Consumption. Mark Hudson
as a refreshing step away from the “scolding” tradition of productivists. Twitchell pointed out that increased consumption had expanded human welfare because it has genuine meaning, as people quest for affiliation, recognition and purpose. The power of the consumer is also shown when multinational firms bend their product offerings to local tastes rather than being able to alter tastes to meet their existing product offerings (Trentmann, 2009: 201–2). An obvious example of this might be that the champions of assembly-line food uniformity, McDonald’s, introduced different menu items tailored for the tastes of different markets, producing the McVeggie in India and, much to the delight of those in the Eastern US, a McLobster during the summer months.
Consumerists also turn the table on the productivists by arguing that many revolutions in business and industry were actually driven by consumer demands. Rather than claiming, as the productivists do, that transformations in industry and trade led to the creation of products that had to find a place in consumer homes, consumerists argue that it was desire for more and novel products that created the impetus for industrialization (Trentmann, 2009: 196). For example, the expanded desire for porcelain, which had spread to the lower aristocracy and growing bourgeoisie, led to new production techniques pioneered by the English company Wedgwood (McKendrick et al., 1982). Many of the innovations in commerce and finance, such as the provision of credit and insurance, which was crucial in the time-consuming and uncertain business of long-distance trade, were caused by the demand for luxury consumption (Sassatelli, 2007: 23). More generally, consumerists argue that modern consumption preceded and provided impetus for the transformation of the economy toward industrial capitalism (Mukerji, 1983; Stillerman, 2015).
The consumerist and productivist positions are very different interpretations of who drives consumption and thus, often, the merits of a consumer society. For consumerists, consumption is driven by our genuine desire to use products in the process of “fashioning who we are” (Trentmann, 2016: 681). Productivists, on the other hand, argue that what we want, and whether we can have it, is driven by producers, creating real questions about whether we are better off at higher levels of consumption. This can sometimes appear a bit like the “chicken vs. egg” debate. Was it consumer demand for luxuries that led to the first long-distance trade, or was it the provision of luxuries from that trade that caused the demand for these products?
As with many of these types of debate, fence-sitters argue for a “multi-causal approach” in which both play a role in the rise of consumption and in driving consumer behaviour (Sassatelli, 2007: 13). This is the space occupied by writers such as Ben Fine, who argues that consumption takes place neither at the behest of a producer wielding the whip hand, nor in a realm of free expression and choice ruled by clear-eyed consumers, but in ways that compromise both. In Fine’s view, while demand for commodified goods such as fashion is indeed generated and manipulated by producers seeking to increase sales, the strategies and successful campaigns to do so are in turn responsive to changing social currents, cultural shifts, and exogenously emergent demands (say, for “sweat-free” clothing or for the promotion of positive body-image) (Fine, 2002).
Contemporary sociology has also tried to reconcile the two sides of the consumption coin, most influentially through “practice theory,” which focuses on how consumption fits into the things we do in our everyday lives (our “practices”). In Warde’s (2017) formulation of the term, practices are the things we say and do, connected through understandings, know-how, descriptions, emotional states, motivations and rules. Practice theory is an attempt to allow for the intentionality and agency of consumers in how they interact with objects. They do so as part of finding meaning, satisfaction and sustenance through their day-to-day practices. At the same time, they do so under rules and constraints put in place partly by commercial interests who want us to buy stuff and partly by groups, organizations and other communities of practice (such as groups of cycling or motoring enthusiasts or gourmet cooks). We consume primarily not as a practice, in Warde’s view, but almost always as part of our other practices – the purposeful, meaningful and expressive (building model trains, playing saxophone) as well as the unconscious everyday (heating our homes or taking a shower).
Practice theory does attend to the presence of commercial interest in the development of practices. But it also tends to reject arguments that are holistic – that connect practices to a set of “unified driving forces across the whole of the institutional complex” (Warde 2017: 170). Warde argues, for example, that, “even though producers try to mould our practices in line with their commercial interests, the practices are not dictated by producers of goods and services but rather directed by the symbolic and practical purposes that people pursue while going about their daily lives” (ibid.: 76–7). And so they are. But these purposes are equally open to conditioning not just by individual businesses who would like you to make Pepsi a part of your practice rather than Coke but by a systemic imperative that you live your life increasingly through the commodities it generates as a means of its self-expansion. It is in our commitment to a holistic explanation, rooted in an overarching, dominant system that governs the way we produce and reproduce our social existence, that our approach here deviates from practice theory, and it is in many ways a return to earlier forms of critique that do not shy from macro-scale analysis.
The commodity forms which, as Warde stresses, have colonized practices have done so as part of a political and cultural push to shape our means of going about our daily lives: to privatize and commodify them. To get at an explanation for consumption, we have to look at want, desire, meaning, purpose, and how these are developed in and through practices; but, in order to connect consumption to political economy, we have to situate this within a system whose logic is independent of these things, and possibly at odds with them.
The Rest of the Book
The rest of the book is dedicated to examining theories about how to interpret the modern world of capitalist commodity consumption. We will start with one consumerist theory that portrays consumption as an individual and beneficial decision. The subsequent chapter will critically evaluate this theory from a political economy perspective, with very different implications for the overall benefits of growing consumption and, therefore, the policy implications to remedy the identified shortcomings. The remaining chapters will examine the implications of individualized consumption for social well-being, for the environment, and for the distribution of power across classes and genders, and then look at the possibility of using consumerism as a political tool.
2An Aspiration for All the World: Championing Individual Freedom of Choice
There is much cause to be grateful that ours is a consumer-oriented society.
(Katona, 1964: 4)
Introduction
You have just bought a fashionable shirt. Examining the many decisions that were made in purchasing that particular item as opposed to its many alternatives provides a useful, intuitive entry point into an analysis of consumption. The first decision might be whether to go out shopping for a shirt in the first place. With the money you spent on clothes you could have engaged in numerous other activities, from buying ice cream to enjoying a movie. Or you could have popped it in your savings account and relaxed in the park. The fact that you have opted for shirt purchasing would suggest that this was a more pressing desire than any of those alternatives.
Once you decided that the best use of your time and money was picking up a much needed top, you could then choose among a wide variety of alternative shirts from an impressive array of different stores or online vendors. In making that choice you would compare a number of different shirts – carefully looking at the cut, colour and fabric to choose the one that made you look your most presentable and feel the most comfortable. Additionally, you would consider how much hard-earned cash you wanted to part with. Was the slightly more flattering fit worth the extra money? In making each of these decisions you were most likely making the choice based on what you preferred. People don’t often choose to go shopping for clothes if they