Collective Consumption,Urban Segregation,and Social Classes

Although collective consumption is recognized as a major issue for urban research, the specificity of the urban field should not be limited to it, thus reproducing theoretically the dominant separation enforced ideologically and practically between production and reproduction, Production, and more generally work relations and practices, should be considered as basic determinants of the urban, not only because of their direct spatial dimensions and implications, but also because of their relations to reproduction practices.

These relations are not mechanistic determinations but complex, contradictory, mediated, and retroactive processes. Therefore social differentiations or cleavages related to consumption practices, like urban social segregation and unequal access to collective consumption, are not simple translations of class structure in the most general and abstract sense. They contribute both to the strengthening of class identities and social solidarities in certain situations, areas and conjunctures, and to class fragmentation and competition or conflict in others.

Nevertheless, they are but another aspect of the complexity of class structures and not an independent mode of social cleavage. This can be seen in class differentiations of consumption practices as well as in the related stakes for urban social struggles.