Exploring and Understanding Youth Consumer Culture in Light of the Transformations of Liquid Modernity from the Perspective of Zygmunt Bauman

(A Qualitative Study on a Sample of Saudi Youth in Riyadh)

Abstract

This paper aimed to explore the sociological features of consumerism logic through analysis and investigation of how young people are affected by consumption issues not as an abstract economic behavior, but as a cultural process that reproduces identity and social relations in light of Zygmunt Baumann's concept of fluid modernity

Specifically, this study relied on a qualitative approach that was based on individual and group interviews and discussions to identify the issues and topics addressed in the study. The study population consisted of male and female students in some public and private universities in Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the focus groups sought to extract ideas and reveal topics regarding consumption patterns, components of consumer culture and their new dimensions, and the researcher appeared with a set of concepts that were: the dimensions of culture (cognitive, technological, value, psychological and symbolic dimension), competitive consumption, liquid consumption, and the components of the new culture, which were represented in (food culture, body culture, image culture, and debt culture) among individuals

The study concluded that there are societal dimensions of consumer culture, represented in the technological dimension, the cognitive dimension, the value dimension, and the psychological dimension, while the consumerism of university youth was centered on consumption patterns (such as competitive consumption and liquid consumption), the study also reached the formation of a new consumer culture among university students, the most prominent of which were (food culture, body culture, image culture, and debt culture). The study recommended that the media, educational and religious institutions of the society should work to establish the youth on the moral and religious constants that would refine their moral character in order to enable them to face the waves of moral and material change that may distance them from their Arab identity and culture.