Geographies of Consumption, Chapter 2: Histories (Mansvelt 2005)
Urbanisation, industrialisation and the Emergence of 'Modern Consumption'
Examining a chronology of consumption
Definition where consumption assumed dominance in the structuring and maintenance of everyday life beyond meeting material needs
Industrial revolution- capitalist system- mass production of commodities.
However, Knowledge into exotic costume etc. goal of modernity occurring before industrialisation
Emergence of modern consumption uneven across the globe and between different commodities
Role of women procuring commodities for the domestic sphere was accentuated. Primary purchasers for home and family
Modernity bound with consumer culture as the dominant mode of cultural reproduction
Practices of consumption have been constituted in the relationship between civic values, concepts of individual and social identity, traditions as dynamic and changing
Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Consumerism: the Spatial and Social Extension of Consumption
Extensive spread of mass markets and mass consumption into North America
More countries became integrated, contributing to the unevenly developed geographies at various scales
Over time, goods and services extended to those on lower incomes. Sought to emulate the lifestyle choices of the upper and middle classes through fashion, travel and food tastes.
Children became objects of of parental consumption practices
Became a visible aspect of daily lives, e.g. eating out, extension of consumer practices, consumer goods, and consumer services
Commodity Racism- Promote desirable features of products, turning imperial time into consumer space. Soap- fetishizing soap through advertising- racism- washing away blackness and colour.
Emerging Public spaces of consumption
Emergence of modernity and mass production and consumption invoked new psuedo-public spaces. Places where individuals can engage in conspicious consumption
E..g. the department store- critical role in shaping consumer culture, linking shopping with pleasure, romatisized and sensuous.
Provide a space for women to make purchases for the home, reinforcing notions of domesticity. Spatial logic of stores was aligned with capitalist and patriarchal discourses enshrining male sexuality and identity
Spaces of 'leisure and pleasure', occupied by women but were still 'out of place' - over consumption seen as natural and derogatory.
Fordist production and consumption
Modernity, capitalism changed from a liberal to a laissez-faire model in 18th and 19th c. Fordist regime of accumulation.
Consumption of standardised goods in mass markets became widespread, with commodification progressively encompassing more aspects and spaces of everyday life
The development of consumer culture is associated with significant changed in production
Alternative geographies
Consumption is contingent on place based and complex social , political and economic interactions between people, things and processes
Practices which comprise consumption are spatially and temporally uneven
Post modernity and Niche Consumption
Mid 1970s- niche over mass markets
Individual over collective forms of consumption- choice and identity predominate
Emerging human world of 'flexibility, diversity and differentiation' reproduced in both society and space
Is Post modernity another phase in capitalism?
Consumption becoming a symbolic rather than instrumental activity
Producing commodities marked to serve diverse sets of consumers and consumption practices
Public life gives way to commercial spectacle, communities of consumption replace real community
self-reflective distinction, self-actualisation and of belonging, commodities an important mean of establishing different body images, lifestyles or social types
cultural segmentation of consumers rather than fragmentation is occuring
'Placing' Transformation in consumption: Problems of Extrapolation and Interpretation
Three stage model: emergence of modern consumption, consolidation and mass consumption and post modern consumption
Can NIC's of Asia or countries of the third world be assumed to have been altered along similar trajectories
Histories and Chronologies: the need for specificity
Spatial and temporal contexts- vital to examine whether they are articulated in particular time and place contexts at a variety of scales