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For nearly three centuries of the industrial, modern, scientific era, our lives and existence — our lifeworlds — to use the term from European philosophical tradition (Husserl, 1913; Merleau-Ponty, 1962) — have been split sharply into roles: consumer, worker, saver, investor, voter, resident, spouse, parent, child, sibling, partner, neighbour, "friend" (including the new use of this term for cyber-connections), etc. Some of these roles have been receiving boosted valourization in the era of advanced capitalism, especially those of "consumer" and "investor". Let me illustrate this increasingly high valour ization of the consumer role via some contemporary examples.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137353290_11

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