The Dictionary of Human Geography

Comp. by: LElumalai Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_C Date:31/3/09
Time:21:45:55 Filepath://ppdys1108/BlackwellCup/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-
9781405132879/appln/3B2/revises/9781405132879_4_C.3d

in globalization, with place-related con-

sumer cultures (such as national cuisines or

musics) having been largely replaced by a

landscape of hybrid commodity flows (see

food,hybridity,music,transculturation).

Some of the features taken to be character-

istic of contemporary consumption are likely

facets ofmodernity (Glennie and Thrift,

1992). Indeed, some argue that the consumer

revolution actually preceded theindustrial

revolution, with innovation in production

being fuelled by changes in consumer tastes

and mores. Historical geographies of retailing

thus reveal a remarkable series ofinnovations

in the design, advertising and selling of goods

through the eighteenth and nineteenth centur-

ies, with a succession of carefully orchestrated

spaces – including market halls, arcades and

department stores – playing a major role in

imbuing products with an aura of desirability

(Wrigley and Lowe, 2002). In the era of high

modernism, cultures of consumption were

also very much associated with the attainment

of security and comfort, with the idealization

of the suburbsreflected in a plethora of

products that no home could possibly be

without. The domestication and suburbaniza-

tion of consumption was mirrored in the de-

centring of consumption, with retailing and

leisure following the middle classes into the

suburbs; simultaneously, however, mass trans-

portation allowed the city centre to enhance

its role as a space of consumption, withcin-

ema-going, nightclubbing and eating out

becoming key urban rituals, maintaining the

myth that city centres provided a vibrant

public sphere.

The mid-twentieth century has thus often

been characterized as an era of ‘high mass

consumption’. Nonetheless, Bauman (2001a)

suggests that consumption remained subor-

dinate to work throughout this period. As he

describes, work served as the link holding

together individual motivation, social integra-

tion and systemic reproduction, with con-

sumer goods primarily regarded asrewards

for work. Furthermore, in industrial producer

societies, thestateprovided some of these

rewards to workers through collective provi-

sion, so even the unemployed could partici-

pate in rituals of consumption. However, in

postmodern, deindustrialized societies, the

state has little interest in tending to this

‘reserve army of labour’. Hence, thewelfare

state‘safety net’ has gradually eroded, with

individuals forced to search for security in the

marketplace. (seeneo-liberalism. Luckily (at

least for some), contemporary consumerism

implies that for every human problem there

is a solution that can be purchased: even prob-

lems of over-consumption (e.g. obesity) fuel

the marketing of new commodities (e.g. diet

products, health club subscriptions, plastic

surgery).

The second consumer revolution has thus

heralded an era in which consumption, not

work, is the hub around which identity

revolves. Yet, as Appadurai (1996, p. 38)

insists, ‘consumption has now become serious

work’, and it is wrong to imply that consumer-

led societies are any less disciplined than

industrial ones. Indeed, consumerism has

arguably bequeathed a new mode of social

control, where the fundamental social divide

is not between bourgeois and proletariat, but

between the creditworthy seduced – those

whose appetite for consumption fuels a huge

leisure, recreation and service sector – and the

repressed– those ‘flawed consumers’ who are

unable to enjoy a life of conspicuous consump-

tion (Clarke, 2003). While the former are

drawn into purchases through a panoply of

subtle (and not so subtle) marketing, it also

requiressurveillanceto exclude the repressed

from spaces of leisured consumption. CCTV,

security guards, credit-rating mechanisms and

consumer profiling are all significant in this

process, maintaining the order of consumer

spaces designed for the affluent.

The way in which shopping malls combine

such mechanisms of social control with a care-

fully orchestrated ambience has led many

geographers to proclaim them as paradigmatic

consumer settings:

Developers have sought to dissociate malls

from the act of shopping. That is, in recog-

nitionoftheemptiness of the activity for

which they provide the main social space,

designers manufacture the illusion that

something else other than mere shopping is

going on. The product is effectively a

pseudo-space that works through spatial

strategies of dissemblance and duplicity.

(Shields, 1989)

Given that the acquisition ofcommoditieshas

become so central to developing a sense of self,

exclusion from such spaces must be regarded

as a significant dimension ofsocial exclusion

(Williams and Hubbard, 2001). However,

accounts focusing on seductive spaces of

consumption perhaps ignore the more routine

spaces where the majority of consumption

occurs (e.g. supermarkets, corner shops, take-

aways). Likewise, the emergence of new spaces

of ‘second-hand’ consumption (e.g. eBay) also

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 109 31.3.2009 9:45pm

CONSUMPTION