A critique of desire: Distaste and dislike in consumer behavior

Abstract

This paper argues that what we do not want to consume is often as personally and socially important as what we desire. Are desire and distaste really two separate bodies of knowledge; do we keep separate mental lists of good and bad, of things to be sought out and things to be avoided? Or are the positive and negative aspects of goods always intimately related to each other, so that we learn a series of relationships between desire and disgust, or desired and detested objects? This inquiry was prompted by a long term study of consumption in the Central American country of Belize. Survey data show that distastes, aversions, and dislikes are much more socially diagnostic than positive desires. I argue that dislikes and distastes are not the mirror images of tastes and desire, but instead provide very different ways for people to express identity and difference, to create senses of self, space, and personal and social time.