Emergence of Consumer Society

Late 19th century

More leisure - Factories Acts - fewer hours, half day Saturday, some
sections of population had increased income. Separation of work and
leisure becoming more institutionalised. Organised sports. Music halls.
Working Mens Clubs.

Early - mid 20th century

Technology and a reduction in quantity of work.
Growth in white collar workers and professionals - better quality of
work, more satisfying.
Increase in domestic consumption - democratisation of consumption, all
groups have more choice.
Commercial domination.
Emergence of youth and ethnic cultures
Economic historians agree that about half the population - not the
poorest and not the wealthiest - enjoyed a substantial rise in their
share of real income during and shortly after the Second World War,
and that their share remained generally stable from then on. This
redistribution to the burgeoning middle class meant an expanded
market for homes, cars, appliances and services - a high
consumption economy. Production of passenger cars rocketed from
2 million in 1946 to 8 million in 1955. (...) Six thousand television
sets were manufactured in 1946 compared to 7 million sets in
1953, by which time two-thirds of American families owned one.
High and frequent consumption was encouraged by the ready
availability of credit. From 1946 to 1958, short-term
consumer credit, most commonly used for buying cars, rose from
$8.4 billion to almost $45 billion. And in 1950 the credit card was
introduced. In less than a quarter of a century the American
economic system had shifted from one based on scarcity and need,
to one based on abundance and desire."
Whiteley, Nigel. "Toward a Throw-Away Culture. Consumerism, 'Style Obsolescence'
and Cultural Theory in the 1950s and 1960s" THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL-10:2 1987
Pierre Bourdieu (1930 - 2002)

People have all their basic needs met and in

order to sustain itself, capitalism had to
create new needs and motivations for
consumption.

Capitalist consumption and production

became less needs based and more
concentrated through symbolic exchange.
 Jean Baudrillard
Needs are constructed, not innate.
Purchases/Objects signify something socially, ie they "say something"
about their users.
Therefore consumption is more important than production
There are four ways of an object obtaining value:
1. The functional value of an object; its instrumental purpose. A pen,
for instance, writes; and a refrigerator cools.
2. The exchange value of an object; its economic value. One pen may
be worth three pencils; and one refrigerator may be worth the salary
earned by three months of work.
3. The symbolic value of an object; a value that a subject assigns to an
object in relation to another subject. A pen might symbolize a student's
school graduation gift or a commencement speaker's gift; or a diamond
may be a symbol of publicly declared marital love.
4. The sign value of an object; its value within a system of objects. A
particular pen may, whilst having no functional benefit, signify prestige
relative to another pen; a diamond ring may have no function at all, but
may confer particular social values, such as taste or class.
 Where status depends on displaying differences, goods
are used to identify a person, to demarcate social
relationships.

Jimmy Choo M&S Dolcis

 Thorstein Veblen The Theory of
the Leisure Class (1899)
Conspicuous consumption - lavish spending on
goods and services that are acquired mainly for the
purpose of displaying income or wealth.
As a means of attaining or maintaining social
status.
Conspicuous leisure.
Through "conspicuous consumption" often came
"conspicuous waste," which Veblen detested. Much
of modern advertising is built upon a Veblenian
notion of consumption.
"The idea that one disposes of artefacts or products before one needs to in order
to buy a more up-to-date or desirable version is at least as old as consumerism
and capitalist society, but it is only in the twentieth century that products
themselves have been designed and manufactured with some form of conscious
style obsolescence."
Whiteley, Nigel. "Toward a Throw-Away Culture. Consumerism, 'Style Obsolescence' and Cultural Theory in the 1950s and
1960s" THE OXFORD ART JOURNAL-10:2 1987
"Although it was a long way from replicating
America's 'high mass-consumption stage' - in
1956 only 8 per cent of homes had
refrigerators, for example - Britain
was becoming decidedly more consumerist
with all that was implied in terms of social
mobility and the social role of objects.
However, the fear was expressed by some
that, not only was Britain importing America's
economic system, but it was also being
overtaken by American culture. Hollywood
films, magazines such as Life and Colliers,
comic books, rock'n'roll music and, following
the commencement of commercial television
in 1955, American television programmes
including 'Dragnet' and 'I Love Lucy' were as
loathed by intellectuals as they were loved by
large sections of the population."
 Commodity Fetishism
Capitalist society wealth presents itself to us as an
immense accumulation of commodities

When we buy products tend not to recognise them as

products of labour.

We neither control the things we produce, nor do we

recognise them as the product of our labour

This Marx refers as commodity fetishism; like gods,

commodities are our creation but appear to us as an
alien force which rules our lives .
 Marx refers as commodity fetishism; like gods,
commodities are our creation but appear to us as an
alien force which rules our lives
 Logic of Capital Pervades the Culture
Industries and the Industrialisation of Culture
Culture industry and has replaced the human
production of artistic and intellectual creativity

Marketplace governs the production of culture

Systematic classification of consumers
Economic profitability determines value
Culture products dominated by their exchange value
 Culture Industry: Standardization
CULTURAL HOMOGENITY..Film, radio and magazines make up a
system which is uniform as whole and in every part. . Adorno and
Horkheimer (1997:120)

PREDICTABILITY. As soon as the film begins, it is quite clear how it

will end, and who will be rewarded punished or forgotten. In light music
[popular music], once the trained ear heard the first note of the hit song, it
can guess what is coming and feel flattered when it does comeThe result
is a constant reproduction of the same (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997:125)

Source: Adorno, T., and Horkheimer, M., (1997); Dialectic Enlightenment,

London:Verso
The triumph of advertising in the culture industry Is that
consumers feel compelled to buy and use its products even though
they see through them
Adorno and Horkheimer
 Function of Commodified Culture

An escape through pure illusion

Amusement under late capitalism is the prolongation of work.
It is sought after as an escape from the mechanised work
process, and to recruit strength in order to be able to cope with it
again.

Industrialized Culture Reproduces Capitalist Relations of Work

(You need to work in order to be able to consume commodified
culture)