Comment on Dunleavy and Preteceille

Abstract

This comment takes up the question, addressed by Dunleavy and Preteceille, of the economic, political, and cultural significance of consumption-based cleavages, It is accepted that such cleavages are related to the class system, but Preteceille's suggestion that the latter is necessarily primary is denied. Not only is access to consumption locations structured by factors such as household composition, life cycle, and the use of state power, as well as by class location, but consumption may also generate its own independent effects on the distribution of life chances, Furthermore, the cultural significance of consumption location is underemphasised by both writers, The public–private division is not simply ideologically constituted, as Dunleavy suggests, but reflects real and important variations in people's capacity to exert control and autonomy in crucial areas of their everyday lives, The division now opening up between private-sector and public-sector consumers thus has real and far-reaching economic and cultural foundations.