The Vice of “Virtue”: Teaching Consumer Practice in an Unjust World1
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The Journal of Moral Theology, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2018): 13-27 The Vice of “Virtue”: Teaching Consumer Practice in an Unjust World1 Cristina L. H. Traina N THE EARLY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, teaching children con- sumer virtue is often portrayed as inculcating habits of resisting commercial consumer media, limiting conspicuous consumption, I delaying gratification, and preferring lasting, often intangible goods. The argument is usually made by white, upper-middle- and up- per-class moralists, among whom I count myself. It is premised on the moral theological assumption that habits that are good for the soul, all things being equal, are also good for society. But if this assumption is incorrect, what then? This article lays out the classical consumer virtue argument and then questions the connection between personal virtue and the social good. First, it reflects on race and class variations in consumption patterns, exploring some of the circumstances and mo- tives that lie behind differences. Then, engaging Lisa Tessman’s work on burdened virtues, it asks what happens to virtue and its assumed connection to personal and public flourishing in structurally unjust sit- uations. Next, it argues that this question shifts our focus from simply promoting virtue to also overcoming the structural injustice that stunts and contorts virtue and severs its connections to flourishing. Finally, it recommends a socially critical approach to modeling virtuous con- sumption, one that focuses as much on justice and social change as on personal practice. In the background lies one uncomfortable assump- tion: in the world we know, it is not possible to consume in a way that perfectly supports classical understandings of virtue as well as true, holistic personal and communal flourishing. We must hold impeccable standards, but we will not meet them. I. THE INNOCENT CHILD IN THE BIG BAD WORLD: ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT VIRTUOUS CONSUMPTION Early twenty-first-century literature on parenting and new media seems to have reached a consensus: an evil, newly predatory culture of consumption, supported by ubiquitous, media-savvy marketing, en- 1 Helpful suggestions from the anonymous reviewer from the Journal of Moral The- ology improved this essay. All remaining flaws in the argument are mine. 14 Cristina L.H. Traina dangers vulnerable children by forming them into mindless consum- ers. On this view, parents raised in the post-baby-boom ethos of ac- cepting differences in values and behavior, children with rising dis- posable incomes, and ever-present media poised to target their spend- ing converge to create a toxic market in which anything, especially obscenity and violence, can be sold directly to children while adults stand by helplessly if not exactly haplessly.2 Even when they try to avoid the worst appeals, parents and their children fall victim to “the siren song” of commercial marketing aimed at “good” parenting of “successful” children.3 Even children’s spirituality is a marketing op- portunity.4 The result of these trends, according to this argument, is self-cen- tered consumers who focus on private benefit. Worst of all, Benjamin Barber adds, the effect is lasting and fatal: market-driven consumer habituation stunts moral maturity, creating infantilized adults who not only consume mindlessly but become incapable of effective demo- cratic participation.5 Contemporary market capitalism’s uncontested, steady aim at vulnerable child consumers will be the downfall of so- ciety and therefore of the common good. This argument translates easily into the language of moral theol- ogy. For example, Chad Engelland and Brian Engelland point to a fail- ure “to distinguish needs from wants” that leads to “splurging” and “wasteful spending.”6 Consequent vices like a desire to “keep up with the Joneses,” with its tendency to “sacrifice long-term goods for short- term satisfactions,” are responsible for the ills of a market that has 2 Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti, “Toxic Lessons: Children and Popular Cul- ture,” in Kid Stuff: Marketing Sex and Violence to America’s Children, ed. Diane Ravitch and Joseph P. Viteritti (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2003), 1-18, at 3-4. See also Teresa Malcolm, “Hard to find sanctuary from $17 billion in marketing to kids,” National Catholic Reporter, Nov. 16, 2007, 5a; Ellen T. Charry, “Countering a Mal- forming Culture: Christian Theological Formation of Adolescents in North America,” in Nurturing Child and Adolescent Spirituality: Perspectives from the World’s Reli- gious Traditions, ed. Karen Marie Yust, Aostre N. Johnson, Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, and Eugene C. Roelkepartain (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 437-448. For a more balanced approach in this latter volume, see Joyce Ann Mercer, “Spiritual Economies of Childhood: Christian Perspectives on Global Market Forces and Young People’s Spirituality,” 458-471. 