Introduction to consumption and its social and economic implications

Science and Practice, Theme 1Michal Sedlačko

Outline of the session

• introduction + logistics• what is consumption?• overview of historical development and scale• watching The Story of Stuff and discussion• overview of theoretical and empirical

explanations of why we consume so much

What do we mean by consumption?

When did it start?• it started in the 1600s...

– expanding population on a fixed land base– growing role of cities– weakening of traditional sources of authority (church, communities)– rise of capitalist production relations – imperative of growth, alienation– uncertain life paths

• 1700s-1800s: sellers started to use advertisement, shop displays, endorsements by prominent people – home furnishings, clothes, cosmetics...– international trade and colonialism, access to cheap resources and oil– department stores– emergence of mass culture and consumerist society: (1) identity through consumption;

(2) from luxury to necessity; (3) creation of fashions• 1900s: further spread and intensification

– television: a study found that for every additional hour of television people watched each week, they spent an additional $208 a year on stuff (even though they had less time in a day to spend it)

– standardised lifestyle (“to be, you have to own”) and conspicuous consumption– planned obsolescence

...the growing list of necessities

1800: coffee, soap, sugar, tobacco1920s: radio, going to the movies, car1930s: canned food, bakery bread1960s: television, washing machine, refrigerator1970s: air conditioner, fast food, credit card, several cars1980s: larger home, personal finance advisor, therapist1990s: flights (city break), disposable diapers, pet food,

personal trainer2000s: computer, cell phone, flat screen, bottled water

20th century: consumption grown dramatically over the past five decades

• sixfold increase from 1960– growth in population: a factor of 2.2 between

1960 and 2006– consumption expenditures per person almost

tripled

The stuff we consume was produced from natural resources

• between 1950 and 2005:– metal production grew 6x– oil consumption 8x– natural gas consumption 14x

• in total, 60 billion tons of resources are now extracted annually– the world extracts the equivalent of 112 Empire State Buildings from

the earth every single day• the average European uses 43 kilograms of resources daily (the

average American 88 kilograms)• the world’s richest 500 million people (7% of the world’s

population) are responsible for 50% of the world’s CO2 emissions, while the poorest 3 billion are responsible for just 6%

How many Earths do we need?

The Story of Stuff

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM• Watch, take notes and discuss in pairs:

Why do we consume so much?

Why do we consume so much?

• “The possession and use of an increasing number and variety of goods and services is the principal cultural aspiration and the surest perceived route to personal happiness, social status, and national success.” (Ekins)

• Cultural norms—how people spend their leisure time, how regularly they upgrade their wardrobes, even how they raise their children – are now increasingly oriented around purchasing goods or services.

Consumption as a social pathology• 4th c. BC – Plato & Aristotle: the insatiable desire for more (pleonexia) is a human failing, an

obstacle to achieving the ‘good life’• 17th c. – Hobbes: society of unlimited materialist values has ‘pervasive anxiety’• 18th c. – Rousseau: industrialisation creates ‘artificial’ (as opposed to ‘natural’) needs• 19th c. – Marx (and many others): capitalism characterised by ‘fetishism of commodities’; human

vs. inhuman needs• 1899 – Veblen: tendency towards ‘conspicuous consumption’ is destructive• Marcuse (1964): capitalism creates ‘false needs’ and ‘false consciousness’ oriented on

consumption of commodities (new mechanism of social control)• Fromm (1976): alienation and passivity of modern life caused by an economic system based on

increasing levels of consumption• Scitovsky (1976): addictive nature of consumer behaviour, failure to mirror the complexity of

human motivation and experience – resulting dissatisfaction• Illich (1977): the ideology that equates progress with affluence and needs with commodities is

wrong• Hirsch (1977): we consume not only because of the functional value of material goods, but also

because of the value of positioning us with respect to our fellow humans – ‘theory of envy’• over the 1990s increasing evidence that in spite of increased personal income happiness and life

satisfaction are somewhat lower than in the decades before

Happiness and average annual income

Jackson 2010

Consumption: why does it happen? (I)

• consumption as consumer choice to increase well-being (economics)– Jeremy Bentham’s (18th c.) concept of utility: ‘that property in any

object whereby it tends to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good or happiness’ – nevertheless, what constitutes personal utility in any particular case is regarded entirely as a matter of individual preference by neoclassical microeconomics

– theory of consumer choice based on the assumption of preference maximisation all transactions in the market are assumed to represent the rational decisions of informed consumers, attempting to maximise individual utility in the face of the available choices and their own resource constraints

– higher consumption equals higher standards of living; human wants are infinite and insatiable

– nature or origin of preferences not really discussed in economic theory! (‘needs’ not existing, rather ‘wants’, ‘desires’, ‘preferences’)

Consumption: why does it happen? (II)

• consumption as need satisfaction (psychology)– satisfaction of needs (Maslow 1943)– nine fundamental human needs (Max Neef 1991):

