Consumer Society and the Post-modern City

David B Clarke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415205153
• eBook ISBN: 9781134627936
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

The fact that we inhabit a consumer society has incredibly far-reaching implications. Working through the often controversial ideas of the consumer society's most influential theorists, Jean Baudrillard and Zygmunt Bauman, this book assesses the ways in which consumerism is reshaping the nature and meaning of the city. It examines the nature of consumption and its increasing centrality to post-modern society by;
*considering the development of consumerism as a central facet of social life
*demonstrating that social inequalities are increasingly structured around consumption
*uncovering the hidden consequences of consumerism
*pondering the meaning of lifestyle
*revealing how the nature of reality is changing in an age of globalization.Employing a sustained and engaging theoretical analysis, the book ranges across a variety of sometimes unexpected topics. It represents an impassioned plea for everyone interested in the social life of cities to take the notion of the consumer society - and the arguments of its major theorists - seriously.

Part I
Consumption

1 Consumption controversies

postmodern society engages its members primarily in their capacity as consumers rather than producers. That difference is seminal.

(Bauman 2000, 76)

no more ‘productive’ or ‘unproductive’ consumption, only a reproductive consumption.

(Baudrillard 1993a, 28)

Introduction

According to Wyrwa (1998, 432), the Middle Ages had no single term corresponding to what we now matter-of-factly refer to as ‘consumption’: ‘Only with the advent of mercantilism, devoted to the fiscal interests of the sovereign, does the Latin derivative “consumption” begin to take on real meaning’. Consumption only came to be recognized as such when the opportunities it afforded for taxation were recognized. From this point on, consumption has commanded ever-greater attention, though never before has consumption been seen as meriting the level of attention it is currently afforded. Over the past decade or so, there has been a veritable explosion of interest in the topic, putting it firmly on the map of concepts of fundamental importance to the social scientist, of whatever stripe or disciplinary background (Miller 1995). Some may, of course, regard this turn towards consumption as little more than academic fad and fashion. There is, no doubt, an element of truth in such an assessment. Nonetheless, the current wave of interest in the topic arguably marks a far more profound recognition that consumption is increasingly vital to the survival of capitalism. Within the social sciences, consumption has shifted from a position where it could, without too many difficulties, be effectively sidelined, to one where an acknowledgement, appreciation and understanding of its role has become increasingly important. Whilst it is true that consumption has been subject to cyclical attention-swings in the past, the current level of attention seems to be of an entirely different order. To claim that contemporary capitalist societies need to be understood, first and foremost, as ‘consumer societies’ is not, of course, uncontroversial. Even more contentious is to reserve the term ‘consumer society’ for contemporary capitalist societies alone. This is, nonetheless, I will argue, a valid proposition.

Slater (1997) makes the case that it is possible to take the time-horizon of the ‘consumer society’ back more or less indefinitely. Thus, we find Sherratt (1998, 15) referring to changes in social organization occurring in Europe around 1300 BC as marking ‘a consumer revolution’, and pointing to the importance of so-called ‘secondary products’ in even earlier times (Sherratt 1981). It is demonstrably possible, in other words, to highlight the incredibly long-standing importance of consumption to human social arrangements. However, such observations do not necessarily pronounce on the appropriateness of reserving the term ‘consumer society’ to present-day societies (or, at least, remarks such as Sherratt’s are not intended to make such an adjudication). An ever-growing body of work has highlighted the particular centrality of consumption to early modern social arrangements (Agnew 1993; Appleby 1993; Bermingham and Brewer 1995; Breen 1988; Dyer 1989; Lemire 1990; Shammas 1990; Thirsk 1978; Weatherhill 1988). In the light of such diligent research, which reveals the extent and variety of past consumption practices to be far more complex than was hitherto appreciated, is it not misleading and inappropriate to reserve the term ‘consumer society’ for today’s ‘consumerist’ kind of consumer society? Again, one must answer in the negative. In fact, were we to pin down the emergence of ‘consumption’ as a meaningful concept in painstaking detail – particularly in relation to the evolution of political-economic thought – or to document the immense variety of consumption practices characterizing past and present societies in different parts of the world, none of this would invalidate the specific sense in which the ‘consumer society’ label is appealed to when applied to today’s capitalist societies (Baudrillard 1996; 1998a; Bauman 1987; 1998a). The appropriateness of the label, as intimated in the Introduction, centres on the systemic role increasingly being played by consumption.¹ It is this systemic role – which coincides with consumption assuming a ‘mythic’ status – that defines our society as a fully fledged consumer society. As Baudrillard (1998a, 194) remarks: ‘The historic emergence of the myth of consumption in the twentieth century is radically different from the emergence of the technical concept in economic thinking or science, where it was employed much earlier’. This historic emergence broadly coincides with what many have attempted to grasp under the rubric of ‘postmodern’ society. Clearly, it will take some effort to establish this connection, and to demonstrate the significance of the sense in which the ‘consumer society’ label is appropriate to postmodern society in a way that it is not, for instance, to early modern or prehistoric society. This is the primary purpose of this chapter.

