Consumerism

Why I Thrift (and How I Got Started) by Grace Yia-Hei Kao

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Last weekend, I went to a store and came home with one cotton sundress, four lightweight sweaters, two pairs of pants,... more Last weekend, I went to a store and came home with one cotton sundress, four lightweight sweaters, two pairs of pants, one beaded necklace, and three khakis for my preschooler. I paid $26.31 for the entire haul. That feat was only possible because I bought all of those items second-hand at a thrift store. 

While I have always been a value-conscious shopper, for the majority of my life “scoring a bargain” almost always meant buying something new on sale at a deep discount. I only started buying used clothes a few years ago after my firstborn son moved up into the toddler room at his daycare. In short, the more artwork he did at school, the more consistently he came home with paint splattered all over his hair, body, and clothes. Though his teachers always told us that it was “just” finger paint and that it would wash out, his clothes would almost invariably remain stained (whether or not I pretreated the stains, or vigorously attempted to scrub them out by hand before and/or after the wash).

That permanently-ruined-though-barely-worn clothes routine quickly drove me bonkers. Worst still was my growing realization that even if I had been successful in removing the stains, my rapidly growing son would soon outgrow his clothes anyway. When I shared these frustrations with my “working moms” support group at Virginia Tech, it was then when I learned of this amazing store featuring gently used children’s clothes and toys that I hadn’t realized even existed–Once Upon a Child.

Popular Culture and Consumerism: Mediocre, (Schein-)Heilig and Pseudo-Therapeutic

by Roman Meinhold

(2009) In: Yusuf, Imtiyaz and Atilgan, Canan (ed.) Religion, Politics and Globalization. Implications for Thailand and Asia. Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Bangkok. 51-65. ISBN 978-616-90475-0-6

Lifestyle und Selbstverwirklichung auf dem Weg zur Nachhaltigkeit?

by Roman Meinhold

[Lifestyle - Self-realization - Sustainability] In: AWT-Info. Weingarten. 110-125. Edition 2001. Volume 20. Jubiläumsausgabe. ISSN 0179-9456

Sense and Sensibility: Mothering practices and school choice under neoliberalism

by Andrew Wilkins

For consideration in ‘Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism’.  M.V. Giles (ed.)

Draft copy only.
Please do not quote without permission from author.

Since the late 1970s/early 80s political and public policy opinion in England has been saturated with inflated claims... more Since the late 1970s/early 80s political and public policy opinion in England has been saturated with inflated claims to the waste and inefficiency generated through government intervention over the control and delivery of public services.  As a corrective to such top-down bureaucracy, neoliberal ideologues insist that citizens should be ‘empowered’ to pursue their own self-interest as a condition of their rights (and obligations) as consumers of public resources.  The expectation here is that market-driven reform will produce direct incentives for welfare providers to improve their services through appealing to welfare users as rational economic actors; in other words, informed and discriminating.  In the case of education, parents are expected to exercise choice over which school to send their child to.  But how do parents know how to choose and how are parents expected to know what is the ‘right’ choice? This chapter intends to move beyond the abstractions and estimations posited through government advice on choice in order to capture the fractures, tensions and dilemmas pertaining to mothers’ choice-making practices.  Utilising in-depth data taken from semi-structured interviews with several mothers, this chapter brings into question the neoliberal orthodoxy that works to subsume human behaviour to fit with a tidy, narrow utilitarian construction of the parent as consumer.  In doing so, it offers a grounded discussion of the ways in which neoliberal meanings and representations are lived as well as negotiated through sites and practices of mothering.

Consumer Goods as Dialogue About Development

by Richard Wilk

Published first in 1990, Culture & History, 7: 79-100.
also published in 1995 as Consumer Goods as Dialogue about Development: Colonial Time and Television Time in Belize." in Consumption and Identity, J. Friedman, ed., Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic. pp. 97-118.

An early effort to think about why middle class consumers in Belize are so deeply interested in buying and owning... more An early effort to think about why middle class consumers in Belize are so deeply interested in buying and owning foreign goods. I argue that rather than being a form of copying or emulation, consumption acts in an almost magical way to try to call a particular future into being.

