Journal of Consumer Culture 2014 Ritzer 3 24

Article
Prosumption: Evolution,
revolution, or eternal
return of the same?
Journal of Consumer Culture

2014, Vol. 14(1) 324
! The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1469540513509641
joc.sagepub.com
George Ritzer
University of Maryland
Abstract
Prosumption, the interrelated process of production and consumption, is increasingly
obvious everywhere, but especially on the internet where people prosume, for example, Facebook pages, Wikipedia entries, and Amazon.com orders. But what is prosumption? Has it evolved out of recent behaviors? Or, is it new and revolutionary? Or, is it
what weve always done? In fact, it is all three. Beyond dealing with these questions and
re-conceptualizing much of what we do as prosumption rather than as either production or consumption, we reflect on the future of prosumption, as well as on the
continuing utility of traditional concepts, paradigms, theories and methods that were
created to deal with epochs, phenomena and processes seemingly focused on production or consumption.
Keywords
Prosumption, consumption, production, digital, eternal return of the same
It is now possible to begin to get a handle on the full extent of a series of extremely
important and closely related changes in everyday life, especially involving the
economy. Changes in production are often noted and there has even been increasing, but still inadequate, attention to changes in consumption. However, changes in
prosumption, the interrelated process of production and consumption,1 indeed
the phenomenon itself, have generally not been recognized, at least until recently.
This is a revised version of a paper presented as the annual Robin M Williams, Jr Lecture at the Eastern
Sociological Society meetings in Boston, MA on 21 March 2013. I would like to thank Chih-Chin Chen, PJ Rey,
Nathan Jurgenson, and the students in my spring 2013 graduate seminar on consumption at the University of
Maryland for their input into this paper. Reviewers, as well the editor of this journal, made many useful
comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Corresponding author:
George Ritzer, University of Maryland, Art-Sociology Bldg, College Park, MD 20742, United States
301-405-6418.
Email: gritzer@umd.edu
Downloaded from joc.sagepub.com at Universit degli Studi di Napoli 'L'Orientale' on April 22, 2015
Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)
They are largely invisible not only to scholars, but also to the people most actively
involved in, and aected by, them.
There are several reasons for the near invisibility of prosumption. The social
changes associated with prosumption are usually so mundane (e.g. bussing ones
own debris at a fast food restaurant) that they hardly seem worthy of note to those
involved. In addition, they are occurring in so many diverse economic and, more
broadly, social worlds (airports, the internet, etc.) that it is dicult not only to see
their connections to one another, but also that they are part of some larger set of
changes. Because they have largely not been recognized by laypeople and scholars,
the phenomenon and these changes have not been researched, theorized, or even
conceptualized until relatively recently. Without a signicant concept, or set of
concepts, to describe them, scholars and, more importantly, laypeople have been
unable to discern the commonalities or connections among the diverse changes and
the even more diverse phenomena undergoing these changes.
Beginning in 1980, scholars did begin, albeit haltingly, to conceptualize these
changes, but they soon created a series of very dierent concepts often dealing with
only a part of the broader economic and social changes, as well as the phenomena
involved in those changes. As the number of these concepts grew over the years,
their quantity and diversity tended to prevent scholars and laypeople from understanding what the various changes and empirical phenomena had in common.
The rst signicant contribution to conceptualizing prosumption was made by
Alvin Toer (1980; Toer and Toer, 2006), a popular writer, a futurist, without
a base in an academic discipline. Because his ideas lacked legitimacy, at least to many
in the academic world, Toers work did not have a great deal of impact on scholars.
Toer was on target in his work on prosumption, but he was, as a futurist, ahead of
the curve, especially because the arena in which his ideas were most relevantthe
internetwas still in its infancy. While his 1980 book, Third Wave, devoted much
attention to prosumption, it was only a small part of his larger argument about the
Third Wave and the dramatic social changes on the horizon. It was that overarching argument that received most public attention and was the source of great
controversy. Prosumption was largely lost in the broader issues and the controversies that surrounded it. The concept failed to gain much traction among either laypeople or scholars in spite of the expansion of phenomena that clearly involved
prosumption. A major social change away from production and consumption and
toward prosumption was not only under way but was soon to accelerate.
In the wake of Toers work on prosumption, and only in part as a result of it,
scholars in a number of dierent elds began to accord greater attention to the
changes involved. In the process, they either used or created other concepts to deal
with them. This eventually led to a set of similar concepts that, in turn, led, at least
in part, to a failure to see what they had in common. Among them are such ideas as
do-it-yourself (DIY) (Watson and Shove, 2008); craft consumption (Campbell,
2005); Pro-Ams (Leadbetter and Miller, 2004); co-creation (Prahalad and
Ramaswamy, 2004a, 2004b); service-dominant logic (Vargo and Lusch, 2004,
2008); commons-based peer production (Benkler, 2006; Benkler and
Ritzer
Nissenbaum, 2006); collaborative capitalism involving both value co-creation and

service dominant logic (Cova, Dalli and Zwick, 2011); crowd- and open-sourcing
(Howe, 2009); putting customers to work (Ritzer, 1993); wikinomics based at least
in part on the idea that businesses put consumers to work on the internet (Tapscott
and Williams, 2006); the complete collapse of consumption into production (Zwick
and Knott, 2009); Laugheys (2010) productive consumption; and the produser
(Bird, 2011; Bruns, 2005, 2008). In spite of this conceptual proliferation, it is
prosumption that remains the most popular and useful concept for understanding
the full range of the changing economic and social phenomena of concern here.
Despite this growth in work on prosumption (and related ideas), it remains a
niche concept that is largely unknown to most observers. A key factor in this
invisibility is the fact that within the social and economic worlds, there are hegemonic conceptsproduction and consumptionthat are so omnipresent and powerful that they strongly bias and limit the ways in which scholars and laypeople look
at those worlds and what they see in them. As a result, they are largely unable to see
the prosumption that is rife throughout the economy and the social world.
Nonetheless, the hegemony of the concepts of production and consumption eventually led to the greater acceptance and popularity (compared to similar ideas listed
above) of the concept of prosumption because it involves a fusion of the concepts
of production and consumption. However, given these largely economic roots, the
concept of prosumption inhibits our ability to see and fully understand the
broader, non-economic dimensions of that process (for example, how they apply
to the media and media studies).
Some deper theoretical background

