Consumer Culture

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Consumer Culture
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Outline

• Rising consumption rates
• Happiness and Consumption
• Social Competition and Consumption
• The Effects of Consumption
• Consumption as a Tool of Social Change

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Rising Rates of Consumption

• Income and Expectations
• Since World War II, real income (that is, income
  adjusted for inflation) has tripled in North
  America. Broadly speaking, then, we are better
  off than those who lived before us. It is hard,
  of course, for many of us to see ourselves as
  relatively wealthy to previous Canadian
  generations most of us struggle to make to our
  next pay cheque without going into overdraft, or
  relying on credit. Nevertheless, statistically
  speaking, we are well off not just in
  international terms, but in relation to previous
  generations.

1900 2000
Wealth
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Income and Expectations

• At the same time as this increase in standard of
  living, we witness rising expectations
  expectations of what we need - materially
  speaking in order to be satisfied, happy, and
  socially comfortable. A Roper study conducted
  provides some evidence of these changing
  expectations and requirements of wealth.
• The study asked people the following question
  (among others) How much money would you need to
  make all your dreams come true? In 1986, the
  average dollar figure put forward by respondents
  was 50,000. A mere eight years later, it was
  102,000.
• Similarly, and not surprisingly, spending habits
  have changed as well. Between 1979 and 1995,
  average spending increased by 35 according to
  one study. Between 1990 and 2000, personal credit
  debt doubled. Savings levels, another measure of
  spending, dropped from 3.5 in 1980 to 1.7 in
  1995. Not surprisingly, personal bankruptcies
  increased dramatically.

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Income and Expectations

• Sociologically, this shift in expectations points
  to the fact that what is enough is a relative
  matter. That is to say, what people believe is a
  sufficient amount of commodities to
  own/experience, changes as a result of social
  conditions. Lets consider, for example, the
  following commodities.
• Car
• A room of ones own.
• Television
• Mobile phone
• At various points in Canadian history, these
  items were deemed luxuries beyond the reach
  (and need) of most people. In time, however,
  these became if not necessities, then, staples of
  middle class life. You may be surprised to learn,
  for example, that 60 of U.S. teens now have a
  television in their bedrooms.

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Wealth Happiness?

• To a certain extent, the rising rates of
  consumption can be understood in terms of the
  concept of happiness. For several decades, an
  organization has conducted a number of Happiness
  Surveys in various countries. While these surveys
  rely on self-reported answers (I.e. The
  respondents define their own level of happiness,
  rather than someone else), they do provide
  information that can be useful for understanding
  consumption. These studies show, for example,
  that twice as many undergraduates in the 1990s
  defined happiness in terms of wealth than did the
  same demographic in the 1970s. Other factors,
  such as peace of mind, friendship, challenging
  work are given less and less significance wealth
  is given more and more.

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Happiness and Wealth
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Wealth Happiness?

• While real income has tripled since the 1950s,
  Happiness Surveys suggest that happiness has not
  kept pace. Indeed, these studies suggest that
  happiness reached its plateau in the mid-1950s.
  Once basic necessities are satisfied medical
  attention, shelter, food, and others, happiness
  is maximized. This finding is supported by other
  studies that note that poverty in developing
  nations is not necessarily associated with lower
  levels of happiness. (India is often cited as an
  example of this phenomenon.)
• Thus, the belief that higher rates of consumption
  and wealth will lead to happiness, may explain to
  a degree, the increased rates of consumption that
  characterizes contemporary North American life.

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Consumer Culture and Social Competition

• A second explanation of higher consumption
  requires our attention, however. This second
  approach to the question of consumption comes out
  of the area of study often called consumer
  culture studies. Consumer culture studies (or
  the study of consumer culture) begins with the
  assumption that people act in ways that maximize
  their own social positions. Culture, in this
  framework, is a marketplace where each individual
  employs the resources that are available to them.
  
• The objective in this competitive environment is
  to obtain the highest level of social status
  possible. To win, we use consumer goods
  clothing, automobiles, and more abstractly, the
  proper attitude towards these commodities.

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Consumer Culture and Social Competition

• The significance this approach is that it
  encourages to look beyond the individual to
  explain behaviour. What we consume and what we
  derive from these consumption activities, in
  other words, is not a matter of personal feelings
  and tastes, but a result of the conditions of the
  environment in which we operate.
• The Social competition thesis put forward by
  Juliet Schor is consistent with the consumer
  culture approach. Schor argues that it is the
  desire to keep up with the Jones that has led to
  increased levels of consumption. The meaning and
  value of a commodity to us, she contends, is
  based largely on how it compares to what we
  perceive others own/experience.

