O consumo de luxo: uma compreensão da experiência de mulheres na pós-modernidade

Abstract

This study aimed at understanding the significance of the consumption of luxury goods to women from the generation X, that is, born from 1968-1978 (SCHIFFMAN; KANUK,1997), residents of São Paulo, with a monthly household income over R$ 10.982,00 and that, in the last year, purchased at least three brands which they considered to be a luxury good. As a way to acess it empirically, we adopted the concept of narrative identity (RICOEUR 1976;1996;1997 apud KUBLIKWOSKI, 2004). In order to achieve our goal, we set the cultural meanings of consumptions and luxury , and considered that the luxury consumption, inherits, broadens and shares the same cultural meanings. For that reason, we developed the theme according to this vision of the world that we adopted: the postmodern paradigm. Considering the context, our paradigmatic lenses led us to the concept of the Society of Consumption, the Culture of Consumption, as well as the terms of postmodernity, modernity, modernism and postmodernism. Our vision of the world allowed us to consider the Positivist paradigms and the Critical Theory as cultural productions that are related to moralism and hedonism traces that are usually associated with this theme. Throughtout this project, we also discuss the gender constructions and their relations with that cultural definitions of consumption and luxury. This research was conducted using the qualitative method, especially a more thematic analysis (RATNER, 2001) that had as an instruments semistructured interviews. The analysis and interpretation of four interviews were the base of five categories present in our study on luxury: the pleasure, the homo oeconomicus model (SLATER, 2002), the singularity of the postmodern logic, the group references (experiences, gathering and differentiating) and to culture as capital