Scholars and laypeople have long had a productivist bias (Ritzer and Slater,
2001) when examining the economy (for a recent example of this bias, but focused
on the internet, see Scholz, 2013). As a result, they tended to concentrate on production and work at the expense of consumption and leisure (as well as play). The
latter were seen, at least until the years following the end of World War Two, as
being of only minor signicance. Most of those who studied the economy rarely
recognized and acknowledged the importance of consumption or looked at it in a
positive light.2 Consumption (and even more leisure) was seen as at best trivial and
at worst as a wasteful social practice (Veblen, 1899/1994). The focus on production
was especially strong after the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the growth in
signicance of factories that produced various goods as well as being a workplace
for those who produced in them. The capitalist economic system greatly valued
factories and the productive work that took place in them and, at least in its early
history, accorded comparatively little importance to consumption.
The emphasis on production is found in the work of the classical social theorists,
most notably Karl Marx (as well as Adam Smith). In the labor theory of value that
lies at the heart of Marxs theory of capitalism, it is production (work, labor) that
gives commodities their value. Consumption, especially the demand of
consumers, plays no role in the value of commodities which is determined by the

labor involved in them. What mattered most to Marx was the productive work, the
labor, of the proletariat (as well as the fact that they were not rewarded adequately,
indeed were exploited, by the capitalist). Max Webers (19045/1958) emphasis on
production is clearest in his best-known work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism (as well as companion works on other major world religions and their
relationship, largely as barriers, to the rise of capitalism outside the Occident). The
focus is on the role of Protestantism (especially Calvinism) in the rise of the spirit
of capitalism and ultimately of capitalism itself (and, more generally, a rationalized economy) in the West. Webers productivist bias is even clearer in his greatly
underrated General Economic History (1927/1981) where Weber is mainly interested in the development of the Occidents rational capitalistic economy, as well as
the barriers to the development of such an economy elsewhere in the world.
Durkheim was much more interested in collective beliefs and collective morality
than he was in the economy. For example, he saw socialism as a movement aimed
at the moral regeneration of society through scientic morality (Durkheim, 1928/
1962). His most systematic thinking on the economy is found in the Division of
Labor in Society (Durkheim, 1893/1964). His ultimate interest is clear when he
argues that the economic services that it [the modern division of labor] can
render are insignicant compared with the moral eect that it produces and its
true function is to create between two or more people a feeling of solidarity
(Durkheim, 1893/1964: 17). In mechanical solidarity people were held together
by the fact that they generally performed the same tasks and had the same responsibilities, whereas in organic solidarity people needed one another because they
performed dierent tasks and had dierent responsibilities. Mechanical solidarity
was strong because people tended to share a strong collective conscience, whereas
the bonds were reduced in organic solidarity because of a weaker collective conscience. In terms of the economy, the focus was clearly on what people did (their
work) and not on their role as consumers. Similarly, in terms of his proposals for
dealing with the weakness of the collective conscience in organic solidarity,
Durkheim (1893/1964: 5) proposed the occupational association, or an organization that would encompass all the agents of the same industry united and organized into a single group. Rosalind Williams (1982) sees Durkheims focus on the
occupational association as emblematic of the reign of the producer in his work.
Of all of the classical theorists, Thorstein Veblen (1899/1994) is the best known
for his work on consumption, especially the famous concept of conspicuous consumption. However, this work occupies a unique place in Veblens oeuvre which
otherwise is almost completely devoted to production-related matters. Veblens prioritization of production begins with his assumptions about human nature, especially the instinct for workmanship. This instinct is concerned with practical
expedients, ways and means, devices and contrivances of eciency and economy,
prociency, creative work and technological mastery of facts. . . a proclivity for
taking pains (Veblen, 1914/1964:33). The instinct of workmanship is manifest in
both the technical eciency of the individual worker and in the technological
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prociency and accomplishments of the community as a whole (the industrial

