Learning to consume: An ethnographic study of cultural change in Hungary

Abstract

The economic transformations of East Central Europe opened the floodgates to a sea of western advertising and other symbolic activities aimed at informing the public about new products, their appropriate use, and their social and cultural meanings as markers of status. The significance of advertising and other marketing activities in such a setting lies not in their direct pitches to purchase this or that product, but rather in their subtle instruction in how to experience and express one's cultural identity through spending. Using ethnography and other qualitative approaches, this study explores how people in one particular post‐communist society are making sense of this cultural transition. Specifically, it investigates the ways in which social actors in Hungary—cultural producers as well as the lay public—conceptualize and articulate their experiences as subjects in that nation's transition to a culture of consumption.