Consumption norms and everyday ethics

226 Pages·2014·0.978 MB·English

by  Lena Pellandini Simanyi

Consumption and Public Life
Series Editors: Frank Trentmann and Richard Wilk
Titles include:
Mark Bevir and Frank Trentmann (editors)
GOVERNANCE, CITIZENS AND CONSUMERS
Agency and Resistance in Contemporary Politics
Magnus Boström and Mikael Klintman
ECO-STANDARDS, PRODUCT LABELLING AND GREEN CONSUMERISM
Jacqueline Botterill
CONSUMER CULTURE AND PERSONAL FINANCE
Money Goes to Market
Daniel Thomas Cook (editor)
LIVED EXPERIENCES OF PUBLIC CONSUMPTION
Encounters with Value in Marketplaces on Five Continents
Nick Couldry, Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham
MEDIA CONSUMPTION AND PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
Beyond the Presumption of Attention
Anne Cronin
ADVERTISING, COMMERCIAL SPACES AND THE URBAN
Jim Davies
THE EUROPEAN CONSUMER CITIZEN IN LAW AND POLICY
Jos Gamble
MULTINATIONAL RETAILERS AND CONSUMERS IN CHINA
Transferring Organizational Practices from the United Kingdom and Japan
Stephen Kline
GLOBESITY, FOOD MARKETING AND FAMILY LIFESTYLES
Eleftheria Lekakis
COFFEE ACTIVISM AND THE POLITICS OF FAIR TRADE AND ETHICAL
CONSUMPTION IN THE GLOBAL NORTH
Political Consumerism and Cultural Citizenship
Nick Osbaldiston
CULTURE OF THE SLOW
Social Deceleration in an Accelerated World
Léna Pellandini-Simányi
CONSUMPTION NORMS AND EVERYDAY ETHICS
Amy E. Randall
THE SOVIET DREAM WORLD OF RETAIL TRADE AND CONSUMPTION
IN THE 1930s
Roberta Sassatelli
FITNESS CULTURE
Gyms and the Commercialisation of Discipline and Fun
Kate Soper, Martin Ryle and Lyn Thomas (editors)
THE POLITICS AND PLEASURES OF SHOPPING DIFFERENTLY
Better than Shopping
Kate Soper and Frank Trentmann (editors)
CITIZENSHIP AND CONSUMPTION
Yolande Strengers
SMART ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
Smart Utopia?
Lyn Thomas (editor)
RELIGION, CONSUMERISM AND SUSTAINABILITY
Paradise Lost?
Harold Wilhite
CONSUMPTION AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF EVERYDAY LIFE
A View from South India
Consumption and Public Life
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Consumption Norms and
Everyday Ethics
Léna Pellandini- S imányi
Department of Media and Communication, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary
© Léna Pellandini- Simányi 2014
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First published 2014 by
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
1 Introduction 1
Varieties of consumption norms 2
Moralizing consumption 5
Consumption moving to center stage 7
Why everyday consumption norms
have been ignored 9
Acknowledging the normative concerns
of everyday consumption 12
Chapter outline 17
2 Understanding Consumption Norms 19
What are consumption norms? 19
What are consumption norms about? 21
Consumption norms and cosmologies 35
3 Explaining Consumption Norms 51
Consumption norms as cultural resources 52
Supply- s ide explanations 53
The demand side of consumption norms 69
Conclusion 81
4 Consumption Norms as Practical Ethics 83
Practical ethics 84
Subjects developed through objects 85
Practical cultural repertoires 88
How objects get their ethics 90
Engaging practical ethics 92
5 How Consumption Norms Change 102
Changes over the l ife- course 103
Changes over generations 110
How consumption norms change 134
6 Ethical Consumerism and Everyday Ethics 140
The ethics of ethical consumerism 142
Ethical consumption and ordinary ethics 155
Engaging ethical consumerism 163
v
vi Contents
7 Private Virtues, Public Vices 166
What is wrong with private choice? 167
What is wrong with a single normative principle? 170
A qualified liberal approach 172
Notes 178
Bibliography 191
Index 213
Acknowledgments
This book marks the end of a long journey through which I sought to
understand what appeared to me to be puzzling aspects of consump-
tion. It began in my grandparents’ kitchen, when my grandmother’s
efforts to convince my mother to dress in a more elegant way devel-
oped into a heated debate on what social position our family should
aim for and what a proper woman should look like. It seemed odd that
such a petty issue could bring to the surface deep tensions and gener-
ate intense emotions. The journey led through the Consumer Behavior
and Sociology departments at the Budapest University of Economics,
and subsequently through the Department of Sociology at the London
School of Economics, where I dedicated my PhD research to the topic.
Finally, it led to the writing of this book in which I summarize the
answers I reached on the way. I could not have completed the journey
without the help, feedback and encouragement I received from a num-
ber of people. I would like to thank Don Slater for his support during my
years at LSE and for the discussions through which what first seemed
like an uncrossable jungle of consumption theory gradually turned into
an English landscape garden. While living in London, coffees and din-
ners with Zsófi Barta and talking with Kati St Clair were indispensable.
I thank the participants of the Culture/Society workshop in Budapest,
in particular Zoltán Kacsuk and Gábor Vályi, for their comments, which
helped me make the last stages of the journey. Finally, I am particularly
grateful to my husband, Virgilio, for being a loving companion all the
way and for making sure that I did not settle down on the hospitable
islands of Procrastination, Self- Doubt and Confusion.
vii