arts). The bulk of Veblens work is devoted to the conict between what he calls
business and industry. Those involved in industry seek to become ever more
ecient, but they tend to be thwarted by those oriented to business and their interest
in money, including large prots and low costs, rather than in eciency and workmanship. Thus, business leaders often seek to keep production low (to inhibit, even
to sabotage, those associated with industry) in order to keep prots high.
This productive bias among social theorists and sociologists was not restricted to
the economy; there was a tendency to privilege production over consumption in
other spheres of the social world, as well. In the family, for example, the productive
contributions, especially of men in the labor force, were accorded prime signicance.
Even before women entered the labor force in great numbers, the cult of domesticity led to a focus on the domestic work that women did in and for the family
(Welter, 1966). This work, as well as their consumption functions within the family,
was seen as of secondary signicance to what men did, especially in the labor force.
The classical thinkers inherited and lived and worked in a world in which the
whole idea of a consumer was either non-existent or largely undeveloped. In an
exhaustive historical genealogy of the idea of the consumer, Frank Trentman
(2006: 23; italics added) says,
The consumer was virtually absent from eighteenth-century discourse. Signicantly, it
only appears in seven of the 150,000 works of the eighteenth-century collections on line
. . . Even after the French Revolution, when deputies in Restoration France considered
consumers interests, it was only to render them insignicant compared to peoples
social station and larger national interests represented by land, production and trade.
In the early 19th century there was only limited use of the idea of the consumer,
often to refer to physical or metaphysical processes of use, waste and destruction
(Trentmann, 2006: 26). It was not until the 1890s that the intellectual pursuit of
the consumer took o (Trentmann, 2006: 29). All of this is to say that the classical
theorists were working in a context in which the whole idea of a consumer was un-,
or at least under-, developed. Thus, not only were they drawn to the revolutions in
production taking place around them, but they lacked a strong sense of the consumer to counter-balance the inclination to emphasize production. However, that
is not to say that the classical thinkers were unaware of consumption.
Marx was well aware that, for example, the consumption of various things (e.g.
the raw materials, tools and machinery that allow labor power to function in the
production process) was needed in order for production to occur (productive
consumption). It could be argued that use value is all about consumption (to
be produced, a commodity must be a use value; a commodity will be consumed
only if it is useful). Furthermore the C-M-C (Money-Commodity-Money) circuit is
focally concerned with the exchange of commodities to be consumed (versus the
M-C-M [Money-Commodity-Money]) circuit which is more concerned with the
prot dynamic in capitalism that feeds continual and expanding production).
To the degree that there was a concern for consumption in Webers work on the
Protestant Ethic, it was ultimately on the propensity of the Protestants to value
frugality; to consume as little as possible. One of the major limitations of Webers
argument on this was claried by Colin Campbell (1987) who demonstrated that
Weber did not take his argument far enough historically. Over time, the Protestant
Ethic also gave birth to a consumerist ethic to parallel the early capitalist (productivist) ethic.
Williams (1982) interprets Durkheims moral crisis as one that involves the
consumer, but she argues that his response to that crisis is to focus on the realm
of the producer (and the role of occupational associations in resolving that crisis).
Even in his later work, Durkheim turns to religion, especially the morality of religion and its asceticism, as at least a constraint on consumption.
Simmel is best-known for his micro-sociological work on forms of interaction
and types of interactants, but he dealt with the economy in at least some of that
work. His best-known work in this area, The Philosophy of Money (Simmel, 1907/
1978), dealt with capitalism and the problems created by a money economy (e.g.
cynicism, a blase attitude, increasing impersonality). Interestingly, this work, while
far from silent on the issue of production (the development of a rational market),
had much more to do with consumption.
As the title suggests, Simmel is concerned with the money economy including
many of the distortions associated with it. For example, the rapid circulation of
money induces people to spend and in the process to acquire goods and to utilize a
range of paid services. While money in general grows increasingly important, a
specic quantity of money, especially if it seems to be a small amount, becomes
more insignicant. As a result, it becomes increasingly easy to spend. Money, especially in contrast to predecessors such as barter, leads people into what Simmel calls
a temptation to imprudence. That can mean spending more money than one
should (overspending) and going into debt in order to be able to consume at a
desired level. While it was rather dicult to acquire debt in Simmels time, it has
clearly become far easier today with, for example, credit cards (Ritzer, 1995, 2012;
Manning, 2001; Marron, 2009) and other forms of easy credit. As a result, Simmel
can be seen as anticipating the debt and consumer orgies that precipitated the
Great Recession that began in 2008, as well as its lingering eects.
Many other aspects of Simmels work, especially his numerous essays, deal
either directly or indirectly with consumption. His essay on fashion (Simmel,
1904/1971) attunes us to the greater consumption associated with constant changes
in what is in (or out of) fashion. More generally, his overarching thinking on
objective culture (Simmel, 1921/1968) relates to consumption in various ways.
For one thing, the need to consume becomes part of the objective culture which
pushes individuals in the direction of ever more consumption. For another, as part
of objective culture, the pressure to consume grows increasingly distant from
people and much more dicult to control. In fact, it is increasingly likely to control
people and to lead them in the direction of hyper-consumption. Werner Sombart
(1913/1967) devoted far more attention to consumption than his peers (except,
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perhaps, for Veblen), especially in Luxury and Capitalism. There he reversed the
usual argument and contended that it was the consumption of luxury goods that
played a central role in the rise of capitalism. In spite of these exceptions, the classic
theorists lacked a strong sense of consumption. This had many consequences, but
the most important eect from the perspective of this essay is that without a sense
of consumption to complement their focus on production, there was no way that
the classical theorists could have developed the idea of prosumption.
Overall, production has been a hegemonic concept since the Industrial
Revolution. It retains that position to this day even though industry has declined
in importance in much of the developed world, especially the United States, as has
the manual work and production associated with it. Work, more generally, is itself
less central with the rise in importance of consumption that more-or-less coincided
with the decline of factories and the work associated with them. In spite of these
changes, production (and the factory) remains important and retains its hold on
popular and scholarly imagination; we continue to operate with a productivist bias.
Since World War Two, consumption has grown in economic importance and, as a
result, it has increasingly taken its place beside production as a hegemonic concept.
With consumption now accounting for 70%, or more, of the American economy, it is
natural for it to occupy a place beside production in thinking about the economy, as
well as other sectors of the social world such as the family. Given the change, some
social theorists began to shift from a productivist to a consumerist bias (e.g.
Galbraith, 1958). The work of Jean Baudrillard, especially his Consumer Society
(1970/1998), is particularly pivotal in this shift in focus. Interestingly, in spite of
the title, Baudrillard continued to privilege production over consumption.
Nevertheless, the key point from the perspective of this essay lies in the title of
Baudrillards book heralding a shift in the 20th century from a society dominated
by production to consumer society. Baudrillard argues that capitalists came to recognize that the 19th century emphasis on regulating workers was no longer sucient.
In the 20th century the view emerged that consumers could no longer be allowed to
decide whether or not to consume or how much or what to consume (Bauman, 1992
takes a similar position). In many ways, a mirror image of the theories of the classical
theorists emerged. While the latter focused almost exclusively on production (or
separated their analysis of production and consumption into dierent works
[Veblen, Sombart]), a number of theorists and empiricists in the late 20th century
came to focus almost exclusively on consumption. Indeed, a distinct area of consumer
or consumption studies emerged in several elds (e.g. anthropology, sociology, marketing), as did journals (e.g. Journal of Consumer Culture; Journal of Consumer
Research) devoted to the study of consumption.3 A new section of the American
Sociological Association, Consumers and Consumption, was launched in 2013.
This was related to the view that had emerged in the wake of the work of
Baudrillard and others that we had moved, or were moving, from a modern to
postmodern society. Among the things that were associated with the modern world
was production, but the postmodern world came to be linked to consumption
(Ritzer, Goodman, and Wiedenhoft, 2001). Thus, for example, Bauman argued
10
that the society of concern to classical theorists such as Marx was work-based.
It was one in which its members were engaged primarily as producers. In
contrast, a later-modern, or second-modern or post-modern stage. . . engages its
membersagain primarilyin their capacity as consumers (Bauman, 1998: 24).
More extremely, Bauman discusses the passage from producer to consumer society (Bauman, 1998: 24). Indeed, the ascendancy of consumer culture was seen as
one of the hallmarks of the postmodern world (see Featherstones [1991] Consumer
Culture and Postmodernism).
The key point is that in the last several decades the two concepts of production
and consumption have so dominated our thinking that they have prevented us
from thinking in other ways about what transpires in the economic and social
worlds. Furthermore, thinking in such binary terms, indeed thinking in modern
binary terms in general, tends to distort our conceptions of the world. Specically,
the production-consumption binary prevents us from seeing the consumption (e.g.
of raw materials, tools, labor time) that is inherent in production and the production that is intertwined with consumption (for example, the work [e.g. shopping]
involved in much consumption; the creation of the meaning of brands; producing
an order on Amazon.com; creating a response after reading a blog, etc.). In other
words, we are prevented from seeing the prosumption involved in what is conventionally thought of as distinct processes of production and consumption.
Furthermore, the hegemonic status of the concepts of production and consumption has rendered us unable to see that prosumption, not production or consumption, is the primal (and still predominant) process (Ritzer, 2010a). That is, early
humans consumed as they produced and produced as they consumed. More
importantly, the hegemony of production and consumption has prevented us
from seeing that we are in the midst of a largely unrecognized social change involving a massive expansion in, and the development of dramatic new forms of,
prosumption (Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010; Ritzer, Jurgenson and Dean, 2012).
Rethinking production and consumption in light of