Consuming Morality

by Richard Wilk

Published as Wilk, Richard 2001 “”Consuming Morality.” Journal of Consumer Culture 1(2): 245-260.

This essay began as a set of exasperated notes while reading books about consumption, such as Lasch’s (1979) The... more This essay began as a set of exasperated notes while reading books about consumption, such as Lasch’s (1979) The Culture of Narcissism, a complaint about the shallowness of modern consumerism. Reading an early version of Miller’s piece, ‘The Poverty of Morality’ (this issue), prompted me to revise that essay. The result is neither a critical response to Miller’s work nor
a completely separate and distinctive essay.We share literatures and critical reactions,many field experiences and have exchanged many drafts, ideas and conversations about consumption. Despite, or maybe because of, this relationship, we do not agree about everything. Part of the difference is no doubt due to my American perspective. I live in a state where more than 40 percent of adults are clinically obese and the roads are crowded with mammoth sport-utility vehicles. On this side of the Atlantic it is easier to take concepts like ‘overconsumption’ and ‘affluenza’ seriously. I have also
been deeply engaged for several years with the issue of global climate change and I believe that consumption is the most urgent and fundamental environmental issue that we face (Wilk, 1998).

"Real Belizean Food": Building Local Identity in the Transnational Caribbean

by Richard Wilk

American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 101, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 244-255 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/683199

Food and cooking can be an avenue toward understanding complex issues of cultural change and transnational culturalmore Food and cooking can be an avenue toward understanding complex issues of cultural change and transnational cultural
flow. Using examples from Belize, I discuss the transformation from late colonial times to the present in terms of hierarchies of cuisine and changes in taste. In recent Belizean history, food has been used in personal and political contexts to
create a sense of the nation at the same time that increased political and economic dependency has undercut national autonomy.
I suggest several possible ways to conceptualize t he complex and  contradictory relationship between local and global
culture.

Morals and Metaphors: The Meaning of Consumption

by Richard Wilk

Published as Wilk, Richard 2004 “Morals and Metaphors: The Meaning of Consumption.” In Elusive Consumption, edited by Karin Ekström and Helene Brembeck. Berg Publishers. Pp. 11-26.

My application of George Lakoff's metaphor theory to sustainability and consumer culture. Most studies of consumption... more My application of George Lakoff's metaphor theory to sustainability and consumer culture. Most studies of consumption have two things in common; they do not define consumption in any concise way, and they incorporate, consciously or unconsciously, moral values about consumption. Are these two phenomena related to each other? The very meaning and content of the term “consumption” is elusive, despite many attempts at definition and specification. Recent research in cognitive linguistics provides the tools to show why consumption is such a fuzzy category, and why consumption and moral issues are closely related to each other.  By exploring the structure of the concept of consumption, and the central metaphors that link its meanings together, we can better grasp our elusive topic. More importantly, we can also avoid some of the pitfalls that so often occur in the social sciences when we use folk-categories as if they were empirical and universal.

Consuming Ourselves to Death

by Richard Wilk

published as
Wilk, Richard 2009 “Consuming Ourselves to Death.” In Anthropology and Climate Change: from Encounters to Actions, edited by Susan Crate.  Duke University Press. Pp. 265-276.

Ultimately climate change is the product of consumption; greenhouse gases are produced by making things and energy,... more Ultimately climate change is the product of consumption; greenhouse gases are produced by making things and energy, moving things, and carrying people around. Simply put, more people are using more energy and creating and using more “stuff” than ever before in the history of the planet. Besides lamenting the passing of low-impact village-level societies, what does anthropology have to say about consumer culture which might actually be useful in thinking our way towards more sustainable levels of consumption? I argue that a drastic re-orientation of the way we teach anthropology is in order; what do we want our students to learn about the world and what kind of skills do they need? The same argument can be made for the public messages we extend in our popular publications.