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The Subjective Nature of Wealth

• According to the social competition thesis, then,
  we feel rich or poor, content or not, on the
  basis of the environment in which we live.
  Specifically, we derive pleasure and measure our
  wealth by comparing ourselves to those with whom
  we interact most often. Students who live and
  work around a college campus, for example, would
  use the people with whom they interact, and their
  consumption practices, in this environment as the
  reference point for their own sense of
  wealth/poverty and the consumption practices that
  stem from this sense.
• What does this mean in terms of rates of
  consumption? It means that if we interact
  regularly with people who are more affluent than
  we are, and who consume in accordance with this
  affluence, then we are likely, statistically
  speaking, to consume more than if we lived around
  people who are relatively less affluent.

Family A
Family B
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Social Competition and the Ideal of Personal
Autonomy

• Many people are uncomfortable with the idea that
  our consumption activities are driven largely by
  our desire to compete (or at least keep up with)
  the neighbours. The root of this discomfort, I
  believe, lies in our commitment to the notion of
  personal autonomy the idea that our thoughts and
  practices are our own. This ideal is evident in
  the responses people commonly give to studies on
  materialism (consumerism). In one study,
  respondents told the researchers that 89 percent
  of people say "our society is much too
  materialistic." . . . However, 84 percent also
  wished they had more money, and 78 percent said
  is was "very or fairly important" to have "a
  beautiful home, a new car and other nice things.

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Too materialistic?

• It is worth noting that this criticism of
  materialism, in addition to being contradictory,
  is also incorrect. It is incorrect in the sense
  that the problem lies not with our being too
  materialistic, but with our not being
  materialistic enough. As Raymond Williams, a
  noted cultural critic argued in the late 1960s, a
  materialistic society is one that is concerned
  with material goods. We, on the other hand, are
  increasingly concerned not with the material
  itself (the automobile, for example), but with
  the symbolic value of the material. It is the
  symbolic value of commodities that drives
  consumer culture the desire to acquire material
  goods that have social (I.e. symbolic) value.

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Is Consumption only about Social Competition?

• Like all theories, the social competition thesis
  provides some only a partial answer. Not all acts
  of consumption are driven by the desire to
  compete socially through the acquisition and
  display of commodities. Research suggests that
  only certain kinds of commodities are subject to
  the logic of competitive social practice. Those
  social activities that are subject to it are
  typically very public, as opposed to private
  in nature.
• Market research finds, for example, that people
  do not buy privately used commodities such as
  life insurance or furnaces on the basis of the
  social status they may provide. This is because
  the items are consumed privately.

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Is Consumption only about Social Competition?

• An interesting example of this distinction
  between private and public is within the beauty
  product industry. Market research tells us that
  women tend to be willing to spend little on
  relatively private goods such as facial
  cleansers, but are willing to pay much more for
  publicly displayed beauty products such as
  lipstick. Lipstick, unlike facial cleansers is
  often consumed (applied) in public settings.

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Is Consumption only about social competition?

• We are living in an age when the notion of
  neighbour, as we are using it here, is undergoing
  significant change. In the 19th century, what
  constituted a neighbour was quite straightforward
  these were the people in your community those
  with whom you lived and worked. By the
  mid-twentieth century, however, media to a
  limited but significant degree began to play
  the role of the neighbour. Rather than spending
  time with our neighbours next door, more and more
  contemporary citizens are interacting with the
  characters both real and fictional on
  television/radio/films. Each Wednesday night
  during the 1990s, for example, millions of North
  Americans sit down to catch up on lives of the
  characters on Beverley Hills 90210. Like real
  neighbours, viewers keep up with the lives of
  their neighbours on programmes such as these.
• For many people, this notion of virtual
  neighbours seems bizarre, possibly too extreme.
  However, a mere consideration of the number of
  hours people spend in front of media of various
  types an average of 21 hours per week in front
  of the television, for example makes clear just
  how much of our lives is now spent watching our
  virtual neighbours.

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Why is this significant?

• The presence of these virtual neighbours is
  important in terms of consumer culture because
  these new neighbours are unlike our traditional
  neighbours in one very key respect they occupy a
  higher socio-economic position. Television
  characters, for example, are typically
  represented as members of the top 20 of income.
  Therefore, regardless of the viewers income,
  they are exposed to the lifestyles of this high
  income group. For a simple (goofy) graphic
  representation of this change, see the next
  slide.

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Neighbours Then . . .

• ..and now

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Actual Versus Virtual Neighbours

• The existence of this affluent virtual neighbour
  is a mechanism that drives consumption rates
  higher. Due to the fact that our real neighbours
  typically occupied a similar socio-economic
  position, the competitive impulse of consumption
  was held in check. Each member of community is
  competing, certainly, but they are doing so with
  people who have a similar level of resources.
• Our new virtual neighbours, though, stimulate
  consumption by continually displaying and
  celebrating lavish lifestyles.

