Baudrillard's Study On The Ideology Of Consumption

Jean Baudrillard's study on the ideology of consumption has made a significant contribution to the theories of social criticism.He thinks the western capitalist society has changed from a production-oriented society to a consumption-oriented society called consumer society.Baudrillard reveals the phenomena and problems of consumption that are widely spread in western capitalist society,pointing out that people in consumer society no longer care the value of the objects only and what they are more concerned about is the abstract meaning given by the symbol.People consume symbol-coded objects in the hope of highlighting their identity and status or having access to their desired classes and groups.In consumer society,people consume everything that they can.When labor becomes objects that can be consumed,consumption becomes the object of Baudrillard's social criticism.Consumption can not only be guided and stimulated,even can be produced through serial consumption and personalized consumption.And the mass media especially the advertisement expands publicity in a way of guided statement,allowing people to recognize and decode it in the unconsciousness.On the basis of detailed analysis about Baudrillard's System of Objects,Consumer Society and related works,the paper mainly analyzes Baudrillard's study on the ideology of consumption,which is about how the consumption in the economic field is drawn from the economic base and functions as a superstructure as a controlling machine with ideology.His study on the ideology of consumption enriches and develops Marx's theory of social criticism,which has made significant theoretical progress.However,his study on the ideology of consumption has certain limitations in terms of symbols,production,and form,eventually leading him to formalism and nihilism.