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

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5,000

10,000

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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

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2

4

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1961 1978 2001

Billions of hectares

Per Capita Footprints

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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

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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