Cecilia Solér, Göteborg University

The aim of this study was to describe the meaning of environmentally relevant products and services as code, a "system of communication and exchange, as code for signs constantly expressed, received and reinvented" (Baudrillard, 1970, page 141).This theoretical framework is particularly tempting as it offers insights to our insatiability as consumers. The language metaphor partly explains why most consumers are concerned about environmental problems but seldom or never change their consumption/buying habits for environmental reasons (Solér, 1997). Consumption as code imply that products are no longer defined by their use but by what they signify, and because what they signify is defined by their relationship to the entire system of products, the system offers an infinite range of differences. According to Baudrillard (1988, page 48) " if we acknowledge that a need is not a need for a particular object as much as it is a need for difference (the desire for social meaning), only then will we understand that satisfaction can never be fulfilled..." In this study, the possibility to describe consumption as code from a sustainable perspective guided both the criteria for selecting households and the consumption objects included. In deciding which households to include in the study the concept of consumption code as a social and communicative context in which consumption takes place, guided the selection of two different neighbourhoods. Thus the main motive for interviewing members of households living in the same neighbourhood was the supposed sense of inclusion between households. To interview neighbours instead of selecting households in different areas of living were supposed to increase the possibility to describe sign-value according to the language metaphor stipulated by Baudrillard and Bourdieu (1984). The neighbourhoods were selected in order to enhance the possibility to uncover and describe different consumption codes or cultural strategies as "through the process of consumption, people are able to make visible the social and cultural differences between people" (Dolan, 2002). This study included six product groups/phenomenon: means of local/domestic transportation (cars, bikes, bus rides etc), travels, clothing (including footwear), household equipment (appliances used for cooking/storing food, washing and cleaning), home repairs and renovation and hobby-, play- and sport products. The criteria for including products/services in the study were twofold. First, products and/or services should influence the environment negatively through the input of resources in the production, use or disposal phase. The second criterion for including products and services in the study was the proposed communicative properties of the consumption objects. Visible consumption objects as cars, clothes and sport products obviously act as social markers (Douglas and Isherwood 1978) whereas products and phenomena related to the home also can be characterized as a mode of self expression (Miller 2001). Food consumed in the home or outside, has communicative properties (e.g. se Douglas, 1975) and important effects on the environment. Food, however, was not included in the study. One argument is found in Belk (1988) where physical things (e.g. cars) become part of our identities as extensions of our bodies and memories of the past. This object-as-part-of-the-body-metaphor is difficult to apply to food products.

The results of this study suggest a questioning of the institutionalised relation between symbolic and communicative consumption and happiness as a possible road towards sustainable consumption. The label reflective consumption, i e the reflection on behalf of consumers regarding the value of communicative consumption in terms of happiness and well-being, indicate that such reflection occur. This study indicates that reflective consumption is not an individual choice but rather forced by circumstances that are primarily financial. The results from a phenomenological study show how sign-value of goods and services orchestrated in a commercial setting are internalized or negotiated by individual consumers depending on their perceived financial situation. These findings are in line with Prothero and Fitchett (2000) who argue that sustainable consumption require an alternative commodity discourse promoting less material consumption. However, the results of the study presented in this article indicate that such an alternative sustainable commodity discourse should focus less on consumption as communication and differentiation (as suggested by Connolly and Prothero, 2003) and more on the utilitarian function of consumption in relation to well-being and happiness. This study suggests that sustainable consumption can only be advanced through a critical examination of the use of "existing commodity discourse" (Connolly and Prothero, 2003). Within this commodity discourse "consumers are conceived as identity seekers and makers" (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). An equally important assumption is "that the market place has become a pre-eminent source of mythic and symbolic resources through which people... construct narratives of identity" (Arnould and Thompson, 2005). The findings of this study illustrate consumption as a reflection, or negotiation, of culturally institutionalised ways to "vital social and psychological functionings - identity creation, social cohesion, cultural defence against anomie" (Jackson, 2006b). Holt (1995) refers to the "institutional structures, such as the social world" on the basis of which consumers construe their experiences as meaningful. The institutionalisation of consumption as identity dominating both theory and practice in the Western world support the notion of reflection as deviation (from the norm) and money as control, as suggested by this study.