Dispersion

Chapter 6: Consumption and Dispersion

Consumption Emerges

False Promises by Stanley Aronitz; argued that consumers (and are) passive and easily manipulated.
The "colonization model" assumed that the culture of consumption emerged along with the corporation.
The psychology of consumption required in theory for consumers to act not react.
Beginnings of class splitting. Victorian Elite: first to "colonize" leisure. Emergence of a cultural hierarchy in America. The genteel and the wealthy classes began the split between highbrow and lowbrow.
1900 classicism reigned: Shakespeare "had been converted from a popular playwright to a sacred author who had to be protected from ignorant audiences."

Popular Culture

The consumption of popular culture was voluntary consumption.
Emerged in response to demands for lively entertainment.
New popular culture amusements (movies, theme parks, cameras, etc.) were accused of undermining the work ethic.
Labor demanded a shorter work-week. More leisure time, more activities.
New styles of clothing appeared in stores. Consumers needed more than work wear.

Thorstein Veblen: "pecuniary decency" people now consumed in search for approval.
An adaptation of a dominant American style of thinking about the "greater truth" of mass taste.
Yesterday's luxury, today's necessity.
Immigrants: assimilation meant acceptance of the promise ever-greater abundance not just a fixed standard.
Leisure: an alternative to work. Parks and cinemas "expressed a new set of values: not work but play. Not saving but spending."

"The sober conservation of energy no longer seemed necessary in a world where the power supply seemed unlimited."

Electrification

Thomas Edison: incandescent light. Intended to compete with gas systems.
By 1900: American cities were the most intensively lighted in the world.
GE: "the white way" campaigns.
Electricity enhanced urban life: social classes mixed freely. Entertainment meant going out.
David Nasaw: the newest, most technologically advanced amusement sites now are our living rooms."

Material Goods

Material goods are building blocks of identity.
Factory output soared creating the demand for varied goods which became central to the process of self-definition.
Some families bought an automobile before installing plumbing.
Budgets were now stretched to the limits.
Marx: the fetishization of commodities.

These objects "attained a mystical character that obscured the relationship between the labor and the capital that had created them."
Greater flows of goods and services changed the word "customer" in favor of "consumer."
People now encountered one another in impersonal ways.
Automatic vending machines: goods were standard weight, size, and quality.

Brand Names

Consumers no longer relied on personal acquaintances with shopkeepers. Instead, they relied on the reputations of products.
Nabisco, Gillette, and swift backed their products with guarantees.
Advertising: attempted to persuade readers through rational arguing. A short-lived approach.
Emotional appeals were used instead: fears, hopes, and colorful designs rather than logic.
Consumers engaged in "impulse buying."

The Diderot Effect: the purchase of one new item leads to the acquisition of a whole set more expensive possessions that fit together.

Department Stores

Provided a new venue for the distribution of new products.
Sold goods at fixed prices with money-back assurances of quality.
Wide selections reversed the trend toward specialized shops combining form 50 to 100 shops under one management.
Customers in one department were potential customers in all the others.
Small profit margins: high turnover of goods.
Credit introduced with monthly installment payment plans.
Stores treated customers as "guests" and the department store was soon known as the "palace of consumption."
Thorstein Veblen: "conspicuous consumption." The rich had learned to display their wealth.

Crime

"Kleptomania" labeled the inability to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate fantasies of consumption. A form of "insanity" linked to problems of with menstruation.

Consumption Community

No physical location.
Americans more and more judged one another by the value and extravagance of their goods. They made themselves "known" through their products.

The Automobile

Driver's dictated land use and soon thereafter suburban living came into existence.
The automobile "was an enabling technology that permitted greater dispersion of the population.
Technological momentum not determinism. Autos are not isolated objects: only parts of a complex energy consuming system (factories, roads, parking lots, etc.)
Cars not transformative: they gave Americans a powerful new medium with which to express pre-existing cultural preferences.
Embraced by people who were restless and individualistic.

Problems

Auto blamed for urban congestion, pollution, traffic injuries and the disfigurement of the city.
Travel form outside of New York to downtown used to take a half-hour in older surface cars.
With faster cars it now took an hour. Improvement?

Increased Popularity

The auto declined in price rapidly and therefore increased demand.
Social prestige now coincided with auto ownership.
1920: 1 car for every 5 Americans.
78 percent of the cars in the world in the U.S.
The automobile became the central American consumer good and the engine of the American economy.
Mass transit declined. The auto became a necessity rather than a luxury by 1930.

Death of The "Walking City"

Decentralization: most of the street life disappeared. Vendors, the casual walk, the corner drugstore and the sidewalks themselves vanished.
Human relations slowly eroded.
As much as half a city's land area was consumed by roads, driveways, and parking lots.

Knowledge of the Auto

Males and Females: the car symbolized mobility.
Supplier of more power to individual Americans than anything ever before.
Knowing a car involves specific knowledge which expands the potential for new experience.
Driving developed into a new form of visual browsing.
Ownership of a car was a "transient personal possession". It lasted no longer than a decade and could not be handed down through the generations.

Cause of the Depression:

Too Much Energy

Marxist Analysis: only a socialist state could resolve the contradictions between capital and labor, and between profit and human need.

Growing of the Service Sector

Chapter 7