AS 2011 approaches its end, in freezing cold and pervading haze, enthusiastic shoppers are heading to one shopping mecca after another, scouring for discounts, bargains, and "free" iPads.

There have been warnings of stampedes, scams and markups disguised as discounts, but all these seem only to heighten the pleasure of the shopping adventure.

Viewing this exhilarating spending spree, one might easily forget we have just seen one of the worst periods of inflation in decades.

Significantly, these frenzied shoppers are not shopping for bread. They are shopping for style, to publicize the fact that they are aspiring to the good life.

From faith in bread to faith in a rotten apple, with a missing bite, the leap is revolutionary. A loaf of bread is physically limited, a rotten apple is a logo, with infinite potential for imagination, and profit.

Of course, the apple product's nominal function of communication still serves to reify the image it projects, just as a LV handbag can still hold things.

Predictably, given the orthodoxy about the need for growth, in times of slowed consumption, nearly all governments ("economies") are talking about "expanding demand."

In China successfully branded liquor has become a luxury item whose profitability is closer to that of property development.

A bottle of Moutai liquor priced at 500 to 600 yuan (US$80-95) four years ago now fetches a price of 2,000 yuan.

It has been observed that government expenditures play an important role in fueling the consumption of Moutai.

As the saying goes, "Those who buy never drink it, and those who drink never buy."

As consumption has become a salient feature of cosmopolitan engagement, it deserves more academic attention than it gets.

In an article titled "Liquidity, middle class and urban space," (September 26, Wenhui Daily) researcher Bao Yaming from Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences points to rampant liquidity and a widening wealth gap in the wake of globalization.

As Bao concludes, the vanishing middle class and the gaping divide between the haves and have-nots is not unique to the United States.

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman's conception of liquid modernity, as cited in Bao's article, gives a more systematic analysis of consumption that has come to define the urban landscape, and modernity.

Bauman pays particular attention to the sense of rootlessness in all modern interactions.

In an agrarian society that China once was, a person lives off soil, and is dependent on people around him. This affinity dictates a set of rituals and code of morality.

Thus, it was not for fear of starvation that cultivation of crops had been encouraged by all dynasties.

In his "On making grains more valuable," statesman Chao Cuo (200-154 BC) explained to the monarch why tilling the land is important.

"Vice stems from poverty, while poverty stems from lack of soil cultivation ... and lacking cultivating will make peasants prone to leave their hometown, like birds or beasts. This flight cannot be curbed even by building high walls or digging deep moats," Chao wrote.

Here scholar Liang Qichao's observation over 90 years ago about the impact of industrialization in Europe is still relevant.

Liang observed that as a large amount of labor was gathered in one marketplace or factory where they sell their labor, they are estranged from each other except in material terms, and lacking anything substantial to anchor them, they drift along, in constant fear of being uprooted, their nerves constantly frayed in dealing with the demand of urban life in its myriad complications.

Liquidity

Bauman coins the term liquid modernity to make sense of the constant changes that undermine all notions of durability.

As Bauman observes, "Transience has replaced durability at the top of the value table. What is valued today is the ability to be on the move, to travel light and at short notice. Power is measured by the speed with which responsibilities can be escaped. Who accelerates, wins; who stays put, loses."

In consumer society this transience manifests itself in the "plenitude of consumer choice," in the society's constant urge to create new products to be admired and possessed.

Take the latest obsession with the iPad, the possession of which is suggested by advertisers to be something of a spiritual quest.

In this instance, the vacuity of conspicuous consumption has been rebranded as cutting edge, revolutionary, idealistic.

This apotheosis of novelty has been made possible with the destruction of old communal life.

Ultimate consumption can flourish only in the anonymity of urban existence where an individual can be judged by the logo on her/his handbag.

In writing about his American experience earlier last century, renowned Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong was struck by - notwithstanding its material comforts - the sameness of America. He traveled in similar cars on similar highways to hotels with the similar setups.

He found shifting residence in America as easy as moving to a hotel. All can be fixed up with a phone call.

He was nostalgic for his old family home back China, the old plane tree, on which was carved his name.

"I am not accustomed to those over-illuminated American houses that can be taken in in one glance. Living in such rooms you easily develop a kind of illusory confidence that what you see is the world all over," Fei wrote.

Fei thought that this outlook enables Westerners to view the world as nothing but resources yet to be exploited, while Oriental people live in fear of the unknown, burdened with obligations not only to others, but also to their posterity, and their ancestors.

Unlike Chinese who tended to view the reigns of legendary kings of Yu, Shun and Yao as ideal states of government, in the fluidity of modernity, the past is constantly overcome and jettisoned as inferior, while the present is perceived as more desirable, more progressive, and more developed, with something still better in store for us.

With the enshrinement of market forces, sometimes known as market fundamentalism, comes the mandate for growth, and consumption.

The current Chinese dictionaries still define consumption as an act to satisfy needs.

Needs have since been replaced by desires.

"Now it is desire's turn to be discarded. It has outlived its usefulness: having brought consumer addiction to its present state, it can no more set the pace. A more powerful, and above all more versatile stimulant is needed to keep consumer demand on a level with consumer offer," writes Bauman.

Consumption

When consumption is purged of the last impediments of "reality," full credit can be given to its pleasures.

This kind of consumption is based on the aesthetization of everyday life, as encapsulated in numerous signs, logos, and images that symbolize "new" products.

The obsession with LV bags can be enormously emancipatory, for it shows the owner can afford to be freed from practical function.

As Bauman observes, the new consumers "live from attraction to attraction, from temptation to temptation, from sniffing out one tidbit to searching for another, from swallowing one bait to fishing around for another."

When consumption is elevated from the level of meeting needs to the level of wish-fulfillment, the compulsion to consume runs into the dead-end of "never wilting excitation."

Bauman's incisive and cool-headed analysis of consumption has considerable realistic applications.

For a nation committed to growth as its ultimate objective, a model citizen can only be one evincing trained sensitivity to the exhortations of advertisements, and pursuing consumables, tacitly inflating demand.

The trouble is, the earth is finite.

As a scholar asks in "Public fuming over foul air finally gets attention" (Shanghai Daily, December 12), "Growth should benefit people. When it harms their health, what's the point of growth anyway?"