consumerism

Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole
$16.95
This entire book is based on a demonstrable fallacy - that Benjamin Barber knows what's good for other human beings.. better than they do themselves.. and that the use of violent force (the state) should be made to enforce his will on those too stupid to think like he does.

What a waste of my time.

Cute, Quaint, Hungry And Romantic: The Aesthetics Of Consumerism
$16.95
This is by far the worst book that I have ever read. It is about 300 pages of the author complaining, whining and rambling. There is no logical flow and this book is just annoying to read.

The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism
$17.50
In The Conquest of Cool, Thomas Frank provides a comprehensive analysis into how the business culture of the advertising and menswear industries is related to the counterculture and the changing American value systems of the sixties. The main point of Frank's analysis is that the business cultures of the advertising and menswear industries were undergoing massive marketing, management, and creative revolutions in the early sixties even before the counterculture revolution took place in the latter part of the decade, and that these business culture revolutions had an enormous effect on changing American values and consumerism. This claim is very significant and unique because it goes against the traditional and largely accepted view of the sixties, which represents itself in one aspect by the co-optation theory. The co-optation theory states that the authentic counterculture had revolutionary impact on the mass society's value system. Furthermore, the theory maintains that businesses imitated the authentic counterculture in order to mass produce fake counterculture to facilitate selling to a large youth demographic and to subvert the threat of the authentic counterculture.

The depth, consistency and credibility of Frank's research and the examples he uses to support his assertions is the main strength of Conquest of Cool. Frank verifies his statement that revolutions in business cultures predated the counterculture revolution by first citing management literature of the fifties and sixties. Various individualistic and anti-hierarchical themed books such as Whyte's Organization Man and Packard's Hidden Persuaders are thoroughly analyzed and interpreted as the foundations for the business culture revolution. These management texts influenced the change in business culture from being overly hierarchical and conforming to stressing leadership and creativity. Moving on from this management literature, Frank focuses on the advertising industry and how many different firms utilized these management practices. Using the examples of firms such as Doyle Dane Bernbach and Papert Koenig Lois, the author is able to show how instilling leadership and creativity into new advertising companies enabled them to achieve sudden and dramatic success. The ability of these firms to achieve such success by encouraging creativity is significant because other firms in the industry took notice and began to incorporate such practices into their firms. This eventually led to the complete changing of the business culture in that every firm wanting to achieve profits and maintain clients were essentially required to adopt creative and anti-hierarchical practices.

Segueing from the advertising firms to the actual advertisements they produce, Frank demonstrates through vast research how the creative firms began to interject their newly adopted individualistic, anti-conformist, and hip values into the ads they produced, and that this transition was accomplished well before the counterculture gained national prominence in 1967. The central theme to these ads, which is exemplified by the Volkswagen advertisements of the early sixties, is that consumer culture is fraudulent because it demands conformity over individualism. The advertisements of the sixties brought about a change in American consuming values toward immediate gratification and craving for the new, which resulted in accelerated consumption. The youth counterculture was symbolic for consumers to think young and assume attitudes of the counterculture revolutionaries. Therefore, admen utilized the youth counterculture as the signifier of choice for this new hip consumerism.

The focus of The Conquest of Cool is shifted toward the menswear industry toward the end of the book. The Peacock Revolution in menswear made considerable use of the new hip consumerism that emerged from the efforts of the advertising industry. Another strength of the book is that Frank chooses to focus on only one industry to demonstrate in depth how hip consumerism was used at the end of the sixties. While some might believe it would be better to show a wide variety of products to explain hip consumerism, Frank is able to go into more depth by narrowing his focus on a particular industry which captures hip consumerism the most, menswear. Moreover, numerous examples of different products such as automobiles and soft drinks were used in conjunction with the advertising analysis, which also touches upon hip consumerism.

Conquest of Cool ends with a recapitulation of hip consumerism from the early seventies until the nineties. Frank explains that hip consumerism in the advertising and menswear industries was on the retreat in the early seventies due to the recessions which put an end to the postwar economic boom. However, the effect hip consumerism has had on these and other industries is profound and lasting, and in fact, the emergence of hip consumerism resulted in a permanent change to American consuming values. Thomas Frank closes his book with a brief comparison of the youth counterculture of the sixties to Generation X in the nineties and how they are similar in their cynical view of advertising. Though this comparison is rather interesting and quite convincing, it does not go as in depth with research and examples as virtually every other subject of the book. This is one of the book's weaknesses, being that it could better explain the nature of hip consumerism to younger readers who would be more familiar with the products and advertising of the nineties.

