Capitalism and Consumer Society

1
Capitalism and Consumer Society
2
Sociology of Consumption

• Requires a critical analysis of the relationship
  between capitalism and consumption.
• Marxs Critique of Capitalism

3
Marxs Analysis Presumes

• A Dialectical Approach to Historical Events
• Mounting Contradictions undermine systems leading
  to social change.
• Capitalism is a necessary phase
• specific historic conditions generate a limited
  set of futures

4
Industrial Capitalism 1820

• The capitalism discussed in the work of Marx is
  fairly brutal.

5

• Workhouse boys who have lost limbs in factory
  work. In many cases, repetitive use injuries
  lead to amputations.
•  

6
Miner- late 1800s.
7
Improvements

• Life expectancy in 1900 was 49 years, whereas
  today it is 77.
• Sanitation
• Medicine
• Social Justice
• Legal Protections

8
The Development of Consumer Culture

• From Feudalism to Capitalism
• Expansion of World Trade after the Colonization
  of the Americas, parts of Africa leads to
  increased economic expansion- 1600-1800.
• Increase in currency, goods, and workers in
  circulation
• Industrial Capitalism- 1820- 1980s
• From Capitalism to Post-Industrial Capitalism
• Information/Entertainment as an inexhaustible non
  utilitarian good.
• 1980s on

9
From Loyal Subjects to Producers

• Key Changes
• From Feudalism to Democracy
• Rise of Individualism
• Increasing rationalization
• Changes in work and family life
• Urbanization

10
Understanding the Shift- Trade and the Growing
Middle Class

• Between 1600 and 1800 expanding world trade in
  wood and textiles was undermining Feudal
  sharecropping systems.
• New opportunities for wealth for small
  businesspeople expanded the middle class and
  shifted political relations of power.

11
The Peasants/Serfs

• Rural peasants witnessed the erosion of land
  grant rights as their labor in textile production
  became more valuable than their labor in
  agricultural production. As peasants were
  evicted from rural areas, they migrated to urban
  centers offering work in textile production.

12
The Peasants/Serfs

• Rural peasants witnessed the erosion of land
  grant rights as their labor in textile production
  became more valuable than their labor in
  agricultural production. As peasants were
  evicted from rural areas, they migrated to urban
  centers offering work in textile production.

13
New Social Relations are Created

• A growing middle class, industrialists and
  workers are new social roles. Aristocratic
  systems based on paternal responsibility in
  exchange for loyalty are becoming obsolete.
• Individual rights and social mobility are
  emerging in ideologies.

14
Marxs Critique of Capitalism

• The fundamental contradictions of capitalism will
  eventually lead to its destruction.
• Capitalism creates vast inequities in wealth and
  incredible abuses.

15
Understanding Modes of Production

• Mode of Production- Two elements
• 1) Forces of production- physical arrangement of
  economic activity
• 2)Social relations of production- indispensable
  human attachments that people must form to carry
  out this economic activity.
• Mode of production is the superstructure on which
  legal and political life and forms of
  consciousness rest.
• Changes in the mode of production produce changes
  in the relations of production.

16
Commodities

• Are products of labor intended for both use and
  exchange.
• People produce what they need to survive.
• Commodities are the reified result of labor.

17
The Fetishism of Commodities

• Labor gives commodities their value. The
  fetishism of commodities involves the process by
  which actors fail to recognize that it is their
  labor that gives commodities their value.
• A commodity is therefore a mysterious thing,
  simply because in it the social character of
  mens labor appears to them as an objective
  character stamped upon the product of that labor
  because the relations of the producers to the sum
  total of their own labor is presented to them as
  a social relation, existing not between
  themselves, but between the products of their
  labor. Marx, 1867

18
Value

• For Marx, the main function of capitalism is the
  production of value, rather than goods.
• Value Total Amount of Labor time expended in
  the production of a given commodity.

19
Value and Commodity Exchange

• Value is the common denominator among all
  commodities.
• The types of goods produced by capitalists are
  immaterial to them, the production of value is
  what is key.

20
Types of Value

• Use Value- for what something can be used.
• Exchange Value- for what something can be traded.
  
• Surplus Value- the difference between the input
  costs of producing an item and what it can be
  exchanged for. Surplus value is produced by
  paying labor a wage that is less than the value
  produced by that labor.
• By maximizing the amount of time an individual
  works, the capitalist can maximize the rate of
  surplus value.

21
Production of Commodities and Surplus Value

• Labor creates value.
• All other inputs bring only the amount of value
  already embedded in them.
• What are ways that more value can be obtained
  from workers?
• Longer hours
• Faster production
• Fewer benefits

22
The Fetishism of Commodities

• Commodities must fulfill a social need as well as
  the manifold needs of the individual.
• The Creation of Need in Consumer Society is a key
  shift.

23
So Wheres the Revolution?

• Post-Industrial Capitalism
• Is it still coming?- only when globalization is
  complete and the international workers of the
  world unite, can there be a revolution.
• Is it outside the realm of the fathomable? The
  changes remain as of yet inconceivable/

24
From Producers to Consumers

• Since the 1950s, mass consumption has
  proliferated.

25
The Making of the Consumer

• How does a culture encourage people to behave in
  some ways and not others?
• In 1870, 53 of the population lived and worked
  on farms and produced much of what they consumed.
• How much of what we consume do we produce?

26
Creating Consumers

• Changes in the Display of Goods
• Development of Department Stores- one might go
  just to look
• Goods were presented in ways designed to make
  consumers want to buy them.
• It also acted as a primer- telling people how to
  decorate and dress.

27
Creating Consumers

• Advertising
• The goal of advertising is to create desire.
• In 1880 30 Million was invested in advertising.
  In 1998, 437 billion was spent on advertising.

28
Creating Consumers

• The growth of a lifestyle of consumption.
• Mass media demonstrates how to be a proper
  consumer.
• Stars became models for social behavior.

29
Culture Industry

• Reception becomes dictated by exchange value as
  the higher purposes and values of culture succumb
  to the logic of the production process and the
  market. (Featherstone, 1991)

30
The Transforming of Institutions

• Educational institutions developed fields like
  accounting to facilitate mass consumption.
• Synergistic relationship between knowledge and
  culture industries. Ie. Museums and designers
  consult with each other.
• Governmental Organizations- Commerce Department
  etc.

31
Reading the Signs

• Consumption entails the active manipulation of
  signs.
• The sign and commodity come together to produce
  the commodity-sign. (Baudrillard, 1970).

32
Demand is Socially Constructed

• Key Question Is demand imposed from above upon
  consumers, or does it come from consumers?
• Both- but understanding the complicated
  relationships between consumer taste/demands and
  social structural forces remains a challenge.

33

• The consumer is expected to assume responsibility
  for appearance, failing to do so becomes a sign
  of a host of failures.
• This reinforces social status especially class
  stratification.

34
The Commodification of Leisure Time

• Industrial production requires exponential growth
  in consumption. Recreation and leisure becomes
  an important forum in which this can occur.

35
The Commodification of Otherness

• bell hooks- there is pleasure to be found in
  the acknowledgement and enjoyment of racial
  difference. p. 343