Consumption Norms and Everyday Ethics

L. Pellandini-Simánya, Kenneth A. Loparo

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137022509
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

How much is acceptable to consume? What is appropriate to consume and which goods fall into the disapproved category? Answers to these questions vary widely across time and space. This book examines the sources of this variation by providing an account of how everyday consumption norms develop, why they differ and why they change.

1

Introduction

What is the acceptable amount to consume? Who should be entitled to more and better goods and on what basis? Which goods are appropriate to consume and which fall into the disapproved category? And more generally, on what basis should consumption be judged? The answers to these questions are the very stuff of consumption norms. These norms have been articulated in very different contexts and forms across time and space. The religious taboos regulating what is allowed to be eaten, when, how and by whom; the sumptuary laws defining the kind of clothes, swords and feasts that are legitimate for certain social groups; the modern regulation of consumption ranging from Prohibition to the control over everyday consumption in socialist countries; as well as the mundane discussions conducted around the dinner table about what kind of wedding would be appropriate given the family’s social and financial situation – these are all different versions of consumption norms.

Consumption norms are articulated at two distinct, yet related levels: first, in public discourse, including the intellectual moralizing about consumption, the political debate about the regulation of consumption, and views promoted by social movements addressing consumption; and second, at an everyday private level. The moral concerns underpinning public discourse on consumption have been subject to historical analysis (e.g. Hilton, 2001; Horowitz, 1985) and to the recent discussions on consumption and citizenship (e.g. Trentmann and Soper, 2008b). Norms articulated by ordinary people in everyday life, in contrast, lack systematic analysis. Although a number of works in cultural studies, consumer behavior and material culture studies argued that consumption choices often express values, identities and cultural categories, none of the existing literature provides a focused discussion of everyday consumption norms. As a result, the two levels of consumption norms are hardly connected; and even when they are, it is limited to identifying values in everyday life that conform to the agendas of intellectual and political movements.

The aim of this book is, first, to provide a systematic analysis of everyday consumption norms, by inquiring into what they are about (Chapter 2), how to explain them (Chapter 3), how they work (Chapter 4) and how they change (Chapter 5); and second, based on the analysis, to develop a framework in which the often conflicting moral stances pertaining to public and private norms can be analyzed (Chapters 6–7). This chapter sets up some of the key arguments which will be developed in the book and provides an introduction to the issues and debates that have dominated the study of consumption norms.

Varieties of consumption norms

Consumption norms per se have rarely been the core focus of research or theorizing. Rather, different phenomena that can be classified as consumption norms have been discussed under different headings – the anthropological study of consumption taboos, the sociological and historical work on sumptuary laws and the changing moral discourse on consumption and luxury –, with little or no relation to each other.

The first, and probably most widely studied, type of consumption norms are taboos. Taboos are sanctioned by rituals (Buckser, 1997) and regulate a wide array of practices, ranging from sexual behavior – for example, the taboo on incest – to mourning customs. Consumption taboos regulate what can be used, when, by whom and how. For example, in China during the Qin and Han times (221 BC–AD 220), taboos regulated on which day new clothes could be worn (Tseng-Kuei, 2009); the taboos of the Huaulu, people living on the island of Seram, in Indonesia, forbid human clothing to be put on animals (Valeri, 2000); and in most religions, sacred objects can only be touched by particular people and seen by outsiders only on special occasions.

Yet the most common consumption taboos are dietary restrictions. Some of them apply to certain types of food: pork is a general taboo in Judaism and Islam, beef in Hinduism; meat in general was a taboo in 7th-century Japan (Cwiertka, 2004) and remains a taboo for Krishna believers today. Other food taboos regulate who can consume certain types of food. For example, according to the dietary restriction of the Lele, people living in Congo, different foods are forbidden for men, women, adults and children. Flying squirrel can only be eaten by children, whereas they are not appropriate for adults (Douglas, 2002). Another set of food taboos differentiate along occasion. Taboos of the Zuni, a native American tribe, forbade eating meat during the first four days of the winter solstice and for four days following a death (Bunzel, 1929); whereas in the religious fasting periods in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, restrictions apply to solid food and drinks.