Another weakness of Conquest of Cool lies in the writing style of its author. Thomas Frank's first book gives a fantastic analysis of the business culture and counterculture of the sixties and how this led to new American consumerism. However, when Frank backs up this analysis with in depth research, the vast amount of literary works, authors, creative admen, advertising firms, and advertisements that Frank invokes and applies throughout the book can be disorienting to the reader in trying to remember them all. Fortunately, this weakness does take away the effect of the research in explaining Frank's main points, which is the primary strength of the book. Because of Frank's writing style, which also includes vocabulary that may have one reaching for their dictionary or thesaurus, undergraduate students may find the book too difficult to obtain and truly grasp its main points. Nevertheless, certain undergraduate students, graduate students, and their professors of various concentrations including marketing, management, and history will find the book engaging, interesting, and especially enlightening.

The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need
$13.00
We have to buy something to learn that we're buying too much. In this case, a book. This paradox alone demonstrates the United States' deeply ingrained and all-encompassing consumerism. The book in question, by its mere existence in the marketplace, helps drive the point home. But doesn't such recursive amelioration prove that we're beyond help? Once again: we need to consume to learn how to consume less. It sounds like something straight out of Kafka or Lear. Zeno would be proud of us moderns. Of course, the proposition ignores alternatives such as borrowing the book. Still, somebody has to buy it, either a library or a friend. One typically has to own what one lends. Nonetheless, borrowing entails less consumption. And isn't that the point? To go further, if one person reads the book and imparts its contents to friends, colleagues, and relatives, those audiences don't really need to buy the book to learn from it. Vicarious learning is still learning. More important, they didn't need to consume to begin thinking about consuming less. Benefits of ownership can be dispersed. The paradox has weakened. We're not encased in perpetual consumer amber. There is a way out and Juliet Schor's "The Overspent American" builds a foundation for breaking our national consumption addiction.

Though now a decade old, the problems outlined in this book remain prevalent. Probably more prevalent given the economic crises plaguing today's economy. People don't seem to think before they buy. And the mythology of the consumable, now escalated to a divine mystery, encourages reckless spending. In the first four chapters, Schor goes a long way towards dissolving some of these myths. She looks at the workings of products on people's psyches. Advertising, wish fulfillment, keeping up with the real or imaginary Joneses, status seeking, or just plain addiction emerge as suspects. She introduces the notion, not new, of a "reference group." These can be friends, colleagues, neighbors, or even fictional characters. People tend to emulate, or want to emulate, the lifestyles of such groups. So they spend to "Keep up" or "fit in." The lower income non-profit employee socializing with lawyers or executives will experience this problem like a club to the head. Money will vaporize. The lesson: choose your reference groups wisely. But even something as innocuous as having children can increase spending. Parents can find themselves spending to keep their kids up with the Joneses kids. Vicious cycles emerge as can with gift giving between adults. Social pressure alone may lead to consumption. All of this can result in one's own identity becoming wrapped up products. We become what we buy.

It's all well and good to point out problems, and even the root of problems, but what can people do to solve them? In response, Schor goes beyond mere description. The book's remaining chapters discuss downshifting and habit breaking. "Downshifters" have rejected the consumer lifestyle. They try to get by with less to avoid the work-and-spend gerbil wheel of modern society. Schor profiles, based on personal interviews, people who have attempted voluntary and involuntary downshifting. Some were more successful than others. Nearly all came from affluence, which may sound circular, but Schor says in her introduction that her target audience is the upper-middle class. This group has disposable income and seems more prone to dangerous reckless spending, regardless of their educational levels. The profiles show that downshifting isn't for everyone and comes with risks. For those intimidated by such drastic lifestyle shifts, the final chapter lists nine principles to help cut down on consumption. Anyone can do these. An epilogue attempts to answer the question "Will consuming less wreck the economy?" Some of the arguments presented here seem tenuous and undeveloped; likely an entire book would be required to adequately address these issues.

A word of warning: "The Overspent American" may cause a life-changing shift in some readers. It makes ridiculous some of the habits we now take for granted. It undermines some of the rationalizations people present, to themselves and others, for excessive spending. Most of all, it points out that too much consumption is very much a bad thing from personal, societal, ecological, and economic perspectives. We haven't stepped off the dangerous road we were on when this book was published ten years ago. Some of the implications of this have arguably begun to emerge only today. This book retains its relevance in the face of our sagging economy bloating with people addicted to personal fulfillment through spending. If you can borrow this book, do so, but it nonetheless justifies its cover price.