The World of Goods: Toward an Anthropology of Consumption

The World of Goods: Toward an Anthropology of Consumption (1996 [1979])
By Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood

Synopsis: This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between economics and anthropology by arguing that the "idea of consumption itself has to be set back into the social process, not merely looked upon as a result or objective of work" (viii). This is a critique of materialist views, and takes a very anthropological approach. The book is divided into two parts: Part I: Goods as Info System, and Part II: Implications For Social Policy. The main argument is that goods are primarily a function of social relations, and are markers of rational categories. Goods are part of a live information system, hence our ability to access and produce "information" is key. Consumption decisions define our culture, and commodities are nonverbal mediums for the human creative faculty. Goods are the visible part of culture, and there will indeed always be luxuries as rank will always be marked. Basically, though, argues that goods are a type of social communication, and are the medium through which social relations are carried out. This book tries to distance itself from the theories of moralists who say "stuff" is universally bad.

Interacts With:

Any book that views consumption and material culture as a social phenomenon full of meaning and identity construction: Meaning of Things,
This point of view is interesting, but in some ways it can come off as a bit too apologetic about/corrective of consumer culture. They sell goods and things as vital elements of identity and social connection, yet what about the very real moral, ethical, and environmental concerns that are connected to excessive consumption - can these really be avoided? It's hard to argue with something that they argue is vital to our very sense of humanity, but there is something a bit sick about people who place such a strong emphasis on construction of self and of status via things. In some cases, I think you can and should judge such excessiveness.

The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self

The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (1981)
By Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton

Synopsis: This book is an empirical analysis of the interaction of persons and objects, which seeks to understand "how and why people in contemporary urban American relate to things in their immediate environments" (x). It also seeks to investigate the "role of objects in people's definition of who they are" (x). The methodology of this book stands out as it is a social science study done as a kind of ethnography, relying on interviews and questionnaires of family members living in Chicago. However, the book is mostly centered on theoretical and hypothetical ventures as opposed to detailed discussions of the concrete findings. One of the most striking arguments is that homes/people which lack lots of objects which tie them to other people (i.e. "this is a cup my father made" vs. "this is a comfortable chair") tend to have less ties to communities and less of a connection to causes larger than themselves. Also discovered that "warm" families inspire a sense of purpose and a drive for expertise, whereas "cold" families might leave members focused on themselves and on a search for people who will nurture them. Overall, argues that "things" are embodiments of psychic energy, and the way we equate meaning to that psychic energy relates to how we are connected to others; we have only a finite amount of psychic energy to invest. Bottom Line: "Past memories, present experiences, and future dreams of each person are inextricably linked to the objects that comprise his or her environment" (ix). The authors are also very concerned with the fracturing affect of modernity and the way it has focused so much attention on individuals. The goal should be to reach some kind of larger cosmic connection and to look always for new possibilities and growth.

Interesting Specifics:

Our relationship to objects is part of what makes us human.

"...the potential significance of things is realized in a process of actively cultivating a world of meanings, which both reflect and help create the ultimate goals of one's existence" (xi).

"The condition of community, as Hannah Arendt (1958) has said, is one of plurality, not homogeneity" (11).

"The objects of the household represent, at least potentially, the endogenous being of the owner" (17).

The possession of certain objects seems to also be "an expression of Eros in the broadest sense, a need to demonstrate that one is alive, that one matters, that one makes a difference in the world" (27). [Does this mean that you have no sense of worth if you don't have stuff?]

Durkheim claims that religion originated as a way to explain the mysterious experience of sociability, rather than inexplicable natural phenomena, i.e. the feeling of belongingness made people believe in the existence of a sacred force (33).

Durkheim used term "collective effervescence" to describe the feeling of collective exhilaration that was based on a sum greater than its parts (34).

Agrees with Marx's idea that "humans create their existence primarily through productive efforts" (92).

"For an adult, objects serve the purpose of maintaining the continuity of the self as it expands through time" (100).

Part of maturing is to shift "the center of the self from one's own actions to one's position in a network of enduring relationships" (101).