1. subsistence2. protection3. affection4. understanding5. participation6. idleness7. creation8. identity9. freedom• each culture adopts a different set of satisfiers: provision of some needs

requires material goods (‘material needs’), with some satisfiers however in general having different material implications in different cultures

Consumption: why does it happen? (III)

• consumption as a biological imperative or evolutionary adaptation (evolutionary psychology)– ‘instinct of acquisition’ (McDougall 1908)– ‘selfish gene’ (Dawkins 1976): humans have a need to ‘position’

themselves in relation to the opposite sex and to their competitors increasing competition (Red Queen struggle)

– humans as unwitting collaborators in genetic selection, carried along by drives and persuasions over which we have little individual or collective control – critique of the rational model in economics (Ridley 1994)

– display consumption beyond only sexual display: power, status, hierarchy – ‘conspicuous consumption’ (Veblen 1899) and ‘class distinction’ (Bourdieu 1984)• these regulate access to resources

– ‘positional goods’ (Hirsch 1974)• distinction → emulation → normalisation / new positional goods

Consumption: why does it happen? (IV)

• consumption as communication and pursuit of meaning (sociology, anthropology, psychology)– consumption of goods not only for their functional properties, but also because of their

symbolic properties: we consume in pursuit of meaning, and consuming less would mean fewer opportunities for constructing and performing meaning

– consumption has a symbolic role in mediating and communicating personal, social, and cultural meaning (Douglas and Isherwood 1979): e.g. material goods provide ‘marking services’, i.e. are used in social rituals that embed the consumer in their social group, strengthen social relations within the group and maintain information flows• consumers behave rationally!

– ‘extended self’ (Belk 1988; cf. Jackson 2009): possessions play different roles in the different stages of human development, e.g. enable the infant to distinguish between self and environment or a sense of continuity and preparation for death in older adults

– individual consumer is locked into a continual process of constructing and reconstructing personal identity in the context of a continually renegotiated universe of social and cultural symbols (Baudrillard 1970; Bauman 1998) – ‘aggregate identities’

– McCracken’s (1988) pursuit of ‘displaced meaning’: 3 strategies for dealing with the gap between the ‘real’ and the ‘ideal’ in social life, i.e. aspirations: (1) naive optimism, (2) open cynicism, or (3) displacing our ideals to some distant (and relatively inaccessible) place or time while at the same time providing illusion of access

Consumption: why does it happen? (V)

• empirical explanations: growing consumption is a result of economic forces on the side of the producers (economics)– competition on costs– competition on price– product innovation

• do you know a consumption area with very little product innovation?

– product diversification and specialisation• are there counter-examples?

– advertising– deferred payment systems (credit facilities etc.)– increasing material requirements of leisure activities– work-and-spend cycle– growing price of labour– prices of industrially-produced products continually falling

Consumption: why does it happen? (VI)

• consumption as consumer lock-in and ‘ordinary consumption’ (sociology)– part of the ordinary, everyday decision-making, not oriented particularly toward

individual display: ‘inconspicuous consumption’ that is about convenience, habit, practice, and individual responses to social norms and institutional contexts:• Human beings are embedded in cultural systems, are shaped and constrained by their

cultures, and for the most part act only within the cultural realities of their lives. The cultural norms, symbols, values, and traditions a person grows up with become “natural”. … Driving cars, flying in planes, having large homes, using air conditioning… these are not decadent choices but simply natural parts of life – at least according to the cultural norms present in a growing number of consumer cultures in the world. (Worldwatch Institute 2010, p. 3)

– also collective socio-material systems (power, sewage...)– consumers locked in into day-to-day consumption decisions as a result of a ‘critical’

consumption choice, or by social norms that lie beyond individual control, or the constraints of the institutional context within which individual choice is executed

– consumers not necessarily the willing actors in the consumption process, capable of exercising either rational or irrational choice in the satisfaction of their own needs and desires – again critique of the economic model of consumer choice

– habitual behaviours need to be ‘unfrozen’ by examining and challenging accepted ideas and then new behaviours can be tried, repeated and established into new routines and lifestyles – ‘refreezing’ (Lewin 1951)

Social implications of consumption (Briceno & Stagl 2006)

• decrease in collective and participatory activities is associated with more material-intensive consumption and new social systems that reinforce it– decreasing number of people per household increasing

demand for household appliances and services, creating new patterns of consumption centred on the individual

– increased number of private cars fewer resources for public transportation, making consumers increasingly dependent on cars

– collective sharing schemes and maintenance and repair services have become less frequent new trends of consumption altering community life and decreasing public ownership and management

Further structural drivers

• individualisation (Princen et al. 2002; Røpke 1999)• distancing (Princen et al. 2002)• commodification (Princen et al. 2002)• busyness (Røpke 1999)• effectiveness (Røpke 1999)• ‘global sweatshop’ and the ‘cheap banana’ (Schor

1996; Jackson 2009): post-colonial hegemony based on access to cheap labour and resources (until recently, material costs have been falling in real terms)