prosumption
Figure 1 oers a perspective on prosumption not as a single process (or phenomenon), but rather as a wide range of processes existing along a continuum. The
poles of the continuum involve production redened (a bit awkwardly, but more
accurately) as prosumption-as-production (p-a-p) and consumption as
prosumption-as-consumption (p-a-c). This means, among other things, that production and consumption, at least in their pure forms devoid of prosumption, do
not exist on this continuum. There is no such thing as either pure production (without at least some consumption) or pure consumption (without at least some production); the two processes always interpenetrate. In the middle of the prosumption
continuum production (-as-consumption) and consumption (-as-production) are
more or less evenly balanced; it is there where something approaching balanced
prosumption exists (see Figure 1).
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Prosumption-as-ProductionBalanced ProsumptionProsumption-as-Consumption
Figure 1. The Prosumption Continuum.
The prosumption continuum

Sociologists, social theorists and other students of society should have always
focused on prosumption. At best, production and consumption should have
been treated as special limiting cases, as ideal types (Weber, 1903/1917/1949:
90), that do not exist in the real world economy, but may be useful in helping us
to analyze the economic world. However, even that accords production and consumption too much importance since from the point of view of this discussion they
are merely types, albeit extreme types, of prosumption. In other words, production
and consumption are sub-types of prosumption; it is prosumption that is the more
general process that subsumes the other two.
A number of students of the internet (in many ways the contemporary home
of prosumption) have come close to understanding the nature of prosumption and
its relationship to production and consumption. For example, Howe (2009: 71)
contends: Once upon a time there were producers and consumers. . . the consumer, as traditionally conceived, is becoming an antiquated concept.
Interestingly, undoubtedly because of a lingering productivist bias, Howe is
unable to see that the concept of the producer has also become outdated.
Similarly, Clay Shirky (www.shirky.com/writings/consumer/html) argues that
the consumer is the Internets most recent casualty and that we are all producers now. While Shirky is on the right track, we once again see the productivist
bias at work here. He is able to dismiss the concept of consumption on the internet,
but he remains in the thrall of the idea of production there (and presumably
elsewhere).
Viewed from todays vantage point, and armed with the concept of prosumption
(and the continuum), we can now see that concepts true utility and signicance as
well as the many phenomena well-described by it. A number of examples of these
phenomena are discussed below. We begin with examples from the material world
and then turn to digital, as well as mixed material and digital, examples. The
examples to be discussed below all lie toward the middle of the continuum in
Figure 1; they are more balanced forms of prosumption. However, it is also the
case that examples that lie at or near the extreme ends of the continuum exist. That
is, processes approaching what we have traditionally thought of as production
and consumption continue to have a role in the social world. For example, at the
production end of the continuum we can still nd the traditional factory worker
(although better thought of as a prosumer-as-producer), while a consumer in an
elite boutique staed by many salespeople is a traditional shopper (although even
in this case more of a prosumer-as-consumer).
12
It is important to make clear that the distinction between the material and the
digital is made for discussion purposes only; the material and digital worlds increasingly interpenetrate. That is, we must avoid operating with a dualistic sense of the
material and the digital worlds. Rather we should think in terms of augmented
reality in which the digital and material worlds complement one another
(Jurgenson, 2012). Acts of material prosumption such as cashing a check or checking a bank balance are more likely to occur on a computer or a mobile device and
are thereby increasingly digital. Similarly, those actions involving immaterial prosumption such as creating a digital design on ones computer are increasingly likely
to be materialized by 3-D printers (Anderson, 2012).
Among the (mainly) material examples of (balanced) prosumption are lining up
in cafeterias and more recently fast food restaurants to collect ones food and
afterwards disposing of ones own leftovers; fetching ones own food purchases
and using self-checkout systems at super-and hyper-markets; building, really just
putting together (although it is not as easy as it looks and products are often
considered impossible-to-assemble) IKEA furniture (with the help of a sheet
of instructions and maybe a small tool or two); buying and using on ones own
medical technologies such as blood pressure and glucose monitors, as well as tests
for PSA and cholesterol levels, pregnancy, male fertility, drug, tobacco and alcohol
use, and HIV; and using smart phones to photograph and video dramatic events
(e.g. the damage on Americas east coast caused by Hurricane Sandy in late 2012)
and then sending the photos and videos to TV networks (like CNN) and local
stations that show them on air almost immediately.
Then there are such (mainly) digital examples as increasingly making all-but-themost-complex travel arrangements on ones own through various websites (e.g.
Travelocity, Expedia); doing all of the work on websites such as Amazon.com
including making the appropriate choices for items to be purchased, providing
needed delivery and payment information, and making ones way through the
various steps needed to complete the process; as buyers doing the largely digital
work of providing a body of information on themselves to eBay and if (when) they
are sellers on that which they are oering for sale; diagnosing oneself (or at least
believing one is capable of self-diagnosis) as a result of the proliferation of information on the internet on every conceivable disease and the associated symptomologies; co-creating and crowd-sourcing (producing) open-source software (e.g.
Firefox, Linux) online and then downloading and using (consuming) it; producing
and consuming most of what is found on the billion Facebook pages; contributing
to and using Wikipedia; and writing and reading blogs.
Although the material and the digital forms of prosumption always interpenetrate, the following examples more clearly demonstrate that interpenetration
including producing the rental of a Zipcar online (with the help of various technologies, of course) and then driving the car; producing the listings on Freecycles
website and, along with the person receiving the object, taking the various digital
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13
and material steps needed to transfer the object from giver to receiver; searching
out and renting lodgings on Airbnb and eventually occupying the rented spaces in
the homes of people in the locales to which one is traveling; tele-teaching and
internet-based education on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) where
much of the burden of education is put on the students themselves (e.g. having
students grade each others exams, even essay exams).
Given the massive number and array of examples of prosumptionand the
