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The lost art of consumer critique: a defense

The lost art of consumer critique: a defense. “Consumption studies” and the backlash against consumer critique. A productive positioning against the critics (totalizing narratives, consumer dupes, overly conformist portrayals, elitist attitudes, etc)

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The lost art of consumer critique: a defense

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  1. The lost art of consumer critique: a defense

  2. “Consumption studies” and the backlash against consumer critique A productive positioning against the critics (totalizing narratives, consumer dupes, overly conformist portrayals, elitist attitudes, etc) However, the pendulum swing has become constraining, de-politicizing, and paralyzing wrt macro analyses and outcomes… The failures of consumer society are becoming increasingly evident--time for a course correction Re-integration of critical perspectives with their critique--(“dialectical” re-formulation)

  3. Re-valorizing Consumption • Not a denigration of consumption a la the masculinist bias of the earlier critiques, but the reverse--a re-valorization of consumption activities--but from a critical/analytic perspective • To moralize or not to moralize? False question. All analysis is moral • Key is to reject the singularity of consumption as a-moral and re-integrate consumption into larger paradigm of social action • “social death of stuff” problem of de-linking symbolic and utilitarian dimensions of consumption

  4. Delivering the goods Personal Consumption Expenditures per capita (2000$) But also the bads…

  5. The Output Bias:Rising annual hours of work, CPS, 1967-2000

  6. Income and Happiness:GDP per capita v. % very happy, US 1946-1996(Layard 2005)

  7. Commerciogenic maladies

  8. Consumerism and ecological disaster

  9. Tracking The Global Footprint: sustainable consumption was exceeded in 1978

  10. Per Capita Footprints

  11. Veblen and the status consumption model

  12. Features of status models • Hierarchical social structures reproduced by competitive status consumption. • Game is played through visible consumption (visibility, an efficient property, is necessary to avoid moral hazard) • Model not of all consumption, but of the pattern of goods and the relationship among private c, public c, savings and leisure • Trickle down model • Highly rational, but social, agents, uniform (consensual) goods rankings • Game characterized by prisoners’ dilemma (pure positional model)

  13. Veblen’s critics • Lacks an account of meaning • Informational demands high; post-modern market fragmented, Holt 2000: “good life” not a matter of consensual status-symbols, but project of individual self-creation • Trickle up

  14. Salvaging status accounts • Diffusion path doesn’t need linearity, just a linear segment • Individuation not fatal if it’s not infinite (individuation as a status strategy) • Strong empirical support • Collapse of high and low culture not evidence of “democracy” and egalitarianism/socioeconomic immobility and inequality have increased sharply • Need to integrate income distribution into consumption accounts • Timing of the backlash/luxury boom

  15. Social comparison and prisoners’ dilemmas: Does rising inequality fuel competitive consumption?

  16. Adorno and Horkheimer and the circle of manipulation

  17. Critiques • Totalizing, disempowering narrative • Functionalist analysis btw production and consumption without a micro-mechanism • In dupes v agents: agents win (except at the bank)

  18. Theoretical cul de sac? • Inability to analyze producers’ power • Conflates micro and macro analysis by creating an isomorphic structure • Must analyse, not assume that isomorphism. • Holt’s 1940s and 50s cultural authority thesis (2002); Bourdieu’s habitus • But producers now constructing and selling consumer agency (Nike), rather than having it deployed “against” them.

  19. Back to Galbraith

  20. Naturalized Insatiability: From want creation to Wal-Mart stampede

  21. Epidemic depression Was Galbraith Right that Affluent Consumption Fails to yield Much in the Way of welfare?

  22. Elitist, yes….

  23. But why the singularity of the personalized attack? Why no attack on adulterous ethicists or the tenured free market economists? Curious singularity wrt consumption

  24. Wither Corporate power? But powerless Against the Sovereign Consumer? Corporate “takeover” Of the govt, Growing influence in universities, Public schools, welfare, health care Military, etc

  25. Re-reading the Frankfort School • Their worry: totalitarian system anchored by a conformist consumer culture. Should it be ours?

  26. Time for a new american dream? • Americans coming together to “change the consumer culture” (100,000 registered activists) • Holistic paradigm change--economic and cultural • Values and lifestyle congruence (more of what really matters) • Personal, corporate and state accountability. Participants demand moral consumption. But consumption is not singular. They demand consistency.

  27. Consumer critique & activist practice Newdream.org

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