Consumerism pervades modern culture and shapes our identities. It is historically unusual but ubiquitous. Consumerism operates through various ideologies like conferring freedom of choice, stimulating economic growth, and replacing political provision with marketplace satisfaction of needs. Advertising plays a key role in constructing commodity signs and fetishism by using symbolic, indexical and iconic signs to interpellate consumers and promise identities through consumption of glamorous, nostalgic futures. It appropriates notions like nation, family, feminism and exoticism to sell products.

1. CONSUMPTION, CONSUMERISM, &
CONTEMPORARY CULTURES
Consumption, Consumerism, & Contemporary Cultures
18th September 2019
AMERTA CLASS, FISIP UNAIR
Prof. Rachmah Ida
Rachmah@gmail.com
Muhammad Saud
Muhhammad.saud@gmail.com

2. - Ours is a consumer culture.
- Consumerism pervades almost everything we do, every act of ‘identity
construction’ we participate in, and every interpersonal relationship we
conduct.
- We don’t think about how historically strange consumerism is because we live
and breathe it ‘24/7’
It is all about a world of things to be desired, envied and imagined…. Life as it
“should be”.
It speaks the language of the imagined future - a world that works by
abstraction.

3. WHAT IS CONSUMERISM?
 Consumerism as a moral doctrine -
consumerism could be considered as
our ‘moral responsibility’ to shop.
This shopping, the doctrine goes,
confers choice, freedom, autonomy
and ultimately happiness on the
individual.
What is a consumer society?
A society in which the individual is
surrounded by an enormous
assortment of goods, goods whose
characteristics are changing
constantly.

4. Marxist theory explained that the production
of surplus (goods) gave rise to the need
for workers to be consumers and to spend
large sums of money on mass produced
goods.
This all gives rise to modernity and the
expected lifestyle in our society.
With the recent introduction of e-commerce
and telemarketing, the physical basis of
selling may be going through a major
change, as virtual shopping may make
stores obsolete.
Customized ordering of goods and services
have impacted the manufacturing and
distribution model that has been in place.

5. In the 20th century the
workplace, home and commerce
were increasingly separated.
Women were relegated to the
home (private sphere) while men
were delegated to the public
sphere.
Within the context of the city,
people came to feel the concept
of self and identity were
influenced by the greater group -
and the fact that commodities
gave ‘meaning’ to their lives in
the absence of the once close
knit community and its traditions.

6.  Consumerism as the ‘ideology of
conspicuous consumption’
 this ideology suggests that consumerism
is less about ‘stuff’ for ourselves, and
more about how what we buy confers
identity and social status compared to
other social groups.
 Consumption is about signalling social
status and group membership.
What is consumerism?

7.  Consumerism as economic ideology - an incredibly powerful ‘logic’
post WW2. This argument has it that consumerism is necessary to
stimulate economic production. If people ever felt content with what
they had this would lower production and ‘economic growth’.
 Consumer culture must continually stimulate new desires in
populations whose basic needs are already met.
What is consumerism?

8. Window shopping is one manifestation of this new activity, where the flaneur
flaneuse is one example of the mobile practice of looking in the consumer culture.

9. Associated with this is a belief that everyone was potentially inadequate
and in need of improvement through consumption of goods.
Consumption was seen as a form of leisure and pleasure as well as
therapy.
Even though a global market has come into existence, advertising
remains something that is organized to demographics, age, culture,
gender and class.

10.  Consumerism as political ideology - has largely replaced the idea that politics should
be about the state providing for its people.
Now all the main political parties tell us that a successful political state is one where
people’s needs are satisfied by ‘individual choice’ in the marketplace.
George Bush said this after 9/11 - that it was every American’s patriotic duty to shop
more than ever.
What is consumerism?

