Being realistic about consumer culture

Being realistic about consumer culture

Oslo Consumption, Capitalism and

Everyday lifeDecember 8-12 2014

Richard WilkIndiana University

Anthropology and Food Studies

Provocation:

Anthropology as a form of radical critique, using cultural contrasts and cultural analysis to make the exotic understandable and to reveal the exotic mystery behind normal everyday life.(making the strange familiar and the familiar strange)

The negative terrain of discipline

• What we do not study can be more informative than comfortable and conventional topics

• Sometimes the hardest thing to see is what is right in front of your face (G. Orwell)

(“Blindingly obvious”D. Miller)

• These zones of willful blindness are always worth investigating (open fields are liberating)

Commercial BreakOff the Edge: Experiments in Cultural Analysis Orvar Löfgren, Richard R. Wilk

B. Ehn, O. Lofgren, R. Wilk Exploring Everyday Life. 2015, Altamira Press.

Some things we have learned to take for granted:

1. Your worth as a human being is measured by status, material culture & salary

2. Lack of things make you an outcast, an unperson: homeless, impoverished, retired

3. Sophistication, experience, cosmopolitanism is a good thing

Are these bourgeois values? Ethnocentric?Ask yourself – why don’t we recommend more TV?

Save food! kill your dogs and cats

A great deal of consumption is industrial and commercial rather than personal.For example, in the USA

about 80% of paper72% of energy 60% of food 96% of water

Are used by industry and Agriculture

Our own consuming, reusing and recycling can make a major difference…

Complexity

Baroque = “eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details“Wikipedia

30-40,000 food products in the average US Supermarket. Thousands of new products a year. Creativity!

True Confessions…

Fun, entertainment, flow, fulfillment, ecstasy, pride, love – we have complicated material relationships.

Colin Campbell finds a form of romance in consumption.

Latour: we are often unsure who is really in charge of this romance!

Fun, entertainment,Identity, tribal solidarity

80 HP Bass boat, 4-wheel drive “Coal Blower” Dooly, 4 dirt bikes, 2 ORVs, 2 riding mowers, snow blower, leaf-blower, roto-tiller, 2 Jet Skis, 2 cars, weed-whacker, camping trailer

Not nutrition,Nutri-tainment

A branch of the entertainment industry

ParasitismStrangler Fig, Ficus watkinsiana

Positive human social relationships, emotions, and practices are commoditized

• Gender• Age• Learning• Love• Gifting• Sexuality• Travel• Food production• Expressive art

http://www.jeongmeeyoon.com/

Exploiting and exaggerating gender differences

Gender & Age

Sports water bottle holders

Blue, “boys” Sparkletts Sport Jr. water

PRODUCT SEGMENTATION

Contradictions that feed increased consumption

Global and Local

What is truly global is the opposition between local and global, and the commoditization of both.

Many religions prescribe periods of fasting followed by indulgence, carnival, bacchanal.Sacrifice is closely linked to consumption in general, and it is often followed with a treat. Sacrifice makes virtue out of consumption (D. Miller, A Theory of Shopping)

Nichter, M. and Nichter, M. (1991) Hype and Weight. Medical Anthropology 13, pp. 249-284.

Work Break Work

Morning Lunchbreak Afternoon

Workday Evening Rest Workday

Workweek Weekend Workweek

Working months Holiday Working months

Youth Working Life Retirement

Shakers, Owenites, Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites and other utopian agrarian communalists – shared similar beliefs about the importance of self-

sufficiency, cooperation instead of competition, and the corruption of the values of the

marketplace

What about utopian alternative consumption? Could it also be part of more consumption?

Horace Fletcher,Rev. Sylvester GrahamDr. John Harvey Kellogg

Temperance, VegetarianThorough masticationBland unspiced cookingWhole grainsUnmixed plates

= less carnal passion= fighting the scourge of masturbation= better health

Global Warmer of the Year Award?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KSryJXDpZo