The panoptic role of advertising agencies in the production of consumer culture

by Chris Hackley

Hackley, C. (2002) The panoptic role of advertising agencies in the production of consumer cultureConsumption, Markets and Culture, Vol. 5 (3), pp. 211–229

Advertising’s role in promoting an ideology of marketed consumption has been widely commented upon by critical more Advertising’s role in promoting an ideology of marketed consumption has been widely commented upon by critical
theorists yet the mechanisms through which this influence becomes manifest remain relatively under-examined. In
particular there has been no explicit examination of the mediating role of cultural knowledge in the production of
ideologically driven advertising. This paper invokes the panoptic metaphor to position the knowledge gathered by and on behalf of advertising agencies as a major dynamic in the production of consumer culture. The consumer of advertising is a known entity for advertising agencies: the subject is watched, filmed, questioned, recorded, and tracked. Indeed, consumer biography and subjectivity itself has become material that is both produced and consumed by advertising agencies in order to produce culturally constitutive advertising. The paper integrates disparate
literatures to situate knowledge of consumer culture at the hub of advertising’s constitutive ideological influence.

Social Character and Social Order

by Paul Lachelier

This paper was published in the newsletter of the American Sociological Association's section on consumers and consumerism.

This article lays some groundwork for the study of character as a force in social order, and as a brief case study, in... more This article lays some groundwork for the study of character as a force in social order, and as a brief case study, in the reproduction of consumer capitalism.

Privatized resistance: AdBusters and the culture of neoliberalism.

by Max Haiven

Published in the journal The Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies – 29:1, 2006, pp. 85-110.

A critique of the periodical AdBusters (and culture jamming more broadly) for its participation in a Neoliberal... more A critique of the periodical AdBusters (and culture jamming more broadly) for its participation in a Neoliberal cultural politics of individualization.

Care of the self, Care of the Earth: a new conversation for Rio+20

by Peter Doran

Draft of my paper to appear in the forthcoming edition of the Review of European and International Environmental Law

What if capitalism was on the agenda at a world summit on sustainable development? Do we need to pay more attention t... more What if capitalism was on the agenda at a world summit on sustainable development? Do we need to pay more attention t the ways in which our immersion in the culture of capitalism compromises our responses to the environmental crises? These are two of the questions taken up in this paper.

Economic and Ecological Anthropology and the Study of Consumer Culture

by Richard Wilk

Published in Chinese: 2006  Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities, Beijing, 27(6): 29-37.
This is a partial republication of “But the Young Men Don’t Want to Farm Any More: Political Ecology and Consumer Culture in Belize.” In Reimagining Political Ecology, edited by Aletta Biersack and Peter Brosius, Durham: Duke University Press. Pp. 149-170.

In the recent past a recognizable anthropological subfield has emerged, devoted to the ethnographic and... more In the recent past a recognizable anthropological subfield has emerged, devoted to the ethnographic and cross-cultural study of consumer culture.  Rich in detail and diverse in topics, this work ranges from McDonalds restaurants in Korea to the careful brewing of traditional banana beer in East Africa.  But these studies are all very new; just thirty years ago there were virtually no anthropologists studying consumption.  In 1982, when Eric Arnould and I sent a paper on new patterns of consumer culture in developing countries to the American Anthropologist, it was rejected on the grounds that this was "not a topic of anthropological interest."

Philistines on the Big Screen: consumerism in Soviet cinema of the Brezhnev era

by Natalya Chernyshova

Published in Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, Vol. 5, No 2 (December 2011), pp 227-54

As living standards improved in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, the regime was faced with a challenge of growing... more As living standards improved in the Soviet Union under Brezhnev, the regime was faced with a challenge of growing consumerism among its population, especially young people. In these new circumstances, it became important to define the boundaries between acceptable norm and unacceptable excess in socialist consumption, and cinema took an active part in the public discussion that ensued. This article considers a wide range of popular films by a variety of directors, including those that often fall off the film historian’s radar, to assess this contribution and to investigate the filmmakers’ motives for engaging with the topic of consumption. The article argues that the individual’s relationship with material goods was a very prominent theme in Brezhnev-era cinema, but also one fraught with many contradictions, reflecting Soviet society’s own conflicting attitudes to modern consumption

Religion, Neuroscience and Emotion: Some Implications of Consumerism and Entertainment Culture

by Rebecca Sachs Norris

This is a chapter in Religion and the Body: Modern Science and the Construction of Religious Meaning, David Cave and Rebecca Norris eds., Brill, Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, forthcoming 2012.

