The Unmanageable Consumer

Yiannis Gabriel,Tim Lang

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781473933767
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Comportement du consommateur

' The Unmanageable Consumer has long been one of my favorite books in the sociology of consumption. This long overdue third edition has updated and revised the basic argument in many ways. Most importantly, it now offers a new chapter on the consumer as worker or, more generally, the prosumer. Assign it to your classes (I have…and will again) and read it for your edification.' - George Ritzer, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland, USA

Western-style consumerism is often presented as unstoppable, yet its costs mount and its grip on consumer reality weakens. In this 20th Anniversary edition, Gabriel and Lang restate their thesis that consumerism is more fragile and unmanageable than is assumed by its proponents.

Consumerism has been both stretched and undermined by globalization, the internet, social media and other cultural changes. Major environmental threats, debt, squeezed incomes and social inequalities now temper Western consumers? appetite for spending. The 20th century Deal, first championed by Henry Ford, of more consumption from higher waged work looks tattered. This edition of The Unmanageable Consumer continues to explore 10 different consumer models, and encourages analysis of contemporary consumerism.It looks at the spread of consumerism to developing countries like India and China and considers the effects of demographic changes and migration, and points to new features such as consumers taking on unwaged work.

New to this edition:

• Coverage of new phenomenon such as social media and emerging markets
• Explores contemporary topics including the occupy movement and horsemeat scandal
• A new chapter on the consumer as worker.

?This is a remarkable and important book. The new edition updates consumer cultural studies to take into account austerity politicsand the economic crisis, and the impact these have had on how we think about and experience everyday practicesof shopping and consuming. The authors also build on and maintain the lively and challenging argument from the previous volumes which sees the consumer as an unstable space for a multiplicity of often contradictory responses which can unsettle the various strategies on the part of contemporary capitalism to have us buy more.? - Angela McRobbie, Goldsmiths, University of London

'The book exemplifies how social science should be: engaged, insightful, imaginative, scholarly and highly socially and politically relevant. Strongly recommended to students, academics as well as all people interested in understanding our time and themselves in an age of consumerism and false promises.' - Mats Alvesson, Professor of Business Administration, Lund University, Sweden

1 The Emergence Of Contemporary Consumerism

There is little sign that most of the populace wish for anything other than a continual increase in the availability of such products and the benefits felt to be received by their possession. (Miller, 1987: 185)

Since the 14th century, the word ‘to consume’ in English has had negative connotations, meaning ‘to destroy, to use up, to waste, to exhaust’. By contrast, the word ‘customer’ was a more positive term, implying ‘a regular and continuing relationship to a supplier’. The unfavourable connotations of the word ‘consumer’ continued to the late 19th century. Gradually, the meaning of ‘to consume’ shifted from the object that is dissipated to the human needs that are fulfilled in the process (Williams, 1976: 69). It is mainly since the ‘Roaring Twenties’ (1920s) in the USA that the meaning of consumption has broadened still further to resonate as pleasure, enjoyment and freedom (Lasch, 1991). Consumption moved from a means towards an end – living – to being an end in its own right. Living life to the full became increasingly synonymous with consumption.

By the 21st century, this has changed. The consumer is a totem pole around which a multitude of actions and ideologies now dance. Whether en masse or as an individual, the consumer is no longer a person who merely desires, buys and uses up a commodity. Instead, as we shall see in subsequent chapters, we encounter the consumer in turn as one who chooses, buys or refuses to buy; as one who displays or is unwilling to display; as one who offers or keeps; as one who feels guilt or has moral qualms; as one who explores or interprets, reads or decodes, reflects or daydreams; as one who pays, who gets into debt or shop-lifts; as one who needs or cherishes; as one who loves or is indifferent; as one who defaces or destroys.

Like the words consumption and consumer, the word consumerism has emerged as the umbrella term that captures the centrality of consumption in life. It has become part of the vocabulary of different intellectual traditions which carry different nuances but share the conviction that consumption provides the key to understanding of a wide range of issues in economics, psychology, cultural studies and politics. At its heart, consumerism is an ideology on a par with religion and politics – even overtaking them on some fronts. It looks at consumption as the source of meaning, identity and pleasure. Unlike politics and religion, consumerism is based on a relatively narrow conception of self-interest and personal choice. As a moral doctrine, therefore, it overcomes the Puritan ethic of self-denial; it celebrates and emphasizes the right of each person to search and find happiness in the use and display of commodities that they freely choose and acquire. Consumption has emerged virtually unchallenged as the essence of the good life and the vehicle for freedom, power and happiness. The claims of style, taste, fantasy and sexuality are at the forefront of this ideology, in which gender makes an intermittent appearance and class can vanish.

