Two Tales of a City: An Exploratory Study of Cultural Consumption among Iranian Youth

The complexity of the issues of youth has made this broad subject a focal theme for a large number of researchers and scholars who have looked at it from different perspectives (e.g., anthropology, sociology, psychology, and politics). Positioned in consumer culture theory, this paper is another attempt to explore a different dimension of the youth's world: cultural consumption among Iranian youth. The article, therefore, follows two objectives: First, within the context of cultural consumption among young Iranians, it seeks to demonstrate the complexity of consumption as a creative process of reflecting and constructing identities, meanings, and values. Second, it examines the impact of cultural globalization on the identity of such consumers and the varying relationships between their consumption patterns and identity construction. In so doing, the first part of the paper will concisely elaborate on consumer culture. Then, cultural globalization will be briefly defined and, within this framework, consumer culture among Iranian youth will be discussed.