Assume Nothing, Consume Everything
Catherine Tayeh explores the relationship between consumption and democracy.
I ♥ democracy… and whales… and the Obama revolution. We should all buy free range eggs because I ♥ chicken welfare. We should be like Scandinavia and have cafes that sell hash brownies and fair trade chai because I ♥ African orphans. I also ♥ non-colonialist coffee, non-oppressive gelato and alcohol that isn’t tested on animals.
You could argue that fashion has never been more political. But perhaps it is more accurate to say that politics has never been more fashion-conscious.
In recent years, conviction consumption has become a dominant force in world markets. It has been framed by the media and corporate enterprise as a movement towards higher ethical standards and greater social participation. But at the same time, the rise of the democratic dollar has been a reactionary force. Across developed and developing worlds, the growing trend for people to ‘vote with their wallets’ underlines the fact that our existing political structures are manifestly inadequate for addressing these social concerns.
Capitalism itself is not to blame for such superficial contortions of citizenship. The market has merely done what neo-classical economists claim it does best: adapt to meet certain wants and needs. In the case of conviction consumption, it has offered solutions where democratic systems have failed.
The Citizen Consumer
The modern-day debate as to whether consumption can double as a form of civic engagement sources many key ideas from the French Enlightenment. In The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau establishes a framework for analysing modern citizenship. He crucially distinguishes between the ‘general will’ – concerns in the common interest to be acted upon by the state – and the ‘will of all’ – the sum of individual interests. Citizenship thus involves individuals contributing to the general will by looking beyond their own interests and acting for the common good.
“Capitalism itself is not to blame. The market has merely done what neoclassical economists claim it does best.”
Conviction consumption challenges this vision of civic participation. The general will cannot be expressed satisfactorily through the market. This is because of the complexities in rationalising consumer behaviour and the systemic market impediments to genuine participation. Contrasting how conviction consumption operates in first and third world democracies sheds light on such obstacles.
Developed Countries
Thorstein Veblen’s theory of Conspicuous Consumption highlights how, , conviction consumption in the developed world is tempered by the social stratum of the consumer. In his 1899 Theory of the Leisure Class, Veblen argues that people consume not only to maximise their utility, but because they are conscious of others. This means that consumption serves an alternative purpose apart from meeting individual needs: that of exhibiting status.
Within developed countries, so-called ‘socially responsible’ products are considered luxury goods, enabling social demarcation because their considerable mark-up means they are only available to a minority of the population. Though the availability of these products creates the illusion of an active and informed populace, their limited procurement reinforces socio-economic marginalisation, because affluence is a precondition for participation.
The growth of the LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability) consumer in the United States can be interpreted as a direct response to the apparent futility of political involvement, as citizens struggle to gain a secure foothold in the democratic process. The Global Market Information Database estimates that there are no less than 50 million such consumers in the U.S. alone, mainly consisting of young adults who demonstrate a basic awareness of contemporary social issues – such as climate change and sweatshop labour – but still choose to pursue happiness through consumption.
At the same time as consumption choices are politicised by consumers following the examples of Hollywood personalities like Bono and Madonna, the American democratic system is confronting citizen apathy. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, young people aged 18-24 have the lowest voter turnout rate, at 22 per cent in 2006. Ironically, they continue to emphasise the importance of ethical consumption despite lacking economic resources.
In Why Americans Hate Politics, E.J. Dionne identifies the general “unpleasantness” with which Americans regard political involvement. In such an anti-intellectual country, with poor civic education and an increasing mistrust of government, it seems that conviction consumption is providing a means, albeit limited, for a select few to pursue an alternative form of political activity.
Developing Countries
Though conviction consumption in developing countries may also be characterised as a response to democratic inadequacies, it differs from developed countries because the products are intended, and are correspondingly priced, for mass consumption.
In this instance, conviction consumption is a common act that involves sharing political sentiments, rather than providing a means of distinguishing individuals and denoting status. This mode of consumption links people through product symbols and creates a shared sense of political will, even though it finds no voice in existing democratic structures.
