erves the emergence of a version of moral equivalence between consumer behavior and consumer psychology in the U.S. American culture, he says (32-3), is defined by the psyche of consumption, even though the consuming public is no longer unitary but rather highly segmented according to idiosyncratic social experience. The inference to be drawn from his view that the notion of mass culture in the U.S. is over is rather subtle when set beside Wacker's assertion that consumer psychology is shaped by having access to goods. This suggests that that subcultural elites, which have discretionary income that can purchase access, participate in the culture fundamentally and not instrumentally by way of behavior as consumers. Wacker's assessment is consistent with Dittmar's discussion, focused mainly on Britain but tangentially on the U.S. (157-60), of the social psychology of consumer behavior and the experience of the relationship of the consumer to money and the marketplace. Wacker's view is consistent, too, with the facts of consumer behavior in the late 1970s and
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