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Unless we know why people need luxuries [that is, goods in excess of survival needs] and how they use them we are nowhere near taking the problems of inequality seriously.

Mary Douglas, In the Active Voice

To be melancholic is ‘to sense the infinity of connection, but to be hooked up to nothing’

Rolland Munro, in Culture and Organisation 4 (2005)

Going to a political meeting ranked on a par with a visit to the circus as one of the British public’s least likely things to do

Frank Mort, The Making of the Consumer

In Britain, living on credit and in degbt has by now become part of the national curriculum, designed, endorsed and subsidised by the government.

Bauman in Consuming Life on how we fund higher education

We rewrite [the poor's] stories away from the language of deprivation to that of depravity. The poor are portrayed as lax, sinful and devoid of moral standards.

Bauman in Consuming Life on how consumerism creates an ‘underclass’