Consumption norms and everyday ethics

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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 Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–403–99983–2 Hardback 978–1–403–99984–9 Paperback (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Consumption Norms and Everyday Ethics Léna Pellandini-Simányi

Department of Media and Communication, Eötvös Loránd University, Hungary

© Léna Pellandini-Simányi 2014 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–02249–3 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.

Contents vii

Acknowledgments 1 Introduction Varieties of consumption norms Moralizing consumption Consumption moving to center stage Why everyday consumption norms have been ignored Acknowledging the normative concerns of everyday consumption Chapter outline

1 2 5 7

12 17

2 Understanding Consumption Norms What are consumption norms? What are consumption norms about? Consumption norms and cosmologies

19 19 21 35

3 Explaining Consumption Norms Consumption norms as cultural resources Supply-side explanations The demand side of consumption norms Conclusion

51 52 53 69 81

4 Consumption Norms as Practical Ethics Practical ethics Subjects developed through objects Practical cultural repertoires How objects get their ethics Engaging practical ethics

83 84 85 88 90 92

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5 How Consumption Norms Change Changes over the life-course Changes over generations How consumption norms change

102 103 110 134

6 Ethical Consumerism and Everyday Ethics The ethics of ethical consumerism Ethical consumption and ordinary ethics Engaging ethical consumerism

140 142 155 163

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Contents

7 Private Virtues, Public Vices What is wrong with private choice? What is wrong with a single normative principle? A qualified liberal approach

166 167 170 172

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 consumption. It began in my grandparents’ kitchen, when my grandmother’s efforts to convince my mother to dress in a more elegant way developed 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 generate 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 number 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 dinners 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.

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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 analysis (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 consumption choices often express values, identities and cultural categories, none of the existing literature provides a focused discussion of everyday 1

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consumption norms. As a result, the two levels of consumption norms are hardly connected; and even when they are, it is limited to identifying 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 example, 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

Introduction 3

children, whereas they are not appropriate for adults (Douglas, 2002). Another set of food taboos differentiate along occasion. Taboos of the Zuni, a native American tribe, forbade eating meat during the first four days of the winter solstice and for four days following a death (Bunzel, 1929); whereas in the religious fasting periods in Judaism, Islam and Christianity, restrictions apply to solid food and drinks. Consumption norms can also take the form of legal regulation. From ancient to early modern times, sumptuary laws regulated what and how much can be consumed by different social groups in nearly all countries of Europe, in China (Shish, 1972), Japan (Totman, 1993), Iran and other Asian countries. For example, in Ancient Rome the lex Oppia – in force from 215 BC – forbade women to possess more than half an ounce of gold, and laws regulated the maximum amount that could be spent on a feast per year, including the value of the silverware and wine that could be served (Berry, 1994, pp. 76–7). English sumptuary laws from the 14th–17th century regulated consumption by ‘estate’ and gender, defining in detail the apparel that could be worn by men and women of different social ranks. For example, purple and gold could only be worn by the royal family; velvet only by barons or above; hats only by knights or above and so on. Other laws limited the use of foreign materials or even foreign designs (Hunt, 1996b, p.  238). In Japan, sumptuary laws passed in 1649 forbade merchants to decorate their houses with gold or silver trimming or to have gold or silver clasps on tobacco pouches (Slade, 2009). Under the Ancien Régime, laws prohibited men from dressing up as women (Muchembled, 2012). Modern states have also regulated consumption and continue to do so today. In the United States lotteries were prohibited in the 1830s, and alcohol prohibition was extended to the whole country in 1919 (Cross, 2001). In socialist Hungary, possession of foreign currency, gold, and second homes were regulated by law (Hammer and Dessewffy, 1997; Vörös, 1997). Contemporary legal regulation on drugs or the laws that forbid people under the age of 18 or 21 years to buy alcohol and tobacco are also versions of consumption norms codified by law, constituting modern forms of sumptuary legislation. However, not all consumption norms are codified in religious taboos and secular laws. Social movements, various organizations, intellectuals and even the state express abundant criticism or encouragement of certain consumption practices on normative grounds, without codifying these in an explicit form (Berg and Eger, 2003; Wilk, 2001). Practices classified as luxury had already raised moral concerns in ancient times, as they were seen as threats to social and moral order, as

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well as impediments to reason and virtue (Appelby, 2001; Berry, 1994; Sekora, 1977). Schama (1987), in his analysis of 17th-century Dutch culture, considers the ‘anxieties of superabundance’ (p. xi)  – the fear that excessive consumption may have destructive consequences  – so characteristic that he entitled his book ‘The Embarrassment of the Riches’. Appelby (2001) and Hilton (2001) show the ways in which consumption was judged negatively from the 17th century in England, whereas Horowitz (1985, 2004) follows the ‘anxieties of affluence’ in the United States from 1875 in two subsequent books. Criticism of conspicuous consumption associated with the nouveaux riches, and worries over materialism voiced by various intellectuals, are contemporary versions of these discourses. Although these discourses often seem to criticize consumption as such, on closer look their focus turns out to be on specific practices, by specific groups (Wilk, 2001), hence they can also be seen as articulating specific consumption norms. Similarly, the consumption norms advocated by social movements promoting green, national and fair trade consumption, and government campaigns to encourage citizens to conform to consumption norms required by the ideal of the patriotic, socialist or modern citizen (Berghoff, 2001; Garon, 1997; Gerth, 2008; Trentmann, 2006b) are other examples of noncodified consumption norms. Finally, consumption norms are prevalent in everyday life. They are present in parental advice discouraging the teenage son from wearing torn jeans, in dinner-table discussions of the pretentions of the nouveaux riches, and in chats over the neighbor’s egoistic purchases. Often, everyday consumption norms are not even articulated but guide practices through an unreflected sense of what is normal, decent or appropriate to do (Bourdieu, 1977; Shove, 2003). Shove (2003) uses the term ‘perfect injunction’ to refer to these type of actions that people consider as having to be done without ‘further thought or reflection’ (p. 161), and suggests, following Giddens, that most ‘social norms and conventions are … sustained and recreated through practices like these’ (p. 161). The division line between religious and legal regulation just like the line dividing the noncodified consumption norms of public discourse from those guiding everyday life is often fuzzy. Sumptuary laws that belong to legal regulation were read out from church pulpits and enforced by ecclesial courts (Muzzarelli, 2009; Sekora, 1977; Slater, 1997a). Often, consumption norms proposed by social movements later became codified by law, as was the case with Prohibition (Cross, 2001; Hunt, 1996b). Further, everyday norms may initiate, incorporate,

Introduction 5

rework, contest or even ignore public norms, taboos and regulations (see Chapters 2–5). The above list of consumption norms could be further refined and extended. The aim here, however, is not so much to cover all varieties of consumption norms; rather to suggest that seemingly disparate fields are variations of the same phenomenon. This point is far from self-evident. Early anthropological theories suggested that taboos are superstitions that are exclusive to ‘primitive’ cultures, and hence have no equivalent in the advanced and rational West (Douglas, 2002). Similarly, sumptuary legislation was long considered an ‘immature or unsophisticated stage of legal development’ (Hunt, 1996a, p.  410), an isolated premodern curiosity that was doomed to fail and perish with the advent of modernity.1 Differences in grounding and context of consumption norms undoubtedly exist. Yet what is even more striking is not their differences but their similarities and the persistence of normative stances to consumption across time and space.

Moralizing consumption What makes consumption attract so intense moralizing? What is the reason behind the existence of consumption norms? One might be tempted to think that there is something intrinsically evil in consumption, and this immanent fear surrounding the issue takes different forms in different societies. From this point of view, the ritual avoidance of certain foods, the 17th-century Dutch embarrassment over affluence, the repeatedly reinvented criticism of the consumer society and current ecological concerns are seen as culture-specific expressions of the same anxiety. This approach is suggested by Miller, who considers shopping the contemporary equivalent of a ritual sacrifice aimed at removing the evil inherent in consumption: [T]here are many cosmologies and regions of the world where consumption is seen as intrinsically evil and destructive. I have argued that much of the logic of traditional sacrifice and exchange is itself an attempt to avoid these dangerous and immoral consequences of consumption as an act that uses up resources. So the specific concerns fostered by Green consciousness have become wedded to much deeper and long-standing fears about the evils of consumption more generally. Where in other societies aspects of sacrifice and exchange are employed to prevent the realization of these immanent evils of consumption, in our society the practice of consumption is itself

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turned into a three-stage ritual [of shopping] that has the same effect of negating what is seen as destructive nature. (Miller, 2001a, p. 132) This book suggests a different answer. If we look at the content of consumption norms across time and space, we find that through different consumption norms specific ethical issues are articulated.2 First, consumption norms mediate particular normative visions of how to live and who to be. What makes consumption norms a suitable terrain to mediate these questions is the fact that consumption is involved in most human practices; and as such, in the practical realization of nearly all the endeavors that people pursue. This is because ethical visions of how to live do not exist as mere abstractions but they are always intertwined with specific practices. What it means to be a ‘good mother’, for instance, primarily exists in practical responsibilities, actual practices of care. In Chapter 4, this argument will be further refined, and I will propose the notion of practical ethics that suggests that rather than holding abstract ethical ideas of good life which people would ‘express’ in practice, practice is often the primary realm in which ethics exist and are transmitted. For the moment, it suffices to say that many of the everyday ideas of how to live are objectified in practices that have a consumption aspect. This is what enables consumption norms to serve as a terrain through which we negotiate and redefine abstract ethical ideals at a practical, everyday level. For example, the cut of the jacket that a ‘decent man’ should wear can generate heated normative debate because ethical visions of decency are embedded in, and therefore can be negotiated through, the particular practice. Second, consumption norms mediate ideals of justice; that is, principles involving questions of entitlement and the distribution of valued goods. Environmental debates over the fairness of current levels of Western consumption vis-à-vis other countries and future generations or the questions raised over the entitlement of the nouveaux riches to their riches, are just some example of consumption norms where the legitimacy of certain consumption practices is assessed from the point of view of justice. At a more mundane level, the consumption norms articulated in the pub over whether or not a politician should get a state-funded BMW, or the routine norm of serving the father first at the dinner table are similarly mediations of ideas of entitlement and legitimate distribution. In debates on consumption norms, competing ideas of justice, good life and social values clash. The condemnation of the conspicuousness associated with the nouveaux riches, the criticism of materialism, and

Introduction 7

even the mundane norms guiding how tidy a room should be acquire a moral weight because they imply normative views on how people should live and what would constitute a legitimate hierarchy and distribution of goods. These normative questions are the primary stakes of moralizing about consumption: these are the points mediated through consumption norms. In this light, the reason behind the constant moral preoccupation with consumption and the persistence of consumption norms is not so much the intrinsically morally evil status of consumption but its interconnectedness with ethical visions of good life and justice.3

Consumption moving to center stage The point that consumption is intrinsically linked to questions of good life and justice is a general, ahistorical argument that needs some qualifications. Consumption is one of the key fields, even though not the only one, through which these questions can be addressed. In fact, for a long time traditional politics and the realm of work were seen as the primary terrains for their articulation, and it is only in modern consumer societies that consumption has become the key domain through which values are defined and pursued (see, for example, Bauman, 1998, 2001a; Featherstone, 1990b; Giddens, 1991; Slater, 1997a): Consumption and material culture may be central to all human society but only the modern West came to be defined, and indeed define itself, as a consumer culture or consumer society. The underlying claim here is that because of such modernization processes as marketization, the decline of traditional status systems and the rise of cultural and political pluralism, private, market-based choice has become increasingly central to social life. … In a consumer culture, then, key social values, identities and processes are negotiated through the figure of ‘the consumer’ (as opposed to, say, the worker, the citizen or the devotee); central modern values such as freedom, rationality and progress are enacted and assessed through consumerist criteria (range of choice, price calculations and rising affluence, respectively); and the cultural landscape seems to be dominated by commercial signs (advertising, portrayals of ‘lifestyle’ choices through the media, obsessive concern with the changing meanings of things). (Ritzer and Slater, 2001, p. 6) The pessimistic reading of this shift is that the loss of real freedom and the possibility of an authentic self-development in the sphere of

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work and politics are compensated by the false illusions offered by consumption. As people are unable to make choices over the political and economic structures that would make a real difference to their lives, they retreat to the pseudo-freedom of inconsequential choices that they can make in their private life over consumption (Baudrillard, 1998; Bauman, 2001a; Shields, 1992). A more positive reading is that through their consumption choices people are able to influence processes of the political economy, and gain unprecedented power; an argument supported by a growing engagement in citizen issues through consumer movements (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2001; Gulyás, 2008; Micheletti, 2003; Miller, 1995). Captured by Miller’s formulation of ‘consumption as the vanguard of history’ (Miller, 1995, p.  1), consumption appears here as a new, progressive realm where values can be expressed and politics are pursued. In this reading, the change is understood as a move toward a more open and democratic participation: through their consumption choices, ordinary people can directly influence even multinational corporations that they could not otherwise reach through traditional means, such as trade unions or nation–state politics. Although the actual impact of consumer movements is debated (Clarke, 2008), what these accounts suggest is that consumption has acquired an unprecedented centrality in articulating, negotiating and pursuing ethical projects.4 (I will return to these debates in Chapters 6–7.) Despite the emphasis on ordinary people and democratic participation praised by these accounts, in this literature surprisingly little attention has been devoted to understanding what exactly those projects are that ordinary people pursue in their everyday consumption. This is problematic for two reasons. The first is practical: without taking into account the everyday moral concerns we have little hope of understanding how and why consumption norms change, what are the everyday norms that ethical consumption movements – including the environmental movement, fair trade and so forth – have to confront or integrate, and why these movements succeed in certain places while fail in others. The second problem is political. The lack of sustained analysis of everyday moral concerns has led to an approach that acknowledges the morality of everyday concerns and norms as long as they match the norms articulated in public discourse: green consciousness, creative agency or anti-materialism. In other words, the everyday has not been seen as a realm from which alternative, competing, normative visions can potentially emanate but one that needs to conform to norms defined outside it. Any democratic debate on the way people should

Introduction 9

live and on justice needs to take into account the voices of those concerned; yet this position forecloses precisely this option by ignoring the visions of good life and justice that underpin everyday consumption norms. These twin concerns of the practical and political importance of everyday consumption constitute the starting questions of this book.

Why everyday consumption norms have been ignored The negligence of everyday consumption norms, and more generally the reluctance to acknowledge, let alone to study, ethical concerns informing everyday consumption, is not new, and is largely attributable to the theoretical questions in the context of which consumption had been traditionally studied by social sciences. In sociology, the study of consumption had been subsumed to the critique of modernity and capitalism. Modern consumption was seen as emblematic of the negative consequences of these developments and it was identified with status competition, hedonism and materialism, or it was simply pictured as the supplement provided by capitalism for the loss of real freedom. It is not by accident that consumption in this context was depicted as a typically female activity. The female consumer – assumed to be emotional, irrational and susceptible to manipulation – epitomized the duped consumer that this approach critiqued (Slater, 1997a). In this reading, consumers were seen as either manipulated or morally corrupted, hence it is not surprising that the option of investigating their own norms, and the ethical concerns informing them, did not even arise. The analysis was conducted instead from external moral vantage points; consumption, as Miller (2001c) argued, became a terrain where analysts demonstrated their normative stance to the world. This theoretical tradition has been developed in four different, yet interrelated ways. First, theories focusing on materialism assume an immoral, nonreflected, homogeneous, innate drive to consume. In these accounts, any desire to consume – ignoring normative distinctions between different practices  – is seen as a sign of materialism (Ahuvia and Wong, 2002; Belk, 1985; Richins and Dawson, 1992). The implication of this view is that values are only imaginable outside consumption; what is more, that people can only be considered moral agents as long as they enact values that are in opposition to consumption as such. Second, status competition theories assume that people want goods out of the superficial motive of social competition. The key author of this line is Veblen (1924), who argued that goods signal status and

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people desire them because they intend to use them to demonstrate their status or relative success. Competitive motives are sometimes described as innate human characteristics. Other times, as Campbell (1987) points out, they are depicted as social in their origin, yet still seem to apply universally to everybody; a feature that makes them similar to universal innate drives. More recent theories of this line, such as Schor’s (2000) argument on the increased consumerism in the United States, see status competition as resulting from the structural conditions of the labor market, inequality and the application of neo-classical economics. Yet despite the differences in where they locate the origins of status competition, these accounts share the same skepticism over the moral values informing consumption. The third approach, that traditionally saw consumption as a realm opposed to normative concerns, draws on Marx and critical theory. This tradition, unlike the above ones, does not refuse the possibility that goods could be part of an authentic cultural and self-development (Miller, 1987; Slater, 1997a), yet it argues that such a possibility cannot be realized under capitalist relations of production. Goods produced under alienating conditions, purchased through impersonal money relations  – where they appear to have no connection with subjective contents, work relations and practice – result in alienation and dominate rather than express consciousness. As a result, instead of a development of subjects and objects through praxis in full consciousness – captured by the notion of ‘real needs’ and leading to real happiness and freedom  – we pursue false needs that are functional to the interest of the capital. The same underlying assumption can be traced in different theories suggesting a link between capitalist interests on the one hand, and values and identities expressed by commodities on the other. For example, Bauman suggests that contemporary self-expression is limited to the choice between easily updated ‘ready-made identity’ choices manufactured by the market (Bauman, 1988) that do not simply express false values but lose all reference to values (Bauman, 2001b). A similar link is established even more strongly and deterministically by Baudrillard (1983). He argues that goods have lost all relationship with practice and reality; his argument does not stop at alienation but goes on to suggest that objects mask the disappearance of all content, becoming sheer signs that only relate to each other. Objects gain their meaning from their relation to other objects, forming a semiotic system orchestrated according to capitalist interest. This logic dominates society and consciousness, ‘drawing the consumer into a series of more complex

Introduction 11

motivations’, locking people into actions dictated by the ‘calculus of objects’ (Baudrillard, 1998, p. 27). Some of these accounts acknowledge that people experience commodities as conveying certain meanings or even values. Yet these are classified as false and inauthentic; or worse, by finding the false values in consumption, people do not only accept but willingly reproduce the conditions of their own subordination (Marcuse, 1964). Others go further and suggest the disappearance of all norms and values from the realm of consumption, as it allows for the unlimited consumptive desire required by capitalist interest. The distinctive feature of consumer culture, in Bauman’s formulation, ‘is the emancipation of consumption from its past instrumentality that used to draw limits … – setting consumption free from functional bonds and absolving it from the need to justify itself by reference to anything but its own pleasure’ (Bauman, 2001a, pp. 12–14). The fourth position that led to the reluctance to study everyday consumption norms has been developed in detail by Bourdieu (1984) and starts from a different premise. Bourdieu acknowledges the normative distinctions that people make between practices, yet considers these as unconscious competitive strategies to acquire social distinction. He argues that the widely held idea that taste – the ability to make sophisticated normative judgments on consumption practices – being innate is an ideology favoring the dominant classes. Taste in reality is produced by objective social conditions, rather than being a personal choice. The idea of innate taste in contrast posits differences in tastes as if they would reflect individual virtues and shortcomings. This makes social divisions appear as if they would be based on innate personal merit, hence naturalizes and legitimizes social inequalities and domination. (For more details on Bourdieu’s theory, see Chapters 3–4.) This account is akin to the previous one in that people’s own ideas are seen to be formed by and functional to maintaining larger structures of social domination. However, here these objective structures are not exclusively capitalist production relations but different capital compositions. Yet the research implication is similar: taking people’s everyday consumption norms seriously would not only be a methodological mistake but also a contribution to the dominant ideology. These four accounts of consumption put forward both a substantive and a normative claim. Substantively, they see consumption as a uniform practice that conforms to a single immoral motive of materialism, hedonism or competition. Even if consumption norms arise in everyday life, they are functional to these hidden motives, hence they

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are worthless to study in their own right. The normative claim that follows is that as everyday consumption is devoid of any value, normative stances to it can only be formulated by the external analyst. These substantive and normative positions have led to the theoretical and research agenda which ignored the ethical concerns guiding everyday consumption, and consequently consumption norms.

Acknowledging the normative concerns of everyday consumption Criticism of these approaches was developed in cultural studies, consumer behavior, anthropology and material culture studies that argued that consumption is a realm mediating values or ethical concerns. Although the focus of these works was not on consumption norms specifically, the acknowledgment of ethical concerns in mundane consumption opened up the way to the study of consumption norms. These works seemingly suggest the same point: that consumption is a moral activity. Yet what they mean by the moral nature of consumption differs substantially due to the differences in the theoretical traditions in relation to which their arguments have been developed. Cultural studies formulated its stand largely against Marxist claims that saw work as the only possible realm of genuine self-development, and consumption as a false manipulated activity. They used research findings to question the theoretically based pessimistic views on manipulated consumers and inescapable ideologies and revealed the new meanings and values goods take on in different contexts and subcultures. This led to the theory according to which consumers have the power to impose their own creative meanings on commodities, and these meanings can even go against the ones intended by advertisers or common ideas (Fiske, 1989; Hebdige, 1988; Willis, 1990). As Miller points out, this argument often turned into a celebratory account that redeemed consumption as generally ‘good’ rather than generally ‘bad’ (Miller, 1995). However, here consumption was only seen as ‘good’ as long as it proved to be creative and resistant to manipulation (De Certeau, 1984; Fiske, 1989). The problem with this strategy is that it is open only to specific everyday normative stances: to those that conform to creativity and resistance, thereby equating morality with agency. Consequently, despite its seeming opposition to the Marxist account, it works on the basis of a Manichean reversal and leaves the external moral vantage points for assessing the ‘goodness’ of consumption largely unquestioned.

Introduction 13

Consumer behavior scholars argue that consumption is related to moral concerns building on a different intellectual tradition. As a discipline, consumer behavior originates in economics, whose model of human behavior is largely informed by early liberal and utilitarian thought. The founding idea of liberalism is the conceptualization of the human subject as an active, powerful, autonomous agent who is able to judge and develop her (but mainly his) own needs; an ideal which can be traced back to Enlightenment ideas from which liberalism originally emerged (Slater, 1997b). This is why the argument on agency that had to be asserted against Marxism in cultural studies here constituted a starting premise. The other inheritance of economics is the assumption that all choices are motivated by preferences and that people act according to them by the principle of utility maximization. This idea dates back to the ‘felicific calculus’ that Bentham envisaged as the maximization of pleasures and avoidance of pain (Slater and Tonkiss, 2001). Preferences refer to simple liking, or desirability with no normative aspects involved.5 This use is reflected in most consumer behavior studies. Even when the term ‘personal values’ is used, it does not imply a normative aspect, rather a more enduring or more encompassing liking and desirability (Caruana, 2007). For example, Solomon et al. define value as ‘a belief about some desirable end-state that transcends specific situations and guides selection of behaviour’ (Solomon et al., 2006, p. 113), and a widely used definition adopted from Rokeach suggests that a value is ‘an enduring belief that a specific mode of conduct or end-state of existence is personally or socially preferable to an opposite or converse mode of conduct or end-state of existence’ (Rokeach, 1973, p. 5). The problem with this formulation is that values seem to be nothing more than enduring preferences or meta-preferences that underlie more volatile everyday choices, blurring the difference between consumption norms and mere liking. This is why, in actual research, qualities such as ‘customized’ and ‘service’ are listed alongside ‘fairness’ and ‘purism’ (Roland Berger Strategy Consultants, 2009) among personal values even though they have no normative content but simply refer to the preference for personalized products or high-quality service. Despite these conceptual problems, many of the findings in consumer behavior can be reread as evidence of particular sets of ethical concerns, pertaining to different groups and consumption practices. Value research (Gutman, 1982; Rokeach, 1973) revealed links between personal values and products, and studies on brand loyalty suggested that people choose certain brands because the values conveyed by

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them match their own personal values. Lifestyle research – such as the VALS (Values and Lifestyle) and AIOs (Activities, Interests, Opinions) – extends this approach beyond detecting the connection between single goods and single consumer values. These surveys develop relatively homogenous groups of consumers based on a combination of value systems and demographics and link them to product choices (Schiffman and Kanuk, 1991).6 Furthermore, interpretative consumer research using qualitative methods to understand consumers’ own experiences (Thompson et al., 1989) provided evidence of a wide array of values and ethical concerns that consumers express through commodities (Belk, 1988; Fournier, 1998; Holt, 1997), from Harley Davidson riders (Schouten and McAlexander, 1995) to mothers juggling working and maternal roles (Thompson, 1996). The iconic ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 1986 across the United States called the ‘Consumer Behavior Odyssey’ suggested that in contemporary American commodity consumption some goods are treated as sacred (such as flags, the home, collections–etc.), symbolizing values seen as transcendent by the individual and perceived in opposition to profane goods (Belk et al., 1989). Here a clear distinction is drawn between moral concerns and preferences, even though the moral is equated with the sacred, suggesting a rather limited use. The third theoretical line, that was probably the first to address the ethical concerns informing consumption, is anthropology. It did so by extending the standard anthropological point, according to which categories of goods and their exchange relations reflect social relations, from non-Western cultures to modern ones. Mary Douglas, whose work pioneered this extension, argued that in contemporary modern society, just like in traditional societies, goods make visible, accessible and enduring the social, cognitive and moral order of a given culture. Ordinary consumption hence was argued to be inherently moral in the sense that it mediates the shared conceptual categories and moral rules of society (Douglas and Isherwood, 1996). The anthropological  – and archeological  – insights of the mutual correspondence between material culture and social relationships have been developed in different directions by material culture scholars. Daniel Miller extended this point further by connecting the anthropological question on the link between objects and social relations with the argument proposed by cultural studies against the standard sociological depiction of modern consumption as alienated. He suggested that modern mass consumption is a means to appropriate and re-create culture and negotiate social relationships. Unlike Douglas, he argued that

Introduction 15

consumption does not simply reflect static social relations or a cultural system but is a dynamic realm through which people are able to renegotiate social relationships and culture. For him, the moral contents of consumption are part of this everyday culture that is re-created through the appropriation of material culture: ‘people transform resources both purchased through the market and allocated by the council into expressive environments, daily routines and often cosmological ideals: that is, ideas about order, morality and family, and their relationships with wider society’ (Miller, 1987, p. 8). In his later work, Miller developed a somewhat different view on the moral aspects of consumption in dialog with anthropological theories of sacrifice. In his A Theory of Shopping, ordinary shopping is argued to be a moral activity: people are motivated by love and care, as well as by concerns of respectability in their everyday shopping. ‘Love’ here refers to a shared and long-lasting moral idea that is ‘in some sense higher than the mere dictates of instrumentality’ (Miller, 1999, p.  19). What gives love its normative nature here is its connection to transcendence: love is a contemporary version of a religious cosmology. In fact, the central argument of the book is that shopping can be seen as a devotional rite. Miller suggests an analogy between the phases of a religious sacrifice and shopping, and traces the roots of the moral cosmology of contemporary love to devotional rituals. This makes it possible to argue that ‘Shopping so far from being, as it is inevitably portrayed, the essence of ungodliness, becomes as a ritual the vestigial search for a relationship with God’ (1999, p. 150). This argument is narrower than his original theory of consumption, as it limits the scope of moral concerns to those which are related to transcendence; which implies that other moral concerns that equally inform consumption norms, yet bear no relation to religion, are less easily accommodated. These related bodies of research  – in cultural studies, consumer behavior, anthropology, material culture studies and, increasingly, in sociology (Zukin, 2010)  – go against previous negative accounts of consumption both in their factual claims and their normative implications. The factual claim is that consumption practices are often guided by moral concerns, such as egalitarian ethics, care for others or the resistance against capitalism (Gullestad, 1995; Miller, 1995, 2008; Shove et al., 2007; Wilk, 2001). The normative implication, in turn, is that if consumers themselves express moral concerns and apply normative distinctions between practices (Miller, 1995), the superiority of the normative standpoint of the researcher becomes debatable (Miller, 1995, 2001c; Slater and Miller, 2007). These findings raise the question of

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the relationship between everyday moralities and the researcher’s own stance: they suggest that rather than assessing consumption from predefined moral stances, the norms embedded in the practices of everyday life can also be a basis of normative standpoints. This puts into question the strategy, informing most critical accounts, that analyzes consumption through a critical lens from an external moral vantage point. To some extent this skepticism toward external moral vantage points and the dissatisfaction with the arrogance that they imply toward people’s own views is what informs this kind of research in the first place (Slater and Miller, 2007; Trentmann, 2012). In this respect they fit into a broader trend that seeks to develop a bottom-up approach to normative judgment. Captured succinctly by Boltanski and Thévenot’s argument, any social theory that aims to liberate and empower people should not refuse people’s own normative judgments as its starting point but find a way to incorporate them: The main problem of critical sociology is its inability to understand the critical operations undertaken by the actors. A sociology which wants to study the critical operations performed by actors – a sociology of criticism taken as a specific object  – must therefore give up (if only temporarily) the critical stance, in order to recognize the normative principles which underlie the critical activity of ordinary persons. If we want to take seriously the claims of actors when they denounce social injustice, criticize power relationships or unveil their foes’ hidden motives, we must conceive of them as endowed with an ability to differentiate legitimate and illegitimate ways of rendering criticisms and justifications. (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999, p. 364) These considerations lead to a new approach to consumption norms which this book also builds on. The book emphasizes the diversity of competing and conflicting visions of good life and justice underlying consumption norms, be they articulated in public discourse or in everyday life. Furthermore, it argues that normative agendas need to acknowledge and incorporate people’s own sense of good life and justice underlying their consumption norms. This implies that rather than asking whether private consumption is moral or immoral according to the standards formulated in public discourse, we need to recognize the plurality of value-claims informing consumption and inquire into how to resolve conflicts between them in a fair way. This is not to abandon criticism; but to place it on a new plane that focuses on the extent to which conflicting ethical concerns are taken into account in

Introduction 17

a democratic way, rather than taking an unquestioned moral vantage point and criticizing what is assumed to be immoral everyday consumption from it.

Chapter outline Chapter 2 develops an interpretative account of consumption norms. Expanding the argument developed in this chapter, according to which consumption norms build on ethical concerns, I  suggest that both public norms  – manifested in intellectual debates, policy and social movements  – and private norms of consumption are based on specific cosmologies. These cosmologies consist first of pragmatic ideas, expectations and practical knowledge of how the world is; and second of normative ideals of how the world should be: ethical ideas that refer to how people should live as well as to justice, the fair distribution of goods and legitimate social hierarchy. In contrast to Chapter 2, which developed an internal, interpretative account, Chapter 3 looks at explanations of consumption norms by external factors, such as the motive to maintain and legitimate power, maximize material well-being or maintain social order. The chapter highlights the problems with general explanations that provide a uniform cause behind all consumption norms and proposes instead an explanation that emphasizes the different degrees of access to the material and cultural resources that norms depend on. Chapter 4 focuses on how everyday consumption norms work and looks at the connection between normative ideas and the actual everyday practices of consumption. The chapter proposes the concept of ‘practical ethics’ which refers to ideals of good life and justice that exist primarily in their material, embodied form rather than as abstract ideals, allowing them to be transmitted and engaged without conscious deliberation. Drawing on practice theory, the chapter suggests that practices carrying practical ethics mediate between cosmologies of different social actors, and serve as key terrains in which shared cosmologies are developed, maintained and modified. Whereas Chapters 1–4 looked at the interpretation, functioning and explanation of consumption norms in an idiosyncratic way, Chapter 5 focuses on the question of how consumption norms change. I look first at why consumption norms change over one’s lifetime, and discuss the role biology, cultural conception of different ages and life-cycle play in the change. The second part, in turn, focuses on why consumption norms change over time from one generation to the other. In this

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part I  look at the main types of factors  – institutional, technological, economic and social  – that have been used to account for changing consumption norms. By using cases when these factors did and did not have an effect, I suggest that they affect consumption norms only if they get incorporated into existing cosmologies; that is, into pragmatic beliefs of how the world is and ethical visions of how it should be. Therefore the effects of these large-scale factors are not uniform but they are adopted, modified or rejected by people depending on existing traditions, worldviews and practices. This explains why in many cases consumption norms have remained relatively stable despite economic, social, institutional, technological and ideological changes. Chapter 6 uses the theoretical framework developed in previous chapters, which explains consumption norms by their underlying cosmologies, to analyze the relationship between norms arising from the concerns of everyday life and the aims set by ethical consumption movements. Building on cases from the United Kingdom, Hungary, Germany and China, among others, the chapter stresses the diversity and cultural embeddedness of the objectives set by ethical consumption movements. It then shows that the norms required by these movements are adopted in everyday practices depending on whether they can be integrated into the ethical visions that inform everyday life. Building on Chapter 6, the last chapter discusses the political implications of the argument developed throughout the book and situates it in relation to ethical consumerist approaches. These approaches suggest that individual consumer choice can become a new realm of politics, through which people are able to address global environmental, social, political and economic problems. This solution, however, as this chapter argues, has two fundamental flaws. First, it frames systemic problems as individual moral failures and hence provides, at best, a partial solution. Second, it puts forward a substantive definition of how people should live, which risks reducing the ethical complexity that is at play in ordinary consumption. The chapter suggests a different approach (which I will call a qualified liberal solution) which promises to overcome these flaws and allows for integrating the conflicting aims of everyday ethics and ethical consumerist aims.

2

Understanding Consumption Norms

Social scientific approaches to studying any given phenomenon are customarily divided into two groups. ‘Emic’, or interpretative approaches, focus on how people experience and make sense of the phenomenon in their own terms, whereas ‘etic’ approaches seek to provide explanations that are external to actors’ interpretations. The present chapter follows an emic approach, focusing on what consumption norms mean to people and what is the internal logic guiding them. Etic approaches, inquiring into how to explain consumption norms, in turn, will be discussed in the next chapter. The argument according to which consumption norms mediate normative visions of good life and conceptions of justice has already been introduced in the previous chapter. This chapter extends this argument into an analytical framework for the interpretative understanding of consumption norms. It argues that consumption norms draw on interconnected sets of normative and pragmatic visions of the world, which I will call cosmologies. The first part of the chapter, after a brief clarification of the concept of consumption norms, explains how consumption norms reflect pragmatic and normative elements; whereas the second part shows how these elements are linked together into a relatively coherent cosmology, using a case drawn from my own study on changing everyday consumption norms in Hungary.1

What are consumption norms? To arrive at a working definition of consumption norms it is useful to define consumption first. Despite being commonly used, what is meant by the term ‘consumption’ is far from clear. Sometimes it denotes the act of purchase, other times it includes the use and the divestment 19

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of goods; often it is equated with material possessions, other times it includes services; some use it to refer to provision mediated by money as opposed to barter, state provision or self-sufficient production, whereas for others it includes all of these forms (e.g. Douglas and Isherwood, 1996; Slater, 1997a). Most critiques of consumption use the term in a limited sense referring to practices that they consider excessive  – the purchase of branded goods, a third car, or a thick golden chain – and leave out purchases that they see as meaningful – books, theater tickets, or a grill for a barbecue with friends – from the definition.2 Campbell’s definition of consumption as ‘selection, purchase, use, maintenance, repair and disposal of any product or service’ (Campbell, 1995, p. 100) is useful in that it extends the concept beyond the mere act of purchase and beyond material goods. Yet it is deficient in that, by specifying ‘purchase’, it assumes acquisition mediated by the market. Market exchange is only one of the possible allocation mechanisms, alongside systems based on reciprocity and redistribution (Polanyi, 1957);3 hence the definition unjustifiably limits the scope of consumption. For example, gifts are acquired via networks of reciprocity; whereas in socialist countries flats, holidays and many scarce goods were mostly distributed by the state, councils and trade unions, based on connections rather than purchasing power. An extended definition of consumption defines it as the acquisition, use and disposal of goods and services, which, by substituting ‘purchase’ with ‘acquisition’, includes all these different ways in which goods can be acquired. Note that this definition includes uses as well, which implies that the line between ‘consumption’ and other activities is not clear-cut. From dining out to reading a book and exploring the world, almost all activities have a consumption aspect, without being about consumption per se. As Warde points out, consumption is not a distinct act but ‘a moment in almost every practice’ (Warde, 2005, p. 137).4 Using this definition of consumption, how can we define consumption norms? Consumption norms in economics refer to the average consumption of a particular good.5 This definition does not distinguish between normative stances to consumption and actual consumption. This is problematic because the two do not always coincide. First, people may hold certain normative views on consumption, yet may be unable to act on them. For example, one may think that wearing a suit would be the appropriate thing to do, yet not be able to afford it. Second, the same consumption can be informed by very different normative stances. For example, vegetarianism can be based on religious norms, the love of animals, or environmental concerns.

Understanding Consumption Norms 21

A more appropriate definition can be arrived at by approaching consumption norms as social norms that ‘prescribe and proscribe behaviour in specific circumstances’ (Hechter and Opp, 2001, p. xi). The key point is that consumption norms are distinguished by their normative aspect from other views on consumption. To clarify the difference, Charles Taylor’s distinction between preferences and ‘strong evaluations’ (Taylor, 1989, p.  20) is particularly helpful. Unlike preferences, strong evaluations are experienced as higher and independent of personal inclination, constituting outer standards by which our very desires can be judged: ‘We sense in the very experience of being moved by some higher good that we are moved by what is good in it rather than that it is valuable because of our reaction’ (1989, p.  74). Applying the distinction to the mundane field of consumption, the difference between consumption norms and preferences becomes clear: choices driven by norms are not simply different but normatively better or worse. For example, my choice of lemon tea over orange tea is motivated by a mere preference if I think that lemon tea is simply tastier but in no respect normatively better than orange tea. In contrast, if my choice of lemon tea over orange tea is motivated by a religious belief that forbids the consumption of orange, or by my awareness of the Fairtrade badge on the lemon tea’s package, it no longer reflects a preference but a strong evaluation as it is judged by a standard outside of my desires. It is in this case that we can talk about consumption norms.

What are consumption norms about? Despite the vast literature on consumption in social sciences, hardly any focus specifically on the interpretative analysis of consumption norms. At the same time, many studies looking at related issues can be usefully reread from the angle of consumption norms and provide a rich resource for such an interpretative analysis. First, historical studies on the moral worries surrounding consumption (e.g. Berg and Eger, 2003; Horowitz, 2004; Hunt, 1996b; Sekora, 1977) and research on consumption policy and regulation (Daunton and Hilton, 2001; Garon, 1997; Hunt, 1996b; Landsman, 2005) give insights into consumption norms in public discourse. These works focus largely on key intellectuals or institutions (policymakers, the Church, regulators, etc.), articulating their views in an explicit form in public documents, such as in newspapers, books, laws and regulations. Second, anthropological, sociological and consumer behavior research, focusing on everyday practices and

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meanings of consumption, discussed in the previous chapter, provide important insights that can be used to understand the moral concerns informing consumption norms in everyday life. The different focus and context of these studies makes it difficult to summarize their ‘findings’ on how exactly people draw the distinction between good and bad consumption. Even those studies whose focus is closer to the question provide little guidance. For example, Livingstone and Lunt’s (1992) research on the everyday understanding of necessities and luxuries was concluded by a rather inexact result that the distinction ‘involves general principles of classification, functional assessment of goods, moral judgments of utility, advisory implications of classification, and pragmatic rules of classification in particular behavioral contexts’ (1992, p. 45). In the following sections I will suggest that despite this variety in the concerns informing consumption norms, these can be usefully grouped into three categories: questions of good life, that is, how to live and who to be; questions of justice, that is, what constitutes a legitimate social hierarchy and, accordingly, a fair distribution of goods; and pragmatic beliefs, referring to descriptive ideas of how the world is, including beliefs about the economy, particular groups and contexts. These are the three issues that consumption norms ‘are about’. In the following sections I look at these issues in detail. Ethical visions As suggested in Chapter 1, consumption norms draw on ethical visions of how people should live: what a normal person, a proper citizen, an ideal family or relationship should be like. What does it mean in practice? Ethical visions of how to live and who to be are more easily identified behind the agendas of appropriate consumption promoted by states, social movements and intellectual debates, as these actors tend to be explicit about their aims, unlike the implicit conceptions guiding most routine consumption norms of everyday life. In socialist Hungary, for instance, consumption norms promoted by the state explicitly drew on an ideal of a true socialist way of life and model socialist citizen. This ethical vision focused on work, culture and community, and was seen as the opposite of the corrupted capitalist way of life, guided, in this view, by materialism and individualism. Furthermore, the ideal socialist citizen was rational and egalitarian, hence preferred functionality to decorated ‘bourgeois’ objects. She – but mainly he – was not supposed to be interested in material accumulation, but gained satisfaction from

Understanding Consumption Norms 23

his or her work and cultural activities (Dombos, 2004; Dombos and Pellandini-Simányi, 2012; Ferge, 1979; Hammer and Dessewffy, 1997; Vörös and Nagy, 1995). This ideal is captured in the Soviet concept of the kulturnost, a ‘cultured way of living’ (Gronow, 2003, p. 147) which involved not only cultural sophistication but also good manners. This ethical vision informed the socialist consumption norms that translated into pricing policies that subsidized books and cinema tickets, five-year production plans of functional furniture and flats, and regulation prohibiting ownership of multiple flats (Ferge, 1979). Similarly, the consumption norms promoted by the consumer movement in postwar Japan also drew on a specific ethical vision of what the ideal Japanese way of life, future, citizen and state would be like. This vision focused on progress and modernity, combined with an emphasis on national identity and civic responsibility, and promoted consumption practices that were seen as matching these ideals (Garon, 1997, 2006; Trentmann, 2012). 19th-century English public discourse provides yet another example, where consumption norms were formulated with reference to the ethical ideal of the ‘control of the liberal self’ promoting ‘types of consumer behaviour that took into account the moral responsibility of the individual to one’s fellow citizens, be it in the realm of wealth creation, distributive justice or the spiritual and aesthetic elements of life’ (Hilton, 2001, p. 119). Even the seeming avoidance of imposing specific consumption norms in contemporary Western liberal discourse can be interpreted as promoting a particular ethical vision of how people should be and live. Roberta Sassatelli (2001) calls this vision ‘tamed hedonism’ (2001, p. 93), by which she refers to the moral classification of consumption as good or bad, corrupting or innocent based on a normative idea of autonomous choice. Autonomous choice means that decisions are to be made freely, with the self-mastering subject in control of the situation, echoing early liberal conceptions of autonomous subjects (Slater, 1997a). The opposite of choice, which denotes bad (corrupting or deviant) consumption, is characterized by the lack of control: excessive and irrational consumption that dominates the self. This classification turns the assumption of consumer sovereignty, held by economics, into a normative ethical vision of what people should be like and how they should act, and formulates the criteria distinguishing ‘good’ from ‘bad’ consumption based on this vision. Ethical visions are equally identifiable behind everyday consumption norms, even though they may not be as explicitly articulated as in public discourse. For example, the consumption norm of thrift among

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North London housewives, according to Miller’s (1999) ethnography, draws on ideals of decency and respectability, whereas the norm that limits self-directed purchases is based on the ethical concerns of love and care for one’s family. Studies on car use (Gullestad, 1995; Miller, 2001d; Sheller, 2004) suggest that one of the considerations that makes cars a legitimate purchase is the fact that they are used as means of maintaining and managing relationships with family members and friends – picking up the kids from school, visiting friends and so on – which are essential parts of the ethical visions of being a good parent and friend. Consumption norms prescribing certain styles and items of clothing, in turn, gain their importance from the ethical vision of dignity and respectability (Bourdieu, 1984; Entwistle, 2000; Gullestad, 1995; Smith, 2002), among other concerns. Economic theories of the homo economicus and postmodern sociological theories of the hedonistic, self-oriented ‘playful identityshopper’ (Falk and Campbell, 1997, p.  7) suggest that these ethical visions are individual in their orientation (Cook, 2008). Although it holds in some cases, most empirical findings suggest that the ethical visions defining who to be and how to live that inform consumption norms are articulated in terms of relationships to other people: family members, peers and others in society. The relational nature of these ethical visions is probably the most evident if we consider the consumption of children and their caretakers. The ethical idea of being a good parent that informs the purchases of the parent for the child is by no means individual, but  – as Daniel Thomas Cook (2008) argues, using Thompson’s (1996) concept of the ‘relational self’ – is defined in terms of interpersonal relationships of care and mutual obligations. He argues that this should not be treated as an exception to an otherwise tenable image of the individualistic model of the homo economicus, but rather to highlight ‘the relational and co-productive nature of acquiring, having and displaying things’ (Cook, 2008, p. 222). Indeed, most, if not all consumption is co-consumption, involving actual or imagined others, and the norms guiding them are informed by relational visions of who to be: a good mother, a loyal friend, or a respectable member of a group. In fact, in many cases the very reason why consumption is subject to moral assessment in everyday life  – as opposed to being treated as a morally neutral preference – is that it concerns relationships that matter hugely to people. Miller’s (1999) study of shopping in London mentioned above, for example, shows that ‘shopping was hardly ever directed towards the person who was doing the shopping’ and it is ‘not therefore best

Understanding Consumption Norms 25

understood as an individualistic or individualizing act related to the subjectivity of the shopper’ (Miller, 1999, p.  12): housewives in the study bought goods primarily with their family members in mind, whereas common purchases by couples served as the terrain to develop their common taste, refine roles in the relationship and shared ideas of how to live. According to Miller, consumption is not simply a way in which people express relationships but is the very terrain through which these relationships are enacted and negotiated. Chin’s (2001) study on children’s consumption in Nashville suggests a similar point. As part of her participant observation, Chin gave $20 to children and found that alongside items for themselves, many of them – especially the girls – bought gifts for their family members and items to be shared with their siblings. As Chin argues, in a similar vein to Miller, Gift-giving was a powerful way for children to strengthen, transform, or maintain relationships with those around them.  … These gifts were an effort to reciprocate with care and caring and at the same time allowed kids to show that they were competent in meting out material resources in ways that served not only material ends, but social ones as well. (Chin, 2001, p. 139) These findings suggest that ethical ideas of who to be are embedded in social relationships rather than being individual, suggesting a ‘relational conception of the self in which one’s sense of personal identity is formed and sustained in relation to the activities and the interpersonal relationships that compose the person’s social network’ (Thompson, 1996, p. 401).6 Pragmatic beliefs So far, I have suggested that consumption norms reflect ethical visions of how to live and who to be. These concerns are crucial, yet not sufficient to understand consumption norms, as they are further informed by a set of non-normative pragmatic beliefs. The same ethical ideas result in very different consumption norms, depending on the pragmatic beliefs they are combined with. For example, in the 1990s many middle-class Brazilians abandoned previous norms of long-term planning that previously characterized their consumption in an effort to maintain a decent middle-class life. Long-term considerations were replaced by ‘immediatism’ (O’Dougherty, 2002, p. 72), a tactic focused on immediate buying once a good offer was found. This change did not stem from a change in ethical ideas of how to live but from the fact that

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rampant inflation required people to adopt new consumption norms in order to maintain previously pursued ethical visions of good life. Pragmatic beliefs are often experienced by people as facts or objectives given, and therefore are referred to as ‘objective conditions’. I use the term ‘pragmatic belief’ instead for two reasons. First, because even ideas that do not fit the concept of objective conditions, such as the faith in supernatural powers, are part of these pragmatic beliefs. For example, the moral worries over 17th-century Dutch material accumulation were partly based on the belief that excessive consumption calls down disaster, attracting the anger of God, resulting in floods that have accompanied Holland’s history (Schama, 1987). Second, and more importantly, I  use the term to indicate that the same objective conditions can be interpreted in many ways, resulting in very different consumption norms. Pragmatic beliefs about the economic conditions have the most immediate impact on consumption norms. These include firstly what economics refers to as ‘expectations’. An increase in available income and goods may or may not result in increased spending, depending on how people interpret the situation. If they think it is a temporary increase, they will refrain from spending and save up for scarcer times, engaging in norms of restraint. Similarly, the drop in price of certain goods – such as flats, or antique furniture – may trigger frenzied sales or frenzied buys depending on whether people understand it as temporary drop – thereby a good opportunity – or a permanent change, indicating that these goods no longer serve as a form of investment. Second, pragmatic beliefs about the economy include general assumptions about how the economy works. A  comparison between the assumption underlying Ancient conceptions and some of our modern ideas provides an example by illuminating the way interpretative frames and expectations play a key role in our understanding of ‘objective conditions’. The consumption norms opposing luxury in Ancient Athens and Rome were informed by a view of the economy that is very different from its mainstream conception today. This view was based on the assumption of limited resources and production opportunities. Consumption was therefore seen as a zero-sum game: for one to consume more, someone else had to consume less. Increasing per capita consumption was hence imaginable only in two ways: either by reducing the population by expatriating people; or by getting goods from somewhere else, through commerce or booty (Finley, 1999).7 This is why one of Socrates’ arguments against luxury, described by Plato in The Republic, was that luxury would require Athens to go to war, as the

Understanding Consumption Norms 27

‘country which was enough to support the original inhabitants will be too small now’ (Plato, 2004, p. 316). This pragmatic belief that the economy cannot grow, and hence ‘a man of quality, by fighting, acquires wealth more honorably and quickly than a meaner man by work’ (Madariaga cited in Hirschman, 1977, p. 7, emphasis in the original) was widely held until the 18th century (Brewer, 1997; Finley, 1999; Hirschman, 1977). The contemporary norm that promotes consumption  – and allows for announcing increasing consumer spending or growing GDP with joy in business reports  – is due to the changes in this pragmatic belief about the economy and resources. According to this new assumption, higher consumption expenditure will result not in war but in the multiplication of growth: more consumption means more demand, which means more jobs, more money and even more consumption to start the virtuous cycle again. This change in views can be traced back to the 18th century (Hirschman, 1977; Perrotta, 2004), when the increasing participation of Western Europe in world trade and more efficient production methods expanded the range of affordable goods to unprecedented levels, resulting in what many commentators consider a consumer revolution (Campbell, 1987; McKendrick, 1982; Thirsk, 1978). David Hume and Adam Smith are often seen as the first authors to put forward an explicit critique of the zero-sum view,8 suggesting that commerce creates synergies that benefit both the exporting and the importing countries, and that import can stimulate internal demand by providing raw materials for new products and introducing new developments (Wennerlind, 2006). These ideas carry an early version of what later became standard economic  – and today common sense  – thinking: that an economy can and should grow and consumption plays an important part in the process. Changes in these pragmatic beliefs are central to understanding why restrictive consumption norms have been eased in recent centuries. Finally, pragmatic beliefs about economic conditions include conceptions of one’s own financial situation. Contrary to standard economic models that assume that ‘disposable income’ or ‘financial constraints’ exercise an automatic unambiguous effect that does not require interpretation, sociological and anthropological work on the uses of money (e.g. Singh, 1997; Zelizer, 1997), and studies on ‘mental accounting’ (Tahler, 1999) in behavioral economics suggest that the very same amount of money is handled differently depending on the meanings people attach to it. People create  – ‘earmark’  – categories; money and monies belonging to the different categories are subject to different spending norms, regulating who can spend it and how. The money set

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aside for the bills is handled differently from the holiday budget and from the money designated to the children’s education (Zelizer, 1997). Interpretation of economic possibilities constitutes a key area of pragmatic beliefs, yet it is not the only one that informs consumption norms. Pragmatic beliefs about particular categories of people, places or occasions are equally important, because they play a key role in defining differential consumption norms applying to these categories. In the next section I turn to these. Differential norms Some of the ethical visions informing consumption norms discussed above are held to be ideals that everyone in every situation should follow. The socialist norm of kulturnost, just like the ideal of the self-ruling subject exercising autonomous choice, is an example of such ideals denoting visions of good life and ideal personhood for everyone in every context. However, other ethical visions  – and, accordingly, consumption norms  – only apply in particular contexts. This phenomenon is well illustrated by a failed interview question in my own research on consumption norms. As part of the interviews, I  asked participants to judge specific consumption practices and consumption styles. One of the cases was a made-up character (G) whom I  described as a painter who spends his or her money on drinking and partying with friends in the evening. The question did not work: most research participants were unable to answer it. They kept asking for more information to be able to judge G’s practices as good or bad. Is G a man or a woman? In the former case, his drinking antics were seen as more acceptable than in the latter. Is G young or old? If G is young, it is a forgivable lapse, whereas in the case of a middle-aged person it is a weakness of character. Is G a creative artist or a house painter? In the former case, intense experiences and a hectic lifestyle may be needed to acquire inspiration, whereas in the latter G is merely an irresponsible drunkard. Is G single or does he or she have a family? If G has kids, his or her behavior is an unacceptable breach of parental duty, whereas for a single person it is forgivable. How wealthy is G? If the money that one drinks away is all that one has, it is reckless behavior, whereas if one has substantial wealth it is merely a caprice. Finally: how did G come about the money he or she spends? It is reckless behavior if G spends his or her daily earnings, and even more reproachable if the expenses are covered by the gradual sale of the family heirlooms. If, however, he is spending his recent lottery gain, his drinking is much less frowned upon.

