Abstract
Forty years ago, making a case for a public morality would have been strongly encouraged. Twenty years later you would have run the risk of being attacked as a boring puritan idiot for expressing it. Today, moral appeals are often no longer understood. The rhetoric of everyday verbal intercourse has undergone a significant loss of normative concepts. Notions like ‘sin’, ‘guilt’, ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘decency’, ‘selfishness’ and so on are dropping out of collective memory. They provoke helplessness rather than consent or aggression. ‘What do you mean?’, is a common response.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Burnett, J., Plenty and Want (London: Scholar Press, 1979).
Forty, A., Objects of Desire (London: Pantheon, 1986).
Fraser, W. H., The Coming of the Mass Market 1850–1914 (London: Macmillan, 1981).
Fromm, E., To Have or To Be? (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).
McCracken, G., Culture and Consumption (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).
Murkerji, C., From Graven Images(New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).
Schulze, G., The Experience Society (London: Sage, 1995).
Shi, D. E., The Simple Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985).
Wiener, M. J., English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Williams, R. A., Dream Worlds: Mass consumption in late nineteenth-century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).
Willis, P. E., Profane Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1997 Pekka Sulkunen, John Holmwood, Hilary Radner and Gerhard Schulze
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schulze, G. (1997). From Situations to Subjects: Moral Discourse in Transition. In: Sulkunen, P., Holmwood, J., Radner, H., Schulze, G., Campling, J. (eds) Constructing the New Consumer Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25337-1_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-25337-1_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-63132-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-25337-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)