Consumption

Consumption: Unit 1 Essay Prompt

Background

As James B. Twitchell writes in “Two Cheers for Materialism,”  “most of the world most of the time spends most of its energy producing and consuming more and more stuff” (31). Never in history, he tells us, have a people so reveled in the lust for stuff as have Americans over the past fifty years (31-2).  Twitchell and Frank examine in detail the allure of goods and their promises to better or, indeed, transform the purchaser’s life. However, they disagree on the extent to which these goods are able to deliver such transformation. Twitchell argues that “The process of consumption is creative and even emancipating” (37) and that we create our identity through individual choice. But Frank feels that individual choice falls short of true individualism, arguing, that:

“The problem with cultural dissent in America isn’t that it’s been co-opted, absorbed, or ripped-off. Of course it’s been all of these things. But it has proven so hopelessly susceptible to such assaults for the same reason it has become so harmless in the first place, […]. It is no longer any different from the official culture it’s supposed to be subverting” (49).

These essays examine the consequences of consumption—an activity that occupies a good deal of our time, that shapes our identity, that, perhaps, does indeed transform us, though not necessarily in the ways the advertisers and retailers promise.  As consumers, perhaps we have developed an awareness of this.  However, even our efforts to resist big business, marketing, and materialism—by growing our own produce, buying local, shopping at farmers’ markets, recycling, upcycling, etc.—involve consumption.  Even opportunities to escape the material world—through physical wellness, yoga, spirituality, connecting with nature through camping, fishing, or hunting—are presented to us as acts of consumption.  It seems that we are always consuming something.  And yet, rarely do we stop to examine our patterns of consumption or the forces that drive that consumption.  In Twitchell’s words: “The really interesting question may be not why we are so materialistic, but why we are so unwilling to acknowledge and explore what seems the central characteristic of modern life” (31).  In this unit, and in this essay, you will have the opportunity to explore and question consumption.

Assignment Description

In this essay, examine the act of consumption—as it functions in your own life and as it functions in society at large—by exploring your own choices as a consumer, what you want them to say about you, and the ways in which they may or may not be read that way from the outside. In doing so, engage the ideas presented in the essays we will read in this unit, which challenge us to examine the forces driving our choices as consumers, including obvious entities such as advertising, industry, media, and celebrities as well as less obvious ones such as school, church, family, government, and even loftier influences like ideals and belief systems.  The essays will also encourage us to examine just how deep consumer culture runs.  Does it, as Ewen argues, influence not only our body image and understanding of self but also our ideas about how to reach our goals, encouraging us at once to be individuals and march to our own drums, but to do so by following instructions and obeying the cultural dictate? As Ascher does, you might explore the extent to which our patterns of consumption reflect and/or shape the roles we play in our family or in society, or how advertising draws upon the expectations and change within those roles to encourage us to consumer. You might also consider whether the positive effects of consumption outweigh its negatives or whether or not awareness—a shift from passive to active consumptions—is enough to belay those negative effects.  Your challenge in this essay is to find the intersection between your experience and these questions about our consumer culture.

This essay invites you to tell your own story as a consumer and, in doing so, look critically at your patterns of consumption and the influences of consumer culture on your life and others’ lives.  So, while the essay will tell the story of you as a consumer and provide opportunities for description (of a product and the advertisements or marketing used to promote that product) and narrative (the story of your experience purchasing and/or using a product), as an academic essay, the essay also requires that you analyze and think critically about what shapes your experience (advertisements, marketing strategies, etc.) and your satisfaction with or the feelings you associate with that product, while connecting your observations to the academic conversation surrounding the topic of consumerism.  Your essay, then, must respond to and incorporate ideas from at least one of the authors whose essays we will read in the unit.  This requires, of course, that you use the citations and conventions appropriate to academic discourse. 

Assignment Requirements

1. 4-5 pages in length, 12 point Times New Roman (or similar) font

2. incorporate and properly cite (in-text and on a works cited page) at least one essay from this unit

3. submitted as a draft for peer review ( discussion board ), revision for instructor review (dropbox), and final essay (dropbox)

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