How do underemployed and unemployed
twenty-somethings afford apartments that rent
for several thousand dollars?
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Virtual Neighbours and Consumption Stimulation

• This relationship between the presence and
  ubiquity of virtual neighbours is supported by
  research. Amazingly, for every hour of television
  watched per week, the rate of consumption climbs
  208.00. Thus, if viewer A watches 6 hours per
  week and consumes 100.00 worth of goods, the
  typical 7 hour viewer will consume 120.00 worth
  of goods.

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The Implications of Consumption

• I want now to look quickly at some of the key
  effects or implications of the high level of
  consumption.
• These effects are in 3 categories
• Trade and labour practices
• Environmental issues
• Foreign policy and interventions

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1. Trade and Labour Practices

• How often do we consider who produces these goods
  we purchase, and under what conditions? Rarely, I
  think. However, consumers/citizens are now
  beginning to pay more attention to how goods are
  produced. The most public example of this is the
  media generated around Nike, the athletic apparel
  company from Oregon, USA.
• Critics sought to draw attention to the fact that
  Nike employs only Third World labour to create
  these Western commodities. The rate of pay and
  work conditions are often very poor.
• Indonesia Minimum Wage 2.46 per day
• Indonesia Cost of Living 4.00 per day
• Vietnam Wages 20c per hour
• Vietnam Cost of Living Food Only 2.10 per day
• Cost of production 4.90
• Retail 125-150.00 (Nikes figures)

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Nike Inc. The Practice Target for Consumer
Activism
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Protests Labour Conditions
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Nike

• Nike, like many multinationals, seeks out the
  cheapest possible labour forces. This has led the
  company to move production between the following
  countries
• 1970s South Korea and Taiwan
• 1980s Indonesia and China
• 1990s Vietnam, Indonesia and China
• Critics argue that Western countries like Canada
  and the United States are exploiting developing
  nations using them as a cheap source of labour.
  They note, also that these companies are quick to
  pack up and leave as soon as employees seek to
  improve working conditions and wages. The ease
  and regularity with which employers such as Nike
  can move operations from one country to another,
  forces local employees to accept the current
  working conditions, to not form unions, and the
  like.
• Moreover, developing nations are often so
  desperate for employment opportunities that they
  find themselves competing with other, similarly
  desperate nations, by offering multinationals tax
  breaks (compensated by locals), slack rules on
  child labour and worker safety, and non-existent
  environmental regulations.

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2. Environment

• The high rates of consumption also has profound
  environmental implications. Higher rates of
  consumption produce, obviously, high rates of
  waste.
• North Americans are the greatest producers of
  waste in the history of the world 5 of the
  worlds population/produce 50 of the worlds
  garbage.
• A growing concern is the burgeoning market in
  China. Car manufacturers, for example, imagine
  China as the next market for automobiles.
  However, it is questionable whether the planet
  can sustain another several hundred automobiles
  (Chinas population is over 1 billion and growing
  rapidly).
• A symptom of the environmental implications of
  consumption is the growing battle over where to
  put our garbage. During the last mayoral
  election in Toronto, for example, decisions about
  where to send the citys waste were at the centre
  of the campaign. It is also interesting to note,
  that while the mainstream media in Toronto were
  aware of this, to my knowledge they never once
  addressed the issue of consumption apparently,
  garbage just appears.

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3. Foreign Policy/Intervention

• The final effect we need to consider is possibly
  the most striking. In 1991, a number of wealthy
  Western nations put their military resources in
  action to maintain access to a cheap supply of
  oil. 100,000 Iraqi men, women, and children
  were maimed or killed to achieve this objective.
  Although the leaders (George Bush and others)
  attempted to define this effort as a
  humanitarian/human rights effort, few people in
  the know accepted this explanation.
• This effort is not without precedent. Many
  undemocratic political systems in various
  countries have been kept in place so as to ensure
  a healthy supply of cheap goods to the West. The
  term, Banana Republic, for example refers to
  Southern, agricultural countries that were run at
  arms-length by rich multinational corporations
  from the U.S.. Britain, and elsewhere. In these
  cases, fruit (primarily) companies were the
  interested parties, but their efforts to control
  the local governments was necessarily supported
  by Western governments.

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Reading

• Many of the ideas presented in this presentation
  can be found in the reading by Juliet Schor, The
  New Politics of Consumption

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Questions

• Why might media choose to present the top 20 of
  the socio-group.
• High rates of consumption have many positive
  implications. What are they?
• What strategies would you propose for addressing
  high consumption rates, if any?
• More and more of our culture is organized around
  promoting consumption. Can you provide an example
  of this promotion?