Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order in which the aspirations of many individuals include the acquisition of goods and services beyond those necessary for survival or traditional displays of status.
Similarly, some research and criticism focuses on the sociological effects of consumerism, such as reinforcement of class barriers and creation of inequalities.
The English economy expanded significantly in the 17th century due to new methods of agriculture that rendered it feasible to cultivate a larger area.
[10] Luxury goods included sugar, tobacco, tea, and coffee; these were increasingly grown on vast plantations (historically by slave labor) in the Caribbean as demand steadily rose.
From 1660, Restoration London also saw the growth of luxury buildings as advertisements for social position, with speculative architects like Nicholas Barbon and Lionel Cranfield operating.
This then-scandalous line of thought caused great controversy with the publication of the influential work Fable of the Bees in 1714, in which Bernard Mandeville argued that a country's prosperity ultimately lay in the self-interest of the consumer.
[13][page needed] The pottery entrepreneur and inventor, Josiah Wedgwood, noticed the way that aristocratic fashions, themselves subject to periodic changes in direction, slowly filtered down through different classes of society.
By the turn of the 20th century, the average worker in Western Europe or the United States still spent approximately 80–90% of their income on food and other necessities.
What was needed to propel consumerism, was a system of mass production and consumption, exemplified by Henry Ford, an American car manufacturer.
As an example, Earnest Elmo Calkins noted to fellow advertising executives in 1932 that "consumer engineering must see to it that we use up the kind of goods we now merely use", while the domestic theorist Christine Frederick observed in 1929 that "the way to break the vicious deadlock of a low standard of living is to spend freely, and even waste creatively".
[18] The older term and concept of "conspicuous consumption" originated at the turn of the 20th century in the writings of sociologist and economist Thorstein Veblen.
[19]The term "conspicuous consumption" spread to describe consumerism in the United States in the 1960s, but was soon linked to debates about media theory, culture jamming, and its corollary productivism.
[20]The advent of the television in the late 1940s proved to be an attractive opportunity for advertisers, who could reach potential consumers in the home using lifelike images and sound.
[21] In the United States, a new consumer culture developed centered around buying products, especially automobiles and other durable goods, to increase their social status.
[21] Madeline Levine criticized what she saw as a large change in American culture – "a shift away from values of community, spirituality, and integrity, and toward competition, materialism and disconnection.
While corporate America reaped the ever-growing profits of the increasingly expensive boot and those modeled after its style, Doc Martens lost their original political association.
Andreas Eisingerich discusses in his article "Vision statement: Behold the extreme consumers...and learn to embrace them" that "In many critical contexts, consumerism is used to describe the tendency of people to identify strongly with products or services they consume, especially those with commercial brand-names and perceived status-symbolism appeal, e.g. a luxury car, designer clothing, or expensive jewelry".
[36] Consumerism can take extreme forms, to the extent that consumers will sacrifice significant time and income not only to make purchases, but also to actively support a certain firm or brand.
The book also explores how materialistic values harm our relationships, our communities, and our environment, and suggests ways to reduce materialism and increase our quality of life.
The ability to choose one product out of a great number of others allows a person to build a sense of "unique" individuality, despite the prevalence of Mac users or the nearly identical tastes of Coke and Pepsi.
The invention of the commodity self is a driving force of consumerist societies, preying upon the deep human need to build a sense of self.
In an opinion segment of New Scientist magazine published in August 2009, reporter Andy Coghlan cited William Rees of the University of British Columbia and epidemiologist Warren Hern of the University of Colorado at Boulder saying that human beings, despite considering themselves civilized thinkers, are "subconsciously still driven by an impulse for survival, domination and expansion ... an impulse which now finds expression in the idea that inexorable economic growth is the answer to everything, and, given time, will redress all the world's existing inequalities.
Jonathan Porritt writes that consumers are often unaware of the negative environmental impacts of producing many modern goods and services, and that the extensive advertising industry only serves to reinforce increasing consumption.
Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism points out that the challenge of addressing both underconsumption and overconsumption of resources lies at the heart of the world’s primary sustainability dilemma.
While significant portions of the global population struggle to meet basic needs, the resource-intensive lifestyles of affluent societies — characterized by car dependency, frequent air travel, high meat consumption, and an apparently limitless appetite for consumer goods like clothing and technological devices — are key drivers of the unsustainable practices.
[55] Discussions of the environmental implications of consumerist ideologies in works by economists James Gustave Speth[56] and Naomi Klein,[57] and consumer cultural historian Gary Cross.
[59]Today, people are universally and continuously being exposed to mass consumerism and product placement in the media or even in their daily lives.
[61] On the prevalence of consumerism in daily life, historian Gary Cross says that "The endless variation of clothing, travel, and entertainment provided opportunity for practically everyone to find a personal niche, no matter their race, age, gender or class.
People who rush to the mall to buy products and end up spending money with their credit cards can easily become entrenched in the financial system of capitalist globalization.
These movements range on a spectrum from moderate "simple living",[64] "eco-conscious shopping",[65] and "localvore"/"buying local",[66] to Freeganism on the extreme end.