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The failure of the original question revealed much more about how people draw the line between good and bad consumption than many other questions that worked. It highlighted the fact that the ethical visions that inform consumption norms are most often not held to be universal but apply differently to different categories of people and to different situations. I will now look at these two aspects in turn. Norms pertaining to categories of people Consumption norms apply differently to different categories of people. Big appetite is often seen as praiseworthy in men, but repulsive in women (Delphy, 1984); playing with dolls is considered normal for a child, but weird for an adult; a miniskirt following the latest fashion might be approved for a teenager but critiqued if worn by an elderly person. Categories, furthermore, are cross-cutting: different practices are deemed appropriate for a baby boy than for a baby girl, for an elderly man as opposed to an elderly woman, for a mother as opposed to a father. The reason why the same practice is differently evaluated is that different ethical visions of who to be are posited for different categories of people: the definition of a proper man as opposed to a proper woman, a normal child as opposed to a normal teenager, adult or elderly person. Categories that imply different norms are based firstly on duties and obligations linked to social relations. For example, different norms apply to parents as opposed to childless people because parents are expected to take care of their children. Secondly, categories may also be linked to biological features, such as age or sex. The reasoning behind why different ethical visions should apply to people of different biological categories always involves pragmatic beliefs about inherent differences between these categories; in these cases, beliefs about how women/men, children/adults really are. However, the categories that have been deemed relevant – as well as the pragmatic beliefs attached to them and the normative visions that people occupying them were expected to meet – have changed over time and vary across space, which suggests that cultural conceptions, rather than inherent differences, play a key role in defining these categories and associating particular features with them. In other words, these categories do not ‘naturally’ denote different ethical visions and corresponding consumption norms that their occupants have to meet but do so only by virtue of the contingent, cultural beliefs that are attached to them and posit them as different. Categorizations and the pragmatic beliefs underlying them often involve hierarchical relations between people belonging to the different

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categories. Among public norms, sumptuary laws regulating consumption according to gender and social position are obvious examples. In Ancient Athens, for instance, these consumption norms drew on the then prevailing view that people are born with different abilities which predestine them for different roles, higher and lower activities in society. The hierarchy of social groups9 with different rights was seen as natural, a system originating in nature and reflecting the proper order of the cosmos. It was considered to be in the polis’ and everybody’s best interest for the individuals to stick to their natural place (Berry, 1994). The sumptuary laws regulating women are particularly illustrative of this connection between views of innate nature, just hierarchy and consumption norms. Women were held to be ruled by their body, hence unable to control their emotions, incapable of enduring pain (Berry, 1994; Carson, 1994). These ideas formed part of broader dichotomies in which women were associated with the body versus the mind, with matter versus form and with nature versus civilization; a system of thought whose legacy is still felt even today (Butler, 1993). Since women were seen as inherently irrational, emotional and unable to rule themselves, as Aristotle famously argued, it was the natural order of things that the male head of the family should exercise control over them (Berry, 1994; Sekora, 1977). These ideas were clearly reflected in sumptuary laws regulating the behavior of women. Zaleucus’ sumptuary laws, passed in the 7th century BC, forbade women to wear golden jewelry and embroidered garments (unless they were prostitutes) (McGinn, 1998), and Solon’s sumptuary laws restricted the amount of gowns, meat and drink that women could travel with with (Morris, 1909). In the Hellenistic period the gynaikonomoi, or ‘censor of women’, was responsible for controlling women’s luxury alongside their ‘disorderly expression of grief’ during funerals (Shipley in Bremen, 2005, p.  323); highlighting the underlying assumption that women needed extra sumptuary regulation due to their innate inability to control their emotions and passions. Similarly, the sumptuary law restricting women’s consumption in Ancient Rome was justified by Cato, the censor, on the basis that repealing them ‘would be to allow the passions to rule over reason, to abandon masculinity, and to relinquish proper subordination in society’ (Sekora, 2001, p. 25). These examples reveal a further set of concerns informing consumption norms beyond the pragmatic beliefs and ethical visions discussed so far: concerns of justice, manifested in notions of legitimate hierarchy and in conceptions of a fair distribution of goods. These conceptions of justice can indeed be identified behind many of the consumption

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norms discussed so far. For example, the socialist consumption norms of modest consumption, described above, were informed by egalitarian ideals of society. In contrast, the consumption norm according to which living in a castle is fine for an aristocrat, whereas it would be pretentious for a ‘commoner’, draw on a different view according to which hierarchy based on birth is legitimate. Conceptions of rightful hierarchy and justice are detectable behind everyday consumption norms as well, guiding relations between strangers, peers and within the family. The Norwegian working-class consumption norm that forbids practices which could induce envy among one’s peers reflects an egalitarian ideal of social hierarchy (Gullestad, 2001). In contrast, in contemporary Hungary, most participants in my research who grew up in the period before socialism held consumption norms that reflected the strict social divisions of society of the era. These norms marked out appropriate consumption with reference to one’s social position. Those practices were seen as appropriate which were neither ‘pretentious’ (meaning that they did not involve practices ‘belonging to’ higher ranks) nor ‘inadequate’ (meaning practices belonging to the lower ranks). Conceptions (or more often an ingrained sense) of rightful hierarchy are all the more striking within the family, reflected in consumption norms guiding expenditures and modalities of consumption of particular goods. In Tunisia, for example, according to a study carried out in the 1960s, gender hierarchy was reflected in differential norms applying to men and women. Women were expected to sacrifice their own needs for the male members of the family by preserving better food for them; they ate twice a day as opposed to the three meals taken by men, and dishes for women were usually prepared from lower-quality raw materials than men’s dishes (Ferchiou in Delphy, 1984). This sacrifice was rationalized as the virtue of being a good wife and mother; a phenomenon reported by studies in contemporary Western contexts as well. Marjorie DeVault’s (1991) study focusing on shopping and preparation of meals by women in the United States, for example, highlights the sacrifices that characterize these activities, which is understood by women as motivated by care and devotion to their family (see also Miller’s [1999] research discussed above). Norms pertaining to particular contexts The evaluation of particular consumption practices not only depends on who engages in them but also on the context of consumption. Wearing slippers is appropriate in the living room but not at the opera; buying

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an expensive bottle of champagne may be acceptable on a birthday or from an unexpected lottery win but would be deemed irresponsible on a ‘normal’ day, or if it were financed by the sale of a family heirloom. These contextual factors can be grouped into two main categories: one defining specific norms of consumption depending on the context of use, the other on the source of the income spent on consumption. The contexts of use along which consumption norms differ are so numerous that it seems almost impossible to take stock of them. Time, location, occasion are the most significant among these. Different foods are appropriate to eat in the morning for breakfast as opposed to for lunch, different clothes are decent at home and in public places, different goods are consumed on an ordinary day as opposed to Christmas. What is the common feature of the situations that require different consumption norms? Anthropologist Mary Douglas suggested that those situations will require different consumption practices  – and by implication will be guided by different norms  – that correspond to different cognitive categories of a given culture. For example, the conceptual categories of time  – the difference between morning, daytime and evening or between ordinary days and festivals – are reflected in the kind of food we eat: eggs for breakfast, steak for lunch, and special foods for special occasions. Similarly, conceptual categories of space  – the distinction between home and away – are mirrored by our clothes (Douglas, 1972; Douglas and Isherwood, 1996). The implication of this theory is that culture-specific conceptual categories determine the contexts to which different consumption norms apply. The opera, according to this explanation, implies a different dress code from that of the living room because of the conceptual difference that we maintain about the two places. A related yet different point follows from practice theory, to be discussed in more detail in Chapter 4. According to this theory, the primary units of human action are ‘practices’, denoting ‘a routinised type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, “things” and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge’ (Reckwitz cited in Warde, 2005, p. 133). For example, cooking, attending an opera performance or chilling out in front of the TV at home are such practices. The implication of practice theory is that consumption norms pertain not so much to places and times as to specific practices. From this point of view, it is the meaningful practices that maintain

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the distinctions that Douglas refers to. The home, for instance, becomes different from the street because of the practices that pertain to it; these are what make up and define the meaning of a ‘home’. According to practice theory, the reason why different practices imply different consumption norms is that each practice contains what Sayer calls its ‘internal good’ (Sayer, 2005, p. 117): its own purpose or ethics. Slippers worn to the opera or a gala dress to watch TV at home in the family circle is inappropriate because it goes against the internal goods of these respective practices. Indeed, when participants were unsure about the evaluation of G’s drinking habit, many of their questions referred to understanding the practice as part of which drinking takes place, and, by doing so, its meaningful aim. If G’s drinking forms an integral part of his artistic work – gaining inspiration from his drunken fantasies – it is more acceptable than if he drinks only for the purpose of getting roaring drunk. The fact that ethics are simultaneously seen as internal to certain practices and as pertaining to certain categories of people, explains a crucial point about differential consumption norms. In deciding whether a given practice is acceptable or not, people probe the compatibility between the internal goods of practices and the ethics associated with categories of people. For example, drinking is less acceptable if G is a woman, a minor or a father, as the expectations of ethics toward people belonging to these categories are incompatible with the internal good of drinking. The second aspect, beyond the context of use, along which contexts requiring different consumption norms are defined is the source of income being spent. Consumption norms applying to how a bonus is to be spent differ from those applying to a regular salary, an inheritance or stolen money (Zelizer, 1997). First, the source of income (more precisely, the framing of the source) has significant impact on how freely money is spent, especially in the case of smaller sums (Tahler, 1999). In one of Epley and Gneezy’s (2007) experiments, for example, participants were given a $50 windfall. One group was told that the sum was a bonus, the other group that it was a rebate. Those who were told that the sum was a bonus spent on average 2.5 times more of the received money than those who were told that it was a rebate. A further function of these ‘mental accounts’ is that they allow people to navigate across situations and desires that require different spending moralities without putting into question the integrity of their ethical visions of good life and identity, by providing legitimate exceptions to which normal rules do not apply. A small winning is posited outside the

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normal realm of budgeting, which allows for temporarily suspending normal spending moralities: it can be blown on a lavish dinner without jeopardizing one’s self image as a thrifty, reasonable person. Second, its source influences not only how freely, but also on what money can be legitimately spent. Douglas (1975) tells a story of a friend who spends money derived from her investments on compulsory, routine expenses, whereas she dedicates the money she earns from occasional writing to extravagant purchases. The same mechanism explained a surprising phenomenon I observed in my own fieldwork in Hungary. When visiting an extremely poor family in their home, I was surprised that they owned an expensive television, DVD and hi-fi system, despite the fact that until recently they had lived in a homeless shelter and were still struggling to pay the bills. As they explained, these devices were bought from ‘gift money’ received from a relative, which therefore was designated to extravagant purchases. O’Curry’s research (1997, cited in Tahler, 1999) provides a useful clue to understand the phenomenon. She asked people to rate different sources of income as well as different purchases on a serious–frivolous scale. She then asked participants how they would spend income from different sources. She found that those purchases are seen as appropriate where the seriousness/frivolity of the income matches that of the uses. For example, a winning, which is considered a frivolous income, is more likely to be spent on frivolous consumption, such as eating out, whereas a salary, considered a serious income, is more likely to be deposited on the ‘mental account’ designated to serious purchases, such as paying the bills. This suggests that incomes from different sources are subject to different consumption norms due to the normative evaluations attached to these sources. Probably the most thorough analysis of this phenomenon is provided by Zelizer’s (1997) study on the social meanings of money, which, beyond discussing the above points, adds a further aspect of the way the origin of money influences the norms applied to its uses. Her research on the handling of domestic money between 1870 and 1930 in the United States suggests that consumption norms differed depending on who earned the income paying for it: the man, the woman or the children. In farmer families, money earned by women – for example, by sewing or doing the laundry – was automatically added to the housekeeping budget, destined to cover the family’s expenses related to the home, food and clothing. In contrast, money earned by men was used to pay for machinery and the mortgage. In middle-class families, money earned by women was treated as an additional income, much like windfall money studied by behavioral economics, and accordingly

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destined either to extravagant purchases, such as buying clothes, or to ‘womanly’ practices, such as charity or music classes for the children. Whereas economic theories explain this phenomenon by individual psychological mechanisms, such as the effect of framing on perception, Zelizer shows that contingent social relations and cultural conceptions form the basis of the very frames that people consider relevant at any given time. For example, purchasing goods for the men from money earned by the women was seen as absolutely inappropriate, largely because it would have put into question conceptions of masculinity and power relations between genders. As Zelizer argues, the handling of domestic money is ‘equally shaped by changing cultural conceptions of money and of family life as well as by power relationships, age, and gender’ (Zelizer, 2011, p. 98). The reason why today in many  – but certainly not all  – families the woman and the man’s earning are not handled differently is due to the more equal conception of gender roles and power relationships within the family. This suggests a connection between norms pertaining to particular categories of people and to those pertaining to particular sources of income: in the above cases, the normative ethical visions and hierarchies applied to the earners of money defined the norms that guided its spending.

Consumption norms and cosmologies In the previous sections I suggested that consumption norms draw on normative and pragmatic elements. Normative elements are linked first to particular categories of people. These include ethical visions of who to be and how to live, pertaining to particular categories of people; and ideas of rightful hierarchy among people belonging to these categories. Second, normative elements pertain to particular contexts: to particular practices that are understood as having their own internal ethics; as well as to particular sources of income, as the normative classification of the origin of money is applied to its spending. Pragmatic elements underlying consumption norms, in turn, include practical wisdom concerning how things and people are: how the economy works and financial expectations, what the relevant categories of people are and their characteristics, and knowledge related to particular practices. To understand the consumption norms held by particular people, we need to go further and look at how these elements are connected. This is the aim of this section. I  will suggest that ethical visions and pragmatic beliefs do not operate separately but are interconnected, forming what I  will refer to as cosmologies. The term ‘cosmology’ has been

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adopted by social science from physics and Ancient philosophy where it referred to the laws guiding the cosmos, the universe. In anthropology it has been used to describe religious worldviews and core moral ideas: a coherent set of ‘ultimate justifying ideas’ (Douglas, 2003, p. 6) and people’s ‘understanding of this world and their place in it’ (Miller, 1999, p. 149). Miller uses the term in The Comfort of Things (2008) in a broader sense, denoting a relatively consistent ‘order of things, values and relationships of society’ (2008, p.  294).10 My definition draws on this understanding and I use the term to refer to interconnected sets of ethical ideas of good life and justice and pragmatic beliefs that form a relatively coherent worldview. In the following section I  will develop these points through the indepth analysis of two generations of the same Hungarian family which grew up before and during socialist times. The analysis serves to demonstrate the way the elements discussed above are interconnected in the form of a cosmology; whereas the comparison between the two cases allows for showing that differences between consumption norms stem from the shifts in the cosmologies that they draw on. Case 1: Consumption norms of a ‘gentleman’ cosmology The Bernáts – Sándor (born in 1923) and Magda (born in 1927) – live in a green suburb of Budapest, Hungary. Their house is furnished with old, ornamented wooden furniture, Persian carpets and many classic decorative objects, such as china, crystal glass and embroidery. Some of these objects are family heirlooms; others were accumulated during the socialist period but were of the same style despite the socialist disdain that labeled this taste as the survival of the ‘petit-bourgeois mentality’. When remembering their purchases, the Bernáts emphasized that they always bought ‘useful’ objects. ‘Useful’ is a broad consumption norm that they use to refer to objects that meet the criteria of ‘lasting long’ and being ‘beautiful’, and typically includes furniture, clothing and housing. They recalled that they saved up for these useful goods, and purchased them beyond their means by cutting down on ‘useless’ goods, such as food and entertainment:11 Sándor: For our daughters we always bought gifts with the aim that by the time they got married they would have a sufficient amount of china and embroidery: a stafírung [marriage pack]. They took such care of these gifts, always, and put them away properly. But we found these items a useful present, even

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though we could hardly afford them, because they were not cheap. But we never bought useless things that they would throw away later. I hope they still have them. This appeared to be a luxury considering our income, but we knew that we were buying these items very consciously, so that when they grew up, all of them would have 15–20 pieces [of china]. The consumption norm prescribing longevity and beauty draws, firstly, on a set of pragmatic ideas about the world. One of the core ideas is the belief in the relative stability of value defined by objectively measurable features that guarantee longevity. Longevity is understood here both at a physical and symbolic level. Physical longevity is the extent to which an object keeps its original material form: it does not fall apart; it does not dilapidate but maintains its original splendor. Symbolic longevity, in turn, guarantees that the object will be considered beautiful and prestigious over time, uninfluenced by changing fashions. This belief is the basis of what I would like to call the objective beauty regime. The essence of this regime is that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder; it is not dependent on ad hoc taste and changing fashions but on objective features of the object. These features include primarily the price of the material and the amount of work invested in the object. An ornamented mahogany wardrobe will always be considered more beautiful than a plain oak one, which in turn is more beautiful than a plastic one. It appears that the features seen as the criteria of beauty mark out expensive objects because of the cost of their raw materials and the labor involved in making them. This link, however, is far from eternal. Consider, for example, that today a piece of minimalist furniture may be sold at a higher price than an ornamented one, simply because minimalism may be more fashionable at the moment. Thus the objective beauty regime is founded on the belief that this cannot happen: the material and work invested in an item must be reflected in its price and desirability, regardless of changing times and fashions. It is this idea that makes the belief in the stability of financial value possible, not the other way round (that items are more desirable because they are more expensive). These qualities, however, only guarantee physical longevity. The belief in symbolic longevity, the second pillar of the objective beauty regime, has its roots in the stable social and economic hierarchy that characterized presocialist (and in some aspects, socialist) Hungary. According to the Bernáts’ memories – in harmony with socio-historical

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studies – in presocialist times social hierarchy was clearly defined, with an obvious line that stood between the lower classes and the gentleman strata12 in every field of life from work to leisure, friendships and marriages and consumption (Laki, 2006; Losonczy, 1977; Valuch, 2005). Sándor and Magda remember that in presocialist times consumption practices belonged unambiguously to particular ranks. Sándor explained that in their village, people of different ranks were granted entry to different dance schools, and clothing and furniture were clear markers of one’s position in the hierarchy. In this account, ‘beautiful’ elegant objects refer to a clearly defined set of material practices that can be decoded the same way by everyone and that are unquestionably associated with a ‘gentleman’ position. In presocialist times when they were young, the stable link between goods and social esteem made the belief in symbolic longevity possible. The pragmatic belief in physical and symbolic longevity of certain objects is one of the founding ideas of the objective beauty regime that make certain objects eternally valuable. These pragmatic beliefs do not explain why buying long-lasting goods is the right thing to do; they only constitute the background against which ethical projects can be pursued. In terms of ethical ideas, the emphasis on longevity and beauty draws on respectability and dignity on the one hand and a normative vision of society structured according to status on the other. These ideas are strongly connected to the presocialist world in which the couple grew up. Before socialism, they were proud to belong to the ‘gentleman club’ of the village where they are originally from. In those times, as they recalled with nostalgia, they lived up to the gentleman position in every respect. Sándor proudly explained that, after finishing high school, he went to the gentleman dance school in an elegant blue-striped suit, where only army officers and people with a baccalaureate were allowed to enter. The importance attributed by Sándor to elegance could be interpreted as a desire for signaling upper-class standing; yet for him it is not being upper-class per se that is at stake but predominantly the respect that is paid to the holder of a respectable position. Elegance is important, because it is seen as inseparable from being respectable: Sándor: The one who finished high school went on to work at the council. He would be a lower-rank officer, but would wear a tie and a hard collar shirt. And he would be looked up to. […] When I was courting her, I had a suit I was very proud of. It was grey, tailor-made.

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The connection between ethical qualities, elegance and the respect paid to social standing is emphasized even more in Magda’s account, which shows that the norm of elegance draws on the ethical visions of ‘having a backbone’, respect, self-respect and dignity. Magda: This is the kind of behavior [dressing in an elegant way] that one doesn’t ever want to [be without]. Well, I  have always thought that one has to have a backbone (moral fiber, dignity) towards oneself. Not in order that others honor me; it’s for me […] I like it that way. […] So the two [dressing and meeting expectations] have nothing to do with each other. This is like that in one’s life as well. When I was young my mother used to tell me: ‘My daughter, your hair, your shoes, your hands are most important. Because your hands will be looked at. They will look at your shoes, unintentionally. And your hair is important, for your face.’ She thought that this is the way it’s right, not for anything else’s sake but for her own sake! It’s not important what others are, what they are not; no: for your sake. The ‘others’ classifying people according to what they do – what they wear, how they behave and so on  – are constantly present in these accounts. They read where you stand and how to relate to you from the way you are dressed and behave. This, however, does not reduce the values identified above simply to the drive to meet expectations; the point is rather that, in these ethics, self-respect and being respected by others are almost inseparable. Sándor sees being elegant not as a choice between a range of possible options but as the way a respectable and self-respecting person in his position appears in public. In fact, ethical ideas of respectability and pride are seen as in essence relational: being respectable means effectively commanding the respect of others. This ethic implies engaging the social at its very core; it centers on particular relations with others, these others being wider society – not only friends and family but also strangers. This provides the connection between the ethics of respectability and notions of justice held by the Bernáts. Justice, for them, is founded on a rank-based idea of entitlement: people are entitled to more and better goods based on where they stand in the hierarchy of ranks. In the Bernáts’ interpretation, this idea of entitlement is rooted in the strong connection between respectability and social position, allocating goods to those more ‘worthy’ of them. The connection is not so much an instrumental use of goods to gain respectability; rather if you are a

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respectable person, you will by definition want to dress in a decent way, which rightfully commands respect and honor. This understanding of respectability also explains the substantial difference between consumption norms guiding practices in private and those in public occasions, which are seen as the prime fields of respectability. The Bernáts, just like most participants of their generation, use varied, shabby, inexpensive covers to protect their beautiful sofas and armchairs for everyday use. These covers are only removed on special occasions when guests visit. Just as Magda wears elegant clothes in public but changes to shabbier garments at home  – in order to maintain the elegant pieces in good condition – the use of the furniture changes according to the domestic or public nature of the occasion, based on the same consideration. It is with reference to these ideas that seemingly disconnected practices, such as economizing on food, become understandable. The Bernáts see food as both transient and private, so subject to strict budgeting, in harmony with the old saying ‘You can economize on food, because no-one can see what is inside your tummy’. The exceptions are public occasions of eating, that is, hosting guests or showing relatives around in Budapest, which they consider the only instances where the ‘waste’ of going to restaurants is acceptable. These concerns not only inform consumption norms on what it is appropriate to acquire but also on how it is appropriate to use items, implying that there are specific ways of interacting with objects. Objects are to be preserved, not to be enjoyed in a hedonistic way at any time. The china-headed dolls are not to be used in carefree play but should be handled with a lot of care (even better if they are not touched at all). Objects fulfill their aim of being beautiful on public occasions and are preserved – as opposed to providing fun and comfort – most efficiently by not being used in private contexts. The consumption norm prescribing the purchase and careful use of expensive, long-lasting goods draws on a further ethical concern: the care for their offspring. The Bernáts saw buying and giving china and embroidery to their children as an unquestionable aim, even when it was beyond their financial means. One interpretation could be to see these items as means of preserving and transmitting financial value for the next generation. This interpretation is part of the Bernáts’ reasoning, as they recall that objects could be converted into money in case of emergency. In this sense the consumption of decorative items is laudable also because it is not seen as ‘consuming’, rather as an alternative form of saving. The emphasis on longevity, then, is partly the

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application of the principles of savings to the field of consumption: maintaining and increasing its value and the ability of being convertible to money when necessary. Yet for financial accumulation a savings account would have sufficed. Through the objects, the Bernáts transmitted not only financial value but also certain practical ethics, according to their ideas of how one should live. As Miller (1999) points out, care is normative, in that it does not simply mean buying the receivers what they want but buying goods that they should want if they would be as the shopper would like them to be. Applying Miller’s observation to this case, the normative vision these gifts mediate is a cross-generational ideal of the family, which draws on a particular ethical stance centering on maintaining and expanding the parents’ ideal of respectability. Longevity in this context not only guarantees that the home will live up to the standard of respectability but that the next generations will also be able to adhere to the same standards. The crucial question is then inheritability, as shown clearly in the Bernáts’ comments on ‘transient’ goods their children buy today: Magda: Even if I  despise these things, the children don’t. These things, the computer, the laptop, these things they change every half year, don’t they? They are always different, so they will not go far with them, they can’t even inherit them. The reason why the laptop is useless compared with the little china spaniel is that the latter can be and is worth being inherited, and hence one can get further with it. What makes china and lace so important in this light is their ability to form part of this cross-generational accumulation project of respectability and security. In summary, this analysis shows that consumption norms that distinguishes ‘good’ from ‘bad’ consumption rely on a specific cosmology, involving pragmatic and normative elements. These elements are strongly connected. Principles of longevity and beauty rely on a pragmatic belief in the stability of financial and symbolic value, which in turn relies on an understanding of the presocialist hierarchy of ranks and implicit ideas of how the market works. At the same time, these consumption norms draw on ethical elements of the same cosmology. These elements involve ideals of respectability and dignity formulated along the lines of presocialist ‘gentlemen’s ethics’ and a notion of just social hierarchy, structured by ranks of more and less respectable people. Moreover, they involve the imperative of care for the family understood as providing objects suitable

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for a respectable life to the next generation. These ethical ideas, together with pragmatic beliefs of the world, mark out the distinction between good and bad consumption; they account for consumption norms. The implication of this argument is that differences in consumption norms can be explained  – still interpretatively  – by differences in the pragmatic and ethical elements of the cosmology underlying it. This is the argument that the next case illustrates by highlighting the differences in the pragmatic and ethical elements of the cosmology that their daughter’s (Zsuzsa’s) consumption norms draw on. Case 2: Consumption norms of a ‘socialist intellectual’ cosmology Zsuzsa Bernát (born in 1950) pursued what can be termed a legitimate career route during socialism: she acquired a university degree, became a researcher and gradually moved up the work hierarchy. Ede (born in 1952), her husband, is an engineer who followed the same route, but after the fall of socialism started working for a multinational company. The Bernáts gradually achieved a standard of living that counts as middle-class. Today they live in a one-bedroom flat in a terraced house in the green belt of Budapest, have been able to travel abroad, buy expensive electronic goods and artworks, and support their two children by helping them pay off the mortgages on their first flats. Today the Bernáts vote for the Socialist Party and embrace a largely leftist interpretation of the past, which is subject to heated debate with the older Bernáts, who see the period as the end of respectability in favor of an authoritarian rule by the lower ranks. They are aware that ‘socialism was not perfect’, yet suggest that contemporary conservative accounts are unjustifiably negative. They emphasize that they never entered the Party, yet could achieve a successful career; which they see as evidence that the system provided opportunities even for those who refused to participate in the political maneuvers. The younger Bernáts’ flat demonstrates a striking continuity with that of Sándor and Magda. The small home is crammed with expensive, antique objects: paintings, koloniál furniture – wooden furniture produced during socialism, yet inspired by the presocialist style  –, Persian carpets, flower stands, ceramics and embroidery. The windows contain tinted glass inlays, which creates a castle-like stylistic impression in the externally modern, socialist-style, modular apartment house. During the interview we could not sit down in a circle, because the armchairs are too big to be placed next to each other; there is only room for them when they are in separate corners. The walls are ornamented with paintings and the bookshelves are

Understanding Consumption Norms 43

full of books and beautiful china vases. I learned that there are some more vases in the cellar, as they have no more space in the room. When the younger Bernáts account for their home decoration, they draw on ethical visions and pragmatic beliefs both similar and substantially different from those of the old Bernáts. In terms of ethical ideas, while Sándor and Magda saw valuable furniture as a means of maintaining practices appropriate to the gentleman ideal of presocialist hierarchy, in Zsuzsa’s account the emphasis shifts to everyday domestic harmony and aesthetic sophistication: Zsuzsa: [What is important] first of all is quality and what I like, so I don’t buy fashion objects, just because it’s in fashion. It’s not characteristic of me. It should be lasting, valuable, good  … It’s very important that I like it. So in the flat I can’t stand an object that I don’t like. […] For me [what is important] is that when I come home I feel good at home and that I am among such objects [that make me feel good]. If I don’t like the look of something, I remove it sooner or later; there must be harmony in the flat. If I like something in itself I will not buy it, because I know that it doesn’t fit the flat. I like many things, modern things, but if I know that it doesn’t fit my flat, then no, because I will not put it out anyway, so there must be harmony in the flat, the objects should go well with each other. Although the same principles of longevity, quality and value observed at her parents are present in Zsuzsa’s account, the emphasis is on a very different vision: objects have to make her feel good at home and be in harmony with each other. Zsuzsa does not value an object if it does not pass her subjective aesthetic judgment or fails to create a harmonious atmosphere; whereas for her parents, the value of an object is something objective, inscribed. This is why for Zsuzsa the flat objectifies one of the aesthetic styles she likes; however, she likes modern style too. Her parents would have rejected an item in a modern style on the basis that it does not fit the ideal of a respectable home, would not keep its value and hence cannot be inherited in contrast, Zsuzsa refuses it on the basis that it would not fit into the harmony of her flat. (It is not impossible that it is partly the objects gifted by her parents that generated this material culture by adhering to the rule of harmony.13) This difference is clearly reflected in the way furniture is used, too. While her parents carefully cover the furniture except for special occasions when receiving

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visitors, for Zsuzsa such a practice would be out of the question. The same material culture, then, objectifies a different ethical idea that centers on a very private, domestic, everyday harmony and subjective aesthetic experience, which involves a very different ideal of everyday life from that of the older Bernáts. This ideal of the home as a realm of aesthetic harmony and sophistication is embedded in a larger ethical stance of what I would like to call socialist intellectual asceticism. I  call these ethics ‘socialist’, because they are in line with the official socialist ideal that praised intellectual development, aesthetic refinement and a broader, everyday vision of living in a ‘cultured way’, referred to as kulturnost in the Soviet context (Dombos, 2004; Gronow, 2003). These stances can be clearly observed in Zsuzsa’s own views: Zsuzsa: We went to Italy in the 1980s; and we went to all the museums in Rome, including the Vatican … When we are abroad we are out all day – we get up in the morning, and fall into bed in the evening and walk the whole day. We never go to restaurants; sometimes I eat an ice-cream in the street, but I  consider it a waste of money because it’s expensive. We always go to youth hostels, which is much cheaper, or with a bagpack, but always to the simplest, most … Léna: Is it because you can’t afford to spend more? Zs: No! It’s because for me it’s a bigger pleasure – we always buy objects abroad – that I go into the room, and then I see that I  bought this vase in Venice, that one in Munich. I  have calculated that if I go to sit three times in a cafeteria to have a cup of coffee, for the same money I can buy a vase. So we prefer to go to a shop and buy refreshment there, because I  would regret spending money on cafeterias, because it is expensive everywhere. Not because I can’t afford it in principle but because I  feel bad about spending money on it. According to my value system, I buy an object, I like objects that give me pleasure, but to sit in a cafeteria doesn’t give me any pleasure at all. I  never begrudge money spent on entry tickets and things like that but I would prefer to walk two kilometers to avoid spending on expensive transport. The quotation suggests that the normative distinction between practices is based partly on the extent to which they contribute to cultural sophistication and to an aesthetic domestic experience. Practices that are seen

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as part of the ‘cultured way of living’ – spending money on museum tickets and artistic home decoration – are justified, as opposed to the goods belonging to the sphere of wasteful spending on public transport, hotels and cafeterias. Zsuzsa emphasizes that she could have afforded them, but to have spent money in this way would have contradicted her value system, clearly suggesting an ethical rather than practical consideration. Beyond the emphasis on intellectual sophistication, these consumption norms also draw on an ideal of a down-to-earth, rational and selfsufficient person. This vision can also be linked to a socialist model: that of the socialist worker. This down-to-earth, rational and self-sufficient ideal person – who is able and willing to make efforts for achievements – was contrasted with the fastidious, presocialist elite that valued superficial frills and felt entitled to and somewhat depended on the services of servants. One of the key elements of this ideal was rationality. Rationality is not only seen as instrumental to saving money but it is an ethical virtue of not being prone to manipulation, being down-to-earth and sensible: guided by reason as opposed to passion or fashion. Second, the ideal involved a negative sanction on ‘self-indulgent’ activities – such as taking a bus rather than walking, going to restaurants rather than cooking, hiring a cleaning lady instead of cleaning yourself and so on – as these were seen as fastidious and contradicting the ideal of the practical, down-to-earth person. Finally, the ideal had an element of modesty and being practical that opposes the presocialist ideal of glamour in favor of a functional, practical aesthetics: Zsuzsa: So, with clothes, again, I hardly care about them. Léna: Could you recall your latest purchase? Zs: I bought a little jacket, which looked, I thought, very pretty on me. It was reduced, on sale, and I bought it. I am happy after all that I bought it. I bought a shirt as well. I have altered it; it’s a habit of mine that I buy something but intend to alter it. I have removed these [beads] because I didn’t like them on it, and also removed the decoration from the jacket. […] Léna: How would you describe your taste? Zs: Well, it’s difficult to explain  … as good, according to me [laughs]. Practical. Clothing does not belong to the field of ‘aesthetic sophistication’; hence decoration is seen not as laudable ‘beauty’ but as useless frill. In the name of a particular functional aesthetics Zsuzsa even removes decorations to

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achieve the required ‘no-frill’, austere look. This no-frill look of socialist asceticism involves different ideals from those of Zsuzsa’s mother about how a proper woman should dress, which centered on investing effort into looking elegant. This change can be related to the socialist ideological approach of eradicating gender discrimination, and the ideal of the somewhat asexual, detached, intellectually sophisticated comrade.14 The second key element of the cosmology that their consumption norms draw on is a different view on social hierarchy from that of Zsuzsa’s parents. For the older Bernáts, objects and people belonged to unambiguous hierarchical categories, and appropriateness of practices was inseparable from the concern to live up to a particular position. This hierarchical view is not shared by Zsuzsa and Ede. They never refer to well-defined, hierarchical social groups, let alone to the idea of living up to a particular social position. Their ideal of society is essentially egalitarian, and inequality is criticized whenever discussed: Léna: In your opinion, who deserves goods more and who less? Ede: In the change of the regime many people got rich without working. Many people became losers, which was not their fault, and many people don’t have a choice. People used not to be as rich and as poor as they are today, although social differences have always existed. In financial terms there are now big differences, which hurts one’s sense of justice. Ede finds social differences unjust per se  – an idea very far from the caste-like society with reference to which the older Bernáts oriented themselves. How does this idea relate to the fact that their home is furnished with expensive, koloniál furniture reminiscent of the presocialist gentleman style? The contradiction is resolved by a familiar trope of socialist public discourse that combined an egalitarian idea with the praise of hard work as the sole basis of entitlement to goods: Zsuzsa: When I was a university student, I worked already from the age of 16 every summer. So, the point is that I earned very well, I worked 14–16 hours a day and didn’t take holidays. Others worked three days, then took three days off but I  thought that I  and my husband could survive without holidays. The others were happy, because they could go to visit the family; on the other hand, we had much more money. So we had much more money at that time for

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Léna: Zs:

furniture and we planned and chose it together. Then the koloniál style was cool and we chose koloniál furniture and we wanted paintings and majolinka vases and all that. So I bought many times in the pawn shops in the 1970s and we frequented the pawn shops all the time; we always visited all of them, to see if we liked something. The aim was always to buy something. The way you furnished the flat, did it count as special? Yes. The kitchen-living room15 [where we were living] was shabby and so was the house itself, but when we wanted to sell it and they [potential buyers] came in and saw the room, usually they remarked ‘wow!’, because at that time it was cool, this oak koloniál furniture. And obviously, these buyers didn’t expect to see it there. Especially in those times.

The status of the furniture is hinted at by the fact that the visitors are surprised: one does not expect to see koloniál furniture in a poor, kitchenliving room environment, but rather in a bigger, richer home. Acquiring ‘cool’ pieces, as opposed to mass-produced, modern items manufactured in socialist factories, as Zsuzsa recalls, required money, extensive searching as well as taste and sophistication. She cannot ignore the fact that koloniál furniture was special and expensive, and could only be bought by a few people, which contradicts their usual account that avoids the distinction between groups. In this sense, then, koloniál furniture represents continuity in terms of its relation to status with presocialist times. What is important, however, is that there was a radical change in what status and hierarchy meant during socialism. Although the older Bernáts see the basis of entitlement in one’s rank, Ede and Zsuzsa do not share this view; they probably do not even know about the castelike hierarchy in which this material culture originally developed. The socialist system set out to eradicate presocialist inequalities and to replace it – at least in theory – with a new one in which hard work led to advances. It is in this context of the socialist ideology that Zsuzsa’s long explanation of how she worked hard to be able to buy koloniál furniture can be made sense of. Koloniál furniture is only a legitimate purchase because Zsuzsa and Ede worked harder than others; therefore they earned the right and deserved to have the best furniture available. In this way koloniál furniture is associated with ‘higher’ lifestyle, and in fact the very idea of having a ‘higher’ lifestyle becomes possible and legitimate – and deserved by people who are the most hard-working and ambitious in socialist terms.

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To fully understand why certain practices are seen as more approved of than others, we have to look at not only the ethical visions but also the pragmatic belief the consumption norms simultaneously draw on. For the Bernáts, as for most participants of their generation, the main element of these beliefs refers to the economy of shortage during socialism (Gecser and Kitzinger, 2002; Hammer and Dessewffy, 1997; S. Nagy, 1987). First, they recall that they acquired their goods gradually, waiting for the occasion to come up to buy appropriate pieces, which in the case of furniture meant waiting years for matching pieces. In this context, the principle of longevity is a viable and necessary strategy to accomplish furnishing projects for a home of perfect aesthetic harmony – which often extended over 20–30 years. Second, the shortage of goods created a situation similar to the ‘objective beauty regime’ identified in the case of the previous generation. Although the rank hierarchy that formed the basis of symbolic longevity no longer applied, shortage guaranteed financial longevity with a similar effect: it ensured that objects maintained their value over time. These characteristics allowed the Bernáts to perceive a similar uniformity and stability of value during socialism that formed the basis of the long-term ‘objective beauty regime’; with the difference that the consensus over value here was based primarily on shortage (and therefore it broke down, as later experience has proven, as soon as others styles become available). The conclusion that can be drawn from the comparison between the two generations is that differences between consumption norms stem from differences in the cosmologies that these norms draw on. This different cosmology in the case of the second generation of the Bernát family involved, first, a vision of justice (in many respects ‘socialist’) centered on equality and work-based entitlement. Second, it encompassed an ethics focused on domestic harmony and ‘socialist intellectual asceticism’ that was connected to a ‘cultured’ way of living as an ideal of life, emphasizing cultural sophistication, rationality and modesty. It also entailed a new idea of what it means to be a proper woman that is more egalitarian, yet also less ‘feminine’. Finally, the new cosmology contained pragmatic beliefs of the socialist economy of shortage, involving long waiting times for particular items, predictability and stability of value and styles. These interconnected ethical and pragmatic views together form a different cosmology from the previous generation’s and account for the differences between their consumption norms. Interestingly, the comparison of the material culture of the older and younger Bernáts reveals only minor differences. Sándor and Magda are content with Zsuzsa’s and Ede’s beautiful flat, even though they

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are somewhat puzzled by their unassuming wardrobes and occasional waste of money on travelling and laptops. Yet the interpretative analysis revealed that the continuity of material culture and consumption norms is based on a modified cosmology involving transformed ethical and pragmatic beliefs, rather than a continuity of them. Cosmologies, categories and contexts The consumption norms of the two generations of the Bernát family analyzed above drew on a connected set of normative and pragmatic beliefs that I  called cosmology. The central normative idea of these cosmologies in each case was a personal ethical vision of who to be and how to live. This personal ethical vision tacitly took into account a personalized understanding of the beliefs and expectations associated with the culturally stringent categories of people that participants belonged to: their gender, social position and familial status. Magda’s consumption norms, for instance, were informed by a personal ethical vision that was defined in terms of what it means to be a proper woman and a mother in her social position. These definitions, furthermore, implied a similarly tacit understanding of the rightful hierarchy between one’s category and other people belonging to other categories. The cases also shed light on the connection between personal ethical visions and ethics pertaining to particular practices. People engage in those practices whose internal ethics meet their personal ethical visions of who to be and how to live. More precisely, as I will show in Chapter 4, personal ethical visions are largely developed through practices that people engage in. For example, the ethical vision of being a good mother emerges through a series of practices, including cooking, shopping, playing with one’s children, picking them up from school and so on. This implies a relative consistency across practices engaged by the same person. This does not mean, however, that participants applied the very same consumption norm in all situations. Firstly, in some cases, the same ethical principle required differential application in different cases. For example, the seemingly opposing norms applying to clothes at home and in public by the older Bernáts were guided by the same concern for respectability: they wear shabby clothes at home in order to preserve them in good condition for public occasions, where respectability is played out. Secondly, cosmologies integrate various, sometimes contradictory, ethical concerns and pragmatic beliefs that are applied selectively in different contexts. For example, Magda is simultaneously a thrifty housewife and a generous hostess, which means that the regular

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norm of thrifty budgeting on food is suspended when guests visit. Yet, contrary to suggestions by some commentators of practice theory, it would be a mistake to conclude that practices are disparate and bear no relation to one another: the very same people engage in different practices whilst holding relatively coherent cosmologies, which implies an underlying ethical logic that connects seemingly distinct practices. The case studies also point toward further conclusions that will be explored in the following chapters. First, the cosmologies discussed here incorporated what etic theories refer to as key explanatory variables of economy, culture and society; an issue that I turn to in the next chapter. Second, the cases suggest that many of the mundane consumption norms operate at a practical level, without being explicitly articulated; a connection that I  will address in Chapter 4. Finally, the differences observed across the two generations raise questions of how consumption norms change over one’s life and across generations; a topic that I will explore in Chapter 5.

3

Explaining Consumption Norms

In the previous chapter I applied an interpretative, emic approach with the aim of understanding what consumption norms are about and how they are made sense of by the people embracing them in everyday life. I showed that consumption norms draw on cosmologies that integrate ethical ideas of good life and justice as well as pragmatic beliefs concerning how the world is. These cosmologies are very personal; in a way they are foundational to people’s moral sense of the self. Yet they are not individual preferences, but are drawn on cosmologies shared by others. This is why they do not differ randomly and we are able to observe commonalities across consumption norms of different people. This suggests that factors external to the individual are also at play in the formation of consumption norms. To identify these factors requires taking an etic approach that seeks to explain, rather than to interpretatively understand, consumption norms. This is the aim of the current chapter. The chapter is divided into two parts. The first looks at why certain consumption norms are available in a given society or culture, whereas the second asks why different social groups are more likely to embrace certain consumption norms as opposed to others from the available repertoire. I will suggest that ambitious theories that promise to predict the content of consumption norms based on a general explanation fail to deliver on that promise due to the multiple and historically contingent nature of consumption norms. Instead, I  will propose a more modest explanation according to which available consumption norms can be understood through their historical evolution determined by existing traditions and the relations between groups involved in their production. The extent to which these available norms are adopted by different groups, in turn, depends firstly their access to the channels 51

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through which norms are accessible, and secondly on their ability and willingness to appropriate them. Class, gender, ethnicity and other factors affect consumption norms only as far as they influence access to relevant channels, and people’s ability and willingness to appropriate norms pertaining to these channels. Which factors, to use Latour’s (2005) formulation, ‘make a difference’ at each of these points cannot be told in advance but need to be specified empirically in each case. This is a modest explanation in that, unlike general explanatory theories, it does not outline a general rule that would universally predict the content of all consumption norms but simply specifies the processes that one needs to look at in order to explain historically contingent and group-specific varieties.

