Consumer Culture and Society

Wendy Wiedenhoft Murphy

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781483358161
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The author is a proud sponsor of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award —enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop.

Consumer Culture and Society offers an introduction to the study of consumerism and mass consumption from a sociological perspective. It examines what we buy, how and where we consume, the meanings attached to the things we purchase, and the social forces that enable and constrain consumer behavior. Opening chapters provide a theoretical overview and history of consumer society and featured case studies look at mass consumption in familiar contexts, such as tourism, food, and higher education. The book explores ethical and political concerns, including consumer activism, indebtedness, alternative forms of consumption, and dilemmas surrounding the globalization of consumer culture.

1 Introduction: Historical Context and Theoretical Tensions

One of the most visible and salient aspects of contemporary society is consumption, or selling, buying, using, and disposing of products and services.

Regardless of income, most of us partake in some type of consumption every day whether it be purchasing a cup of coffee or a new app for our smartphones. Although some forms of consumption are quite tangible, such as buying a car, others are more about consuming experiences, like attending a football game or going to a movie. What we consume conveys not just our preferences but also provides signals to others about our socioeconomic class and status, our gender and sexuality, our race and ethnicity, and our age. These preferences and signals are strongly influenced by advertisers and marketers, who bombard us with images and messages on television and social media platforms on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Our peers also help shape what consumer goods we might purchase, how we use these goods to express belonging or display difference, and where we purchase them. The thought and meaning that goes into our consumer decisions varies, but even those who profess not to care about fashion, style, or novelty are still influenced by consumer culture. Most of us probably know someone who claims that he only purchases clothing that is practical and comfortable, but finding such clothing might take just as much thought, time, and energy as shopping to keep up with the latest trends. Some of us might also know people who think consumption is a trivial activity—a pleasurable hobby for bored housewives and teenagers. This characterized the view of consumption by many academics until quite recently and, as this book will argue, seriously devalues the work, creativity, and care that consumers perform.

Historical Context

Situating the Study of Consumption

As consumption has come to occupy a central part of our everyday lives, it has become increasingly viewed as a subject worthy of the attention of scholars. However, this attention is relatively recent. Historically, what has been called a productivist bias informed the field of sociology and other academic disciplines. Production and work were privileged at the expense of consumption not only by classical theorists like Adam Smith and Karl Marx but, until recently, by contemporary examiners of the social world too (Ritzer, Goodman, and Wiedenhoft 2001:410). Starting in the 1960s, this began to change as anthropologists, historians, political scientists, and sociologists started to critically challenge this productivist bias by demonstrating both theoretically and empirically the importance of consumption and consumers in the development of modern society. Miller et al. (1998:1–7) identify three stages of the study of consumption, the first stage starting in the 1960s and ending in the late 1970s with the decline of industrial jobs and traditional working-class culture in Western societies. Academics found that consumption was a clever way to bring culture and interpretation into the social sciences, although it remained linked to production and did not become its own field until the second stage of consumption studies, which lasted from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. During this stage, consumption became understood as a way individuals constructed their identities and was acknowledged as a key component of industrialization, not simply a consequence of it (Slater 1997). Interestingly, one could argue that a consumerist bias emerged during this second stage as consumption was often analyzed in isolation from production processes. This was especially the case with studies that emphasized consumer subjectivity and postmodern culture (Campbell 1989; Featherstone 1991; McCracken 1990).

This neglect of production started to be rectified in the early 1990s and continues today during the third stage of consumption studies, which connects the actions of consumers to the treatment of workers and the effects of production and consumption on the environment. The historical development of consumerism, especially in the United States, is a growing area of research (Cohen 2003; Cross 2000; Deutsch 2010; Glickman 1997; McGovern 2006). Ethical and moral considerations are now being addressed more frequently, including the idea that consumers are citizens who can engage in political and social activism through the marketplace (Breen 2004; Glickman 2009; Hilton 2009). Indeed, what some are calling critical consumer studies that examine the “contradictions and ruptures within capitalist consumerism in order to discern both the promise and the limits of political action” (Mukherjee and Banet-Weiser 2012) is increasingly characterizing this third stage of consumer studies and perhaps marks the transition to the fourth stage.

Given the growth of consumer studies across numerous disciplines and its institutionalization in academia through journals, conferences, and graduate seminars, it currently appears to be a favorable moment for the introduction of a comprehensive, undergraduate-level textbook on consumption. The impressive breadth of scholarship from anthropologists, economists, historians, market researchers, political scientists, and sociologists makes this a considerable undertaking and inevitably requires some constraints on time and space. In the aim of conciseness, this textbook limits the scope of time and space to mass consumer society in the United States. Although theorists and concepts from earlier time periods will be discussed and some instances of mass consumerism in other countries will be provided, particularly in the concluding chapter, the majority of analysis and examples will focus on the United States, where mass consumerism originated and from which it has spread across the world. Despite the scope conditions of time and space used in this primer, it is my hope that it will offer a preliminary guide to help organize undergraduate courses on consumer culture and society and hopefully encourage the creation of more of them in the future.