11. Commodity culture and commodity fetishism
Commodity self (Stuart Ewen’s) idea that we as subjectivities, are, at least partially, mediated
and constructed through our consumption of commodities.
A commodity becomes part of one’s self identity and helps project one’s self into the world.
(e.g., choice of drink, of automobile, of clothing, of body tattooing, etc)

12. Theorist Michael
Schudson argues that
advertising itself may not
really be so powerful; that
ads function indirectly
and there is a host of
other commercial efforts
that make the commercial
environment work.

14. Marxist theory:
exchange value —what a
particular product costs in given
system of exchange
Use value —refers to a product’s
use in society (what they are
valued for in abstract monetary
terms).
Marxist theory critiques the
emphasis on exchange value -
that is, not what the products are
really worth, but what they are
worth in abstract monetary terms.

15. Commodity fetishism — when products are imbued with cultural meanings quite apart
from specific production conditions and context.
Labor and working conditions must remain invisible to the consumer.
Nike, which originally was promoted as a signifier of female self empowerment.
Then, when it was learned that Indonesian women worked as exploited producers, the
company had to institute some reforms.
Yet the argument goes today that the paltry pay is a huge amount of money in a country
where poverty is the rule, not the exception. Thus, Nike can still argue they are doing a
service by having offshore production plants!

16. Commodity fetishism operates through
reification which asserts that abstract ideas
are real or concrete.
Driving a fancy sports car assigns a symbol
of wealth, carefree-ness, “coolness” to the
owner, or at least the owner thinks they
become so.
Condemnations of consumer society and
commodity culture have proliferated
throughout the 20th century.
The Frankfurt School argued that
commodities were a death knell for
meaningful social interaction - a corruption of
the really valuable aspects of existence.

17. Addressing the consumer
Advertising uses interpellation, the process
by which the consumer recognizes
themselves in the subject position offered
in a product or its advertisement.
Judith Williamson calls this appellation,
where “you,” the individual, are constantly
being addressed in the message.
The Frankfurt School referred to this practice
as pseudoindividuality, an ad’s (false)
promise to produce individuality.
The whole process is one in which we
consume products through commodity signs.

18. Ads create a relationship of
equivalence between a product
and its signifier.
Sometimes they use well known
figures to endorse their product;
sometimes they try to show their
product is unique when there are
in fact, many products like it.
Companies also use
differentiation to show their
product is unique.

19. So ads construct relationships of
equivalence, differentiation and
signification to create commodity
signs.
They operate with a presumption of
relevance that allows them to make
inflated statements about the necessity
of their products.
If photos establish the “truth” of a claim
about a product, they also are a primary
source of fantasy.
Text is used to force the viewer to re-
read the image with a new meaning—
this helps to create the ad’s impact.

20. Advertising designers combine iconic signs—drawings or graphs, indexical
signs - which might appear in photographs, and symbolic signs—in the form of
text or other imagery.
Most ads depend on symbolic and indexical combinations.
The photo is perhaps the strongest sign because it depicts what we accept or
believe to be the ‘real’, and so relays a sense of ‘authenticity’.

21. Glamour is the state of being
envied (John Berger).
Envy and nostalgia are also
combined to engage the consumer.
The irony is that ads sell an
unattainable highly constructed
world that promises to be an
attainable ideal.
And as John Berger states - it is a
world always situated in the future.

22. Advertising uses the idea of our
desire to return to a nostalgic
state (perhaps of innocence?)
and our knowledge that we
suffer from a “lack” which
remains unfulfilled…
Some ad campaigns
intentionally try to create a
connection between a product
and a symbol of the past.

23. Other ads sell concepts of the nation and the family as norms.
There is also a tendency to promise “membership” like an exclusive club to interpellate all
consumers as potential members of a class regardless of their actual class status.
http://www.abouttheimage.com/2878/visual_case_study_american_express_are_you_a_cardmember_
campaign/author24

24. The use of races other
than white promise exotic-
ness/multiculturalism to a
product.
Consuming otherness is
central to commodity
culture in the global era.

25. Or advertisers might co-
opt contemporary values
of feminism (self-control,
empowerment, and self
realization) to appeal to
female consumers who
identify with those values.
Thus important political
principles become part of
the act of selling.