Commerce, the great engine of modernity, and advancing consumer culture are strongly implicated in this modernist tale of woe (Lasch 1991). The emerging consumer culture was one in which branded goods replaced unmarked commodities, where mass advertising replaced personal selling, and where the individual consumer replaced the communal citizen. The growing centrality of the individual consumer and his or her growing materialistic desires were (and are) said to be part and parcel of the loss of community. This belief pervades the critique of consumer culture to this day. Not incidentally, branded products were ubiquitous and primary symbols of this purported seismic shift in human consciousness and the resultant (alleged) loss of community (Leiss, Kline, and Jhally 1990; Marchand 1985). The brand, therefore, should have a central and prominent place in the discourse of modernity, community, and society.