The following section of this introductory chapter will provide a brief history of the development of mass consumption during the turn of the twentieth century, including the invention of national brands; the extensive availability of standardized, machine-made products; the use of advertising to create consumer desire; and buying on installment plan credit—strategies of mass consumerism that are so prevalent today that they are often taken for granted by the average American. The next section will highlight several of the main theoretical tensions that have surrounded mass consumption over the years: the oppositions between production and consumption, freedom and coercion, and consumers and citizens. Finally, the concluding section will describe the organization of this book.

Situating the Origins of Mass Consumer Society in the United States

The act of consuming predates modern, industrial society, but it was not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the United States that a genuine culture of mass consumption commenced. Characterized by the mass production of standardized goods that were relatively inexpensive, nationwide distribution, and brand-name advertising, consumption became a daily activity that was no longer the exclusive domain of the wealthy but open to the masses. From ready-to-wear clothing sold off the racks instead of personally tailored to manufactured food products, like sliced bread, that did not need to be mixed, kneaded, and baked in the home, individuals confronted a variety of novel goods that signified progress, promised convenience, and offered the freedom of individual choice (Benson 1986; Strasser 1989). Between 1880 and 1930, Americans came to “depend on the commercial marketplace, with few feasible alternatives, for the necessities of daily life” (McGovern 2006:10), and by the end of the 1920s, the majority of national income was spent in retail stores on commercial products (Ewen 1976:115). Before 1880, consumption and production were “bound together,” and most of the goods that the average American consumed would have been produced by them in their homes (Leach 1993:147). The concept of disposability would have been completely alien to these individuals, who would have repaired and reused the goods they produced instead of throwing them away when they were old or broken (Strasser 1999).

According to Gabriel and Lang (2006:12), “it was not merely the growth of spending power across social classes and strata” but “the experience of choice as a generalized social phenomenon” that distinguished mass consumption from earlier forms of purchasing. In addition to the proliferation of choice, “acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society” became key features of mass consumer culture (Leach 1993:3). Starting with department stores in the cities and spreading into more rural areas through mail-order catalogues, like Montgomery Ward in 1872 and Sears, Roebuck and Company in 1893, tens of thousands of mass consumer goods were available to most Americans if not to purchase then at least to gaze upon. Like mail-order catalogues, the creation of chain stores, such as Woolworth’s, which opened in 1879, helped democratize access to the same goods in different locations (Strasser 1989:222). The rise in popularity of installment plans with monthly payments fueled mass consumption, especially the ability to purchase high-priced items like cars, furniture, and appliances. By 1925, almost 75% of cars, 70% of furniture, and 80% of appliances were obtained with this type of credit (Cross 2000:29). Merchants found that extending credit to customers was an economic risk worth taking as customers who used credit in their stores were not only loyal but “apt to buy impulsively and in larger amounts” (Leach 2003:124).

Desire and fantasy were injected into consumer preference by advertisers, who were already promoting a “therapeutic” quality to consumer goods at the turn of the twentieth century (Jackson and Lears 1983). The first advertising agency, N. W. Ayer & Son, opened in 1877, and by 1900, companies were spending $95 million annually on advertising their products (Glickman 1999:3). Some companies, like Colgate toothpaste, used advertising to persuade consumers that they needed a commercial product where one never existed before, while others that had established product categories, like Procter and Gamble’s Ivory soap, “put most of their marketing effort into producing demand for a particular brand, not a need for the product itself” (Strasser 1989:17). Prior to the widespread availability of mass-produced products, most people bought items—particularly food—in bulk from barrels, which was not amenable to branding or advertising. But, packaging both raw materials and manufactured goods in cans, bottles, and boxes provided the means to symbolically differentiate one type of cereal or detergent or soup from another, giving rise to brands that could be advertised and become easily recognizable (Deutsch 2010; Leach 1993; Strasser 1989). Through national advertising campaigns in newspapers and popular magazines, brands were created not only to confer distinctive qualities and even personalities between comparable mass-produced goods but also to build an implicit trust with consumers that brands would be the same over time and in different stores.

Given the nationwide focus of advertising and distributing mass-produced goods and the progressive reliance by most Americans on them in their daily lives, it is perhaps not surprising that mass consumption engendered a common public culture for “middle and working class, native and immigrant, urban and rural” Americans (McGovern 2006:6). Unlike today, when mass consumerism is often blamed for excessive individualism and narcissism, at the turn of the twentieth century, it was more optimistically viewed by some as providing social cohesion, especially with regard to enlightening the working class and assimilating immigrants. At the time, economist Simon Patten (1907) argued that workers could be “civilized” if they received higher wages with which they could enjoy a higher standard of living through purchasing mass consumer goods and entertainment. Mass consumption was also a way workers achieved unity and overcame ethnic and racial differences (Cohen 1990). By transforming the notion of “class” into “mass” (Ewen 1976:43), manufacturers and advertisers effectively masked economic inequality and helped alleviate the potential threat of class conflict in the United States. Indeed, mass consumption became an important component of the ideology of the American Dream, conceived of as an inalienable right that was at least hypothetically attainable by anyone regardless of class, race, ethnicity, gender, religion, and age.

