Relationship Between Consumption And The Self Essay

Relationship Between pulmonary tuberculosis And The Self EssayConsumption has al ways been an Copernican aspect of human fellowship, in different ways at different times and in different blots (Clarke 2003). The consumer revolution, the birth of which is a subject of debates (McKendrick claims to have discovered it in the eighteenth ampere-second England, Williams- in nineteenth century France, and Mukerji- in fifteenth and sixteenth century England), represents non just a change in tastes, preferences, and purchasing habits alone a fundamental shift in the culture of the early advanced and modern world. (McCracken 1988) The consumer revolution is seen to have changed Western concept of time, space, fellowship, the individual, and the state. Western culture little by little became increasingly dependent on and integrated with the new consumer goods and practices, which appeared from the sixteenth century onwards culture and consumption began to fashion their present relati onship of late complicated mutuality.(McCracken 1988) In such a consumer culture, consumption has an important significance to the meaningful practices of mickles everyday aliveness. That is, they not however make their consumption prizes from the products utilities however in like manner from their typic meanings. Basically, consumption is employed not only to give rise and sustain egotism but to locate concourse in society as well. However, from a critical point of view, seeking to create the self through symbolic consumption can in summarizeition contribute to the immurement of individuals in the deceptive world of consumption. The following study seeks to explore the printingal approaches regarding the relationship between consumption and the self.In the postmodern world Our individuation is moulded as consumers. (Sarup 1996, p.120)Living life to the full became increasingly synonymous with consumption. (Gabriel and Lang 1995, p.7)The friendly organization o f self in modern society is considered to be invariably tie in to consumption. The modern society undoubtedly represents a consumer culture, where good deals life functions in the scene of consumption. (Firat and Venkatesh 1995) It is, peoples friendly arrangement in which the relation between lived culture and social resources, between meaningful ways of life and the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, is mediated gutter markets .(Slater 1997, p.8) Hence consumption is of great importance to the indirect practice of individuals everyday life. Along with the creation and maintenance of the self, consumption is withal employed in beau monde to locate different individuals in society (Elliott 1994a). The various material goods that people buy, the ideals and rulings they held show who they actually are and whom they point with. Indeed, people consume various things not only for satisfaction of ad hominem needs but also for creation of their self-creation projects (i.e. for brain of significance in their pursuit of being ), which may be achieved symbolically through mundane consumption. The validity of this is confirmed by a considerable amount of literature. Lang and Gabriel contest that whether one is looking for happiness, identity, beauty, love , et cetera, there is a commodity someplace which guarantees to prove it. In McCracken point of view, different products embody qualities that reach beyond their attributes or commercial value, which actor, they are capable of carrying and accommodating pagan meanings. Symbolically, people use these meanings in order to create cultural idea of the self, to obligate and maintain lifestyles, to represent social connections and to promote changes in society and the self. (McCracken 1988) In other words, people consume these cultural ideas in order to outlive in this culturally composing world. McCracken (1988a, p. Xi) confirms the latter point without consumer goods, certain(p) acts of self-definition and collective definition in this culture would be impossible.Shopping is not notwithstanding the acquisition of things it is the buying of identity. (Clammer 1992, p. 223)Sartre (1998) argues that The bond of self-denials is an internal bond of being. (p. 588)He emphasizes on the idea that people come to know who they are trough what they possess. By actually observing their material possessions they structure and sustain a notion of existential self. The idea of seeing is of vital importance, because as Sartre states to see it is already to possess it. In itself it is already apprehended by sight as a symbol of being . Thus, when see a superb landscape, people are capable of obtaining a notion of possessing the given landscape, and accordingly associating it with their sand of being . This idea illustrates how people acquire a feeling of alert trough window shopping alone. To have is to be concept is also asserted by Belk (1988) and Dittmar (1992). Dittmar ( 1992, p. 204-06) arguesMaterial possessions have socially holded meanings this symbolic belongs of material objects plays an important role for the owner s identity. This suggests that material social reality in an integral, pervasive aspect of everyday social life, of constructing ourselves and others.Belk (1988) in his examination of the connection between having and being , states that it is a two-fold process