The Consumer Society Wr:��:res Jean Baudrillard The Consumer Society Copyrighted Material Theory, Culture & Society Theory, Culture & Society caters for the resurgence of interest in culture within contemporary social science and the humanities. Building on the heritage of classical social theory, the book series examines ways in which this tradition has been reshaped by a new generation of theorists. It will also publish theoretically informed analyses of everyday life, popular culture, and new intellectual movements. EDITOR: Mike Featherstone, Nottingham Trent University SERIES EDITORIAL BOARD Roy Boyne, University of Durham Mike Hepworth, University of Aberdeen Scott Lash, Lancaster University Roland Robertson, University of Pittsburgh Bryan S. Turner, Deakin University THE TCS CENTRE The Theory, Culture & Society book series, the journals Theory, Culture & Society and Body & Society, and related conference, seminar and postgraduate programmes operate from the TCS Centre at Nottingham Trent University. For further details of the TCS Centre's activities please contact: Centre Administrator The TCS Centre, Room 175 Faculty of Humanities Nottingham Trent University Clifton Lane, Nottingham, NGll 8NS, UK e-mail: [email protected] Recent volumes include: The Body and Society Explorations in Social Theory Second edition Bryan S. Turner The Social Construction of Nature Klaus Eder Deleuze and Guattari An Introduction to the Politics of Desire Philip Goodchild Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory Critical Investigations Bridget Fowler Re-Forming the Body Religion, Community and Modernity Philip A. Mellor and Chris Shilling The Shopping Experience edited by Pasi Falk and Colin Campbell Undoing Aesthetics Wolfgang Welsch Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings edited by David Frisby and Mike Featherstone Copyrighted Material The Consumer Society Myths and Structures Jean Baudrillard SAGE Publications London. Thousand Oaks. New Delhi Copyrighted Material English translation copyright © Sage Publications 1998 Introduction © George Ritzer 1998 Originally published as La societe de consommation © Editions Denoel 1970 This edition 1998, Reprinted 1999 This translation is published with financial support from the French Ministry of Culture Published in association with Theory, Culture & Society, Nottingham Trent University All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the Publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash - I New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 5691 3 ISBN 0 7619 5692 I (pbk) Library of Congress catalog card number 97-061881 Typeset by Photoprint, Torquay, Devon Printed in Great Britain by Redwood Books, Trowbridge, Wiltshire Copyrighted Material Shower him with all earthly blessings, plunge him so deep into happi­ ness that nothing is visible but the bubbles rising to the surface of his happiness, as if it were water; give him such economic prosperity that he will have nothing left to do but sleep, eat gingerbread, and worry about the continuance of world history. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground Copyrighted Material Copyrighted Material Contents Foreword ix Translator's Acknowledgements xi Introduction 1 George Ritzer Part I The Formal Liturgy of the Object 1 Profusion 25 2 The Miraculous Status of Consumption 31 3 The Vicious Circle of Growth 37 Part II The Theory of Consumption 4 The Social Logic of Consumption 49 5 Towards a Theory of Consumption 69 6 Personalization or the Smallest Marginal Difference 87 Part III Mass Media, Sex and Leisure 7 Mass-Media Culture 99 8 The Finest Consumer Object: The Body 129 9 The Drama of Leisure or the Impossibility of Wasting One's Time 151 10 The Mystique of Solicitude 159 11 Anomie in the Affluent Society 174 Conclusion On Contemporary Alienation or the End of 187 the Pact with the Devil Notes 197 Index 204 Copyrighted Material Copyrighted Material Foreword Jean Baudrillard's book The Consumer Society is a masterful contribution to contemporary sociology. It certainly has its place in the tradition which includes Durkheim's The Division of Labour in Society, Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class and David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd. Baudrillard analyses our contemporary Western societies, including that of the United States. This analysis focuses on the phenomenon of the consumption of objects which he has already tackled in The System of Objects (Gallimard, 1968; translation, Verso, 1996). In his conclusion to that volume, he formulates the plan of the present work: 'It has to be made clear from the outset that consumption is an active form of relationship (not only to objects, but also to society and to the world), a mode of systematic activity and global response which founds our entire cultural system: He shows with great perspicacity how the giant technocratic corpora­ tions foster