Consumer society, casino culture

To pursue the suggestion that the defining feature of a consumer society is the systemic role taken on by consumption, let me begin by recalling a discussion at an open-air bar in the central square of the Estonian capital, Tallinn – the city where the European Sociological Association’s ‘Sociology of Consumption Working Group’ met in 1996. The discussion centred on different ways of purchasing drinks: specifically, whether one pays for drinks as and when they are obtained (the common practice in British pubs); or whether a tally is kept by the bartender and the bill settled at the end of the night (as in the café-bars of many continental European cities). These different methods of payment are, in and of themselves, interesting. They reveal a distinctive geography of consumption, a set of situated cultural differences that persist despite the oft-repeated claims that the world is becoming ever more homogeneous as a result of the standardization of consumption. Yet matters are considerably more complex than this. In Britain, for instance, drinks obtained along with a meal in a restaurant are usually paid for at the end of the evening, whilst food purchased in a pub is usually paid for as and when it is ordered. Perhaps the remnants of a class difference are discernible in the need to demonstrate one’s ability to pay (with ‘ready cash’) in certain contexts, and the element of trust (for the moment unsullied by vulgar monetary considerations) implicit in others. Both systems, however, are functional: that is, they are capable of sustaining or reproducing themselves over time (and, within culturally defined limits, space).

A very different system operates in the casino complexes of Las Vegas. There, drinks are supplied free of charge; providing, of course, one indulges in a spot of gambling, and exempting the fact that a gratuity is generally expected. In this system, the income the casino receives from gambling allows the drink – which in any case fuels the gambling – to be treated as a loss leader. Evidently, the customers perceive benefits from the nominally free drinks their gambling subsidizes: they get both ‘free’ drinks and the chance to win fabulous amounts of money. The casino operators also derive significant benefits from the set-up: supplying drinks has become very much secondary to the gambling side of the operation; the supplementary activity has long since supplanted its initial basis. This expanded system is also capable of reproducing itself over time, since the casino is in a position to ensure that, in the long run, the odds are massively stacked against the casino itself ever going broke. What is most significant about this system, however, is the way in which it seems capable of conjuring up an increased ‘total amount of benefit’ – for both consumers and casino operators – simply by diverting the system of supplying drinks through the supplementary detour of games of chance.

Day after day, of course, the casinos generate losers as well as winners; deal out misery as well as happiness. Counterintuitively, perhaps, winning and happiness may not even go hand-in-hand (Frank 1999). If the dream of hitting the jackpot comes true, it can all too easily turn into a nightmare – as the occasional press coverage of the winner who goes ‘off the rails’ serves to confirm. This provides little consolation, of course, for those who have never found themselves in the winning seat. Nor is it likely to deter others from wanting to see how they would cope with such a situation. Invariably, however, the downside of gambling is carefully hidden from view – literally so, in Las Vegas, by a glitzy, fantasy facade. This is not, though, the only dissimulative aspect of the gambling industry. The unpalatable truth lying behind the dream of instant riches is also carefully concealed by the impregnable logic of games of chance: one always might win; one has as good a chance as anyone else. In this regard, the casino is ruthlessly egalitarian, shamelessly democratic.

