Being Human in a Consumer Society

Alejandro Néstor García Martínez

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317175414
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Business

This book offers a new perspective on sociological studies of the consumer society, introducing neglected normative questions relating to the good life and human flourishing - subjects more commonly discussed in fields of moral, political, and social philosophy. With attention to a wide range of subjects, including postemotional law and responsibility, dehumanised consumption and prosumerism, fashion, embodiment, conspicuous consumption, and sustainability, this book analyzes the structural and cultural transformations that can be identified in consumer society. It also offers a critical - but not pessimistic - view of the important question of whether consumption is leading to an increasing isolation, individualization or commodification of human beings, suggesting an analytical framework for understanding consumer culture and human praxis. Bringing together work from across disciplines by scholars in the US, Europe, and the UK to engage with questions concerning our globalized and globalizing world, where consumerism is a keystone for understanding our contemporary culture and its social structures, Being Human in a Consumer Society will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, social theory, and contemporary philosophy.

PART I
Blurring Human Beings: Structural Constrictions in Consumer Society

Chapter 1
Postemotional Law in Consumer Society

Stjepan G. Mestrovic

Introduction

Thorstein Veblen’s key points regarding the position of the consumer in relation to capitalist social structure seem to be as true today as they were approximately a century ago. In meticulous detail, Veblen documented the exploitation of the “common man” by the “robber barons” of his era. His overall argument seems to have been that modern society is really a latter-day barbarism, or a new version of feudal society which compels the common man to take on the role of the serf in relation to corporations as the leisure class. To phrase the matter another way, the common man becomes the prey to the government-corporate structure conceived as a predator. In Veblen’s words:

As it finds expression in the life of the barbarian, prowess manifests itself in two main directions—force and fraud. In varying degrees these two forms of expression are similarly present in modern warfare, in the pecuniary occupations, and in sports and games. (Veblen [1899] 1967, 273)

It is more true than it was a century ago that force and fraud characterize contemporary warfare, economic markets and the business professions, advertising, sports, gambling, and other institutions that are modeled on war, money-making, and sports. As I write this chapter, the world is “recovering” from the “Great Recession.” Today’s equivalents of Veblen’s robber barons on Wall Street were bailed out by the government while the common man gets little to no relief in terms of his or her financial debt, home foreclosures, or other private, financial catastrophes. State governments are all in financial crisis and are resolving these crises through slashing budgets by cutting salaries and benefits for teachers, policemen, firemen, and other social roles that fit Veblen’s characterization of the common man. The situation in the European Union is similar to that of the US, with various EU countries taking on the role of individual states in the US. This phenomenon—the government aiding big business while declining to rescue the common man—has become the object of mockery and humor on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and other comedy television shows. But it has not become an object of academic study in or on Veblen’s terms.

C. Wright Mills ([1959] 1967) hailed Veblen as the greatest American social critic.¹ Veblen has influenced sociology and social thought primarily through his terms “conspicuous consumption” and the related terms, conspicuous waste and leisure. In Consumer Society, Jean Baudrillard (1998) uses Veblen—among other theorists—to extend the idea of consumerism to include the consumption of ideas and collective representations, which is a prelude to Baudrillard’s version of postmodernism as the rootless circulation of ideas. In The Lonely Crowd, David Riesman (1950) drew upon Veblen (again, among other theorists) to develop the concept of the hypersensitive “other-directed type” who applies “conspicuous consumption” to all aspects of social life, not just economic acquisition or the desire for pecuniary gain. The other-directed type wants to be seen, noticed, and liked much more than the previous tradition-directed and inner-directed types. Another important distinction seems to be that the inner-directed consumer was motivated primarily by status whereas the other-directed consumer is motivated more by superficial affection and emotion from the peer group. And even when the other-directed type consumes or strives after pecuniary gain, he or she is always attuned to the opinions of the peer group. Directly or indirectly, Veblen influenced an entire generation of sociologists in the 1950s and 1960s to focus on the consumer, peer groups, conformity, the problem of authenticity, and issues related to narcissism. From Erich Fromm’s (1955) writings on the marketing type to Christopher Lasch’s (1979) The Culture of Narcissism, one may find strands of Veblen’s influence. In a word, the dominant lesson drawn from Veblen seems to have been that the consumer is a narcissist of some sort.