irrepressible desires, creating new social hierarchies which have replaced the old class differences. A new mythology has arisen in this way. As Baudrillard writes, The washing machine serves as an appliance and acts as an element of prestige, comfort, etc. It is strictly this latter field which is the field of consumption. All kinds of other objects may be substituted here for the washing machine as signifying element. In the logic of signs, as in that of symbols, objects are no longer linked in any sense to a definite function or need. Precisely because they are responding here to something quite different, which is either the social logic or the logic of desire, for which they function as a shifting and unconscious field of signification. Consumption, as a new tribal myth, has become the morality of our present world. It is currently destroying the foundations of the human being, that is to say, the balance which European thought has maintained since the Greeks between our mythological roots and the world of the logos. Baudrillard is aware of the risk we are running. Let us quote him once again: Just as medieval society was balanced on God and the Devil, so ours is balanced on consumption and its denunciation. Though at least around the Devil heresies and black magic sects could organize. Our magic is white. No heresy is possible any longer in a state of affluence. It is the prophylactic whiteness of a saturated society, a society with no history and no dizzying heights, a society with no myth other than itself. The Consumer Society, written in a concise style, should be carefully studied by the younger generation. Perhaps they will take up the Copyrighted Material x The consumer society mission of breaking up this monstrous, if not indeed obscene, world of the abundance of objects so formidably sustained by the mass media and particularly by television, this world which threatens us all. J.P. Mayer University of Reading Copyrighted Material Translator's Acknowledgements I would like to thank Marie-Dominique Maison, Leslie Hill, Mike Gane and Glynis Powell for various forms of linguistic assistance with this translation. Thanks are also due to Richard G. Smith for providing some invaluable background information. For reasons of style, the author has made some very minor changes to the original text. I have personally taken the liberty of numbering the chapters. c.T. Copyrighted Material Copyrighted Material Introduction George Ritzer This English translation of The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures (originally published in 1970) will be both a treat and a revelation to admirers of the work of Jean Baudrillard not fluent in French. Here is an early work by a scholar who has come to be thought of by many as the leading postmodern social theorist.1 Postmodernists will be gratified to find, at least in their rudimentary form, many of the ideas associated with Baudrillard's later, more postmodern theorizing. Modernists will find a Baudrillard who is a much more modern social thinker than he is usually thought to be; one who is apt to be far more to their liking than the Baudrillard of the last decade or so. Metatheorists2 will find many rewards in this work including a greater sense of Baudrillard's theoret­ ical roots and the challenge of understanding a work of a thinker who was clearly in the throes of a profound intellectual transformation. Most importantly, theorists and other students of consumer society will dis­ cover a treasure trove of insights and perspectives into the world of consumption. Thus, this is a rewarding book at many levels, although it has, as we will see, its flaws. This is no dusty and outdated theoretical work that is of little more than historical interest. In fact, it is a highly contemporary work that reads very well over a quarter of a century after its initial publication.3 There is, for example, Baudrillard's discussion of such timely issues as sexually ambiguous, hermaphroditic models not unlike those who adorn the controversial Calvin Klein advertisements these days; the booming interest in fitness; the desire for slimness and the resulting dieting mania; obesity and the obsession with low-calorie, low-fat foods; and the burgeoning use of sexuality for commercial purposes. More generally, and importantly, this is a book about consumption and it is clear that Baudrillard was far ahead of his time in focusing on this issue. While most of his contemporaries in France (and elsewhere) were mired in stale old debates about production, Baudrillard recognized that consumption was where the important new issues and problems were to be found. Time has clearly borne Baudrillard out. There has been an outpouring of work, especially in Great Britain (for an overview, see Gabriel and Lang, 1995), on consumption and postmodern society is now seen as being more or less synonymous with consumer society (Featherstone, 1991; Bauman, 1992).