Consumption norms as cultural resources Where do the everyday consumption norms, discussed in the previous chapter, come from? Their most immediate sources are shared consumption norms that are specific to the time and space that people live in. These shared consumption norms are part of what Ann Swidler calls ‘cultural resources’: shared ‘symbols, stories, rituals, and world-views’ (Swidler, 1986, p.  273). There are multiple cultural resources available at any given time, yet they are not unlimited in number but constitute a definite set or ‘cultural repertoire’ (Lamont and Thévenot, 2000, p. 1). These repertoires exist beyond situations and individuals, providing shared resources that people can draw on. Personal consumption norms draw on the repertoire of existing norms, incorporating culturally specific visions of good life, hierarchy and pragmatic beliefs. Repertoires do not determine people’s ideas but, as Swidler suggests, constitute a ‘tool kit’ (Swidler, 1986, p. 273) which people selectively draw on, combine and reinterpret in their everyday life. For example, numerous studies on ethical food consumption norms (Andersen, 2011; Johnston et al., 2011) showed that personal ideas and justifications draw on a culturally specific ‘ethical eating repertoire’ and that ethical shoppers make use of what Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) refer to as shared ‘orders of justification’ (Sassatelli, 2006, p.  230). Similarly, the ethical ideals of respectability and kulturnost, discussed in the previous chapter, are clearly not individual inclinations but part of these shared cultural resources that were available for a wide range of people of the same culture. Along the same lines, the custom of serving the father first at the dinner table is not just a family tradition but one that is exercised across thousands of other dinner tables simultaneously,

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which all draw on the same cultural resource that posits the father as the head of the family and at the top of the family hierarchy. These cultural resources represent the ‘supply’ side of consumption norms that are available to people in a given historical time and space. People, using these cultural resources, in turn, constitute the ‘demand’ side of consumption norms. For the time being I will refer to the supply side as ‘public norms’, and to the demand side as ‘private norms’. To get an explanation of consumption norms held by particular people, we need to explain firstly, the ‘supply’ side of consumption norms, that is, historically contingent elements of the ‘tool kit’; and secondly, the ‘demand’ side, that is, why certain norms  – tools of the ‘tool kit’  – as opposed to others are more likely to be engaged by certain social groups.1 (Note that the separation of the two levels into supply and demand, public and private norms, is not a theoretical argument but an analytical tool: it is easier to think over the development of particular norms if we separate them. The extent to which they are separate in actual cases, as we will see, differs across social and institutional arrangements.) In the following two sections I discuss different explanations of the two sides in turn.

Supply-side explanations Supply-side explanations seek to explain public consumption norms pertaining to particular cultures or societies. These explanations fall into two categories. The first consists of general explanatory theories that promise to explain the content of consumption norms by specifying a general aim or function that these norms fulfill. Theories of the second category, in contrast, suggest that the content of public norms cannot be predicted by a general rule but can only be explained through their historical evolution, involving struggles among social groups over their definitions. In this part I will look at these two categories in turn. General explanatory theories of the first group can be grouped into four categories based on the aim or function that they propose consumption norms fulfill. The first suggests that consumption norms serve to maximize the material well-being of a given social group. The second sees their function in maintaining an unambiguous cultural order, whereas the third sees it in upholding a particular social order. Finally, the fourth suggests that they are means of securing power and social esteem. In what follows I look at these main branches one by one. I will suggest that the main problems of these general explanations is that they single out one motive or ethical aim among many and elevate

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it to the level of an all-encompassing, single explanation. This ignores the fact that different, historically specific motives might be at play behind different consumption norms. This is why the single aim that they posit works well in some cases but is never applicable to all cases. As a result, these theories either remain partial or, when they claim general validity, they do so by covertly incorporating other aims as well, a strategy that makes the argumentation circular. Theories of the second category, discussed subsequently, offer a solution to this problem by looking at the actual processes that are at work in the formation of particular consumption norms: their historical evolution and social groups involved in their formation. Maximizing collective material well-being The first type of general explanation suggests that consumption norms guarantee the material well-being of a given group by prohibiting behaviors that harm and sanctioning those that serve the material well-being of the community. Its explanation of food taboos provides one of the most illustrative examples of this approach. Dietary taboos are explained by health and nutritional considerations allowed by a specific climate, agricultural possibilities or other material factors. Pork in Judaism and Islam, for instance, is argued to be forbidden because it was not a feasible option for the pastoral communities living in hot climates, in which these religions developed: pork meat gets easily rotten in a hot climate (Douglas, 2002), and pigs, unlike cattle, require a sedentary lifestyle (Simoons in MacDonald, 2008). A fuller version of this line of reasoning, called the ‘materialist’ explanation (Harris, 1987, p. 63), suggests that dietary taboos codify behaviors that lead to outcomes of the highest ‘levels of collective material well-being’ (p. 76). The highest level of material well-being is achieved by ‘optimization’ (p. 81), understood as the maximization of costs and benefits. Optimization is similar to the rational calculation of costs and benefits posited by economic models, yet it does not take place at a conscious level but is dictated by our ‘genetically controlled innate human taste’ (p. 80). Costs depend on the available mode of production and ecological factors. Benefits are defined by nutritional values as well as by benefits provided by non-nutritive use (e.g. cherry trees can also be used to make furniture). Dietary norms sanction the optimal solutions to these cost-benefit calculations: ‘Preferred foods (good to eat) are foods that have a more favorable balance of practical benefits over costs than foods that are avoided (bad to eat)’ (Harris, 1986, p. 15). Harris further

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distinguishes between short- and long-term optimization. Even if short-term benefits may necessitate the consumption of certain species, dietary restriction may prohibit their use if in the long run it leads to their extinction or depletion. The optimization model implies that goods that bring a higher nutritional value at a given cost will be favored by norms: for instance, beef over horse meat. However, it also encompasses non-nutritive uses, by incorporating what economics refers to as ‘opportunity cost’: the calculation of benefits that are lost due to one kind of use – in this case, the foraging use  – of a given good. This means that every good has to be evaluated based on the amount of benefit it would bring if it were put to different uses. Dogs, for example, can be used as sources of nutrition or as guards. The eating taboo on dogs is hence explained by the fact that they bring more benefits as guards than as food. Along similar lines, it is prohibited to eat camels in Islam and Judaism because they bring more benefit as carriers than as food (benefit), aggravated by the fact that they reproduce slowly (high cost). The theory has even been applied to explain the taboo on cannibalism: ‘The widespread prohibition on the slaughter of human beings for food is founded on the benefit side on the fact that in state societies, at least, people are exceedingly more useful alive than dead’ (Harris, 1987, p. 75). This means that something is tabooed either because it is not nutritious enough, or because its nonnutritive use is more beneficial. The explanation that consumption norms can be understood as securing optimal results of economic cost-benefit calculations at a societal level can be identified in other accounts as well that do not explicitly belong to the ‘materialist’ school. For example, protectionist sumptuary laws – ranging from those in effect in Ancient Greece to the 1336 English law that limited the use of imported clothes to the royal family (Berry, 1994), and to the modern Chinese efforts to encourage locally produced goods (Gerth, 2003) – are customarily explained along similar lines, as being driven by the aim of maximizing economic prosperity for a given community. This argument works well for many cases, yet can it provide a general explanation that applies to all cases? Hardly. First, as Harris (1987) himself points out, the explanation based on material well-being is unconvincing when it comes to dangerous habits. The consumption of alcohol and tobacco is difficult to justify on nutritional grounds, and examples of what economic theory calls the ‘tragedy of the commons’ puts into question the long-term, innate optimization tendencies in humans.

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Second, generality is achieved by the caveat that the rule of the highest nutritional benefit, gained through foraging use, may be violated if the benefits of non-foraging uses are higher. Through this caveat, however, the theory covertly incorporates ‘cultural’ and emic explanations, against which it was formulated in the first place. For example, dogs may be proven more ‘useful’ by providing companionship to people and a cherry tree may find a more ‘productive’ use in building altars. Yet the usefulness of companionship and worship stem from culturally defined ideas of what constitutes a good life. In fact, any idea of ‘usefulness’ only makes sense with reference to an aim that we find important; which in turn always draws on culturally specific ideas of what counts as an important aim at all. In other words, in order to be able to define what will count as a more ‘useful’ use of a given good, the theory covertly incorporates culturally specific aims and ethics; which makes the argument that norms are explainable solely by the pursuit of material well-being untenable. Keeping cultural categories stable The second type of explanation of the content of consumption norms suggests that their main function is to guarantee an unambiguous cultural order, particularly by maintaining clear-cut cultural categories. These explanations draw partly on Durkheim (to be discussed in the next section), but mainly on structuralism, principally on the structural linguistics developed by Saussure. According to Saussure, meaning is not inherent in the objective world but stems from the differences established within language (Hall, 1997b). For example, the concept of ‘night’ makes sense in its opposition to the concept of ‘day’, ‘West’ in opposition to ‘East’ (Hall, 1996; Said, 1980) and so on. Lévi-Strauss (1966; 1963) applied this theory of language to society and culture. He held that there exists a universal set of core binary concepts, and sought to show their relevance in the system of homologous binary oppositions that structure human thought, culture and social relations. Applying the argument to consumption norms meant that distinctions between what can and cannot be consumed express the same binary logic. For example, as he famously argued, the consumption norm that defines cooked food as more appropriate than raw reflects a more basic binary opposition between Culture and Nature (Lévi-Strauss, 1970). Drawing on Lévi-Strauss, Leach (1964) suggested that our concepts of edibility reflect the distinction between humans and nonhumans. For example, animals that are seen as closer to men – such as dogs in Europe or horses in the United Kingdom  – are not

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considered edible, whereas those that are further  – such as chickens  – are (see also Douglas, 1999; Sahlins, 1976). Mary Douglas in her book Purity and Danger developed this argument into a more general explanation of the content of consumption norms. (Douglas proposed not one but many theories of consumption, which, due to their different theoretical arguments, I  handle separately.) In Purity and Danger she suggested that the key function of consumption norms is to keep these binary categories mutually exclusive and to maintain a clear-cut taxonomy. Ambiguous instances that would blur the line between binary categories threaten the cognitive order and hence have to be eliminated; and taboos are means for such elimination. For example, the taboo on pork in kosher cuisine is based on a taxonomy in which animals that have cloven hoofs and those that do not chew the cud are distinct categories. Pigs fall into both categories, hence they threaten the conceptual order; which explains the eating taboo applied to them (Douglas, 2002). Findings related to sumptuary laws can be interpreted along similar lines. As Berry (1994) and Hunt (1996a) argue, sumptuary legislation tended to be particularly pronounced when the line dividing social groups  – ranks and genders  – became blurred. Sumptuary laws aimed to make clear and visible the lines dividing social groups, which can be read along the lines of the above theory as an attempt to reestablish clear-cut categories. The problem with this theory is, first, that it is limited in its focus; although it applies to many instances, most of our consumption norms do not refer to ambiguous categories. For example, the consumption norm proscribing the purchase of expensive goods – motivated by modesty, or the disapproval of hedonistic purchases in the name of care for other family members – is difficult to interpret along these lines. Second, even in instances when the theory works, it seems to rely implicitly on an emic understanding of the given culture. If we know that there is a consumption norm that disallows wearing shabby clothes in public while allowing their use at home, or a sumptuary law banning women from the use of gold that is in turn allowed for men, we can interpret them as marking out the categories of home versus away and men versus women, respectively. Yet if we are to predict the consumption norms of a culture that we do not know, the pointer that it will taboo ambiguous categories would be of little use. We would only be able to ‘predict’ norms, if we knew the conceptual categories that are in use; which amounts to an emic exploration as described in the previous chapter.

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Maintaining social order The third set of general explanatory theories suggests that the function of consumption norms is to sustain social order through reinforcing solidarity and symbolizing core social values. These theories draw mainly on Durkheim, who held that the function of morality and norms is to secure social order: ‘[m]orality has the same purpose as the law; it, too, has the function of assuring social order  … But this constraint does not consist of external, mechanical pressure, it has a more intimate and psychological character. It is not the state that exercises it, but the whole of society’ (Durkheim, 1993, pp. 86–8). Moral rules oblige people to overcome the egotistical, sensory appetites which belong to the body, and subordinate them to the requirements of Society (Durkheim, 2005). Durkheim suggested that the function of taboos and rites is to ensure social order, and specified two ways in which they fulfill this function. The two ways have later been developed into two distinct theories of consumption norms. The first way is that taboos and rites symbolize the shared interpretative schemes that make social life possible. These schemes include categories or time, space, social relations, group boundaries and so on. Through participating in rites and respecting taboos, people learn and internalize the shared conceptual categories as well as the moral rules that are necessary for social order (Durkheim, 2001). This insight informed Douglas’s theory, discussed in the previous chapter and in the previous section of this chapter, according to which goods mark out shared categories of culture, and their function is to keep a shared conceptual universe stable. The second way is that taboos give a symbolic expression to social values, and by marking them as ‘sacred’ they give them authority (Hamilton, 2001). This argument forms the basis of explanations according to which consumption norms are guided by a universal aim of fostering social cohesion and solidarity. One example of this use is Radcliffe-Brown’s theory of food taboos. In the Andaman Islands food taboos prohibit the consumption of pork and turtle for parents before and after childbirth. The violation of the taboo is believed to bring bad luck and illness. Radcliffe-Brown suggests that the function of this taboo is to generate anxiety in the would-be parents that they might otherwise not feel. This anxiety has a social function: it prepares them for their responsibilities and allows would-be fathers to feel solidarity with the mother (Radcliffe-Brown, 1952). The idea that consumption norms serve to enhance solidarity is apparent in other theories as well, without reference to Durkheim. Explanations of sumptuary laws often point out that the primary aim of

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many early Greek and Roman sumptuary laws was to curb corruption. In Ancient Greece, for example, public feasts were one of the prime means of buying allies and votes, hence the limitation of expenses related to them by sumptuary legislation (Berry, 1994). Medieval and early modern sumptuary laws were also justified by the aim of restoring order and subordinating individual pleasure to the common good (Muzzarelli, 2009). This often meant that the rich were expected to donate a large part of their wealth to charity (Muzzarelli, 2009; Schama, 1987). Similarly, the imperative of solidarity can be seen as underlying many of the contemporary private consumption norms as well. The subordination of individual desires to the family’s needs in the name of love (Miller, 1999), or the consumption norms sanctioning respectability and decency (Gullestad, 1995; Sayer, 2003), can all be interpreted along Durkheimian lines as upholding core social values. One problem with this explanation, however, is that not all societies are equally cohesive: some social structures are more collectivistic, whereas others are more individualistic. This problem is solved by yet another version of Douglas’s theories of consumption. In this version, Douglas uses Durkheim’s theory in a flexible way, suggesting that consumption norms conform to the requirements of different types of social environments, without assuming social relations to be cohesive. Social environments with strong group cohesion place group interest above individual interest, reflected in a consumption norm that ‘prevents deviant individual spending, defines what counts as too much or conspicuous consumption, and proposes punishments’ (1996, p.  20). In contrast, in less cohesive, individualist groups ‘there is no need for envy to be put under definition or controlled’ (1999, p.  22), hence their consumption norms allow for higher individual accumulation. ‘Cosmological values’ and ‘belief systems’ in this reading ‘provide justifications for the actions expected from a person by the constraints of his social environment’ (Douglas, 2003b, p. 247). For example, cohesive environments generate religious beliefs in other-worldly rewards in order to suppress individual interest and encourage people to be modest in their worldly consumption. The strength of this explanation is that it acknowledges the important link between social relations and consumption norms. However, it fails to take account of the fact that social relations alone do not define consumption norms, but they act only in conjunction with traditions and cultural ideals in the context where they developed. A comparison between the consumption norms associated with two similar social environments illustrates this point. The first is Gandhi’s ideal of society,

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based on solidarity and egalitarianism. The emphasis in this case was on national autonomy to be achieved through self-sufficiency, local tradition and spirituality, which informed the consumption norm favoring traditional, locally produced clothes. The other is Swedish egalitarian social relations, which due to the different local cultural traditions translated into different consumption norms. These traditions envisioned social order as based on care and responsibility for one another, with individuals, families and homes being the basic building blocks of this social order (Murphy, 2008). The consumption norms informed by this ideal promoted objects that ‘provide a user with some form of care’ (Murphy, 2008, p. 45), achieved through a particular design: ‘organic, ergonomic shapes are conducive to and take care of the body; simple, straight lines are rational solutions; light, solid colors amplify sunlight and thus improve moods; recyclable wood, rather than an abundance of plastic, is responsible to the environment’ (p. 51). As these examples illustrate, social relations do affect consumption norms; yet the exact outcome of their effect depends on the existing cultural resources that they are combined with. The explanations reviewed so far derived the content of consumption norms from specific aims of the community as a whole: maximizing its material well-being, maintaining the stability of its shared cultural categories or of its social order. In these frameworks differential norms, positing different principles of appropriate consumption to different categories of people, are made sense of, if at all, as furthering these aims. This sounds plausible when the differential taboo applying to parents is explained as preparing them for their new responsibilities. However, most differential consumption norms – such as sumptuary laws granting exclusive access to valued goods to certain social groups  – clearly reflect inequalities; a fact not easily reconcilable with the argument that norms are to protect a single, common interest. This is precisely the point of the fourth set of theories, examined next. Securing advantages Unlike the theories discussed above, the fourth group of explanations suggests that consumption norms are tools by which powerful groups secure their privileged access to valued goods. Christine Delphy’s (1984) analysis of the norms guiding food consumption of family members in rural France provides a good illustration. She suggests that the amount and quality of the food that is considered appropriate to consume for a specific person depends on his or her status within the family. Family members of lower status (women, children and the elderly) are expected

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to eat less, which is reinforced by consumption norms suggesting that a big appetite is natural and admirable for a man, whereas it is out of character for a woman. Similarly, more nutritious food, such as red meat, is considered appropriate for men; whereas less nutritious food, such as milk and cereals, are seen as suitable for infants, the elderly and women. According to this explanation, consumption norms and their underlying beliefs – such as the common wisdom according to which drunken women are ugly, whereas drunken men are manly; or that a good housewife and mother has to sacrifice her own consumption for the family – reflect hierarchical social relations. Along similar lines, sumptuary laws that defined what can be consumed according to status and gender, or the taboos prohibiting women and children’s consumption of certain goods, can be explained as reflecting gender and age-based hierarchies (Berry, 1994). Moreover, if the groups in question internalize these norms, differential norms contribute to the maintenance and legitimization of hierarchical relations, rather than simply reflecting them. As Delphy argues, this happens when women experience their deprivation from more nutritious food as their own taste, which is therefore not experienced as gender-based inequality. This theory has the advantage over the ones discussed previously that it explains differential norms. However, it also carries its own specific problems. First, similarly to materialist explanations, it assumes that material goods are the unquestionable aim of human life and that the value of these material goods can be established with reference to objective standards alone, such as nutrition. In reality, valued goods vary across cultures, and cannot be pinned down to objective standards. The cultural meanings of goods define what counts as valuable: whether red meat or vegetables, silk or cotton, material possessions or the pleasure of spending time with one’s children. Second, economic power alone is not enough to make other groups accept the norms that legitimate the powerful group’s claim to valued goods. As Patico’s (2000, 2005, 2008) discussion to the nouveaux riches in contemporary Russia shows economically powerful yet disrespected groups’ access to valued goods created a sense of injustice and moral decline. In fact, the very concept of nouveau riche refers to a situation in which an economically powerful group’s entitlement to goods is put into question. If just any group that has the economic power could generate norms for its own justification, such a situation could not exist. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of taste seems to handle these problems while still being able to make the point that shared consumption norms reflect and legitimize group interests. The concept of taste usually

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includes both normative and nonnormative stances (preferences). Yet Bourdieu uses it to refer specifically to evaluative stances that classify practices into more and less valuable categories, and this limitation in scope makes his concept of taste almost synonymous with consumption norms. Note that Bourdieu provided various, often contradictory, explanations of both the supply side and the demand side of consumption norms; which I will therefore handle separately. The demand-side explanation that I focus on here is his explanation of the formation of legitimate taste, developed in Distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). Unlike the above explanation that assumes that groups compete over material goods, in Bourdieu’s model power, in particular, legitimate or ‘symbolic’ power, based on acceptance rather than enforcement, constitutes the prime stake of competition. Accordingly, consumption norms are means to secure and legitimize hierarchical power relations, rather than privileged access to merely material goods. Bourdieu argues that practices have no intrinsic value that would make them more or less valuable; value is a matter of social consensus (Bourdieu, 1984). What makes a filet mignon at Gordon Ramsay’s considered more sophisticated than a McDonald’s hamburger is not the quality of the meat or its preparation but the social agreement about the idea that Ramsay’s way of preparing meat is more valuable than McDonald’s. This means that there exists a shared understanding of valuation, which constitutes legitimate, dominant taste. This taste is dominant because even someone who considers a McDonald’s hamburger his or her favorite dish would not question that a filet mignon at Gordon Ramsay’s is more sophisticated. Valuations of practices are not fixed by nature, and different groups value practices differently. These groups struggle over the relative value attributed to practices, each promoting as valuable those practices at which it excels and which fit its own taste.2 Bourdieu (1977) emphasizes that this struggle does not take place through conscious calculation but unconsciously, guided by the habitus (to be discussed shortly). The ‘winner’ of the classification struggle is the group which is able to make the practices in which it excels and which reflect its own taste accepted as more worthy and valuable, and thereby to make others measure the worth of their own practices according to that standard. If, for instance, classical music is acknowledged to be intrinsically more valuable than techno, this can naturalize the claimed superiority of people who are able to appreciate classical music. The trick, according to Bourdieu (1984), is that we think of taste as innate, which allows us to classify people as being more or less worthy

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based on their taste. In reality, argues Bourdieu, taste is determined largely by social background (through processes that I  will discuss in the next section on demand-side explanations that focus on why different social groups adopt different elements of the available repertoire of consumption norms). By seeing taste as innate, we attribute the effect of different social backgrounds to innate worthiness. The myth of innate taste therefore legitimizes social inequalities by making people of a certain social background appear as inherently more sophisticated and others as more vulgar. This explanation suggests, similarly to Delphy’s, that the most powerful group will be able to dictate the dominant taste in its own favor. Unlike Delphy, however, Bourdieu does not suggest that it will be the most economically powerful group. He uses a flexible notion of capital as ‘species of power  … whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1989, p. 39). According to this definition, capital denotes the power by which the stakes – which, let’s not forget, are always forms of legitimate power – can be acquired. This definition takes account of the fact that symbolic power or recognition depends on different qualities in different social settings. In academia, knowledge and publications may grant symbolic power, whereas in the religious field piety may function as ‘religious capital’ which yields esteem (Bourdieu, 1991). This argument seems to apply to more cases; in fact, to all cases, because it involves tautological reasoning. According to the argument, it is not the economically most powerful group that is able to get its own practices and taste accepted as superior but the group that has the most symbolic power. Symbolic power is defined as power based on esteem. However, being esteemed means being recognized as superior. This means that the most powerful group thus defined will always be the one which is able to get its taste accepted as superior, simply because the ‘most powerful group’ has been defined as the group that is recognized as superior. Furthermore, due to the fact that capitals are defined by their ability to grant symbolic power, Bourdieu is always able to show a correlation between capitals, power and dominant taste. The historical evolution of consumption norms Each of the general theories discussed so far proposed a single, generally applicable function by which the content of all consumption norms would be explainable. They relied explicitly or implicitly on an assumption of a universal aim – the pursuit of maximum material well-being for a given community, the need for clear-cut conceptual categories,

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the imperative to sustain social order or competitive aims to secure privileges, respectively – that motivates people or moves societies, in a conscious or unconscious way. The aims that people pursue, however, are diverse and vary across time, space and even from one situation to another. In some cases the motive of securing economic advantages for a given group provides the clue to consumption norms, as in the case of sumptuary laws excluding certain groups from the consumption of silk and gold; whereas other consumption norms  – such as sumptuary laws aimed at limiting corruption or eating taboos prohibiting the overexploitation of natural resources – seem to reflect the concern with the ‘common good’. Often, in a single consumption norm different motives can be identified. As Whitehead puts it in relation to food taboos in Papua New Guinea, restrictions are ‘diversely grounded  … in some case a single restriction, or set of restrictions may represent more than one grounding’ (Whitehead, 2000, pp. 58–9). This is the reason why theories that posit a single overarching aim cannot fulfill their promise of a general explanation. If they stick to a strict definition of the function by which they explain norms, they remain too narrow in their scope of application. If, however, they claim to provide a general explanation of all consumption norms, they end up covertly incorporating other aims as well. For example, the materialist theory of food norms incorporated ethical and social motives by allowing for ‘nonnutritive uses’, and Bourdieu’s theory of taste being dictated by the most powerful group became circular by defining power as the ability to dictate taste.3 As consumption norms draw on historically contingent ethical and pragmatic ideas, it is impossible to trace them back to a single, general motive. The alternative to general explanations identifying a single motive behind all consumption norms comprises theories which argue that cultural resources – and, by extension, consumption norms – can be understood only with reference to their historical evolution. One such explanation, proposed by Alexander (Alexander and Smith, 2001) suggests that culture has its own immanent logic, based on structured relations between signs and meanings; hence it can be explained only internally, through a structural hermeneutic understanding. This explanation is partly true, in that existing traditions have a key impact on the evolution of cultural resources. However, it ignores the important point, highlighted by Lamont and Bourdieu among others, that cultural resources are produced through negotiations between ‘various sectors and groups involved in the production and diffusion of culture’

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(Lamont, 1992, p. 130), whose ideas are informed by their own worldviews  – specific to their respective socio-economic location  – and often by their interests as well. To explain the historical evolution of public consumption norms, therefore, we need to look at both existing traditions and the relations between groups involved in their production. Which groups are involved in the production of cultural resources and, specifically, in the production of public consumption norms? Lamont (1992) highlights intellectuals, education, the media and other cultural institutions as key groups or sites of the production of cultural resources. These are indeed the sites where most cultural resources, including consumption norms, are produced and distributed, yet not the only ones. Different consumption norms are developed in different sites, and often the same norm is simultaneously developed in various sites. For example, the norm opposing excessive alcohol consumption is simultaneously developed by healthcare professionals, the Church, governmental bodies and NGOs. The first step in explaining any particular consumption norm is therefore to identify the sites or groups involved in its development. What are the mechanisms that explain the development of particular consumption norms in specific sites? The best insights, in my view, are given by Bourdieu; but, ironically, not by his theory of taste but that of fields. Bourdieu uses the term ‘field’ to denote ‘relatively autonomous social microcosms’ (Wacquant, p.  39) that have their own logics and stakes: art, business, science or religion are fields in so far as they are guided by their own specific rules and values, and are structured by objective relations of power. Field theory, similarly to Bourdieu’s theory of taste, assumes that action is driven by an unconscious pursuit of power (Bourdieu, 1996, 1999), which I think may apply to some cases but is untenable as a general model of human action. That assumption aside, however, the theory provides two important insights to our question. Firstly, it suggests that cultural resources are developed in dialogue with existing cultural resources specific to the given site; in other words, they have histories. Secondly, it suggests that the development of cultural resources can be understood as a struggle between competing ideas put forward by different groups. This struggle is hardly ever an open democratic process but one structured by power relations (Bourdieu, 1996).(Note that he also addresses a third aspect of why people of a specific social origin promote certain cultural resources within fields; however, this aspect relates more to the ‘demand’ side of consumption norms, hence will be discussed in subsequent sections.)

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The consumption norm of ‘intellectual ascetism’ that combined modesty with cultural consumption prevalent in public discourse in socialist Hungary provides a good illustration of these two aspects. The main site in which this consumption norm was developed was politics. It was subject to political debates in the Planning Commission, featured strongly in political speeches, and fed directly into the planning of the supply, price and access to consumer goods regulated by the government (Ferge, 1979). Even more importantly, it was framed with reference to political questions of what constitutes a true socialist way of life and personhood, and the answer to it was formulated in dialogue with political debates and traditions. In the 1950s these traditions included firstly Leninist and Marxist ideas that treated consumption as secondary to production, as production was seen as a prime site through which human potential can be realized and alienation can be overcome. These sources suggested that satisfaction is to be drawn from one’s work rather than consumption, and limited appropriate consumption to basic necessities (which also included cultural consumption). Secondly, it was in dialogue with previous ‘bourgeois’ traditions, which led to the definition of consumption norms as the opposite of the practices of the presocialist elite (Valuch, 2004). Ferge (1979) explains that the only forms of material well-being known at the time were those associated with the presocialist bourgeoisie and aristocrats; hence the definition of ‘real needs’ – understood as proper, socialist needs – tended to a certain asceticism. According to her account, every act that could be classified as continuity with the earlier period  – from hats to ties, nail varnish, frills and décolleté  – was seen as a manifestation of the ‘bourgeois’ (referring to the entire presocialist elite) mentality and hence a sign of disloyalty to the system. This way, asceticism became identified with the true socialist ethics, and manifestations of material well-being with antisocialist ideas. These two traditions – one to be drawn on and the other to be rejected  – provide the key reference points in relation to which the specific content of the consumption norm promoting modest material consumption with relatively high cultural consumption in the early years of socialism can be understood. The second key aspect of the production of cultural resources is that they are developed through struggles  – structured by power relations  – between different interpretations proposed by specific groups. These relations delimit first which sites can contribute to the formation of a particular cultural resource. To follow the previous example, the totalitarian state controlled the relative access which different sites had to the formation of public consumption norms. The key site was

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politics, yet it was not the only one. Intellectuals outside the Party as well as the ‘general public’ contributed to the discourse on consumption norms through the so-called ‘lifestyle’ debates unfolding in the columns of national newspapers starting in the 1960s; and consumption was discussed in popular cultural materials, such as household manuals (Dombos, 2004). However, these sites were subordinated to politics. Politics exercised direct control over what could and could not be said in these media and set the agenda for the strongly controlled debate: the true nature of socialism was the vantage point from which consumption was to be assessed even in these sites. Other sites, such as the Church or grass-roots citizen consumer movements could not contribute to the production of public consumption norms, simply because they were banned or severely limited by the totalitarian state. Second, power relations define the extent to which groups, promoting competing ideas, can contribute (if at all) to the formation of cultural resources within particular sites (Dijk, 2008). In socialist Hungary, many of the possible competing versions of consumption norms – that were not in line with socialist tenets – were denied access to the debate right from the outset. The competing ideas that remained were two versions of ‘socialist’ consumption norms, the differences between which stemmed from their underlying interpretation of socialism. One, promoted mainly by intellectuals and embraced by people of high educational capital, saw socialism as a new ethical ideal and emphasized the importance of culture, community and hard work as central to the socialist way of life (Dombos, 2004; Dombos and Pellandini-Simányi, 2012). The second interpretation, prevalent mainly in popular cultural media, and observable in accounts of people of lower cultural capital, saw the essence of socialism not in a new ethical ideal but in a more egalitarian access to (previously) valued goods. In this version, consumption norms allowing higher material consumption – such as those associated with the previous elite or Western countries – were accepted, as socialism was seen as giving everybody access to them. A household manual from 1961, for example, praised socialism by pointing out that wearing different tailored dresses for different occasions ‘used to be the problem of only a couple of hundred thousand women’, but ‘today it is a question of interest for millions’ (Pataki-Kelemen et al., quoted in Valuch, 2005, p. 316, my translation). The extent to which these interpretations were given access in public discourse and could contribute to the formation of consumption norms depended on the central administration, which in turn depended directly on Moscow. The reason why the second interpretation was given more

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space in the 1960s, as opposed to the hardline ascetic version of the 1950s, is due to a shift in Moscow’s position. Khrushchev announced the dognaty I  peregnaty (catching up and taking over) program in the 1959 and 1961 Party congresses. The program set out to prove the superiority of the socialist system over capitalism in the standard of living, which put the centrality of modesty in socialist ideals in question and paved the way to a new discourse more lenient on consumer spending (Dessewffy, 2002).4 The shift informed the 1969 Planning Commission’s debate, the ‘Hypotheses of the Commission of Perspective Planning and Standard of Living’, which concerned the direction of development for the next 15 years. As one of the proponents of the first view noted: It is somewhat disheartening that the forecasts of a socialist country up to 1985 … do not say much more than that the structure of consumption will follow a pattern very similar to that of more developed countries … If we want more than just to create a kind of bourgeois welfare, then we have to take into account more seriously the specific nature of a socialist country. (Unnamed party cadre quoted in Ferge, 1979, p. 306) The fact that power relations structure the access to the formation of cultural resources  – and, among them, to consumption norms  – does not mean that groups would simply promote their own interests under the pretext of norms. As Hunt points out, even struggles over sumptuary laws have had a primarily moral rather than interest-driven character. He therefore considers sumptuary laws as ‘moral regulation’ involving: practices whereby some social agents problematize some aspect of the conduct, values or culture of others on moral grounds and seek to impose regulation upon them. While moral politics is often complexly linked to the pursuit of economic or other interests, such politics is never reducible to a smokescreen or cover for more mundane class or sectional interests. There is an irreducible core in which people are mobilised and drawn into action by the passionate conviction that there is something inherently wrong or immoral about the conduct of others. (Hunt, 1999, p. ix) The question then is why different groups hold different cosmologies and consumption norms resulting from them. To answer this question we need to turn to the demand side of consumption norms.

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The demand side of consumption norms In the first part of this chapter I suggested that consumption norms can be treated as cultural resources. So far I have looked at the explanation of available cultural resources, which I called the supply side of norms. In this section I turn to explanations of the demand side, and seek to answer the question of why certain elements of the repertoire of consumption norms are adopted by certain people and groups while being rejected or ignored by others.5 Numerous studies look at the key factors influencing consumption patterns, and highlight the importance of class, gender, ethnicity, nationality and age, among others (e.g. Bourdieu, 1984; Coleman, 1983; Crompton, 1996; Grazia and Furlough, 1996; Rao, 2006). Although most of these focused on actual consumption rather than consumption norms, the few that covered the area suggest that these factors explain differences in consumption norms as well. In what way do these factors affect consumption norms? Bourdieu’s explanation Bourdieu’s work provides a useful starting point to understand why consumption norms differ across social groups, particularly across social classes. Bourdieu suggests that people are not born with a certain taste but learn it through the practical experiences that they are exposed to during their upbringing. For example, through regular visits to museums and concerts, children born into families of high ‘cultural capital’ learn to like and appreciate high culture. These experiences form what he calls the ‘habitus’. The habitus is a set of dispositions, perception schemes and practical customs that does not determine but delimits tastes, ethics and bodily gestures, ways of eating, sitting and talking; in short, everything we think and do. We acquire our habitus primarily though practice and apply it unconsciously (Bourdieu, 1977); an aspect that I  will discuss in the next chapter. Through the habitus, people incorporate socially and historically specific ethical stances as well as a sense of constraints and possibilities inherent in their social conditions. For example, Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977) includes vivid descriptions of how the sense of honor – a deeply ethical sense of how a man of virtue should behave, and more broadly, what it means to be a proper man – is ‘inculcated in the earliest years of life’ until it becomes a ‘permanent disposition, embedded in the agents’ very bodies in the form of mental dispositions, schemes of perception and thought, extremely general in application’ (1977, p. 15). Similarly, in Distinction,

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he describes how ‘world views’, ‘philosophies of life’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 292) and ‘a sense of belonging to a more polished, more polite, better policed world’ (1984, p. 76) are learnt and transmitted through practice. As the experiences formative of the habitus differ across social backgrounds, they will produce differences in people’s habitus and therefore in people’s tastes. The theory so far does not explain the content of norms adopted by different groups but simply states that existing differences will be passed on through the habitus. Bourdieu’s work, however, also contains parts in which he sets out to explain why certain consumption norms of the available repertoire rather than others are adopted by different social groups. He proposes two explanations which, however, in my view, are irrevocably reductionist. The first, materialist reductivist explanation suggests that different objective economic conditions create specific tastes or consumption norms by turning constraints into evaluative stances, by creating a ‘virtue made of necessity’ (1984, p. 175). The more constrained one is by economic necessity, the more one appreciates substance rather than form, be it in the field of art, food or manners. For example, the working-class taste for large, earthy portions of food, consumed in a carefree way, expresses the emphasis on ‘content’, such as nutrition; which can be explained by the necessity imposed by conditions of scarcity. In contrast, the taste for minuscule, artistically arranged gourmet bites reflects a distanced relationship that appreciates food not as a source of calories but as a quasi-artistic form, resulting from conditions that are free from necessity (Bourdieu, 1984, pp. 177–208). Similarly, according to Bourdieu, the distance from necessity explains differences in the taste for art along the same oppositional principle of substance versus form. The larger one’s the distance from necessity, the more one can ignore content and focus on form. This is why, high-brow art, emphasizing form over content, is more appreciated by people who are free from economic necessity: The pure aesthetic is rooted in an ethic, or rather, an ethos of elective distance from the necessities of the natural and social world.  … The detachment of the pure gaze cannot be dissociated from the general disposition towards the world which is the paradoxical product of conditioning by negative economic necessities – a life of ease – that tends to induce an active distance from necessity. (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 5) The implication of this argument is that the content of norms is ‘determined by forces of a  … material kind’ (Alexander, 1995, p.  135). The

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problem with this explanation, as Lamont points out, is that it implies that ‘social actors with the same amounts of capital and the same social trajectories have similar tastes and attitudes, independent of the society in which they live’ (Lamont, 1992, p. 187). Yet this is not the case. People who fall into the same category based on variables of income, occupation and education, yet live in different countries, hold different values and consumption norms (Lamont, 1992); and historical work suggests that similar economic conditions ‘produced’ very different consumption norms across time. For example, Elias’s (2000) description of the uninhibited table manners of the medieval upper class shows that ‘civilized’ consumption norms emphasizing self-restraint and form have not always characterized the behavior of those who were distant from necessity. It is a relatively new phenomenon, which he traces back to a socio-cultural transformation in which external prohibitions have become gradually internalized. This means that what appears in Bourdieu’s explanation as a universal causal link between economic conditions and consumption norms favoring substance versus form is in fact the product of a particular historical process rather than a universal connection. This is not to suggest that economic conditions play no role; only that they do not have a deterministic effect on the content of consumption norms. The second, equally reductivist, explanation proposed by Bourdieu suggests that the different norms held by different social groups correspond to unconscious strategies that allow them to gain distinction, or more broadly, the most symbolic power in the light of their existing assets. For example, ‘the preference of intellectuals  – characterized by low economic and high cultural capital  – for cheaper, avant-garde art theatre is governed by the pursuit of maximum “cultural profit” for minimum economic cost’, expecting ‘the symbolic profit of their practice from the work itself, from its rarity and from the discourse about it (after the show, over a drink, or in their lectures, their articles or their books) through which they will endeavour to appropriate part of its distinctive value’ (1984, p. 270). Bourdieu proposes this argument against the ‘naïve’ interpretation, according to which people follow their values, by exposing the hidden and unconscious interest-based logic that guides their actions. This means that even those norms that appear in interpretative accounts as reflecting ethical pursuits turn out to serve an ideological function of acquiring power from a critical, external point of view. In some cases it is certainly true; yet not in all cases. However, the theory is unable to distinguish between these two cases. This is because Bourdieu’s concept of capital incorporates ethics as well. Through their upbringing and

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participation in particular fields later on, people simultaneously acquire a sense that a given quality is valuable (i.e. a certain ethics) and also that quality itself. For instance, by being brought up in an intellectual family, one acquires both the ethical idea that being knowledgeable is important and the knowledge itself. This knowledge, in turn, will serve as a ‘capital’ in fields that agree on the ethics according to which knowledge is an important quality. This is why when people act on their ethics in fields that share the same ethics (i.e. where esteem is granted on the basis of these qualities), they can be shown to maximize their symbolic profit on their existing ‘capitals’. (In fact, even if they do not, by entering fields that do not recognize their qualities as valuable, it is not treated as a counter-evidence by Bourdieu but labeled as the acceptance of their dominated position.) Furthermore, unlike Bourdieu’s suggestion, the existence of distinction cannot be treated as evidence of competitive struggles; as distinction results not only from competition but also from genuine ethical pursuits. As Dumont argues, ‘to adopt a value is to introduce hierarchy, and certain consensus of values, a certain hierarchy of ideas, things and people’ (Dumont, 1970, p. 20). Ethical ideas of how to live, due to being normative, automatically produce a sense of higher and lower; that is, distinction. For example, if I think that a life dedicated to the care of others or to the pursuit of wisdom is more valuable than a life spent watching soap operas, I create a distinction: I will hold people who spend their life with pursuits that I deem valuable in higher esteem than those who exhibit qualities that I deem worthless. In other words, people – by holding normative ideas of how to live and engaging them in practice – inevitably engage in a process of producing distinction based on more or less valuable qualities. This means that the existence of distinction can equally be the ‘symptom’ of pure competitive motives and of ethical engagements.6 To illustrate this point, consider O’Dougherty’s study of the Brazilian middle class. She suggests that ‘discursive claims of “cultural” and “moral” superiority [are] key to the middle class identity’ (O’Dougherty, 2002, p.  3). These stances manifest in consumption norms that favor high spending on private schools and lower spending on goods that are seen as materialistic, such as expensive cars. This consumption norm, in turn, produces a distinction between ‘cultured’ people and ‘vulgar people’ who drive flashy cars yet take their children to state schools that provide poorer quality education. However, it would be a mistake to see these stances only in terms of distinction. Living a cultured and morally superior life are primarily ethical stances that define this class’s vision

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of good life. This ethical vision does produce a distinction that classifies a life centered on flashy cars as less valuable; yet this is not necessarily due to a hidden competitive interest but to the fact that normative ideas bring about distinctions between higher and lower by their normative nature, even if no competitive drives are present.7 Access and appropriation The problem with these two explanations put forward by Bourdieu is that they attempt to explain  – similarly to the general explanations of the previous section  – why different social groups adopt different consumption norms from the available repertoire by a single universal motive. Yet just like the theories of the previous section, the explanation remains partial or achieves generality through unfalsifiable arguments. In order to answer why certain groups hold different norms in a given society at a given historical moment, we need to look at the concrete processes by which these groups came to acquire specific norms. I will suggest that the process depends on two points: the access to a specific consumption norm on the one hand and the capacity and willingness to appropriate it on the other. In establishing which factors ‘influence’ the norms held by particular groups and how, we need to have a look at how they influence these two points. Access Access, or the possibility to get in touch with a given cultural resource, is the precondition of its appropriation. Cultural resources can be accessed through particular ‘channels’; a term that I use to highlight that cultural resources are often produced in sites that are distant from their users, and channels are the actual means by which people can get in touch with remotely produced cultural resources. These channels include the media, but also the practices in which particular consumption norms are embedded. Specific consumption norms can be accessed through specific channels: in order to get in touch with the consumption norms of the soap opera Dallas, one needs a TV or a computer; whereas to access the consumption norms of a techno party, one needs to take part in its practice. Access to the channels through which particular cultural resources can be encountered is uneven. Some cultural resources may only be accessible to people of a specific class or gender, participants of an online gaming community, a choir, or a geographical area. For example, in socialist Estonia those living closer to the Finnish border and able to fabricate TV antennas got access to images of Western life through the

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programs of Finnish television (Rantanen, 2001). This means that we cannot take the ‘effect’ of ‘factors’ such as class and gender for granted: they affect consumption norms insofar as they denote access to the channels through which specific norms can be encountered. For example, in socialist Hungary four key channels provided access to the official version of the socialist consumption norms. The most direct channel was participation in politics. Second, university education provided a route of access as it included classes on communist ideology. Third, high position in a state company also got people in daily touch with this discourse due to the close control of politics over these companies. Finally, the norm was accessible through high-brow media (as opposed to popular cultural media that tended to embrace a different interpretation of socialism as more equal access to material consumption). In this case, the correlation between class and consumption norms is due to the fact that ‘class’ – defined in terms of education and occupation  – denoted the educational and work sites that served as the key channels through which this particular cultural resource was directly accessible. Furthermore, as I will discuss in the next section, the educational and occupational settings denoted by class also provided the cultural skills necessary for the appropriation of these cultural resources. As education, party membership and positions in state companies were the prime channels of access to socialist discourse, participants who did not belong to the educated elite used mainly the popular version of socialist discourse that saw socialism as more egalitarian access to previously valued forms of life. One working-class couple in my research, for instance, drew entirely on this discourse and reacted with astonishment to the idea that there might be people who refrain from spending even if they have money, simply out of principle. For them, the egalitarian ethics meant that they too gained access to goods, rather than restraint in any sense. In their understanding, socialism was a system in which they could finally become ‘respectable’ by being able to afford decent clothes, weekly restaurant visits and home decoration resembling aristocratic ideals (this decoration was labeled with contempt in elite newspapers as petit-bourgeois kitsch, the true enemy of a socialist way of life). Yet they were convinced that this is what the slogans on socialism being a workers’ state meant. Not only working-class people but also those participants who, based on their income, would qualify as upper class, yet ran their own company as private entrepreneurs – which became tolerated after the 1970s  – without university qualifications were oblivious to the official socialist discourse; simply because they missed out on the channels where they could get in touch with it.

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Class influences consumption norms not only by granting access to particular discourses of consumption norms through education and working position. Its most obvious effect is that it determines the access to actual consumption practices, to which much of our consumption norms pertain (see Chapter 4). In capitalist societies, access to the majority of these practices depends on income. Yet money only explains differences as long as it structures access to practices. For example, in socialist countries, political connections and working position provided direct access to many of the goods allocated by the state and the union without being mediated by money, whereas in Ancient and medieval times sumptuary laws regulated access to particular practices based on social position. This means that ‘class’ or any other social grouping influences consumption norms only in so far as it structures access to the practices in which these norms are objectified. In the cases discussed so far, particular factors ‘affected’ consumption norms, by granting access to channels – social contexts and consumption practices  – through which specific consumption norms could be accessed. Class had an impact firstly because educational institutions and workplaces were contexts through which people could get in touch with particular consumption norms; and secondly because it structured access to consumption practices by denoting different ‘capitals’, in Bourdieu’s sense of the term, which granted entry to these practices. We can understand other factors influencing consumption norms along similar lines. Gender has an impact if there are consumption norms that are spread through gender-specific channels and practices (such as girls’ magazines or via stag nights), and age affects norms if a consumption norm is accessible only through age-specific channels, such as through cartoons or elderly clubs. This description carries voluntaristic overtones, implying that consumption norms are simply on offer in particular contexts, and that it is entirely up to people to pick and choose as they like. In most cases, however, norms are not simply offered but are also enforced by these contexts, enforcement taking different forms: from peer pressure to actual sanctions. For example, in a university setting, low cultural consumption may be frowned upon and peer pressure may prompt a person to adopt consumption norms that ‘fit’ his or her education. In contrast, in a monastery, the consumption norm of refraining from the consumption of food on fasting days is enforced through more direct rules. Providing exclusive access to particular channels through which consumption norms can be acquired or through which they are enforced is one of the key process by which various factors ‘affect’ consumption

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norms, yet not the only one. As noted in previous chapters, differential norms often apply to different categories of people. In practice this means that the same site or practice acts as a channel of different norms toward people belonging to categories that are deemed as different in the given site: toward men and women, whites and people of color, kids and adults. As a consequence, even groups which have access to the same site or practice may not have access to the same consumption norms. Parents telling off their drunken teenage daughter but merely shaking their heads at the same behavior by their teenage son are acting as channels through which consumption norms denoting appropriate consumption for men and women are not only accessible but also reinforced. Also, the waiter automatically putting the rare beef steak in front of the man and the vegetarian dish in front of the woman guest, despite the fact that they ordered the other way round, acts as a channel of differential gender consumption norms, even if it is thoroughly unintentional. ‘Access’ to particular consumption norms therefore is not guaranteed by the access to the sites where these norms ‘reside’ as the same site may provide access to different norms depending on the characteristics of people – gender, age, ethnicity, sexuality and so on – that the given site classifies as different. Capacity and willingness to appropriate So far, I  have suggested that factors such as class, gender, ethnicity or age influence consumption norms by denoting channels through which specific norms can be got in touch with or through which they are enforced. However, for a cultural resource to be appropriated, availability is essential but not enough: it also requires the capacity and the willingness to appropriate a given resource. The capacity to adopt a given cultural resource requires the necessary (cultural) skills to make sense of it; whereas the willingness to appropriate it depends primarily on whether or not it is compatible with one’s existing cosmology. These skills and existing cosmologies are developed through previous contact with particular cultural resources. To use standard sociological language, they are acquired through socialization that starts in childhood yet does not end there: educational institutions, workplaces and clubs are also sites of socialization. From this point of view, the two aspects of, first, access and, second, of capacity and willingness to appropriate cultural resources do not describe distinct processes but temporally distinct parts of the same process. Cosmologies are accumulated through previous access to cultural resources.8 Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus is particularly helpful here, if we divest it of the reductivist explanations discussed above and treat it as

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a description of how cosmologies specific to particular social locations are transmitted and reproduced without conscious and explicit deliberation. The theory predicts that cultural resources are more likely to be adopted if they are compatible with one’s habitus acquired through upbringing, and that the habitus will define how new resources will be appropriated. Although the decisive part of the formation of the habitus takes place in early childhood, it does not end there. By incorporating cultural resources specific to fields that one enters, the habitus takes on new layers and may shift into new directions (Bourdieu, 2000). The way this happens, to follow our original example, is well illustrated by comparing how people of a different habitus incorporated the consumption norms proposed by socialist public discourse in Hungary. In each case, people drew selectively on the consumption norms of available discourses, yet the selection depended crucially on the compatibility of these norms with their existing cosmology. Mr Kovács, one of the participants of my research, was a son of a farmer of a mid-sized agricultural farm. During the socialist era he entered the Party, acquired a university degree and over time became the CEO of a state-owned agricultural company. His original habitus, acquired through his upbringing, took on new layers through the new cultural resources that he got in contact with and was expected to conform with in the new sites he entered: the university, the Party and the state company. These sites made the official discourses of appropriate consumption abundantly available and provided him with the necessary cultural skills for their appropriation. He has incorporated elements of the official socialist consumption norms by weaving them together with this existing cosmology, by highlighting compatible elements and repressing or reinterpreting mismatching ones. His upbringing in an agricultural area emphasized hard work and manual skills as key to masculinity and the centrality of the family. The work ethic of his upbringing got reframed as the socialist ideal of hard work, and became framed as a socialist stance as opposed to the laziness of presocialist aristocrats with their inherited wealth. In contrast, elements of the socialist consumption norm that did not fit his habitus got reinterpreted or ignored. In Mr Kovács’s wealthy family (although not wealthy enough to obstruct his career) a big house and high quality possessions were seen as hallmarks of a respectable man; an ideal with which the material modesty implied by the official norm was incompatible. He reinterpreted the anti-consumerist stance of public discourse as an ideal that fitted more his own habitus idea of good life: one centered on work, family and friends, which he contrasted not

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with consumption per se but only with hedonistic and individualistic consumption. This allowed him to see his large, expensive house as compatible with both his original habitus and his socialist ideas: the house, being the home of his family, no longer classified as a materialistic acquisition. Also, hard work, rationality and expertise (praised by the discourse) got translated in his interpretation into a preoccupation with quality, smoothing out the original contradiction between the official discourse and his purchases of expensive, high-quality clothes and cars. Through the process of weaving together elements of the public discourse with his existing cosmology, he arrived at a new, personalized version of a socialist citizen, with consumption norms combining elements of the official discourse with his original habitus. People with a different original habitus and life history that led through different sites, and hence with access to different cultural resources, were less able and willing to incorporate the official consumption norms and the cosmologies that supported them. Many people from the presocialist elite and middle strata, such as the older Bernáts discussed in Chapter 2, rejected socialist discourse altogether on the basis that it contradicted all their original ethical ideals. During socialism, like other ‘gentlemen’s families’ studied by Utasi (1995), they tried to adhere to ‘gentlemen’s practices’, understood as keeping to their ethical vision. This is why as soon as the political climate allowed for it, and once goods become available in the 1960s, Magda and Sándor returned to the material culture that they were used to before the arrival of socialism. The only element of public discourse that they could appropriate was the kulturnost’s emphasis on manners, culture and refinement. In their cosmology, the kulturnost got reinterpreted to provide continuity to noble family traditions, objectified in ornate home decoration and respectable manners. Reconnecting the supply and the demand sides In the first part of this chapter I looked at the ‘supply’ side of consumption norms and argued that public consumption norms are produced in particular fields or sites through struggles between various groups, promoting different consumption norms. The second part, in turn, looked at the ‘demand’ side of why various social groups hold different consumption norms. At this point we are able to reconnect the supply and the demand sides of consumption norms that we separated for analytical purposes at the beginning of the chapter. This allows us to understand why different groups involved in the production of consumption norms in these fields would want to promote different norms.

