Research Paper for the Culture of Consumption

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), which was inspired by the events of the French Revolution into articulating the basic characteristics underlying conservative thinking. As such, modern conservatism may well be said to have drawn its first inspiration from a reaction to the rationalist ideals of the Enlightenment, which found (albeit rather distorted) expression in the French Revolution. These reactions are: (i) a negative attitude toward social change; (ii) a tenaciously held faith in the moral and political rightness of traditionally held attitudes and beliefs; (iii) a generally bleak and pessimistic view of human nature, i.e. conservatives tend to think that individuals left completely alone to pursue their own goals will generally descend into an at best immoral, and at worst amoral, lifestyle (a view which stands in direct contrast to the more optimistic conception of the individual held by both liberalism and socialism); (iv) the view that society is an interconnected structure of relationships constituting a community.

In the twentieth century there have been a number of significant (or at least well- known) exponents of conservatism. Michael Oakeshott has frequently been cited in this connection, although his political thinking, as well as owing a significant debt to such philosophers as Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes and G.W.F.Hegel (the latter two of which display ‘conservative’ tendencies), also has features which might equally be described as having features in common with the thinking of communitarianism and is, in any case, far more complex than such a label might imply. Leo Strauss and, most recently, Roger Scruton, might both be taken as better examples of modern conservative thought.

More recently the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas has provided an account of conservatism which links it to the writings of postmodernism (e.g. Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard). Postmodern thinking, Habermas argues, in articulating its criticisms of the Enlightenment (i.e. of the Enlightenment faith in reason and science) is in effect the expression of a resurgent conservatism which takes its inspiration from the writings of those ‘darker’ thinkers of the bourgeoise tradition, Sade and Nietzsche (although it may well be equally germane to connect the thought of a thinker like Lyotard with the liberal tradition, with which his later work shares some common features). [PS] Further reading: Burke 1982; Oakeshott 1975; Scruton 1984.

consumption

The idea that capitalism had become a ‘consumer society’ arose, at least in western Europe, in the 1950s, in response to increased affluence and changes in the economic and industrial structure (a move away from traditional heavy industry and towards new technologies and service provision) after the Second World War. This awareness gradually led to an increased interest in consumption as a culturally significant activity. However, important theories of consumption can be found from the late nineteenth century onwards.

Social theorists such as Thorstein Veblen and Georg Simmel were amongst the first to begin to articulate the significance of consumption to urban existence. Veblen’s (1953) account of the ‘conspicuous consumption’ of the new bourgeois leisure class suggested

Key concepts in cultural theory 54

that class identity could rest, not upon occupation, but upon patterns of consumption, that served to construct distinctive lifestyles and express status. Similarly, Simmel’s essays, including those on ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’ (1950b) and on ‘Fashion’ (1957), analyse the manner in which consumption may be used to cultivate, what for Simmel is a sham individuality. Such sophisticated, and indeed blasé, consumption allows the consumer to differentiate him or herself. Fashion is thus seen to work through a curious interplay of conformity and dissension, of familiarity and strangeness, in so far as fashion-conscious consumers at once consolidate their membership of the fashionable as they distinguish themselves from the mass. Fashion, for Simmel, represents an attraction to the exotic, strange and new, and yet, thanks to its continual historical change, an opportunity to ridicule the fashions of the past (and thus paradoxically one’s own once fashionable self).

Marxists typically demonstrate a similar, or even more pronounced, scepticism as to the value of consumption, not least in so far as Marxist social theory is grounded in the view of human beings as primarily producers. An emphasis on humans as consumers suggests an ideological distraction from the essence of economic and political struggle, or at best a manifestation of the unfulfilling or alienating nature of production within capitalism. Perhaps the most sustained Marxist engagement with consumption came from the Frankfurt School. The account of the culture industry proposed by Horkheimer and Adorno (1972) holds that twentieth-century capitalism is a distinct mode of production, at least in comparison with the high capitalism of Marx’s own time. For Marx, nineteenth-century consumers could freely choose between commodities on the grounds of the utility (or use-value) that they would derive from them. A useless commodity would be rejected, and thus the consumer retained some vestige of power with high capitalism. Horkheimer and Adorno argue that in late capitalism, use-value has been brought within the control of the capitalist producers, thanks to the power of advertising and the mass media. The consumers buy, crudely, what capitalism wants them to buy. The model of the culture industry is, however, more subtle than this. The consumers are not, on Horkheimer and Adorno’s account, passive dupes of the capitalist system. Rather, the most efficient way of surviving and gaining some pleasure within the constraints of a highly bureaucratic and instrumental society, is to accept the goods offered, and that consumption may serve to express a deep awareness of the damage that capitalism is inflicting upon them. Adorno imagines a ‘shop girl’ who visits the cinema, not because she believes that the fantastic events of the cinema could happen to her, but because only in the cinema can she admit that they will not happen to her (Adorno 1992b: 49–50). This vignette expresses a side of Frankfurt theory that is often lost to its less sensitive readers.