enumeration above only scratches the surface of the full range of this ever-expanding phenomenonthe topic to be addressed in the remainder of this paper is
whether prosumption constitutes a revolutionary new development or whether it
is consistent with earlier, even primal, forms of prosumption. Obviously, many of
the examples iterated above rely on new and advanced technology (especially the
computer and the internet), but the major issue is whether the basic actions
involvedthose that combine production and consumptionconstitute something
new, even revolutionary.
A revolutionary development
The view that a revolutionary change is under way involves the idea that while we
have always been prosumers, we are now witnessing the emergence of the new
prosumer associated with, among others, the following realities. First, prosumers
are performing tasks (e.g. checking themselves in and out of hotels and at airport
kiosks) that they rarely, if ever, did before. Second, many people are no longer
employed, or they are doing dierent kinds of work, because of the various things
prosumers are now doing themselves without pay. Third, many companies are
earning unprecedented prots because they are able to employ far fewer people
than they would have if prosumers did not perform various tasks without pay.
Fourth, people now get lots of things free of charge, especially on the internet, in
part because of the free labor of prosumers (Anderson, 2010). Fifth, many of these
developments have been made possible by new technologiesthe computer, internet, self-scanners, 3-D printersand they are leading to further technological
advances that will, among other things, further expand prosumption.
The new prosumer has been made possible, and is dened, by the emergence of
the new means of prosumption. This idea is derived from Marxs famous concept
of the means of production and his less well-known idea of the means of consumption. Interestingly, Marxs (1884/1981: 471) denition of the means of
productioncommodities that possess a form in which they. . . enter productive
consumptionmakes it clear that he is aware, at least implicitly, of the process of
prosumption. Since it combines production and consumption, the idea of productive consumption is obviously one way of thinking about prosumption, albeit one
that prioritizes production over consumption. Among the means of production for
Marx are labor-time, tools, machines, and the factories in which they exist; that
14
which is used and used up in the process of production. The means of production
are, in Marxs terms, then the means that make possible. . . the production of
commodities (Ritzer, 2010: 50b).
Marx (1884/1981: 471) also develops the idea of the means of consumption, but
he denes it in a way that is at variance with his denition of the means of production. That is, they are dened as commodities that possess a form in which
they enter individual consumption of the capitalist and working class (Marx,
1884/1981: 471). Marx associates the luxury means of consumption with the
consumption of capitalists and the necessary means of consumption with that
of the working class. Basic foodstus would be necessary means of consumption
while expensive automobiles such as Maseratis would be examples of luxury means
of consumption.
However, there are logical problems in the way Marx uses the concept of the
means of consumption, especially in comparison to the paired notion of means of
production. The means of production occupy an intermediate position between
workers and products; they are the means that make possible both the production
of commodities and the control and exploitation of the workers. In contrast, the
way Marx uses the idea, the means of consumption are not means but rather the end
products in his model of consumption; they are those things (either subsistence or
luxury) that are consumed. In other words, there is no distinction in Marxs work
between consumer goods and what are seen here as the means of consumption (fast
food restaurants, supermarkets, Amazon.com).4 To put it another way, in Marxs
work there is no parallel in the realm of consumption to the mediating and expediting role played by the means of production. Here, the means of consumption are
clearly distinguished from that which is being consumed. The means of consumption play the same mediating role in consumption that the means of production play
in Marxs theory of production. Just as the means of production are those structures
that allow the proletariat to produce, the means of consumption are the structures
that make it possible for people to acquire goods and services. Thus, the means of
consumption should be dened (assuming we are going to do something we no longer
should do and clearly dierentiate between production and consumption), in parallel with the denition of the means of production, as those means that make it
possible for people to acquire goods and services (Ritzer, 2010: 50b).
In the 19th century, consumption was a very cumbersome and time-consuming
process involving, for example, long and slow treks to and from such means of
consumption as specialized shops (e.g. butcher shops, grocers). Today, consumption is innitely easier and consumption time is greatly reduced because of the
development of such newer means of consumption as supermarkets and online
shop-at-home services (e.g. Peapod).
Given our interest in the prosumer, we also need the concept of the means of
prosumption, or those means that make it possible for people to prosume goods and
services. In terms of the continuum depicted in Figure 1, IKEA leads prosumers to
produce their own bookcases at home (prosumption-as-production), MOOCs
lead students to consume college-level courses, and perhaps degrees, on their own
Ritzer
15
computers (prosumption-as-consumption), and ATMs lead to both doing the

work involved in a bank withdrawal and obtaining and using the needed cash
(balanced prosumption).5 Thus, IKEA, MOOCS, and ATMs are means of prosumption; they allow, even force, people to be prosumers. Since prosumption is
such a desirable process from the capitalist point of view (fewer paid workers and
more unpaid prosumers), we can expect the creation of an increasing number of
new means of prosumption in the future. Both the means of production and the
means of consumption are, in a sense, means of prosumption because production
and consumption have been redened in this essay as prosumption-as-production
and prosumption-as-consumption. In another sense, if we treat them as binaries,
we could say that both the means of production and the means of consumption are
imploding into one another, especially on the internet, producing the means of
prosumption. Also imploding into the means of prosumption are the actions we
actually take on them. It is increasingly dicult to tell when we are producing,
consuming or prosuming (assuming we can even make those distinctions) on these
new means of prosumption. Those distinctions cease to have meaning when we are,
for example, blogging.
The new prosumer relates to many older means of prosumption such as the
home workshop in which the DIY-er and the craft consumer are found.
However, what especially interests us here are the new means of prosumption that
are not only making the new prosumer possible, but are both expanding and
revolutionizing the process of prosumption. Many new means of prosumption
are found in the material world (e.g. self-checkout systems, digital kiosks and 3D printers), but they are especially important in the digital world (Amazon.com,
Facebook, Wikipedia).
The eternal return, or recurrence, of the prosumer

