fetishism of the consumer

is the illusion that a consumer has agency where in fact the agency lies with the producer and the forces of production.

To briefly restate Marx's concept, fetishism of the commodity is the regard of a product as divorced from its production. That is, it forgets the origin of an item as the product of human and labor and instead reifies it as an autonomous object, thus providing it with an agency that it does not actually possess. Appadurai shifts the focus of this fetishism from the commodity to the act of production and the consumer. To define the former, 'The locality becomes a fetish that disguises the globally dispersed forces that actually drive the production process.' (517) In regards to the latter, fetishism of the consumer is a 'mask for the real seat of agency, which is not the consumer but the producer and the many forces that constitute production.' (517-518) Appadurai then cites global advertising as a medium which has driven and actively perpetuates this obscuring of the true origin of agency, which in Appadurai's estimation is the producer

fetishism of the consumer, n.Definitions

fetishism of the consumer