The lost art of consumer critique: a defense
“Consumption studies” and the backlash against consumer critique
A productive positioning against the critics(totalizing narratives, consumer dupes, overly
conformist portrayals, elitist attitudes, etc)However, the pendulum swing has become
constraining, de-politicizing, and paralyzing wrt macro analyses and outcomes…
The failures of consumer society are becoming increasingly evident--time for a course correction
Re-integration of critical perspectives with their critique--(“dialectical” re-formulation)
Re-valorizing Consumption• Not a denigration of consumption a la the
masculinist bias of the earlier critiques, but the reverse--a re-valorization of consumption activities--but from a critical/analytic perspective
• To moralize or not to moralize? False question. All analysis is moral
• Key is to reject the singularity of consumption as a-moral and re-integrate consumption into larger paradigm of social action
• “social death of stuff” problem of de-linking symbolic and utilitarian dimensions of consumption
Delivering the goods
0
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000
25,000
30,000
1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2005
PersonalConsumptionExpendituresper capita (2000$)
But also the bads…
The Output Bias:Rising annual hours of work, CPS, 1967-2000
1550
1600
1650
1700
1750
1800
1850
1900
1967 1973 1979 1989 1995 2000
Income and Happiness:GDP per capita v. % very happy, US 1946-1996
(Layard 2005)
Commerciogenic maladies
010203040506070
Adults Youth
Prevalence of Obesity and Overweight, NHANES, 2003-04
obese
obese andoverweight
Consumerism and ecological disaster
Tracking The Global Footprint: sustainable consumption was exceeded in 1978
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
1961 1978 2001
Billions of hectares
Per Capita Footprints
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
India
Indon
esia
Seneg
alChina
Brazil
Italy
Japan
German
y US
Footprint in hectares
Veblen and the status consumption model
Features of status models• Hierarchical social structures reproduced by competitive
status consumption.• Game is played through visible consumption (visibility, an
efficient property, is necessary to avoid moral hazard)• Model not of all consumption, but of the pattern of goods and
the relationship among private c, public c, savings and leisure• Trickle down model• Highly rational, but social, agents, uniform (consensual)
goods rankings• Game characterized by prisoners’ dilemma (pure positional
model)
Veblen’s critics
• Lacks an account of meaning • Informational demands high; post-modern
market fragmented, Holt 2000: “good life” not a matter of consensual status-symbols, but project of individual self-creation
• Trickle up
Salvaging status accounts• Diffusion path doesn’t need linearity, just a linear
segment• Individuation not fatal if it’s not infinite
(individuation as a status strategy)• Strong empirical support• Collapse of high and low culture not evidence of
“democracy” and egalitarianism/socioeconomic immobility and inequality have increased sharply
• Need to integrate income distribution into consumption accounts
• Timing of the backlash/luxury boom
Social comparison and prisoners’ dilemmas:Does rising inequality fuel competitive consumption?
Shares of Consumption by Household Income
05
1015202530354045
top 20% 80% 60% 40% bottom20%
Adorno and Horkheimer and the circle of manipulation
Critiques• Totalizing, disempowering narrative• Functionalist analysis btw production and
consumption without a micro-mechanism • In dupes v agents: agents win (except at the
bank)
Theoretical cul de sac?
• Inability to analyze producers’ power• Conflates micro and macro analysis by creating an
isomorphic structure• Must analyse, not assume that isomorphism. • Holt’s 1940s and 50s cultural authority thesis
(2002); Bourdieu’s habitus• But producers now constructing and selling
consumer agency (Nike), rather than having it deployed “against” them.
Back to Galbraith
Naturalized Insatiability: From want creation to Wal-Mart stampede
Epidemic depression
Was GalbraithRight thatAffluent ConsumptionFails to yieldMuch in theWay of welfare?
Elitist, yes….
But why the singularity of the personalized attack? Why no attack on adulterous ethicists or the tenured free market
economists? Curious singularity wrt consumption
Wither Corporate power?
But powerlessAgainst theSovereignConsumer?
Corporate “takeover”Of the govt,Growing influence in universities,Public schools, welfare, health careMilitary, etc
Re-reading the Frankfort School
• Their worry: totalitarian system anchored by a conformist consumer culture. Should it be ours?
Time for a new american dream?
• Americans coming together to “change the consumer culture” (100,000 registered activists)
• Holistic paradigm change--economic and cultural• Values and lifestyle congruence (more of what
really matters)• Personal, corporate and state accountability.
Participants demand moral consumption. But consumption is not singular. They demand consistency.
Consumer critique& activist practiceNewdream.org