By the time mass consumerism came into its prime following World War II, most Americans were familiar and comfortable with the practices that were established during its infancy at the turn of the twentieth century. The shear increase over time in the amount of standardized mass-produced goods, most of them nationwide brands, resulted in even more choices. Advertisers and the mass media expanded their attempts to entice consumers with fantasies and desires using new technologies, like the television, in addition to persuading them to “keep up with the Joneses.” Retailers and consumers became accustomed to selling and buying with credit, a habit that found its way into the housing market with home mortgage loans from banks that were secured by the federal government. In fact, the postwar suburban housing boom was subsidized substantially by the federal government through the GI Bill to build homes for returning soldiers and their families (Cohen 2003). Many of these homes were prefabricated—the ultimate mass-produced good to enter the market. Of course, these homes needed to be equipped with the latest mass-produced appliances and furnishings, their garages housing new garden tools and automobiles, which fueled even more consumption. Today, this logic of consumer acquisition has broadened and become more individualized. Now mass consumer goods are used to equip not so much the household as a unit but the individuals who compose the household, with each person requiring his or her own room, phone, computer, and automobile, when they once were shared with other household members (Lipovetsky 2011:27).

Inevitably, the intensification of mass consumerism over time has raised concerns about problems that have been lurking behind its so-called success. Some critics have questioned how democratic and inclusive living in a mass consumer society really has been, especially given the racial residential segregation that resulted from federal housing policies and suburbanization and the stubborn persistence of poverty (Cohen 2003). Others point out that mass consumerism has caused serious environmental degradation and psychological insecurities over bodily appearances (Kilbourne 2010). Additional scholars warn that mass consumerism has led to an epidemic of overconsumption triggered by easy access to credit cards and unfulfilling jobs that trap indebted individuals (Schor 1998). The more people work to pay off consumer debt, the less time they have to spend with their family and friends or participating in community activities; furthermore, any free time individuals might have is often spent playing with their consumer toys in the privacy of their homes (Putnam 2000).

Positioning the Concept of Consumption: Tensions and Contradictions

Clearly, the costs and benefits of mass consumerism are subject to debate, but one aspect of consumption in general that the many scholars and commentators agree on is that as a concept, it has been plagued continually by a variety of tensions and contradictions. According to Aldridge (2003:7), the concept of consumption is often depicted in opposition to another concept, like production or citizenship, and “there is usually a latent implication that consumption is inferior to its opposite.” These oppositions have given rise to a number of tensions that have supplied rich terrain for theoretical deliberations over the years, proving difficult to resolve. This section will examine three such tensions: production and consumption, freedom and coercion, and consumers and citizens. In the interest of providing a succinct overview of these tensions, the theorists and concepts introduced in this section will be more fully elaborated upon in succeeding chapters.

Production and Consumption

Perhaps the oldest tension surrounding consumption is its relationship with production. Production has been privileged over consumption as a process that is meaningful because it generates employment and wealth, contributing to the economic development of society. Favoring production, an activity that employs labor to give birth to objects over consumption, which is the end or death of production, should be expected given that historically, consumption was associated with waste and destruction. Indeed, not so long ago, the physical ailment of consumption was commonly referred to as the “wasting” disease (Graeber 2011:491). In 1776, Adam Smith notably claimed in the Wealth of Nations that “consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production” (1776/1976:625). While his assumption that demand determines supply became a maxim of liberal economic thought, consumption was left as a taken-for-granted end that warranted little explanation because consumers were understood to be rational actors operating to maximize their utility. As long as a consumer was sovereign over his or her desires and had the capacity to calculate and pursue them rationally, liberal economists did not really care what these desires were (Slater 1997:54). This narrow focus on utility left little room for investigating other possible motivations that might influence consumer behavior, like emotions, culture, and social relationships (Trentmann 2011:105). Furthermore, positioning consumption as the end of production leaves little incentive to explore what consumers actually do with goods after they have purchased them. According to Firat and Venkatesh (1995:259), “The idea that the consumer is at the end of a process … needs to be debunked” because he or she is “a participant in an ongoing, never-ending process of construction.”

The celebration of production and workers as opposed to the negative consequences of consumption and consumers is a central theme in the work of two important theorists, Thorstein...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword and Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• 1 Introduction: Historical Context and Theoretical Tensions
• Part I. Conceptual Framework
• 2 Objects of Consumption: Commodities and Mass Consumer Society
• 3 Subjects of Consumption: Passive Dupes or Active Agents?
• 4 The Places and Spaces of Consumption
• Part II. Applying the Conceptual Framework: Case Studies
• 5 Food
• 6 Tourism
• 7 Higher Education
• Part III. Ethical Concerns and Consumer Activism
• 8 Political Consumerism and the Consumer Movement
• 9 Credit and Debt
• 10 Objects of Consumption: Commodities and Mass Consumer Society
• 11 Conclusion: The Globalization of Mass Consumer Culture
• References
• Index