If You've Got It, Flaunt It: The Rise and Rise of Consumerism

What is consumerism?

I take consumerism to mean the 'expression of the apparently ubiquitous act of consumption' (Miles), which particularly occurs in capitalist economies. Consumerism has become the dominant mode of identity in modern ‘globalised’ culture-- from the mods of 1960s England to the cosplayers of modern Japan, “without consumer goods, acts of self-definition in this culture would be impossible” (McCracken). Understanding why it is so successful is vital in a world where final consumption accounts for 61% of world economic activity. 

I should note that this piece assumes no negative or positive outcomes from consumerism- there have been a mixture of both (envrionmentalism vs. new identities and empowerment) but seeks rather to explain why it has been so successful. 

What are the current approaches?

There are three primary explanations so far proffered: those of cultural anthropology, social anthropology and neoclassical economics. 

Cultural anthropologists have proposed that consumerism is an outgrowth of a 'consumer society', that is products confer a 'moral' authority to those who have them because proper use of objects indicates that a person knows how the world works. Cultural explanations often err in assuming that culture is a static object rather than a field of connections, which often means they are of limited use by themselves.

Social anthropologists have proposed that consumerism is largely used as a way of purchasing recognition in particular groups (students, hipsters, mods etc) and part of the acts of mutual recognition and association. The problem with this approach is that it neglects how social attitudes are actually formed and makes Durkheim's mistake in assuming that groups agree on a 'totality' of beliefs and practices. 

Neoclassical economists have proposed that rational actors will always act as if 'more is better' and in essence that consumerism is just a particular manifestation of this desire. The first flaw is that this may not apply culturally, for instance certain societies such as the Tzeltal directly limit wealth by making wealthy individuals have expensive feasts for the whole village and even in our own society there are social and cultural limits on excessive consumption. 

A Memetic Explanation: What is a Meme? Why is Consumerism a Meme? 

Memes are a concept of Richard Dawkins' that are best defined as “elements of a culture … passed from one individual to another by imitation” (Blackmore). Memes are selected for or against, because of the nature of humans as imitators or the memes themselves and their groupings. 

I argue that consumerism is a meme because it succeeds by spreading through people imitating others' choices, either because of what they see in advertising, their peer group, observing others etc. The consumerist meme has flourished because companies shaping culture and promoting social reinforcement now define economic value and this system of value is propagated by the production of consumer goods and a pervasive system of market exchange. 

I will explain consumerism along three axes: consumption, production and exchange.

‘I do love new clothes’: Consumption Patterns and the Modern Corporation

The meme of consumerism has sought to manipulate the environment in which it exists culturally to make it more favourable to itself by changing attitudes to wealth and consumption.

The value of wealth accumulation has changed from the medieval view of public virtue arising from private virtue to the economic idea that public virtue can arise from private vice. In the 20th century in particular there has also been a popularisation of modern hedonism, characterised by the creation of cultural value in the self-conscious seeking of personal pleasure. These concepts have spread widely to the point where self-interest is taken for granted in most of modern Western society and through global media, much of the world. Daniel Miller, for example has documented how contact with the West has made this idea spread to Trinidad, where independence signaled the potential for new wealth and thus new possibilities, which an oil boom helped perpetuated. The existence of a normative type of wealth accumulation, centered around elaborate ornamentation is evidence of a changed material culture.  

Companies have also sought to associate “sign values” with consumer goods through “commodity aesthetics” in which people ascribe value solely on the basis of design or promotion. This is an outgrowth of what Marx called “commodity fetishism” or the mystification of human relations resulting from market trade. 

Further, the idea of fashionability where “to be and not to be in fashion are nowdays important components of choice” (Ilmonen), allows for a strict dichotomy between those who consume what the group consumes and those who break the bonds of commonality. This relates to what Jonathan Friedman calls “homo consumens, whose fragmented identity is constantly rearranged by the winds of fashion”, which he explains by examining how Swedish culture has come to privilege the modern.

But this does not explain how consumer products are effective meme vehicles, so we move to production.

'Work must not Cease’: Consumer Goods as effective Meme Vehicles

Any meme needs to be transmitted and its vehicle thus needs to have three characteristics: high copying-fidelity or the ability to be copied accurately, high fecundity or the ability to make many copies and a level of longevity adapted to its environment (Blackmore 58). 

High copying-fidelity is ensured by industrialised production technologies, which can produce millions of copies of the same good. This form of production also relies on disembedding production from social relations, for example the Kubo system where they own the means to complete production but do not own products because consumption is immediate could not sustain consumerism alone. Without the disembedding, fidelity is impossible because goods have different sign-values due to their relations to a specific person’s labour. 

High fecundity is perhaps the chief feature of the production of consumer goods, which often leads to overproduction when more supply is produced than consumers demand.

The longevity of consumer goods can be selected for the producer’s benefit due to planned obsolescence or the building in of faults so products can only be kept for a certain period.

But this does not explain how consumer products are sold successfully, so we move to exchange.

‘The Invisible Hand’: Consumerism and Market Exchange

Market exchange is predicated on the idea that commodities have value because of the relationship between things, especially in terms of the translation into a monetary value. Trade is predicated on the substitutability of unlike goods and each participant having a different scale of values in order to produce mutually beneficial trades. For consumerism to work, markets have to be efficient at allowing a relatively free flow of goods. To do this, markets have to be embedded and naturalised within society, because as Polanyi observes, ‘free markets’ are instituted processes that must be articulated through social, legal and political strategies. Markets also act as a distribution network for consumer goods and help to coordinate economic action.

This system of exchange is predicated on social acceptance, which is why Western development projects often include help setting up market economies, as a ‘charitable’ venture. Therefore, when confidence is lost in markets they cease to function and consumerism should also fail. This occurred amongst the Nentsy people of Northern Siberia when the bank accounts the Soviets had given them became valueless due to the depreciation in the value of the ruble in the early 1990s. As predicted, the herders switched from buying consumer goods off the Russians back to solely reindeer herding.  

Conclusion

Companies have manipulated cultural and social capital to propagate the meme of consumerism through changing the worth of wealth accumulation and the nature of identity itself. The consumerist meme is able to spread because it has an effective vehicle in the consumer good and associated production processes and an effective distribution network in the form of the ‘free’ market. The memetic approach builds on all three of the current approaches within a coherent theoretical framework. It shows that the success of consumerism should not be taken for granted-- it has been a product of complex social, political and cultural processes.

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Dan Gibbons is a third year Bachelor of Commerce (Economics) student at the University of Melbourne. He has a forthcoming publication in Intergraph: A Journal of Dialogic Anthropology (about memory and nationalism) and is currently submitting papers on the rise of modern consumerism, the role of criminology theory in literary criticism and the institutional theory of nationalism. Dan is a keen debater and public speaker.