This book relies on a lot of gender stereotyping - hmm.

"...people who denied meanings to objects also lacked any close network of human relationships" (164).

Interacts With:

Books that deal with the use of objects to construct a sense of self/identity. Is not concerned with social status or class or generic "consumerism," but rather with how objects are embedded with/used to construct meaning.
Goss article
Elvis Culture
American Technological Sublime (discussion of communal experiences or things that bind people together - here through objects, there through amazing feats of technology)

Design in the U.S.A.

Design in the U.S.A. (2005)
By Jeffrey L. Meikle

Synopsis: "The purpose of this book is to trace the history of design in the U.S. as a functional tool, as an economic force, and as the expression of a consumer culture that continues to transform everyday life" (17). It traces the history of U.S. design from 1790-present, and is divided into five sections: 1) The Emergence of the American System, 1790-1860 (increased urbanization at the end of this period; Americans had democratic passion for physical comforts that influenced design; 1853 NY Exhibition showed fanciness that would soon be available to the middle class too); 2) Art and Industry in the Gilded Age, 1860-1918 (rise of visual appearance over touch-based production; increased focus on taste and personal expression; aesthetic vs. moral views of design; Arts and Crafts Movement, 1880s - ); 3) Designing the Machine Age, 1918-1940 (birth of the industrial design profession in 1930s; rise of streamlining = desire for a less complex world; increased mobility and efficiency); 4) High Design vs. Popular Styling, 1940-1965 (rise of functionalism; rise of populuxe; shift from material to immaterial existence); 5) Into the Millennium: Moving Beyond Modernism (fracturing of any single design vision; playful mixing of postmodern style; information age as extension of modernity). Most interesting argument (as this book is more of a survey as opposed to an argument-driven book) is that the increased malleability of everything in the information age (today) and the increased catering to a multitude of subcultures marks the dissolution of the "modernist vision of rational, universal coherence" (210). American design is largely about the massive proliferation of stuff.

Interesting Specifics:

"...The democratic pursuit of happiness was related to an increasing flow of material goods - all of them products of design" (12).

It is said that design imposes order - but whose order, and for what purposes? (15-16)

Catherine Beecher = 1800-78

Transcontinental Railroad Completed = 1869

Model T Ford = 1908

Frederick Taylor = 1856-1915

Ford shuts down River Rouge plant in 1927.

Fiestaware = 1930s

Journal Industrial Design launched in 1954.

1960s = shift from a material to immaterial world (information age - isnt' this also when "postmodernism" began?)

Defines what it means to be a consumer: "how to invest time and energy in shopping, how to gain emotional release by acquiring material things, and how to construct and express personal identity by arranging and displaying possessions" (52).

"Visual appearance...assumed greater economic and cultural significance, as a 'touch-oriented, local world of production' yielded to a 'sight-oriented, broader world of consumption'" (52).

There were two schools of British design philosophy - the aesthetic and the moral - "one advocating design as a source of visual and tactile pleasure, the other as a source of moral reform" (67).

Tiffany lamp craze was in the 1900s.

Arts and Crafts Movement big in 1880s-1900s.

Stickley started making mission style furniture in 1902.

Industrial design profession emerged in the 1930s.

Streamlining "represented a common assumption that society's larger processes had to be rendered smoother, less complex, more frictionless in operation" (125). Also, "its rounded, enclosing forms, particularly when applied to architecture, suggested a need for protection and stability" (125).

Ford Taurus as radical design breakthrough, and car historians regard it as "'the single most important American production design of the 1980s'" (191).

Says Learning from Las Vegas (1972) launched the postmodern movement (192). [Hmm, don't others say it was a little earlier? Maybe it's that these guys were the first to really defend it and make it a "taste of the people" movement to embrace - ]

Grid was the first laptop.

Interacts With:

Rudeness and Civility, Class (any book that deals with middle class obsession with comfort)
Meaning of Things
Land of Desire (focus on the rise of the visual)
Did consumer culture kill Modernism?

