CONSUMPTION

Interest in consumption predates anthropology. Little theoretical elaboration on consumption per se in contrast with production and exchange- material culture anthropology- commodities have had little consequence in anthropology Maussian tradition: distinction between gifts (inalienable items creating social connections) and commodities (alienable items, impersonal exchange). Commodities in this tradition therefore are not viewed as productive of social relations and have no relevance to anthropology. Miller (1987): as long as anthropology remained interested in non-capitalist non industrial small societies, significance of goods has been sidelined. Early Marxist anthropology (50 and 60s): with notable exceptions did not focus on consumption either. Wolf: production is fundamental to identify social formation. Consumption is only explored negatively as a capitalist trait perpetuating the subordination of the proletariat- commodity-fetishism. For Marx: true value of object is within social labour of production. Under capitalism commodity is purchased with money and becomes fetishised since commodity is seen as possessing the value itself. Thus commodities hide social inequalities of capitalism. Consumption from 1970s comes into focus within anthropology as shift of focus to industrial and post-industrial societies (under influence of structuralism and semiotics) Sahlins, Douglas, Bourdieu confronted assumptions within the conception of consumption especially in microeconomics. Consumption until that point entailed free choice of individual in market to maximise needs and desires (utilitarianism according to sahlins and douglas). All three argued that consumption was determined by culture as system of communication rather than free choice. o 1976 Sahlins (la pense bourgeoise): explores symbolic logic organising demand. Thus analyses for instance edibility system in America: gradation from dogs, horses, pigs and cattle in edibility and gradation between cuts of meats from most similar to human to least similar. The whole system is but a metaphor of the prohibition against cannibalism. This (totemic) order is reflected on the social level: marginalised or poorer communities consume the least culturally comestible of the meats whilst more comestible ones are consumed by elite. This is particularly apparent when linked to racial divisions and the coding of poverty through such divisions. For Sahlins therefore the structure of society dominates consumption rather than microeconomic individual taste or ecologist material determinism. o 1979 Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood (The world of goods: towards an anthropology of consumption): commodities are important as they help us make sense of the world. Consumption is in this perspective a ritual which clarifies cultural categories: food consumption is used for instance to divide time and social interaction (inclusion and exclusion) eg of medieval differentiated food restriction and contemporary differences in purchasing ability limiting social mobility. o 1984 Bourdieu (distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste) Taste classifies and it classifies a classifier. Investigates the relationship between two conceptions of class: a) Marxist economic sense, control over means of production,

b) as a lifestyle or Weberian status groups. Relationship between economic and cultural capital. Two orders which influence each other in all aspects of life. Case study of France in 1960s across all aspects of life: he concludes that economic mobility and culture of meritocracy has not translated into real social mobility. Thus economic capital does not necessarily convert into cultural capital. Taste therefore creates social boundaries and is reproduced, regulated and embodied by class habitus. Food is the epitome of this: necessity is prioritised in working class families whereas bourgeoisie makes eating an aesthetic art. Criticism of structuralist approaches to consumption: little space for agency. o Bourdieu somewhat aware of this: habitus therefore shapes individual practices but is also continuously shaped and renewed by these individual practices. Such individual practices however are only mere attempts at converting economic to social capital. Here he draws on Veblen 1899: American 1890s Elite status of nouveau riche reinforced through conspicuous consumption. Sets standard which others attempt to emulate. o 1980s and 1990s actors practices (self reported and observed) are taken more into account in the analysis of consumption, an approach different from structuralists, microeconomists and critical social theorists (such as Adorno and Frankfurt school who saw consumers as passive actors manipulated by commercial institutions). Daniel Miller (1998) or Jonathan Friedman (1994) see individuals as fashioning new meanings over objects of consumption that are not determined by producers. Consumption becomes therefore the central form of creativity in the modern world. This is aptly termed by both as appropriation and reappropriation of goods. For Appadurai (1986) and Kopytoff also discuss the goods in terms of their biographies. Kopytoff: goods become individualised through consumption. Friedman (1994): consumption is a project of self-definition or identity. Although goods may be more or less uniform but cultural differences produce differential motivations in the usage of goods, a process he calls a local orchestration of global dependency. Case study of Congo and beauty cults of the Sapeur: young men consume latest expensive parisian tastes for the purpose of local social prestige (no financial gain) and establish their own identity through this ritual. Daniel Miller (1998) Ethnography in London. For him, consumption is not about self-identity but rather about constructing the other in relation to oneself. Eg: housewives pattern of consumption (and non-consumption) reflects their perception of the desires of others in particular husbands and children. Shopping becomes an act of love and thrift. Furthermore general discourse of shopping is similar to popular media: it is a materialist and selfish, self-indulgent form of pleasure. Contrast between discourse and practices. Shopping is a ritual sacrifice which transforms material goods into social reproduction. This occurs in three stages: discourse of shopping described above, practices of shopping itself (discourse of excess is negated and the practice is in fact an exercise in thrift which is valued), dissemination of goods in the home (redirected from the sacred ritual sacrifice of shopping to the profanities of sociality). In effect, shopping is not as discourse

maintains about fulfilling necessities but rather about re-establishing social bonds. He therefore claims that within consumer societies, alienable goods come to occupy the same space that alienable goods occupy in other societies: that of creating socialities. Relationship between consumption and production has become blurred. Friedman and Miller advocate analysing consumption separately from production. Marxist approaches take into account a wider political economy. o For instance Ngai Pun (2003) states that consumption must be seen through the lens of state sponsored consumerist ideology which creates consumptive desire, a reaction to earlier politico-social focus on the role of production. This new order leads to renewed exploitation in the lower strata of society. o Others Marxist approaches have highlighted the relationship between production and consumption through enquiring the meaning of specific commodities. Sweetness and power by Sidney Mintz (1985) for example. 1996 William Roseberry on yuppie coffee 1999 Mary Weismantel