Today we had a seminar on consumerism. Since I wasn't present in the past seminar we conviniently recapped over some of the things I had missed:
Freud's theory
That all humans have instinctual desires and 'pleasure principles' and once these are satisfied they become docile. It also states that essentially the world is rational and humans are irrational beings and things like war and conflicts are caused by this incompatibility between humanity and society.
Bernay's theory
That the consumerist system attaches these natural human desires to materials - for example, 'buy this to feel sexy!'. This gives us the idea that our desires will be satisfied if we were to obtain this product.
This sort of attachment of human desires to actions are used almost everywhere - not just in materialistic marketing. Commodities, people, celebrities, and even politicians, for example, use these techniques to gain support of the community by attaching a false notion of desire.
Consumerism was born out of the Mass Production Boom.
It can be argued that consumerist culture started when the rise of mass produced products came into normal circulation - the Fordist mass production of the 1920's.
Fordism, named after Henry Ford, is a notion of a modern economic and social system based on an industrialized and standardized form of mass production.
The Ford Motor Company was one of several hundred small automobile manufacturers that emerged between 1890 and 1910. After five years of producing automobiles, Ford introduced the Model T, which was simple and light, yet sturdy enough to drive on the country's primitive roads.[6]The mass production of this automobile lowered its unit price, making it affordable for the average consumer. Furthermore, Ford substantially increased its workers' wages,[7] in order to combat rampant absenteeism and employee turnover which approached 400% annually, which had the byproduct of giving them the means to become customers. These factors led to massive consumption. In fact, the Model T surpassed all expectations, because it attained a peak of 60% of the automobile output within the United States.[8]
The production system that Ford exemplified involved synchronization, precision, and specialization within a company.[9]
It caused an acceleration of availability of products and commodities. It also meant that:
- There was an increase in disposable income.
- There was an increase in consumption.
- There was an increase in competition between products.
- An emergence of brand culture from this competition.
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We then went through an extract of J Berger's 'Ways of seeing'. This lead to a discussion on consumerist culture and the effect it has on everyday society.
The task set from this session is here.
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