The Reflexive Generation: Consumption, Crisis and Sustainability

The consumption analysis in the biographical narratives of young people makes it possible to outline the strategies enacted to deal with the 'late modernity' crisis scenario. Young people have incorporated the dimension of crisis – as incertitude and generalized risk – and they seem to perform reflexive consumption strategies closely linked, in some cases, to the sustainability issue, which emerges as a drive of the current consumption practices. However, consumption strategies differ for the individual endowment of social resources as well as biographical trajectories. This paper deals with this issue and the results of a qualitative research are reported.