3. Consumption (interlinked with Production) Flashcards
1
Q
What is Consumption?
A
- The use of an object or service for a particular need.
- Traditionally: to waste, use up, destroy e.g. tuberculosis = ‘consumption’
- 18th Century: opposite of ‘to produce’ - two spheres of human activity:
- men = public domain of work
- women = private home domain duality.
- Heavily interlinked with production - to consume more have to produce more.
- Contemporary: material and intangible goods e.g. films, websites, plastic surgery…
2
Q
Why is Consumption important?
A
- Vital to life: air, water, food
- Basis of capitalist economy
- Important cultural change
- Replaces democracies
- Structures social stratification
3
Q
What is the history of Consumption?
A
- Prior to 1800 there were ‘sumptuary laws’ which dictated what you could and could not consume. This was coupled with moral laws.
- Industralisation (mid 18th Century to mid 19th Century) - machinery replaces human labour. Buying and selling process (marketplace) is key component. This transforms buying habits - ‘luxuries transformed into necessities’ (Robbins 2005:16).
- Bon Marche (1852) was credited as the world’s first department store.
- They created a different shopping experience - the browsing and looking at displays. (Rather than items crammed into a shop).
- These displays inform and invoke desires.
- This gave raise to branding and labelling - designed to allure and promote.
- From the mid-1800s this brought about marketing and advertising which in turn changed the social institutions e.g. univiersity degree courses in new emerging displines.
- Raise of home ownership, automobiles.
- Targeted Marketing = understand desires –> potential consumers –> affliate to products
- Reconfiguration of Space and Class.
- Department stores designed to encourage consumption.
4
Q
Why do Anthropology and Consumption have an uneasy relationship?
A
- Consumers have a complex relationship with what they consume.
- It’s important to go in with curiosity rather than judgement.
- Daniel Miller = ‘consumption is important’ OR
- Graeber = ‘consumption is a diversion’
5
Q
What does Douglas tell us about Consumption?
A
Mary Douglas (1974)
- Consumption sumbolises and reinforces important cultural categories
- Tried to get the study of consumption recognised and taken seriously
- The things that we buy enable us to make a place in and make sense of the world
- Goods ‘mak[e] visible and stable the categories of culture’ e.g. gender ratification
- ‘Commodities are good for thinking; treat them as non-verbal creativity’
6
Q
What does Bourdieu tell us about Consumption?
A
Pierre Bourdieu (1984)
- Reproduction of social hierarchies and class
- People develop taste and the naturalises class division e.g. liking Polo!
7
Q
What does Mintz tell us about Consumption?
A
Mintz (1986)
- Consumption in relation to production
- Political economy of consumption
- Consumption is important to the labour process
8
Q
What does Appadurai tell us about Consumption?
A
Appadurai (1988)
- Social Life of Things
- Different owners, used for different purposes
- Products come in and out of ‘commodity’ status e.g. second-hand clothes, antique furniture
9
Q
What does Miller tell us about Consumption?
A
Miller (1987)
- Consumption in terms of material culture
- Through consumption people develop meaningful relationships.
- People realise their ‘selves’ through objects and rely upon these objects to create and sustain self, family, and community
- Love and duty can reside at the heart of shopping practices
10
Q
What is the power of Consumption?
A
- Is shopping the new voting?
- How many people engage with polictics versus consumption?
- Production enables consumption.
- Consumption of a lifestyle rather than goods.
11
Q
What are the critiques of Consumption?
A
- Too partial, too narrow (Carrier Heyman) - micro-studies of household contents
- Too celebratory - Not an autonomous sphere (Friedman)
12
Q
What is Fairtrade?
A
- Moral link to goods being consumed
- Ethical standards
- Rehumanising link between production and consumption
- Not being exploited and getting a fair price for goods
- Improves conditions for workers
- “It is a facade.” Creating an illusion, an image. Not fully informed in the process of production.
- What are the processes and criteria for getting the fairtrade?
- Is it really fair?
- Is it promoting wastage by the fulfiling of certain societal parameters.
13
Q
What are the myths of Consumption?
A
- Mass consumption causes global homogenisation
- Consumption is opposed to sociality (i.e. individualistic, selfish)
- Consumption is opposed to authenticity
- Consumption creates particular kinds of social beings
14
Q
What 2 ethnographies are associated with Consumption?
A
- Edmonds, A. (2007). ‘“The Poor Have the Right to be Beautiful’: Cosmetic Surgery in Neoliberal Brazil.’
- Freeman, C. (1998). ‘Femininity and Flexible Labour: Fashioning Class through Gender on the Global Assembly Line.’ (Barbados)
15
Q
What does Edmonds’s (2007) ethnography say about Consumption?
A
- Consumer goods can be used to express or challenge social distinctions (Edmonds) - development of ‘taste’, which naturalises class hierarchies (Bourdieu)
- Hospitals offering cosmetic surgery to the poor in Rio de Janeiro
- Poor attempt to rid selves of physical markers of low status
- Does ‘beauty’ make upward mobility possible?
