Consuming Life E-Book

Zygmunt Bauman

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 303

Beschreibung

With the advent of liquid modernity, the society of producers is transformed into a society of consumers. In this new consumer society, individuals become simultaneously the promoters of commodities and the commodities they promote. They are, at one and the same time, the merchandise and the marketer, the goods and the travelling salespeople. They all inhabit the same social space that is customarily described by the term the market. The test they need to pass in order to acquire the social prizes they covet requires them to recast themselves as products capable of drawing attention to themselves. This subtle and pervasive transformation of consumers into commodities is the most important feature of the society of consumers. It is the hidden truth, the deepest and most closely guarded secret, of the consumer society in which we now live. In this new book Zygmunt Bauman examines the impact of consumerist attitudes and patterns of conduct on various apparently unconnected aspects of social life politics and democracy, social divisions and stratification, communities and partnerships, identity building, the production and use of knowledge, and value preferences. The invasion and colonization of the web of human relations by the worldviews and behavioural patterns inspired and shaped by commodity markets, and the sources of resentment, dissent and occasional resistance to the occupying forces, are the central themes of this brilliant new book by one of the worlds most original and insightful social thinkers.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Dedication

Title page

Copyright page

Introduction

1 Consumerism versus Consumption

2 Society of Consumers

3 Consumerist Culture

4 Collateral Casualties of Consumerism

Index

To Ann Bone,

editor supreme

Copyright © Zygmunt Bauman 2007

The right of Zygmunt Bauman to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2007 by Polity Press

Polity Press

65 Bridge Street

Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK.

Polity Press

350 Main Street

Malden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-07456-3979-6

ISBN-13: 978-07456-4002-0 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-5583-3 (Single-user ebook)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-5582-6 (Multi-user ebook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

Introduction

Or, the most closely guarded secret of the society of consumers

There is no worse deprivation, no worse privation, perhaps, than that of the losers in the symbolic struggle for recognition, for access to a socially recognized social being, in a word, to humanity.

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations

Consider three cases, picked up at random, of the fast changing habits of our increasingly ‘wired up’, or more correctly increasingly wireless, society.

Case One

On 2 March 2006, the Guardian announced that ‘in the past 12 months, “social networking” has gone from being the next big thing to the thing itself.’1 Visits to the website MySpace, a year earlier the unchallenged leader in the newly invented medium of ‘social networking’, grew sixfold, while its rival website Spaces.MSN scored eleven times more hits than the year before, and visits to Bebo.com multiplied sixty-one times.

Highly impressive growth indeed – even if the amazing success of Bebo, a newcomer to the internet at the time of reporting, might yet prove to be a flash in the pan: as an expert on internet fashions warns, ‘at least 40 per cent of this year’s top ten will be nowhere this time next year.’ ‘The launch of a new social networking site’, he explains, is ‘like opening of the latest uptown bar’ (just because it is the latest, a brand new or freshly overhauled and relaunched outfit, such an uptown bar would attract huge traffic ‘before receding as certainly as the onset of the next day’s hangover’, passing its magnetic powers over to the ‘next latest’ in the never relenting relay race of the ‘hottest’, the latest ‘talk of the town’, the place where ‘everybody who is somebody must be seen’).

Once they get a foothold in a school or a physical or electronic neighbourhood, ‘social networking’ websites spread with the speed of an ‘extremely virulent infection’. In no time, they’ve stopped being just one option among many and turned into the default address for swelling numbers of young men and women. Obviously, the inventors and promoters of electronic networking have struck a responsive chord – or touched a raw and tense nerve which has long waited for the right kind of stimulus. They may rightly boast of having satisfied a real, widespread and urgent need. And what might that need be? ‘At the heart of social networking is an exchange of personal information.’ Users are happy to ‘reveal intimate details of their personal lives’, ‘to post accurate information’ and ‘to share photographs’. It is estimated that 61 per cent of UK teenagers aged thirteen to seventeen ‘have a personal profile on a networking site’ enabling ‘socializing online’.