CONSUMPTION AND COMMODITIES Anthropologists have focused considerable attention on production processes in economic activity and until recently have given less emphasis to under? standing consumption (Miller 1995, 1987), despite the importance of the latter due to the globalization of the world economy (Miller 1995). Douglas and Isherwood (1979:57) consider consumption as "the vital source of the culture of the moment" and "the very arena in which culture is fought over and licked into shape." Just as in tribal societies, where "rituals serve to contain the drift of meanings ... consumption is a ritual process whose primary function is to make sense of the inchoate flux of events" (Douglas and Isherwood 1979:65). It is a system of classification, a "marking service" that classifies individuals and events and represents underlying patterns of social relations. Consumptive behavior occurs in patterns of "periodicities," with information being critical for inclusion or exclusion among consuming classes (Douglas and Isherwood 1979:115). Concomitantly, Philibert (1989) also examines the underlying pat? terns and classificatory schemes revealed through consumptive practices. He considers consumption as the "appropriation of meanings symbolized in the use of particular objects," and that "people consume according to a code of recogni? tion, a semiotic chain invested in a (bound) series of objects" (Philibert 1989:64). Consumption can be viewed as a text of how "people speak about themselves in their consumption choices" (Philibert 1989:64). Miller (1995, 1987) posits a theory of consumption based on the objectification of material culture: that it is through consumption that we re socialize commodities (Miller 1995:143). Consumption is thus the "negation of the commodity" (Miller 1987:192) and a process through which an alienable