However, Veblen’s powerful claims that the corporate-government social structure is essentially barbaric has been overlooked or otherwise ignored. Veblen’s disturbing message is that all modern social institutions are fundamentally predatory. Veblen writes:

The predatory phase of culture is attained only when the predatory attitude has become the habitual and accredited spiritual attitude for the members of the group; when the fight has become the dominant note in the current theory of life; when the common-sense appreciation of men and things has come to be an appreciation with a view to combat. ([1899] 1967, 19)

Riesman asked, regarding Veblen’s work, “Who is the real barbarian?” I believe the question ought to be modified as follows: “Who is the real narcissist?” Is it the consumer who buys primarily to please the peer group, who markets his or her self on the personality market, and who goes into debt in order to achieve conspicuousness? Or is it the “captain of industry” (the contemporary CEO) who manipulates the system and the consumer into conspicuous consumption? Other questions and issues follow from these: What is the emotional labor required to achieve, maintain, resist, and even escape this narcissism on the part of the consumer as well as the social structure? How does the common man and woman succumb to predatory culture? How can the common man and woman escape the postemotional predicaments of falling prey to predatory culture against his or her better and more altruistic instincts?

There are many definitions and understandings of what it means to “be human.” On one end of the continuum one finds various doctrines that promote rugged individualism, survival of the fittest, and variations of narcissism that include lack of social responsibility, lack of empathy for others, and a desire to outshine all others. Ayn Rand’s writings enshrine variants of these doctrines in literature, and far right political parties often include elements of them in political parties. On the other end of the continuum one finds doctrines that promote altruism, cooperation, understanding, sympathy for one’s fellows (and animals), and social responsibility. But my overall point in this chapter is that it is not a matter of choosing one over the other, and that neither exists in a pure form. Rather, the two extreme points of view are conjoined in what I call a postemotional bind such that one’s sense of virtue (the yearning for truth, patriotism, social responsibility and so on) are co-opted by a predatory culture in pursuit of antithetical aims. My goal in this chapter is to offer a modest sketch of what I mean by these claims, which may or may not be pursued in a future project.

Postemotional Society and the Issues of Being Human

Any answers to the questions I have posed above are bound to be as complex as the questions themselves. But contemporary sociology as well as society seems to have opted for the facile explanation that we have overcome the “constraints” of previous generations as well as social theories. Anthony Giddens (1990) proposes that the knowing agent is at all times enabled as well as constrained, and always has “choices” available to him or her.² (It is ironic that the same time that he promotes choice and agency, Giddens depicts modernity as a “juggernaut” that crushes everything and everyone in its path.) Giddens criticizes earlier social theorists, particularly structuralists such as Durkheim and Parsons for allegedly turning the human agent into an overly-constrained “cultural dope.” The word “choice” has also permeated popular culture and advertising. Supposedly, the contemporary consumer has unprecedented choices in deciding upon phenomena ranging from Internet sites and brands of toothpaste to marriage partners and politics. But if we turn to the everyday life of the common man, it becomes apparent immediately that the doctrine of choice is specious. While it seems, on the surface, that the contemporary agent has unprecedented choices, one has to dig deeper to perceive the continuation of old restraints. The human agent is often forced into making choice he or she does not choose in the fullest sense of the term.

For example, the consumer has no choice regarding the choices that were made by managers, advertisers, and corporations for what he or she may choose in a supermarket. Choices on the Internet are constrained by market principles of who pays for the privilege of being placed toward the top of the list on Google and other search engines. What Veblen termed fraud or chicanery are omnipresent in most transactions that involve the consumer. For example, one must invariably sign a contract in order to purchase a cell phone, appliances, automobiles, homes, access to web sites, as well as gain access to credit cards. Most often, the purchase of a consumer good, such as a cell phone or cell phone contract, is predicated on having credit, so that the consumer is constrained by several contracts simultaneously. The contracts are always lengthy, complicated, and, to the common man—incomprehensible. One does not need to conduct a sociological study to conclude that most people, most of the time, click “I agree” to terms and conditions without reading them fully. If one were to read them fully, one would often find that he or she gives up rights and privileges to a corporate entity, much as Veblen predicted. The products themselves have obsolescence built in to them so that the consumer will be compelled to repeat the purchase in a relatively short while. It is true that in the US and the EU, efforts have been made by consumer protection agencies to protect the consumer from fraud and usury, but despite legislation, the everyday situation has not enabled the consumer appreciably. In summary, the only real choice the consumer is often given is whether or not to “opt out” of an agreement or transaction.

