History of shopping and the rise of consumer class and culture
the individual(s) is confronted with and surrounded by an enormous assortment of goods, and in which the character of those goods change constantly.
Historically, consumer societies emerged in the context of modernity in late 1800 and early 1900 in the wake of Industrial Revolution.
The industrial revolution was driven by the aim to increase production and lower costs through mechanical invention, new power sources, new materials, new machinery and the division of labor.
The industrial revolution created many advantages for society but brought with it many challenges that are still faced today.
Workers in an automobile factory live far away from where the car is bought and sold. The workers might not be able to buy one. This is the irony of the human society
As industrialization and bureaucratization meant a decrease number of small entrepreneurs and an increase in large manufactures; this resulted in people traveling long distances to work, from the countryside to city, as well as countryside to another countryside, and city to city. People travel more so the designer thinks people need to travel faster so they produce it. This also meant that the landscape is populated with cars
By the 1950s, billboard became a central venue for advertising.
What is the function of advertising in these places?
It asks us (the consumer) to imagine ourselves within the presented image depicted whatever in the billboards. It ask us to imagine to be inside, "this could be you" so buy the product. Nowadays, we use LED billboards, online marketing, Youtube Ad.
"Capitalist society produces more goods than are necessary for it to function, hence the need to consume goods is an important part of its "ideology".
- Karl Marx
The function of products is less the concern but the ideology is more important. His critic define what advertising is good at
In a consumer society, a large segment of the population must have discretionary income and leisure time, which means that they can afford to buy "extra" stuff in support of their cultural status and style.
The important thing is consumer buying. We are accumulating stuff.
Ever since late 1800, the emergence of consumer society has enabled the cultural reconstruction of urban space in terms of leisure, work, and home. People who live in this urban setting were called the "consumer class".
This becomes the template of what consumer society is all about. Hence, now the consumer society will look like the template. For example BSD, Gading Serpong, PIK (live>work>shop).
In, pre-industrial city the production and consumption of goods were much more intertwined. The elite class is surrounded by artisan neighborhood. They live side by side. People work from home.
Late 1800 and early 1900
A modern consumer society period that give birth to the rise of department store as a commercial site, Leisure and commerce is thus were intertwined.
The department store is designed to display numerous goods to a consumer. Big windows were set up as spectacular exhibition of goods. The idea of faceless mannequins enhances that we project you into the faceless object.
Here the idea of planned obsolescence was introduced and invented. It is a deliberate act to produce goods that have short shelf-life in order to necessitate their replacement with new ones every few years.
21st century
Shopping changes to become like the new spiritualism. Want is more important than need.
This is what historian T J Jackson calls the "therapeutic ethos" - society shifting from theological ethic, civic, responsibility, to legitimize the idea of leisure, spending, and individual fulfillment.
Following what we "want" pushes the idea that we are incomplete and in need of improvement. The products act as therapy/aid to solve and improve problems. Modern advertisements are able to highlight "anxiety and identity crisis." Today, consumption continues to be thought of as a form of therapy
Commodity and fetish culture
consumer culture means we have balanced work and leisure time (shopping). The ideology of capitalism is to create more commodities that would fulfill our sense of incompleteness with an object.
Commodities - things that are bought and sold in a social system of exchange.
The culture of commodity relates to the idea that we build our identities through outgrowing cultural products that becomes an integral part of our nature
Culture Industry - Theodore Adorno
Our relationship with nature is no longer about human to human, human to organic matter...but with the world filled with objects, gadgets, glass, materials, artificial intelligence, cinema, galleries.
The role of advertising
Advertising is very central in giving this particular product object super extra qualities and values which they really don't. The task of the advertiser is to speak about the object. Human tends to create a myth.
According to Karl Marx...
A Marxist "way of looking", would enable us to see how goods are used and exchanged in a capitalist system, which he calls this process as a "commodity fetishism".
We attach personal meaning to the object. No longer the production side. No longer about the workers that produce. We create myths around the object.
This is how capitalism functions. It functions between the dynamic interchangeability between use value and exchange value of a given thing or object. It points out the way in which capitalism tent to focus on the exchange value over use value.
Use value: its use within a society (e.g cars are used to travel to places)
Exchange value: the cost of a product in a given system of exhange (e.g Using BMW gives higher status)
For example, McDonalds
The context of production is not shown . We have no clue who process the product. The culture of factory is not transparent to the consumer's eyes, yet the laborers' work/name dissolves under in the form of a logo.
The product is then linked to advertising images that instill it with cultural meanings quite different that the reality
Gives new meaning the transparency
Handmade Object
Handmade objects made by craftspeople are different from commodity objects.
Because handmade objects retain traces of the person who makes the object, how it is made, and the context of its production. It has more personal relationship with the object thus we appreciate both the artist and worker.
Commodity Fetishism
In short, a consumer of a commodity fetishized goods are made invisible on who made the objects, because the process of making things are invisible to them. It is called the process of fantasizing/mythicizing which takes it away from the process of production and giving new meaning commodity status.
Commodity fetishism is, thus, seen as a "system of mystification that empties objects of the meaning of their production and then fills them with commodity status"
As a concept, commodity fetishism's main concern is with the advertising of certain "meaning" to products, which each of these products would not necessarily have in themselves.
Advertising's main concern is to give these products "complex and emotional attributes, or what Walter Benjamin would call "aura".
Thus commodity fetishism operates through "reification" - a process by which abstract ideas are assumed to be real and concrete. In short, a commodity fetish exists only in the mind.
For example in advertising,
A perfume like Channel No.5 carries connotations of wealth, class status of luxury, beauty, and gender is fixed to female. While Calvin Klein's CK ads signify not only hipness but androgynous sexual status and the usage is suitable for any gender.
In reality, or in material terms, these are just scented water. Ads attach this meaning and specific qualities to the perfume to encourage consumers to "feel" they can acquire through buying and using the product.
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