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The process seems fairly straightforward at first glance: producers of public norms simply promote their own, personally held norms. Bourdieu, however, suggests that the process is a bit more complex than that. He argues that people entering specific fields cannot promote just any idea, but have to choose between preformed ideological positions offered by the given field. These ideological positions are developed through the struggles specific to the field’s history, and correspond to strategies that groups of different capital compositions can pursue in their effort to maximize their symbolic power. This is why the prime form of antagonism is always ‘between orthodoxy and heresy … the struggle between those who espouse conservatism because of the dominant position they temporarily occupy in the field (by virtue of their specific capital) … and those who are inclined to a heretical rupture, to the critique of established forms, to the subversion of the prevailing models’ (Bourdieu, 1996, p.  234). For example, novel normative visions of good art by an artist, or a new morality preached by a prophet, can be understood objectively as best strategies of groups whose capital composition is not valuable enough according to the existing rules, who therefore try to get new valuations accepted (Bourdieu, 1991, 1996). By extension, in fields where public consumption norms are produced, groups benefiting from the existing norms will defend them, and those not benefiting will critique them. From this point of view, the antagonism in socialist Hungary between consumption norms favoring elegant and decorated items as tokens of decency and the socialist norm of modest material consumption can be explained as an antagonism between positions of different capital compositions: one high and another one low in economic capital. Bourdieu suggests that people enter those fields and within them those positions that allow them to maximize their symbolic power given their existing capital composition. For example, the habitus and cultural capital of someone from a French intellectual family will make her more likely to enter the academic field than, let’s say, football or the Church (Calhoun, 2003). Also, within that field, she will be more likely to occupy the position of a conservator than that of a rebel, and will be more likely to have a position of high influence on the production of cultural resources. This means, as Bourdieu suggests, that the ideas – or in our case consumption norms – promoted by specific people cannot be explained simply by the personal views held by them, but it is ‘the institutional space, in which all social agents … have their places assigned to them, [that] produces so to speak the properties of those who occupy them, and the relations of competition and conflict which set them against each other’ (Bourdieu 1990a, pp. 193–4, emphasis in the original).

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This theory provides an adequate description of the way personally held views of producers of cultural resources are translated and transformed by institutional constraints. However, as discussed above, there is one problematic point of the theory that needs to be corrected: that it dismisses ethics by tautological arguments that make both ethical and interest-based action appear as interest-based. First, capitals are defined as means by which symbolic power (i.e. power based on esteem) in the given field can be secured; hence the argument that ‘capital composition’ within a given field correlates with the ability to impose one’s own qualities as superior will always apply, as this is the very essence of symbolic power. Second, the habitus incorporates both a sense of what the valued qualities are and those very qualities; which means that when people follow their values in fields that appreciate those values, they can always be shown to ‘maximize’ their symbolic profit on their ‘capitals’. In other words, the explanation does not falsify the alternative account, according to which people’s choices can also be motivated by their values but simply relabels these choices as pursuits of power. We do not need to assume an unconscious competitive logic to describe the same process that Bourdieu identified. People are drawn to those fields, and within them to those ideological positions which are accessible to them, given their capital composition; and which are compatible with their values, defined by their habitus, formed initially by upbringing but molded through the different sites and practices in which they participated later in their life. Once occupying these positions, they will promote field-specific agendas that pertain to these positions. This means that we can agree with Bourdieu in that the personal norms held by producers of cultural resources affect which cultural resource that they promote only indirectly, through the preformed ideological positions that they occupy in a given field; without accepting his argument that the process is motivated only be the unconscious pursuit of power. Cultural resources, promoted by groups of a given social position, as Bourdieu (1996) argues, in turn will be more likely to be appreciated and appropriated by people of the same position because they will be in harmony with their cosmologies. This description particularly applies to cases when cultural resources are produced within the same community where they are used. However, in reality, available cultural resources have often been produced in a different society or under social conditions that no longer persist. The temporal and spatial distance between their production and their uses introduces an element of relative autonomy. As Lamont suggests, ‘repertoires need to be analyzed separately because, even if these repertoires are shaped by a wide range

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of economic, political, and socio-historical factors, they take on a life of their own once they are institutionalized. In other words, they become part of the environment, of the structure  …’ (Lamont, 1992, p.  135). Once stabilized and established as part of the available cultural repertoire, cultural resources persist even if the conditions of their production are not, or are no longer, present. Yet this stabilization is never fully permanent. As Lamont points out, ‘repertoires … pre-exist individuals, although they are transformed and made salient by individuals’ (Lamont and Thévenot, 2000, pp. 6–7). This sheds light on a further aspect of the production and uses of cultural resources: apart from extreme cases of a fully controlled public discourse, with no access to its formation, people are not simply users but to varying degrees also co-producers of cultural resources. Firstly, people may actively participate in the formation of norms in key sites where they are produced or transmitted. For example, Mr Kovacs was not just a passive recipient of a consumption norm (channeled to him from Moscow through the Hungarian Communist Party, and from there more directly through his workplace and educational environment), but by participating in these sites he also became coproducer of them. Secondly, people are not just users of a cultural resource but are themselves channels of them toward other people. When Mr Kovacs goes home, he will act as the main channel of this consumption norm – more precisely, his own modified version of it – toward his own children, shaping their habitus on a daily basis. This means that the clear-cut separation of the production and user sides of norms, albeit useful as an analytical tool, is by no means an adequate description of how consumption norms develop. In practice, consumption norms evolve through multiple, overlapping sites of production, in which people act simultaneously as users and producers; the exact extent of each depending on power relations delimiting the access of various groups to the formation of a given cultural resource.

Conclusion How can we explain consumption norms? Unfortunately, there is no single (let alone short) answer to this question. Personal consumption norms are formed through a process of multiple turning points, with different factors at play in each. We need to look firstly at the repertoire of consumption norms available in a given culture, which depends on existing traditions and the power relations that define the extent to which different groups are able to influence a particular norm. In the

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second step, we need to investigate what are the key channels – specific media, practices and sites such as workplaces, educational institutions and so on  – through which a particular consumption norm is made available. To explain which of these channels are involved in the transmission of a particular norm requires again a historical perspective that takes into account both the history of the particular channel and that of the particular norm. In the third step we need to identify the factors that delimit people’s access to these channels, which again are variable: in some cases class, in other cases gender, or living location – or a combination of various factors – grants access to particular norms. Finally, the incorporation of norms depends on people’s existing cosmologies, which are in turn accumulated, personalized versions of previously accessed and appropriated cultural resources. This explanation is messy and painstaking when compared to the seemingly straightforward general explanations of consumption norms that are on offer in the existing literature. According to these, predicting consumption norms is easy, and there is no need for such a time-consuming study. These theories would tell us, for example, that consumption norms are in fact about acquiring social distinction, or that they function to maximize material well-being, and it is enough to look at how these universal motives are best followed given the particular circumstances. However, as the analysis of the first part of the chapter showed, these theories fail to account for the variation and complexity of consumption norms because they either generalize a historically and socially specific motive into an ahistoric, general rule or they attain generality by relying on circular, unfalsifiable accounts. This is why, despite their obvious appeal, the more modest and time-consuming approach is necessary. By outlining such an approach, this chapter has provided the basic model for explaining consumption norms. The model is basic first, because it does not take into account the practical nature of consumption norms; and second, because it does not explain how and why consumption norms change. These are the issues taken up by the next two chapters.

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Consumption Norms as Practical Ethics

The previous chapters argued that consumption norms are based on cosmologies, involving pragmatic beliefs, as well as normative ideas of good life and justice. Throughout these chapters I have treated consumption norms as abstract ideas. This simplification was necessary to elaborate the questions of what consumption norms are about and where they come from, but does not provide an adequate model of how consumption norms actually work in everyday life. In reality, most consumption norms refer to and operate in practice, and hardly ever get articulated, let alone in abstract terms. This chapter corrects this simplification by taking a closer look at how consumption norms operate, in particular at the connection between normative ideas and consumption practices. Its central point, explained in the first part of the chapter, is that normative ideas are often so inseparable from practices that the very term ‘ideas’ becomes questionable. Ethics in these cases primarily exist in practice; that is, norms denote specific practices of right behavior, rather than abstract principles. To capture this emphasis I introduce the notion of practical ethics. The concept indicates that normative visions of how to live and whom to be are embodied and objectified in practices; and consequently are experienced, transmitted and negotiated principally through material culture practices rather than through abstract concepts. This interdependence between ethics and practices has three key implications for consumption norms that are discussed in subsequent sections of this chapter. First, the interdependence implies a close connection between ethical visions and the objects and practices in which these are embedded. This section suggests, drawing on dialectical and actor-network theory (ANT), that subjects do not simply express their pre-formed ethics via objects but develop new ethics via their 83

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engagement with the material world. Second, the practical rather than abstract nature of these ethics implies that they can be applied, learnt and transmitted without fully conscious deliberation. Finally, the interconnected nature of ethics and practice means that the shared cultural repertoires, discussed in the previous chapter, are often embedded in particular material practices, which allows practices to mediate between individual and shared cosmologies.

Practical ethics What lends certain consumption practices to normative evaluation is that they are seen to be connected to particular ethical ideas of how to live and justice. How do these contents get connected to practices? One answer that long dominated the sociological and marketingoriented study of consumption suggests that there exists a set of abstract normative ideas on the one hand and an independent set of consumption practices on the other which are then connected via symbolic coupling. For example, in advertisements, love is coupled with a box of chocolate, freedom with Diesel jeans, or femininity with a perfume by images and slogans that invest these products with the required symbolic meaning. In these theories, goods are seen as empty shells that can be filled with any symbolic meaning or ethical content. This is the model posited by semiotic studies of advertisements (Barthes, 1993; Goldman, 1992; Williamson, 1978) as well as by consumer behavior research on brand personality (Schiffman and Kanuk, 1991). The model works well as a description of how advertisements invest goods with symbolic meanings. Yet as a general model it is insufficient. In most cases, normative contents do not exist independently from practices, nor can they be coupled with just any practice at will. Rather, normative ideas are embedded in particular practices,1 denoting practical ways of behaving correctly. Objects form a constitutive part of these practices and cannot be easily substituted. The norm of elegance, engaged by Magda (discussed in Chapter 2), provides a good illustration. For Magda, this norm draws on the ethical visions of ‘having a backbone’, respectability and being a proper woman. These ethical ideas are inseparable from their embodiment in an elegant person; they are experienced as embedded in the practice of elegance. Or take Ilona, a housewife, also from my own study in Hungary. The happiness of her family and being a good mother are the core ethical visions guiding her everyday life. This ‘good mother identity’ primarily exists in practical responsibilities, actual practices of care: buying goods for family members that she thinks

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they might like or that they should like (e.g. fruit and vegetables), cooking for them, or creating a home for them. The ethical vision of being a good mother is not a clearly articulated abstract ideal that is expressed through practices but it is deeply embedded in them. In these cases, normative ideals are not abstract ideas, but are inseparable from practice. Therefore it is more adequate to talk about practical ethics, which are particular normative visions of how to live and whom to be that exist primarily as embodied and objectified in practices. Everyday consumption norms most often work this way: they prescribe certain practical ethics; that is, practices by which people are able to engage in specific ethical visions.2

Subjects developed through objects At the individual level, the interconnectedness of ethics and material objects implies that subjects are never completely independent of objects; much of our subjectivity is developed through objects. As Miller points out, this idea forms the basis of constructivist psychological theories of development in early childhood. According to this theory, the mental capacities of the child develop in accordance with her interactions with her environment. Certain ways of understanding depend on certain sensory-motoric actions and new mental categories are developed through the practical experience of more and more complex actions (Miller, 1987). The interconnections between external forms  – material objects being one of them – and subjectivities have long been the focus also of dialectical philosophical theories. Dialectical theory, originally coined by Hegel, suggests that consciousness develops through the process of expression and subsequent reincorporation of (material)3 forms. The process, as Miller (1987) explains, starts with an unreflexive subject and a separate object world. In the next stage – similarly to relational theories of identity (Hall, 1996, 1997a) –, the subject acquires an awareness of itself by defining what it is not: by creating its constitutive ‘other’. In the final stage the subject comes to realize that the ‘other’ is in fact its own projection, its own creation, and reincorporates it into its subjectivity, thereby enriching itself with new content. Subjectivity develops through the repetition of the process with a more and more complex ‘other’ and, by consequence, with a more and more complex subject after its reincorporation. The classical case to which sociology originally applied dialectical theory was not consumption but production. Marx held that work is the

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key quality that distinguishes humans from animals precisely because through it they are able to transform their environment in a way that reflects their subjectivity (Marx, 1964). The more and more refined material world allows for the development of more and more refined subjectivities (Miller, 1987; Slater, 1997a) through a Hegelian dialectical development. When I  paint a painting, I  express something that I am not fully aware of; yet when I see the end product I may become conscious of it. When I build my own house, it reflects my visions of what a home is, how my family should live; and I am able to recognize my ideas in the material world that I created. In fact, the long-standing tradition in sociology that subsumed the study of consumption to the critique of modernity, discussed in Chapter 1, was based on the argument that in modernity this dialectic is broken. As a result, subjectivity cannot develop via new forms created through creative practice, but people are confined to the mere adoption of a world that is not of their own making, and objects gradually come to dominate subjectivity (e.g. Baudrillard, 1998; Bauman, 1988; Marcuse, 1964). The application of dialectical theory to modern consumption – that is, to objects that we do not produce, but simply consume  –, has been developed most fully by Daniel Miller. As already mentioned in Chapter 1, Miller argued that dialectical development is possible not only through production but also through consumption. Through using goods, we are able to appropriate objects and recontextualize them as part of meaningful projects that reflect our own subjectivity, even if they were originally not our own creation. He calls this process ‘objectification’ (Miller, 1987, p. 27), by which he refers to the mutually shaping relationships between subjects and objects (Miller, 1987, 2005). A similar argument has been developed by ANT and practice theory more recently. ANT argued that conceptual division between preexisting subjects and objects is untenable; it is better to see subject–object assemblages, actor-networks, hybrids, cyborgs as the primary units of analysis as opposed to subjects and objects.4 In these subject–object assemblages, both humans and nonhumans have a constitutive role. What does this constitutive role mean when applied to consumption practices? Let’s imagine a man, Mike, for whom friendship is a core ethical value. He maintains his friendships by regular dinners at his place. When he cooks dinner for his friends, is it the dinner or is it him that carries the ethical content of ‘friendship’? It is partly him: he considers friendship important and that is why he organizes the dinners. Yet whether he ‘expresses’ this feeling through sending his friends long letters, chatting with them on-line, or meeting them

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one-to-one over a coffee makes a difference to what the actual nature of their friendship will be. Long letters facilitate the explications of stories and ideas; chat implies brief exchange of moods and thoughts; one-toone coffees allow for exchanging private matters, whereas bigger dinners favor common topics over private problems. These forms, in other words, do not simply get invested with just any meaning, but facilitate certain subjectivities and social relations and hinder others. Subject–object entities are not determined solely by the qualities of the object, nor those of the subject, but by their interactions.5 This is why instead of the term ‘qualities’, Latour uses the term ‘affordances’ (Latour and Venn, 2002, p. 253) to indicate that these are only potentials that may or may not be realized in a given assemblage. Which of these affordances of human and nonhumans will be actualized and developed depends on how they are connected to each other (Latour, 2005, 2008; Law and Hassard, 1999). In other words, subjects and objects become who and what they are through their mutually shaping connections. Parachuting, driving a car, making ceramics and having access to the internet allow me to develop some of my ‘affordances’ into particular subjectivities and qualities that I would otherwise not be able to develop. Simultaneously, by putting objects to certain uses, I  turn their affordances into particular qualities; for example, by using a piece of textile as a parachute rather than as a tent or as clothing. According to this model, then, there are no preexisting subjects and no preexisting objects, but they are both born through their interconnections: subjective and objective contents ‘co-evolve’ (Shove, 2003, p.  43)6 through their connections in practice. Two important insights can be gained from these theories with respect to practical ethics prescribed by consumption norms. First, they suggest that practical ethics do not simply reflect our subjectivity; we become a certain kind of subject as opposed to another by engaging in them. When Magda’s mother, discussed in Chapter 2, showed her how to dress decently, she did not only teach a particular practice but, through it, also a particular sense of what a proper women should be like, which came to form an essential part of Magda’s sense of who she is and how she should live. Through engaging in the practices of elegance, Magda simultaneously developed the qualities of a respectable woman. Second, these theories suggest that practical ethics stipulated by consumption norms depend not only on our subjectivity, but also on the affordances of objects. The development of a novel ethical ideal of masculinity defined in terms of rationality and objectivity, as opposed to violence, described in Smith’s (2002) study on the changes

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in English consumption between the 17th and 19th centuries, provides a fitting example. The new ideal developed with the spread of coffeehouses, which – as opposed to the pubs that centered on alcohol consumption  – provided the actual places for the development of a rational, Habermasian-style public sphere. They became the sites where virtues of civility, politeness and rationality associated with masculinity could develop in practice. The coffeehouse culture depended on the rising new middle class and transformations in politics; yet also on these new public spaces, as well as the import of tea, coffee and tobacco. The practical ethics of ‘rational masculinity’ developed in a co-constitutive way with the material elements of the practices of coffeehouse culture, and it was therefore inseparable from the material processes that these elements depended on. Similarly, contemporary notions of cleanliness could not have developed without the parallel changes in detergents and the water system (Shove, 2003; Smith, 2002); and the current professional standards of being up-to-date depend largely on new, faster information technologies.

Practical cultural repertoires Some of the practical ethics prescribed by consumption norms are developed autonomously by us. A couple who had their first big argument in a seaside resort may develop a private consumption norm that puts a taboo on seaside holidays; a norm completely unintelligible to anyone outside the two of them. Yet the majority of consumption norms and the practical ethics that they involve are not our own, private inventions. They preexist us and practices objectifying them seem to come with a certain degree of ethical content already inherent to them. As practice theory suggests, social practices7 present themselves as ready-made, coordinated entities of what to do, what to think and what to feel that include practice-specific ethical contents as well (Shove and Panzar, 2005; Warde, 2005). They are recurring, recognizable, coordinated activities rather than one-off individual actions (Warde, 2005). A similar point is stressed by Lakoff and Collier’s concept of ‘regimes of living’ (Lakoff and Collier, 2004, p. 420) which they define as culturally specific, connected sets of practices and ethical reasoning; as well as by Woodruff Smith’s concept of ‘context’ (Smith, 2002, p.  13) which he uses to refer to integrated, socially shared sets of cognitive, discursive, behavioral, institutional and material elements. When Magda puts on elegant attire, she enters into a practice of already existing material and ethical elements, engaged by millions of

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other women. As Reckwitz suggests, conventionalized ‘mental activities of understanding, knowing how and desiring are necessary elements and qualities of practice in which the single individual participates, not qualities of the individual’; therefore ‘the single individual – as a bodily and mental agent – then acts as the “carrier” (Trager) of a practice’ (Reckwitz cited in Warde, 2005, pp. 249–50). In this sense, social practices are materialized, practical cultural repertoires that people can selectively draw on in devising their personal practical ethics. These material cultural repertoires carry normative elements of how to live, whom to be and justice – in practice, through objects and their uses. These practical cultural repertoires do not simply offer distinct practices, but rather clusters of connected practices linked together by specific ethical and pragmatic beliefs. This aspect of practical cultural repertoires has formed the basis of the long-standing traditions of archeology and anthropology – developed recently by material culture studies – according to which material culture reflects and reinforces shared cultural ideas and social relations (Bourdieu, 1977; Miller, 2009a).8 In these theories, it is not distinct practices in themselves but a set of practices relationally defined that carry meanings and materialize shared cosmologies. Douglas’s theory (Douglas, 1972; Douglas and Isherwood, 1996), discussed in Chapter 2 and 3, according to which material goods express the cognitive categories of a given culture, is one example. Similarly, in his analysis of the Berber house, Bourdieu (2003) showed that conceptual divisions  – between male and female, private and public, human and animal, night and day – as well as social relations – such as the status of women and children – are reflected in the spatial arrangement and use of the house. The key point of these theories is that objects and practices mediate social relations and culture; and by objectifying them they also make them stable and publicly accessible. Whereas in Douglas’s and Bourdieu’s theory the coherence across practices is due to the fact that by their very nature they symbolize or conform to shared cultural beliefs, according to the sociological literature on lifestyle this coherence is only due to marketing efforts, which respond to problems specific to modernity. According to these accounts, in modernity the disappearance of the traditional social order with fixed identities brought about increased risk, anxiety and identity crisis (Bauman, 1988; Shields, 1992; Warde, 1994). The task and responsibility of identity-construction has been delegated to the individual, setting at the same time changing expectations which require the constant updating of identity. Consumption in this line is

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seen as a solution through which anxieties over identity-construction are to be resolved by assuming easily changeable consumer-identities. Bauman argues that consumption gained unprecedented importance as a basis of identity because, in the rapidly changing world, identity has to be constantly updated, and the flexible field of consumption is a better ground for change than the previous static categories related to one’s work or nationality (Bauman, 2001a; Bauman, 2001b). Similarly, Giddens suggests that in high modernity individuals are faced by an abundance of identity options and at the same time the imperative to maintain a coherent self-identity. The contradiction can be resolved not by the return of the stable core self but by the integration of the different selves in the frame of a narrative. The material form of these narratives are lifestyles defined as ‘more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces’ (Giddens, 1991, p. 81), and which by their unity give ‘a continuing sense of ontological security’ (p. 82) to individuals. This way ‘the project of the self becomes translated into one of the possessions of the desired goods and the pursuit of artificially framed styles of life’ (p. 198). According to this interpretation, then, practical cultural repertoires involve clusters of practices united by their underlying values partly due to marketing efforts and partly to people’s need for a coherent self-identity.

How objects get their ethics The theories discussed in the previous section, despite their differences, agree on one crucial point that practices carry certain values or ethics internal to them. How exactly do objects get invested with ethical ideas? Studies that look at the role of producers in connecting meanings to practices provide important insights. The oldest lines suggests that advertisements imbue goods with values (Goldman, 1992). However, as discussed above, this model is a relatively limited one, as it mainly covers symbolic coupling. Products can also be designed in such a way that they not only carry ethics symbolically but also through enabling or – in some cases – enforcing particular ethics in their physical make-up. First, objects can be designed in a way that fosters certain behaviors, and through them, particular ethics. Bentham’s panopticon, an architectural design developed primarily for prisons, is one of the obvious examples. The design, consisting of a circular building with a central tower in the middle, allows for inspectors within the central tower to see every part of the circular building, whereas people residing in the building cannot see

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into the tower. As they can never be sure if they are being observed, they will always behave, at least in theory, as if they were being watched. As Bentham enthusiastically wrote, ‘morals reformed … all by a simple idea in Architecture’ (Bentham, 1995, p. 31). Similarly, Haussmann, following Napoleon’s request, planned the streets of Paris so that they would make civil disorder difficult; many American campuses built in the 1970s were specifically designed to ‘defuse student demonstrations’ (Winner, 1999, p. 31); urban design and house planning have been used as a means of crime prevention since the 1980s (Grönlund, 2012); and the layout of council estates in the United Kingdom was supposed to promote a sense of community (Miller, 1987). A similar phenomenon can be observed also in the design of everyday objects aimed at fostering a particular ethics, rather than control. For example, the simple practical furniture promoted by intellectuals, home economics classes and magazines in Sweden in the 1940s and the 1950s was designed according to the ethical vision of progress, modernity and rationality. This furniture did not simply symbolize this vision but was believed to bring it about through the practical, bodily experiences which it created. As Löfgren explains, ‘in the modern chrome chair your body was kept alert and upright, it was a piece of furniture for people on the move forward’ and the ‘peaceful and light, the restrained and low-key, the orderly and practical home [was to] create a setting for light-hearted, openminded, harmonious and rational minds’ (Löfgren, 1994, p. 43). More generally, the same mechanism is at work in many of the everyday objects that surround us, constraining certain uses while enabling others. To use Latour’s famous example, road bumpers oblige drivers to slow down, forcing people to behave ethically and respect the speed limit (Latour, 2008). Automatically slumming doors, as he argues, go a step even further in reinforcing a certain ethics. Their physical makeup does not prompt people to be polite and shut them, but the doors themselves behave politely without human intervention: they shut themselves automatically. In these examples the normative vision of appropriate behavior, or practical ethics, is ‘inscribed’ (Introna, 2009, p. 27) in the object itself. Latour (2008) suggests that we ‘have been able to delegate to nonhumans … values, duties, and ethics’, and, following Akrich (1992), calls the process ‘prescription’ when a required ethical ‘behavior [is] imposed back onto the human by nonhuman delegates’ (p. 157). He argues that prescriptions play a key role in maintaining and extending morality, as they impose a stable and predictable morality that humans would fail to deliver: ‘it is because of this morality that we, humans, behave so

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ethically, no matter how weak and wicked we feel we are’ (Latour, 2008, p. 157). (See also Dant [2006] and Miller [1987, Ch. 6].) Prescription occurs not only when objects are designed consciously to foster certain ethics. Designers and product developers may also invest objects with prescriptions unconsciously, simply by creating objects that fit their assumptions about how users and the world should or would be like. For example, as Michael Callon (1987) explains the French designers at Electricité de France, when envisaging a new electric car, not only took into account resource needs and technological aspects but also the assumed needs of the new postindustrial society which they believed was to come. This society was seen to have new needs compared to its predecessor. People in it were supposed to care more about the environment and no longer to be interested in status competition; hence they were assumed to want a car that they could use in an efficient and environmentally friendly way on an everyday basis. Therefore the car was designed with more emphasis on efficiency, ecology and less on a distinctive image. The designers in this case did not want to force users to behave in certain ethical ways; yet still designed an object with prescriptions that reflected their ideas of what people should value, how they should use the car, and how the world in which this use would take place should look like. The outcome – had it been realized – would have been a car that not only suited the needs of the environmentally conscious and modest individual, but one that  – materially  – fostered these ethical ideas by only allowing for environmentally friendly use and limiting possibilities for competitive display. This example is less exceptional than it may seem. The design of even the most simple washing-up liquid is carried out with a whole set of implicit assumptions about standards of cleanliness, foods that people normally eat, social relations in the family and how housewives are or should be. The resulting product is customized to this vision of the world, and by being so it also contributes to the actual realization or maintenance of this vision; simply by virtue of the fact that certain technologies are ‘more compatible’ (MacKenzie and Wajckman, p.  5, emphasis in the original), with certain social relations and identities than with others.

Engaging practical ethics In the previous chapter I discussed the supply side of cultural repertoires, by which I referred to a shared pool of abstract ideas – thoughts, ideals, symbols and worldviews. The cosmologies carried by objects outlined

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above can be seen as constituting the supply side of the materialized, practical cultural repertoires that people’s practical ethics draw on. Yet the fact that this repertoire is practical rather than abstract implies that the way people draw on, appropriate or modify it works somewhat differently from the model outlined in the previous chapter. The key to this difference is the fact that practical ethics allow for ethical ideas of good life and justice to be engaged without conscious reflection. This is made possible by the practical embeddedness of ethics, which allows for their engagement in and through practice. Unreflected engagement of practical ethics Research on how ethics are engaged in everyday life suggests that fully reflected engagement is the exception rather than the rule (Laidlaw, 2002; Lambek, 2000; Sayer, 2005). Most ethical engagements occur only partially through reason; most often they happen also through emotions as well as bodily sensations, such as disgust. Cognitivist theories of emotion (Neu, 2000; Nussbaum, 2001; Solomon, 1980) suggest that such a distinction between emotions and body on the one hand and abstract moral ideas on the other may not even be tenable as emotions are ‘embodied evaluative judgments’ (Sayer, 2005, p. 3). This is not to suggest – as emotivist theories do (Taylor, 1989) – that bodily processes, preferences or simple sensations generate our moral sentiments; rather that these moral sentiments often manifest in emotional and bodily reactions. Unreflected and partially reflected engagement is particularly relevant for the way practical ethics prescribed by consumption norms are engaged. The housewives described by Miller (1999) do not ponder about whether being a good mother is the best identity choice to be taken and whether cooking dinner for their loved ones is the best way to express that identity. The practical ethics of care for their family and the pursuit of decency that guide these shopping choices are hardly ever made explicit, but constitute taken-for-granted ethics that are engaged through these choices in an unreflected way. The same can be said about ethical ideas of justice. People generally do not reflect on whom to serve first at the dinner table but automatically serve the ‘head of the family’ first, or follow a random order, depending on their unreflected sense of hierarchy. Similarly, feelings of what is pretentious given one’s position reflect a sense of entitlement to goods, a sense of justice, without conscious reflection. In fact, it is this practical, unreflected engagement of ethics that characterizes much, if not most, of our consumption norms.

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Unreflected engagement not only characterizes how we act on practical ethics but also how we acquire them. As Bourdieu’s theory of the formation of the habitus (described in the previous chapter) suggests, people acquire their sense of the social and cultural world unconsciously, through practical inculcation. To go back to his analysis of the Berber house, through living in and using the house – or any other domain of practical everyday life that reflects the same division – people incorporate the social relations and cultural ideas objectified by it. They may not be aware of these contents, yet they develop a ‘sense’ of how things are how they should be; they acquire a very practical cosmology (Bourdieu, 2003). These cosmologies involve what Bourdieu calls ‘world views’ or ‘philosophies of life’ (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 292): Family heirlooms not only bear witness to the age and the continuity of the lineage and so consecrate its social identity  … they also contribute in a practical way to its spiritual reproduction, that is, to transmitting the values, virtues and competences which are the basis of legitimate membership in bourgeois dynasties. What is acquired in daily contact with ancient objects, by regular visits to antique dealers … is of course a certain ‘taste’, which is nothing other than a relation to immediate familiarity with the things of taste. But it is also the sense of belonging to a more polished, more polite, better policed world, a world which is justified in existing by its perfection, its harmony and beauty, a world, which has produced Beethoven and Mozart and continues to produce people capable of playing and appreciating them. (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 76) Ethics and entire cosmologies are acquired and transmitted through practical, even tactile experiences. This allows the habitus to operate in practice without explicit, consciously held and intentionally followed rules and values (Bourdieu, 1977; 1984; 1995). As Miller argues, this practical sense operates through ‘feelings rather than language’; [and] it is those expressions of disgust, distaste, and discomfort which best express our sense of something being “wrong”’ (Miller, 1987, p. 105). When does engagement become reflected? Most consumption norms work through an unreflected engagement of ethics and justice through practice; yet in some cases, the engagement may also be conscious. For example, the intellectual discussions of good and bad consumption examined in Chapter 2 contained well-reasoned arguments on which practices would serve best certain highly valued

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aims. Some of our everyday choices also involve a conscious pondering on which goods would best express our values. In which cases is the engagement reflected and in which cases is it unreflected? Or, put differently, in which cases do consumption norms and their underlying ethics become explicit? First, the more a question is seen as a matter of choice, the more it lends itself to conscious deliberation. When choosing eggs one can ponder whether the well-being of chickens, promised by free-range eggs, or the protection of the environment, promised by organic eggs, is more important. The less consumption norms are seen as a matter of choice the less they are reflected upon and articulated. This is the case with norms referring to what people take for granted as the minimum of a normal life, such as the norm prescribing getting dressed before entering public spaces or maintaining the socially expected standard of cleanliness. In fact, these norms, albeit unarticulated, involve the strongest normative claims of what it means to be human, to have dignity and autonomy. In this sense it is in the most routine, nonreflected practices that our most defining ethical stances are most at play. These ethical norms only become explicit when they can no longer be taken for granted due to poverty (Draculi, 1991) or the sudden loss of possessions in natural catastrophes (Belk, 1988; Erikson, 1976; McLeod, 1984); and these are the instances when their centrality to what is seen as a human existence becomes apparent. Second, research on norms in general – which can be usefully applied to consumption norms as well  – suggests that they become explicit in situations when the taken-for-granted ethical discourses and habitual actions do not serve as automatic guidelines. This happens when previous routines stop working, either because the situation is new (Sayer, 2005), or because a dispute arises (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Zigon calls these disruptions of routine ‘moral breakdowns’ (Zigon, 2007, p. 133), by which he refers to a consciously acknowledged ‘ethical dilemma, which necessitates a kind of working on the self so that one can return to the unreflective and unreflexive comfort of the embodied moral habitus or unquestioned moral discourse’ (Zigon, 2008, p.  18). Lakoff and Collier also suggest that ‘problematic or uncertain situations’ bring about ‘ethical problematization’ (Lakoff and Collier, 2004, p. 421), and argue that particular forms of ethical reasoning which they call ‘regimes of living’ are typically invoked in these situations ‘in order to give such situations a certain moral or ethical structure’ (p. 428). Boltanski and Thévenot focused on disputes precisely because these are the instances when the habitual, nonreflexive actions that they wish to critique in Bourdieu’s

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description break down; these are the situations when, unless resorting to violence, participants have to invoke a common principle of justice or the good, which requires critical, reflexive operations (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Ann Swidler links these breakdowns not to situations but to particular periods which cultures go through. She suggests that ‘explicitly articulated cultural models’ (Swidler, 1986, p. 278), which she calls ‘ideologies’, are characteristic of unsettled periods of social or cultural transformation. In contrast, in settled periods, taken-for-granted common-sense habits, beliefs and traditions guide action.9 We can easily apply these insights to consumption norms. In socialist countries consumption norms took an explicit form in political and intellectual discourse in ‘unsettled periods’, when previous social and cultural conventions broke down, and the political and intellectual elite wished to introduce new norms. Sumptuary laws, which regulated what can be consumed by different ranks and genders, always appeared in periods when social hierarchy and gender roles became uncertain (Berry, 1994; Hunt, 1996a). This uncertainty necessitated the explicit formulation (in sumptuary laws) of norms that had been taken for granted before. Separating questions of consciousness, freedom and ethics To what extent are people able to change or at least to appropriate the ethical contents inscribed into objects? The extent to which people are able to consciously engage and transform the external world is not only an empirical question but one that has long served as the key normative ground on which social theorists judged practices as good or bad. Therefore, before answering the question it is necessary to clear some theoretical ground, as most theories in social sciences doubt that the unconscious engagement that I have described so far can be called properly ethical at all. The reluctance to consider unreflected action ‘ethical’ has its roots in moral philosophy, where the idea that consciousness is the prerequisite of freedom, which in turn is the prerequisite of ethical action, has a long tradition from Plato (1994) to Kant (1993) and Heidegger (1962). Along similar lines, in sociology the ideal of agency and freedom was long associated with consciousness, in a tradition extending from Marx (1977) to Marcuse (1964), Adorno (1997), Lefebvre (1991), Braudel (1981), Baudrillard (1998) and Bourdieu (1992). These theories suggest that, through routines and habits that do not require consciousness, we unconsciously reproduce existing social relations and cultural notions objectified by these practices (Slater, 2009; Thévenot, 2001; Warde, 2004).

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These existing social relations can be oppressive, yet through habitual action we learn to treat them as normal, or even as the only imaginable arrangement, and not something that depends on our own actions and is subject to change. When we unreflexively follow habitual scripts of action, as Bourdieu suggests, ‘we accept many things without knowing them’ (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992, p.  113). The only way out, according to these theories, is ‘conscious rupture: revolutionary praxis, “situations”, Marcusian libidinal hedonism and Adornian autonomy – all forms of intransigent and reflexive non-complicity’ (Slater, 2009, p. 219). This is why in these theories, unreflexive action is equated with the blind adoption of the oppressive systems, whereas freedom and ethics are associated with critical consciousness (Slater, 2009; Trentmann, 2012). The normative distinction between conscious, hence free, action on the one hand and unreflected, hence unfree, action on the other got translated into substantive definitions of ethics. According to these definitions, only those actions deserve the name ‘ethical’ that are conscious and therefore free from the oppressive social, economic and cultural structures; otherwise they are nothing more than the adoption of ideology (Lambek, 2000). To mark the distinction between properly ethical (i.e. reflected and autonomous) versus unreflected, rule-following action, the conceptual distinction between ethics and morality is often used. The distinction draws partly on Foucault, who used the term ‘morality’ to refer to moral rules that social institutions try to impose on us; in contrast to ‘ethics’, that refers to the conscious process of working on the self through practice, and which hence constitutes ‘the conscious practice of freedom’ (Foucault, 1997, p. 285; see also Zigon, 2008). Drawing on Foucault, Laidlaw uses the term ‘ethics’ to mean the reflexive search for the answer to how one should live, and the term ‘moral’ to denote one specific, institutionalized answer to this question in the form of ‘law-like obligations’ (Laidlaw, 2002, p. 137). Lakoff and Collier (2004) do not use the moral versus ethical terminology, yet highlight the difference between the narrow use of ethics as ‘application of values or moral rules to specific situations’ and ‘ethical response in the classical sense’, which involves a ‘form of reflection and practice concerned with how a particular kind of ethical subject, society, should live’ (p. 421). Zigon (2008), too, defines ethics as a ‘reflective and reflexive stepping-away from embodied moral habitus or moral discourse’ (p. 18), as opposed to morals which are about the unreflected adoption of existing discourses or habitual ways of acting. (See also Sayer [2005] and Lambek [2000] for similar distinctions.)

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The problem with the position according to which only conscious and free action is properly ethical is that it conflates answers to three distinct questions, resulting in a rather unhelpful theoretical space in which consciousness is equated with agency and seen as good, whereas unreflected action is equated with domination and seen as bad; with the term ‘ethics’ defined with reference to these normative standpoints. The first is the empirical question of whether or not a given (normative) content is engaged in a conscious or unreflected way in the case under study. The second is another empirical question of whether these contents are products of existing scripts inscribed into objects or are autonomously formed by the subject. Finally, the third is a normative question of how to evaluate these contents. Unlike what the above position suggests, answers to the first and second questions are not necessarily related: an action can be unreflected yet resistant; or reflected yet conformist. De Certeau (1984) showed that ordinary practices of walking, cooking or reading carry a potential for resistance and change through unintentional creative uses. Similarly, Willis, based on his study on young people in Britain, suggested that resistant meanings are constituted through practice in the processes of ‘living symbolic mediation’, which ‘work through the senses’ (Willis, 1990, p. 25). In fact, as Slater suggests, ‘the oppositional force of subculture was often seen in terms of its non-verbal character: it is rooted in music and image, dress and stance, dirty or neat bodies’ (Slater, 1997a, p.  166). Conversely, an action may be reflected yet conforming to an existing set of ethics and scripts. For example, I  may study Buddhist philosophy and decide to live by it, even if it is not of my own making; thereby engaging in an ethics that are external to me through conscious deliberation. Similarly, there is no evident connection between empirical questions of consciousness and agency and the normative question of whether certain practices are good or bad. One can go and demonstrate against a law guaranteeing equal pay for women; yet just because it is a conscious and oppositional act, it will not be considered good from the point of view of social justice. Similarly, one’s son can buy an SUV as part of his conscious, resistant action against his parents’ environmentalist principles; yet viewed from an environmentalist position, it will still be considered bad. Conversely, the ingrained, unreflected sense of modesty, benevolence and care exhibited by the mothers in Miller’s (1999) and Gullestad’s (2001) studies are neither conscious nor particularly resistant, yet still result in actions that most people would qualify as good. In fact, the view that agency equals freedom and is by definition good

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is only based on implicit assumptions that people will use their freedom and consciousness to bring about change in the right direction (Laidlaw, 2002), whatever that direction might be, depending on the theorist in question. Going further, positing freedom as the ultimate normative standpoint is already a moral choice, which is not self-evident either. Other normative standpoints may include equality, environmental protection, or other, variously defined common goods. The separation of these three questions allows for understanding that both reflexive and unreflexive action can be conformist and resistant, and instances of either of these combinations can be morally laudable or condemnable depending on our normative standpoint. As these standpoints differ, it is more useful for analytical purposes to define ethics descriptively rather than normatively. This is precisely what the definition proposed in Chapter 2 does, by defining ethics as strong evaluations, leaving open the empirical question of how ethics are engaged – consciously and unconsciously, in a conformist or resistant way – and the normative question of what should count as ‘good’. Appropriating practical ethics After this clarification we can now return to our original question: To what extent are people able to change or at least to appropriate the moral contents inscribed into objects? In many cases, change is nonexistent: people follow the scripts, and, by doing so, simply adopt the ethical imperatives carried by objects. Yet in other cases this does not necessarily happen. Council estate dwellers may not develop a community feeling and Parisians may not become less rebellious just because they live in a Haussmann-designed Paris; they may erect road blocks, or simply move the rebellion to the suburbs. As noted above, the ability to resist or modify the ethics carried by objects has long been associated with consciousness. As Wilk explains, ‘[s]ocial limits and standards are taken for granted, and only change through being brought out of the doxic realm of the unconscious habitus, into the discursive sphere of heterodoxy where they are subject to manipulation, evasion, and multiple interpretation’ (Wilk, 1999, p. 7). In contrast to this view, I suggested that consciousness and the ability to modify practices are not necessarily related: change and appropriation may take place even in an unreflected way. As Introna argues: neither the things nor those that draw upon them simply accept these inscriptions and enrolments as inevitable or unavoidable. In the flow of everyday life things often get lost, break down and need

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to be maintained. Furthermore, those who draw upon them use them in unintended ways, ignoring or deliberately “misreading” the script the objects may endeavour to impose. (Introna, 2009, pp. 27–8) These changes and modifications may go unnoticed, precisely because of the lack of abstraction and articulation. The comparison of two Bernát family generations’ home-decoration practices in Chapter 2 illustrates how this happens. For the two generations, the very same objects – the koloniál furniture, ornamented vases and paintings – stood for a very different cosmology. For the older generation, they objectified the ethical idea of accumulating family heirlooms and living up to the ‘gentlemen’s position’. In contrast, the same material culture for Zsuzsa and Ede fitted into the ideal of a ‘cultured way of living’, focused on a subjective sense of harmony and aesthetic sophistication. The furniture did maintain its link with social position, yet this did not imply the survival of the same view of social hierarchy. The hierarchy in terms of which these positions were made sense of had changed; the objects became seen as legitimately deserved by hard work. This means that unconscious engagement of practices is not only a vehicle of reproducing ethics, but also one of change that occurs at a practical level without conscious reflection. As Shove suggests, ‘[w]hile new practices sometimes arise as a consequence of explicit challenges to routine  … they also emerge through barely visible adaptations and adjustments within and across existing frameworks of order’ (Shove, 2003, p. 163, emphasis in the original). This possibility is present in most theories positing a correspondence between material culture on the one hand and social relations and culture on the other, described in previous sections. Douglas (Douglas and Isherwood, 1996) suggests that material culture reflects the categories of a shared culture, yet through consumption individuals are also able to modify and renegotiate these categories. Similarly, earlier formulations of Bourdieu’s (1977) theory of practice suggest that practices do not simply reflect social relations and culture but, being utilized in everyday life, also allow for their modification. Recent versions of practice theory as well as Miller’s theory of objectification take this argument a step further by suggesting that no such overarching structure of social relations or culture exists, and that practices are the very realm where a common culture and social relations are constantly recreated and renegotiated. Even though practices preexist individuals, their very existence depends on people engaging them in their everyday life (Shove and Pantzar, 2005). The constant reenactment

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of practices in everyday life allows for changes and appropriation. As Shove suggests, ‘people’s routines are shaped and moulded by the collective conventions of the day’, yet they do not ‘simply mirror’ them; instead, ‘private habits are construed as people steer their own course through culturally and temporally specific landscapes of legitimating discourse and classifications of ordinary and extraordinary behaviour’ (Shove, 2003, p. 94). While leaving room for individual modifications, social practices retain a degree of uniformity of form and content. By engaging in the same practice of ‘respectable clothing’ or ‘thrifty shopping’ people are able to engage in a very similar cosmology, without explicitly exchanging views about it. In this sense, social practices, by being relatively shared, serve as nonverbal media integrating cosmologies held by distinct individuals; they are the very means by which something called the social can exist at all. This means that by being simultaneously constrained by collective conventions and subject to individual appropriations, practices mediate between the individual’s and society’s cosmologies, and serve as a terrain through which a shared cosmology can be negotiated and modified. Earlier in this chapter I suggested that our very subjectivity develops by engaging in practices. If we bring this point together with the one proposed here, practices appear as key sites through which we simultaneously develop our own consciousness and incorporate shared cosmologies. These shared cosmologies, as illustrated by the previous chapter, are more than oppressive structures limiting our freedom. They are to some extent necessary and constitutive of our very subjectivity and identity: we develop our own subjectivity and ethics through becoming social beings. This means that the ethics inscripted in material-culture practices constrain us, yet this constraint is also an enabling one that allows us to develop any kind of identity and ethics in the first place.

