Advertising and Consumer Culture

Abstract This chapter argues that the proliferation of advertising has been key to the creation and expansion of a modern consumer society. It explores literature on the growth of advertising with an emphasis on developments in the early part of the twentieth century. Using an institutional approach, it discusses the impact of advertising on discourses surrounding the emerging culture of consumption. Throughout the twentieth century, advertising and the consumer society it commanded were challenged, testing the political powers of marketing forces and their supporting institutions in both the cultural and political arenas. Commercial forces won most of these battles but were unable to eliminate a general uneasiness with commercialization.