production practices resulted in serious quality issues for many products. A common practice at the time was to cut bread with sawdust as a cost-saving device. A study published in the medical journal The Lancet found that, in England during the 1850s, all of the bread, all the butter, half of the oatmeal, and just under half of the milk sampled were adulterated (Hobsbawm, 1964: 84–7).
Consumption is determined not only by income but also by prices, which are influenced by the system of production. The price reductions after the 1600s that were so important in the democratization of some long-distance goods – coffee, sugar and tobacco, for example – were the result of the despicable system of slave labour, which had a devastating long-term impact on the African countries from which slaves were captured (Nunn, 2008).
Further, according to the productivists, the desire for consumption is not independent of the process of production. People’s wants and needs do not originate with themselves. Rather, consumers are manipulated into purchases that they would not have desired if not given a nudge by the seller. This is not a new phenomenon. As a widespread activity, advertising appeared in newspapers in the UK as early as the eighteenth century, but it has evolved and been considerably refined over time (Stillerman, 2015). As an article in the Printers’ Ink journal in the 1920s approvingly noted, “advertising helps to keep the masses dissatisfied with their mode of life, discontented with ugly things around them. Satisfied customers are not as profitable as discontented ones” (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2015: 155).
At the turn of the twentieth century, advertising was an unregulated wild west, where fantastical falsehoods were used to lure consumers (Dawson, 2003). This was especially common in health-improving products, which often advertised the curative properties of cocaine, laudanum and alcohol. To take one example, in 1905 Anheuser-Busch advertised Malt-Nutrine as a “scientific preparation of malt and hops” that “your physician will tell you … will aid materially in the digestion and assimilation of food eaten. Dyspeptics, invalids and convalescents especially are benefited” (Figure 1.1).
Figure 1.1 Anheuser-Busch advertisement, from Theatre Magazine, February 1905; www.bonkersinstitute.org/medshow/buschtonic.html
Consumer rebellion against blatantly false claims, and the increased regulatory oversight of advertising that followed, changed the message but not the degree of manipulation, a topic to which we will return throughout the book. To provide just one example of how productivist scholars worry about the impact of more modern advertising, according to economist Juliet Schor’s study of advertising to children at the turn of the 2000s, “by 18 months babies can recognize logos … During their nursery-school years, children will request an average of 25 products a day … children between the ages of six and twelve spend more time shopping than reading, attending youth groups, playing outdoors or spending time in household conversation” (quoted in Paterson, 2017: 211).
Finally, productivists often point out that what at first appear to be decisions around consumption may actually be decisions about production. In the early Industrial Revolution families increased their consumption of tobacco, tea, sugar and candles. This could be interpreted positively, as people having sufficient income for the consumption of life’s little luxuries. Productivists, however, point out that all of these items were crucial to maintain energy and provide light to help poorly nourished workers toil incredibly long hours, many of which, especially for women, were in the home under the “putting-out system” that paid per unit produced (Trentmann, 2016). Some productivists also argue that consumption fills a void in people’s lives created by the current system of production. Workers’ inability to lead fulfilling work lives in the harsh, regimented, top-down control structures of wage labour led to consumption as an alternative sphere in which they could exercise control and express creativity (Bauman, 2008: 59–60). As the “sucker” nickname for consumers implies, it is probably also fair to say that the productivists are more pessimistic and critical of the role of consumption in society than the consumerists.
Consumerists tend to view people as much more “savvy” in their consumption activities. This is not to deny that sellers frequently attempt to influence and manipulate their customers but to stress that the final decision in any act of consumption belongs to the consumer. Consumerists point to the fact that people consume in order to express their “own sense of identity” (Paterson, 2017: 143) through assemblages of commodities, cannily providing for their families, liberating themselves through transgressive displays, and engaging as savvy co-producers of brands. James Twitchell (1999), to whose writing we return in chapter 6, was an emblematic celebrant of this turn, casting it as a refreshing step away from the “scolding” tradition of productivists. Twitchell pointed out that increased consumption had expanded human welfare because it has genuine meaning, as people quest for affiliation, recognition and purpose. The power of the consumer is also shown when multinational firms bend their product offerings to local tastes rather than being able to alter tastes to meet their existing product offerings (Trentmann, 2009: 201–2). An obvious example of this might be that the champions of assembly-line food uniformity, McDonald’s, introduced different menu items tailored for the tastes of different markets, producing the McVeggie in India and, much to the delight of those in the Eastern US, a McLobster during the summer months.
Consumerists also turn the table on the productivists by arguing that many revolutions in business and industry were actually driven by consumer demands. Rather than claiming, as the productivists do, that transformations in industry and trade led to the creation of products that had to find a place in consumer homes, consumerists argue that it was desire for more and novel products that created the impetus for industrialization (Trentmann, 2009: 196). For example, the expanded desire for porcelain, which had spread to the lower aristocracy and growing bourgeoisie, led to new production techniques pioneered by the English company Wedgwood (McKendrick et al., 1982). Many of the innovations in commerce and finance, such as the provision of credit and insurance, which was crucial in the time-consuming and uncertain business of long-distance trade, were caused by the demand for luxury consumption (Sassatelli, 2007: 23). More generally, consumerists argue that modern consumption preceded and provided impetus for the transformation of the economy toward industrial capitalism (Mukerji, 1983; Stillerman, 2015).
The consumerist and productivist positions are very different interpretations of who drives consumption and thus, often, the merits of a consumer society. For consumerists, consumption is driven by our genuine desire to use products in the process of “fashioning who we are” (Trentmann, 2016: 681). Productivists, on the other hand, argue that what we want, and whether we can have it, is driven by producers, creating real questions about whether we are better off at higher levels of consumption. This can sometimes appear a bit like the “chicken vs. egg” debate. Was it consumer demand for luxuries that led to the first long-distance trade, or was it the provision of luxuries from that trade that caused the demand for these products?
As with many of these types of debate, fence-sitters argue for a “multi-causal approach” in which both play a role in the rise of consumption and in driving consumer behaviour (Sassatelli, 2007: 13). This is the space occupied by writers such as Ben Fine, who argues that consumption takes place neither at the behest of a producer wielding the whip hand, nor in a realm of free expression and choice ruled by clear-eyed consumers, but in ways that compromise both. In Fine’s view, while demand for commodified goods such as fashion is indeed generated and manipulated by producers seeking to increase sales, the strategies and successful campaigns to do so are in turn responsive to changing social currents, cultural shifts, and exogenously emergent demands (say, for “sweat-free” clothing or for the promotion of positive body-image) (Fine, 2002).
Contemporary sociology has also tried