3 Valerie Weaver-Zercher, “Buy, Buy Baby,” Sojourners, January 2009, 38-39, 41- 43. 4 Joyce Ann Mercer, “Capitalizing on Children’s Spirituality: Parental Anxiety, Chil- dren as Consumers, and the Marketing of Spirituality,” International Journal of Chil- dren’s Spirituality 11, no. 1 (2006): 23–33. 5 Benjamin R. Barber, Con$umed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (New York: Norton, 2007). 6 Chad Engelland and Brian Engelland, “Consumerism, Marketing, and the Cardinal Virtues,” Journal of Markets and Morality 19, no. 2 (2016): 304. The Vice of “Virtue” 15 converted private property from an engine for communal flourishing to an item for individualist accumulation and enjoyment.7 A significant proportion of this literature also agrees on the solu- tion to the problem. It argues that if we raise children to become vir- tuous consumers who can resist the ubiquitous cultural force of media- driven marketing, we will promote the common good in three ways: people will become morally virtuous, with respect to both their con- sumption and their concern for the social whole; both individuals and society will flourish materially because people will spend mindfully rather than wastefully; and the main instigator of vice, the overwhelm- ing media marketing giant, will wither for lack of an audience. For instance, the Engellands promote the four cardinal virtues, “habits that enable us to act well in four aspects of life,” for both consumers and marketers: “moderation regarding pleasure, courage regarding pain, justice regarding people, and prudence regarding truth and good- ness.”8 Small changes on the individual level will add up to social transformation. We wish to curb frivolous consumption for the sake of the person and encourage consumers to weigh more heavily long-term value into their purchase calculus. Doing so will free up resources that can be directed toward the poor and the environment, and these are good rea- sons to pursue the virtues.9 In short, the diagnosis of the consumption problem is personal vice, and the recommendations for curing it boil down to virtue both for consumers and for producers and advertisers: change your motives; restrain your desires; consider function over status, form, and novelty; be willing to run against the grain; consider the future (both yours and others’) and the common good. While the interdependent system of consumption, production, and marketing vices is certainly responsible for exacerbating social ills, not to mention encouraging personal sinfulness in children, the argu- ment that market-driven consumption is the product purely of individ- ual vice and is the font of all American social ills is overly simplistic. Richard Reeves’s Dream Hoarders and Elizabeth Currid-Halkett’s The Sum of Small Things argue that, in the context of current structural injustice and social inequality, the classical virtuous consumption pat- terns usually embraced in arguments that adopt a white, upper-middle class perspective reinscribe and harden race and class stratification: “virtue” works against the common good. Conversely, I argue, many 7 Engelland and Engelland, “Consumerism,” 298, 310. 8 Engelland and Engelland, “Consumerism,” 301. 9 Engelland and Engellend, “Consumerism,” 299. 16 Cristina L.H. Traina so-called “irresponsible” patterns of consumption often attached pejo- ratively to the bottom 80% and to people of color are driven by virtu- ous motives. If we wish to engage children on the ethics of consump- tion, then, we need to explore the nuances of virtue, holistic flourish- ing, the common good, justice, and the often uncertain connection among them. II. RACE, CLASS, AND CONSUMPTION: COMPLICATING THE STORY Recent research has illuminated important differences in American consumption patterns. Broadly speaking, US African Americans and Latinxs spend about 30 percent more of their incomes on visible goods than whites with similar incomes but much less than whites on less visible goods like education, entertainment, and health care.10 Currid- Halkett expands this less visible category—which she calls inconspic- uous consumption—to include services like house cleaning that make life simpler, investments like 401K plans, and higher-status, more ex- pensive versions of ordinary items. In this last case, one might substi- tute children’s hockey for basketball, organic for conventional food, or elite private for public universities.11 What she calls “the aspira- tional class”—defined by valuing “smart” consumption informed by superior, intangible, socially current knowledge over conspicuous consumption—emphasizes inconspicuous consumption at all income