As society changes, so too must the theories that are based on that society. Thus, the sociology of consumption just developed in the 1980s with an emphasis on material, mostly mass, culture in advanced Western societies. The proponents of this theory attest that it provides an additional avenue of studying urban society, especially with inequality and political alignments. They believe that sociology has too long been dominated by 19th century issues of classical theorists such as alienation, social class, division of labor and the like. These issues stress production as a source of social meaning and basics of social order or conflict (Marshall 1998, p. 112).

             However, individuals such as H.F. Moorehouse stated "It should no longer be possible for analysts to operate with a notion of an alienation based on paid labor pervading all of contemporary life, nor should it be possible to privilege the factory, office, shop or mine as the crucial site of human experience and self understanding, though this is continually done in a lot of sociological and Marxist theorizing" (Marshall 1998, p. 113). In other words, too many sociologists place emphasis on what it is like to work for a car company and too few on what it takes to drive, own or fix up one's own car.

             It is understood that consumption is required by a society, especially to fulfill basic needs for survival. According to Marx, precapitalistic society involved production of use-values directly for consumption by immediate producers or by know others in small communities (Ritzer 2005, 139). However, the development of markets and commodity forum drives a wedge between production and consumption, so workers produce commodities in exchange for wages that they will spend on consumption goods they did not produce. .

             Some believe there's a consumption cleavage in advanced capitalistic societies between the majority of people who provide for consumption requirements through the market and the minority who remain reliant on increasingly inadequate state goods and funding (Marshall 1998, p.