Consumption Many Critical Scholars of Consumption Base

Consumption

Many critical scholars of consumption base their ideas on the works of Karl Marx who critiqued consumption in capitalist societies such that under capitalism the marketplace would produce a large quantity and variety of goods and services that would be bought and sold in the marketplace as opposed to being communally available to the very people that were engaged in producing them (Miller, 1987). Marx's term for this was "commodification" (Marx, 1894). Since the very producers (workers) did not own the result of their labor they would have to purchase (consume) the very commodities they produced. Marx also envisioned that goods and services would be treated as if they were living entities, whereas the labor to produce them would be bought and sold as if it was an inanimate component of production (Miller, 1987).

According to critics, the people that own the capital make up the rules and regulations of society (culture). Consumption is an effect of production. There is a division between the location of the actual production of goods and the ideas and ideology (culture) that drives the production. Thus, the people that produce goods and services and also consume them are enslaved by those who own and control capital. The culture of consumption could be a way to refer to the exploitation of the people that produce goods and services by the people that own capital and make up the rules regarding how capital is allotted and goods and services distributed. If one were to combine in Simmel's notion of the definitions of society or culture with the critical notion of consumption we would have something to the effect of that the increase in consumption is another manner whereby workers contribute to the strengthening of capitalism but at the same time increase their own exploitation (Levine, 1971). By using the income gained from sale of labor to produce goods and services the labors purchase these commodified goods and services and bolster the position of the capitalist elite while at the same time weakening their own position. Labor, the real commodity, is an inanimate product, whereas laborers are duped into believing that goods and services are the viable commodities that they must have in order to increase their position in society. However, capitalist owners, who contribute nothing accept illusion, are the only ones to profit.

Cultural anthropological approaches to consumption take a more personalized viewpoint. For instance, Warde (1994) notes the critical approach to consumption fostered by Marx and does not denounce it; however, Warde focuses on the social psychological aspect of consumption and its relation to the self-concept and that notion that people choose their identities. He describes Beck's, Giddens', and Bauman's ideas and concludes consumption matters because it is a form of expressing or finding self-identity as it creates a reflexive self (people becoming agents of their own identity mediated through consumerism), constructs a person's self-narrative, or acts as a form of self identification. However, because consumption as a form of self- identification it the choices to the individual it can be risky. The risk in consumption is the potential for mistakes to be made. On the one hand someone like Bauman would regard this choice as a form of freedom, but Warde compares it to a form of suicide.