I propose that the situation for the common person is not one of constraint versus freedom, but one of constraint under the illusion of freedom. I refer to this state of affairs as postemotional society (Mestrovic 1997). The word “postemotional” is awkward, because it does not imply a lack of emotions. On the contrary, it assumes a plethora of emotions which are subjected to chicanery and manipulation by one’s self as well as social structure. Thus, postemotionalism involves an obfuscation of facts through the use of displaced emotions from history, and the manipulation of emotionally charged collective representations of reality on the part of individuals as well as the culture industry. “A working definition of postemotionalism might be that it is a neo-Orwellian mechanism found in Western societies in which the culture industry markets and manipulates dead emotions from history that are selectively and synthetically attached to current events” (Mestrovic 1997, 11). Postemotionalism always involves confusion, hypocrisies, nostalgia, ironies, paradoxes, and neo-Orwellian manipulation such that 2 + 2 do not equal 4. (The main character in Orwell’s novel, 1984, maintains that he is spiritually free so long as he knows that 2 + 2 equals 4.)

Postemotionalism overlaps with postmodern approaches, but is distinct from them. Both postmodernism and postemotionalism as modes of analysis emphasize the importance of simulacra and hyperreality. However, postmodernism tends to view society as a rootless circulation of fictions (Baudrillard 1986), and these fictions are mostly cognitive, whereas postemotionalism finds compulsive and emotional (albeit, displaced) patterns in the circulating fictions. A postemotional approach to consumerism and choice (or any other phenomenon) makes widespread use of what David Riesman ([1950] 1992, 196) called “fake sincerity,” and is itself the outgrowth of what he called other-directed social character. As such, postemotional rituals, politics, and culture in general must be distinguished from more sincere and genuinely emotional responses to events. In other words, postemotionalism is not like the tradition-directed society’s revivification of customs and celebrations that is described by Emile Durkheim ([1912] 1965) and it is not like the inner-directed society’s internalization of ideas that were sincere enough to last for at least a lifetime that is described by Riesman.

Examples of political postemotionalism range from the Serbs invoking a grievance from the year 1389 in order to justify their violence in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, Greece using the memory of Alexander the Great in order to block the existence of Macedonia in the 1990s, to France and England still nursing their wounds at losing their Empires by reminding the world that they were the founders of civilization and the Enlightenment (Mestrovic 1997). Similarly, the USA used the moral code of the Puritans—who were expelled over 500 years ago from Europe to the North American continent—as the “beacon of democracy set upon a hill” depicted by Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America to justify war against Iraq when the real enemy was Osama Bin Laden. But it seems that few people read the unabridged version of Tocqueville’s classic, which deals with slavery and extermination of Native Americans ([1845] 2003, 370–485).

It is beyond the scope of this chapter to offer anything like a full explication of postemotionalism as a theory, which is derived from Durkheim, Veblen, Riesman, and the pragmatists such as William James ([1884] 1997) and John Dewey. Perhaps an illustration from literature will be helpful in capturing the practical reality of postemotionalism. Dostoevsky’s protagonist in Notes From the Underground is angry at his boss for humiliating him, and nurses a grudge over the course of several years. When he finally confronts and assaults his boss in public, years after the insult had passed and had been forgotten, everyone thinks that the protagonist has simply gone mad. No one can make the emotional connection between the protagonist’s emotions and the object of his emotions. I am suggesting that similar problems in connecting emotions and behaviors occur on a societal level, as illustrated by the above examples concerning the siege of Sarajevo in 1992 and the Battle of Kosovo in 1389. As we turn to the issues of consumerism, humanity, and choice, similar problems will be uncovered. I will elaborate on Veblen’s insight that the doctrine of “choice” is rooted in the historical past which involves England, the Puritans, and theorists such as John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and other prophets of the doctrine of Natural Law. Veblen notes, but does not elaborate, on the fact that the age of Enlightenment which produced the above-mentioned philosophers of liberty was also the age of witch hunts, slavery, and religious persecutions. But discrepancies of this sort are precisely what must be confronted and understood if social life is to make emotional sense. Like Dostoevsky’s protagonist, like the leaders of the Belgrade regime who attacked Sarajevo in 1992, and like other examples of postemotional types, the modern consumer is blind to his or her being prey to the robber barons because of the widespread emotional misconnection to a historical period of alleged freedom and choice.