It might reasonably be objected that it is patently untrue that everyone has an equal chance of hitting it rich at the casino. Are not some, those already wealthy, more equal than others? Indeed they are, insofar as the marginal utility of money – the value of another pound or dollar – differs starkly between rich and poor. But the logic of the casino is impregnable precisely because it is tautologous. Fortunes can be made with minimal stakes. There is no prior requirement a winner must first fulfil. Sheer good luck is all it takes. The chance is open to all, and fate will run its course with absolute indifference. The implication, of course, is that there is no point in being a sore loser. ‘Losers have no less reason than winners to wish that the game goes on, and that its rules stay in force; and no more reason to want the game to be proscribed or its rules to be overhauled’ (Bauman 1993a, 44). With a fiercely commercial benevolence, the casino automatically offers a second bite of the cherry, ensuring that the misfortunes of the past are not brought to bear on the opportunities of the present. Today’s loser may yet become tomorrow’s winner; yesterday’s loser is as welcome again today as anyone else – with the sole exception that those who incur debts they are unable to honour can expect no mercy. The sinister threat of Las Vegas’ gangster past still hangs in the air; an ambient warning to those who would leave town without first clearing their debts. Those who prefer to disappear when payback time comes around, the suspicion remains, might be given a helping hand in precisely that direction. It is surely no coincidence that Las Vegas is surrounded by desert (Baudrillard 1988; Bauman 1988a).

Learning from Las Vegas has, of course, rapidly become an outmoded activity. Even gambling looks set to be supplanted by other (equally profitable) leisure activities, from theme park rides to art galleries. Nonetheless, I want to suggest – without too much hesitation or qualification – that the casino system provides a near-perfect analogy for the consumer society. The way in which it is capable of conjuring up, seemingly from thin air, an increased amount of ‘total happiness’ is very much like the way in which the consumer society itself operates. And, whilst there can be no doubting its capitalist character, the consumer society is as unlike earlier forms of capitalist society as Las Vegas is from other systems of buying and selling drinks. Indeed, one would probably be hard pressed to characterize the Las Vegas casinos as simply another system for supplying drinks, on a par with continental European café-bars and British pubs. As we have already had cause to remark, the supplementary dimension of gambling renders the supply of drink a minor (if nonetheless significant) subsystem of a far larger whole. As with Las Vegas, so with the consumer society. Consumption is no longer just one aspect of society amongst others. In a fully fledged consumer society, consumption performs a role that keeps the entire social system ticking over. It is this sense of ‘consumer society’ that is both appealed to and explicated in this book, and from which the understanding of ‘consumption’ it both develops and applies derives. All societies, of course, have seen consumption feature amongst the activities that are necessary to sustain and reproduce them. A consumer society, however, sees this common, everyday activity elevated to new heights. And lest it be thought that this is merely a minor modification to the existing structure of capitalism, it is worth recalling Derrida’s (1973, 89) definition of the ‘strange structure of the supplement’ – which identifies the supplement as ‘a possibility [that] produces that to which it is said to be added on’. The consumer society represents a development the potential for which was there from the very start.

Consumption, theory, postmodernity

‘Many diagnoses of our “postmodern condition” hinge upon debates about consumption’, note Miller and Rose (1997, 1). This connection is, in fact, a source of considerable contention. Thus The Dictionary of Human Geography (Johnston et al., 2000, s.v. ‘consumption, geography of’) berates accounts of consumption that appeal to the postmodern as little more than overblown theoreticism:

In the most apocalyptic of postmodern pronouncements, the chief reason for existence has become consumption; signs of the commodity have become more important than the commodity itself and people have begun to lose their identity in the mêlée of consumption (Baudrillard 1998[a]; Bauman 1993 [sic. – 1996a]; Clarke 1997[a]). But the careful empirical research carried out by geographers over the course of the 1990s (e.g. Miller, Jackson, Thrift, Holbrook and Rowlands 1998) must give considerable pause to this kind of depiction.

This is, sadly, very much a caricature of understandings of consumption that posit a strong connection between the consumer society and postmodernity. It needs to be set against a more accurate depiction.² The very notion of ‘postmodernity’ is, of course, an essentially contested concept. Many faulty conceptions of postmodernity remain in circulation. Little wonder, then, that the notion should so frequently evoke confusion and incredulity. A more adequate account of what the notion entails is therefore of the utmost importance. The way in which postmodernity relates to the consumer society must also be specified, particularly given that an historically naive formulation frequently emerges from the linking of the two concepts. These two issues – the nature of postmodernity itself, and its relation to the consumer society – are closely entwined, but they may be tentatively separated, if only for ease of exposition.