As an economic ideology, consumerism is seen as the force fuelling technological innovation and disseminating it globally. Following the collapse in the 1990s of the Communist bloc and its productionist rhetoric (‘forever more tons of steel per head’), consumerism emerged uncontested as the ideological force behind the hegemony of free markets. It championed the pursuit of ever-higher standards of living from ever-less regulated markets, ushering in a new period of capitalist accumulation. It has become a key feature of international relations from trade and aid to foreign policy. The rise of the consumer and, relatedly, free markets are seen as the key to economic development everywhere.

Consumerism has long been the hallmark of neo-liberal politics but it has been increasingly embraced across the political spectrum in high-, medium- and low-income countries alike. The modern state has emerged as a guarantor of consumer rights and minimum standards while facilitating the ‘free’ operation of markets. In this process, large sections of the state itself – including the provision of health and education services – come under the sway of market forces; indeed, they are turned into quasi-markets. Almost all political parties have adapted accordingly, shifting their rhetoric from paternalism and protection to choice and freedom. Consumerism is the guarantor of access to marketplaces that supply glamorous, stylish goods and personalized services in contrast to the shabby, run-down state services left over from a previous political era. In this new world, the role of the state is to create and defend markets and to ensure fair market disciplines are applied.

A now discarded meaning of consumerism referred to a variety of social movements that sought to promote and protect the rights of consumers collectively. Consumer advocacy, dating back to the co-operative movement in the 19th century, developed as the patterns and the scope of consumption changed. This attitude to consumption emphasizes the vulnerability of individual consumers and the need for collective defence, education and representation. Neither state nor free markets, according to this view, can entirely be trusted to work for the consumer. While this tradition has endured and assumed new forms of consumer activism in our time, it has increasingly come to be associated with ethical consumerism, sustainable consumerism or even anti-consumerism. Thus consumerism – in spite of its global reach and ideological supremacy – is neither uncontested nor unproblematic. Even more contested and problematic are the images of the consumer that emerge from different academic traditions that are mesmerized by contemporary consumption. Thus some academics approach the consumer as a sovereign choice maker, others as a creature of habit rarely venturing beyond the familiar; some as conformist, easy fodder for marketers and advertisers, others as rebel, forever seeking to subvert or appropriate brands; some as rational and calculating, and others as capricious and impulsive.

Each of the chapters of this book introduces a different face of the consumer. We embrace the variety and nuances in the idea of ‘the consumer’ in order to develop a more complex account of consumerism, as a phenomenon that both describes social reality and also shapes perceptions of social reality. In all its meanings, consumerism is neither ethically nor politically neutral, and is therefore a terrain to be contested and argued over. Our object is not merely to clarify current and past debates on consumerism, consumers and consumption, but to explore the contradictions harboured by contemporary consumption patterns, the limits to consumerism and the forces that are likely to oppose it in the future.

The rest of this chapter sketches the emergence of Western consumerism and some of the contradictions that it faces today. We examine the circumstances that fostered it in the early phase of mass production and mass consumption in the 20th century. We trace its development through a period of mass media and advertising, examine its mutation in post-Fordist regimes and what some argued was a postmodern phase, and its resurgence in the era of the internet, and finally its possible dissolution into what some analysts already refer to as ‘post-consumerism’ (Lansley, 1994: 234–8; Gilbert, 2008; Cohen, 2013). The contradictions created within consumerism by environmental, population and political forces are cited by some commentators as the reasons for it moving in this direction.

CORE ARGUMENTS

Consumerism emerged as a leading ideology in the 20th century and looks certain to play a major role in the 21st century. Identifying the good life with people’s ability to meet their desires through the accumulation of goods, consumerism elevates individual choice to a supreme value. It proclaims free markets as the guarantors of technological innovation, economic growth and political freedom. This ideology originated in the West but has now gone global. Consumerism was underpinned by a ‘Fordist Deal’, the deal behind the rise of mass production and mass consumption under which enhanced standards of living compensated for alienated work. This deal has unravelled with a global division of labour and new technological forces such as the internet which have seen jobs become more precarious and mobile. The major challenges for consumerism in the future look likely to arise from economic and political forces that depress wages and increase job insecurity; from increasing awareness of the adverse environmental impact of consumption; and from the failure of consumption to deliver the happiness and well-being that it promises.