Postemotional Society and George Ritzer’s McDonaldization of Society

Despite the limitations of space, I will touch briefly on the similarities and differences between Ritzer’s complex argument in his McDonaldization of Society (1992) and my argument in Postemotional Society, with an eye on the overall theme of being human in consumer society. I explicitly draw upon Ritzer’s work in my book on postemotionalism, which I sometimes paraphrase as the McDonaldization of emotions. It is not immediately clear what either Ritzer or I might mean or imply with this phrase, the McDonaldization of emotions, because both of us take complex stances toward the social theorists we use for our own theoretical scaffolding. The main difference between Ritzer’s approach and mine is obvious: he primarily extends the thought of Max Weber while I primarily extend the thought of Emile Durkheim. I say primarily, because both of us are aware of and use a host of other theorists. Even in this regard, there is a parallel, in that one could argue that both Weber and Durkheim were concerned with the overall theme of “disenchantment” in modern societies. For Weber, charisma retreats in the face of rational-legal authority, and leads to the iron cage of modernity. For Durkheim, the “sacred” is the site of emotional attachment to persons, places, things, and ideas that are treated with awe and respect. Durkheim is aware that “sacred” names, holidays, rivers, trees, and a plethora of other “collective representations” are disappearing as modernity advances, and that, literally, formerly “sacred” representations become increasingly “profane”—which is to say, the social world becomes increasingly disenchanted, ordinary, and pedestrian.

But here again, Weber and Durkheim diverge. Weber is a pessimist, and offers no clues as to how we may exit the iron cage. Durkheim seems to be more optimistic, in that he leaves open the possibility that successive waves of “collective effervescence” will re-enchant the world. Formerly “profane” phenomena are “revivified” and made “sacred” anew, even if they are not the same sacred objects, ideas, and representations from previous generations. To phrase the issue differently, Weber seems to follow Nietzsche in condemning the Enlightenment as a trap which disenchants the world and disembowels charisma (Weber’s rough equivalent of Durkheim’s “sacredness”). Durkheim is also critical of modernity and Enlightenment narratives—after all, his book, Suicide, basically shows that civilized peoples are weakened with regard to the “will to life” in contrast to our ancestors. But overall, Durkheim is an optimist who believed that genuine, or at least new, forms of Enlightenment will emerge and that society’s capacity to reinvent the sacred is infinite.

Ritzer’s take on McDonaldization is also complex, yet essentially Weberian. Some of Ritzer’s readers misread him as championing the alleged rationality, efficiency, predictability, and control that are the heart of McDonaldization. But he insists that he is a critic of these tendencies, and that his overall argument is that excessive rationality leads, paradoxically, to irrationality. Like Weber, Ritzer does not point to the exits that might lead out of McDonaldization, even though he does suggest home-spun suggestions for fighting the iron cage privately, suggestions such as “eat at a Mom and Pop restaurant.” The problem is that Mom and Pop restaurants are disappearing all over the world and are being replaced with restaurant chains, and much the same is true for other sites of enchantment/sacredness—they are all subject to the seemingly inexorable law of disenchantment and the profaning of the sacred.

I am sometimes asked whether “postemotionalism” is simply another name for propaganda or manipulations of the individuals by governments and corporations. I always answer in the negative, but this does not mean that the questioner is convinced. M...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Why Consumption and What Society?
• PART I BLURRING HUMAN BEINGS: STRUCTURAL CONSTRICTIONS IN CONSUMER SOCIETY
• PART II CONSUMER CULTURE AS MEDIATION IN HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS
• PART III FRAMING THE HUMAN BEING IN A CONSUMER SOCIETY
• Index