Listening
to the Tavis Smiley Show recently, I learned that the average person in the United States carries about a dozen credit cards in
his or her pocket, and that one out of every 73 U.S.
households filed for bankruptcy in 2003, a record high (www.npr.org March 15, 2004). These astounding figures tell us
something about the current state of the economy, but they also raise questions
about the sorts of values Americans hold and what effects those values have on
the well-being of humans and our larger environment. These latter questions are
the subject of the anthology Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle
for a Good Life in a Materialistic World, a book that is certain to prompt
further research.

Editors Tim Kasser and Allen Kanner point out, in
Chapter One, that the discipline of psychology has paid little attention to
crucial psychological questions such as why people are materialistic and what
effects materialism has on a person’s happiness. They give a compelling
argument for taking seriously the kind of culture–consumer culture–in which
we are embedded. In subsequent chapters, authors address three central themes:
cultural contexts for consumerism, the relation of consumerism to subjective
well-being, and consumerism as a mental disorder. Especially in the first part
of the book, numerous studies are cited that show that materialist values are
correlated with unhappiness. This empirical evidence alone should be enough for
mental health professionals to be concerned about the effects of consumer
culture on current and future generations.

The
overall argument of the book is that we are inundated with messages to buy
things, to own things, and to consume things. Such messages are not benign;
they manipulate our desires and beliefs in order to promote purchasing and
accrue profits to businesses and corporations. Many people internalize the
message that material goods can provide happiness (it’s hard not to!) and thus
absorb materialist values and beliefs. But materialist values and beliefs are
psychologically damaging both in adulthood and child development. They are also
destructive to the environment and to underdeveloped economies. Psychologists
can (and should) take an active role in reorienting people’s values and in
changing trends in media, education, advertising and other production sites of
cultural ideology.

As
in most anthologies, some chapters are stronger than others. I was particularly
taken by Chapter Four on "Globalization, Corporate Culture, and
Freedom" by Allen Kanner and Renée G. Soule. Kanner and Soul argue that a
focus on corporations and corporate culture is necessary in order to understand
not only consumerism but responsibility. They reason that "through their
vast influence on the media, government, and the millions of workers they
employ, corporations are reshaping American culture by fostering the belief
that happiness is attained through the satisfaction of material needs"
(49). In addition, the effects of globalization pervade work and family life
through the greater demands that outsourcing places on employee commitment.
Advertising, they argue, is objectifying in that it reduces the human subject
to that of a consumer, and widening markets and technology mean more people
than ever are being objectified. Finally, the authors argue that a corporate mentality
has transformed higher education into a kind of corporation itself such that
universities turn out "products" instead of students and professors
are expected to pursue research that serves the marketplace. This chapter
offers a good discussion of globalization, and I will use it next time I teach
business ethics.

Another
article I will use in future business ethics courses is "Money, Meaning,
and Identity: Coming to Terms with Being Wealthy" by Stephen Goldbart,
Dennis Jaffe, and Joan DiFuria. The authors discuss ways in which coming into
sudden money creates its own difficulties, and they explain how important
discussions about stewardship and other life values are for those lucky enough
to have this experience. This article frames questions about value and
responsibility in a useful way not only for the suddenly wealthy but for all
those who have more to spend than they need.

Chapter
Seven, "Mindfulness and Consumerism" by Erika Rosenberg, is useful
and interesting. Readers who are familiar with the concept and practice of
mindfulness might be surprised to learn that mindfulness can be used to combat
consumerism, but Rosenberg argues that consumerism is frequently
done unthinkingly and uncritically. Mindfulness, she argues, can raise levels
of awareness and assist people in being more thoughtful about purchases and,
hopefully, thinking more critically about our desires and what we take to be
our needs.

The
three chapters on child development are useful and important to read. Each
addresses the effects of advertising and media in general on children’s values
and identity. Two of them focus on specific populations that are targeted in
marketing–namely, Black youth (written by Velma LaPoint and Priscilla Hambrick-Dixon)
and females of all colors (written by Jean Kilbourne). It is perhaps too bad
that these themes were not better integrated into the rest of the articles, but
I expect that future research on consumerism will incorporate issues of race
and gender.  As the editors say, this subject is still in an early stage of
research.

When
I finished reading this book, I was left with some questions.

Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi defines materialism as "the tendency to allocate
excessive attention to goals that involve material objects: wanting to own
them, consume them, or flaunt possession of them" (92). This definition is
useful and plausible. But other of the authors explain materialism as the
overvaluing of extrinsic goods. This way of understanding materialism is not
very helpful, because the distinction between external and internal is more
complicated than these authors indicate. For example, friendship is a great
good, and recognition, respect, and dignity are great goods, and none of these
goods is purely "internal." They are social goods, and they involve
relations between people in order to be realized. If we are to understand how
materialism differs from other desires for the goods we need and want for
living a good life, we need a richer discussion of what the various goods are
and how they relate to the good life than a simple internal/external dichotomy.

I
admit to being skeptical about claims that acquisitiveness (Chapter Nine) or
compulsive buying (Chapter Ten) are mental disorders. Why not call acquisitive
desire a vice along Aristotelian lines? How will individuals benefit from
identifying such behavior as a distinct disorder? How does the pathologizing of
consumerist behavior fit with the cultural critiques of materialism offered in
the first half of the book?

At
least in one respect, though, an initial reservation gave way as I read more
chapters–regarding the role that psychologists can play in effecting changes
in society. It wasn’t obvious that issues such as the market economy,
globalization, and consumerism are subjects for the discipline of psychology;
nevertheless, this anthology does a good job of identifying what psychologists
can do beyond clinical and research work to address the problem of materialism.

© 2004 Nancy Nyquist Potter

Nancy Nyquist Potter, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy, University of Louisville, Kentucky

Categories: Ethics, Psychology