While it is possible to think in terms of a series of revolutionary changes giving
birth to the new prosumer, it is also possible to see the new prosumer as continuous
with earlier, even primal, prosumers. Production and consumption were not clearly
distinct processes. Rather, people prosumed, that is they produced as they consumed and they consumed as they produced, or at least the processes were closely
associated in form and temporally. Bruns (2008: 326), who focuses on the media,
argues that prosumption,6 including that which takes place today on social networking sites such as Facebook, is consistent with the social processes of preindustrial communities. Vargo and Lusch (2004: 12) operate from a marketing
perspective in their discussion of service-oriented logic, one of the alternatives to
the concept of prosumption (see above). They argue that that process harks back
to pre-Industrial Revolution days. They cite Hauser and Clausing (1988) who
oer the following example of this:
Marketing, engineering and manufacturing were integrated in the same individual. If a
knight wanted armor, he talked directly to the armorer, who translated the knights
16
desires into a product, the two might discuss the materialplate rather than chain
armorand details like uted service or greater bending strength. Then the armorer
would design the production process (cited in Vargo and Lusch, 2004: 12)
In this case, the knight is directly involved in prosuming the armor in communicating his desires about the material used, design elements, and the exibility of the
armor (modern prosumers increasingly do this with, for example, clothing designers).
However, the knight lies more toward the prosumption-as-consumption end of the
prosumption continuum because physical production remains in the hands of the
armorer. In most other pre-industrial, especially primal, instances, the consumers are
involved in much more than preliminary deliberations about the end-product; they
are actually involved in the physical production of what they consume.
Ballantyne and Varey (2008) make this clear in their discussion of the fact that
service-dominant logic has much in common with the realities of pre-industrial
society. The key is that in that epoch people were most often not simply involved
in preliminary deliberations, but were involved in production for their own immediate use. In the absence of any large-scale production, people provided for the
needs of their own families and communities. At this point in time, production and
consumption were highly integrated, but this ended with the Industrial Revolution
which, as Toer (1980) pointed out, served to separate production and consumption (or at least seemed to). This involved a shift from personal value-in-use in preindustrial society to market-based value-in-exchange in industrial society.
Marketers have long operated with a value-in-exchange perspective, but when
they shift to value-in-use it becomes clear that they are dealing with prosumers
and that it is the latter who produce value. From this point of view, the role of
producer or supplier involves supporting the value-creating process of the prosumer throughout the entirety of the production-consumption process. More generally, this process involves (re-)connecting the processes of production and
consumption seemingly severed in the Industrial Revolution.
Ballantyne and Varey argue that a variety of recent changes have made it even
clearer that production and consumption are tightly integrated and cannot be
neatly distinguished from one another. Among these are the integration and reintegration of distribution channels, the emergence of collaborative global supply
chains, as well as the increasing understanding that production and consumption,
as well as procurement and distribution, are no longer separable aspects in a supply
chain.
All of this supports the view that prosumers and the process of prosumption are
not new phenomena; indeed they are primal roles and processes that have taken on
new and perhaps greater importance in the contemporary age, especially one
increasingly dominated by the internet. This view stands in stark opposition to
the previously discussed idea that contemporary prosumption represents a revolutionary new development.
The thinking of Friedrich Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin is helpful in conceptualizing prosumption in this way. Nietzsches ideas are highly abstract and
Ritzer
17
philosophical, but Benjamin has done the heavy lifting for us by being more
concrete and sociological. He draws on Nietzsche (1999: 337) and applies his
key concept of eternal return [or eternal recurrence] of the same (1999: 71)
to the social world. This means, of course, that Benjamin (1999: 298) is critical
of the concept of progress, especially of revolutionary progress. Therefore, he
is implicitly critical of the idea that prosumption is a revolutionary (or evolutionary) development. That is, what appears to be revolutionary is from this
perspective simply the return of some past reality. Thinking about eternal
return is consistent with Benjamins roots in Marxian theory, especially dialectical
thinking. In fact, Benjamin (1999: 357) sees dialectics as an example of eternal
recurrence. Thus, thesis always returns in the wake of antithesis and synthesis.7 Theories of evolution and progress are not dialectical, but a theory of
eternal return is certainly dialectical. Some of the clearest examples of eternal
return exist, most generally, in the eternal cycle of nature and more specically
in the changes in weather (1999: 102) and the stars (1999: 116; 340). In the social
world, Benjamin (1999: 464) argues that what has been within a particular
epoch is always, simultaneously, what has been from time immemorial. For
example, Benjamin (1999: 544) denes the modern as the new in the context
of what has already been there. More specically, he discusses the creation of
the newest out of the oldest and sees it as the true dialectical theater of fashion
(1999: 64). There is nothing new in fashion and, perhaps, everywhere else in the
social world. In the realm of production, Benjamin (1999: 331) discusses the
eternal return of the same as manifest in mass productions. In consumption,
the arcade, an early means of consumption, involves eternal return in various
ways, especially since it resembles earlier means of consumption such as bazaars
and souks. Most generally, Benjamin (1999: 463) sees the whole of primal history group[ing] itself anew in images appropriate to that [the 19th] century.
Perhaps the phrase of Benjamins (1999: 116) that best ts with the approach
to prosumption taken in this section is the following: primal history enters the
scene in ultramodern get-up. In terms of our interest, the prosumption that
predominated primordially, as well as at all times throughout history, has reentered the scene today in various ways, especially in ultramodern forms on
the internet and smart phones. Of course, in discussing the new, ultramodern
forms Benjamin is acknowledging that what is returning is far from exactly the
same as that which existed in the past. Benjamin here is taking a position that is
consistent with Deleuzes (1986) emphasis on dierence in eternal return.
It may still be prosumption, but its ultramodern guise (e.g. on the internet;
with 3-D printers) makes it dierent in various ways.
An evolutionary view of prosumption

