most influentially through “practice theory,” which focuses on how consumption fits into the things we do in our everyday lives (our “practices”). In Warde’s (2017) formulation of the term, practices are the things we say and do, connected through understandings, know-how, descriptions, emotional states, motivations and rules. Practice theory is an attempt to allow for the intentionality and agency of consumers in how they interact with objects. They do so as part of finding meaning, satisfaction and sustenance through their day-to-day practices. At the same time, they do so under rules and constraints put in place partly by commercial interests who want us to buy stuff and partly by groups, organizations and other communities of practice (such as groups of cycling or motoring enthusiasts or gourmet cooks). We consume primarily not as a practice, in Warde’s view, but almost always as part of our other practices – the purposeful, meaningful and expressive (building model trains, playing saxophone) as well as the unconscious everyday (heating our homes or taking a shower).
Practice theory does attend to the presence of commercial interest in the development of practices. But it also tends to reject arguments that are holistic – that connect practices to a set of “unified driving forces across the whole of the institutional complex” (Warde 2017: 170). Warde argues, for example, that, “even though producers try to mould our practices in line with their commercial interests, the practices are not dictated by producers of goods and services but rather directed by the symbolic and practical purposes that people pursue while going about their daily lives” (ibid.: 76–7). And so they are. But these purposes are equally open to conditioning not just by individual businesses who would like you to make Pepsi a part of your practice rather than Coke but by a systemic imperative that you live your life increasingly through the commodities it generates as a means of its self-expansion. It is in our commitment to a holistic explanation, rooted in an overarching, dominant system that governs the way we produce and reproduce our social existence, that our approach here deviates from practice theory, and it is in many ways a return to earlier forms of critique that do not shy from macro-scale analysis.
The commodity forms which, as Warde stresses, have colonized practices have done so as part of a political and cultural push to shape our means of going about our daily lives: to privatize and commodify them. To get at an explanation for consumption, we have to look at want, desire, meaning, purpose, and how these are developed in and through practices; but, in order to connect consumption to political economy, we have to situate this within a system whose logic is independent of these things, and possibly at odds with them.
The Rest of the Book
The rest of the book is dedicated to examining theories about how to interpret the modern world of capitalist commodity consumption. We will start with one consumerist theory that portrays consumption as an individual and beneficial decision. The subsequent chapter will critically evaluate this theory from a political economy perspective, with very different implications for the overall benefits of growing consumption and, therefore, the policy implications to remedy the identified shortcomings. The remaining chapters will examine the implications of individualized consumption for social well-being, for the environment, and for the distribution of power across classes and genders, and then look at the possibility of using consumerism as a political tool.
2An Aspiration for All the World: Championing Individual Freedom of Choice
There is much cause to be grateful that ours is a consumer-oriented society.
(Katona, 1964: 4)
Introduction
You have just bought a fashionable shirt. Examining the many decisions that were made in purchasing that particular item as opposed to its many alternatives provides a useful, intuitive entry point into an analysis of consumption. The first decision might be whether to go out shopping for a shirt in the first place. With the money you spent on clothes you could have engaged in numerous other activities, from buying ice cream to enjoying a movie. Or you could have popped it in your savings account and relaxed in the park. The fact that you have opted for shirt purchasing would suggest that this was a more pressing desire than any of those alternatives.
Once you decided that the best use of your time and money was picking up a much needed top, you could then choose among a wide variety of alternative shirts from an impressive array of different stores or online vendors. In making that choice you would compare a number of different shirts – carefully looking at the cut, colour and fabric to choose the one that made you look your most presentable and feel the most comfortable. Additionally, you would consider how much hard-earned cash you wanted to part with. Was the slightly more flattering fit worth the extra money? In making each of these decisions you were most likely making the choice based on what you preferred. People don’t often choose to go shopping for clothes if they have no food in the fridge. Nor do they usually select a shirt that they think looks terrible on them or is made of a scratchy, uncomfortable fabric. In their purchasing activities, people generally attempt to make choices that benefit them.
This may not seem like a particularly brilliant insight, but, at its core, this is the logic behind a theory that maintains that increasing household consumption should be the primary function of the economy and that, further, individual commodity consumption is the most efficient way to meet people’s wide-ranging needs and desires. This chapter will lay out the intellectual history behind this justification, explore some of its implications, and examine some modifications of this theory that attempt to increase its “realism” while still maintaining its general policy conclusions.
From Classical to Neoclassical Economics: Consumers as Rational Maximizers
Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (Smith [1776] 1976) is often credited with being the first true work in economics, or what he would have called political economy. Smith’s work was revolutionary in many ways, not the least of which was his insistence that consumption should be the primary purpose of production. Before Smith, self-interested consumption was commonly and negatively portrayed as greed, a base sentiment compared to “all the Virtue and Innocence that can be wish’d for in a Golden Age” (Mandeville, 1732). As we saw in chapter 1, certain types of consumption were even outlawed.
However, for Smith, consumption was nothing more than the pursuit of personal satisfaction and well-being (Sassatelli, 2010). Further, for Smith, the most effective manner in which consumption (and thus social welfare) could be maximized was through the invisible hand of the market guiding individual self-interest. For purchasers, this self-interest means getting the best product they can at the lowest cost. For firms, it is selling at the highest price. In this exchange of purchasers searching for bargains and firms searching for profits, a mutually agreeable deal can be struck that benefits both parties. “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages” (Smith, [1776] 1976: 18). Here we see Smith’s transformation of what were previously considered to be vices into, if not quite virtues, at least necessary evils. For Smith, the efficient ability of the invisible hand to provide what society desired was dependent on consumers engaging in self-interested behaviour. The win–win agreement between parties with conflicting goals is possible because of competition. Sellers are likely to provide their customers with quality goods at reasonable prices because they know that unsatisfied buyers can move on to the seller’s competitors.
As was generally true for his fellow classical economists, Smith argued there was a difference between the value at which
