Consumption and Material Culture Studies in the Global South

Abstract

This special issue of International Review of Social Research holds the challenge of representing a growing field of studies in the social sciences: that of consumption and material culture. In Brazilian academia, where most of the authors of the articles presented here come from, the study of consumption has experienced a boom in recent years, with an ever-increasing number of national and international meetings and congresses, as well as books and journals published. Despite the recent interest in the dynamics of consumption in complex societies, consumption is not, however, a completely new and unexamined theme in social sciences. In fact, consumption has been studied by anthropology the home discipline of the guest editors since its inception. Not only the consumption, but also the production and circulation of goods, have been examined by disciplinary sub-fields such as, for instance, economic anthropology or anthropology of food,