The third perspective on prosumption is that it is not a revolutionary development,
or an instance of the eternal return of the same, but rather that it is continuous with
a number of recent developments which are, in turn, continuous with their
18
predecessors. For example, an internet shopping mall (but not the internet itself)
such as Amazon.com can be seen as continuous with, and a logical development
from, shopping malls. The latter, in turn, evolved from earlier prosumption sites,
including arcades. Fast-food restaurants, as well as the food courts based, among
other places, in shopping malls, are clearly derived, at least in part, from cafeterias.
Going back much further in time, ancient food stalls by the sides of roads are other,
much earlier, forerunners of fast food restaurants. More generally, many of the
phenomena associated with contemporary prosumption are not new, although the
role of prosumption in them has increased greatly in recent years. For example,
people have always, or at least for quite some time, made their own travel arrangements; engaged in self-diagnosis and helped themselves medically; reviewed, at least
informally, products and work performed by others; participated in auctions
(Smith, 1990) not that dierent from eBay; and participated actively in their own
education. Thus, from this perspective, prosumption is not a new process and its
current manifestations are not inconsistent with past processes.
Conclusion
This discussion has highlighted a number of recent social changes broadly grouped
under the heading of prosumption. The main issue is whether these changes are an
example of the eternal return of the same, a revolutionary new development, or are
continuous with earlier developments. The central conclusion of this paper is that
they can be associated with all three processes.
Many of these changes are consistent with earlier developments. To take an
example not dealt with previously, the work that consumers do on Amazon.com
is not dissimilar from that done by those who ordered products from the Sears
catalogue in the late 19th century and well into the 20th century. While, as in this
example, there is some continuity between present and past phenomena, there is
much greater discontinuity. That is, a number of revolutionary changes have taken
place in the realm of prosumption. Many of those revolutionary changes involve
the internet, itself an extraordinarily revolutionary development. Much of todays
prosumption takes place on the internet and would not be possible without that
technology, as well as others such as the smart phone, the credit card and the
express package delivery systems. New and emerging technologies will both
increase and alter the nature of prosumption. The emergence and growing signicance of those 3D printers will allow makers to produce an increasing array of
products at home (Anderson, 2012).
While there are both evolutionary and revolutionary changes in the realm of
prosumption, perhaps the most interesting conclusion to be derived from this discussion involves the eternal return of the same. We were all prosumers before there
was a distinction between producers and consumers; prosumption is our primal
condition. Ironically, the major technological changes discussed here are making it
clear that we are more like our ancestors than we imagine. That fact has been lost
sight of in the last few centuries as we dierentiated between, and thought of
Ritzer
19
ourselves as either, producers or consumers. However, we were prosumers then and

