My work investigates what consumption means through consumerism’s consumer element and trap. Consumption may have meant different things to different individuals before David Graeber, but he has inspired a new way of thinking about the phrase, and we are now thinking about it in a new way. Since the 1980s, anthropologists have been subjected to persistent, weirdly moralistic requests to recognize the significance of something “consumption.” The calls were heeded, and during the subsequent decades, the expression grew widespread in theoretical debates. I intend to incorporate Graeber’s findings in the attempt to get the definition of consumerism especially. Graeber explores consumption from the same perspective I did in my prior work but with more depth and a stronger emphasis on anthropology. As a result, I may benefit immensely from his efforts and gain much knowledge from them. Graeber is intrigued by the history of “consumption” and the consequences of classifying specific actions as “consumption” as opposed to others.
Academic works define “consumption” as “any activity involving the acquisition, use, or enjoyment of any manufactured or agricultural object for a purpose other than the production or exchange of new commodities. From this reference material, the imaginative ways the studied individuals employ consumption result in the modernist concept of an economy with two worlds, production, and consumption, being fooled into shouldering consumption. Graeber believes consumption replaces all non-market-oriented production, a metaphor for consuming and digesting the object. The chase of material goods has overtaken all other parts of social life, and the creative consumption that gives social life its significance has vanished. Graeber’s essential job is identifying and removing the cultural bias in our analytical language. To lend my support to this essential joint work, which is the result of anthropologists from all over the world, I would like to highlight a couple of Graeber’s ideas, season them with a dash of four-field perspective, and suggest further covert entanglements of consumerist ideology. According to Graeber, the consumption culture’s “poverty-stricken” theory of “human desire and fulfillment” signifies a radical divergence from the conventional wisdom of the Western canon. Western philosophers have long claimed that social acceptability, consumption, sexual desire, and power over others are people’s primary needs, not material commodities. By the time the early modern era arrived, Westerners had a tough time determining how to attain these communal objectives. Graeber illustrates his idea with an allegory based on Hegel’s philosophy. In the allegory, two men seek one another’s approval as free, autonomous, and ultimately human people; nevertheless, this acceptance is contingent on the other man being worthy of such recognition. However, these two individuals are at odds with one another because they are striving to establish whether the other individual is as free and independent as they are. What evidence could they possibly possess? The loser would seem considerably worse if they engaged in combat.
Graeber intends to examine the causes that drive people to believe they exist rather than criticizing consumption or consumer practices. After reading the article, I was left wondering where the word “consumption” came from, why we started using it, and what it indicates about our attitudes toward ownership, desire, and social connections. This, therefore, affected the way I will work on my work from now, although the philosophies are more aligned with my work. I see why we must determine how far we wish to stretch Graeber’s metaphor. It is one thing to discuss the “consumption” of fossil fuels but quite another to discuss the “consumption” of advertisement. Although several books and essays have been written on the issue, this remains true. My works represents consumption in our modern world – which include social media, movie culture, food, and technology. Our modern society is keen to increase consumption in terms of foods, technology, money and wealth. The surreal nature of the art visualizes consumption in several ways as per the perspective of the viewer of the art.
The only plausible explanation is that those compensated for making advertisement are located elsewhere than where customers are engaged. Most of these viewers do not pay for the material they watch. Therefore, we cannot claim that they “consume” the content in the conventional sense. Because it is impossible to attain and its value is unaffected by its use. Instead, we face an infinite number of fantasy content choices, some of which may or may not be designed to advertise certain things. Cultural studies experts and anthropologists who write in a similar vein will insist that “consumers” do not passively absorb these images but instead actively interpret and appropriate them in ways that the producers would not have anticipated and use them to fashion identities; this is the “creative consumption” model at work again. It is common knowledge that some individuals base their entire identity on their favorite television programs/video channels. At its most creative, “creative consumption” is not genuinely consumption, but at its least creative, it most nearly approaches what we would call “consumption.” I think I will interrogate this part in my work by attempting to authenticate what the cultural studies experts have alleged and exploring more on creative consumption.
I believe this broad category contains a few additional research avenues adding complexity and is more of an extension than a direct challenge to Graeber’s concept. First, historians interested in descriptions of ancient yearnings would not restrict their research to Western desire. I will pay greater attention to the emergence of consumer commitments in prosperous urban environments such as Song China. For instance, in locations such as Song China, tastes and possibly causes evolved, directly influencing European interests. If like Graeber, I assume that desire is a distinctively human quality or, at the very least, unquestionably premodern, it might be instructive to examine how it expresses in Asia. Some more aggressive consumer behavior has resulted in arrests and executions, which does not negate the reality of meaningful desire or its usefulness in contemporary life.
Graeber’s definition of consumption and consumerism theories are in contact with my work because the focus is closely related. Some new perspectives arise after Graeber’s work, such as the term’s origin. Although some academic fields, such as history and anthropology, are paying modern consumerism much comparative attention, it is feasible that additional premodern research would be beneficial. Thus, I will interrogate this in my work. One difference between my work and the reference is what triggered me to investigate consumerism did not allow me to concentrate on the history of the usage of the term. More and more often, I’ve realized that we buy those goods not because we need them or how much we like them but to blindly follow the trend to satisfy our vanity. I was keen to include Chinese culture and investigate the Chinese pictogram characters to get their relationship to consumerism.
Reference
Graeber, D. (2011). “Consumption.” Current Anthropology, 52(4), 489–511. https://doi.org/10.1086/660166