Packaging Life: Cultures of the Everyday by Pramod K. Nayar - Source Quotations.

'High-end consumption - or conspicuous consumption, which is not about necessities, but about lifestyle - is increasingly possible to the consumer through a democratisation of comfort.' (Nayar, 2009: 47)

'Comfort is the cultural logic of mass manufacture, marketing and consumption, while luxury is the cultural logic of niche manufacture, marketing and consumption.' (Nayar, 2009: 47)

'Humanity is intimately linked to material culture and the objects that constitute material cultures. That is, objects are central to the formation of humans as subjects because we are engaged in a relationship with them.' (Nayar, 2009: 48)

'Material objects have a deeper meaning than simply utility for their users...people give meaning to material objects.' (Nayar, 2009: 49)

'Goods posses meanings that are dependant upon their appropriation by the users. Material culture, therefore, is not simply about things and objects. Rather, it is about the intimate connection between the object and its users. Issues of style, fashion, aesthetic appeal are not properties inherent in particular objects, but the result of a social and cultural evaluation of these objects.' (Nayar, 2009: 49)

'Necessity is embedded within the cultural rhetorics of lower incomes and even poverty. Luxury, at the opposite end of the scale, signifies massive wealth, but also taste.' (Nayar, 2009: 50)

'Douglas Holt (1997) has argued that consumption almost always occurs within 'cultural frameworks' - of taste, ideology, aesthetics and efficiency.' (Nayar, 2009: 50)

'The marketing and consumption of eco-products and nature is within a cultural framework of environmentalism.' (Nayar, 2009: 50)

'No product can now be marketed as simply ' necessity' - it needs a little extra something.' (Nayar, 2009: 51)