1
Introduction
What is the acceptable amount to consume? Who should be entitled to
more and better goods and on what basis? Which goods are appropriate
to consume and which fall into the disapproved category? And more
generally, on what basis should consumption be judged? The answers to
these questions are the very stuff of consumption norms. These norms
have been articulated in very different contexts and forms across time
and space. The religious taboos regulating what is allowed to be eaten,
when, how and by whom; the sumptuary laws defining the kind of
clothes, swords and feasts that are legitimate for certain social groups;
the modern regulation of consumption ranging from Prohibition to
the control over everyday consumption in socialist countries; as well
as the mundane discussions conducted around the dinner table about
what kind of wedding would be appropriate given the family’s social
and financial situation – these are all different versions of consumption
norms.
Consumption norms are articulated at two distinct, yet related levels:
first, in public discourse, including the intellectual moralizing about
consumption, the political debate about the regulation of consumption,
and views promoted by social movements addressing consumption; and
second, at an everyday private level. The moral concerns underpinning
public discourse on consumption have been subject to historical analy-
sis (e.g. Hilton, 2001; Horowitz, 1985) and to the recent discussions
on consumption and citizenship (e.g. Trentmann and Soper, 2008b).
Norms articulated by ordinary people in everyday life, in contrast, lack
systematic analysis. Although a number of works in cultural studies,
consumer behavior and material culture studies argued that consump-
tion choices often express values, identities and cultural categories,
none of the existing literature provides a focused discussion of everyday
1
2 Consumption Norms and Everyday Ethics
consumption norms. As a result, the two levels of consumption norms
are hardly connected; and even when they are, it is limited to identify-
ing values in everyday life that conform to the agendas of intellectual
and political movements.
The aim of this book is, first, to provide a systematic analysis of
everyday consumption norms, by inquiring into what they are about
(Chapter 2), how to explain them (Chapter 3), how they work (Chapter 4)
and how they change (Chapter 5); and second, based on the analysis,
to develop a framework in which the often conflicting moral stances
pertaining to public and private norms can be analyzed (Chapters 6– 7).
This chapter sets up some of the key arguments which will be developed
in the book and provides an introduction to the issues and debates that
have dominated the study of consumption norms.
Varieties of consumption norms
Consumption norms per se have rarely been the core focus of research
or theorizing. Rather, different phenomena that can be classified as
consumption norms have been discussed under different headings –
the anthropological study of consumption taboos, the sociological and
historical work on sumptuary laws and the changing moral discourse
on consumption and luxury –, with little or no relation to each other.
The first, and probably most widely studied, type of consumption
norms are taboos. Taboos are sanctioned by rituals (Buckser, 1997) and
regulate a wide array of practices, ranging from sexual behavior – for
example, the taboo on incest – to mourning customs. Consumption
taboos regulate what can be used, when, by whom and how. For exam-
ple, in China during the Qin and Han times (221 BC– AD 220), taboos
regulated on which day new clothes could be worn ( Tseng- Kuei, 2009);
the taboos of the Huaulu, people living on the island of Seram, in
Indonesia, forbid human clothing to be put on animals (Valeri, 2000);
and in most religions, sacred objects can only be touched by particular
people and seen by outsiders only on special occasions.
Yet the most common consumption taboos are dietary restrictions.
Some of them apply to certain types of food: pork is a general taboo in
Judaism and Islam, beef in Hinduism; meat in general was a taboo
in 7th- century Japan (Cwiertka, 2004) and remains a taboo for Krishna
believers today. Other food taboos regulate who can consume certain
types of food. For example, according to the dietary restriction of the
Lele, people living in Congo, different foods are forbidden for men,
women, adults and children. Flying squirrel can only be eaten by