Discussion Notes from the January 27, 2016 meeting
Consumption, Coercion and Utopia
Led by Clare Crowston
Consumption, Coercion and Utopia
Led by Clare Crowston
- How does consumption/history of consumption connect to labor studies? What are the connections between histories of production and consumption in our own work?
- The global connections present in histories of consumption are rarely explored in the ways they are in histories of production. How can they be brought in? How do processes of unfree labor factor in?
- In the primary sources (Adam Smith and Benjamin Franklin), they expressly mention utopia. What is their vision of utopia? How do their disavowals of the category function, and what do they tell us about how utopia has been imagined? In the process of attacking the idea of utopia, they raise up a very clear idea of what a utopia could look like; why might they do so? How does it connect to (a) the concrete ideas of what types of people they want to attract to their vision (e.g., hardworking, industrious) and (b) a more general rejection of the idea of utopia?
- How is the term “utopian” used as an ad hominem attack in order to deflect criticism? How do Franklin and Smith reject utopianism in order to make their own visions seem more realistic and achievable?
- These readings focus on capitalist societies that privilege consumption, but in socialist societies the onus is very much on production. Historians initially used this onus to assume that socialist societies were deliberately limited when it comes to consumption, and have only recently discovered the range of socialist consumption; how have contemporary historians of socialist consumptions tried to counter this narrative?
- How do historians treat consumption, particularly in capitalist societies? How have scholars praised or critiqued aspects of it? Is there a push back against this recent experiment? How has consumerism been historically treated? Is spending seen as laudable or reckless? Does it vary based on urban proletariats versus rural peasants?
- What role does slavery play in Franklin’s piece? How does he contrast them with the idea of the “Freemen” yeomen? How does his use of images outside of the U.S. reinforce the idea of a “middle class utopia”, built on the idea of labor?
- What is the role of the state? Why is it more invisible (or less desired) in the Smith/Franklin primary sources, but very obviously present in the Rockman piece?
- How does the social meaning of objects factor in? Can we see them as utopian in that they project a specific image of social status? See, for example, the role of curtains in de Vries work (pp. 100). Are there any specific items (e.g., coffee and tea) that act as strong markers of changing environments and social status?
- In what way is consumption about choice? Around the time of the “consumer revolution”, inventories show that people across class lines have a variety of clothing items, and the distinction between people becomes less apparent. To what extent does this variety connect to our historical conception of the “modern”?
- How do conceptions of democracy factor in to ideas about choice and consumption? Can these conceptions be used alongside ideas of coercion? What’s the interplay between them?
- How is consumption racialized? How are assumptions about labor and race connected to ideas about ‘earning’ consumption rights? How does this continue today (e.g., “driving while black”, especially with a luxury car)?
- How does the difference between use and sign value factor in? A lot of what we’ve been discussing connects only to sign value (e.g., the difference between a round or square table), but market saturation and the backward-bending supply curve (de Vries, pp. 111) connect more closely to use value.
- What role does other aspects of modernity (e.g., print culture, mobilization, urbanization) play? How does this answer de Vries’ question about where the consumer revolution comes? How does it also connect to other processes (e.g., the decline in agricultural prices)?
- How does consumption “trap” its consumers? In what ways to those people who enter the consumer revolution become increasingly dependent on it to buy necessities that they can no longer produce?
- Many of these histories rely on ideas about western dominance and hegemony, but other scholars have looked at the ways in which consumption in areas like East Africa pushed along production in Europe. The use of tariffs in Western European also shows the dominance of the production of areas like India. How can a more global view of consumption remedy these blind spots?
- What is the role of apprenticeships? We mostly connect the idea to production, but it can also be linked to consumption, looking specifically at ways in which people were told how to live. How is the term used more broadly in paternalistic justifications for imperialism? Rockman also points out that apprenticeship can be used to point that all oppression can be looked at as a movement towards “future liberation”, which can be seen as a utopian vision.