Consumption and identity, consumption and relations: How things make people Week 8, 10th April 2019 Consumption and identity •Premise: Ability of objects to communicate social position •Not necessary through ownership – importance of distribution and circulation of goods for asserting status in some non-industrial societies (e.g. kula, potlach) •Consumption as an important status-signifier: concept of luxury goods in both non-industrial and industrial societies, taste as a class classifier in industrial societies (Veblen, Bourdieu). • •Friedman, Jonathan (ed.). 2004. Consumption and Identity. •explicit connection between self-identification and consumption. The former may be a conscious act, a statement about the relation between self and world, or it may be a taken for granted aspect of everyday life, i.e. of a pre-defined and fully socialized identity. • • Veblen. Theory of Leisure Class (1899) •Social status is measured by separation from everyday productive work. •Aim: visible distance from productive work •Conspicuous consumption and Leisure; Leisure does not mean passivity •Lifestyle is created in order to distinguish leisure class from productive classes (through consumption and leisure). In modern society it regulates relationships between classes •Objects are able to demonstrate status, because they are part of the lifestyle of groups with high status. Since goods can signify status, they can bee also the means of status competition. •Model of emulation– competitive mimicking of consumption patterns •Lower classes want to increase their status by mimicquing style of higher classes. Higher classes respond is a change of style •One of explanations of the dynamics of consumer culture • Veblen. Theory of Leisure Class •Critique of Veblen: •Reduces social motivation to envy and repetition – desire to be equal with these who have higher status. •Style is not only trickling down •Mechanistic view on hierarchies and their reproduction • • Consumption and identity •Veblen: inspiration for: •Sociology of consumption, especially American •Consumers try to acquire things that can serve as positional goods – status symbols. Through acqusition and/or display of such goods they try to show or improve their position in social structure and confirm so social hierarchies and borders • •This discourse changes with World of Goods and Distinction - > Objects as material means of social interaction and communication, as mechanism of social reproduction Douglas, Isherwood 1979 World of goods •Inspired by Veblen •How objects define social position? Information approach to consumption •Social meaning is unstable. Consumption as a ritual activity creates visible public definitions of cultural categories and classifications •Consumption as a flow of information integrates people into meaningful world but creates also inequalities: poverty is not lack of possessions or wealth, but exclusion from the flow of informations •Meanings of things reflect pre-existing social reality. They are structured by society. This approach ignores the fact that social order is not only reflected but is also constituted, reproduced and changed through material praxis • Douglas, Isherwood 1979 World of goods •„ Rituals are conventions that set up visible public definitions.“ •„consumption is a system of reciprocal rituals which entail expenditures for appropriate marking of the occasion, or of the guests and hosts, or the community at large.“ •„Goods, in this perspective, are ritual adjuncts; consumption is a ritual process whose primary function is to make sense of the inchoate flux of events.“ • Individual work •Summarise what you learned during the last lesson and answer: •How Bourdieu describes relation between consumption and social position? Consumption and identity •Daniel Miller (ed.). 1995. Acknowledging Consumption. •The study of consumption transforms anthropology as a discipline •Global mass consumption leads to increase in definition of culture, ideas and selves through commodities •Gender, ethnicity, religion etc. expressed through commodities •Consumption as an important sphere for creating and expressing identities in postmodern societies. •Bauman (Liquid Modernity): Consumption as a means for creation of identity in postmodern society, identities are liquid – people can experiment with them, adopt and abandon them; consumption is an individualistic play with identities • • Consumption and identity in postmodern society •Consumption and identity are related through lifestyle. Lifestyle is oriented around objects of consumption. Everyday routines of sociality: •Giddens: Consumption and identity are related through lifestyle; Everyday routines of sociality: „lifestyle is routine acting “; routines are embedded in everyday choices and practices of fashion, food, behaviour etc.; Routines (unlike Bourdieu’s habitus) can be changed •Slater: lifestyle does not correspond to traditional status differences and class differentiation, does not expect long socialization and learning. Is not stable, depends on consumer choices, cultural representations, signs and media. Voluntary – choice of identity; identity can be accepted and abandoned • Consumption and identity: example - gender •Jantzen, Ostergaard, Vieira: Becoming a woman to the backbone. Lingerie consumption and experience of feminine identity •Edndeavour to control the environment through the control over the body: •Foucault: technologies of subjectivation -> technologies for creation of self/person -> formalized sets of techniques leading individuals to correct management of their bodies •Right things for the right occassion on the right body; lingerie enables certain feeling, experience of the body Power of invisible things Importance of having right body Harlot versus Madonna; courtesan versus housewife Work in couples: •Describe (10 sentences) relation between consumption and identity in Layne’s work on pregnancy loss. • Consumption and relationships: objectification •Daniel Miller. 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption •Objects of consumption are key elements of culture – they are used in dialectic process of objectification and as such are means for creation of social meanings, identities and practices •The concept is inspired by Hegel, Marx, Simmel”, Bourdieu, and Munn •For Miller it does not make sense to analyse things on their own and social relations on their own: Culture „is always a process and is never reducible to either its object or its subject form“ p.11 • • • Consumption and relationships: objectification •Mass culture as a dominant context for subject-object relation •„A theory of culture can have no independent subject, as neither individuals nor societies can be considered as its originators, since both are inseparable from culture itself “ •“Finally, the term objectification may be used to assert that the process of culture, which must always include self-alienation as a stage in its accomplishment, is thereby inherently contradictory.“ p. 33 • • • • • Miller, Daniel. 1998. Theory of Shopping. •Consumption as a ritual practice •Consumption as destruction – opposite of production, TBC •Sacrifice – in archaic religions related to consumption. Idealised segment of production is given to Gods and cancels negative consequences; •Shopping and sacrifice – same structure • • Shopping and sacrifice – same structure •Sacrifice •separates parts consumed by gods from parts consumed by people •Transcendental transformation leading to social order and relations. Sacrifice creates relationship to divine • • •shopping •spending changed to saving, thrift separated from treat •Transcendental transformation leading to social order and relations. shopping creates relationship to people -> making love in supermarket • Miller, Daniel. 1998. Theory of Shopping. •Shopping: Stages •1. Idea of excess connected with violent destruction – spending woman – discurse, not practice •2. Practice negating discourse – ritual of shopping – the aim is transcendence •3. Creation of relationhsip with other important subjects. Shopping as expression of love and other relationships • Work in groups •Prepare examples of: •Consumption expressing position in social hierarchy (e.g. class) •Consumption related to ethnic, gender or other group identity. You can think about social categories intersectionally •Consumption expressing self/relation: a Unique combination of personal characteristics and preferences •Consumption expressing/creating relation