Are you a Consumer or a Commodity?
Or both?
Part of my dissertation reading has been Zygmunt Bauman’s book, Consuming Life, which describes and explores some of the implications of living in a consumerist society.
Bauman very quickly makes the connection from a society oriented around consuming products to a society which also finds itself consuming each other:
[All] people… are enticed, nudged, or forced to promote an attractive and desirable commodity, and so to try as hard as they can, and using the best means at their disposal, to enhance the market value of the goods they sell. And the commodity they are prompted to put on the market, promote and sell is themselves.
They are, simultaneously, promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote.
(Bauman, p6)
The ultimate result of a cultural trend towards consuming products, rather than creating and producing them, is a society transformed into the image of the market. A web of “relational” transactions between “products”, each evaluated based on the principles of cost, supply and demand.
In such a society, the only option is to enter into the marketplace, and thus be forced to promote your own brand, or be forced into isolation.
(Do you know any well-connected, socially active human beings under 50 who aren’t on Facebook?)
Bauman argues that for years humanity has understood itself to exist as the “object” outside of the consumer market – impartial observers able to look in and see the market for what it is. However, we are now able to understand that absolute objectivity is impossible. In order to participate in a consumerist culture, we are unable to remain the “object”, but must resign ourselves to being “subjects” – part of the consumer system itself.
But unfortunately, as Bauman observes, “In the society of consumers no one can become a subject without first turning into a commodity.” (p12)
Do you ever feel like a commodity to be consumed?
- Is life basically just a series of transactions made between people – or is there something deeper happening?
- What ways can you see out of the consumer trap?
- Where’s God in this understanding of how society works?
Please contribute your thoughts by adding a comment, and help critique this understanding of society and culture.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll be exploring more of the implications of a consumerist culture and begin to trace some possible ways out, drawing links between the sociology and the theology.
