This chapter proceeds with brief sections on why consumption matters and how sociology might sit in an interdisciplinary field of scholarship. I then outline the reasoning behind fractal analysis. Thereafter I point to some features of the analysis of consumption which are distinctively canvassed by sociology. In particular, I discuss the challenge posed by some branches of sociology to the prevalent tendency to put the autonomous individual choice at the centre of analysis. That is a theme which runs throughout the book, drawing on traditions within sociology which give explanatory priority to social situations, social groups, social positioning and configurations of institutional arrangements.