The Fordist Deal and the rise of 20th-century consumerism

How did it all start? Contemporary consumerism in all its current diversity is unthinkable without the unwritten deal pioneered by Henry Ford for his employees: ever-increasing standards of living in exchange for a quiescent labour force. Ford offered his workforce the carrot of material enjoyment outside the workplace as compensation for the de-skilling, control and alienation that he imposed in the workplace. He also recognized the potential of his workers as customers, once they rose above mere subsistence. ‘If you cut wages, you just cut the number of your customers’ (Barnet and Cavanagh, 1994: 261). Since that deal was struck, consumerism has come to signify a general preoccupation with consumption standards and choice as well as a willingness to read meanings in material commodities and to equate happiness and success with material possessions (Lebergott, 1993).

The Fordist Deal linking consumption to the labour process highlights three dimensions of 20th-century consumer capitalism that are rarely addressed together. They will be at the forefront of our discussion throughout this chapter. The first is its historical character. Consumerism did not appear already shaped and formed in advanced industrial societies. It was prefigured in earlier societies (McKendrick et al., 1982; Williams, 1982; Mukerji, 1983; McCracken, 1988). Contemporary consumerism is the product of long-term historical changes. Fordism (as a phenomenon embracing both production and consumption) signalled the transformation of consumerism from an elite to a mass phenomenon in the 20th century in advanced capitalist societies (Williams, 1976). A very different picture emerges if, instead of approaching contemporary consumerism as the terminus of economic and cultural trends, it is seen as transitional, that is, having to reinvent itself or being overtaken by other social forces.

The second dimension of contemporary consumerism is its global nature. While consumerism touches the minutiae of everyday life, it is a global phenomenon in many different ways. It underlines the interconnectedness of national economies, it affects rich and poor alike, it shapes international trade and (as the wars in the Middle East have demonstrated) politics and peace. The major players in the consumerist game, the transnational corporations, are global players, the stakes are global stakes and the implications of the game itself are global (Barnet and Cavanagh, 1994; Castells, 1996; Held, 1999; Brewer and Trentmann, 2006). By the end of the 20th century, just 200 corporations accounted for a fourth of global economic activity (Anderson and Cavanagh, 2000: 3).

This connects with the third dimension, sharply highlighted by the Fordist Deal, the vital links between contemporary consumerism and production. To be sure, a central feature of consumerism is the separation of the at times squalid circumstances of the production of commodities from their glamorized circulation and sale (Frenkel et al., 1999; Klein, 2000; Korczynski, 2001a; Korczynski, 2001b). Yet, patterns of consumption are crucially linked with developments in the nature of production. The consumer is ultimately the same person as the worker or manager now threatened by continuous mechanization of production and distribution or by the flight of capital to lower wage economies. Equally, international capital has a lot at stake in seducing the displaced peasant and exploited workers of low income countries and converting them into consumers aspiring after Western standards (e.g. Sklair, 1995; Prahalad, 2004; Seabrook, 2004).

The emergence of contemporary consumerism

As a mass phenomenon, consumerism may be a distinctly 20th century one, but particular patterns of consumption have held important social meanings throughout history, something explored by a number of scholars. In a pioneering study, McKendrick explored the consumption of the affluent in the early part of the industrial revolution, when the commercialization of fashion turned the British middle class into avid spenders (McKendrick et al., 1982). Rosalind Williams looked at the rampant consumerism of the Parisian bourgeoisie and the arrival of mass consumption through the institution of department stores in the late 19th century (Williams, 1982). Mukerji went further back and examined conspicuous consumption among Elizabethan nobility, fuelled by the discovery of ‘fashion’ and the arrival of nouveaux riches (Mukerji, 1983). What sets modern consumption apart from earlier patterns is not merely the growth of spending power across social classes and strata, but, more importantly, the experience of choice as a generalized social phenomenon. No earlier period afforded social masses the choice of what to spend surplus cash on after the means of subsistence had been met. This is well illustrated by the decline in the proportion of household expenditure on food. In Britain, at the start of the 20th century, working-class consumers were spending around a half to two-thirds of their income on food (Burnett, 1969). By the middle of that century, food on average claimed only a third of household expenditure. By the beginning of the 21st century it was nearer one tenth (Defra, 2014).