Consumption norms can also take the form of legal regulation. From ancient to early modern times, sumptuary laws regulated what and how much can be consumed by different social groups in nearly all countries of Europe, in China (Shish, 1972), Japan (Totman, 1993), Iran and other Asian countries. For example, in Ancient Rome the lex Oppia – in force from 215 BC – forbade women to possess more than half an ounce of gold, and laws regulated the maximum amount that could be spent on a feast per year, including the value of the silverware and wine that could be served (Berry, 1994, pp. 76–7). English sumptuary laws from the 14th–17th century regulated consumption by ‘estate’ and gender, defining in detail the apparel that could be worn by men and women of different social ranks. For example, purple and gold could only be worn by the royal family; velvet only by barons or above; hats only by knights or above and so on. Other laws limited the use of foreign materials or even foreign designs (Hunt, 1996b, p. 238). In Japan, sumptuary laws passed in 1649 forbade merchants to decorate their houses with gold or silver trimming or to have gold or silver clasps on tobacco pouches (Slade, 2009). Under the Ancien Régime, laws prohibited men from dressing up as women (Muchembled, 2012).

Modern states have also regulated consumption and continue to do so today. In the United States lotteries were prohibited in the 1830s, and alcohol prohibition was extended to the whole country in 1919 (Cross, 2001). In socialist Hungary, possession of foreign currency, gold, and second homes were regulated by law (Hammer and Dessewffy, 1997; Vörös, 1997). Contemporary legal regulation on drugs or the laws that forbid people under the age of 18 or 21 years to buy alcohol and tobacco are also versions of consumption norms codified by law, constituting modern forms of sumptuary legislation.

However, not all consumption norms are codified in religious taboos and secular laws. Social movements, various organizations, intellectuals and even the state express abundant criticism or encouragement of certain consumption practices on normative grounds, without codifying these in an explicit form (Berg and Eger, 2003; Wilk, 2001). Practices classified as luxury had already raised moral concerns in ancient times, as they were seen as threats to social and moral order, as well as impediments to reason and virtue (Appelby, 2001; Berry, 1994; Sekora, 1977). Schama (1987), in his analysis of 17th-century Dutch culture, considers the ‘anxieties of superabundance’ (p. xi) – the fear that excessive consumption may have destructive consequences – so characteristic that he entitled his book ‘The Embarrassment of the Riches’. Appelby (2001) and Hilton (2001) show the ways in which consumption was judged negatively from the 17th century in England, whereas Horowitz (1985, 2004) follows the ‘anxieties of affluence’ in the United States from 1875 in two subsequent books. Criticism of conspicuous consumption associated with the nouveaux riches, and worries over materialism voiced by various intellectuals, are contemporary versions of these discourses. Although these discourses often seem to criticize consumption as such, on closer look their focus turns out to be on specific practices, by specific groups (Wilk, 2001), hence they can also be seen as articulating specific consumption norms. Similarly, the consumption norms advocated by social movements promoting green, national and fair trade consumption, and government campaigns to encourage citizens to conform to consumption norms required by the ideal of the patriotic, socialist or modern citizen (Berghoff, 2001; Garon, 1997; Gerth, 2008; Trentmann, 2006b) are other examples of noncodified consumption norms.

Finally, consumption norms are prevalent in everyday life. They are present in parental advice discouraging the teenage son from wearing torn jeans, in dinner-table discussions of the pretentions of the nouveaux riches, and in chats over the neighbor’s egoistic purchases. Often, everyday consumption norms are not even articulated but guide practices through an unreflected sense of what is normal, decent or appropriate to do (Bourdieu, 1977; Shove, 2003). Shove (2003) uses the term ‘perfect injunction’ to refer to these type of actions that people consider as having to be done without ‘further thought or reflection’ (p. 161), and suggests, following Giddens, that most ‘social norms and conventions are … sustained and recreated through practices like these’ (p. 161).

