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                                   CONSUMERISM

                I shop, therefor I am poster

                                                       Image by Barbara Kruger

We are all consumers of pop culture and the other products that surround pop culture. But consumerISM is a common social disease that entails the endless pursuit of more and more goods, an insatiable need for me. Consumerism often equates ownership of things with identity. This attitude is captured in the once common phrase, "Whoever dies with the most toys wins." Beginning in the 1950s, consumerism was even seen as patriotic act demanding of all citizens. More recently, ethno-consumerism, the market to specific ethnic groups and subculture, and the marketing of ethnic cultures and subcultures, has gained momentum amidst neo-liberal globalization. Pop culture drives consumerism both through straight advertising and through the marketing of consumerist lifestyles in film, TV shows, the Web and other mass media.

And as the Barbara Kruger poster above suggests, under contemporary capitalism, identity itself is increasingly determined by branding ourselves via product brands. By wearing logos on our clothes we turn ourselves into walking advertisements, and shape our sense of self around which brands define us. 

We also teach consumerism from an early age through things like Barbie dolls, with Barbie acting as a model consumer. Consumerism also includes consuming fantasy lifestyles through following celebrities, and through fantasy islands like the "Atlantis" theme park linked below.

Selected Representative Studies of Consumerism

Banet-Weiser, Sarah. Kids Rule! Nickelodean and Consumer Citizenship. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

Barber, Benjamin. "Shrunken Sovereign: Consumerism, Globalization, and American Emptiness." World Affairs Journal (Mar. 2015).

Bauman, Zygmunt Does ethics have a chance in a world of consumers?. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008.

Brody, Yoseph. "Obedience to Corporate-State Authority Makes Consumer Society Increasingly Dangerous in an Era of Climate Change." TruthOut (Sept 23, 2013).

Bronner, Simon J. ed, Consuming Visions: Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920.

Canclini, Nestor Garcia. Consumers and Citizens. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. On the rise of consumerism in Latin America.

Chasin, Alexandar. Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to the Market. NY: Palgrave-MacMilllan, 2000.

Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Knopf, 2003.

Ewen, Stuart. Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976.

——. All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1988.

Ewen, Stuart, and Elizabeth Ewen. Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.

Fox, Richard Wightman, and T. J. Jackson Lears, eds., The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History, 1880-1980. NY: Pantheon, 1983. Classic set of essays.

Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counter-culture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. How consumerism co-opted the radical edge of resistant countercultures, and turned politics into branding.

Heinz, Andrew R. Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity.

Horowitz, Daniel. Anxieties of Affluence: Critiques of American Consumer Culture, 1939-1979. Amherst MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005.

Jacobson, Lisa. Raising Consumers: Children and the American Mass market in the Early Twentieth Century. NY: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Klein, Naomi. No Logo: Taking Aim at Brand Bullies. NY: Vintage, 2010.

Lury, Celia. Consumer Culture. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996.

Matt, Susan J. Keeping up with the Joneses: Envy in American Consumer Society, 1890-1930.  Philadelphia PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. 

Park, Lisa Sun-hee. Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Pendergast, Tom. Creating the Modern Man: American Magazines and Consumer Culture, 1900-1950. Columbia MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000. On the gendering of male consumption.

Pitcher, Ben. Consuming Race. NY: Routledge, 2014. Demonstrates the myriad ways in which race and ethnicity define and are in part defined by consumer choices.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Eight Hours for What We Will”: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920. Beginnings of the process of drawing the working class into consumerism.

Sturken, Marita. Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch and Consumerism from Oklahoma City to Ground Zero. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2007.

Weems, Robert E. Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century.
NY: New York University Press, 1998.

Alternatives to Consumerism Resources

AdBusters  Long a leading advocate of disrupting consumerism.

Consum(er)ium Wiki with hundreds to links to for alternatives to consumerism.

George Carlin on American Consumerism. A different approach to a critique of consumerism (content warning: Mr. Carlin uses all 7 of the words that he famously noted are banned from mainstream television)

Post-consumerism Curing the addiction to things.

Barbie

  • Barbie.com The official site from Mattel Co. is amazingly rich in Barbiana. Try out "I can be..." to find out which Barbie you want to be. I'm holding out for radical acitivist Barbie.
  • Barbie Doll Analysis Essays. From a dubious source -- a term paper "help" site -- but with some interesting introductory essays on the cultural significance of Barbie. Needless to say, do not try submitting these essays in any class. Profs are hip to this now.
  • Barbie Doll Video Playlist. Barbie dolls have been perhaps the most analyzed toy in human history. There is a vast scholarly and popular literature on them/her. This link takes you to a large collection of Barbie doll videos -- analyses, parodies, and commercials that give a sense of how she is being marketed today (including, of course Video Barbie, with a camcorder in her necklace.
  • "Barbie's Hips Don't Lie." An Atlantic article looking at the new line up of diverse body types and skin tones for the iconic doll.
  • "Fifty Years of Barbie." Brief BBC news article tracing Barbie's 50 year career. Weak on analysis but provides some overview of B's enduring legacy.
  • "Fulla, the Veiled Barbie." Analysis of the creation of an Islamic Barbie look-alike doll in black abaya (head to toe covering).

Theme Parks for Kids and Adults