More recent approaches to consumption recognise the utopian element inherent in shopping. An ideology of shopping may be analysed, where shopping or consumption are perceived as solutions to the discontents of one’s life. In Lacanian terms, shopping promises to make us whole again. Yet, as with Freud’s analysis of dreams, the pursuit of consumption may be interpreted as an illusory solution to the real problems of social life. In effect, this returns the analysis to the Frankfurt position. The continual round of consumerism is rejected as a short-term and ultimately illusory solution to one’s problems. The task of theory would be to expose the real (social and psychological) problems that cause this discontent in the first place. Jacques Attali (1985) has lamented upon this theme, suggesting that when we purchase music (in the form of records), what

Key concept 55

we do is exchange our own labour (and thus involvement in the pressures and necessities of working life) for a commodity. But, unlike most other commodities, we carry out this exchange only in the utopian expectation of some day having the leisure time to enjoy it. (We work, in effect, for the promise of a work-free future.) This time, of course, never comes, and the use-value of the music lies forever unrealised.

More positive accounts of consumption, not least in that they suggested the potential of consumption as a form of political resistance, first emerged in association with subcultural theory. Youth subcultures, from the 1950s onwards, were seen as consuming the products of capitalism, but not in a manner that accorded with the expectations of the producers. The consumer is thus credited with the ability to make his or her own use- value from the commodity. Michel de Certeau (1984) thus describes consumption as ‘secondary production’. While the products may be imposed by capitalism, the ways of using them are not. The shopping centre itself (as well as a number of key contemporary commodities, such as the ‘Walkman’ (du Gay et al. 1997) and ‘Barbie’ dolls (Rand 1995)) has become the focus of much analysis from cultural studies. Shopping is recognised as a highly popular leisure activity (and not simply the means to other leisure activities). The shopping centre becomes one focus of this activity, not least in so far as the shopping centre may well offer attractions other than shopping (including restaurants, cinemas and other leisure facilities). Yet, again, different groups will consume the centre itself differently. The young, unemployed, elderly and homeless, despite the fact that they are overtly excluded from consumerism due to lack of economic resources, will still find use within the centre (for example as a source of shelter, warmth and entertainment, or as a meeting place) (Morris 1993).

The theoretical issues in the analysis of the political and social significance of consumption perhaps revolve around the conceptualisation and understanding of human autonomy and individuality. Empirical evidence (for example that 80 per cent of all new products are rejected by consumers) is, in itself, of little value in establishing whether or not consumers have exercised active and autonomous choice. Simmel’s pseudo- individualism, and even Horkheimer and Adorno’s culture industry are not incompatible with such statistics. Yet, consideration of consumption does indicate much about how humans find scope for self-expression (however glorious or impoverished this expression is ultimately judged to be) within the close restrictions of their everyday life. [AE] Further reading: Bocock 1993; Corrigan 1997; Falk and Campbell 1997; Miller 1995.

content analysis

Content analysis is a specific approach to the analysis of communication. It strives to avoid subjective bias, and to generate quantifiable (statistical) results. Content analysis is most appropriate to the analysis of large samples, rather than to individual texts. The statistical occurrence of key units within this sample is of significance. For example, the content analysis of television news reports of strike action might focus on the proportion of reports (or the proportion of all broadcast time devoted to strike action) which cover a particular industry, and compare these to the actual proportion of all industrial action that

Key concepts in cultural theory 56