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From Mass Consumer Society To A Society Of Consumers: Consumption And Community In Late Modernity, Matthew Russell Colling

Theses and Dissertations

This study examines a late-modernity model of society where consumption is the conduit through which individuals meet society. This model is contrasted with Wilkinson's (1991) model that sees the community as the place where individuals make contact with society. Using Brown et al.'s (1996) Outshopping Index, residents of two rural Mississippi Delta communities were asked how often they shopped for 30 consumable items outside of their communities both in 1996 and again in 2007. Logistic regression demonstrates a significant interaction effect between year and outshopping such that outshopping was significantly and positively associated with community sentiment in 1996 but not …