The division line between religious and legal regulation just like the line dividing the noncodified consumption norms of public discourse from those guiding everyday life is often fuzzy. Sumptuary laws that belong to legal regulation were read out from church pulpits and enforced by ecclesial courts (Muzzarelli, 2009; Sekora, 1977; Slater, 1997a). Often, consumption norms proposed by social movements later became codified by law, as was the case with Prohibition (Cross, 2001; Hunt, 1996b). Further, everyday norms may initiate, incorporate, rework, contest or even ignore public norms, taboos and regulations (see Chapters 2–5).

The above list of consumption norms could be further refined and extended. The aim here, however, is not so much to cover all varieties of consumption norms; rather to suggest that seemingly disparate fields are variations of the same phenomenon. This point is far from self-evident. Early anthropological theories suggested that taboos are superstitions that are exclusive to ‘primitive’ cultures, and hence have no equivalent in the advanced and rational West (Douglas, 2002).Similarly, sumptuary legislation was long considered an ‘immature or unsophisticated stage of legal development’ (Hunt, 1996a, p. 410), an isolated premodern curiosity that was doomed to fail and perish with the advent of modernity.¹ Differences in grounding and context of consumption norms undoubtedly exist. Yet what is even more striking is not their differences but their similarities and the persistence of normative stances to consumption across time and space.

Moralizing consumption

What makes consumption attract so intense moralizing? What is the reason behind the existence of consumption norms? One might be tempted to think that there is something intrinsically evil in consumption, and this immanent fear surrounding the issue takes different forms in different societies. From this point of view, the ritual avoidance of certain foods, the 17th-century Dutch embarrassment over affluence, the repeatedly reinvented criticism of the consumer society and current ecological concerns are seen as culture-specific expressions of the same anxiety. This approach is suggested by Miller, who considers shopping the contemporary equivalent of a ritual sacrifice aimed at removing the evil inherent in consumption:

[T]here are many cosmologies and regions of the world where consumption is seen as intrinsically evil and destructive. I have argued that much of the logic of traditional sacrifice and exchange is itself an attempt to avoid these dangerous and immoral consequences of consumption as an act that uses up resources. So the specific concerns fostered by Green consciousness have become wedded to much deeper and long-standing fears about the evils of consumption more generally. Where in other societies aspects of sacrifice and exchange are employed to prevent the realization of these immanent evils of consumption, in our society the practice of consumption is itself turned into a three-stage ritual [of shopping] that has the same effect of negating what is seen as destructive nature. (Miller, 2001a, p. 132)

This book suggests a different answer. If we look at the content of consumption norms across time and space, we find that through different consumption norms specific ethical issues are articulated.² First, consumption norms mediate particular normative visions of how to live and who to be. What makes consumption norms a suitable terrain to mediate these questions is the fact that consumption is involved in most human practices; and as such, in the practical realization of nearly all the endeavors that people pursue. This is because ethical visions of how to live do not exist as mere abstractions but they are always intertwined with specific practices. What it means to be a ‘good mother’, for instance, primarily exists in practical responsibilities, actual practices of care. In Chapter 4, this argument will be further refined, and I will propose the notion of practical ethics that suggests that rather than holding abstract ethical ideas of good life which people would ‘express’ in practice, practice is often the primary realm in which ethics exist and are transmitted. For the moment, it suffices to say that many of the everyday ideas of how to live are objectified in practices that have a consumption aspect. This is what enables consumption norms to serve as a terrain through which we negotiate and redefine abstract ethical ideals at a practical, everyday level. For example, the cut of the jacket that a ‘decent man’ should wear can generate heated normative debate because ethical visions of decency are embedded in, and therefore can be negotiated through, the particular practice.

Second, consumption norms mediate ideals of justice; that is, principles involving questions of entitlement and the distribution of valued goods. Environmental debates over the fairness of current levels of Western consumption vis-à-vis other countries and future generations or the questions raised over the entitlement of the nouveaux riches to their riches, are just some example of consumption norms where the legitimacy of certain consumption practices is assessed from the point of view of justice. At a more mundane level, the consumption norms articulated in the pub over whether or not a politician should get a state-funded BMW, or the routine norm of serving the father first at the dinner table are similarly mediations of ideas of entitlement and legitimate distribution.