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How Consumption Norms Change

If you compare what your grandparents considered to be a decent appearance, a normal flat or a sufficient amount of food in the pantry to your own ideas, you will probably notice many differences. Some may even have been articulated already in the form of amazement; or, if you are less lucky, in the form of reproachful remarks that you don’t dress prettily enough, that you set your standards too high (or too low), or that you don’t plan long-term enough. Some of these differences are due to the fact that your grandparents are older than you and they are in a different stage of their life, often referred to as age effect and life-cycle effect, respectively. Others, in turn, are due to the changes of consumption norms over time, from one generation to the other. This can be termed as the generational or cohort effect, meaning that your grandparents grew up in different times, and were therefore exposed to different social, economic and cultural influences (Mannheim, 1972). If we compare our own consumption norms to those held a few hundred years ago, these changes become even more striking. What was considered a normal standard of hygiene would be considered utterly unacceptable today, and in most countries it would be unimaginable now if sumptuary laws told us not to consume a given good because we are of a certain social class or gender. This chapter looks at these two sources of change. In the first part I  explore why consumption norms change over one’s life. I  will suggest that although biological factors play a role in infancy, consumption norms associated with different ages in childhood and adulthood largely depend on cultural conceptions defining the boundaries and contents of different ‘ages’, and on the social relationships that people enter into in different stages of their life. These cultural conceptions and relationships provide age and life-cycle specific ethical ideas of whom 102

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to be, and involve hierarchical relations, which together inform the consumption norms pertaining to them. In the second part I examine why consumption norms change over generations, by examining the role of economic, social, technological and institutional factors. Expanding the arguments developed in Chapter 3, I  will suggest that existing cosmologies are crucial to the effect, or the ‘success’, of these factors in changing consumption norms. This is not to suggest that cosmologies and practices remain unchanged and merely act as gatekeepers to ward off effects that are incompatible with them. Rather, that existing cosmologies act as a prism through which new economic and social conditions, novel technologies and cultural resources are filtered through: they are interpreted and acted upon depending on existing cosmologies and influence norms through being recombined with their pragmatic or ethical elements. The effects of these factors are therefore not uniform but vary according to how they are adopted, modified or rejected by people in the light of existing cosmologies and practices. Change is an incremental process in which existing ethical and pragmatic elements are gradually reinterpreted and practices reconfigured in order to incorporate new cultural, technological, economic and social conditions.

Changes over the life-course Why is it that people of different ages often hold different consumption norms? We can identify three main explanations – biological, social and cultural – which, however, are often combined in particular theories. Theories that posit biology as the key explanatory factor draw on developmental psychological models, particularly on work of Piaget (Buckingham, 2011). Piaget argued that cognitive abilities develop in four stages from infancy to adulthood. Through these stages, children become capable of performing increasingly complex cognitive tasks and gradually to imagine others’ perspectives, departing from the egotistical orientation characteristic of infants (Atkinson, 1983). Consumer socialization models incorporate this theory by identifying distinct age brackets characterized by particular cognitive and social skills in order to explain certain consumer behaviors and consumption-related knowledge (Ward, 1974).1 For example, between the ages of 7 and 11, children move into the ‘analytical’ stage that allows them to develop a more complex understanding of brands; between 11 and 16 they are in the ‘reflective’ stage that makes them more prone to peer pressure (John, 1999, p.  187). Although this research focuses on consumption and

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the knowledge related to it, we can easily extrapolate the argument to consumption norms as well: people hold different norms as they grow older because their more sophisticated cognitive abilities and decreasing egocentrism result in more complex pragmatic beliefs and in an othercentered ethical outlook. Although social and cultural influences are noted in this literature, they are not incorporated into the explanatory model. These models therefore have a biological logic: they apply to particular age groups regardless of social and cultural context. The argument that biological maturity is the precondition of holding certain consumption norms certainly applies at a young age. Not even the most committed constructivist theorist would deny that babies lack the empathy and cognitive skills that would allow them to hold any kind of norm. However, the theory is less convincing when it is applied beyond infancy. Cross-cultural and historical comparisons suggest that the capabilities attributed to people at a specific age vary widely across time and space, which puts into question the universal, biologically grounded model. For example, Alexander the Great was 16 when he defeated the Thracian revolt and founded the city of Alexandropolis; an age that would be considered too tender today to allow him to purchase a beer, let alone to vote in most countries.2 Alternative explanations of changes of consumption norms over one’s life highlight that social and cultural factors shape the very conceptions of age groups as well as the different norms pertaining to these groups. In his influential work on the history of childhood, Ariès (1996) suggests that in the Middle Ages the concept of childhood did not exist: children were treated as small adults. Owing to the lack of conceptual distinction between children and adults, the objects for children were no different from those for adults; for example, they wore the same clothes, just in smaller sizes. It was with the emergence of the concept of children as qualitatively different  – rather than being simply quantitatively different, as small adults – that different consumption norms started to apply to them, with a different set of objects designed specifically for children. The argument that age categories and the consumption norms applying to them depend on cultural conceptions rather than biology is further supported by Cook’s (2004) analysis of the rise of the ‘toddler’ as a relevant age category for consumption in the United States. The term was already in use in the late 18th century, however, it referred simply to the fact that children between the ages of one and three have a wobbly walk. It was only in the 1930s that toddlerhood became established as a distinct life stage, qualitatively different from the life stages of being a baby and a child, hence requiring distinct consumer goods. Toddlers

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were seen as being in the process of developing their own personalities, and hence were claimed to require special goods that met their distinct needs. The emergence of the category, as Cook explains, was fostered by new child-rearing practices and the appearance of toddler stars like Shirley Temple. The clothing industry, in turn, created a special size and style range conforming to the alleged needs of the toddler, thus cementing it as a distinct life-cycle stage with a distinct set of consumer goods. Cultural conceptions of different age groups operate in conjunction with other conceptions defining pertinent categories, including gender, class and ethnicity. As Firestone points out, the emergence of the child as a distinct category from adults in the 17th century at first only applied to boys: childhood did not apply to women. The female child went from swaddling clothes right into adult female dress. She did not go to school, which, as we shall see, was the institution that structured childhood. At the age of nine or ten she acted, literally, like a ‘little lady’; her activity did not differ from that of an adult woman. As soon as she reached puberty, as early as ten or twelve, she was married off to a much older male. (Firestone, 1970, p. 81; emphasis in the original) Firestone suggests that the child/adult distinction applied only to males because women and children were considered to belong to the same substantive category; therefore girls were assumed to remain children even when they reached adulthood. These theories suggest that, consistently with the argument developed in Chapter 2, it is cultural conceptions rather than biology that determine, firstly, which age brackets will be seen as denoting distinct age groups, with different consumption norms applying to them; and secondly, the content of these norms, by defining how people of these different categories are and how they should be. This explanation highlights the fact that cultural conceptions do not simply exert an external ‘influence’ on biologically defined age categories but play a constitutive role in forming them. These cultural conceptions are manifested in discourses and in institutional practices that bring about actual differences between the age groups that they distinguish not only by maintaining the conceptual differences but also by structuring the practical experiences of people belonging to them. For example, children in the Middle Ages were not just thought of as adults but also treated as ones: they were integrated into adult daily activities, including work, as opposed to the situation today where children take part in specialized, spatially segregated

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activities designated for children, such as schools and playgrounds that do not allow children to participate in adult practices (Thorne, 2009).3 Indeed, as Jenks argues: the child emerges in contemporary European culture as a formal category and as a social status embedded in programmes of care, routines of surveillance and schemes of education and assessment. … The status of childhood has its boundaries maintained through the crystallization of conventions and discourses into lasting institutional forms like families, nurseries, schools and clinics, all agencies specifically designed and established to process the child as a uniform entity. (Jenks, 2005, p. 5) The practices that children are allowed to participate in, and the relations in which they enter through participation, consolidate the meanings and boundaries of ‘childhood’. As Rogoff et al. (2009) point out, the ‘organization of practices and routines in which children participate and the ways their participation is supported by others are often “invisible”’, yet these ‘tacit, routine expectations of everyday life are likely to be among the most powerful cultural experiences’ (Rogoff et al., 2009, p. 491). Interestingly, these insights are not entirely missing from Piaget’s original theory either, which is well illustrated by his explanation of different moral outlooks of different stages. He suggested that children first hold a ‘heteronomous’ moral outlook, characterized by ‘moral realism’ that posits moral absolutes, largely derived from an authority, such as parents and teachers; then move to the stage of ‘autonomous morality’, guided by the logic of reciprocity, and in which they understand that rules are subject to negotiation. The development of cognitive abilities, explained above, is only part of the explanation, according to which children enter first the stage of moral heteronomy, because they are cognitively unable to take others’ perspectives and to understand the logic of transitivity. The other part of the explanation is that children’s heteronomous moral framework is also due to the social relationships in which they engage: chiefly, to their subordinated relationship to adults, defined by authority and obedience. It is through engaging in reciprocal relationships with their peers that they learn to adopt others’ perspectives and understand that rules are negotiable; both of which are essential for the development of the autonomous perspective (Piaget, 1968). These points suggest that different cultural conceptions of ages are embedded in particular social relationships. This argument forms the

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basis of the third, related approach to understanding why people of different ages hold different consumption norms. This approach suggests, first, that cultural conceptions of different age categories are defined relationally: what it means to be a child is constructed in relation to what it means to be an adult and a parent (Cook, 2008; Martens, 2010). Second, these definitions, as Alanen’s concept of ‘generational order’ (Alanen, 2001, p.  130)  – meant to be analogous to class order and gender order  – highlights, are always embedded in and sustained by actual social relationships. These relationships pertain to specific social settings  – such as the school or the home, institutionalizing teacher– pupil, parent–child relationships  – and involve particular power relations structuring them. Children, from this point of view, are occupants of a subordinated social position, akin to women. This is why, as Delphy (1984) explains, similar consumption norms (e.g. approving less nutritious ‘lighter’ food) apply to children as to women. The centrality of social relations in explaining changes of consumption norms over one’s life is explored from a different angle by consumer-behavior scholars. Wells and Gubar (1966) coined the term ‘family life-cycle’4 and argued that it is the key determinant of spending patterns. The term stood to indicate firstly that it is not so much one’s age as the life-cycle stage that explains what look like age-related differences; and secondly that not individuals alone but individuals as part of a family go through a series of stages which impact their consumption. They suggested a linear process through which people move from a young single stage to young married stage, have children, who subsequently leave the ‘nest’, after which point people move on to the next stages of older married or older widowed stages. According to the theory, people consume differently in the different stages because, first, in each stage they have different prerogatives (e.g. in the ‘full nest’ stages their expenses relate to the family); and, second, because they have different levels of income, increasing as they reach the peak of their career and decreasing after retirement. Since the publication of the original study, a number of refinements (e.g. Wilkes, 1995) have been proposed resulting in less linear models incorporating other stages, such as divorce, and in renaming the theory as household life-cycle in order to accommodate a diversity of social relations. These studies highlight the important fact that it is not age in itself but the social relationships that people enter into at different stages of their life that result in what appear to be age-specific differences. Anthropological and sociological work on the topic complements this insight by showing that these stages result in different consumption

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norms precisely through the obligations and expectations implied by the social relationships which they involve. Osella and Osella’s (2000a, 2000b, 2006) work on the Izhavas in Kerala, India, provides an excellent case in point. The Izhavas are a former untouchable group, many of whom work as migrant workers in the Gulf today (Osella and Osella, 2000b). Among the Izhava men the key life-cycle transition is the one from boyhood to adulthood, marked by the achievement of a householder status. The householder status has religious as well as social connotations. Hindu religion distinguishes the stages of the student, the householder, the forest-dweller and the renouncer (Osella and Osella, 2006a). Each of these stages is characterized by different aims or ethical concerns. The householder stage of married life is defined by two of the four life aims – the aim of success in professional life and the aim of pleasure in married life – as well as by the obligation to support one’s family. The study makes it abundantly clear that entering into the householder life-cycle stage requires much more than reaching a specific biological age: in the householder status a life-cycle stage, wealth-based social categorizations and ideas of masculinity overlap. The householder is a mature, respected status which stands in contrast both to the young and the poor, who are both seen in this sense as not mature enough (Osella and Osella, 1999). In this sense, ‘consumption and mobility trajectories are clearly articulated with the life-cycle’ (Osella and Osella, 1999, p. 991): becoming a householder means both maturing as a person – turning from boy to man – and moving into a more respected status socially. Wealth alone, however, does not guarantee a householder status: Wealth alone suggests masculinity but not maturity, the other essential component of manhood; maturity demands bhuddi [intelligence or powers of discrimination, wisdom] and the wise use of resources …. By fulfilling obligations in a way which places himself as a patron at the centre of a web of dependents and clients, the migrant emerges a successful adult man who, having accumulated enough resources, manages to find a skilful balance between the pull of social obligations and the need to retain control of his resources, in other words between spending and saving. (Osella and Osella, 2000a, pp. 129–30) These qualities distinguish the householder, understood as ‘a successful, social, mature man holding substantial personal wealth, supporting

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many dependents and clients’ from other returned Gulf workers of the same wealth and age: ‘the kallan, a self- interested maximizer or individualistic anti-social man’, who refuses to respect his social obligations and ‘the pavam, an innocent good-guy, generous to the point of self-destruction’, who is seen as weak and unwise, therefore unable to acquire prestige (Osella and Osella, 2000a, p. 117). This means first that the entry into the householder stage is not automatic by reaching a specific age, but defined through a set of social relationships, both in relation to one’s family and the wider community. Second, these relationships imply a different set of responsibilities and ethical concerns compared to the young stage: assuming responsibility for the family, understood both financially and symbolically as being responsible for the family’s reputation and long-term respectability. Finally, it is this change in ethical orientation that translates into different consumption norms as ‘an initial youthful orientation towards transience and ephemerality should eventually be replaced by a mature demeanour directed towards duration and permanency’ (Osella and Osella, 1999, pp. 990–1). The point is not simply that as one moves into the householder stage, one’s ethics and corresponding consumption norms change. Rather, as the above quote suggests, these ethical orientations and corresponding consumption norms are constitutive of this very life stage, as they are the key markers that one has indeed achieved the householder status. What are the consumption norms that qualify one as a householder? Norms that posit those expenses as approvable which contribute to the family’s long-term respectability: providing a good education for the children, dowry and, most importantly, a family home (Osella and Osella, 2000a, 2000b, 2006). In fact, the house, being the ‘long-lasting and concrete embodiment of a family, its worth and reputation’ (Osella and Osella, 1999, p.  1016) is the prerequisite for acquiring a respectable ‘householder status’ (p. 991). Houses objectify the continuity of the family both symbolically and materially (Osella and Osella, 2000b, 2006). They wear the names of the family that inhabits them, ancestors are buried in the land and their spirits reside in the house. This is why the house is a never-finished project: ‘as a family’s wealth, reputation, prestige and membership grows, houses will also grow …. Houses do not merely reflect the status of their inhabitants: they constitute an objectification of the householder and of the latter’s name and reputation’ (Osella and Osella, 2006, p. 97). The reason why consumption plays such a central role in the respectable householder status is that the work done by Izhavas still belongs

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to the less respected ones, hence consumption is the only terrain where the householder status can be established. As a result, the figure of the Hindu householder ‘is being redefined … as a successful provider and a successful consumer’ (Osella and Osella, 2006, p. 80), and ‘has became merged with the bourgeois paterfamilias and revitalized as the consuming man of substance’ (Osella and Osella, 2000b, p. 247). This case suggests that life-cycle impacts consumption norms through the ethical visions, responsibilities and purposes that arise from the social relationships within one’s family and with wider society that define particular life-cycle stages. As it is made evident by the case, people do not automatically go through particular life-cycle stages and adopt consumption norms specific to them by reaching a certain age or family status. First, life-cycle stages and associated consumption norms are not simply defined in terms of age and family relations but also in terms of wealth, social status and gender. Second, contingent cultural conceptions play a constitutive role in the definition of particular stages, as well as in shaping the social relationships, ethical visions and consumption norms that the stages involve.

Changes over generations So far, I have looked at explanations of changes in consumption norms over one’s life, termed – depending on the theoretical framework – as age effect or life-cycle effect. In this section I turn to the second aspect of changes: generational or cohort changes, resulting in changes in consumption norms over time, from one generation to the other. How do these changes come about? The question has long occupied scholars working on fields as diverse as the historical study of consumer revolutions and mass consumption (Campbell, 1987; Clunas, 2004; McKendrick, 1982), the marketing-oriented research on changing consumer behavior (Schiffman et al., 2008; Zimbardo and Ebbesen, 1970) or the social and anthropological study of technological change (Shove, 2003). Studies have often been pursued along distinct questions, in isolation from one another even within the same discipline (Trentmann, 2004); as a result, the findings have rarely been synthesized and we do not have a common debate where these approaches are brought together and contrasted.5 We have instead a wide array of explanations, each developed in the context of a particular region, historical period, and social group. Change in one case is argued to have been triggered mainly by an economic boom; in another by the arrival of global media; in yet another by social transformations involving shifting gender roles

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or the expansion of the middle class; in other cases the combination of all of these factors seems to have been at play. Factors vary across cases, yet it is still possible to identify their four main types. The first suggests that new economic possibilities are responsible for the changes in consumption norms; an explanation which overlaps with the second type that sees social factors as the drivers of change. Shifts in technology and material culture more broadly constitute the third; new cultural resources  – in particular, new discourses and values promoted by specific institutions – form the fourth set of causes. To understand how these factors contribute to changes in everyday consumption norms, this section looks at instances where the four major types had an effect on consumption norms, as well as at cases where, despite economic, social, technological changes and the efforts of institutions, consumption norms remained relatively stable. When economic explanations are not enough Why do consumption norms change? One of the most widely shared views attributes changes in consumption norms to economic factors: mainly, to changes in disposable income and in the prices of goods. Economic factors obviously have an influence on the amount and variety of goods that people can consume. The consumer revolution in 17th-century Holland (Schama, 1987) and 18th-century England (McKendrick, 1982), the prosperity in Western Europe in the 1960s (Schulze, 1992) or the growth of Indian consumption after the 1990s (Wilhite, 2008) all depended on the availability of affordable goods and increasing income – not for all, but certainly for the middle and upper classes. Decreases in income and available goods, in contrast, reduce consumption: the economic shortages during and following the Second World War, the industrialization projects that diverted resources from consumption to industrialization in socialist countries in the 1950s (Valuch, 2005) and in Nehru’s India (Fernandes, 2006) or the inflation in the 1990s in Brazil that led to shortages and devaluation of real wages (O’Dougherty, 2002) all resulted in lower consumption. The effect of decreases in income and available goods is even stronger than that of increases, as it constitutes constraints that people cannot ignore; whereas people can choose to spend or save extra income. The strong connection between consumption and economic factors prompted scholars to look at the economic preconditions rather than cultural factors in explaining changes of consumption (e.g. Pomeranz, 2000). Economic possibilities influence consumption; yet to what extent do they affect consumption norms? To answer this question we

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need to look at the connection between economic factors and the cosmologies that consumption norms draw on. The first connection is evident: new economic constraints and possibilities are incorporated into cosmologies as pragmatic beliefs about how the world is.6 Yet what is the relationship between ethical elements of cosmologies and economic possibilities? In other words, to what extent are economic possibilities able to influence the ethical principles along which people consider particular consumption practices as right or wrong? The standard argument is that rising income and the availability of cheaper goods sets free consumptive appetites and erodes moral boundaries to consumption (e.g. Varma, 1998). This account suggests that moderation of any kind is based on the internalization of constraints; as soon as these constraints are lifted, innate acquisitiveness comes to rule. This assumption in turn relies on a further implicit supposition, according to which people will choose to consume as opposed to three other alternatives: (a) refusing consumption simply because it is not important for them or out of principle; (b) saving; or (c) free time, that is, working less and having more free time as opposed to acquiring more goods. These assumptions certainly hold for many people today. However, they are far from universal; in fact, they are elements of historically specific moral outlooks. Alternative models of human nature as naturally non-acquisitive  – and only contaminated by consumptive desires – abound (Belk, 1985; Csíkszentmihályi, 2001) and examples of modest consumption even when economic possibilities were available are equally easy to find. Contemporary movements of voluntary simplicity (Doherty and Etzioni, 2003; Etzioni, 1998) and the independence movement of Gandhi that associated simplicity with indigenous culture (Wilhite, 2008) are all examples of restrained consumption chosen out of principle rather than purely economic constraints. The idea that people are inherently predisposed to consume as opposed to saving up is not self-evident either. Max Weber (2003) famously argued that the willingness to save as opposed to consume revenues was one of the key preconditions of capitalism that he saw as unique to Western Europe. The argument is debatable, yet the fact that consumption over saving is not a natural, universal choice rests on firm ground. In fact, even consumer revolutions, during which people’s ‘natural’ propensity to consume as opposed to save is supposedly the most manifest, fail to provide a convincing case. Many objects whose increased consumption in 18th-century England commentators identify

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as proof of a consumer revolution (such as clothing and household goods) also acted as means of investments. Nenadic’s (1994) study of Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries shows the existence of large second-hand markets where prices remained stable, and demonstrates that ‘household goods and many types of clothing, irrespective of age, had a high intrinsic value, which raises the probability that consumers were sometimes motivated in their decision to buy by the belief that material objects could act as a form of saving (p. 134).’ This means that what looks like consumption from a consumption from a contemporary perspective, was understood simultaneously as a saving at the time.7 Finally, the assumption that people are naturally predisposed to opt for more work and more consumption over free time is equally dubious. The American ‘leisure class’ studied by Veblen (1924) flaunted its wealth not only by conspicuous consumption but primarily by conspicuous leisure. Indeed, as Gary Cross (1993) points out, the idea that economic growth will allow for more free time rather than more consumption was widely held even in the interwar years in the United States. It was only from the middle of the century that the option of more work and consumption of more free time became the dominant idea. It did not result from innate consumptive desires, but from a complex process that involved pressure from employers, the experience of joblessness during the Depression, the coupling of work with self-respect, as well as the rise of consumption-intensive ideals of domesticity and respectability. Even today, this orientation is maintained not necessarily by choice but by corporate policies that do not allow for shorter hours and require people to work more as they advance in their professional career (Schor, 1991). Even when these assumptions applied, and people chose consumption as opposed to the above alternatives, increased economic possibilities did not automatically result in a new consumption norm marked by a general acquisitive stance. People hardly ever wanted consumption for consumption’s sake, but ‘consumptive desires’ have always been oriented toward achieving existing, culturally specific, valued aims. This is why economic possibilities did not result in an all-encompassing consumptive drive, but most often led to increases in consumption along existing ethical visions. Chinese immigrants living in Paraguay today provide an example of the point. Maintaining traditional Confucian values of hard work, self-control, long-term planning, frugality and saving became a means of preserving their cultural identity in a foreign country and claiming moral superiority over the locals, who appear in this narrative as shorttermist and consumerist. The increasing income of this group is spent

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on expensive real-estate and cars. Can we interpret these purchases as manifestations of a new consumerist mentality? Hardly. In fact they follow the very same Confucian moral framework, prioritizing the longterm security of the family. Purchases of durable goods conform to these ethics, hence the increase in spending on them. This is why other practices, seen as futile according to these ethics, did not undergo a similar rise: despite their high income, they still wear cheap, simple clothes, drink tap water and refrain from costly leisure activities (PinheiroMachado, 2007). New economic possibilities in this case opened up previously unavailable consumption opportunities; yet in the absence of a corresponding change in cosmologies additional purchases conformed to existing, culturally specific visions of good life, rather than reflecting free-ranging consumption desire. If economic factors alone do not bring about changes in consumption norms, then how do we account for the numerous instances when economic booms were accompanied by the emergence of previously unseen norms? A closer look at these instances suggests that economic changes in these cases were coupled with new discourses, new cultural resources that were able to reframe existing ethical principles. The economic changes in India in the 1990s that allowed for higher consumption levels for the new middle class provide such an example. The possibility of higher consumption levels was made possible first, by increasing disposable income, partly due to remittances that in some provinces – such as Kerala – have recently accounted for as much as 40 per cent of GDP (Wilhite, 2008). Second, the opening-up of the Indian economy in the 1990s brought about the spread of novel and cheaper products and new retail outlets (Wilhite, 2008). These changes led to higher consumption, particularly among the middle class, which commentators often attributed to the emergence of the acquisitive consumerist mentality in place of previous norms of restraint. Varma, for instance, sees the new middle class as ‘morally rudderless, obsessively materialistic, and socially insensitive to the point of being unconcerned with anything but its narrow self-interest’ (Varma, 1998, p. 174). Previous ideas of moderation did indeed shift, but not simply as a result of these economic changes. Economic changes went hand in hand with, and have even been prompted by, new discourses that allowed for higher spending. State rhetoric, in particular, played a key role in undermining former cultural objections to consumption associated with Gandhian ideas. Gandhi’s independence movement praised simplicity, solidarity and indigenous development. The postindependence

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policy of Nehru was still largely in line with Gandhian principles of moderation in consumption, indigenous development and social equity, which frowned upon conspicuous display of wealth (Chaudhuri and Majumdar, 2006; Wilhite, 2008). This orientation to consumption started to change with Rajiv Gandhi in the 1980s, who posited consumption both as a sign of and a means to economic development. The liberalization and opening-up of the market in the early 1990s was accompanied by a new state rhetoric, embracing consumption as a means of progress and praising the new consumerist middle class as its main proponent (Fernandes, 2006; Wilhite, 2008). Whereas economic changes provided the possibility, this new discourse provided the moral justification for higher consumption levels. Some commentators see these new discourses and associated policies as the complete reversal of previous ideals. Varma, for example, suggests that they represented a ‘collective exorcism from the nation’s psyche of the “repressive” and life-denying nature of Gandhi’s idealism, an exultant, exuberant escape from his emphasis on an austerity that could not be ignored but was inherently unemulatable’ (Varma, 1998, p.  175). A  closer look at the rhetoric, however, reveals many connections to previous ideals and suggests that existing ethical ideas have been reframed along lines that are more lenient toward higher spending. The first connection was established through the reinterpretation of the concept of national grandeur. Gandhi’s main project was to gain independence from the British colonial rule, and much of the Gandhian principles of consumption were conceived as promoting this larger ideal. (Although not exclusively: frugality and equality were also seen as values in their own right.) What we witness in contemporary discourse is that consumption is posited as a means of achieving these very same ideals – national grandeur and parity in relation to the West – by positing consumption levels as one the key terrains in which India’s strength as a global power is demonstrated. In this discourse the new consuming middle class embodies the new vision of India as a global player, able to contribute and benefit from the global economy. As Wilhite (2008) suggests, in this context the consumption of Western goods is made sense of in everyday discourse as parity with the West: it is seen as a reversal of the colonial rule, in which goods were only taken away from Indians. The second connection with the previous rhetoric is the emphasis on solidarity and equality. In the new rhetoric these ideas are not abandoned but reframed through the ideal of the new middle class. The middle class is posited as a progressive group, open to all, not restrained

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by previous obstacles of caste. It stands for ‘the promise of access to the benefits of liberalization’ (Fernandes, 2006, p.  210), even though this promise is only moderately realized in practice. In this sense, as Fernandes points out, the ‘rise of the new middle class is a cultural, and, I would add, a normative political project because it helps shape the terms of development and national identity’ (Fernandes, 2006, p.  xxvii). This conceptualization of the middle class as representative of modernization, progress and the public interest of the nation as a whole is itself not new; it originates in the 19th century, when the class was born. Created originally by the English rulers to provide Englisheducated intelligentsia for public administration, the middle class was somewhat independent of the traditional caste system and became the key proponent of modernization, education, civic responsibility and political participation (Fernandez, 2006). The ideal of the middle class in today’s political discourse draws on these traditions when it posits the middle class as the carrier of modernization and progress. The new discourses, in short, did not go against existing cosmologies, but reframed them in ways that depict higher consumption spending as compatible with the ideals of national autonomy, social equality and progress. This is why, albeit consuming more, people still condemn – contrary to Varma’s verdict – what they consider an unashamed consumerist mentality (Wessel, 2004). What happened was that the reinterpretation of cultural resources allowed people to see new consumption practices – that were allowed by the new economic conditions – as legitimate, rather than as signs of this condemned mentality. To sum up, the most direct effect of economic factors is that they open up new possibilities or pose new constraints that force people to revise pragmatic beliefs of their existing cosmologies. In the light of new pragmatic considerations, the same ethical outlook requires different actions. For example, someone guided by the concern of assuring one’s family’s future in the form of durable consumer goods might buy more houses, jewelry or gold if his or her income increased. Yet this is not the abandonment of previous ethical ideas, rather a way of sticking to them in the light of the new circumstances. For ethical ideas underlying consumption norms to change, in turn, economic changes alone are not enough: they need to be accompanied by new discourses that allow for the reinterpretation and reframing of previous ethical ideals.8 When social explanations are not enough Social explanations of why consumption norms change encompass a wide range of factors, including new patterns of social mobility, work

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relations, family structures, gender roles, urbanization and the development of new urban and retail spaces. For the sake of brevity, I discuss only one of these in detail here. This will be the effect of social mobility and, more broadly, of changes in the position of one social group in relation to another, which has been most widely used as an explanation of the emergence of new consumption norms.9 Accounts of changing consumer norms as a result of the English consumer revolution of the 18th century provide abundant examples of this type of explanation. According to McKendrick’s (1982) classic description, this consumer revolution was triggered on the one hand by economic factors: higher wages that were provided by industrial work and the involvement of women and children in these occupations, and better production methods that catered for the increased demand. On the other hand, new consumption norms emerged due to social changes. Large cities, such as London, acted as the showroom for the nation, exhibiting and dictating new fashions; and the spread of new retail facilities and marketing techniques enabled producers to get their products to the consumers. Yet the key social factor of this account is the increased possibility of social mobility and decreasing social distance between different strata. According to his explanation, as soon as barriers to social competitions broke down, people let loose their repressed competitive desires and previous norms regulating consumption automatically disappeared. McKendrick’s assumption, similarly to Veblen’s (1924), is that people are universally predisposed to social emulation and want goods as a means of social competition. Yet counter-examples suggest that just because the possibility of emulation arises, people do not always grasp it and abandon their previous consumption norms. Competitive desires, similarly to acquisitiveness, are not a universal phenomenon (Campbell, 1987; Douglas and Isherwood, 1996; Miller, 1995). First, norms prescribing egalitarian relationships may hinder competition. For example, the Norwegian working-class women studied by Gullestad (2001), mentioned in Chapter 2, are guided by a strong moral stance of equality that disallows for competition and emulation of higher classes. Second, the fragmentation of social groups may make them uninterested in competition. For example, Schulze (1992) suggests that in contemporary Germany, milieus are not defined in relation to one another in hierarchical terms but have become inwardly oriented  – as he puts it, ‘ethnocentric’  – and hence are no longer interested in emulation or competition. For example, there is no obvious hierarchical relation between the ‘entertainment’ milieu, focused on stimulation  – which

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may include watching action movies and attending football matches – and the ‘integration’ milieu, whose members spend their free time doing activities focused on their family, house and garden. Finally, even in hierarchical societies, competition may be blocked by the fact that people accept the hierarchy as legitimate. Bourdieu (1984) describes an ingrained sense of one’s place in the social hierarchy that acts as a barrier to emulation. To give an example of this phenomenon from my own research in Hungary, a well-off working-class woman refrained from wearing silk clothes as she saw them as pretentious, given her social position. In this light, what needs further explanation in McKendrick’s account is how a possibility became an actuality. What made people feel entitled to consuming goods that were previously off limits and the exclusive preserve of the aristocracy? In other words, how did previous norms barring emulation gave way to new norms allowing it? Woodruff Smith’s (2002) excellent book on the subject, partly touched on in the previous chapter, provides an answer. He acknowledges the importance of both economic factors (such as rising disposable income, increased supply, more efficient agriculture, and commercial developments) and social factors (the fluidity of social boundaries and the rise of the bourgeoisie); yet argues that these changes did not result in automatic shifts in consumption norms. For that to happen, a parallel transformation of ethical visions was necessary, which was provided by the rise of the new ideal of respectability.10 Smith traces back the ideal of respectability to the 17th century and follows it up until its heyday in the 19th century. Until the 17th century the idea of a fixed status hierarchy, with the aristocracy  – defined in terms of noble bloodline and titles – at its top prevailed. This hierarchy was seen as natural and in some ways divine: in the great chain of being, the king derived his power from God, and passed it on to the aristocracy (Slater, 1997a). The aristocratic ethics centered on honor and familial repute, objectified in practices including conspicuous display of wealth and leisure and the consumption of luxury items, often sanctioned by sumptuary laws. In the late-17th century, many people of common origin became able to afford the aristocratic lifestyle. Newcomers tried to fit into the existing hierarchy: the business of genealogy research – aiming at uncovering forgotten noble ancestors  – flourished, and newcomers adopted the practices associated with gentility. At the same time, the entry of non-noble newcomers into the elite shifted the emphasis from noble origin to genteel behavior: demonstrating genteel

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behavior became a sign that one genuinely belonged to the gentlemen. This novel emphasis is captured by the concept of respectability that defined gentility as an internal merit as opposed to a birthright. The key implication of respectability in terms of ideas of justice and entitlement was that it provided a new ground for defining worthiness. As opposed to previous ideals that grounded entitlement in noble bloodline, respectability was essentially based on merit. It therefore located previously external  – and unchangeable  – markers of merit inside the individual and made social status a matter of individual moral worth. Respectability provides the missing link that explains why people felt entitled to emulation. First, this new concept suggested that people are entitled to higher consumption levels if they are able to demonstrate that they are morally worthy of the higher status. Second, it suggested that this moral worthiness is to be proven by respectable practices, which included consumption practices in the first place. Consumption was no longer seen as sign of birth status, but as a proof that one is morally entitled to his or her acquired social status. ‘Respectability’, as Smith succinctly sums up, ‘converted what had once been signs of a claim to high birth status into signs of moral competence’ (Smith, 2002, p. 210). At the same time, the entry of new social groups into the gentleman strata and the redefinition of merit created tensions within the ethics of gentility itself, which provided the key trigger for the redefinition of ethical ideas along which consumption norms were formulated. In fact, respectability can be seen as a combination of aristocratic and commoner elements within a new ideal that required mutual adjustment and reinterpretation. For example, practices previously perceived as luxuries and hence traditionally associated with excess and sensuality – which were compatible with the original aristocratic ethics, but not with the more restrained commoner ethics – became morally acceptable under the ideal of respectability by being reframed under the newly developed ideals of ‘taste’ and ‘comfort’. Taste stood for the controlled and balanced enjoyment and appreciation of sensual and aesthetic experiences, and reframed luxury as respectable by curbing its excessive nature and transforming its sensuality into a controlled and detached experience. Similarly, the newly invented ideal of ‘comfort’ tamed luxury by redefining it as legitimate, pleasurable, sensual experience: one that is enjoyed in moderation and in the context of respectable activities such as the comfort of the home. This way, many practices that

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were seen as luxury before became redefined as respectable practices of good taste and comfort (Smith, 2002). These changes were aided by the inconsistencies inherent in the original aristocratic ideal of gentility that alongside its flamboyant elements contained contradictory aspects which lent themselves to reinterpretation and combination with the more restrained ethics of respectability. For example, gentility involved not only noble birth but also titles and magistry. Magistry, which has its roots in the ancient as well as feudal ideal of mutual obligations between the ruler and the ruled, situates the holder of public office as a leader of the community who has to be responsible and to some extent exemplary in his virtues to be worthy of his office. Magistry required sobriety and moderation, which was in contrast to aristocratic opulence and could be connected to the new ideal of respectability (Smith, 2002). The rise of respectability provides a much more appropriate clue to understand why consumption increased in the period than simplistic theories of unleashed competitive drives. Respectability consisted of many interrelated aspects, from domesticity to genteel behavior, politeness and civility; the merits of honesty and sobriety associated with holding a public office; taste and exhibiting a sense of balance and order; cleanliness; as well as ‘rational masculinity’ understood as capacity for rationality and objectivity. These different aspects of respectability were developed through distinct practices, or ‘contexts’ in Smith’s formulation. For example, rational masculinity was developed through practices involved in the newly emerging coffeehouse culture, whereas domesticity emerged through practices related to the home. What gave special importance to these practices was that it was through them that moral worth, the key marker of status, could be demonstrated. Respectability ‘gave meaning – moral and political as well as social and economic  – to consumption, thereby permitting the construction of a host of connections between purchasing commodities and thinking and acting appropriately’ (Smith, 2002, p.  3). The rising demand for new and more objects stemmed from people’s desire to participate in practices that objectified these different aspects of respectability, rather than from a general emulative desire. For example, the rising consumption of objects associated with the domestic sphere were due to the new role the home and the family acquired in developing and demonstrating respectability (Appelby, 2001; Davidoff and Hall, 2002; McKeon, 2005; Nenadic, 1994; Smith, 2002). Firstly, the home became the realm where proper upbringing was to be provided. It became a site of education, which in turn implied a

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new role of women as responsible for an appropriate domestic environment (Löfgren, 1994; Smith, 2002). As Smith (2002) argues, the development of the practice of the tea as a family meal in the 17th and early-18th centuries can be understood as part of this change. The tea, supervised by women, was an occasion of respectable, domestic family encounter, where civilized manners could be practiced and developed. Secondly, the home became an area where respectability could be demonstrated toward outsiders. Social occasions moved inside the home: hospitality, exercised through dinners and receiving visitors, became a central virtue. These domestic practices, connected to respectability, explain the rise of a range of domestic objects. Dining tables and cutlery were acquired to host dinners, the piano to entertain guests and demonstrate the genteel upbringing of daughters; chinaware and tea were used as part of the tea (Nenadic, 1994; Smith, 2002); and toys were bought to educate children (Plumb, 1982).11 The increase in the consumption of other goods can be explained along similar lines, as stemming from the desire to participate in particular practices of respectability. For example, the practices associated with gentility required fine cloths, such as calicos. The rise of the ideal of cleanliness produced demand for soap and for underclothes, which prompted technological innovations in the English textile industry. The rationality and objectivity associated with ‘rational masculinity’ was developed through discussions in coffeehouses, producing demand for products associated with it, such as coffee, tea and tobacco (Smith, 2002). This example illustrates the key processes through which social mobility prompts the emergence of new consumption norms. Mobility allows new groups, with a different habitus, to enter into practices previously exclusive to higher classes. This entry creates tension in existing cosmologies, which promotes their reinterpretation. In this case, the merger of two cosmologies – the aristocratic and the commoner – necessitated the reinterpretation of previous ethical ideas of whom to be and how to live, resulting in the new ideal of respectability, and led to changes in ideals of justice and entitlement which, in this case, were provided by the reinterpretation of merit as inner worth. The development of these new cultural resources, resulting in new cosmologies, allowed for the emergence of new consumption norms. The desire for goods therefore did not stem from an unleashed competitive drive but from the desire to participate in practices through which the new ethical ideal of respectability was demonstrated, negotiated and refined.

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When technological explanations are not enough The third set of factors that features prominently in accounts of why consumption norms change over time is new technologies and objects. One version of this argument suggests that new technologies and objects automatically change people’s ideas of what is normal and appropriate to consume. Once mobile phones, PCs, refrigerators enter the market and people have the money to buy them, they will spread and bring about new standards of normal consumption. The assumption behind this argument is that as new objects and technologies become available, they will automatically be adopted. This assumption, in turn, is based on the idea that objects and technologies contain intrinsic qualities of usefulness; hence, once they become available, people will automatically want them. Yet if it is so, how do we account for the vast amount of technological innovations that seemed perfectly useful in the laboratory but failed to attract consumers? The answer to this question illuminates why technological changes often fail to bring about changes in consumption norms, hence it is worth considering more in detail here. For examples of failed technological and product innovations, it is enough to watch any talent show on TV featuring inventors or startups presenting their product ideas – most of which, despite their useful qualities, fail in the pre-selection process of the show. Other products are not that lucky and they fail after the costly process of development and market introduction. IBM’s technological innovations of more complex hardware in the early 1990s were not well received and the company lost its previous prestigious position in the market (Day, 1999). Indian consumers did not want Kellogg’s Corn Flakes (Chaudhary and Monga, 2012), and Avon’s bath additives failed in Japan (Knight, 1995). The electric car developed by Electricité de France in the 1970s did not even reach its market introduction (Callon, 1987), while the once successful bicycle model called Xtraordinary fizzled out after an initial phase of success (Pinch and Bijker, 1984). All of these products were useful. Why did they fail then? Usefulness, as it turns out, is not an intrinsic quality of objects. Objects are only useful by virtue of the fact that they can be used for certain meaningful aims, as part of meaningful social practices. Different social practices require different qualities from the very same object in order to be considered useful (Pinch and Bijker, 1984). The bicycle, for example, is used in at least three different social practices: racing, off-road and as a means of transportation in the city. For

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a racer, speed is central; hence any innovation that enhances speed will count as useful: more aerodynamic form, larger and narrower wheels and so on. For an off-road cyclist the ability to negotiate difficult terrains is central; wider and more stable wheels, as well as more flexible form, will count as useful. Finally, an urban cyclist may want a bike that is comfortable, can be ridden with a straight back and that ideally has a basket already installed. Usefulness can only be defined with reference to the practice-specific purpose for which the object will be used. One of the major causes of product failures is that laboratory engineers’ ideas of purpose differ from those of users. This might not be evident at first glance, because engineers work with the seemingly universal concept of efficiency. Yet efficiency itself only means that a purpose can be pursued more efficiently; hence, underlying every product development, there is an implicit assumption of what that purpose is. In the case of IBM, this discrepancy stemmed from the fact that engineers focused on developing more and more complex hardware rather than user-friendly solutions that customers could actually use (Day, 1999); a recognition that made Apple the market leader later on. Kellogg’s Corn Flakes failed in India, despite the US$65 million spent between 1994 and 1997 to promote it, because it did not fit into the Indian notion of breakfast which largely consisted of hot vegetables (Chaudhary and Monga, 2012). The Avon cosmetic company’s failure to sell bath additives in Japan in the 1970s was due to similar reasons. Whereas in the United States people use the bath for cleansing, Japanese wash themselves first and use the clean water of the bathtub for relaxation. The same bathing water is used by members of the same family; cleansing products, including bath additives, are not used in the bath water as they are associated with washing (Knight, 1995). Avon’s bath additive is very useful as long as you use the bath for cleansing; if it is a ritual of relaxation that is pursued only once you are completely clean, it loses its usefulness.12 Products and technologies, in short, are found useful and hence adopted if they are suitable for a purpose embedded in a specific practice. The notion of purpose brings us back to our original question, namely, the relationship between new objects and consumption norms. Purpose encompasses those aims in the name of which action is considered legitimate, meaningful and pragmatically sensible; and as such it stems directly from the cosmologies that inform consumption norms. Consider the spread of bathing and related equipment in England and France in the 18th century. Looking at the phenomenon from the technological point of view, what happened was the invention of

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new bathing technologies (Wright in Smith, 2002) which, being useful, automatically spread and changed norms of cleanliness. Yet these technologies would have been found absolutely useless and would have been rejected had they been invented a century earlier. This is because for bathing equipment to be found useful one needs to believe that being clean is something desirable, legitimate and harmless; that is, one needs the underlying ethical and pragmatic beliefs of a cosmology by reference to which bathing makes sense at all. These are precisely the elements that were missing in earlier times. St Margaret of Hungary, who lived in the 13th century, attested her chastity and purity of soul by refraining from washing above her ankle till the age of 18 (The Margaret Legend, 1975). It was only in the 16th and 17th centuries that cleanliness became a desirable quality, as part of the rise of the new ideal of respectability that posited – as described in the previous section – behavior and the goods one consumed as key signs of gentility. Initially, cleanliness was not associated with bathing. Rather, clean underclothing was a sign of status, demonstrating that one could afford a servant and that one was free from physical work (Smith, 2002). Bathing was in fact seen as a dangerous endeavor, as medical theories of the 16th century held that skin was a protective layer that water perilously opens up, making it susceptible to illnesses. Odors – or ‘miasmas’ as contemporary discourse called them – emanating from dirty clothes were considered the main sources of disease. As a result, clean clothes, rather than a clean body, were seen as a means to avoid illness. These views changed only in the 18th century, when medical opinion shifted and started to promote bathing, particularly immersive bathing (Shove, 2003; Smith, 2002). Cleanliness was gradually reinterpreted as bodily cleanliness and became associated with an inner moral stature. Bathing that was first seen as an exotic luxury (modeled after the Turkish bath), with cleanliness as something of a side-effect, changed purpose and became associated with respectability (Smith, 2002). This means that it was only when pragmatic beliefs of cleanliness – provided by medical experts  – and ethical ideas  – associating it with respectability  – came together in a cosmology that bathing and douching equipment came to be seen as ‘useful’. The implication is that new technologies and objects do not change consumption norms automatically, simply by being available. In fact, most of the cases that appear as examples when new technologies have changed consumption norms turn out to be instances when these technologies fitted well into existing cosmologies and norms, or offered solutions to already existing concerns. The emergence of the

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cheap palm soap in England in the 19th century did not bring about a new norm of cleanliness; rather, cleanliness already existed as part of the culture of respectability, and the soap’s success was due to the fact that it allowed people to meet the ideal of respectability at a lower cost (Smith, 2002). Similarly, the rapid proliferation of cell phones among teenagers in Finland was not due to their ability to introduce new consumption norms but to the fact that they provided a solution for the tension between parents’ desire to keep their children safe on the one hand and teenagers’ desire to go out at a younger and younger age on the other. Their success was due to the fact that they allowed for combining parental control with freedom for teenagers and their parents (Røpke, 2003). Even in cases when the very same product seems to have swept through different countries, imposing the very same use and ideas on people, it is hardly ever the case. As Shove and Pantzar’s (2005) study on the proliferation of Nordic walking in Japan, Norway and the United States shows, in each country the sport had to be ‘reinvented’: connected to local ideas, purposes and images as well as to already existing skills, and made sense of in relation to local practices. In this sense, Nordic walking was not ‘diffused’ or ‘exported’ but reassembled with homegrown ingredients in each case.13 Saying that the adoption of new technologies depends on their compatibility with existing cosmologies does not imply that cosmologies and norms remain unchanged, and the very same cosmology is expressed in new practices. As discussed in Chapter 4, by being incorporated into new practices, cosmologies also undergo transformations. They are formed, negotiated and concretized through particular practices: meanings and purpose co-evolve with objects. Using cell phones to control one’s kid is not the same as knowing that she is safe and sound in her room. Phones give new meaning to security and parental control; through the new practice these very notions become renegotiated and modified.14 Once adopted and used on a regular basis, technologies and objects become taken-for-granted routines of everyday life. These routines, as discussed in the previous chapter, are no longer reflected upon but start to form part of what is taken as the ‘normal’ thing to do, through a process that Wilk calls ‘naturalization’ (Wilk, 1999, p. 7). The argument that the adoption of new technologies depends on their compatibility with existing cosmologies works well as long as adoption is a choice. But what happens in cases when new products and technologies are forced on people? Such cases are not uncommon. State provision

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of goods characterized most socialist countries in the 1950s, with people having little or no say in ‘what the needs of the individuals are, and how and to what extent they ought to be gratified, [as it was] is decided by the political state, and acted upon by bureaucracy’ (Bauman, 1988, p.  87). Even in democratic societies, production standards, state-sponsored development of council houses, roads and public transportation systems or the layout of corporate offices are beyond the choice and control of the individual consumer. Can these technologies and objects that people have no choice to refuse change consumption norms? Buchli’s analysis of the way inhabitants used the state-designed Narkomfin House in Moscow provides an illustrative answer. The house was designed in the late 1920s, inspired by Leninist ethical ideals of a communist life, family and person, along principles of rationality, functionality and an emphasis on the community. It also contained a feminist element, in that it sought to free women from the patriarchal oppression of the traditional family by promoting their employment and the delegation of housework from the household to the community. When it came to architectural design, these ideas were seen to be best manifested in the minimalist Modernist aesthetic, informed by the requirements of functionality and rationality. The domestic space was stripped of all ornaments, including decorative objects, fancy wallpaper and ornamented furniture. Floors were made of resistant fibrolit and walls were covered with oil paint. The flats originally contained no kitchens, as the kitchen, laundry and crèche were located in the communal space of each block (Buchli, 1999). These principles fell out of favor during Stalin’s rule which  – despite starvation and forced industrialization – was marked by the rhetoric, and to some extent the practice, of luxury for the masses. Under Stalin, the production of champagne, caviar, perfume and other luxury items was promoted; Stalinist Classicism dominated urban architecture; and domestic spaces were decorated with what later counted as kitsch ornamentalism (Buchli, 1997; Gronow, 2003). Following Stalin’s death, Khrushchev condemned Stalinism and launched a new political agenda aimed at returning to the true and original sense of Communism. Stalinism in this rhetoric was not only attacked for its terror, but also for its promotion of what was seen as prerevolutionary consciousness of materialism and luxury (Buchli, 1997). Khrushchevian politics promoted a return to Leninist Modernism in architectural design that was considered more in line with the spirit of real Communism (Buchli, 1997, 1999). The extent to which inhabitants followed the Narkomfin House’s ‘script’ during and following the Khrushchev era largely depended on

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their identification with the principles underlying it, or, more precisely, on their ability to weave these principles together with their own cosmology.15 Some were happy to conform to the script because, in line with Khrushchevian state rhetoric, they saw it as oppositional to Stalinism, and hence as a means to step out of an ideology and material culture which were linked to terror and personal losses of loved ones. Others, particularly young people, embraced the House’s design because they saw it as the opposite of their parents’ principles and practices, thus as a field where generational conflict could be played out. In contrast, the inhabitants whose cosmologies were not compatible with the design’s underlying principles resisted the material culture imposed by the House. For example, a factory director’s grandson, interviewed by Buchli, kept much of his old decorative objects and furniture. Many of the homes got an individual kitchen installed because inhabitants refused to adopt the new model of the family and women’s place in it promoted by communal kitchens. Most inhabitants described by Buchli adopted some elements of the principles informing the design, yet combined them with their cosmologies in ways that would have shocked the designers. One illustrative example of Buchli is an ornamented, prerevolutionary style buffet cabinet that accommodated both the collected works of Lenin and Stalin and a range of prerevolutionarystyle decorative objects. The cabinet, treated as the highlight of the flat, was placed in the corner where traditionally icons are located and venerated (Buchli, 1999). In this case, then, even though a particular design was forced on people, they still found ways for appropriation, reinterpretation and partial refusal based on existing cosmologies. But what happens with objects and technologies that do not leave room even for a minimal choice? Standards of thermal comfort, discussed by Shove (2003), provide such an example. The international standards of thermal comfort, set by the ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and AirConditioning Engineers) and the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) are not mandatory, yet they are used across the world, particularly for public buildings such as offices, libraries and supermarkets. The maintenance of these standards requires heating and airconditioning, as well as buildings fitted to accommodate them: beyond the obvious requirement of electricity, appropriate insulation and fixed windows. In these buildings, temperature is centrally controlled and human intervention is limited: windows cannot be opened, nor can fans and heaters be individually regulated. In this case, then, rejection, or even appropriation is severely limited, at least in the field of temperature.