on the job(p) in both directions respectively. Not only do people place their self-identities into their possession but they also integrate the latter into their identities that is mirrored in the so called self-extensions process (i.e. the extended self). As extension of the self, peoples possessions not only enable them to find their actual characters but to achieve or mark their wiz of continuity from the past. Thus, material possessions act as a faculty to manage individual s life in its current course.As stated above to have is to be but to have also means to bel ong . Richins (1994, p. 523) states, Possessions are part of the social communication strategy and are sometimes actively used to communicate aspects of the self. Undoubtedly, when obtain individualised possession that expresses peoples individual sense of identity and their sense of belonging to a group and collective identity. Material things encompass symbolic meanings, trough which a bridging of the self to others in society is possible. Dittmar (1992, p. 11) statesThe notion that we express our identity trough our material possessions, and make inferences about the identity of others, on the basis of what they possess, means that there must be socially material objects as symbolic manifestation of identity.Nowadays, people are able to use consumption symbolically in order to gain a considerable sense of belonging to various imagined communities (Anderson 1983) or different neo-tribes (Maffesoli 1988). Thus, people consume different products that add to the symbolic means of i dentification of the self, trough which they associate themselves emotionally with those sacramental manduction their lifestyles. (Gabriel and Lang 1995)Consumption, as it has been stated in the above paragraphs, provides people with symbolic meanings to construct their self and identity, but it also can imprison them to the superficial sense of self and the enduring consumption. Therefore, from a critical perspective, to have means to be enslaved.If I am what I have and if what I have is lost, who then am I? (Fromm 1976, p. 76)According to Fromm, seeking to obtain a sense of being trough having hides a risk of losing it since having may not tour permanently. Contrary, he raises the idea that people realize the self by gravid and sharing practices, et cetera. To have contributes to peoples enslavement of their own possessions. (Fromm 1976) People become slaves (i.e. commodities) in the realm of goods (Giddens 1991). Faurschou (1987, p. 82) arguesPostmodernity is no longer an age in which bodies produce commodities, but where commodities produce bodies bodies for aerobic, bodies for sport cars, bodies for vacations, bodies for Pepsi, for Coke, and of course bodies for fashion total bodies-a total look. The liquidation of the body as its own production/consumption machine in late capitalism is a fundamental theme of contemporary civilization.The belief that people are capable of exercising their freedom through certain choices seems unrealistic. Actually, we all not only follow lifestyles, but in an important sense are forced to do so-we have no choice but to choose (Gidddens 1991, p. 8). Also, Elliot (1994b) states that the pleasure, more than specifically the immediate one derived from legion(predicate) consumption practices may imprison people in the scope of habit-forming consumption. Gergen (1991, p. 74-5) shows some apprehension over freedom of consumptionYet this analogous freedom ironically leads to a form of enslavement. Each new confide places its demands and reduces one s liberties. Liberation becomes a swirling vertigo of demands. Daily life has become a sea of drowning demands, and there is no shore in sigh.The will and eagerness to be more, to grow more, to accumulate more and more, and more results in suffering and self-destruction of the individual. The only possible way of let go this degenerated cycle is to accept the idea that to be is merely an illusion. Consequently, people should let go of their will to be , leave alone the intrust to have .Considering all that has been stated above in the current paper about relationship between self and consumption strongly confirms their accommodative coexisting within and in developed societies of the contemporary world. The consumer is seen as caught in a cultural project (McCracken 1988), which main purpose is to achieve a full completion of the self. The consumer machine provides individuals with the necessary cultural materials in order to rationalise their varying i deas about themselves and their social roles in society. All of their cultural notions are embodied in the symbolic nature of goods, and it is through their possession and practices that individual understands the meaning in his own life. As Kavanaugh states, individuals in a society create themselves or define themselves culturally through the objectification of a culture s conceptual models in centrally prescribed phenomenal forms (McCracken 1988).It is through the systematic endowing of the meaningful properties of objects/goods that individual satisfied the opportunity and obligation of self-definition. The logic and directions of this process of self and world construction through the nature of goods has been increasingly understudied and since recently it has been drawn accurate exploration. But which still needs further examination.