Consumption & Self-Identity

Early in the twentieth century, scholars in a variety of disciplines began to recognize that consumption - or more properly consumerism - had become an important aspect of North american culture. These early works generally had a strong economic perspective, and perceived consumption of goods primarily as a means of creating and maintaining class distinctions. At the same time, another group of thinkers, primarily philosophers and sociologists, recognized another significant change that was taking place, relating to the individual's sense of identity and his or her place in society. By the middle of the century, these two trains of thought were beginning to come together to define a new paradigm of the self which has, among other things, been central to the development of Post-modernist thought. In essence, the argument goes something like this:
  1. As societies become increasingly able to produce goods in excess of actual needs, the appropriation of such goods ("conspicuous consumption") by the wealthy and powerful serve as a primary means of maintaining distinctions between classes. (Veblen)
  2. As the middle classes accrue wealth, they begin to emulate the consumption habits of the class above them, in order to gain status and mobility. What is fashionable in goods at the upper level of society thus becomes fashionable at lower levels ("Trickle-Down Theory"), leading the upper classes to adopt a new fashion in order to maintain the initial distinction. (Simnel)
  3. With the increasing urbanization and industrialization of society, people become more isolated or alienated from their communities. This isolation undermines traditional methods of assessing another person's character, and causes a shift away from 'character' and towards 'personality' as a basis for making judgements about others. (Susman)
  4. Since 'personality' is largely a matter of outward appearance and behaviour, individuals begin to use goods as a means of creating their social 'self'. Identity becomes constructed, rather than revealed, variable rather than fixed.
At this stage of the argument, a third train of scholarship came into play: the field of semiotics, or in some usages, semiology. This study is concerned with meanings - how they are created, transmitted and manipulated, and how they relate to the object they purportedly represent. This subject originated as a branch of linguistics, but its applicability to the artifactual world around us became apparent early on. The central premise of semiotics is that all communication involves both an external object or idea - the 'signified' - and a communicable expression, or 'signifier', which represents the original object in discourse. For example, the word 'rock', or the picture of a rock, are signifiers which represent the physical rock lying on the ground. But they are not the same thing. More importantly, the word 'rock' is not the same in every language either. It is a cultural convention, and one moreover which will vary from one culture to another. Meaning, in short, does not reside in objects themselves, but is associated with them through the agency of a culturally defined sign, be it word, picture or other referent.

The foregoing is obviously a gross over-simplification of semiotic theory, but is sufficient to formulate our remaining theoretical constructs:
  1. Cultural meanings are necessarily embodied (or 'encoded') in every object we make.
  2. In acquiring or using (consuming) goods, we associate ourselves with the meanings embedded in those goods. These adopted meanings therefore become part of the perceived 'self'.
Combining these ideas with the original four listed above, we are left with a construct of enormous implications, suggesting that our consumption of goods is an integral part of our modern identity, both social and personal. By corollary, of course, we can also change who we are by changing the goods we choose to wear, use, or surround ourselves with.
If these ideas seem at first a little far-fetched or esoteric, it is worth considering the extent to which they may be seen to apply to the world of twentieth-century advertising - a field which, not coincidentally, experienced its period of most extraordinary growth and expansion in precisely those decades (1900-1950) which spawned the theories we have been considering.


Last updated: 29 December 1997