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These externally imposed constraints change behavior without having to be mediated by cosmologies. People may perfectly freeze in their airconditioned offices and would prefer to change the temperature (Baker and Standeven, 1996), or even suffer from the so-called ‘sick building syndrome’ affecting workers in air-conditioned structures (Sykes, 1990); yet all they can do is adapt to the constraints of the building. This means that where personal choice over material culture and its use play no or a very limited role, behavior changes without the necessary changes in the ethical elements of the underlying cosmologies. People simply take account of the constraints, build them into their cosmologies as pragmatic beliefs, and adjust their behavior accordingly. This is even more so with large-scale socio-technological systems, such as electricity networks, sewerage systems and transportation networks that strongly determine individual behavior yet stand beyond individual choice (Shove, 2010). The fact that people hold pragmatic beliefs that take these technologies for granted allows for the development of new practices and norms. For example, the air-conditioned office allows for wearing a jacket regardless of season, which enables it to become a standard ingredient of a proper business appearance that may survive beyond the air-conditioned offices. Similarly, as soon as the availability of cars and road networks is taken for granted as part of pragmatic beliefs, their existence gets built into planning the acceptable distance between A and B: a ’10-minute distance’ becomes a ‘10-minute driving distance’, and supermarkets get located in the suburbs, and it becomes acceptable to live further away from one’s workplace. This is called Zahavi’s Law or the Hupke Constant: the time spent travelling remains the same, only the distance traveled increases. The rise of suburbs in turn leads to new problems, requiring new products and solutions: not only cars for each family member, but also local infrastructure, including shops, schools, water and electricity network (Røpke, 1999). To sum up, depending on the level of choice people have over their uses, new technologies and objects influence consumption norms in distinctive ways. If people are able to exercise some degree of choice, the availability of new technologies and objects does not automatically change cosmologies and consumption norms: they are refused or adopted and appropriated depending on existing cosmologies. Through their appropriation, however, they are able to give new directions and meanings to existing cosmologies, through a process of co-evolution which involves the transformation of both cosmologies and practices. This process is one of the main sources of change in consumption

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norms. In cases where personal choice over material culture plays no role or a very limited one, behavior change is triggered even if the ethical elements of the underlying cosmologies remain unaffected: people simply take account of the constraints posed by material culture in the form of pragmatic beliefs, and act accordingly. When institutional explanations are not enough The fourth type of explanation attributes changes in consumption norms to the new cultural resources  – discourses, values and images  – fostered by key intellectuals and institutions. My own argument, proposed in Chapter 3, according to which one of the key explanatory factors of consumption norms is availability of specific cultural resources, also falls into this category. It is now time to consider the exact role that these new discourses play in changing consumption norms and the conditions under which they are able to exercise an effect. The institutions responsible for the production of new cultural resources discussed by the existing literature vary from advertising departments (Bauman, 2001a; Ewen, 1976; Lears, 1983), through global corporations and media (Ritzer, 1993; Sklair, 1994; Wilhite, 2008), the government (Buchli, 1999; Fernandes, 2006; Gronow, 2003), the Church (Campbell, 1987; Weber, 2003) to social movements (Hunt, 1999) and key intellectuals (Horowitz, 1985, 2004). It is impossible to discuss all the strands within the limits of this chapter; instead I  will focus on the one that has been most widely cited as a cause of change in consumption norms: advertising. Advertising has been posited as the key factor in the development of consumerism in the 20th century in the United States (Ewen, 1976; Lears, 1983; Packard, 1957), contemporary China (Sklair, 1994) and 19th-century France (Williams, 1982), among others. The standard account suggests that advertisements implant the desire for new goods in people, promote a consumerist outlook according to which happiness is achievable through goods (Belk, 1985), and erase all moral inhibitions attached to consumption (Bauman, 2001a). This explanation, however, is held almost exclusively by social theorists. Marketing scholars and practitioners learnt through a costly series of failed campaigns that advertising is not always successful. In the marketing literature, what makes ads ‘work’ is seen as a complex question, explored by hefty handbooks and journals dedicated to this question alone. According to this literature, one of the key factors that makes ads successful is that they are able to connect the product to meanings and uses that are important for the target audience: ‘advertisers must

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draw in some part upon existing understandings and values to be successful’ (Haynes, 2010, p. 186). This sounds quite self-evident, yet this is precisely the point that is missing from the model that suggests that advertising can implant new consumption norms into people: not just any ad will be successful, only those that are able to connect to existing cosmologies, or to use the terminology of Chapter 3, those which are compatible with them. This is well illustrated by examples of failed marketing efforts. CocaCola’s ‘Share my Coke’ campaign in India in the mid-1990s centered on the symbolic message of the shared global experience of being a teenager. The assumption was that there exists a new global teenager culture which transcends national boundaries, and Indian teenagers will be eager to buy into this global imaginary (Mazzarella, 2003). The campaign did not succeed, unlike Pepsi’s successful campaign that used an Indian cricket celebrity, Sachin Tendulkar. The problem was not that being part of the global world is a theme alien to consumers of the new Indian middle class whom the campaign targeted, but that ‘being global’ is not understood as the opposite of being local. Rather, it is seen as an ascendency of India to global power; an idea that builds on longstanding Indian discourses of independence and the nation. This is why notions of modern and the global seem to work only if the ‘global is incorporated within the nation’ (Fernandes, 2006, p. 52), that is, connected to local discourses, traditions and symbols. These were missing from Coca-Cola’s vision of the global teenager culture. A similar phenomenon explains why mortgage advertisements emphasizing low interest rates that were successful among non-Hispanic consumers in the United States failed among Hispanic Americans. Interest and lending and particularly the term mortgage (hipoteca) have negative connotations in Spanish, as they invoke ideas that go against core ethical values. ‘In Latin America, you rely on a hipoteca only when you are in real trouble. Placing a hipoteca on your home for Hispanics means you are endangering the future of your family’ (Korzenny and Korzenny, 2005, p.  185). Here again, advertising failed because it was unable to connect the service to existing cosmologies. The media literature explains why only those messages ‘get through’ and have an effect that build on existing cosmologies by pointing out the different decoding strategies applied by media audiences. As these studies suggest, people decode media messages (Azalanshah, 2012; Hall, 1980; Liebes and Katz, 1990; Morley, 1980) and advertisements (O’Donohoe, 1997; Zhou and Belk, 2004) differently, depending on their existing culture and class-specific interpretation schemes. Through

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the process, they filter and distort the original meaning in order to fit it into their existing interpretation schemes. This way, messages get ‘misinterpreted’ compared to their original meaning unless the interpretation schemes of the producers and consumers of the message coincide. The reason why the difference between the meaning intended by advertisers and the one decoded by users often goes unnoticed is that producers of advertisements are frequently from the same culture and of the same (middle-) class position as their target market, hence their interpretation schemes coincide. Ad-producers are not external, autonomous creators of meanings, but they are influenced by the practices, discourses and concerns of their time, which simultaneously influence their very audience.16 It is no accident that most cases of spectacularly unsuccessful campaigns are from contexts where advertisers created ads for consumers of a different country or social group, where this shared cosmology was missing.17 In fact, the sociological and social historical accounts of advertisements successfully ‘transforming’ consumption norms appear on closer inspection to be examples of a successful match between advertising messages and cosmologies of the target audience, rather than impositions of new consumption norms by advertising alone. This fact is hidden by the selectivity that most of these accounts suffer from: they only record successful changes, whereas the gamut of failed campaigns goes unnoticed, giving the false impression that all marketing efforts have been successful. To illustrate this point, let us look at one of the prime cases to which this explanation has been applied: the development of a consumerist ethos in the late-19th and early-20th-century United States. According to this account, the institutionalization of marketing and the subsequent proliferation of advertisements brought about the development of new consumption norms, focused on hedonism and consumerism (Ewen, 1976; Featherstone, 1990a; Lears, 1983; Packard, 1957). Was advertising alone responsible for the change? Not quite. Rather, as Lears (1983) points out, marketing took up and responded to moral dilemmas that were central to the American culture at the time, in particular to the wealthy middle and upper classes who constituted the main target of advertisements. As he puts it: ‘To thrive and spread, a consumer culture required more than a national apparatus of marketing and distribution; it also needed a favorable moral climate’ (Lears, 1983, p. 4). This ‘moral climate’ was one of an increased sense of inauthenticity, lack of direction and loss of touch with reality. These feelings were brought about by a set of distinct developments pointing in the same direction. Urbanization meant anonymity and the breakdown of traditional ties

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and control; secularization put moral standards into question; technological development brought about alienation from the natural world and the rise of large-scale organizations implied that people became part of systems whose workings they were no longer able to influence. The emergence of the ‘therapeutic ethos’ (Lears, 1983, p. 11), argues Lears, was a response to this vacuum of authenticity. The therapeutic ethos focused on self-realization, understood as the discovery of one’s true self, spontaneity and living one’s emotions to the full. The ethos did not emerge by itself, but through the combined efforts of various intellectuals and institutions that provided ways of articulating and responding to the concerns brought about by the changes. These included not only marketing professionals but also doctors, psychologists, writers as well as Protestant religious movements. The medical side of the discourse built on contemporary theories, such as Freud’s, to emphasize the negative effects of repressed emotions; whereas religious movements reinterpreted faith as a therapeutic force which allows people to realize heaven on earth. The appeal of the ethos, according to Lears, was that it solved the problem of disappearing external moral rules  – imposed by tightly knit communities and religion  – and authenticity by locating them inside the individual. At the same time, the centrality of self-realization brought about an increased responsibility for one’s personality: as soon as identity was not seen as inscribed by existing structures but as explored and nurtured through self-development, one became morally responsible for it. This sense of personal responsibility for one’s identity – including one’s career, body and home – placed an increased importance on the practices in which these aspects of identity were seen to be manifested. As Featherstone (1990a) explains – with reference to the body – beauty, hygiene and style became markers of one’s inner self, and hence a matter of moral responsibility.18 These ideas did not appear from one day to the next, but evolved from concerns that had their roots in earlier centuries. The focus on the inner self has its origins in 18th-century Romantic ideals centered on the cult of the self; which in turn can be traced back to the 16th century, which marked a ‘significant moment of change in relation to attitudes towards individuality and a new sense of the self’ (Breward cited in Entwistle, 2000, p.  91). Similarly, as discussed earlier in this chapter, the personal responsibility for one’s appearance  – be it one’s body or home  – evolved as part of a longer process that started between the late-16th and 17th centuries and through which personal worth became redefined as ‘respectability’  – a quality that could be acquired and

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needed to be demonstrated – as opposed to a noble bloodline (Smith, 2002). In this sense, the therapeutic ethos has reframed and recombined existing ideas with emerging concerns to create a new ethical ideal. As Lears points out, advertisements built on the loss of orientation; not least because advertisers themselves were faced with the very same problems in their own lives. ‘Rooted in largely personal dilemmas, the therapeutic ethos nevertheless provided a secular world view that well suited the interests of corporate proprietors and managers in the emerging culture’ (Lears, 1983, p. 11). Rather than imposing an external new norm on people, advertisers’ key role consisted of articulating newly emerging concerns and providing solutions to them through the therapeutic ethos; translating the ethos into consumption intensive practices; and spreading it through advertising. This is why advertising did not create a general stance of free-roaming materialism, validating the consumption of virtually anything. Only the consumption of certain goods, connected to practices that fitted into these cosmologies, increased. Most studies looking at the period do not go into such qualitative distinctions, yet it is no accident that the illustrations they use are always goods that formed part of practices connected to the therapeutic ethos: goods implicated in practices of respectability, such as personal hygiene products or clothes; goods related to hospitality and the domestic sphere; and those to scientific claims on health. These goods became coveted and legitimate as part of the therapeutic ethos, rather than of a general, uninhibited materialistic stance.19 This case illustrates that producers of new discourses do not represent an omnipotent force that would be able to impose new norms and practices autonomously. New discourses are only successful if they build on existing cosmologies and practices; yet by doing so, they also transform and reinterpret them, and contribute to their wider dissemination and establishment. The way this happens at the everyday level is well illustrated by the case of official discourse in socialist Hungary discussed at the end of Chapter 3. As the case showed, official discourses are appropriated and reinterpreted in the light of existing cosmologies: elements of state ideology were appropriated by being woven together with elements of existing cosmologies to produce very different understandings across different social groups. In summary, the role of institutions and intellectuals in changing consumption norms is twofold. First (and this is the least frequent case), they may propose new consumption norms. Second, and this is their key role, they provide interpretations of economic, social or

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technological changes, translating them into new cultural resources and proposing ways of coping with them. Yet in either case, their effect on everyday consumption norms depends on the extent to which they can be incorporated into existing cosmologies.

How consumption norms change Having discussed in such detail how consumption norms do not change, it is time to summarize what we learnt through this exercise about how they do change, by bringing together arguments of the present and previous chapters. Consumption norms, as explained in Chapter 2, depend on cosmologies that incorporate ethical elements – visions of good life and justice – as well as pragmatic beliefs – ideas about how the world is. These elements, as discussed in the previous chapter, may exist in an abstract form, but may also be embedded in practices as practical ethics. As these elements are the foundations of consumption norms, changes in consumption norms stem from changes in one or more of these elements. How do these elements change? We can identify four routes of change, based on the factors that trigger it. First, change can be triggered by new objective conditions: new constraints to cope with or new possibilities that people can opt to take advantage of or ignore. These new conditions can be caused first, by economic factors; lower income or lower prices are examples of these. Second, new conditions may result from social changes. For example, the entry of women into the workforce means that they have less time to do housework but have their own earnings. Finally, new objective conditions may be due to technological factors: new aviation technology may allow more flights, or a new regulation may ban coal-heated stoves. New objective conditions necessitate firstly modifications of pragmatic beliefs of cosmologies underlying consumption norms. The modifications in pragmatic beliefs are able to change notions of what is deemed appropriate to consume without affecting the normative elements of cosmologies. For example, the care for one’s family may prescribe very different consumption practices in prosperity and in poverty, without a necessary change in the underlying ethical idea. In fact, a large part of changes in consumption can be explained along these lines, as sticking to the same ethical idea in the light of new conditions. Secondly, the tensions created by new objective conditions may lead indirectly to changes in ethical elements of cosmologies as well. Increased earnings may create tensions with a frugal outlook, and less free time may collide

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with previous ideas of what it means to be a good wife or mother, and hence require their reinterpretation. The crucial point is that new objective conditions do not determine the content of new pragmatic and ethical beliefs, and, correspondingly, of the new consumption norms. The content of the new pragmatic and ethical belief that they give rise to depends in the first place on how the new conditions are interpreted and responded to. To use an earlier example for pragmatic beliefs, decreasing prices may be interpreted as a sign of a long-term trend or temporary opportunity, and – depending on the interpretation – may lead to less or more purchasing. Similarly, if women have less free time to do housework, it may lead to a redefinition of a ‘good wife’ along more equal gender roles, or  – as a form of compensation – to an even bigger emphasis on the traditional gender role of a housewife in the shorter time that remains. The interpretation and modification of everyday cosmologies unfolds in the context of shared discursive and practical answers to the changing conditions. First, producers of public discourse  – institutions and intellectuals  – propose interpretations and ways of responding to the changes. They suggest new pragmatic beliefs and corresponding norms. They may propose, for example, that the economic crisis is only temporary, and that spending, rather than skimping, is the way out of it. Furthermore, they also propose new, matching ethics, mainly by reinterpreting and reframing existing ones. For example, marketing and psychology professionals proposed the therapeutic ethos, whereas kulturnost was promoted by political discourse and intellectuals in response to changed objective conditions. Second, partly informed by public discourse, producers (and retailers) of goods and services also interpret the changes, predict responses to them and provide goods and services that fit their interpretation. By doing so, they offer new products and services whose script implies a certain way of interpreting and responding to changes  – matching their own ideas, or their predictions of how the ‘market will react’. For example, the launch of household equipment that allow dinners to be cooked in less time, as Wilhite’s (2008) study of India documents, implies and allows for the maintenance of previous definitions of a good housewife despite the shortage of time working women have for preparing dinner. The script of ready-made meals, in contrast, implies a shift in that definition. The relative uniformity of the modifications of everyday cosmologies and consumption norms in response to new conditions is due to the fact that these modifications draw on shared cultural resources that

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are articulated in public discourse and are implicitly embedded in new products in the form of ‘scripts’. Yet this uniformity is always to remain partial. When incorporating new cultural resources at an individual level, existing cosmologies act as an interpretative prism through which new conditions are filtered; and through that process, ethics and norms proposed by institutions and intellectuals may get significantly altered, and even be ignored or rejected. As previous chapters showed, even when incorporated, elements of public discourse are woven together with people’s different sets of existing ethical sources  – from religious beliefs to family traditions – and transformed in the process. This is why existing cosmologies are not static but open to change, as long as new elements are able to connect to existing ones. The same applies to the effect of the new products and technologies that people start using in response to the changes in objective conditions. New products and technologies are not able to impose just any new cosmology by their script in the vacuum opened up by uncertainty about new conditions. Rather they allow for the co-evolution of subjectivities, shaped by existing practical ethics, and the ‘affordances’ of objects. As suggested in the previous chapter, this type of change often takes place at the level of practices, in an unreflected way, through gradual shifts in practical ethics. As Shove suggests, ‘values and purposes are actively constructed through use with the result that there is no simple continuum between tradition and innovation’ (Shove, 2003, p.  153). Through the process, new objects and technologies are combined with existing ethical concerns, and by this combination transform and stir them into new directions. Cell phones allow for the reinterpretation of parental control and care, new cleaning technologies for redefining cleanliness and respectability, and coffeehouses for a new kind of sociality and its norms to be defined. The second route through which changes in cosmologies informing consumption norms are triggered is by the entry of new groups into the formation of cultural resources or into the practice to which particular consumption norms pertain. This entry may result from economic as well as social changes. The decrease in the price of clothing made fashion accessible for the lower classes, whereas upward mobility in 18thcentury Britain allowed for nonnoblemen to participate in practices previously exclusive to the aristocracy (Smith, 2002). New groups bring their own cosmologies into the discourse or into a given practice, creating tensions with existing elements of the cosmology underlying them. This may result in a merger of the two cosmologies, as was the case with respectability born from the reinterpretation of aristocratic ethics along

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the lines of middle-class ethics. It may also result in the reaffirmation and strengthening of existing cosmologies; a reaction underlying the introduction of sumptuary laws in times of uncertain social hierarchy. Third, changes in consumption norms may stem from the autonomous development of new technologies. Although as the sociological study of technology suggests (e.g. MacKenzie and Wajckman, 1999b) technological innovations never follow a solely immanent logic, but are always shaped instead by social, economic and cultural factors, it is possible to distinguish innovations that are responses to particular socio-economic changes from those that are affected by, but not reducible to them. I refer to the latter by ‘autonomous’ development, because it has more to do with the internal dynamics of the field where it has been developed than with a specific social or economic change. The process through which new technologies and objects affect consumption norms is the same as described earlier: new technologies allow for the modifications of cosmologies and corresponding consumption norms through practice. Finally, changes of consumption norms may stem from the autonomous development of new cultural resources by institutions and intellectuals. Here again I am using the term ‘autonomous’ in a limited sense. As I  argued in Chapter 3, cultural resources are produced in specific fields through struggles among various social groups. Economic and social changes affecting these groups and their access to the formation of cultural resources have a key impact on the cultural resources being produced. Yet there is an important difference between the case when cultural resources are developed as a response to new conditions external to these fields and the case when they are explainable by the field’s relatively autonomous, internal dynamics. The former case corresponds to the first route, described above, where institutions and intellectuals merely provide ways of making sense and responding to changes external to them. In contrast, in this route, corresponding to the latter case, institution and intellectuals are the main initiators of change. Microdynamics of change The four routes outlined above sketch out the main factors that trigger changes in consumption norms. Yet being broad, they provide little clue as to the processes of change at the level of personal cosmologies and practices, which I discuss in this section. How do new objective conditions, the entry of new groups into particular practices, new technologies and cultural resources impact consumption norms? To understand the process, we need to have a

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look at the practices in which consumption norms are embedded. Every practice incorporates numerous ethical concerns and pragmatic beliefs in a relatively consistent way. For example, home decoration for the first generation of the Bernáts incorporated ethical ideas of respectability and care for the family, notions of a just social hierarchy based on rank, and pragmatic beliefs about the objective value regime. If any of these elements changes, it creates inconsistencies within the practice and calls for an adjustment in other elements as well. New objective conditions, participants, technologies and cultural resources create such inconsistencies, which according to Smith (2002) provide the key impetus for practices  – or, in his formulation, ‘contexts’  – to change. They may create inconsistencies by what Smith calls the intrusion of an ‘exogenous element’ (Smith, 2002, p. 22) into practices. For example, the entry of green concerns into car driving may put into question the passion element and require people to solve, at least partially, the contradiction. Furthermore, they may bring out a practice’s inherent inconsistencies. For example, the incompatibility between the ideal of aristocratic opulence and magistry requiring more modest consumption gradually surfaced and transformed the notion and practices of gentility due to the entry of middle-class participants into the practices associated with it. Furthermore, practices are connected to each other, hence changes in one practice affect other practices as well. Practices are connected, first, because the same ethical element may be present in numerous practices. For example, ideals of masculinity may simultaneously feature in practices related to food, home decoration, clothing and work. This means that if the meaning of a given ethical idea changes in one practice (context), it brings about changes in other practices as well, where the same element is present. For example, if existing ideals of masculinity are transformed in a work context, this also questions practices related to this ideal in the home. Second, practices are also connected through the cosmologies which inform them. ‘Rational masculinity’, for example, formed part of the broader ethical vision of respectability that also involved concerns of taste and gentility, among others. Similarly, the ideal of the kulturnost, explained in Chapter 2, connected elements of cultural sophistication, modesty, manners and egalitarianism. Different elements of these ethical visions are developed in particular practices, yet remain connected at the level of these unifying ethical visions. This implies that changes in one element trigger changes in other elements as well, in order to retain this relative coherence. For instance, the emergence of new ideals

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of masculinity defined in terms of rationality put into question previous ideas of opulence that belong to the same unifying ethical vision of gentility. This prompted the redefinition of luxury as controlled, balanced comfort and taste. The examination of these microdynamics suggests a complex system in which the ethical elements of any given consumption norm simultaneously depend on: (a) the other ethical elements that the same practice integrates; (b) the developments in other practices in which the same element is embedded and (c) the cosmology that it belongs to. These multiple connections constitute the microdynamics through which consumption norms change, through a process of mutual adjustments between new and old elements.

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The consumption of the average U.S. citizen requires eighteen tons of natural resources per person per year and generates an even higher volume of wastes (including household, industrial, mining, and agricultural wastes). Some of these wastes are released to the atmosphere, rivers, and oceans; others are landfilled or incinerated; a small proportion is recycled. The standard conception of economic development envisions the rest of the world’s population as moving steadily up the ladder of mass consumption, eventually achieving levels similar to those achieved by the United States and some European economies. Clearly, the environmental implications of the global spread of mass consumption for resource use and environmental waste absorption are staggering. … In accepting increasing marketization as normal, and recommending it strongly to developing nations as a route out of poverty, we tend to ignore such negative correlates. Again, the effects on resource consumption and the environment are especially evident, but the insidious effects of the shifting boundary are more general. The undermining of community and family, as well as the replacement of spiritual values with commercial ones are now joined by the distancing of the individual from the natural world, with attendant environmental degradation. (Harris, 1997, pp. 269–72) It’s a very good feeling that we sit down together, we have breakfast in a completely different way than if 140

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we didn’t sit around a properly laid table. I think this is very important in the family. And the children, if they get used to it they will have this requirement as well. Because  – I  often say this  – if this is lacking for someone, then I say that one has no soul. I think these small things are needed for me to be tolerant and generous. … It’s important that one has an inner (moral) backbone. (Excerpt from an interview with S.R., entrepreneur and housewife, Budapest, Hungary, 2007) The two quotations above are equally familiar, yet in different contexts. The first, expressed by an environmental economist, formulates moral concerns over the global impacts of consumption in general. The second, put forward by a housewife, makes explicit the ethical concerns behind a particular consumption practice of seating all the family around the breakfast table. Despite their coexistence, there is a clear tension between the two discourses. The first considers consumption as destructive both practically and morally. The second sees it as a necessary element of maintaining some of the most important values of everyday life: the family, the home, decency and even a moral backbone. These differences stem from the discrepancy in the normative standpoints of the two discourses: the first evaluates consumption from the point of view of its environmental effects; whereas the second does so from that of the meaningful practices of which it forms part. What allows for this double assessment of consumption practices is, to use Wilk’s (2001) term, its ‘dual nature’ (p. 255). On the one hand, as this book has argued, ordinary consumption norms are formulated with reference to ethical concerns arising from everyday life, such as being a good father or a respectable person. On the other hand, consumption practices are also intertwined with complex political, economic, social and environmental processes. They are part of chains of systems of provision (Fine, 2002), and every act of consumption maintains or implicitly supports other elements of the entire chain: the labor relations, political regimes, transportation means, retail structures, environmental impact and so on. Furthermore, due to the scarcity of resources, consumption is also inseparable from questions of access, distribution and inequality. Purchasing a carton of milk is simultaneously an act of parental care and a consciously or inadvertently taken affirmation of the labor relations under which it was produced, the animal welfare issues involved and an addition to our eco-footprint. Owing to these connections, every consumption act can be assessed from two sets of

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normative angles: one relating to everyday concerns, and the other to its implications for the larger social, economic, environmental and political systems that it maintains. The book has so far focused predominantly on the first set of concerns. This chapter, in turn, looks at the second aspect by analyzing the relationship between norms arising from the concerns of everyday life and the aims set by ethical consumption movements. The chapter stresses the diversity and cultural embeddedness of ethics of consumption at both levels. First, I  will argue that ethical consumer movements formulate their objectives based on particular visions of good life and justice that, rather than being universal, are shaped by local social and cultural concerns. Second, I will show that the adoption of ethical consumption objectives at the level of everyday life depends on whether they can be integrated into existing culture-specific local cosmologies.

The ethics of ethical consumerism Diverse ethics ‘Ethical consumption’ encompasses a wide range of actions from nonconsumption, as in the case of boycotts and the voluntary simplicity movement (general downshifting of consumption) to consumption following particular ethical principles, such as the purchase of fair trade, green, and free-range goods and ‘buycotts’.1 More broadly, it involves not only particular purchasing (or nonpurchasing) decisions, but also particular ways of using goods  – such as handling them with care so that they last longer, for green motives – and ways of disposing of them, such as recycling and selective waste collection (Cooper-Martin and Holbrook, 1993; Gulyás, 2008). Ethical consumption is customarily described as a particular type of consumption decision that is motivated by ethical purposes. Gulyás, for instance, defines it as a ‘conscious endeavor of the consumer to make their choices on the basis of their values or ethical principles’ (Gulyás, 2008, p. 26). Similarly, according to Starr (2009), ethical consumers can be identified by their ‘purchasing and using products and resources according not only to the personal pleasures and values they provide but also to ideas of what is right and good, versus wrong and bad, in a moral sense’ (p. 916). The underlying idea of this approach is that ordinary consumption is immoral, or at best amoral. This conceptualization of consumption, as shown in previous chapters, has a long history in social sciences. In sociology, the study of consumption was

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dominated by the critique of consumption, featuring it as hedonistic, inauthentic, competitive, selfish and materialistic (Lasch, 1980; Veblen, 1924); and private consumer choice was long posited as the opposite of citizenship (Trentmann, 2007b; Trentmann and Soper, 2008a). Ethical consumption in this understanding is defined as the exception to the rule: as special consumption practices which are motivated by ethical – ‘political, religious, spiritual, environmental, social or other’ (Harrison et al., 2005, p. 2) – aims. More narrowly, the distinction between ethical and other consumption has been made on the basis of selfish private aims versus altruistic public aims. This distinction has been criticized along different lines. Kate Soper (2007, 2008) suggests that public, altruistic aims can also be engaged in a self-regarding way. Side effects of affluence and a consumerist lifestyle – including pollution, exploitation, materialism, stress and the ‘tragedy of the commons’  – may create dissatisfaction in consumers, and thereby alter their understanding of what defines a good life. Self-interest is thus modified and takes a ‘distinctively moral form of self-pleasuring or a self-interested form of altruism: that which takes pleasure in committing to a more socially accountable mode of consuming’ (Soper, 2007, p. 213). Integrated into personal visions of a good life, ethical consumption aims are no longer experienced as altruistic, but as self-regarding or, as she labels them, ‘alternative hedonists’; hence the advancement of the common good does not require the ‘sacrifice’ of self-regarding aims. These moral forms of pleasures may be complemented by more hedonistic pleasures intrinsic in alternative forms of consumption such as cycling or taking a walk, yet for an act to count as ‘alternative hedonist’ it needs to be ‘sensitive to the “tragedy of the commons” factor in consumerism and keen to adjust individual consumption in the light of it’ (Soper, 2007, p. 215).2 Another line of criticism has questioned the very assumption that ordinary consumption is immoral or amoral by pointing out the cultural, social and moral imperatives at play in ordinary consumption (see Chapter 1), and has prompted a redefinition of the concept of ‘ethical consumption’. One of the most prominent of such examples, featured particularly in geographical discussions of the topic (Barnett et al., 2005; Popke, 2006; Trentmann, 2007a), defines ethical consumption as concern directed at distant as opposed to close others, which is characteristic of ordinary ethical concerns. For example, Barnett et al. (2005) suggest that ethical consumption can be conceptualized as referring ‘to any practice of consumption  … explicitly registering commitment or obligation towards distant or absent others’ (p. 29). Daniel Miller, too,

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distinguishes between the ‘ethics’ of consumption (defined as ‘direct involvement of altruistic concern for others and, in particular, distant others’) and other normative concerns that involve ‘general questions of good versus bad, or right versus wrong behaviour by the social actors themselves’ (Miller, 2001a, p. 133), which he calls ‘morality’. In contrast to the approach that sees consumers as naturally amoral, this line considers them as ordinarily moral; the question is rather how to extend the scope of ordinary moral commitments to distant others. The problem is seen to lie in distance and in the invisibility of people and processes which distance brings about. For example, distance hides the complex commodity chains involving environmental degradation, exploitative work relations, unfair trade and the reality of battery farms from the eyes of the consumer who only encounters the neatly packaged product on a shelf in a metropolitan supermarket (Barnett et al., 2005). Yet even this definition of ethical consumption as care for distant others is problematic. As Amartya Sen argues, the ‘[g]roups intermediate between oneself and the all, such as class and community, provide the focus of many actions involving commitment’ (Sen, 1977, p. 334). Indeed, many of the ethical consumerist movements have focused on a ‘politics of proximity’, the ‘commitment to closer rather than distant others’, involving overlapping ethical reasons of ‘regionalism, nationalism, environmentalism and communitarianism’ (Adams and Raisborough, 2008, p.  267). These concerns defined, among others, patriotic consumer movements, the slow-food movement that started in Italy (Sassatelli and Davolio, 2010), as well as the contemporary organic movement in China (Klein, 2009). Many ethical consumer movements are not directed at distant others at all, but focus on the self (Sassatelli, 2004) and their primary motive is self-amelioration. For example, the intention to overcome materialism and gain back control over one’s spiritual development through renouncing consumption is one of key elements of the voluntary simplicity movement and of various branches of religiously motivated ethical consumption (Doherty and Etzioni, 2003). The difficulty in pinning down ethical consumption by a substantive definition only partially stems from the diversity of the phenomenon. The other, probably even more stringent, reason is that ‘ethical’ is used simultaneously as a descriptive and a normative term. Acts are therefore classified as ‘ethical consumption’ based on a substantive definition of the good, which makes analytical descriptions dependent on particular value judgments (Dombos, 2008). As opposed to this stance, the approach that I wish to follow here is to refrain from any substantive

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definition of what counts as a properly ethical concern in order to be able to analyze the ethics proposed by different ethical consumerist movements, and to provide a descriptive rather than a normative assessment of the definitions of ethics that different movements use. What is obvious even at first glance is that ethical consumption movements do not follow a single, uniform ethical principle, but apply a diverse range of ethical imperatives. These vary from fair trade and antisweatshop principles to aims related to environmental protection and wildlife preservation, animal welfare, national progress and personal moral development. Often the same initiative combines different aims. For example, the Buy Nothing Day in Canada consists of a mix of ‘environmental, humanitarian, ethical and political motives’ (Sassatelli, 2006, p.  228), and the UK-based Ethical Consumer organization rates products and services along 23 criteria, including ones relating to animal welfare, environmental protection, human rights, fair trade, working conditions and company politics (Ethical Consumer, 2012). The criteria are often complementary, yet they may also be conflicting. The conflict between buying organic products versus goods with a lower food mileage, when locally produced organic produce is unavailable, is well documented (e.g. Andersen, 2011). The contradiction may not only stem from the difficulty of combining all criteria in one product but also from disagreements over the ethical ideas objectified by them. A  patriotic consumer may choose products with a higher content of local raw materials and labor, whereas one concerned with global inequality may opt for one that helps the most disadvantaged group globally. For example, some of the British ethical consumers studied by Adams and Raisborough (2008), saw their choice of buying locally produced food as a political statement defined against foreign goods, including Fairtrade products. Similarly, depending on the side one takes, let’s say, on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, one may boycott and buycott Palestinian or Israeli products. Even the criteria used by the Ethical Consumer rating can be disputed. For example, companies that lobby for trade liberalization receive a lower rating (Ethical Consumer, 2012); which is in sharp contrast with the aims of the free-trade consumer movement in late-19th and early-20th-century England that saw free trade as simultaneously promoting national interest and cheaper prices (Trentmann, 2008). These dilemmas are often hidden by composite ethical scores and the language of ethical consumption that suggests a simplistic opposition between the ethical versus ordinary ‘unethical’ aims. Yet ethical consumerist aims, like all values, cannot be assumed to stand beyond

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debate. Therefore they are better analyzed as particular forms of consumption norms; an approach that highlights the fact that their conflicts stem from the differences in the ethical elements of their underlying cosmologies. First, the majority of ethical consumer movements promote a particular ethical vision of how to live and whom to be, as an individual or as a society. These visions can be radically different, which is the first source of conflict between the imperatives of various movements. To illustrate this point, let’s compare the underlying ethical visions of two movements: the contemporary voluntary-simplicity movement in the United States and the National Product Movement in China in the early-20th century. Voluntary simplicity involves cutting down on consumption, sharing goods (such as cars), in many cases vegetarianism and avoidance of genetically modified food, and in some cases moving to rural areas or less industrialized countries. The movement extends beyond consumption, involving changing to a job and living location that allow for more connection with nature and more time spent with one’s family and on spiritual development (Bekin et al., 2005; Doherty and Etzioni, 2003; Etzioni, 1998). The ethical vision of good life that the voluntary simplicity movement seeks to develop is free from the ills of modern consumption characteristic of affluent Western consumer societies; a life lived in harmony with nature, focused on spirituality and authenticity rather than on material satisfaction (Etzioni, 1998). This simple life is believed to allow one to regain control (as opposed to the previous dependency posed by consumer society), and to find one’s real purpose in life (Bekin et al., 2005). In this sense, the movement is connected to older traditions of Western thought, such as Rousseau’s idea of ‘back to nature’, as well as to Romantic and conservative ideals of premodern harmony that accompanied the Enlightenment and modernity. The National Product Movement in China in the early-20th century, in contrast, sought to encourage a very different ideal of people and society. It promoted the production and purchase of products manufactured in China, using Chinese raw materials and workforce as opposed to foreign products. The movement, unlike the grassroots voluntary simplicity movement, was promoted by the state, alongside women’s organizations, students and ordinary citizens. It used not only boycotts but also sumptuary laws, and sometimes even violence: several merchants were murdered for stocking foreign goods. The context of the movement was imperialism and China’s inability to impose regulations on imports. The movement was an alternative means to gain national

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autonomy, and its main ethical idea centered on nationalism (Gerth, 2003, 2008). Nationalism involved ‘cleansing China’s national humiliation’ (Gerth, 2003, p. 19) and the creation of a pure Chinese nation by means of pure Chinese goods, often invoking eugenic rhetoric. Unlike voluntary simplicity, the movement promoted modernity, industrialization and economic progress. As opposed to small local producers and handicraft, it posited the ‘authentic Chinese capitalists’ (Gerth, 2003, p.  8) as the epitomes of ethical conduct and promoted the establishment of factories.3 As this comparison shows, the different imperatives of the two movements stem from the differences in their ethical visions of how to live, either as an individual or as a community. Ethical consumption movements, beyond these ethical visions of a good life, also promote specific notions of justice. The basic idea of fair trade (guaranteeing a fair price to producers) can be cited as one example. Similarly, ethical consumption motivated by the aim of reducing one’s eco-footprint and thereby not consuming more than one’s due of Earth’s resources also draws on a particular principle of justice. The principles of justice used by different ethical consumerist movements, just like the ethical visions of a good life promoted by them, are diverse and contradictory. A brief look at competing ideas of justice relating to environmental harm illustrates the point. Who should the political community, that justice refers to, include? People of the same nation or people of the globe? Only present or also future generations? Only people or also animals and even plants, and if so what applies to deadly bacteria? Examples are easy to find for all these positions. The environmental justice movement, originally launched in the United States to guarantee that pollution does not fall unevenly on poor areas, inhabited by people of color, used a notion of justice that applied to different social groups within the nation; therefore its aim was to reinforce a national antidiscriminatory legislation (Taylor, 2000; Walker and Bulkeley, 2006). Critiques of the disproportions in eco-footprints, in turn, promote justice among different nations globally, whereas the agenda of sustainability extends the political community entitled to justice to future generations (Martinez-Alier, 1995). Environmentalism limits the community to people, whereas ecologism includes nonhumans as well (Bell, 2006). Not only the relevant members and communities across whom justice is to be set, but also the principles along which it is to be decided are subject to debate (Bell, 2006; Wissenburg, 2006). This means, in sum, that the definitions of ethics and the principles of justice promoted by ethical consumption movements are far from uniform. Just like all consumption norms, definitions of various

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movements involve different, competing visions of how to live and justice. Whose ethics? How can we account for these differences between the ethical visions of good life and justice of various ethical consumption movements? A comparative view suggests that ethical consumption movements are shaped by local social, economic, political and institutional settings; and their particular ethical visions underlying different conceptions of what counts as ‘ethical’ draw on local cultural resources. These cultural resources pertain firstly to different countries. As Maclachlan and Trentmann suggest, in different countries ‘different ideological traditions … shaped the formation of organized consumer groups and definitions of consumers’ interests’ (Maclachlan and Trentmann, 2004, p. 171), and the success of each movement depended on the ‘ability of the movement to frame objectives in ways that complement or contribute to broader cultural norms and prevailing ideas about democracy and political economy’ (p. 201). This means that, depending on a country’s ideological traditions, different country-specific ethical objectives are likely to develop, and these ethical aims draw on existing political and, more broadly, cultural traditions. Press and Arnould (2011), for example, showed how the Community Supported Agriculture programs selling directly from farmers to consumers in the United States achieved success by building on the existing tradition of American pastoralism, and incorporating ‘elements of the American pastoral dream: safety, community, spiritual fulfillment, contributing to a better world’ (Press and Arnould, 2011, p.  185). Kozinets and Handelman (2004) studying antiadvertising, anti-Nike, and anti-GE food activists found that these movements draw on the spiritual and evangelical values that can be traced back to the religious origins of these movements. The organic movement in China suggests a similar conclusion: one of the organic farms studied by Klein (2009) linked organic food to traditional Chinese conceptions of health as balance as well as to the Confucian and Buddhist notions of compassion for one’s surroundings. The embeddedness of ethical consumerist aims in local cultural resources implies that global ethical consumerist trends are better understood as the development of diverse, homegrown versions of a vaguely similar idea, rather than as a proliferation of the very same ethics. This phenomenon is well illustrated by the different conceptualization and reception of fair trade in the United Kingdom, Germany and Hungary.

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The key objective of fair trade is to provide more equitable trading terms in international trade, in particular by paying a fairer price to producers of developing countries (Boonman et al., 2011). The movement is vastly popular in the United Kingdom, which has the biggest share of the world’s fair trade market (26 per cent). In Germany the movement is popular, yet its 8 per cent of global market share is still far below the United Kingdom (Boonman et al., 2011). In Hungary the movement has barely taken off (Dombos, 2008). In the United Kingdom, the movement was originally connected to Christian religious cultural sources. Its antecedents were poverty relief programs launched by Oxfam after the Second World War to help Eastern European recovery by importing handicraft from local producers (Nicholls and Opal, 2005).4 The first fair trade organization, Traidcraft, established in 1979, linked fair trade to religion, to the ‘love and justice found at the heart of their own Christian faith’ (Traidcraft website, cited in Barnett et al., 2005, p. 33). Alongside various distribution channels (such as mail order catalogs, fair trade shops and mainstream supermarkets), volunteers promoted and sold the products in churches, and gave sermons as part of the Traidcraft Speaker Scheme (Barnett et al., 2011). Most of the current Traidcraft buyers first encountered the movement through their personal contacts in their local church-based network, and connect the aims of the movement to their religious faith. As Barnett et al. point out, the ‘fair trade movement mobilizes existing, geographically embedded social networks with the purpose of sustaining a vision of alternative economic and political possibilities, networks rooted in local church communities or in localities where local businesses, fair trade activism and willing customers collude to generate [a] thriving fair trade “scene”’ (Barnett et al., 2011, p. 180). Later on, fair trade moved mainstream, with products sold by leading retailers, many of which – such as Tesco and Marks and Spencer – market their own fair trade brands (Barrientos and Smith, 2007; Varul, 2008). In going mainstream, fair trade effectively connected to  – and was reinterpreted according to – different and more widely shared cultural traditions. One of these is the nostalgic, romantic, even orientalist aesthetic imaginary – underlying voluntary simplicity as well – which sees modernity as alienated. In this context, fair trade is associated with a life lived in harmony with nature, authenticity and self-sufficiency (Pratt, 2008; Varul, 2008), epitomized by the ‘smiling, satisfied peasant depicted on the package’ (Carrier, 2007, p. 2). Furthermore, in the United Kingdom, one of the key principles of fair trade, according to which people can and should act as consumers to

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promote social causes, could build on existing local political traditions. One of these is the long history of citizen-consumer movements, as a result of which acting as a consumer is seen as a legitimate, even civic activity. The other, related tradition is that of a neutral state characteristic of a liberal democracy, and the assumption that public interest is to be achieved by the proper working of the market (Maclachlan and Trentmann, 2004). These traditions imply that consumer choice and market mechanisms are a legitimate and efficient means of bringing about change. These helped the development of the Free Trade movement in the early-20th century that campaigned for the elimination of trade barriers in order to provide access to cheap necessities for consumers  – equated with the general public at the time. Thatcherite liberal politics in the 1980s that involved both the privatization of public services and the repositioning of citizens as customers of state services also drew on these traditions (Burgess, 2001; Maclachlan and Trentmann, 2004; Trentmann, 2005). Fair trade in the United Kingdom could also connect to these traditions: as the market is seen as a selfregulating entity, unfair trade is understood as a market failure that is to be corrected through the market, that is, through consumer choice. This is why in Britain fair trade producers are often depicted as self-sufficient farmers who enter into commercial relationships with consumers. This depiction, in turn, can be further connected to the dissociation from the colonial past: the relationship is between equal trade partners rather than between colonizer and colonized (Varul, 2008). In Germany, fair trade has built on different cultural resources, and has been conceptualized accordingly. Unlike in the United Kingdom, the consumer here has not developed into a figure symbolizing public interest. Instead, the emphasis has been on workers, and even when consumers were invoked it was largely in defense of producers’ interests (Trentmann, 2005). According to the German corporativist tradition, the liberal market in itself is not seen as a self-regulatory mechanism that guarantees fair pay; it is to be regulated based on principles of entitlement in order to achieve certain social aims. Therefore in Germany the commercial aspects of fair trade are played down: producers are pictured as wage-earners rather than independent trade partners, and fair price is understood as an entitlement rather than as a correction of market failure (Varul, 2008). The other aspect of the producer – as opposed to the consumer – identity prevalent in Germany is a strong emphasis on rational choice understood in terms of price and quality that leaves less room for a symbolic aesthetic imaginary. As Varul (2008) argues, this explains the limited romantic

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appeal used by fair trade in Germany, and a strong focus on conscious ethical choice instead. This is also probably why, whereas in the United Kingdom fair trade went mainstream and became an ordinary choice, in Germany fair trade consumers are seen as forming a distinct moral community. This is also reflected in the retail system of fair trade, consisting mainly of specialized fair trade shops rather than mainstream chains. The Hungarian positioning of the movement illustrates yet another local appropriation of fair trade. To Hungary the movement arrived relatively late, with the opening of the first temporary fair trade café in 2005. At the time of its launch, the receptiveness to fair trade, according to market research commissioned by the activist organization, was virtually non-existent (Dombos, 2008). This is not surprising, given the social, political and economic circumstances of the time, 16 years after the transition from socialism to market economy. Socialist public discourse emphasized a citizen-worker identity and associated consumption with materialism and individualism. The socialist state limited all civil society activities, including churches and charities, and promised to provide all needs compatible with the socialist ideology – from poverty reduction to culture and workers’ rights  – thought state-affiliated organizations. Fair wages in this discourse were to be guaranteed by the state and by the socialist system itself. The change of 1989, in turn, brought an uncritical embracing of the liberal, deregulated market economy on nearly all sides of the political spectrum, and the market was posited as a mechanism which automatically solves all problems of inefficiency. Leftist discourse became quickly associated with dictatorship and political crimes; a situation which makes the articulation of leftist arguments difficult even today (Szalai, 2003). In this context, the idea that people should pay more in order to correct market inefficiencies regulating wages did not fit easily. Furthermore, unlike the United Kingdom and Germany, Hungary’s position between East and West is ambiguous. Located in Eastern Europe, and with much lower GDP per capita than the two other countries, its self-perception is of a poor country in contrast to its Western neighbors rather than a rich one in contrast to developing countries. Hence it sees itself as a legitimate recipient rather than contributor of aid. Given the rapid increase of inequalities and unemployment, decreasing real wages, and the reduction of workers’ rights following the change, the notion that one could act as a benefactor or proponent of worker rights in even poorer places was not easily adopted. In the Hungarian context, fair trade became associated with an existing idealized Western imaginary that has long pictured the West as more

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advanced, progressive and morally superior (Dombos, 2008). This somewhat ‘self-colonizing’ (Kiossev, 2000, p. 7) discourse has a long tradition in Hungary. It featured prominently in 19th-century debates on development and continues to serve as one of the key reference points in contemporary political discourse (Farkas, 2012). Drawing on this discourse, the lack of Hungarian involvement in fair trade has been depicted by the media and activists by contrasting ‘the image of the “modern”, “progressive”, “concerned” societies of the West with the “poor”, “parochial” and “self-centered” Hungarian society’ (Dombos, 2008, p.  131). Fair trade became linked to values associated with the West: modernity, civil society and development. This was further reinforced by the fact that fair trade was launched by people with strong ties to Western countries, either being from the United States or the United Kingdom themselves or having spent extended amounts of time there. Also, fair trade goods arrived in Hungary through Western fair trade outlets, carrying foreignlanguage text and high-quality images that stood out in comparison to the poor design of locally produced items (Dombos, 2008). As this comparison suggests, the global ‘spread’ of ethical consumerist movements do not imply the adoption of the very same idea but involves its local appropriations into existing traditions. Through such a process, the aims of the movement are transformed, but the traditions with which it is coupled are also altered. This process is well illustrated by Sassatelli and Davolio’s (2010) study on the way the ethical aims of the Italian slow food movement were gradually reframed and modified as it came to incorporate elements of the ecological ethical consumer movement. The slow food movement started in 1987 as a left-wing protest against McDonaldization, Americanization, the disappearance of local cultural diversity and a slower pace of life. Its original emphasis – highlighted by the 1989 manifesto’s subtitle ‘International Movement of the Defense of and the Right to Pleasure’ – was on gastronomic pleasure; local artisan food specialties and slow-paced osterias were appreciated because they contributed to such a pleasure. The incorporation of ecological and sustainability aims into the movement in the 2000s took place ‘by stressing concerns such as the environment and landscape, with pleasure being not deemphasized, but re-framed’ (Sassatelli and Davolio, 2010, p. 216) into a new concept of eco-gastronomy. The concept works by extending the range of gastronomic connoisseurship from taste to the circumstances of production, and by shifting ‘focus from the safeguard of typical foods to the safeguard of their cultural and environmental premises, emphasizing biodiversity, sustainable agriculture and responsible consumption’ (p. 211).