Collecting Clothes with a Conscience

by Tove Hermanson

published August 30, 2011 on Thread for Thought

Earlier this summer I watched the tremendous documentary Herb & Dorothy (2008) which follows a ridiculously... more Earlier this summer I watched the tremendous documentary Herb & Dorothy (2008) which follows a ridiculously adorable, now elderly, couple (Herb and Dorothy Vogel) who started collecting art in the ’60s and amassed one of the finest and most extensive of modern and contemporary art in the world. The twist here is this: Dorothy was a public librarian and Herb was a postal worker, subsisting on public  servants’ salaries. Dorothy paid all the bills — their modest rent-controlled Village apartment, phone bill, etc. — and Herb’s salary was entirely devoted to their shared passion: collecting art. By 1992, they had amassed just under 5,000 works (all stored within their one-bedroom apartment!!) when they decided to donate it to the National Gallery for public consumption (they’d had offers from some of the largest art institutions, but chose to donate their collection to the National Gallery in part because it was free to the public).

Compare this story to another, published in June’s New Yorker, about Walmart heiress Alice Walton. Ms. Walton (third wealthiest woman in the world) has been aggressively collecting American art to open a museum in her hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas. Ms. Walton has been compared to other “great” female patrons of the art like Isabella Stuart Gardner and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, both of whose institutions I enjoy with some regularity (the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum and MoMA, respectively). And here lies my conflicted relationship with art patrons.

Who is the Consumer? The Diversity of Consumer Concepts

by Akos Kohidi

In this paper the diversity of consumer concepts will be discussed. It is necessary to distinguish between substantive... more In this paper the diversity of consumer concepts will be discussed. It is necessary to distinguish between substantive and technical perceptions. In my opinion the substantive one could only be detected out of the scope of legal sciences. Firstly I would like to outline the common core of the various Hungarian definitions and the problems, which have arisen along with regulations. As the origin and the source of the national consumer protecting rules can be traced back to the directives of the European Union I will try to sum up the basic elements of the constituted notions. In addition the main statements of the European Court of Justice concerning the relating articles of Brussels Conventions of 1968 shall also be focused on.

Courting the Pink Pound: "Men Only" and the Queer Consumer, 1935-1939

by Justin Bengry

History Workshop Journal 68 (2009): pp. 122-148.

Men Only was among the earliest men’s lifestyle magazines published in Britain. From its first issue, in December... more Men Only was among the earliest men’s lifestyle magazines published in Britain. From its first issue, in December 1935, the magazine cultivated a mainstream audience of middle-class, presumably heterosexual male consumers. But at the same time, I argue, it addressed and courted another audience long associated with urban leisure and fashionable consumption. References to homosexuality in Men Only went beyond mockery and insults directed at effeminate men. Instead, both textual and visual references to subcultural codes, practices, and homoerotically charged situations all reinforced potential readings of the magazine that would be understood by a queer audience. Other readers sometimes decoded the magazine’s references and doublespeak too. Some even expressed concern that particular magazine elements were ‘a trifle pansy’. But by printing such concerns the magazine producers further highlighted Men Only’s complicated dual address. By 1939, however, as the magazine’s references to homosexuality and urban queer subcultures became increasingly dated and less lucrative, it began to direct its attention to a new military and home front audience. This article argues that through the deft use of humour, imagery, and coded doublespeak, Men Only courted a homosexual market segment a full half century before advertisers and marketers would openly acknowledge and seek the Pink Pound.

Consumo y crisis capitalista

by Antonio Caro

Publicado como editorial en el nº 1 del volumen 4 (2010) de Pensar la Publicidad. Revista Internacional de Investigaciones Publicitarias, Universidad Complutense de Madrid y Universidad de Valladolid, pp. 9-13.