Although the ‘postmodern thesis’ contains what might be regarded as an historical dimension, the issue is rendered infinitely complex by the fact that the postmodern programmatically disrupts the sense of history bequeathed to us by modernity. All too often, however, the term ‘postmodern’ is mistakenly formulated as referring to an historical periodization, to a discrete, diachronic sequence: we were once modern, we are now post-modern. Such an unproblematized notion of historical succession is evident, for instance, in accounts of postmodern society that posit a relatively recent consumerist ‘re-enchantment’ of a ‘disenchanted’ modern world (Firat and Venkatesh 1995; Ritzer 1999). This sense of re-enchantment was, however, intrinsic to modernity (Heelas 1996), and cannot, in and of itself, be seen as marking the irruption of a ‘postmodern era’. In a similar vein, Dear (2000, 140) suggests that one of ‘the most innovative aspects of recent debates on the postmodern condition is the notion that there has been a radical break from past trends in political, economic, and socio-cultural life’. The postmodern is, however, more complex than accounts that appeal to such a ‘radical break’ allow. The postmodern marks, in a very particular sense (which will only finally be pinned down in the final chapter), the end of history, where ‘history’ itself is part and parcel of the modern way of viewing the world. Thus, as Lyotard (1984, 81) insists, to make sense of the notion, the ‘Post modern would have to be understood according to the paradox of the future (post) anterior (modo)’ – it will have been.³ Lyotard’s suggestion involves a complex argument about the processes set in sway by modernity and their unintended consequences. Specifically, it involves a sense in which the modern progression of history works towards its own liquidation, revealing the shape and nature of modernity only in retrospect (the Owl of Minerva’s crepuscular habits being well known). It also amounts, however, to a recognition that the onset of a ‘postmodern condition’ does not entail that modernity is simply done away with or left behind us (as accounts of the ‘radical break’ variety tend to maintain). As Bauman (1993a, 38) puts it, in the midst of postmodernity, modernity ‘remains very much with us and around us – perhaps never more than now, in its posthumous life’.⁴ Or in Kuspit’s (1990, 60) words: ‘the term “postmodern” implies contradiction of the modern without transcendence of it’. Accordingly, perceptions of an ‘apocalyptic’ element to the postmodern – which are invariably invoked to dismiss the notion as far-fetched (Wynne and O’Connor with Phillips 1998) – tend to misspecify entirely the relationship between the postmodern and the modern, not least in assuming a thoroughly conventional understanding of ‘apocalypse’ (Doel and Clarke 1998). The full implications of the sense of ‘postmodernity’ and its connection to the ‘consumer society’ will emerge as the book proceeds. It would be premature to say much more before a fuller account of the consumer society has been provided. Suffice it to say, for the moment, that the conception of the consumer society appealed to by way of the casino analogy has a good deal to do with the notion of postmodern society; but only insofar as this is understood as a kind of ‘decomposition’ of modern society – as its posthumous form.⁵

Even if many commonly peddled versions of postmodernity are indeed misleading, the concern – again voiced in the definition contained in The Dictionary of Human Geography – that ‘postmodernism’ legitimates the latest brand of armchair theorizing, is certainly not disingenuous. Thrift (2000a, 1), for instance, fears that the floodgates to the practice of ‘letting theory outrun the data’ have been opened. The consequences are reputed to be especially dangerous in promoting the unsubstantiated pronouncements of particular theorists. Thus, for Thrift (ibid., 5), too many ‘geographers’ use of theory … remains resolutely eucomistic and representational; and therefore in danger of simply retracing steps already made by others’. The present book, insofar as it follows closely in the footsteps of Baudrillard and Bauman, may well fall foul of Thrift’s objection. There is, however, a questionable logic in Thrift’s assessment, which comes close to suggesting that theory is essentially opposed to data – that theory simply gets in the way. Theory, however, always marks out a path. Attempting to retrace the trails blazed by others, examining the routes followed and the vistas offered, is an established practice not because o...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Consumption
• Part II Consumption and the city
• Part III The consumer society and the postmodern city
• Notes
• Bibliography