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So far, I  have located the ethical objectives of ethical consumerism movements in the traditions of particular national cultures. Specifying the argument further, ethics of particular ethical consumerist movements reflect not only national traditions but also ethical views of a particular class, gender or ethnicity. Dorceta Taylor (2000), for example, in her study of environmental activism in the United States, shows how its changing agenda reflected the concerns of the various social groups which participated in the movement over time. The first, ‘romantic environmental’ (p. 527) phase that emphasized wildlife protection and conservation was promoted predominantly by middle-class white males. Proponents were often immersed in capitalist production, and used nature as a means of recreation through exploration and hunting, which led to a view of nature as a reserve of authenticity and as a source of rewarding leisure activities. Later, the environmentalist agenda was taken up by working-class activists who connected it to workers’ rights and occupational health and safety. More recently, environmentalism has been linked by working-class people of color to the critique of ‘environmental racism’ (Bullard, 1990, p. 78) – a term referring to the disproportionate environmental hazard afflicted on communities of color  –, resulting in a new agenda that connects environmental concerns to discrimination, social inequality and human rights. Looking at the dominant model of ethics of ethical consumerism, emphasizing private choice, antimaterialism and altruistic concerns from this angle raises questions about which social group’s concerns and possibilities are reflected by it. Most commentators analyzing ethical consumerism from this point of view suggest that, despite its seeming universalism, it reflects the concerns of middle-class, white, Western consumers. Miller, for example, suggested that the critique of materialism stems from an ‘anxiety most acutely felt by fairly well-off academics, mainly in the United States, about the possibility that they may be too materialistic’ (Miller, 2001c, p. 226). He argued that a large part of the world suffers from poverty (i.e. the lack of goods, including food, medicine and housing), and the moral stance that emphasizes denouncing the desire for goods is characteristic of the privileged, affluent class position enjoyed only by few. Johnston (Johnston and Baumann, 2010; Johnston et al., 2011), building on Bourdieu’s (1984) theory of taste, also emphasized the middle-class character of ethical consumption. According to Bourdieu, maintaining an abstract relation to goods – focusing on form rather than substance – as opposed to a utilitarian relation is a middle and upper-class phenomenon as it depends largely on one’s distance from economic necessity. Although in ethical

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consumption the emphasis is not on form, it requires a similar stance of abstraction, which makes Bourdieu’s argument extendable to it as well. Ethical consumerist aims have been argued to reflect not only class but also gender and ethnic bias. Guthman, for instance, pointed out that the rhetoric romanticizing the family farm and small-scale agricultural labor conceals the exploitative gender relationships within family enterprises, the history of agricultural production based on slavery, and the land distribution policy that privileged white land ownership (Guthman, 2004). Moreover, having investigated the rhetoric and imaginary conveyed by ethical consumption spaces, including communitysupported agriculture (CSA) and farmers’ markets in the United States, she suggested that the ‘alternative food discourse hails a white subject to these spaces of alternative food practice and thus codes them as white’ (Guthman, 2008a, p. 388). Beyond reflecting particular class, gender, ethnic bias and national cultural ideals, the emphasis of ethical consumerism on private consumption choice mediated by the market is also informed by a distinctively modern and Western worldview, conception of political subject and political action. First, some argued that the centrality of choice is predicated on ideas of moral selfhood and identity that are products of Western modernity.5 This ethics assumes a moral subject who bases his or her moral actions on individually gathered and evaluated information, and works toward a reflexive moral identity (Barnett et al., 2005; Sassatelli, 2006). Second, the emphasis on consumer choice presupposes market distribution. However, markets, as noted in Chapter 1, are only one of the distribution mechanisms, and much of the goods outside Western contexts continue to be allocated by the state and traditional networks where private consumer choice may have little role to play. Finally, it assumes that people universally see themselves as consumers and are willing to act for social and political aims via private consumer choice. However, as Trentmann (2006b) points out, the consumer as a category of selfdefinition and political agency is a particular historical phenomenon that cannot be applied univocally even to Western countries. In fact, many, if not most, of the seemingly consumerist movements did not even operate with a concept of distinct consumer identity but spoke out in the name of citizen-consumers, worker-consumers or other mixed entities. The Co-operative Movement, for instance, that started in 1844 in England sought to reunite the consumer, worker and citizen aspects of what it saw as having been torn apart by monopolistic, capitalist production relations. The aim was to provide consumers with cheaper commodities by simultaneously engaging them as workers of a cooperative and citizens

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of civil society (Lang and Gabriel, 2005). Similarly, in early-20th-century Germany, consumer politics’ ‘emphasis was on developing socially responsible habits of consumption amongst middle-class “consumers” to improve the social conditions of “workers”’ (Trentmann, 2006b, p.  39). Patriotic consumer movements  – such as the Védegylet in Hungary in the 19th century (Gulyás, 2012) and the National Products Movement in China (Gerth, 2003) – that formed part of the political liberation movements from Austria and imperialist powers of Russia, the United States and Japan, respectively, addressed people primarily as patriotic citizens rather than as consumers (Maclachlan and Trentmann, 2004). From this point of view, the self-conscious consumer who takes action via individual consumer choice is not a universal and natural phenomenon but has been brought about by particular political traditions, institutional arrangements, market policies and consumerist movements (Burgess, 2001; Micheletti, 2003; Trentmann, 2005). Some consider it as stemming specifically from liberal economic policies and understand this process, following Foucault, as a form of governance: one that acts on personal conduct through nurturing self-governing forms of consciousness and practices that are compatible with those required by neoliberal economic policy, and see it as part of a broader trend, characteristic of contemporary Western liberalism. As Barnett et al. argue, ‘individual dispositions to choose are not the expressions of natural dispositions, but are worked up, governed, and regulated by an array of actors who make possible certain forms of individualized conduct’ (Barnett et al., 2005, p. 29). These critiques, in sum, suggest that what is meant by the ‘ethics’ of ethical consumption are not universal, unquestionable principles but ones which emerge partly from local ethical traditions and are specific to particular class, gender and ethnic positions. What is even more disturbing is the argument that this definition of ethical action is not only biased towards particular groups but that ethical action thus formulated is only accessible to these groups, thereby excluding others from the possibility of becoming ‘ethical’.

Ethical consumption and ordinary ethics To what extent are these ethical concerns, formulated by different movements, taken up by people in their everyday choices? Surveys looking at consumers’ preoccupation with ethical consumption and their willingness to pay higher margins for ‘ethical’ products6 indicate a growing ethical consumerist trend. In 2009, 50 per cent of adults in the

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United Kingdom said that they purchased a good out of ethical reasons (Co-op Bank, 2009), and more than half of the respondents of a survey covering 15 developed countries claimed to be ‘active ethical consumers’ (Ethical Consumer, 2009). According to a 2009 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey, consumers in developed countries claim to be willing to pay 5–10 per cent more for green products (Manget et al., 2009). The ethical consumerist trend, however, seems to apply mainly to developed countries of the global North. For example, the same BCG survey found that people in China are unwilling to pay a premium for green products, while Chan and Lau (2000) reported a very low level of ecological knowledge and actual green purchases in the country. In Chile, only 6.5 per cent of the population engages in practices that can be classified as ethical consumerist (and even these practices are mainly related to saving resources, hence not necessarily motivated by ethical consumerist aims); whereas in Brazil only 6 per cent of consumers claimed to take the environmental impact of their consumption choices into consideration (Ariztia et al., 2012). This proportion is slightly higher in urban and affluent areas. For example, a recent survey conducted among young urban middle- and upper-class Brazilians in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo found that 19 per cent of respondents already participated in buycotts (Barbosa et al., 2012). Yet even where surveyed people claim to be ethical consumers, these claims do not always translate into actual choices (Miller, 2001a); a phenomenon referred to as the ‘attitude-behavior gap’ (Devinney et al., 2010) or ‘value-action’ gap (Blake, 1999). This is probably the reason why sales of ‘ethical products’ are still small: they only contribute to 1 per cent of sales worldwide (Carrigan and De Pelsmacker, 2009), and amount to only 5.3 per cent of household spending even in the United Kingdom (Stancich, 2008), the country exhibiting the highest ethical consumer awareness. In Southern countries, the proportion is even smaller. Organic food, which rates highest among all ethical products in China, still accounts for only 0.1 per cent of food purchases (Klein, 2009). More disturbing still is the fact that even when people act on their ethical consumerist opinions, the impact of their behavior is doubtful. According to a recent study by Csutora (2012), for instance, green and nongreen (‘brown’) consumers have equal ecological footprints; described as the ‘behavior-impact gap’ (Csutora, 2012, p. 148). One explanation of the low rates of actual ethical consumption choices has been the ignorance of consumers of the effect of their choices. It was assumed that once consumers learn about the actual consequences of their consumption – such as its environmental impact

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or the exploitative labor relations supporting it – they will – switch to ethical consumption (Adams and Raisborough, 2008; Barnett et al., 2005; Caruana, 2007). Another explanation, which drew on the assumption of ordinary consumption as immoral or at best amoral, attributed the reluctance to selfishness. The solution was then to convince people to become more moral and concerned with issues other than their own satisfaction. However, in the light of recent scholarship (including this book) which showed that everyday consumption is also informed by ethical concerns and pragmatic deliberation, neither of the above explanations seems to be sufficient. Rather, given the complexity of ethical concerns at play in ordinary consumption decisions, the obstacle to ethical consumption seems to be not so much the default position of amorality or the lack of knowledge but its possible incompatibility with existing moral frameworks. The adoption of ethical consumption therefore depends primarily on whether or not it can be reconciled with ordinary ethics and practices. What is crucial, then, is the relationship between the ethics of ethical consumption and the ethics of ordinary consumption. In what follows, I look at the different forms that this relationship takes: when the two moral frameworks and the practices implied by them are in conflict; when the moral frameworks do not coincide, yet their associated practices do; and finally, when the two moral frameworks and the practices objectifying them match. Conflicting ethics In his study on shopping practices in London, Miller suggests that one of the major obstacles to ethical consumer choices is that they clash with the imperatives of ordinary ethical concerns guiding consumption: the twin values of care and thrift (Miller, 1999, 2001a). Care among his participants is a primary ethical concern guiding ordinary practices; shopping is seen as legitimate and righteous as long as it is motivated by the love for one’s family. Thrift is partly a means of achieving the best value for the family, but it is also associated with respectability and sobriety. Ethical consumption conflicts with both of these values. The purchase of more expensive ethical goods goes against the value of thrift, and they are hence seen ‘as a form of extravagance’ (Miller, 2001a, p. 134). Moreover, this practice, as Miller notes, is paradoxically considered selfish: ethical consumers are often seen as egotistical and concerned only with their own agendas related to distant others as opposed to their obligations towards their family. A  similar conflict is described by Connolly and Prothero, suggesting that in the

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environmental discourse promoting a simple life ‘particular practices and material goods will become identified as bad, yet these very same practices and material goods may be central (meaningfully) in social relations’ (Connolly and Prothero, 2008, p. 128). Conflicts between ordinary ethics and practices required by ethical consumption go well beyond those posed by thrift and care. From the environmentalist point of view, the less material-intensive is a given good, the better: singing lessons have a lower eco-footprint than sports utility vehicles. Yet it is precisely this aspect that clashes with two of the most widely shared consumption norms. First, it goes against the consumption as investment ethics, outlined in Chapter 2 which implies that consumption is legitimate as long as it materializes in goods. The importance of materiality in this context is connected to the crossgenerational care for the family in the form of inheritable goods, and the translation of expenditure into investment as opposed to consumption. According to these ethics, material-intensive alternatives are by definition more ethical than services such as taking a cab or attending singing lessons which are considered wasteful. Second, environmentally friendly alternatives, requiring less material, often go against norms of modesty and the refusal of snobbery. From a purely environmental point of view, purchasing a Gucci bag or an exorbitantly priced watch are better choices than the thrifty alternative of spending the same amount of money on ten different cheap bags and watches. These choices are abhorred as luxury and snobbery, precisely because the actual material that one gets for one’s money is small compared to the immaterial image value that one pays for. This is why modesty often implies choices with a much bigger eco-footprint than snobbery, and consequently more clashes with environmental principles. The conflict between everyday and ethical consumerist morality at a more general level stems from the fact that most goods, contrary to the assumptions of many of these movements, are not some kind of superfluous extra floating above ordinary life. They are part of practices, which objectify practical ethics. Giving up a good implies giving up participation in a practice and the meaning and ethics that can be lived by it. Reducing the use of soap, deodorant and toothpaste violates norms of cleanliness and respectability; cutting one’s spending on suits, ties and shirts is not compatible with the professional norms required by many jobs; and giving up books means giving up all the internal rewards of reading. Given these conflicts, what seems to require explanation is not so much why people do not engage more in ethical consumption but rather why they – even occasionally – do so.

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Ethical consumption as side effect How and why do people engage in ethical consumption in their everyday life? Or to put it differently, how do they navigate between conflicting ethical demands of everyday concerns and ethical consumerism? Existing research suggests two main avenues. In the first case, which I will call ethical consumption as side effect, a given practice conforms to ethical consumerist aims, yet it is engaged primarily out of ordinary ethical motives that have nothing, or little, to do with ethical consumerist aims. In the second case, the engagement is ‘genuine’ in that people choose ethical consumerist alternatives out of motives promoted by these movements.7 Klein’s (2009) study of organic farms and their consumers in southwest China provides a suitable example of ethical consumption as side effect. The study suggests a divergence between the ethical principles formulated by the organic non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and those of their consumers. NGOs put the emphasis on sustainability, biodiversity and enhancing the livelihood of farmers; and promote stopping the use of chemical pesticides in the name of these aims. Consumers, in turn, understand these products as responding to health concerns (French and Crabbe, 2010; Klein, 2009).8 This phenomenon is also supported by another Chinese survey that found that 69 per cent of eco-friendly purchases are motivated by securing one own and one’s family’s health (Zoysa, 2007). Health concerns are fueled by food safety scandals, including high levels of pesticides, low hygiene standards and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus. These scandals are widely voiced in the media, with no week passing without a new scandal emerging (French and Crabbe, 2010). The marketing of organic products therefore focuses on health. Unlike their Western counterparts, organic products do not contain references to producers or provenance, but emphasize health by highlighting technology, hygiene and safety controls instead. In everyday discourse the concept of ‘green’ is equated with being healthy and free of pesticides, with no implication of environmental protection. This is why NGOs, in promoting organic products, use messages focused exclusively on health, with hardly any mention of the environment in their communication (Klein, 2009). Ethical consumption as a side effect of ordinary ethical concerns not only applies to organic goods. Traditional means of saving money, such as turning off the lights or the heating, limiting car use, cutting down on long-distance holidays, buying goods second-hand and purchasing them in the farmers’ markets are practices that can be equally motivated by thrift and by environmental concerns. In fact, these strategies

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constitute the majority of the ‘ethical consumption’ in Chile and Brazil (Ariztia et al., 2012), and purchase of energy-efficient appliances forms the largest chunk of ‘ethical’ purchases in the United Kingdom (with the purchase of organic food ranking second) (Stancich, 2008); which may explain the seemingly mysterious phenomenon of the recent financial crisis triggering a rise in ethical consumerist practices (Carrigan and De Pelsmacker, 2009). Similarly, the fact that India ranks first on National Geographic’s Greendex index of environmentally sustainable consumption is not due to the high ethical consumption awareness of Indians but to the compatibility of existing practices informed by ordinary ethical concerns with sustainability goals (Anantharaman, 2012). Depending on the prevalence of ethical discourse in a given country and social group, these practices may be more or less framed as ethical consumerist choices. In the Chinese case, environmental discourse was practically absent; hence people felt no need to justify their health concerns by environmental motives. In contrast, in the United Kingdom, where ethical consumerist discourse is omnipresent, Londoners frame even those choices as ethical consumerist that are in fact entirely motivated by thrift  – such as the use of charity shops  – or by health and physical appearance – in the case of organic food (Miller, 2001a). This discursive strategy has also been observed by Johnston et al. (2011) among poor consumers in Canada who appropriated the environmentalist discourse to account for their low consumption level and recycling practices.9 Matching ethics Whereas in the above cases ethical consumption was a side effect of engaging in practices for other, ordinary ethical concerns, there are instances where these practices are motivated by ethical consumption concerns; when not only practices but also the ethics underlying them match those of the given ethical consumerists movement. How can we envision this match, given all that has been said about the frequent incompatibility between ordinary and ethical consumerist ethics? As previous chapters showed, people’s consumption norms draw on different ethical visions of good life, social relationships, obligations as well as ordinary conceptions of justice. ‘Genuine’ engagement of ethical consumerist aims requires their incorporation into these existing ordinary ethical frameworks. The different ways in which this engagement happens can be related to the different degrees to which ethical consumption assumes centrality in one’s life, which can range from the occasional purchases of fair

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trade coffee to joining a radical ethical consumerist community. An analogy with religious devotion is helpful here. People’s religious dedication and activities associated with it vary in intensity from the occasional attendance of religious services to choosing religion as a vocation by becoming a priest or a nun. Similarly, in ethical consumption, the quantitative differences at one point turn into qualitative ones, indicating a different type of engagement. Up to a certain point, ethical consumption aims are incorporated into existing cosmologies; beyond that point, ethical consumerism is understood as a break with ordinary ethics, life and society and it is chosen precisely because it offers a way of complete transformation. In these cases, ethical consumption is not understood as a set of principles that should be integrated into ordinary cosmology and life but as an ideal to which ordinary life should be elevated. Conflicts between ethical consumerist and ordinary ethical frameworks are less intense ‘on the edges’, that is, when people show very little or absolute engagement; and are more severe in the middle, when they try to integrate conflicting demands of the two moral frameworks. In these cases, the conflicting moral frameworks bring about a large amount of ambivalence and inconsistency (Adams and Raisborough, 2008; Andersen, 2011; Connolly and Prothero, 2008; Halkier, 1999; Miller, 2001a). Evans’s (2011) research in southeast England, for example, suggests that ethical concerns are only followed if they are compatible with the main ethical concerns of parental responsibilities, health concerns and thrift. Similarly, Miller, based on his study in north London, suggests that ‘convenience ethics’ guide shopping: people only buy ethical products if they provide an alternative to what they would buy anyway ‘at no additional cost; [otherwise] ethical concerns are nonexistent as a factor determining shopping choice’ (Miller, 2001a, p. 126). Other studies suggest that people reach temporary compromises and change priorities from situation to situation (Andersen, 2011) and limit the scope of ethical consumption to a manageable scale of products and problems to avoid conflict with other commitments (Newholm, 2005). Often, ethical consumerist purchases are made alongside ‘non-ethical’ ones as a form of compensation, and have the opposite effect of the original intention; for example, the organic cotton bag purchased after a downtown shopping spree represent additional material consumption (Simányi, 2004). This phenomenon is partly explained by what Gershuny and Sullivan (2004) call ‘inconspicuous consumption’: consumption used as symbolic representation of a life and values that cannot be pursued within one’s actual lifestyle. In this sense,

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alternative products may come to represent bridges suspended not so much towards others as towards ideals that usually escape us, and which we do not want to renounce: even if a style of consumption that is entirely green might presently be difficult, through buying and using some organic, ethical or fair trade products consumers can gain proof of the importance of their aspirations, feel as if they have the capacity to contribute to change and claim a new kind of identity for themselves. (Sassatelli, 2006, p. 221) These conflicts only seem to ease in radical forms of ethical consumption. These require the submission of ordinary ethical concerns and values internal to diverse practices to ethical consumerist aims, and involve a fundamental transformation of one’s ordinary life, including social relations, work and lifestyle. For example, members of most British voluntary simplifier communities radically change their previous lifestyle: they move to the same rural place, work full time or part time at the community, produce their own food and develop new forms of social relations required by the communal way of living (Bekin et al., 2005; Moraes et al., 2008). As Eräranta et al.’s (2009) research on eco-communities suggests, these new social relationships develop by ‘problematizing their personal relation to themselves (self) and to others (spouse and family), as well as by constructing new forms of subjectivity, intimacy, and relatedness through communal life’ (p. 347). The point of joining a radical ethical consumption community is not simply to achieve a given social, political or environmental aim through purchasing choices; rather, it is an identity project through which one becomes a new kind of person. Life in these communities is experienced by participants as ‘not only [in] direct opposition against the social order of contemporary Western consumer society but also [as a] more subtle resistance against the normalized forms of subjectivity that it entails’ (p. 347). The community provides ‘a safe-shell from consumer temptations and an aid in self-disciplinary techniques’ (p. 19) that allows participants to develop their genuine self and overcome their unwanted, unethical selves. Moraeas et al., following Low and Davenport (2007), therefore call these communities ‘ethical spaces’ (Moraes et al., 2008, p.  19): spaces that by their rules, norms and ‘communo-spatial environments’ oblige participants to be ethical and block their unethical impulses. In these cases, the full engagement of ethical consumption norms does not take place through the incorporation of these norms into what is seen as a normal or ordinary life. The emphasis is on rupture: developing

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a new ethical outlook, involving a new form of life, new subjectivities and new social relations.

Engaging ethical consumerism Research on the motives of people engaging in ethical consumption is abundant. We now know, for example, that reasons as diverse as environmental concerns, belonging to a community, creating direct contact with producers and helping to sustain their livelihood, safeguarding tradition, health, superior taste, culinary expertise and physical appearance motivate green eating (Andersen, 2011; Johnston et al., 2011; Klein, 2009; Miller, 2001a), and that people join ethical consumption communities because they would like to reconnect with nature, raise their children in a calm environment, or because they are fed up with the stress and materialism of affluent lifestyles (Bekin et al., 2005). Yet these explanations seem to be still wanting. Most people would like it if global warming stopped and would prefer to raise their children in a calm environment, yet this leads only few of us to purchase ‘green’ or to join an ethical consumption community. The presence of these concerns therefore is not enough; for them to be articulated as ethical consumerist concerns and acted on accordingly, something more is needed: they need to be compatible with already existing ordinary ethical frameworks that allow for their incorporation, or more precisely, the mutual appropriation of ordinary and ethical consumerist ethics. My own fieldwork in Hungary provides a particularly illuminating case of one of the ways such integration happens. Géza (born in 1979) engages in ‘ethical consumption’ both at the level of discourse and in practice. He holds that one ‘votes with every Forint’,10 buys food in organic outlets and consciously avoids ‘wasteful’ practices. For Géza, the ethics of ‘ethical consumption’ form part of a substantive vision of the good life centered on spirituality, tradition and community, as well as on a high-cultural version of intellectual sophistication. This vision bears a close similarity to those of his parents, who also participated in the research. It rearticulates his mother’s high-cultural intellectual orientation, conservative stance, patriotism and nostalgia for presocialist times into an ethical consumerist imaginary of a traditional, bucolic life and spirituality. This is why ‘conscious consumption’ is an argument he deploys equally to refuse environmentally wasteful practices, kitsch and books of low literary value. Moreover, Géza’s ethical vision of how to live draws on his father’s frugality. His father developed this frugal stance during the shortages in the 1950s, but today this stance regularly

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features in family discussions as a hallmark of his manly rationality. As Géza lamented, frugality has been ingrained in him through his upbringing and today lurks as a suppressed guilt over spending. This feeling is out of place in his actual situation: he earns very well, much more than he actually spends, and has inherited a nice, big flat without a mortgage. He mentioned that his restraint in spending caused conflicts with his friends who – given Géza’s financial situation – could not understand why he begrudges money spent on public transport, pubs and concerts, simply seeing him as a loner, stingy or a weirdo. In this light, for Géza, the modest choices of ethical consumption are partly a way of resolving this contradiction between his ingrained feeling of guilt over spending and his healthy financial situation. Being a conscious consumer translates Géza’s guilt over spending money – which his friends classify as avarice – into a conscious choice of antimaterialism. This translation of ethical consumption aims occurs through what Barnett et al. call ‘re-articulation’ (Barnett et al., 2005, p.  29).11 Rearticulation means that existing, ordinary ethical concerns are reworked so as to incorporate the concerns of ethical consumerist movements. Their example is the Traidcraft movement in the United Kingdom, discussed earlier, that people could relate to largely because it connected to existing religious ethical concerns by rearticulating these concerns as care for distant others.12 The likelihood of this rearticulation, as Géza’s example showed, depends on people’s existing cosmologies, which in turn vary according to the cultural and material resources made available by their social, economic and cultural locations. This latter aspect is emphasized by studies that point out that ethical consumerism is engaged predominantly by middle-class, affluent, Western consumers (Barnett et al., 2005; Miller, 2001c; Sassatelli, 2006).13 This is not only because some practices of ethical consumption require goods that are more expensive than alternatives, or that retail places hosting ethical goods, such as Whole Foods, are located in affluent areas, which may make it difficult for other classes to access them (Guthman, 2008a). Equally important is the fact that, as the first part of this chapter suggested, ethical consumerist aims themselves draw on ethical visions and ideals of justice that are not universal, but reflect the cosmologies of groups of a particular social class, gender, ethnicity and nation. This means that any given ethical consumption discourse is likely to be more compatible with cosmologies of people who have similar backgrounds to those of the movement’s proponents. For example, the aesthetic rather than functional

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relationship to consumption – that is often identified as a middle-class bias inherent in the formulation of consumerist aims – is more likely to ring true to middle-class consumers than to working-class ones. In this light, the engagement of ethical consumption at the everyday level can be understood as a linkage between historically, socially, culturally specific ethical visions that inform ethical consumerist aims on the one hand, and historically, socially, culturally specific ordinary ethical visions that inform everyday consumption norms, on the other.

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Private Virtues, Public Vices

Ethical consumption movements address pressing issues that require urgent response: the use and production of certain goods contribute to global warming, others maintain inhuman working conditions and unfair wages, or involve torturing animals. Ethical consumerism constitutes a particular solution to tackle these problems. This solution has two characteristics: first, it is based on private consumer choice; and second, it requires people to subsume their everyday ethical concerns under ethical consumerist ones. This last chapter uses the arguments developed throughout the book to assess this solution and to develop an alternative one that takes better account of the nature of the problems to be handled and of the everyday ethical concerns that possible solutions need to confront. Throughout the chapter I will use the example of climate change to illustrate my points; however, its logic can be applied to other issues as well. In the first part, I suggest two points of criticism of the solution proposed by ethical consumerism. First, drawing on recent sociological and philosophical discussions of climate change, I suggest that most of the problems addressed by ethical consumerism are systemic, and therefore require systemic rather than individual solutions. Addressing them within the framework of individual choice assigns the decision and the responsibility to the private level. This results in what Ulrich Beck calls the ‘privatization of risk’, and forces people to seek individual solutions to systemic contradictions which are neither feasible nor necessarily desirable. Second, as Chapter 6 showed, the differences between ethical consumerist and private norms cannot be simply placed on the moral/ immoral dichotomy but are to be understood as competing, often inconsistent moral frameworks. Ethical consumerist solutions that put forward a substantive definition of how people should live risk reducing 166

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the ethical complexity that is at play in ordinary consumption, and, consequently, the diversity of everyday life, social relationships and meanings. These two problems together call for a different type of solution and moral standpoint. In the second part of the chapter I  discuss such an alternative, which I will call the qualified liberal position, that promises to tackle problems at a systemic level while retaining the diversity of ethical pursuits.

What is wrong with private choice? Ethical consumerism has received mixed evaluations. As noted in Chapter 1, the positive view suggests that ethical consumerism allows people to exert an influence over large-scale political, social and environmental processes that would otherwise be beyond their reach: through their consumption choices ordinary people ‘cast their ballot – on a world scale, no less’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2001, p. 44). Beyond ‘voting with every penny’ at the point of purchase, consumers can also contribute to the common good in the ways they use and dispose of their goods: ‘individual acts like recycling, composting or buying organic food [are seen] as constituting acts of citizenship as they contribute to the public good, albeit through private action’ (Anantharaman, 2012, p.  13). Furthermore, despite the fact that ethical consumerism often forms part of a state initiative – for example in China (Ho, 2008) – it is nevertheless frequently praised for its benefits as a grassroots movement. It is claimed to be open and democratic, able to give voice to people and to be more efficient than top–down solutions in bringing about change in people’s own values, social norms and practices (Agrawal, 2005a, 2005b; Anantharaman, 2012; Jamieson, 2010; Kennedy, 2011). Yet despite these positive aspects there are a number of problems with a solution based on individual consumer choice. One of them, discussed in the previous chapter, is that this solution is shaped by notions of moral selfhood, assumptions of market-based distribution mechanisms and political traditions that are specific to Western modernity, which limits its applicability in other contexts. An even more pertinent problem is that ethical consumerism seeks to provide individual solutions to systemic problems, thereby contributing to what Beck (1992) calls the privatization or individualization of risk: the delegation of responsibility for global problems to the individual level. This trend has also been linked to Western trends of individualization (Beck, 1992; Connolly and Prothero, 2008; Giddens, 1991) and to neo-liberal governance

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(Calhoun, 2005; Guthman, 2008b); yet here the problems are not posed by the bias of a particularly Western worldview but by the kind of solutions that this framing allows for. Climate change provides a fitting example. It is caused by a set of interconnected processes which are marked by their global collective nature and a degree of complexity that puzzles even experts specialized in the topic. The majority of these processes exceed the ordinary individual’s capacity to comprehend, let alone to influence through private consumer choice. The predominant part of waste is produced and most of the energy and materials are used up by industry as part of production and transportation systems on which industrial design has much more influence than individual consumer choice (Princen et al., 2002; Wilk, 2004). Even in the case of final consumption, individual choices often play little or no role, as they are locked into socio-technical infrastructures (Shove, 2010; Wilk, 2004). Centrally controlled air-conditioning, the availability of highways as opposed to bicycle routes, discussed in Chapter 5, or the path-dependent escalation of energy use due to new technologies requiring more energy (Shove, 2003), are clear examples. Similarly, company policies and labor-market regulations decide if companies give the choice to employees to work less and have more free time instead of money (Cross, 1993; Gershuny and Sullivan, 2004; Schor, 1991). If such an option is not available people will end up with more money that they can either spend on consumption or save; in which case it is lent out as consumer credit to help further investments, producing more consumption yet again (Wilk, 2004). In these cases, private choice that forms the basis of ethical consumerism have little or no role at all. Under such circumstances, as Miller succinctly put it, ‘[to] foist [the] decision upon the individual consumer who does not have these resources seems much more like an abrogation of governmental responsibility than giving the consumer more choice’ (Miller, 2001a, p. 135). For a change to happen, international and local regulation affecting industry-wide standards, carbon-trading rules, transportation and the labor market, the reconfiguration of existing socio-technological systems, and even the rethinking of the very desirability of growth would be needed; which all go beyond the realm of individual consumer choice (Shove, 2010). Furthermore, given the complexity and collective nature of the phenomena, it is questionable whether the notion of individual responsibility that ethical consumerism uses is applicable to the case at all. As Jamieson (2010) argues, climate change poses a challenge to previous notions of responsibility, founded on the idea that harms and benefits

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are individual, easily identifiable and bound to a particular time and space. The devastating effects of climate change, in contrast, are caused by many innocuous acts, such as mowing one’s lawn, sitting around a fireplace, or travelling to the Olympics. There is a very implicit connection between acts and their consequences which are remote in time and space: a barbecue that I organize now contributes to environmental deterioration whose effects on rising sea levels may cause the death of thousands only years later and on the other side of the globe. As the harm caused and the benefits enjoyed by particular acts cannot be linked to particular individuals (Jamieson, 2010),1 even to start to think about how to share the burden of pollution between nations, or of ways of taking past emissions into consideration and conceptualizing responsibility toward future generations, requires a conceptual departure from the individuals to collectives (Caney, 2010). This means that the nature of the problem necessitates new approaches to responsibility that move from an individual conception to one that acknowledges collectively borne harms and benefits; yet the individualized conception of ethical consumerism seems to do the precise opposite. In the light of these considerations, the solution that seeks to tackle such complex challenges and systemic risks through private choice presents two problems. The first is that it is unlikely to succeed. Even if one were to decide to subsume all ordinary concerns under ethical consumerist imperatives, one would have neither the knowledge nor the resources or power required to address complex systemic problems like climate change. The second and more severe problem is that answers promoting individual solutions may not only be inefficient but, worse, counter-productive. Szasz, for example, focusing on environmentalism, argues that ethical consumerism gives the false impression that people can protect themselves from the effects of the ecological catastrophe by a few environmental purchases. This creates a ‘political anesthesia’ (Szasz, 2007, p.  194) which distracts them from political action that would be able to bring about real change. Along somewhat different yet related lines, Shove suggests that the very framing of the problem as a matter of individual choice and responsibility excludes systemic solutions and puts deep transformations off the agenda (Shove, 2010). As she points out, ‘there are real political interests at stake in framing environmental problems’ (Shove, 2003, p.  10) in terms of individual choice and responsibility: this framing reinforces and legitimizes the status quo and justifies governments’ reluctance to take action.

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From this perspective, ethical consumerism  – by channeling political impetus into the realm of private consumer choice – contributes to the evasion of real solutions. This criticism resonates with a more traditional sociological skepticism towards consumption, which suggests that as people are unable to exercise choice over the political and economic structures that would make a real difference to their lives, they retreat to the pseudo-freedom of largely inconsequential choices about consumption which they can make in their private life (Baudrillard, 1998; Bauman, 2001a; Shields, 1992). Yet it also goes further than that. It suggests that ethical consumerism may have been born out of skepticism with traditional political institutions; yet in a situation where the important decisions are still made by these institutions, refraining from participation in them adds to, rather than alleviates, the problem. Ethical consumerism may even end up being complicit with government and industry actors in limiting the space of individual action and responsibility to a very confined territory of consumer choice in a situation in which systemic relations of production, transportation and waste management make the real difference (Princen et al., 2002).

What is wrong with a single normative principle? Much of the discussion in Chapter 6 focused on the dilemmas arising from conflicting imperatives of ordinary ethical commitments and those required by ethical consumerist aims. These conflicts, as explained earlier, stem from the fact that every act of consumption can be assessed from two different sets of normative angles: first, from the point of view of everyday ethical concerns informing the meaningful practices which it forms part of; and second, from the point of view of the broader social, political, economic and environmental processes to which its production, use and disposal contributes. Sometimes the actions required by the two normative angles coincide, but in most cases they imply contradictory actions. In such cases, the standard solution of ethical consumerism is to give priority to actions dictated by the second normative angle, and the first is only of interest insofar as it hinders or promotes the realization of these actions. The dilemma of choosing ethical consumerist aims or ordinary ethical ones can be usefully analyzed using Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) theory of common normative frameworks of justification. As they explain in their book On Justification, there exists a shared set of justification principles, each corresponding to a particular version of worth (i.e. a notion of what counts as worthy, good and valuable). For

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example, in the ‘inspired’ framework, worth is based on creativity and inspiration; whereas in the ‘industrial’ framework, professional capabilities form its basis. Boltanski and Thévenot distinguish six frameworks of worth, or ‘cités’, one of them being the ‘civic’, which draws justification from the common good and collective aims. Different evaluative frameworks coexist and are normally applied to different types of situations. For example, an artist and a piece of art are normally evaluated according to the ‘inspired’ framework, whereas an engineer and his or her work are judged on the basis of professional capabilities pertaining to the ‘industrial’ cité. Yet not all situations are clear-cut, and disputes may arise as to which principle best befits the situation (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). The dilemma of whether to pursue ethical consumerist or ordinary ethical aims can be interpreted as such a dispute. It is not so much a conflict between two cités, but between the ‘civic’ cité and all the others that might inform the given practice. The ethical consumerist solution that gives full priority to ‘ethical consumerist’ aims requires subsuming all other principles of worth under the civic one (Andersen, 2011; Sassatelli, 2006). The implication of applying the civic framework to all choices is that it should not stop at the occasional purchase of fair trade coffee. Nick Hornby’s (2001) book How to Be Good? provides a nice literary depiction of why that is the case. Once ‘being good’ is defined along strict ‘civic’ lines, it is no longer justifiable to own a computer while others do not even have warm clothes; to have an empty guest room, when others are homeless; doing a ‘normal’ job when the same energy could be dedicated to volunteering; or to have a family dinner when others who are starving could be invited to join the table as well. The only logical implication of the consistent application of the ‘civic’ principle is to devote one’s life to bettering the world and to give away (almost) everything: put into the perspective that a few pennies could buy lifesaving medicines or food in poorer places, owning even a second pair of shoes counts as a selfish luxury. The problem with this solution is not only that it is highly unlikely to take place out of voluntary choice but also that it eliminates the diversity of ethics, ways of life and internal goods pertaining to different practices. This implication of the ethical consumerist solution, which subsumes all ordinary ethics under the single civic normative principle, is hardly ever taken account of because of the assumption that cutting down on or altering consumption will do nothing more than removing some superfluous extra. The change will have either no significant implication for everyday life, social relations and culture (people will not have

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a twentieth pair of shoes, which they will not even notice) or, if it does, only be for the better: people will become less materialistic and selfish. However, contrary to this assumption, as emphasized throughout this book, people mostly do not just ‘consume around’ for consumption’s sake but acquire and use goods as part of meaningful practices. They use their computer to write an essay, buy a book to read their favorite writer, get a monthly pass for the local running track, meet for dinner to see their friends and use a bus to get to work. These practices, as explained in Chapter 4, are often the very ‘practical ethics’ that different visions of a good and meaningful life are lived by. Subsuming these practices under ‘civic’ principles which go against the internal values of these practices is often not feasible. Choosing what to read based on the book’s ecofootprint – measured, for instance, by its weight or the miles it needs to travel if we order it –, negates the whole point of reading. If everything from books to paintings and tennis rackets comes to be evaluated based on its eco-footprint, it will mean the end of literature, art and sport as we know it. The implication is that if all ordinary ethics of consumption are subsumed under a single external normative principle, this will inevitably eradicate a large part of these practices as well as the internal goods, social relationships and visions of good life embedded in them.2 This means that we are faced with a choice between two unattractive normative standpoints: one that prioritizes ethical consumerist aims, yet destroys the complexity and diversity of ethical concerns guiding everyday life; and another that maintains diversity, yet only at the expense of ignoring climate change, injustices, animal torture and other pressing issues. Is there a way out of this dilemma? In the next section I discuss a normative standpoint that reconciles these conflicting ethics. Note that the aim of the discussion is not to arrive at the most efficient or even a viable practical solution, but at a normative standpoint from which different solutions can be assessed.

A qualified liberal approach Habermas (1993) proposes a distinction that can be helpful in resolving the above dilemma. He distinguishes between ethical questions of good life that are seen as a ‘matter of what life one would like to lead, and that means what kind of person one is and would like to be’ (p. 24) and moral questions that are concerned with principles of justice. He emphasizes that the same issue can be addressed by both questions; yet depending on how the question is put – as an ethical or as a moral one – the answer can be reached in different ways.

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Ethical questions of how to live can be answered in the light of ideas of one’s identity; both in the sense of how one sees oneself and the ideals one wishes to follow. Ethical questions defined this way are the focus of eudemonist theories of moral philosophy. Eudemonist theories, also called virtue theories, are concerned with how to live, what is a good life, and what are the virtues and practices that lead to excellence and human flourishing. The particularity of virtue theory  – as opposed to deontological theories, to be discussed shortly –, is that it suggests that no universal answers to these questions exist; good life can only be defined in the context of a particular community, and it even differs from one person to another (Barnett et al., 2005; Habermas 1993). McIntyre (1981), for instance, argues that ‘the self has to find its moral identity in and through its membership in communities such as those of the family, the neighborhood, the city, and the tribe’ (p. 221), hence the search for the good of one’s own life is inseparable from the defining community. Moral questions of justice, in turn, according to Habermas, are concerned not with what is good but what is just to do. They refer to generalizable, impartial principles that are valid and can be accepted by ‘all those possibly affected’ (Habermas, 1993, p. 24). In this sense, they are questions addressed by deontological moral theories. In contrast to the context-specific definitions of the good that eudemonist theories pursue, deontological theories seek to establish universal principles of actions. The classical example of deontological theorists is Kant. Instead of defining what the good is, he proposes the principle of categorical imperative: ‘Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law’ (Kant, 1994, p. 421). To arrive at answers to moral questions in the form of these general principles, according to Habermas, a single person’s reflection is not enough precisely because people’s own ideas are always tied to particular cultural horizons. Therefore they can only be arrived at in an ‘ideal speech situation’ (Habermas, 1987, p. 25) which is guided by procedural rules guaranteeing the conditions of a free and democratic debate where all parties concerned are able to articulate and provide reasons for their opinions in an equal way, free of coercion. The outcome is a principle or norm, which can be seen as ‘valid when the foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and valueorientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion’ (Habermas, 1998, p. 42, emphasis in the original). The distinction between ethical and moral questions can be easily applied to ordinary consumption choices. For example, the question ‘Which coffee should I choose?’ can be addressed as an ethical question

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if it relates to my understanding of who to be and how to live (e.g. by buying the coffee my husband likes as part of my project of being a good wife), or as a moral question of justice if I pose it as a matter of generalizable principles relating, for instance, to fair wages.3 How can this distinction help us resolve the dilemma between ordinary and ethical consumerist aims? By proposing a solution in which questions of ethics and justice can be addressed at two different levels, which are not necessarily conflicting. Let us take the example of climate change again. From the point of view of justice, we can reformulate the issue solely as a question of distributive justice; that is, as a matter of fair allocation of natural resources and pollution rights across nations, as well as current and future generations. Questions of justice, according to Habermas, are to be decided in an open, free, democratic debate. In the debate, only questions of justice, in this case, the principles of distribution of pollution rights or the eco-footprint allowance, are to be discussed. The exact principles driving distribution are subject to considerable debate, which cannot be reviewed within the available space of this chapter.4 Yet the point here is not so much to specify these as to stress that the normative assessment of the common principles resulting from the debate is solely based on how democratically they were arrived at (which is called procedural as opposed to substantive justice). Once the agreement on a particular principle of justice is reached – defining in this case how pollution rights and eco-footprint allowances are to be distributed  – and the means of its reinforcement are in place, it is no longer a matter of individual choice – of benevolence or ill will – whether one chooses to respect them. As with all laws and regulations, people cannot legally choose not to respect them, even if they go against their self-interest in particular cases; all they can do is to propose a different principle and put it up for public debate. Yet as long as it is within one’s fairly allocated share, it is up to each and every person to decide what ethical ideas he or she wishes to realize from his or her allowance: it does not matter whether one chooses to spend it on Prada bags or on handmade pottery. This solution does not require people to be ‘green’, antimaterialistic or to exhibit any other quality of the ‘good’. It only requires them to be committed to the democratic ideal that says commonly agreed rules are to be respected by all (in this case, a rule not to exceed allocated limits, leaving ethical questions of good life aside). I call this a ‘qualified’ liberal solution because it draws on the political liberalism of Habermas and Rawls rather than the common understanding of liberalism associated with the economic neo-liberalism of

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deregulation, privatization and individual consumer choice (Bell, 2006; Wissenburg, 2006). The qualified liberalism of political theory, in contrast, is liberal in the sense that it refrains from proposing a substantive definition of good life, as it would limit its core values of freedom and diversity. Yet what is meant by freedom here is not the freedom of laissezfaire neo-liberal economic policy. The principles arrived at through a free democratic debate are binding for all, and can perfectly imply strong governmental regulation and the limitation of consumer choice. The appeal of this solution is, first, that it addresses systemic problems at a systemic level, and as such is more efficient in achieving common aims. This solution requires top–down changes following democratically agreed impartial principles, which may seem to be at odds with this book’s emphasis on the importance of cosmologies in defining consumption norms and gradual change through the incorporation of new ethical ideas. Yet paradoxically, these are precisely the reasons why such a solution is more likely to succeed. The close connection between cosmologies and everyday consumption norms implies that actions informed by the ‘civic’ principles are unlikely to arise from everyday life at a sufficient scale, and changing the ethical elements of cosmologies is a long and gradual process. In contrast, regulation – such as the limitations of the eco-footprint – represent new objective conditions that are incorporated into pragmatic beliefs, which are much easier to alter and result in prompt behavioral changes.5 The second appeal of the qualified liberal solution is that it allows for the realization of diverse visions of good life. This is because Habermas’s distinction between ethics and justice implies that questions of good life belong to the everyday level, and answers will necessarily be diverse, reflecting particular cultural contexts. Questions of justice, in turn, belong to the sphere of impartial public deliberation. (People’s own everyday conceptions of justice do play a role, yet only to the extent that they are able to show in an open debate that these conceptions are of an impartial and generalizable nature.) Within the limits set by commonly agreed principles of justice – regulating their eco-footprint allowance, profit share and working conditions – people can follow their own conceptions of a good life. In other words, this solution only requires people to fulfill their obligation ‘to comply with just institutions and their just laws’ (Rawls cited in Bell, 2004, pp. 11–12), rather than to conform to a specific vision of how to live. However, the establishment of these just institutions and laws through a democratic debate seems utopian; at least in the short run. What to do in such a situation? One interpretation can be, as Sinnott-Armstrong

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(2010) points out, that individuals do not need to and should not act at all: the recognition that the problem needs to be handled at a state level may give reasons for non-action. He gives the example of a bridge: even if one sees that it is falling apart, it is not one’s individual duty to repair it, as repair works are the duty of the municipality. This is a rather dangerous interpretation, and by definition not exactly a solution. A different approach, advocated by Bell (2004), suggests, in contrast, that the duties of the ‘liberal environmental citizens’ (Bell, 2004, p. 2) do not stop at the compliance with laws already in place but also include the obligation to ‘promote just arrangements’ (Bell, 2004, p. 14). In this case, this duty requires action that puts pressure on governments and organizations to reach agreements conforming to the democratic principles of justice, and to set up institutions and regulations guaranteeing that the agreements reached are adequately enforced. This duty might not be compatible with the version of ethical consumerism focused on private choice. First, the requirement that debate and agreement be reached at a political level and implemented from the top down through regulation goes against the model centered on private consumer choice and bottom-up solutions. Second, it is opposed to the idea that it is up to individual deliberation whether one takes moral responsibility for the implications of one’s actions and, as such, to the notion of moral choice implied by ethical consumerism ‘defined in terms of a choice made to accept a widened scope of responsibility towards both human and nonhuman others’ (Barnett et al., 2005b, p.  30, emphasis in the original).6 However, there is an interpretation of the duties of the ‘liberal environmental citizen’ where they partially and temporarily coincide with ethical consumerist actions. If we take seriously the imperative to conform to a shared principle of justice, our obligations do not stop at promoting just arrangements but also include actions that are consistent with just principles, even if these principles are not enforced by law. To illustrate the case with a more radical example: even if slavery is legal in a country, the imperative of justice would not simply oblige one to campaign for its abolition but also to refrain from using slave labor as a minimum requirement. This means that in the absence of a democratic debate and laws, the duty falls back on the individual to envision principles that all those affected could theoretically agree on and act accordingly. This is far from being an ideal solution: as Habermas suggests, questions of justice should be decided through an open debate, and as I  argued earlier, the nature of the problems would require a systemic approach. Therefore it remains a temporary and incomplete solution.

