Thinking through consumption and technology

A few years ago, Zygmunt Bauman published a book polemically titled Does Ethics Have a Chance in a World of Consumers? (Bauman 2008). At first glance, Bauman’s question is not too different from that of others who have studied the ethics of consumption and related consumerist attitudes, behaviors, and practices (e.g., Borgmann 2000 Cafaro 2001). There is, however, one subtlety in Bauman’s formulation of the question that separates it from similar pursuits. Instead of analyzing consumption and the related consumerist lifestyle with a specific ethical theory, Bauman invites us first to uncover the existential conditions engendered by consumer society, and then to examine the possibility of ethics under those existential conditions.