Illuminations

Illuminations (1969)
By Walter Benjamin

Synopsis: This book is a series of essays that span about 15 years, and most are reflections on various cultural components or figures, including Baudelaire, Kafka, and Proust. Also includes a chapter on Benjamin's personal library. Book is most focused on the way history, memory, artifacts, and time together. Underlying all his work is the tension of modernity. In his most famous piece here - "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" - Benjamin argues that the shift from art as steeped in ritual and tradition, to art made solely for mechanical reproduction messes-up the concept of authenticity and also messes with the "aura" of the work. Benjamin is fixated on phenomena and "the wonder of appearance," and seems to be amazed by the way memory and history is embodied. There is a strong sense of loss and longing in his writing, and he seems very concerned with the way human relations and the artifacts between humans have been transformed by modernity. The nineteenth century seems to be more of his place than the twentieth.

Interesting Specifics:

Benjamin loved the flaneur; "To endow this crowd with a soul is the very special purpose of the flaneur" (195).

"The presence of the original is the prerequisite to the concept of authenticity" (220).

"All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war" (241)

War is a way to mobilize all technological systems while still maintaining the property system (241).

Jew are forbidden in the Torah from investigating the future [is this why Benjamin is so obsessed with the past?].

Interacts With:

Anything on memory its link to material culture/artifacts
Kitsch: The World of Bad Taste

"Once-Upon-A-Time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America"

"Once-Upon-A-Time in the Commodity World: An Unofficial Guide to Mall of America" (March 1999)
By Jon Goss (from Annals)

Synopsis: Argues that the Mall of America "narrates out collective loss of a natural world of innocence and immanence, and promises restoration in a utopian community of consumption" (45). In fact a sense of loss and longing seems to subconsciously drive a lot of the fantasies found there. Goss spent ten days doing "semiotic reading and participant observation" at the Mall of America, mostly reading the mall as a text. Consumption depends on a faith that the objects possess some kind of power which will then be transfered to the purchaser - i.e. sexual desirability, prestige, status, etc - and this falls in line with the anthro concept of magic systems (56). He finds that the main tropes within the mall are: movement and mobility, memory and magic, nature, primitives, enchantment, and heritage. Says "the commodity is not a souvenir of the real experience of a past or distant reality, but a memento of the retail experience in which its possibility is imagined" (70). "The task is to recognize how the age-old fears of obsolescence - nature dies, children grow up, primitives are 'civilized,' and out heritage is lost - and dreams of immanence, live in the commodity aesthetic, not to eliminate them as so much 'false consciousness,' but to liberate them and live them more fully in really meaningful consumption" (72).

Interesting Specifics:

This article has a great bibliography.

This is one of my favorites - I love it!

Says the contemporary malls are what Foucault calls " 'heterotopias of compensation,' real and discrete 'counter-sites' where multiple images of ideal times and places combine to create an illusion of a world standing outside of everyday life" (45).

Shopping malls are examples of "hypernarrated spaces (Boyer, 1994), providing texts and contents for commemoration through which are narrated the loss and restoration of a thematic meaning" (47). It attempts to unite "individual biography with natural and cultural history" via the commodity (47). [This reminds me of the Buffalo Bill book on Janet's list - that BBWWS was combining personal and historical memory through the experience of the consumer spectacle].

Interacts With:

Jennifer Price (Flight Maps)
Walter Benjamin
Bakhtin's concept of the chronotype - "generic spaciotemporal structures where stories take place" (50)
In its view of objects as things imbided with meaning and embodying a sense of loss, this fits with most of the material culture books on Jeff's list, like The Meaning of Things, and On Longing, etc. Basically anything that looks at objects as having a special almost talisman-esque power that is passed on to its owner/possessor/giver.
This book does not engage with various debates over the artificiality of the mall or consumer culture, or with the hollow shallowness of consumer culture in general. Rather, it is asking us to look deeper into the meaning behind the objects and what kind of need they must represent.
Doesn't like the high culture critique of authentic vs. inauthentic experiences, and feel discussion of that (i.e. consumption as inauthentic) just reproduces the dichotomy what consumption revolves around (49).