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This incomplete solution requires taking an impartial position; which is the underlying principle of Kant’s categorical imperative and Rawls’s idea according to which principles can be seen as just if people would agree to them in a hypothetical ‘original position’. In this position, people are under the ‘veil of ignorance’ in that ‘no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength, and the like … [or] their conceptions of the good or their special psychological propensities’ (Rawls, 1999, p. 12). Applying this principle to environmental harm, if we can assume that the current distribution of eco-footprints is unjust, and a more just arrangement – that potentially everyone could agree on – would involve a reduction of our own eco-footprint, it is our obligation to act accordingly even if we do not happen to harbor green sentiments. The actions taken according to this obligation are compatible with those required by ethical consumerism as – in the absence of laws and institutions – they rely on private choices. Yet unlike most ethical consumer objectives, they are solely motivated by principles of justice rather than substantive visions of good life and are pursued as a temporary, second best solution in the absence of commonly agreed and enforced principles of justice. The implication of the qualified liberal approach for ethical consumption, then, is twofold. First, it requires aims to be formulated in terms of justice as opposed to specific visions of good life. In this sense, it is more compatible with movements focusing on the fair distribution of resources and profits, such as fair trade, than with those promoting a substantive vision of how to live, such as voluntary simplicity communities. Second, it calls for ethical consumption movements that  – instead of individual consumption choices  – press for changes in governmental policy along lines agreed democratically. This agenda would allow for addressing systemic problems at a systemic rather than individual level, and do so without losing the diversity of moral concerns guiding everyday life.

Notes 1

Introduction

1. The assumption that these phenomena are distinct and unrelated is further reflected by the fact that they are handled in unconnected disciplinary debates, with hardly any connections drawn between them. Important exceptions are Mary Douglas and Daniel Miller who suggested that anthropological theories of rituals developed originally to explain taboos and sacrifices in ‘primitive’ societies can be applied to modern consumption. These works opened the way to see the parallels between a tribal dietary taboo and the modern customs guiding what is appropriate to consume at a cocktail party (Douglas, 1972), or between a ritual sacrifice and grocery shopping in today’s North London (Miller, 1999). Alan Hunt’s (1996b) study on sumptuary laws, although along different lines, also emphasized this commonality, by arguing that sumptuary laws are earlier varieties of moral regulation that today takes the form of consumption regulation by the government and social movements. 2. There is no consensual definition of the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morality’ in social sciences. Some authors use the term ‘ethics’ to refer to questions of what constitutes a good life and the term ‘moral’ for questions of justice (Barnett et al., 2005; Habermas, 1993), which draws largely on Hegel’s (1949) distinction between Sittlichkeit (ethics) and Moralität (morality); but the opposite use is also present (Habermas, 1987). (Habermas even changed his own use from the latter to the former). Applying another distinction, some authors use ‘moral’ to denote actions guided by abstract rules, whereas ‘ethical’ is reserved for practical, context-specific and flexible normative evaluation (Sayer, 2005); yet others use the terms in the very opposite sense (Bauman, 1993). Finally, ‘ethical’ is sometimes used to refer to the concern for distant others, and ‘moral’ for close ones (Miller, 2001a); but this again is not a consistent use. I  will use the two terms interchangeably to refer to normative stances as opposed to mere liking, akin to Taylor’s concept of ‘strong evaluations’ (Taylor, 1989, p. 20), to be explained in the next chapter. 3. This argument is indebted to Slater’s (1997a, 1997b) discussion on needs. He suggests that ‘needs’ is a normative concept; classifying something as a need – as opposed to a desire – always relies on a specific assumption as to what constitutes a meaningful, normal or at least human existence: When I say that ‘I need something’, I am making at least two profoundly social statements: Firstly, I am saying that I ‘need’ this thing in order to live a certain kind of life, have certain kinds of relations with others (for example, have this kind of family), be a certain kind of person, carry out certain actions or achieve certain aims. Statements of need are by their very nature profoundly bound up with assumptions about how people would, could or should live in their society: needs are not only social but also political in that they involve statements about social interests and 178

Notes 179 projects. … Secondly, to say that ‘I (or we – my social group, my community, my class) need something’ is to make a claim on social resources, to claim an entitlement. (Slater, 1997a, pp. 2–3) I consider ‘needs’ as one version of consumption norms and Slater’s point on them has been instructive in developing an understanding of the stakes of consumption norms more generally. 4. These accounts tend to ignore the longer history of consumer movements in particular and that of the connections between moral concerns and the economy more generally (Trentmann, 2006b). Historical research, in turn, suggests that the current rise of ethical consumer movements is the contemporary version of a phenomenon that has a much longer genealogy. 5. Economics conceptualizes all drives behind consumption under the term ‘preferences’ (Kopányi, 1999). Economic theory does not deal with the substantive nature of these preferences but treats given, or revealed, preferences as the starting point (Stigler and Becker, 1977). Often, however, economics deviates from this principle, and implicitly puts forward a substantive theory of preferences as well, assuming not only utility-maximizing means but particular ‘economically rational’ substantive aims as well, which are egoistic and materialistic. Consider the following argument by which Lazear (following Becker) explains the lower fertility rates in high-income households: Children produce a stream of services over time, much like an automobile, so one could talk about population growth in terms of consumption and demand curves.  … Since child services (the commodity produced with children) is a time intensive commodity, high wage women face a higher price of children than do low wage women. (Lazear, 2000, p. 11) Here the discussion of ‘rational means’ is based on the assumption of a specific end, which is the maximization of money as opposed to, say, independence, or achievement of other (artistic, charitable, scientific, religious) aims. In this context the argument seems to become that the real aims behind apparently ethical actions are in fact egoistic and calculative. As Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood (1996) suggest, to fill the vacuum left by standard economic theory on the explanation of preferences, ‘implicit ideas on human needs creep into economic analysis’ (p. 4). These, according to Collin Campbell (1987), are based on the assumption of the insatiable, greedy individual. In this case, economic theory shifts from ignoring consumption norms to denying them. In this sense, consumer behavior can be interpreted as a strand that is in debate with the assumptions of standard economic theory, although, as we shall see, it could not fully depart from it. 6. For a critical discussion of lifestyle studies in marketing and sociology see Holt (1997).

2

Understanding Consumption Norms

1. The research was carried out in Budapest in 2005–06 and covered eight families of two or three generations (20 households) from different class

180

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

Notes backgrounds. The oldest generation of the families grew up during presocialist times; the middle generation was born under socialism; whereas those in the youngest generation started their adult life under capitalism. The methods included individual and joint family interviews as well as observations of everyday consumption practices and family discussions of purchasing decisions. The long-standing tendency in sociology of associating consumption with capricious purchases and the consumer with the allegedly irrational female consumer, discussed in the previous chapter, exhibits the same bias. It is telling that goods and their users that did not fit the irrational image of the consumer have been discussed under different headings, most notably that of ‘technology’. This tendency has been subject to substantial criticism in recent decades, resulting in studies looking at the way men consume and the extension of the concept of consumption from private, luxury goods to material culture more broadly. Once we include, as Elisabeth Shove (Shove and Chappells, 2001) suggests, roof insulation, cars and highways in the notion of ‘consumption’, it no longer appears to be an activity done mainly by (irrational) women in the realm of the household. This book is written in the spirit of this critical approach. This is why it intentionally includes roughly the same amount of examples taken from men and women, and approaches consumption as a process of engagement with material culture as opposed to limiting it to the act of shopping for particular, extravagant goods. For another classification identifying four modes of provision  – market, state, household and communal – see Warde (1990). For further discussion of the term ‘consumption’ see Harvey et al. (2001), Lury (1996), Miller (2001b) and Trentmann (2006a). Fine et al., for instance, define food norms ‘by the ranking of foods by absolute frequency of purchase for the sample as a whole, together with the divergences in rankings for various socioeconomic partitions of the sample’ (Fine et al., 1996, p.  171). Similarly, Winterhalder suggests that ‘social consumption norm will take the form of a line intermediate between minimum and maximum non-foraging expenditure rates’ (Winterhalder, 1987, p. 328). Most of these findings come largely from studies on women  – housewives and mothers  – and when they do not, as in Chin’s (2001) research, they apply mainly to female participants. Does this mean that the relational nature of ethical visions only applies to women? Hardly. Studies on consumption by men suggest that social relationships are central also to the construction of their ethical visions of who to be. Some of these practices are related to the household, such as the purchase of a home and repair related to it, which is understood in terms of one’s duties as a father, as well as in terms of achievement and respectability, understood in relation to the larger community (Osella and Osella, 2006). Other practices, such as the purchase of a new motorbike, which from the household’s point of view appear as individualistic (Nyman, 1999), on closer scrutiny also turn out to be directed at a relational conception of identity, albeit defined through peer relations (see e.g. Schouten and McAlexander, 1995). This difference highlights

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

15.

a further, crucial aspect of the ethical visions informing consumption norms: different norms apply to men and to women, and more generally to different people and contexts; an issue that I will return to shortly. These assumptions were reflected in Ancient legislation that – diametrically opposing contemporary efforts – aimed at enhancing imports and limiting exports (Engen, 2004). Their critique was formulated against contemporaneous mercantilist views that aimed to limit imports and encourage exports in order to maximize the domestic accumulation of money, denominated in gold and silver at the time. Although the commercial policy implication of this view of limiting exports was the opposite of the Ancient one, it nevertheless shared its key underlying assumption of trade being a zero-sum game. The difference in policy implications stems from the fact that whereas the Ancient view saw the key aim of commerce in the maximization of goods, mercantilists saw it in the maximization of money. Athenian society consisted of four social strata: free men, free women, metics (foreigners and freed slaves) and slaves. Only free men above the age of 18 were citizens, which meant that they had the right to take part in politics and to own land. Free women were not allowed to take part in politics or to have property; their realm was the household (oikos). Metics could not acquire land or take part in public life either; they worked as laborers, tradesmen, craftsmen or money-lenders. Freemen only took up these professions if they could not get hold of land that was in short supply in Athens (Herman, 2006). This division of labor corresponds to the moral evaluation of different activities that ranked the participation in politics and revenue realized from land ownership as the highest (Finley, 1999). Miller’s work from this point of view can be divided into two phases. In the first phase he looked at values internal to specific practices. For example, in The Theory of Shopping (1999) he argues that consumer practices are best treated as disaggregated, building on ‘quite contradictory sources of value and desire. What an individual consumer creates through clothing may be quite inconsistent with their expressive desire of the car’ (Miller, 1995, p. 53). In his later books (2008, 2009b), by contrast, he emphasizes the connection across practices that pertain to particular cosmologies. In the interview extracts italics are Hungarian words, simple brackets ( ) include explanations, while squared brackets [ ] are my additions to the text. Also note that in Hungarian there is no linguistic distinction between ‘he’ and ‘she’. The ‘gentleman’ strata consisted of aristocrats, land-owners as well as high cadres of the army, the state and the Church; the ‘lower classes’ included lower-level clerical workers, small entrepreneurs, the emerging working class and peasants. For a description of a similar phenomenon see Clarke (2002) and McCracken (2001). As Fodor argues, ‘while on the surface genderless, the ideal communist subject had distinctly masculine features’ and parallels can be drawn to its ‘counterpart, the rational individual under liberal capitalism’ (Fodor, 2002, p. 241). Flat consisting of one room and a kitchen.

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3

Notes

Explaining Consumption Norms

1. Note that my discussion focuses on the engagement of norms, not actual consumption practices. A norm can be engaged even if the possibilities of putting it into practice are limited. For example, an impoverished aristocrat may still hold the consumption norms of his previous position, even if he is unable to act on them. 2. The struggle over meaning is also present in Mary Douglas’s thesis (discussed previously) on consumption as a means of fixing public meanings. She suggests that those who have greater access to goods and to the consumption rituals that are used to fix meanings also have more power over the formation of the shared cultural universe. People therefore want goods in order to be able to influence and fix public meanings. The ‘main point of consumption’, as she puts it, is ‘the effort to get some agreement from your fellow consumers to define some events in some kind of agreed way’ (Douglas, 2001, p.  246) and to ‘control  … information about the changing cultural scene  … if possible’ (p. 269). Yet unlike Bourdieu, who suggests that the stake of the struggle is relative esteem, Douglas emphasizes the control of information. 3. This is probably why theories end up being so broad that the theoretical interpretation of a case is rather a matter of choice than an insight gained from the empirical material. For example, the norm of decency applied to clothing can equally be interpreted as stemming from the core values that hold society together, or as a translation of the binary opposition between culture and nature (decent=civilized; non-decent=uncivilized ), or as an exclusionary device against the lower classes. 4. See also Landsman’s (2005) study on East Germany between 1948 and 1961, illustrating how the state’s ideological position on consumption was an outcome of the influences of world politics and internal power struggles, including the Party, the consumption lobby and trade organizations. 5. This question is often ignored by the general theories discussed above, because they assume that the norms following from overarching aims will apply to society as a whole, relying on the implicit assumption that people will automatically adopt the general norms that these theories describe. 6. Sometimes Bourdieu’s own writing seems to be sensitive to this double nature of ethics and distinction, in particular his later work. For example, in the Lecture on the Lecture (Bourdieu, 1990) and in the Pascalian Meditations (Bourdieu, 2000) he suggests that a meaningful life and distinction are inseparably connected; although in this case the argument is not made with reference to consumption. Yet in Distinction, which focuses on consumption, he fails to draw the conclusion that ethics and distinction are interconnected, but suggests a competitive aspect behind all tastes. (For a more thorough discussion on the relation between ethics and interest in Bourdieu’s work, see Evans [1999], Pellandini-Simányi [forthcoming] and Sayer [2001, 2005].) 7. Similar conclusions can be drawn from other ethnographic accounts; see for example, Patico (2008) and Vom Bruck (2005). 8. Lamont (1992) specifies two sets of factors that affect the likelihood of people engaging in particular cultural resources. First, ‘remote environmental conditions’ (p. 144) include the level of state intervention, social stratification, geographical mobility and ethnic diversity. For example, the stratification system

Notes 183 influences how competitive people become and therefore how open they are to adopt cultural resources favoring competition. Second, ‘proximate factors’ (p. 147) include the nature of the work and workplace culture, personal social mobility, as well as gender, age, ethnicity, and religion. For example, people doing for-profit jobs are more open to cultural resources emphasizing economic rationality than people doing non-profit jobs. In my interpretation, some of these factors (such as the level of state intervention, social stratification and the nature of the workplace) exert an effect on the adoption of new cultural resources through what I  here call compatibility with existing cultural resources. They describe existing cultural resources  – mindsets or habituses  – and their developments that are more compatible with specific cultural resources than with others. Other factors (such as gender or age) affect the engagement of particular cultural resources because they denote the channels by which they can be accessed. In some cases, the same factor affects both access and compatibility.

4

Consumption Norms as Practical Ethics

1. There are three main uses of the term ‘practice’ in social sciences (Warde, 2004). The first use refers to the fact that something is not purely at an abstract thought level but also involves actual bodies, objects and deeds. The second, developed more recently in practice theory, applies the term to denote recurring activities combining specific objects and subjectivities; for example, cooking (Warde, 2005). The third use associates practices with unreflected action and sees them as the opposite of conscious reasoned choices (Thévenot, 2001). Unless indicated otherwise, I use the term in the first sense. 2. Sociological studies on the everyday engagement of ethics (Barnett et al., 2005; Foucault, 1997; Lambek, 2000; Sayer, 2005) and ethical choices related to consumption (Barnett et al., 2005; Lakoff and Collier, 2004) propose a similar distinction between abstract, universal ideals on the one hand, and practical, negotiable and context-specific concerns on the other. Many of these authors link the distinction to theories in moral philosophy, suggesting that abstract ideals belong to the realm of ‘morality’ and to deontological theories specifying general moral rules, whereas everyday, context-specific ideals belong to the realm of ‘ethics’ and to virtue theories focused on the questions of good life (for a discussion of these two sets of theories see Chapter 7). Despite the undoubtable parallels between empirical data on everyday ethics and virtue theory, I  think we have to be cautious with using philosophical theories to describe how people actually engage ethics. First, philosophical theories, including virtue theory, are primarily concerned with defining the good and the right, not with describing how people actually make these normative decisions. As such they are most useful in clarifying critical positions (see Chapter 7) rather than as models of actual action. Second, virtue theory carries a theoretical baggage that is often ignored by direct applications. It originates in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, where being a good person meant being a good citizen, and the ‘good life’ was inseparable from the good of the polis. The polis was defined in opposition to the oikos (the household and the economy), and Aristotle restricted the

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Notes

pursuit of good life to the former (Carrier and Miller, 1999; MacIntyre, 1981). In fact, the application of virtue theory to the oikos and mundane concerns of everyday life is the direct opposite of its original use. Finally, even when insights from virtue theory can be adopted to models of actual behavior, these models remain partial: although some normative decisions are concerned with good life and are closely connected to practice, others are concerned with what is right to do and justice (a question that belongs to deontological theories) and may take the form of abstract deliberation. This is why the concept of practical ethics that I propose here is not a general model, but only one of the models (see discussion of the conditions under which it applies later in the chapter). 3. For Hegel, these objectifications encompass a broad range of forms from law to language and objects, yet the theory has been adopted to describe specifically material forms. 4. Dialectical theory suggests a sequence of externalization and sublation which made it subject to ANT’s scholars criticism for retaining the idea of a distinct subject and object. However, comparing the actual application of dialectical theories and ANT, the difference seems insignificant. Miller’s theory of objectification, for instance, is a dialectical theory, yet it also emphasizes the simultaneous shaping of subjects and objects: the critical point about dialectical theory such as objectification is that this is not a theory of the mutual constitution of prior forms, such as subjects and objects. It is entirely distinct from representation.  …. What is prior is the process of objectification that gives form and that produces in its wake what appears to us as both autonomous subjects and autonomous objects …. (Miller, 2005, pp. 9–11, emphasis in the original) 5. Others take a more radical position, and argue that the very material properties of objects may foster certain ethics that are independent of human intentions. Winner’s (1999) example is that nuclear power plants require a central, relatively authoritarian management, whereas privately owned solar panels work best with a dispersed power structure. This way, the latter promotes a democratic organization model, whereas the former fosters a more authoritarian one. 6. Shove uses the term ‘co-evolution’ to refer to three dimensions: (a) the ‘symbolic and material qualities’ of objects; (b) the ‘habits, practices and expectations of users’; and (c) the ’sociotechnical systems’ (2003, p. 48). Here I use the term in a limited sense to refer to the connection between (a) and (b), and assume that socio-technical systems affect norms indirectly, through the influence they exert on objects. 7. The theory defines ‘practices’ this way, yet in order to distinguish it from my use of the term that simply refers to practical engagement I will call this understanding ‘social practices’. 8. As Buchli (2002, p.  4) points out, the study of ‘material culture’ originally started as a means of ‘reading’ social progress and social organization from the objects used in non-European cultures. Although the technique of reading artifacts as primary texts was later abandoned in favor of participant observation, the idea that practices – in particular, the circulation and exchange of

Notes 185 objects – are central to understanding kinship, social organization and culture remained of central importance (see also Appadurai, 1986; Kopytoff, 1986; Mauss, 1990). 9. Füstös and Szakolczai calls these turning points ‘axial moments’ (Füstös and Szakolczai, 1998, p. 211).

5

How Consumption Norms Change

1. For a useful review of the literature and consumer socialization theories that incorporate social relations as well see Ville and Tartas (2010). 2. The consumer socialization theory has been subject to critique from other angles as well. The new sociology of childhood perspective takes issue with the developmental approach as a whole for its inability to acknowledge children’s perspectives in their own right. According to this argument, adultcentered approaches that use concepts like maturation and development are akin to colonizers who labeled indigenous cultures as savage and underdeveloped, and were able to do so due to unequal power relations. The alternative view, proposed by this perspective, suggests that children should not be seen as imperfect adults but, just like other cultures, should be understood in their own terms (Jenks, 2005). For further critiques see Buckingham (2011) and Cook (2010). 3. Although, as Zelizer suggests, this separation of activities does not fully apply even today (Zelizer, 2002). 4. In sociology, the term ‘life-course’ is used to indicate the social and cultural factors that shape its stages (Giddens, 2009). 5. Exceptions include Campbell (1987), Røpke (1999) and Shove (2003). 6. This incorporation may happen consciously, as economics’ model of rational choice suggests, or in an unreflected way through the habitus, as Bourdieu (1977) asserts. Yet in either case, as discussed in Chapter 2, economic possibilities are subject to interpretation. 7. The same idea is captured by the objective beauty regime described in Chapter 2. See also Perrotta’s (2004) historical analysis of the idea of consumption as investment. 8. This is not merely about finding a justification for higher and new forms of spending that are allowed by economic possibilities. For example, in many cases, the adoption of the very idea that higher consumption is the hallmark of progress was the prerequisite – rather than the result – of new economic policies favoring higher living standards as opposed to industrial development. 9. This explanation of new consumption norms often overlaps with economic explanations due to the fact that different sections of society tend to benefit to a varying extent from economic prosperity. It is possible to devise a hypothetical case in which purely economic factors are at play. For example, if everyone earns 10 per cent more than in the previous year, social differences remain the same. Yet in reality this is hardly ever the case. In fact, most ‘consumer revolutions’ triggered by increasing incomes have been limited to particular sections of society – such as the bourgeoisie, the middle class, the socialist cadres and so on – and could well be interpreted as the ‘rise’ of

186

10.

11.

12.

13.

Notes specific social groups in relation to others. Purely social factors cannot be isolated, not even in theory, as the relative power of social groups is always defined to some extent by their income: the ‘rise’ of one group is always understood at least partly as a rise in relative economic power. By mobilitybased social explanations of changes in consumption norm, I will therefore mean accounts that contain economic factors, yet go beyond them and focus on relative social position and a new hierarchy. Colin Campbell (1987) provides a different account that suggests that a new type of hedonism developed at the time as a consequence of the rise of Romanticism. Romanticism promoted romantic love, listening to one’s emotions and an inward-looking search for one’s true self. This focus on one’s inner feelings was the predecessor of modern hedonism: it gave rise to the idea that people should discover and act on their inner emotions and desires (pp. 202–27). Romanticism was not born out of thin air as a justification of consumption. It built on existing religious sources; in fact, on the very same sources that gave rise to the ‘spirit of capitalism’. As Campbell argues, Calvinism and Pietism were the two main branches of Protestantism. Whereas Calvinism gave rise to the rational ethic described by Weber, Pietism provided the basis of Romanticism. The strength of Campbell’s explanation compared to McKendrick’s is that it links changes in consumption norms to changes in cosmology. Yet similarly to McKendrick, he also suggests the development of a general stance to consumption, in the form of hedonistic, pleasure-seeking, individualistic ethics. What makes Smith’s explanation superior is that he shows that the demand for goods did not stem from an undifferentiated desire – be it emulative or hedonistic – to consume; rather from the desire to participate in specific practices through which new ethical contents were developed. Hedonism and romanticism can be seen as one of these contents, developed through the practices related to romantic novels, among other goods, yet not as general ideal underlying consumption as such. For a description of a similar process, through which the emergence of the ethical ideal of domesticity brought about a number of related practices that led to increases in consumption in India, see Donner (2008), and in Sweden see Löfgren (1994). This basic insight is behind contemporary marketing’s key principle of market-driven or consumer-orientated approach (Kotler, 2003). According to this approach, product development should start by mapping the different practices and related purposes that the given object can be part of, assessing the customer base that could be attracted by focusing on one purpose over another and evaluating the prospective profitability of each segment. This is often the case with already existing products as well, which – thanks to their multiple useful qualities – can serve different purposes. Slater’s (2002) study on the strategy development of Johnson and Johnson Baby Oil, for example, shows that the oil could be used as a baby oil, as bath additive, as make-up remover, or as a multi-purpose product; and the choice of which of these should be the product’s key image was decided by assessing which purpose would attract the most profitable consumer segment. A similar argument has been proposed by scholars working on cross-cultural consumption with reference to the global proliferation of goods (Howes,

Notes 187

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19.

6

1996; Miller, 1997b; Watson, 1997; Wilk, 1997). The argument here is that imported products – such as Coca-Cola or McDonald’s – do not impose their original cultural content on the receiving cultures but either get appropriated and filled with local contents or get combined with local meanings, resulting in hybrid assemblages. For a detailed discussion on how inconspicuous practices related to cleanliness, comfort and convenience have escalated and co-evolved with technologies, see Shove (2003). Similar conclusions can be drawn from Miller’s (1988) study on the way tenants appropriate council estates in the UK. See for example, Lears’s (1983) study on American, Mazzarella (2003) on Indian and Vargha (2005) on Hungarian ad producers. If these failures are less frequent today it is largely because this insight is increasingly taken into consideration when producing ads. Today’s ad production often starts with research that seeks to understand the target consumers, which involves data from life-style research and value-profiling that show for each consumer group the kind of products they like, the values they hold and the messages that they are receptive to, complete with demographic (age, income, gender, employment status and income) and media profiles indicating the most efficient media to reach them. Advertisements are often created around a key message that is arrived at through the evaluation of the target consumer segment’s values, interests and opinions. Before the ad is launched, pilot screenings are conducted to test decoding strategies and effectiveness. He locates the changes to somewhat later, during the 1920s, as opposed to Lears, who traces it back to 1880–1930. Yet even with these caveats it is easy to overstate marketing’s role in changing norms. When evaluating its effects, we have to keep in mind that marketing only covers a limited range of goods; and goods of a particular kind. If you take a moment to think through the goods that you used today or that currently surround you, you are very likely to find that you have never encountered an advertisement for most of them. The windows, the insulation in the wall or the electricity, the bus that we take to work or the pavement that we walk on take up most of our consumption, yet seem to be out of the realm of marketing. These examples illustrate how advertisementbased explanations are limited in their scope to private, freely chosen goods (see previous section) that lend themselves to symbolic differentiation.

Ethical Consumerism and Everyday Ethics

1. Buycotts are the opposite of boycotts, and refer to purchases made with the intention of supporting a particular cause, company or country. The difference between value-based shopping and buycotts is that the former is regular, whereas the latter has a limited timeframe (Gulyás, 2008). 2. Barnett et al. (2005) also highlight the ‘merging of the self-interested and altruistic aspects of morality’ (p. 17) in ethical consumption. 3. In this respect, the movements’ vision of how the ideal Chinese nation should be like was closer to the Japanese movement to reform everyday life which equally sought to advance nationalistic goals, and defined the good life to be

188

4.

5.

6.

7.

Notes

attained in terms of progress and modernity (Garon, 1997; Maclachlan and Trentmann, 2004; Trentmann, 2012). Other national products movements – for example, Gandhi’s swadeshi (self-sufficiency) movement  – are closer to voluntary simplicity’s vision of traditional, local handicraft production and reconnection with spirituality through material simplicity. Oxfam was set up by Quakers, academics and activists in 1942. The organization raised funds to help Nazi-occupied Greece that was under naval blockade by the Allies, causing famine and shortage of medical supplies even among civilians. This was in line with Oxfam’s original aim to ease suffering caused by the war  – regardless of where it occurred  –, which only in the 1970s got extended into more general poverty relief objectives (Nicholls and Opal, 2005). The environmental ethical consumer movement, among others, has been subject to a similar critique. According to the critique, the movement’s aims reflect the modern Enlightenment view that posits nature and culture as dualistic, and sees nature as a means of achieving human aims. In this understanding nature is to be protected from harms by humans, largely in order to keep yielding benefits for future generations. This conception has been criticized from many angles, including ecologism, eco-feminism, and Actor-Network Theory (e.g. Latour, 1993). More recently, Weller (2006) argued that this view is opposed to the traditional Chinese worldview that sees humans and nature as mutually interdependent and appreciates nature for its own sake. Note that these surveys operate with a narrower definition of ‘ethical’ products than used previously in this chapter, in that they usually include the purchase of organic, fair trade and eco-friendly goods, yet do not cover purchases motivated by patriotic, spiritual or religious aims. The separation between the two is not clear-cut. First, the line between what counts as side effect and what as genuine engagement is debatable. For example, Shaw and Newholm (2002) suggest that downshifting pursued out of the somewhat selfish desire to get away from the overworked and stressed lifestyle is to be distinguished from genuine ethical simplicity that is pursued out of ethical aims. For others, dissatisfaction with the hurried lifestyle indicates genuine identification with the ethical aims (e.g. Soper, 2007). Similarly, ethical consumption is often pursued as a community activity, giving participants a sense of belonging (Cherrier, 2005a, 2005b); which again poses the question of whether belonging itself or the ethical consumerist aims are the primary motives for their pursuit. Second, a practice may at one point be a side effect and become invested with concerns of ethical consumption later on. For example, recycling in India was a once common practice of thrift but started to fade due to higher incomes, the entry of women – who used to do much of the sorting – into the labor market, the decreasing of importance of thrift and the spatial segregation between middle-class gated communities and scrap dealers. Today, members of the new middle class and NGOs revive these old practices as part of the new waste-management and recycling schemes that are promoted as the key means to become green. As Anantharaman points out, ‘old practices can be repackaged and re-envisioned using new labels, and this repackaging can help validate and legitimize these activities again (e.g. recycling going from a thrifty practice to a green practice)’ (Anantharaman, 2012, p. 17).

Notes 189 8. Health concerns have been reported as the primary reason underlying the choice of organic food in studies carried out in, among other places, the UK (Miller, 2001a), Greece (Sandalidou et al., 2002), Denmark (Andersen, 2011), Sweden (Magnusson et al., 2001) and Taiwan (Chen, 2009). 9. Williams and Paddock’s (2003) study in Leicester, England, in contrast, suggests that these practices are only framed as ethical consumption by the middle and upper class. Whereas for the upper class alternative consumption practices, such as buying second-hand, are a matter of ‘choice for reasons to do with fun, sociality, distinction and being seen to buy the right things’ (p. 311), for the poor ‘participation is due to a lack of choice … it is seen to signify their exclusion from the mainstream and a sign of their inability to be like everybody else’ (p. 318). 10. Hungarian unit of currency. 11. Some authors who use the govermentality framework to analyze ethical consumption, discussed above, highlight that this rearticulation of ordinary ethical concerns as ethical consumerist aims does not happen by itself but is an outcome of the efforts of policymakers, marketers and movements directed at rearticulating ‘the ethical dispositions already implicit in routine consumption’ as ethical consumption (Barnett et al., 2005, p.  29). They emphasize that through the process people do not simply express existing ethics in a new way but develop novel notions of the self and ethics (see also Agrawal, 2005a, 2005b). 12. The smooth rearticulation of ordinary concerns as ethical consumerist ones is not the only way engagement of ethical consumerism takes place. Radical forms of engagement are often experienced as a rupture, a complete brake with previous ethical outlooks. These changes are often preceded by disruptive life events or crossroads that trigger what Zigon (2007) calls a ‘moral breakdown’, resulting in heightened reflexivity and reevaluation of self and identity (Cherrier, 2005a, 2005b; Eräranta et al., 2009). The ethical consumers studied by Cherrier, for instance, recalled that their engagement of ethical consumerism was prompted by ‘destabilizing events’ (Cherrier, 2005b, p.  131), including rape, divorce and children leaving home. These events brought about a feeling of ‘collapse of security and the process of existential questioning’, ‘emptiness and disorientation’ and a perception of ‘old realities as an illusion’ (Cherrier, 2005a, p. 602). These events allowed people to radically question previous priorities and replace them with new ones related to a higher, transcendent morality. The extent to which these new ethical outlooks are actually new or are rearticulated versions of existing concerns needs further research. 13. For a critique of this view see Katz-Gerro (2009) on Israel and Dombos (2008) on Hungary.

7

Private Virtues, Public Vices

1. Jamieson suggests a move from the existing consequentialist approach that focuses on outcomes of individual action to virtue ethics centered on particular human qualities, such as humility and moderation (Jamieson, 2010). I am skeptical of this solution, as it requires changes in substantive visions of good

190

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

Notes

life; a position that I disagree with for reasons to be explained in the next part of the chapter. This strategy goes against what Charles Taylor (1989) sees as one of the key strong evaluations, or ‘hypergoods’ of modernity: ‘the affirmation of ordinary life’ (1989, p.  101). He uses the term to refer to everyday strong evaluations related to the way people define their identity and see their life as fulfilled by pursuing aims related to family and work (ordinary life): ‘The householder’s sense of value of what I  have been calling ordinary life is woven through the emotions and concerns of his everyday existence’ (p. 44). He links the emergence of this hypergood to modernity, and suggests that it has been formulated against the Aristotelian thought that prioritized public life over the private realm as a sphere where visions of good life can be realized. The modern ‘affirmation of ordinary life’, in contrast, locates the ‘higher’ precisely in the terrain of everyday life. It would be a mistake to equate ethical consumerist aims with moral concerns of justice, whereas everyday ethical aims with ethical concerns of good life because, as previous chapters showed, both ethical consumer movements and everyday norms provide substantive visions of good life as well as particular principles of justice. First, theories differ on how valued goods should be distributed, with solutions including strict egalitarianism, the application of the Rawlsian difference principle, distribution based on desert, and the utilitarian view that favors distribution resulting in the highest overall utility (Lamont and Favor, 2008). Second, they disagree on what exactly is the valued good that needs distribution, ranging from money to respect and well-being, present and future pollution rights as well as benefits. A related question refers to the assessment of the value of the goods that need to be distributed; which becomes particularly stringent when it comes to assessing natural beauty, health or reproduction rights as occurred in environmental justice debates. Third, they differ over whom valued goods are to be distributed among (Lamont and Favor, 2008). Here the inclusion of future generations, the extension of justice from the national to the global level, and the incorporation of all living beings beyond humans have been recent key questions (Bell, 2006; Martinez-Alier, 1995). The way these principles are to be arrived at is again subject to debate. Some suggest a theoretical deduction from certain moral norms, such as integrity, dignity or from the ‘original situation’. Others, such as Habermas and proponents of a deliberative democracy, stress that the procedural rules of free debate in an open speech situation can be seen as the sole guarantee of arriving at principles regulating justice in a fair way (Bell, 2004, 2006; Caney, 2010; Gardiner, 2010; Lamont and Favor, 2008). Also note that the solution proposed here is not an imposition of external values but values that have been agreed upon and can therefore be shared by all. Bell suggests that private environmental choices may send signals to the government and serve as an implicit means of furthering just arrangements. This is often true, as illustrated by examples where consumer activist agendas were successfully channeled into changes at a policy level (Micheletti, 2003). However, the two types of strategies’ underlying conception of political action and moral selfhood are substantially different, and – as I argued earlier in this chapter – work against one another if consistently pursued.

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Index access to consumption norms, 73–6 Actor-Network-Theory, 86–7, 184 advertising, see marketing affirmation of ordinary life, 190 affordances of objects and subjects, 87 age and consumption norms, 103–10, see also life-course agency, 12–13, 96–101 air-conditioning, 127–8 Alexander, Jeffrey C., 64 alienation, 10–11, 14–15, 85–6 alternative consumption, see ethical consumption alternative hedonism, 143 Ancient Greece, 26–7, 30 Ancient Rome, 30 anthropology of consumption, 14–15, see also Douglas, Mary anti-consumerism, see ethical consumption appropriation, 14–15, 99–101, 126–8 Ariès, Philippe, 104 aristocratic consumption norms, 118–20 attitude-behavior gap, 156 autonomous choice, 13, 23, 96–9, see also agency Barnett, Clive, 143–4, 149, 155, 164 bathing, 123–4, see also cleanliness Bauman, Zygmunt, 10–11, 89–90 behavior-impact gap, 156 Belk, Russell W., 14 Bell, Derek R., 176 Boltanski, Luc, 16, 95–6, 170–1 Bourdieu, Pierre, 11, 61–3, 65, 69–73, 76–7, 79–80, 89, 94 boycotts, see ethical consumption Brazil, 25, 72, 156, 160 Buchli, Victor, 126–7 buycotts, see ethical consumption

Campbell, Colin, 20, 186 capacity to appropriate consumption norms, 76–8 capitalism the study of consumption as part of the critique of capitalism, 9–11, see also alienation in China, 147 in Western Europe, 112, 186 capitals, 63, 69–73, 79–80 care the everyday consumption norm of care, 15, 24–5, 40–1 taking care of objects, 40 for distant vs close others, 144 cars, 24, 72, 92, 128 changes of consumption norms over the life-course, 102–10 over generations, 110–34 channels of access to consumption norms, 73–6, 182–3 childhood, see children children, 24, 25, 60–1, 103–7, 185 China, 146–7, 159–60 citizenship and consumption, see consumer, as political identity civilized behavior, consumption norm of, 71, 121 class, see social position and consumption norms cleanliness, 95, 121, 123–5 climate change, 167–9, 174–6 clothing, 30, 36–9, 45–6, 104–5 Coca-Cola, 130 co-evolution of subject and objects, 87, 125, 128, 184, see also objectification and subject-object relations coffeehouses, 88, 120–1 comfort, 119–20 Community Supported Agriculture programs, 148, 154 213

214

Index

compensation, consumption as for the loss of freedom, 8, see also capitalism for unrealized lifestyles, see inconspicuous consumption for unethical purchases, 161 conscious vs unreflected engagement of consumption norms, 69–70, 93–100 consumer, as political identity (vs worker or citizen), 7–8, 149–51, 154–5, see also consumer movements consumer behaviour, 13–14, 107, 179 consumer movements, 7–8, 23, 142–55 consumer revolutions, 110–21, see also changes of consumption norms consumer socialization, 103, 185 consumption, definition of, 19–20 consumption norms, definition of, 19–21 explanations of, 51–82 varieties of, 2–5 study of consumption norms, 9–16 convenience ethics, 161 Cook, Daniel Thomas, 24, 104–5 Co-operative movement, 154–5 cosmologies, 19, 35–50, 76–8, 89, 92–4, 101, 103, 134–9 cross-cultural consumption, 125, 186 cultural categories, 14, 28–32, 49–50, 56–8, 89 cultural order, 56–8 cultural resources consumption norms as, 52–3 production of, 64–8 adoption of, 69–81 cultural studies, 12 decoding, 130–1, 187 Delphy, Christine, 60–1 demand side of consumption norms, 69–80 deontological moral philosophy, 173, 183–4 developmental psychology, 103–4, 106

dialectical theory, 85–6, 184 differential consumption norms, 28–35, 60–2, see also age and consumption norms and gender and consumption norms diffusion of goods, see cross-cultural consumption of fair trade ideas, 148–52 dignity, 38–9, 95 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, 62–3, 69–72 distributive justice, 174, 190 domesticity, 120–1 double standards in consumption norms, see differential consumption norms Douglas, Mary, 14, 32, 57, 59, 100, 182 durability as a consumption norm, see longevity Durkheim, Émile, 58–9 economic conditions, as explanations of consumption norms, 26, 27, 54–6, 60–1, 70–1, 111–16, 134, 153–4, see also pragmatic beliefs and social position and consumption norms economics conceptualization of humans, 13, 24 notion of preferences in economics, see preferences economy, historically changing views of the, 26–7 egalitarian consumption norm, 15, 22–3, 31, 45–6, 59–60, 117–18, 154–5, 161, 189 emic approach, 19 emotions, 93 emotivism, 93 England, 3, 23, 24–5, 88, 112–13, 157, 160–1 entitlement, 6, 39–40, 46–7, 61, 93, 118–21 environmental activism, 153, 158, 159–60, 162, 169, see also climate change

Index 215 Estonia, 73–4 ethical consumerism, see ethical consumption ethical consumption, 7–8, 140–77 ethics definition of, 178 and consumption norms, 6, 22–5, see also practical ethics vs morality, 97, 143–4, 172–3, 178, 183, 190 see also virtue ethics etic approach, 19, 51 eudemonist moral philosophy, see virtue ethics everyday vs public consumption norms, 1–2, 4 expectations, 26–7 explanations of consumption norms, 51–82 fair trade movement, 147–53 family, 24–5, 30–1, 35–6, 41, 60–1, 77–8, 107–10, 114, 126–7, 157 field theory, 65–8, 78–80 food, 2–3, 31, 32, 40, 54–6, 58, 60–1, 70, 152, 159, 189 France, 60–1, 123–4, see also Bourdieu, Pierre free time vs consumption, 112–13, 168 frugality, see thrift furniture, see home decoration Gandhi, 59–60, 114–15 gender and consumption norms, 3, 9, 26, 29–30, 31, 34–5, 60–1, 76, 105, 120–1, 180–1 generational changes of consumption norms, 110–33 generational order, 107 gentility, 118–21 gentlemen in Hungary, 36–42, 78 in England, 118–21 Germany, 117–18, 150–1, 155 Giddens, Anthony, 90 global and local consumption, see cross-cultural consumption green goods, see ethical consumption

Habermas, Jürgen, 172–5, 212 habitus, 69, 76–8, 94 Harris, Marvin, 54–5 hedonism, 9, 212, 186 Hegel, 85, 184 hierarchy and consumption norms, 29–31, 35, 38–9, 46–7, 60–3, 71–2, 93, 106–7, 118–21, see also social position and consumption and entitlement Hindu religion, 108 Hispanic Americans, 130 home decoration, 36–48, 91, 120–1, 126–7 homo economicus, 24 households, 107–8 houses, 77–8, 89, 109–10 housewives, 24–5, 84, 93, 120–1 Hungary, 22, 36–49, 66–9, 74–8, 151–2, 163–4 Hupke constant, 128 hypergoods, 190 identity, 10–11, 24–5, 89–90, 93, 101, 132–3, 173 income the effect of income on consumption norms, 26–8, 111–12, see also economic conditions source of income determining consumption norms, 33–5 inconspicuous consumption as consumption of non-conspicuous goods, 187 as a way of projecting unrealized lifestyles, 161–2 India, 108–10, 114–16, 123, 130, 135, 160, 188 individual vs collective moral actions, 154, 155, 168–70 inscription of practical ethics in objects, 99 institutional explanations of consumption norms, 129–34, see also producers of cultural resources intellectual ascetism, 66 intellectual sophistication, 11, 23, 44, 71–2, 79

216

Index

internal goods, 33, 171–2 internalization of consumption norms, 31, 58, 61, see also habitus and taste investment, consumption as, 40–1, 113–14, 158 Islam, 55 Izhavas, 108–10 Japan, 23, 123 Judaism, 54–5, 57 justice mediated by consumption norms, 6, 30–1, 39–40, 46–7, 61, 93, 118–21 vs ethics, 172–4, see also ethics vs morality Khrushchev, 68, 126–7 kulturnost, 23, 44, 78 Lamont, Michèle, 52, 64–5, 71, 80–1, 182–3 Latour, Bruno, 87, 91–2 legal regulation of consumption, 3–5, see also sumptuary laws Leninist consumption norms, 66, 126 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 56 liberal environmental citizens, 176 liberalism early liberal concept of the human subject, 13, 23 political liberalism, 175–6, see also qualified liberal approach life-course, 102–10 life-cycle, see life-course lifestyle, 14, 89–90 longevity, 36–8, 40–1, 48, 109–10 love, see care luxury, 3–4 marketing, 84, 89–90, 129–34, 187 Marx, Karl, 10, 12, 85–6 masculinity, 30, 35, 87–8, 108–9, see also gender and consumption norms material culture studies, 14–15, see also Miller, Daniel

materialism, 9, 114, 133, 144, 153 materialist explanations of consumption norms, 54–5, 70 McKendrick, Neil, 117, 186 mental accounting, 27–8, 33–5 milieu-ethnocentrism, 117–18 Miller, Daniel, 5–6, 8, 14–15, 24–5, 36, 41, 85–6, 100, 143–4, 153, 157, 168, 181, 184 moral breakdowns, 95, 189 moral philosophy, see deontological moral philosophy and virtue ethics moral vs ethical, see ethics vs morality Narkomfin House, Moscow, 126–7 National Product Movement, 146–7 nationalism, see patriotic consumption norms necessities, see needs needs, 10, 66, 95, 105, 178–9 new sociology of childhood, 185 non-consumption, see ethical consumption Norway, 31, 117 nouveaux riches, 6, 61 objectification, 86, 100, 184 objective beauty regime, 37–8 objects as causes of changes in consumption norms, 122–9 as reinforcing ethics, 90–2, 99–101, 122–9 see also subject-object relations orders of justification, 52, 170–1 organic consumption movement, see ethical consumption Oxfam, 149, 188 patriotic consumption norms, 23, 59–60, 115–16, 130, 144–7, 155, 187–8 Piaget, Jean, 103–4, 106 Pietism, 186 political anesthesia, 169 political consumption, see ethical consumption

Index 217 political liberalism, 175–6, see also qualified liberal approach practical cultural repertoires, 88–90, 92–3 practical ethics, 83–101 practices, 32, 88–9, 183 pragmatic beliefs, 25–8, 29, 38, 49, 116, 128–9, 134–5, 175 preferences vs values, 13, 21, 14, 93, 179 pretentious consumption, 31, 93, 118, see also entitlement privatization of risk, 166 privileges, consumption norms securing, 60–3 procedural moral theories, 173–4, 190 production of consumption norms, 64–9, 78–81, 129–34 Protestantism, 186 qualified liberal approach, 172–7 Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred, 58 rationality and masculinity, 9, 30, 87–8, 164, 180, 181 and economic theory, 23, 179 in socialist consumption norms, 22, 45, 126, 181 in Swedish design, 91 regimes of living, 88, 95 relational self, 24–5, 39, 180 relationships, 14–15, 24–5, 29, 61, 106–10 religious consumption norms, 2–4, 15, 54–5, 57, 59, 108–9, 149, 186 resistance vs conformism, 12, 96–9 respectability, 38–40, 109–10, 118–21 Romanticism, 186 Russia, 61 sacred goods treated as sacred, 14, 58 values of consumption as transcendent, 14–15 see also religious consumption norms sacrifice, shopping as, 5–6, 15 Sassatelli, Roberta, 23, 145, 152, 161–2

Saussure, Ferdinand de, 56 saving consumption as a form of saving, see investment, consumption as as a consumption norm, 108, 112–13, 113, see also thrift Schulze, Gerhard, 117–18 self-colonization, 152 settled vs unsettled periods, 96 Shopping, A Theory of, 15 Shove, Elisabeth, 4, 87, 100, 101, 125, 127, 136, 168–9, 184 Slater, Don, 98, 178–9, 186 slow food movement, 152 Smith, Woodruff, 87–8, 118–21, 138, 186 social explanations of changes in consumption norms, 116–21 social order, 14–15, 58–60 social position and consumption norms, 30, 31, 38–9, 46–9, 69–78, 107, 116–21, 153–4, 164–5, see also hierarchy and Bourdieu, Pierre socialist consumption norms, 22–3, 42–9, 66–8, 77–8, 126–7 Scotland, 113 Soper, Kate, 143 Soviet Union, 126–7 status competition, 9–10, 62–3, 71–2, 117–18 status, see social position and consumption norms strong evaluations, 21, 99 strong program of cultural sociology, 64 structural linguistics, 56 subject-object relations, 10, 14, 83–8, 184, see also objectification sumptuary laws, 1, 3–5, 30, 55, 57–9, 61, 68, 96, Sweden, 60, 91 symbolic coupling of goods with meaning, 10, 84, 90 symbolic power, 62–3, 71, 79–80 Szasz, Andrew, 169 taboos, 2–3, 5, 54–60 tamed hedonism, 23

218

Index

taste emergence of taste as a consumption norm, 119–20 Bourdieu’s theory of taste, 11, 61–3, 69–72, Taylor, Charles, 21, 178, 190 tea, 121 technology, as an explanation of changes in consumption norms, 122–9 therapeutic ethos, 132–3 Thévenot, Laurent, 16, 95–6, 170–1 thrift, 24, 45, 113–14, 157–61 transience vs permanence as consumption norms, 109, see also longevity Trentmann, Frank, 150, 154, United Kingdom, 149–50, 156, 160, see also England and Scotland

United States, 10, 14, 31, 34–6, 104–5, 113, 131, 148, 153 usefulness, 36–7, 122–4 values, 13, 21, 14, 93, 179, see also ethics and strong evaluations Veblen, Thorstein, 9, 113 virtue ethics, 173, 183–4, 189 voluntary simplicity, 146 Weber, Max, 112, 186 willingness to appropriate consumption norms, 76–8 women, see gender and consumption norms Zahavi’s Law, 128 Zelizer, Viviana, 34–5 Zigon, Jarrett, 95, 97