Most commentators on consumption agree that, following the Second World War, there was an explosion of consumption in the industrialized nations. Many industries, such as automobiles, chemicals, domestic appliances, electrical and electronic goods, took off, fuelling as well as feeding off a culture of consumerism. The basic bargain on which consumerism flourished was a more docile workforce in exchange for ever-increasing standards of living, referred to earlier as the Fordist Deal. Because Fordism makes the reproduction of labour power and mass consumption a decisive basis for the process of accumulation and valorization, it must aim for a tendentially unlimited expansion of consumption, it systematically institutionalizes ‘wish production’ and it constantly extends needs. These can only be satisfied in commodity form, which produces ever-new needs. The ‘endlessness of needs’ introduced with Fordist society, the limitless nature of consumer demands inherent in the Fordist model of consumption, contains an inbuilt tendency to a material ‘“demand inflation” … [This] binds the structure of the Fordist individual with consumerism, which may certainly be politically stabilising, but also has an economically precarious effect’ (Hirsch, 1991: 168).

Governments became vital parties to the Fordist Deal, leading some commentators like Hirsch (1991) and Jessop (2001) to speak of the ‘Fordist State’. Governments became guarantors of full employment: ‘Work and you will be able to consume; consume and you will be in work’ (Bunting, 2004). Following the post-Second World War reconstruction, politics in the affluent world came to be dominated by governments’ credibility, whatever the hue, to deliver on promises to improve living standards (Hobsbawm, 1994: 579ff). Political economy became a constant ‘compare and contrast’ exercise between the different types of contract with consumers (Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, 1993). This was signalled in the UK by the defeat of the Labour government in 1950–51 whose seemingly endless policy of frugality since 1945 was swept aside by the Conservatives’ promise of a better deal for the consumer (Hennessy, 1992) and in the USA by the post-war rediscovery of the American Dream or way of life that it represented (Mander, 1991). Throughout the period referred to by Hobsbawm (1994) as the Golden Age of the West (1947–72), this policy was highly successful, with ever-increasing opportunities for consumers to spend on goods such as records, clothes, homes, cars. By the 1960s, standards of living as measured by traditional indicators of consumption had improved spectacularly, with the USA, as so often, leading the way. In 1920, 16 per cent of US households had a phonograph; by 1960, 31 per cent had one (Lebergott, 1993: 137). In 1900, only 20 per cent of US households had a horse. In 1920, 26 per cent had a car and by 1989, nearly 90 per cent had one. In 1925, 10 per cent of US households had a radio; by 1990, 99 per cent had one and 98 per cent had a television. By 2010, the average number of television sets per US household had risen to nearly three.

The emergence of modern consumerism can hardly be reduced to spending patterns. Equally, it should not be studied outside the ideological context of the Cold War. Throughout this period, glamorized consumption in the West, as depicted in advertisements and celebrated in television series, was at least as potent an ideological weapon in the super-power confrontation as space exploits or gold medal hauls in the Olympic Games. The patent effectiveness of Western free enterprise in supplying a plethora of constantly mutating and highly desirable consumer products was held as final evidence of the superiority of capitalist market forces, entrepreneurship, free trade and political systems. Chronic shortages of consumer goods, perennial queues and the absurd inefficiencies of the Soviet system became as important a part of Western propaganda as civil rights abuses and political oppression. Since then, of course, the Chinese economic success has indicated that its brand of Communism was not intrinsically hostile to expanding consumer markets; certainly, it seized the opportunity to recast itself as the efficient low-cost labour force, reliable source of cheap luxuries to the rest while also fuelling its own consumerist boom.

But the eulogies of Western consumerism set against the alleged bleakness of the Communist system did not merely originate with the propagandists of the Cold War. Scorning a long sceptical and critical tradition from the 19th century to the present, which included Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, Thorstein Veblen, R. H. Tawney and culminated in André Gorz and Herbert Marcuse, many Western economists found much to celebrate in consumerism. To them, the planned economies of the Soviet bloc provided a tangible model against which positive comparisons could be made. Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, for instance, argued that consumers under Soviet-style command economies can only walk down the ‘road to serfdom’. Command economies offer next to nothing, Friedman argued, compared to Western economies, which gain under ‘co-operation through voluntary exchange’, that is, voluntary associations through the free market’s price mechanism (Friedman and Friedman, 1980: 3–14). Raymond Aron, no uncritical celebrant of Western consumerism, noted that under the old Soviet system:

consumer choice has been almost completely eliminated. The distribution of national resources between investment and consumption is dictated by the planners, and even the distribution of resources between various sectors of industry, or between industry and agriculture, is not determined by the consumers. (Aron, 1967: 109)

In Soviet economies, it was a political choice not to give consumers choice. The state controlled the price of goods, taxing the difference between what it bought and sold products for. Thus planners had the power to decide ‘whether or not to satisfy the desires of this or that category of consumers’ (Aron, 1967: 110). Socialist economists joined...