Consumption. Mark Hudson
not only about acquiring but also about identifying yourself through what has been acquired. Sociologist Mark Paterson, for example, has a definition of consumerism that appears to be targeted toward the importance of lifestyle considerations: “a particular moment in which the consumer is participating in a series of processes, having taken account of branding, images, notions of self-worth … and exercised the temporary satisfaction of a desire or felt need” (Paterson, 2017: 3). For Paterson, any examination of current consumption must include “what kinds of things are motivating our decisions to buy, such as the concept of lifestyle, advertising, and notions of consumer choice” (ibid.: 12). This suggests that people define themselves by their consumption – as consumers – rather than through the other roles in their lives. Instead of identifying with their occupation, for example, people view work only as a means “to acquire coveted, meaning-laden consumer items, while the inherent meanings or value attributed to one’s work, career, or job largely [loses] importance … the primary purpose of work [is] its potential or ability to generate disposable income for consumption” (Dholakia and Fuat Firat, 1998: 5). This creates a difference between Trentmann-style consumption, which can be applied fairly universally, a consumer society and consumerism. We use the word “consumerism” to refer to a cultural orientation in which needs are fulfilled and meaning is produced primarily through the acquisition of commodities.
This book gives an analysis of consumption using a political economy framework. This means that it will examine theories through which we can analyze the context for, and consequences of, most consumption as it is currently practiced within a specific system of political economy. Consumption is part of an economic system. Rather than approaching it from the exclusive point of view of the individual consumer, a political economy of consumption centers the systemic: the needs of a capitalist system for growth, the embeddedness of individual consumption in commodity-specific “systems of provisioning” (Fine, 2002: 79), and the problems that arise from those systems for people and the planet. Political economy also foregrounds that consumerism as a mass phenomenon is historically specific. The implication of this is that a political economy of consumption does not set out to generate a critique of “consumption” as a transhistorical or ahistorical category. We must, in some way, shape or form, consume. Rather, we set out to add to our understanding of how capitalism conditions our patterns of consumption in specific ways.
We will take McKendrick et al.’s definition of consumption, which includes the market, one step further by arguing that capitalism – our currently dominant political economic system – contains two other crucial components: for-profit, private ownership and wage labour. Many other political economies, such as slavery, used markets extensively. The key difference between capitalism and slavery is not markets but the different rules about how labour is organized, which have crucial implications for the manner in which consumption should be analyzed. Slaves engaged in consumption – they ate food, wore clothes and slept in shelter of better or often worse quality. They even had some input into the goods and services purchased for their use (McDonald, 2012: 118). However, consumption by the slave, as an owned input into production, would have been determined largely by the slave owner, with the purpose of yielding the highest return in terms of minimizing the cost while maintaining the value of the slave as a salable asset and input in production. In capitalism, for-profit firms hire workers in the labour market based on whether the costs of the worker are less than the benefits that the worker produces for the firm. This calculation largely determines the income that workers have for consumption. The manner in which consumption decisions are made by a wage earner is vastly different in terms of the income earned and the worker’s amount of discretion about where that income goes. It is consumption by the worker, rather than the slave, on which this book will focus. It is the “sphere of exchange,” or the market, for both labour and consumer goods that translates work into consumption in a capitalist, market economy (Sassatelli, 2007).
The second element that distinguishes the capitalist political economy is for-profit, private ownership. This is relevant in terms of consumption because it means that the goods and services that people consume are produced in order to make a profit for firms and the individuals that own them. Goods and services produced in this manner are often referred to as commodities. This makes for a different context of provision than occurs in the home or by the government, neither of which are quite as concerned with profits. Most people acquire most of their goods and services through the market, although this is not exclusively so. Many goods and services, although a declining percentage of total consumption, are acquired through production in the household. This is where many child-rearing services are performed, from changing diapers to cooking meals, often according to socially constructed, traditionally defined gender roles. People also consume goods and services produced by the government. This is how most people get their education, their drinking water, fire protection and roads. Compared to market provision, these are produced under a different logic and with very different consequences for who gets to consume and the types of goods and services with which those people will be provided. In this book, we are concerned primarily with commodity consumption, although we will frequently contrast its crucial differences with the home or government. To sum up all of our definitional discussion, this book is on consumption, with a particular focus on capitalist, commodity consumption, or, as sociologist Max Weber put it, the satisfaction of daily wants and needs achieved through the “capitalist mode” (Weber, 1961).
Competing Themes in the History of Consumption
As we shall see in the remainder of the book, two fractures show up time and again in analyzing the political economy of consumption. The first tension is whether the evolution of consumption is one of continuity or transformation. Those, like Trentmann, who advocate for continuity argue that consumption is a dynamic evolution, not a phenomenon that should be associated with more recent times or any particular place. Rather, they argue that consumption and consumer culture extend back into time and across geographical locations, with no sharp break between a consumer society and a pre-consumerist past (Trentmann, 2009). As Trentmann stated, “things are an inextirpable part of what makes us human” (2016: 678).
Continuity advocates point to the importance of consumption beyond the usual Western European and American locations and back into the distant past. In tribal societies people not only ate, clothed and sheltered themselves but also consumed beyond bare necessities, often using consumption as a mark of status (Sassatelli, 2007). The Roman Empire was famous for its system of transportation that facilitated trade (Trentmann, 2009: 191). Marco Polo’s voyage in the thirteenth century marked the beginning of long-distance trade in high-value items between Asia and Europe. His accounts of the riches of the Great Han, including exotic horses, elephants and leather shoes, inspired further voyages and an expansion of Asian possessions in Europe by the aristocracy and (perhaps ironically) the religious hierarchy – an inventory in 1295 at the Vatican listed quite a collection of Mongolian silk (McCabe, 2015: 18–19). Moving in the other direction, Western imported goods were integrated into Middle Eastern markets by the sixteenth century (Stearns, 2001). An important part of this scholarship highlights the number of things that were in people’s houses as evidence of their propensity to consume (Margairaz, 2012: 193). In China, during the late Ming dynasty (up to the first half of the 1600s), books were an important household item, as were Japanese-made fans, lacquered tables, gold-painted screens and cosmetic boxes (Trentmann, 2016: 47).
Even McKendrick et al.’s definition of consumption for novelty and fashion can be found in more locations and further back in time than is often assumed. In Ming China, people exhibited a taste for changing sleeve lengths, demonstrating the importance of fashion, and one scholar at the time lamented that for “young dandies in the villages … even silk gauze isn’t good enough and [they] lust for Suzhou embroideries.” Merchants would create gigantic banners, some as much as 10 meters high and lit by lanterns at night, to attract customers (Trentmann, 2016: 47). In Zanzibar, off the East African coast, status items such as jewelry and umbrellas were important markers of social standing. Although consumption has evolved, expanded and intensified, it has a much longer history in much more diverse geographic space than is often acknowledged (ibid.: 677).
Similarly, innovations that facilitate consumption, such as credit, also