In debates on consumption norms, competing ideas of justice, good life and social values clash. The condemnation of the conspicuousness associated with the nouveaux riches, the criticism of materialism, and even the mundane norms guiding how tidy a room should be acquire a moral weight because they imply normative views on how people should live and what would constitute a legitimate hierarchy and distribution of goods. These normative questions are the primary stakes of moralizing about consumption: these are the points mediated through consumption norms. In this light, the reason behind the constant moral preoccupation with consumption and the persistence of consumption norms is not so much the intrinsically morally evil status of consumption but its interconnectedness with ethical visions of good life and justice.³

Consumption moving to center stage

The point that consumption is intrinsically linked to questions of good life and justice is a general, ahistorical argument that needs some qualifications. Consumption is one of the key fields, even though not the only one, through which these questions can be addressed. In fact, for a long time traditional politics and the realm of work were seen as the primary terrains for their articulation, and it is only in modern consumer societies that consumption has become the key domain through which values are defined and pursued (see, for example, Bauman, 1998, 2001a; Featherstone, 1990b; Giddens, 1991; Slater, 1997a):

Consumption and material culture may be central to all human society but only the modern West came to be defined, and indeed define itself, as a consumer culture or consumer society. The underlying claim here is that because of such modernization processes as marketization, the decline of traditional status systems and the rise of cultural and political pluralism, private, market-based choice has become increasingly central to social life. … In a consumer culture, then, key social values, identities and processes are negotiated through the figure of ‘the consumer’ (as opposed to, say, the worker, the citizen or the devotee); central modern values such as freedom, rationality and progress are enacted and assessed through consumerist criteria (range of choice, price calculations and rising affluence, respectively); and the cultural landscape seems to be dominated by commercial signs (advertising, portrayals of ‘lifestyle’ choices through the media, obsessive concern with the changing meanings of things). (Ritzer and Slater, 2001, p. 6)

The pessimistic reading of this shift is that the loss of real freedom and the possibility of an authentic self-development in the sphere of work and politics are compensated by the false illusions offered by consumption. As people are unable to make choices over the political and economic structures that would make a real difference to their lives, they retreat to the pseudo-freedom of inconsequential choices that they can make in their private life over consumption (Baudrillard, 1998; Bauman, 2001a; Shields, 1992).

A more positive reading is that through their consumption choices people are able to influence processes of the political economy, and gain unprecedented power; an argument supported by a growing engagement in citizen issues through consumer movements (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2001; Gulyás, 2008; Micheletti, 2003; Miller, 1995). Captured by Miller’s formulation of ‘consumption as the vanguard of history’ (Miller, 1995, p. 1), consumption appears here as a new, progressive realm where values can be expressed and politics are pursued. In this reading, the change is understood as a move toward a more open and democratic participation: through their consumption choices, ordinary people can directly influence even multinational corporations that they could not otherwise reach through traditional means, such as trade unions or nation–state politics. Although the actual impact of consumer movements is debated (Clarke, 2008), what these accounts suggest is that consumption has acquired an unprecedented centrality in articulating, negotiating and pursuing ethical projects.⁴ (I will return to these debates in Chapters 6–7.)

Despite the emphasis on ordinary people and democratic participation praised by these accounts, in this literature surprisingly little attention has been devoted to understanding what exactly those projects are that ordinary people pursue in their everyday consumption. This is problematic for two reasons. The first is practical: without taking into account the everyday moral concerns we have little hope of understanding how and why consumption norms change, what are the everyday norms that ethical consumption movements – including the environmental movement, fair trade and so forth – have to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Understanding Consumption Norms
• 3 Explaining Consumption Norms
• 4 Consumption Norms as Practical Ethics
• 5 How Consumption Norms Change
• 6 Ethical Consumerism and Everyday Ethics
• 7 Private Virtues, Public Vices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index