The Pepsi-Cola advertising campaign in Brazil during the 1980s highlights how consumption can diffuse political tensions. The slogan “Join the Pepsi Revolution”, and the brand’s association with Western modernity, projected a political message at a time when the Brazilian democratic system was in crisis. Pepsi was elevated to a symbol of political frustration; its wide availability made it consistent with Latin America’s mass-orientated political tradition.
“A new political culture is churning, as rapid capital circulation usurps the slow-moving and bureaucratic democratic process.”
With Brazil under authoritarian rule since 1964, the government, though ostensibly democratic, was heavily criticised for being unresponsive to poor living standards associated with economic downturn. Political parties were weak and fragmented, representing the power of traditional elites, and alienating the majority of constituents from the political system. In these circumstances, consumption of Pepsi enabled the poorly educated, youth-dominated population to express its desire for social change. Conviction consumption provided an outlet for social unease in a space where organised, collective action was difficult and dangerous.
Accordingly, conviction consumption may be considered a response to inadequate democratic systems. Yet reliance on it as a form of citizenship creates further challenges for grassroots political participation because it is inherently superficial and corporate-orientated.
Instant Gratification and the Importance of Image
One of the problems with conviction consumption is that it prioritises market preferences and detracts from involvement in the political domain. Today’s citizen consumer is one who expects not only to be instantly gratified, but to see the results of his or her consumption immediately.
Launched by U2’s Bono and Bobby Shriver, Product (Red) enables consumers to make what they call, a “different kind of fashion statement” by buying (Red) endorsed products. A small percentage from the sale of these up-market goods, associated with Converse, Motorola, GAP and Armani, is then channelled into a global fund that supplies HIV/AIDS victims with anti-retroviral drugs.
Though no one can deny the success of the project, which has raised $47 billion since it was founded, it has perhaps been most successful at framing luxury consumption as an instant solution to global problems. This has drawn people away from political involvement by bombarding the disillusioned with seemingly more effective solutions than those provided by government or international organisations. A new political culture is churning, as rapid capital circulation usurps the slow-moving and bureaucratic democratic process.
Furthermore, as conviction consumption is hugely reliant on image, some causes receive more attention simply because they are more marketable than others. For instance, there is a sizeable disparity between the funding going towards HIV/AIDS in Africa and that directed towards other areas such as Southeast Asia, where poor living standards do not wield enough shock value for consumer interest.
Towards Corporate Empowerment and Market Oppression
Conviction consumption creates a distance from the democratic process, as citizens are more likely to assert their political opinions by preferencing certain goods for reasons of ease and exhibition. As a consequence, they simultaneously empower companies and weaken political structures.
Corporate enterprises are not subject to democratic processes, as managerial hierarchies promote individual rather than consensus-based decision-making. Furthermore, these decisions often evade scrutiny because of weak regulation and the ad-hoc enforcement of corporate accountability. Though purporting to act in the common interest, the provision of ethical goods is merely another market trend that enables companies to differentiate their products. Many have argued that consumers are only a small part of corporate concerns and that stakeholder interests in fact dominate, particularly in the U.S.
The lack of available information surrounding particular goods and their conditions of production means that corporate activity is less transparent, and consequently less accountable to citizens than government bodies. In these circumstances, major companies such as the L’Oréal/Nestlé conglomerate have launched ethical products, incongruous with their dominant practices, but aimed at attracting the conviction consumer. No structures exist to prevent this. So L’Oréal, which allegedly pours acid into the eyes of rabbits, was able to acquire The Body Shop, a brand founded on corporate responsibility and active in the campaign to ban animal testing.
Where to?
At its heart, conviction consumption ultimately confines political activity by regulating the behaviour of citizens through market participation. By indulging in such consumption under the guise of ethics, we conform to modes of participation that are dislocated from democracy and lack tangible political impact. We limit citizenship to demonstrating preferences that are quantitatively measured, rather than feeding back into debate with qualitative ideas.
On the whole, conviction consumption signals the public’s willingness to be politically involved, but it marks a failure of government to become more open to active political involvement. Do we, or our political leaders, believe that democracy is vulnerable to robust mass-participation? If anything, these products show that more people want to incorporate social awareness into their lives. Instead of an incentive for corporate enterprise to develop new ways of tapping into niche markets, our democracies need to meet the challenges of conviction consumers and provide them with the means and the knowledge to be engaged citizens.
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