STEVEN MILES, Manchester Metropolitan University

Steve Miles is Professor of Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University. His PhD was concerned with the relationship between young people, consumption and identity. Since that time he has continued to conceive of consumption as being at the heart of the relationship between structure and agency in a rapidly changing world. This is an issue he explored in Consumerism as a Way of Life (Sage; 1998), and Youth Lifestyles in a Changing World (OUP; 2000). Miles’ work has sought to challenge politically-motivated perceptions of consumption as a neo-liberal no-go zone. He has explored this issue more recently in Spaces for Consumption (Sage; 2010) which also allowed him to explore the role of culture as a proxy for the commodification of the post-industrial city. He recently completed his latest book Retail and the Artifice of Social Change (Routledge; 2015). He is also Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Consumer Culture.

Title of Talk: "Why sociology and marketing are wrong: theorising the relationship between structure and agency through the prism of consumption"

1. “Theorizing for Real” Chapter 9, pp. 163-175 in S. Miles (2001) Social Theory in the Real World, London: Sage.
2. Lasch, Cristopher (1984) “The Minimal Self”, Psychic Survival in Troubled Times, London: Picador.
3. Illouz, Eva (2009), “Emotions, Imagination and Consumption: A new research agenda,” Journal of Consumer Culture.
4. “Branded Spaces; Branded Consumers: Spaces for Consumption and the Uncomfortable Consequences of Complicit Communality”, pp. 217-228, in S. Sonnenburg and L. Baker (eds) Branded Spaces, Berlin: Springer.