Illustration from Adbusters
with permission
The consumer is essential for the culture of capitalism. Not only must consumers buy, they must buy more every year, and still more the year after that. Without perpetual consumption, the economy would either decline or collapse. The sign of a healthy national economy, after all, is measured by the Gross National Product (GNP), and the GNP is a measure of the quantity of goods and services people consume. This raises four questions that will be addressed in the following articles. First, historically how was the consumer constructed; second, why do members of the culture of capitalism feel compelled to consume as much as they do; three, what are some of the consequences of our levels of consumption; and, finally, how would you characterize your own commitment to consume
READINGS AND EXERCISES
A. The History and Nature of Consumerism
In Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism we suggest that the emergence of the consumer represents a unique development in the history of the human species. The following readings and resources discuss this development in the United States.
Reading 1. The State of Consumption Today
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/810#1An overview of the material on global consumption contained in the Worldwatch Institute’s publication, State of the World 2011. The overview contains information on the growth of global consumption, inequalities in production, and the social and environmental problems created by the growth in consumption.
Reading 2. The History of Affluenza in America
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/diag/history.html To accompany its documentary on the history of consumption, or affluenza, as they called it, PBS developed this timeline of the development of consumerism. Read each stage of the process and learn, not only about key developments in the history of consumerism in the United States, but also about the periodic resistance to it. Later you will have an opportunity to check the extent to which you are infected with affluenza.
Reading 3 The Rise of American Consumerism
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/tupperware-consumer/ As part of the American Experience series, PBS explored the Tupperware phenomenon that introduced the idea of home parties as a method of selling to consume (pragmatic spending). Read how women were enticed to leave the factory after WWII while still retaining the ability to earn money for consumption.
B. Turning People into Consumers People have, of course, always consumed things, either making these things themselves, bartering or trading for them, or purchasing them at markets. But it is only in the past few centuries, and largely in the past 100 years, that mass consumption has become an essential ingredient of our culture. Furthermore, as we discuss in Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalism people are not naturally consumers; consumers had to be created. The following articles discuss how people, particularly children, are transformed into consumers.
Reading 4. Consuming Kids
https://youthspecialties.com/blog/consuming-kids-how-sellers-create-new-generations-of-buyers/ Advertisers are quite specific on who they target. This article discusses how different corporations target different youth groups, summarizing a number of different books on the exploitation of children.
Reading 5. From Savers to Spenders: How Children Became a Consumer Market
http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/savers-spenders-how-children-became-consumer-market James McNeal, Professor of Marketing at Texas A&M takes us through a discussion of how parents instill consumerism in children thus creating an ethical and moral obligation of parents and marketers to understand the inadequacies of the child consumer.
Reading 6.
Reading 7. The Fast Food Trap: How Commercialism Creates Overweight Children
http://www.mothering.com/articles/the-fast-food-trap-how-commercialism-creates-overweight-children/ This article by Gary Ruskin discusses the rise of childhood obesity in America. Childhood, says Ruskin, has been redefined by American commercial culture to make children increasingly vulnerable to corporate marketing. The corporate redefining of childhood, says Ruskin, “employed four main tools: television, the marketing of junk food, the commercial takeover of the schools, and the starvation of the public sector.” These factors, combined with the decreasing influence of parents over their children has resulted in, among other things, the fattening of American children. At the end of the article, Ruskin lays out some actions that parents and others can take to deal with the problem. You also need to be aware that the food industry has its own campaign to convince people that “food freedom” is under attack, and that scientific studies that indicate that obesity is a problem are flawed. Check out the website for the Center for Consumer Freedom section on food police. The website is a good example of how industry responds when their interests are threatened,
Reading 8: Children as Consumers
http://www.globalissues.org/article/237/children-as-consumers Anup Shah’s Global Issues page on how kids are targeted as consumers. Excellent articles and some basic facts about consuming kids.
Reading 9: $14 Trillion Spent Annually On Trying To Look Cool
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-14-trillion-spent-annually-on-trying-to-loo,17125/ A report on how much American spend on looking cool. Great spoof from The Onion
C. The Consequences of Consumerism One of the essential features of the culture of capitalism is masking from the consumer the effects of his or her consumption patterns. Yet the effects are far-reaching; our patterns of consumption influence virtually every facet of our lives, from the way we allocate our time, to the nature of our social relations, to the state of our environment, even the meaning of our bodies. The following articles discuss some of these effects.
Reading 10. Waste a Lot,Want a Lot: Our All-Consuming Quest for Style
http://www.irfanerdogan.com/cultureideology/wastealot.htm How do you drive people to consume? One way is to ensure that they are dissatisfied with what they have, make them, in effect, slaves to style. In this article, Stuart Ewen traces the history of style in America, and discusses some of the consequences of this for our society.
Reading 11: Blood Bones and Organs: The Gruesome ‘Red Market’ http://www.npr.org/2011/06/10/136931615/blood-bones-and-organs-the-gruesome-red-market?share=email In the culture of capitalism virtually everything is available only as a commodity, that is something to be bought or sold. The necessities of life, for example, such as food, shelter, and health care, exist only as commodities; without the means to “buy” them, people starve, are homeless, or do without medical treatment. Even our bodies, as this article from NPR by Scott Carney illustrates, are becoming commodified. He describes the booming market in human organs, as increasingly impoverished peoples sell their body parts for transplants to rich buyers. The results are the reduction of the human body to bits and parts that can be bought or sold on increasingly globalized markets, and, in some countries, a terrified citizenry that fears they will be killed for their organs.
Exercise 1. Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping
http://www.revbilly.com/ Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping is devoted to bringing the message of the dangers of consumerism to whoever will listen. At the site you can get all kinds information (and links).
- How Badly are you Infected with Affluenza?It is sometimes difficult for us to appreciate the extent to which our behavior is a consequence of what we really want to do, and how much is a consequence of our culture. In Global Problems and the Culture of Capitalismwe use the analogy of the Navaho sandpainting to illustrate the extent to which our culture determines our behavior. This exercise is designed for you to discover the extent to which you are embedded in the sandpainting of the culture of capitalism.
Exercise 2. Do you have affluenza?
http://www.pbs.org/kcts/affluenza/diag/have.htmlTake this test yourself and see to what degree you’re infected with affluenza.
FILMS FOR USE WITH PART 1
Film 1. Big Ideas that Changed the World: Consumerism: a four part series that takes us through the creation of the ideology of consumerism and the resulting effects.
Part 1 (10 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ29DQvopZo
Part 2 (26 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJWYWKNdq4Y
Part 3 (9 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFTjqzqZ3zU
Part 4 (minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyMvJ2giDmQ
Film 2. The Success and Price of Capitalism talks about the corporate mandate to maximize profits and the cost to society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Zkt7KYK8M
