Saving, spending, and self-control : cognition versus consumer culture

Recent economic literature puts forth “behavioral” perspectives on self-control as a means of under- standing oddities of consumer behavior: spending too much, saving too little, borrowing too much on costly credit cards. This article argues that the behavioral emphasis on cognition overlooks the extent to which issues of self-control are framed, elaborated, and sustained as problematics of contemporary con- sumer culture. As such, they are rooted as much in the social, cultural, and economic dynamics of cap- italism as they are in the human mind.