Mike Featherstone's Theory Of Consumer Culture: A Study

Mike Featherstone is one of the important theorists in consumer culture. This paper is to inquire into his theory of consumer culture, which includes three aspects as follows:The first aspect refers to his theory of aestheticization of everyday life, which occupies a very important place in his theory of consumer culture. Although quite a few theorists have made great achievements in the studies of Everyday life and consumption practices--- which paved the way for Mike Featherstone's theory of consumer culture, he neither accept everyday life as a space where Instrumental rationalism controls consumers, nor as a series of fragments. Whereas he thinks it as an important field where consumers carry out their cultural practices, and where aestheticization takes place.The second aspect refers to his theory of control/resistance. When Featherstone explores the process of fighting for discursive power between cultural specialists and consumers of the middle class, he holds that consumers' cultural practices could prove that consumers are replacing and transforming the dominating consumption ethics in the days when ideology of everyday life controls consumers more and more strictly.The third aspect refers to his theory of consumption of literature and arts. He launches serious debates with those who hold that culture has been in disorder and that history of literature and arts has been ended. He holds that all of these cultural phenomena reflect cultural changes in the field of literature and arts, which is very common in the perspective of evolution of literature and arts.Therefore, Mike Featherstone's cultural theory could be taken as a perspective to examine the changes of society and culture as well as a perspective to concern about the life of people in the post-industrial society, and his ideas about middle class should be discussed further. However, his creative ideas about concerns for life and possibility of emancipation of the individual are inspiring for us to construct our harmonious society.