we are clearly prosumers now. What seems so new and revolutionary today is little
more than another stage in the eternal return of the prosumer who predominated at
the earliest points in human history and, in fact, was predominant in the epochs
that appeared to be dened by either producers or consumers. Thus prosumption
is, simultaneously, something that is primal, ancient, recent, new, and even revolutionary. While we have devoted some attention to its historical roots and similarities, it is its new and revolutionary character that is likely to be increasingly
important in the future. This is likely to be true not only on the internet, but
also in the material world, as well as in the increasing interpenetration of the
two. These changes are likely to become increasingly dramatic leading not only
to more and more prosumption, but also to altered, even dramatically new, forms
of prosumption. Thus, prosumption in the future will be radically dierent
(increasingly high-tech), yet it will still, and always, be consistent with the primal
state (decidedly low-tech), and recent history, of prosumption.
However, there is something that will be radically dierent. We will not be
returning to an era in which we think of clear dierences between producers and
consumers. In that sense, we are not returning to thinking in terms of the eras of
the Industrial and the Consumer Revolutions (Cohen, 2003). We will increasingly
be in the era of the prosumer revolution (or is it devolution?) where we will nd it
increasingly dicult to dierentiate between production and consumption; between
producers and consumers.
Given this, what can we say about the future of prosumption? For one thing,
fewer and fewer activities will exist near the (prosumption-as-) production and
(prosumption-as-) consumption ends of the prosumption continuum. Those activities will move more toward the middle of the continuum. That is, they will more
clearly be examples of balanced prosumption. They will even more clearly not be
denable as anything approaching pure production or consumption. For
another, while this will be true throughout the social and economic world, it will
more clearly be the case in some realms rather than others. For example, we will see
a continuation of the trend toward doing things ourselves rather than having paid
employees perform those tasks in the service sector of the economy. The immaterial, especially the digital, worlds will be increasingly characterized by prosumption
since it is very easy there to transfer immaterial tasks from those we think of as
producers to those who are more clearly prosumers. While the digital world is the
natural domain for this change, it will also occur in the more material world where,
for example, patients will do more and more medical work.
There will certainly be a continuation of processes in the material world that we
have historically thought of as (pure) production (e.g. automobile manufacturing), although they will be increasingly found in less developed countries. However,
a counter-trend of some importance is the fact that traditional production may
increasingly be handled by advanced technologies in the developed world rather
than human labor that dominates production in the less developed world
(Brynjolfsson and McAfee, 2012; Marko, 2012). Another counter-trend is
20
associated with the advent of, for example, 3-D printers allowing for what we have
thought of as more traditional production in the developed world. The increase in
prosumption, as well as the realization that it is prosumption and not production or
consumption that is the most central concept, will also cause us to re-examine ageold ideas in the social sciences. Among them are concepts developed for a society
thought to be dominated by production such as alienation, exploitation, and
rationalization. While this is a subject for another essay, we can exemplify the
main point in the case of the concept of exploitation.
Exploitation is most typically thought of, at least from a Marxian perspective, in
terms of paying the workers less than the value of what they produce. This is the
basic source of surplus value and, in more conventional terms, of prot for the
capitalists. However, in most cases prosumers are paid nothing by the capitalists
who prot enormously from this arrangement. In fact, it could be argued that they
earn far greater prots because instead of the pittance normally paid to workers,
they pay the prosumer nothing at all. As a result, from a purely economic perspective, prosumers are exploited within a capitalist system and they are exploited to a
greater extent than the proletariat. While this is true from a structural perspective,
it is harder to defend from a social-psychological point of view. That is, the proletariat saw themselves as exploited, or at least many workers came to see themselves in that way because of their increasing immiseration as well as the eorts of
radical thinkers such as Marx and organizations such as socialist parties and labor
unions. However, it is very dicult to imagine todays prosumers seeing themselves
as exploited or, more generally, accepting the idea that Marxian thinking applies to
them (Rey, 2012). This is true, in part, because they lack the concept of the prosumer, as well as the fact that Marxian theory seems to apply to a bygone era.
More importantly, it is likely that most prosumers enjoy all, or at least most, of
what they do. They would be hard-pressed to think of themselves as exploited when
they order products on Amazon.com, construct bookcases from IKEA, or use the
ATM. Marxian theorists would say that such prosumers are suering from false
consciousness and that, in fact, they are deluding themselves into thinking they are
not being exploitated. However, it is also possible that they are not exploited in a
classic Marxian sense and that the concept needs to revised to take into account
these new realities. It is also possible that an entirely new concept is needed to deal
with the greatly dierent situation confronting todays prosumers in contrast to the
proletariat (who also, it is important to remember, were prosumers [p-a-ps]) of the
heyday of factory-based capitalism. More generally, we need to revisit a broad
range of sociological concepts created during and for eras dominated by production and consumption. At the minimum, we will need to revise them and, more
extremely (and more likely), we will need to create new ideas not locked into the old
and increasingly outdated production-consumption binary.
In terms of its theoretical implications, the coming of age of work on the prosumer foretells a paradigm revolution in the study of the economy (Kuhn, 1962/
1970; Ritzer, 1975/1980). Extant paradigms have taken either production or consumption as their image of the subject matter in the study of the economy. What
Ritzer
21
we are witnessing is the emergence of a new, third paradigm for which prosumption
is that image. This could mean that the study of the economy will be even more
multi-paradigmatic in the future than it has been in the past. However, it is also the
case that prosumption, because it encompasses both production and consumption,
could be the basis of a more integrated sociological paradigm that deals with all
three simultaneously (Ritzer, 1981). This would move the study of the economy in
the direction of the hard sciences where, at least in Kuhns view, single paradigms predominate. While this is possible, the more likely outcome, given the history and current status of the social sciences, is one in which multiple paradigms
coexist within the eld. Paradigms encompass theories and methods and a new
paradigm means major theoretical and methodological changes. Since prosumption encompasses production and consumption, one alternative is increased use of
multiple theories and methods that allow the social scientist to get a handle on all
of these processes. Another is the development of new theories and methods that
are internally diverse enough to deal with these processes.
Thus, the rise of interest in prosumption as an image of the subject matter in the
study of the economy promises a range of dramatic paradigmatic, theoretical and
empirical changes. One parallel example in the history of the eld of sociology is
the work of Emile Durkheim (1893/1964) and his contention that social facts are
the subject matter of sociology. This led to the development of a new paradigm
(the social facts paradigm), as well as theories (e.g. structural functionalism) and
methods (e.g. historical-comparative research) oriented to the study of social facts
(Ritzer, 1975/1980). It is possible that a revolution involving a new prosumer
paradigm will have similarly powerful and wide-ranging eects.
Finally, there is the issue of the implication of this discussion of the prosumer
for the subject matter of The Journal of Consumer Culture (JCC). One obvious
conclusion is that the JCC needs to devote more attention to work on prosumption
(and related concepts). A more extreme conclusion is that what is needed is the
founding of The Journal of Prosumer Culture (JPC) to complement the JCC (as
well as production-oriented journals).8 If the various theses of this essay have
merit, it does seem likely that a journal of prosumer culture will come into existence
in the future. However, it is likely that the JCC (as well as journals focused on
production) will not only continue to exist, but even ourish. Nevertheless, it will
be increasingly important to recognize that the JCC (as well as production-oriented
journals) is focusing on only one end of the prosumption continuum. That is, the
focus of the JCC, and more generally of consumption studies, is, in the terms used
in this essay, prosumption-as-consumption.
Many other future changes could be discussed here, but that would move us in
the direction of the kind of analysis that characterizes the work of Alvin Toer.
That kind of journalistic and futuristic analysis is usually demeaned in the social
sciences. However, we should remember that in 1980 it (and not the work of social
scientists) yielded a conceptprosumptionthat has proven not only durable, but
even more useful in the early 21st century than it was when it was created. It will
likely be of increasing utility as the century unfolds.
22
Notes
1. This constitutes a change in the definition of prosumption from my earlier work on the
topic (e.g., Ritzer and Jurgenson, 2010). I no longer think of prosumption as involving
more-or-less simultaneous production and consumption. A prosumer can produce
something at one point in time (e.g., a crop) and consume it at a much later point
in time. In spite of the passage of time, this still involves the process of prosumption as it
is defined here. I would like to thank Georgia Handforth for helping me clarify this point.
2. There are exceptions, of course, such as Lipovetsky (2002) and Livingston (2011).
3. Of course, journals devoted to production continue to exist and occupy a largely parallel
universe.
4. To Baudrillard (1977/1998), the Parisian drugstore was a key means of consumption.
5. While key points on the prosumption continuum are being distinguished in these examples,
it should be clear that all involve some combination of production and consumption.
6. Bruns, as we have seen, prefers the closely related term of produsage.
7. This, of course, is a great oversimplification of the dialectic; see, for example, Ritzer
(2014) for an example of a more complex model.
8. This would parallel the impact of Durkheims work and his founding of LAnnee
Sociologique in 1898.
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Author Biography
George Ritzer is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. He continues
to think and write about the implications of the changing nature of prosumption
with the objective of writing a book on the subject.

Journal of Consumer Culture 2014 Ritzer 3 24

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Article

Journal of Consumer Culture

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

Nissenbaum, 2006); collaborative capitalism involving both value co-creation and

Some deper theoretical background

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

consumers, plays no role in the value of commodities which is determined by the

prociency and accomplishments of the community as a whole (the industrial

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

Rethinking production and consumption in light of

The prosumption continuum

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

computers (prosumption-as-consumption), and ATMs lead to both doing the

The eternal return, or recurrence, of the prosumer

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

An evolutionary view of prosumption

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

ourselves as either, producers or consumers. However, we were prosumers then and

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

Durkheim E (1893/1964) Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press.

Journal of Consumer Culture 14(1)

Ritzer G and Slater D (2001) Editorial. Journal of Consumer Culture 1: 58.

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