Consumption Always and Everywhere – On the Extension of a Metaphor

When looking for theories on the idea of consumption, its origins and the related human mechanism of desire from a more basic perspective, I stumbled across a collection of essays by David Graeber. Graeber, known as the man for consumer-critical anthropology (he is not so excited about being called “anarchist antropologist” by the way) has been active in direct action groups and combines ethnographic and historical details to describe certain aspects of society. He also believes in the idea that radical and social movements can shed new light on academic discourse, and that such movements can make use of academic concerns in return. Anthropology can often afford new perspective on familiar problems – think of the useful perspective on western habits from an eastern perspective.

David Graeber’s Possibilities. Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion and Desire (2007) contains an essay on The Very Idea of Consumption, and I would recommend it to everyone interested in where the term came from and what it might tell us about our own desires and social relations. However, the essays in the collection do not present a single theory of everything. Instead, they are about both the origins and possibilities of human actions. The text on consumption was conceived during the days of the author’s dissertation in the early 90ies, and in this sense, it also provides a counter-perspective to the cult of consumption found in trendy theories of that time.

Whilst it can be good to analyse contemporary consumer practices, we quite often need to get a better understanding of the word and a working definition, in particular when we accuse someone of mass consumption or consumerist behaviour (or even of laying on a consumerist identity) without having reflected on the meaning of these notions before. The author suggests that this is not the best way of describing such phenomena as this would imply taking on a whole industry around their study. The way research dealt with it is often elitist, as certain classes and layers of society find most of life’s pleasures in consumption, creating their own meanings and (consumer-based) identities out of it. In denouncing consumption generally, researchers and theorists are also denouncing what gives meaning to the lives of those they wish to deliberate, a narrative the author calls “morality tale”, providing some reasons of why this might still be the case.

So why is it that we call certain kinds of behaviour consumption, rarely defining it at the same time? On one hand, the term might be common and tacit knowledge, on the other hand nearly any activity that does not involve self-manufactured goods could be described as consumption nowadays. Graeber is looking at the mechanism of the assumption that the main thing “ordinary” people do when they are not working can be named consumption. An assumption related to a theory of desire and fulfillment we should take a closer look at. The essay tries so by documenting the history of the word consumption, concepts of desire, needs and imaginary pleasures in philosophy, the interrelation of love and consumerism (sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll :-)) and the conception of fulfillment as a form of destruction – asking how far we really want to extend the consumption metaphor.

Graeber, David: The Very Idea of Consumption. In: Possibilities. Essays on Hierarchy, Rebellion and Desire. Oakland/Edinburgh: AK Press 2007.