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In our latest ‘ask an expert’ session, Kim Humphery (RMIT University, Melbourne) advocates balance and fresh thinking in the West’s discussions about consumerism and anti-consumerism.

When we hear the term ‘western society’ it’s a sure bet that one of the things we think of is ‘consumer society’. The western world is the affluent world; the world of material abundance and endless shopping. Maybe that’s why the Global Financial Crisis came as such a shock. We’d all come to expect that the consumer good times would roll-on; because, after all, that’s what the West is supposed to be about.

But not everyone has bought this idea. There’s always been opposition to ‘consumerism’; and over the past few years I have been delving in to the nature of this resistance.

One of the things I have wanted to do is both celebrate and evaluate what has come to be called the ‘new politics of consumption’. Whether expressed through ‘frugal living’ or ‘ethical shopping’, a politics of anti-consumerism, especially in the West itself, has been picking up steam for a number of years. Why? Because more and more people have become concerned about the social and environmental results of overconsumption; of our tendency in the affluent world to buy and waste increasing amounts of stuff.

One of the most positive aspects of anti-consumerist politics is that it asks us as individuals to think hard about why we consume, what we actually get out of acquiring stuff, and what this does to the world around us. Anti-consumerism insists that we change our ways and consume less. Like all philosophies of change, though, the new politics of consumption has a few shortcomings.

First, anti-consumerism tends to be ‘anti-thing’. It sees material objects as less important than the emotional aspects of life, and often condemns the valuing of things as foolhardy. This misunderstands our relationship to the material world and overlooks the fact that material objects are crucial to human culture and happiness (see Danny Miller’s blog post).

Second, so many anti-consumerist critics simply stick the boot in; portraying western populations as mindlessly materialistic and blaming individuals for the continuation of overconsumption. This fails to recognise that we consume for various reasons, not simply because we are brainwashed. It exaggerates individual change as a response to consumerism, and it swallows the fallacy of ‘consumer society’; as if such an overgeneralising term can actually define the lives we lead.

Anti-consumerism is thus a timely politics of the moment, but also a politics in need of fresh thinking.

Oliver asks: Is overconsumption always about increased personal consumption - after all, the world population is much larger than it was 50 years ago, so overall consumption is a bigger issue. Do you think it makes sense to think of an obligation to consume less per person when we face massive population increases?

As the global population increases so do levels of consumption (particularly of energy), no question. But it's a bit of trap to see population increases as the driver of overconsumption. I'm no fan of stats, but I like one in particular: currently about 20% of the world's population is responsible for about 85% of world consumption expenditure. The remaining 80% of the global population either consume at moderate levels or underconsume - that is, they live in poverty. Population is a factor in aggregate world consumption levels, but this does not diminish the responsibility of affluent societies to consume more moderately and thus facilitate a more equitable use of the Earth's resources. Some of this is about individual change, but mostly it's about broader socio-economic and infrastructural change in affluent countries in particular.

Louise asks: Big supermarkets and businesses are sometimes criticized for hijacking and commercializing green issues and ethical shopping, and only paying lip service to them. Do you think ethical shopping is in any way different from 'normal' shopping, or is it just a moderate version of the same old consumer culture?

Ethical shopping (ES) has its critics, and in many ways it deserves them. ES, in-line with consumer culture, often reduces ethics to individual product choice. As such, it can be seen as little more than a 'politics-lite' for those who can afford the often higher prices of ethical goods. What is more, ES tends to imply that those who don't buy certain goods are not invoking a sense of ethics in their consumer choices - and this is quite mistaken. Having said all this, ES does at least express some worthy abstract principles (especially relating to ideas of global equity and environmental sustainability) and a willingness to 'consume with care' must surely be a part of any anti-consumerist politics. At its best ES is conceived also as simply one strategy among many, and as not simply about making better market choices but reducing our overall levels of consumption and waste.

Kim’s new book, Excess: Anti-consumerism in the West, provides a comprehensive overview and analysis of the ‘new politics of consumption’. Drawing on interviews with activists across three continents, it offers a new alternative to current anti-consumerism, which avoids treating consumers as mere dupes in the logic of capitalism.

In our second ‘ask an expert’ session,  Daniel Miller (Professor of Anthropology at UCL) writes about the importance of studying ‘stuff’ to understanding human relationships, and what sociologists can learn from anthropology.

I want to suggest that one of the main problems with the study of things in sociology is that it is almost inevitably subsumed under the study of consumption. As a result it’s almost impossible to discuss the place of material culture outside of the critique of consumption: that, quite apart from its impact on climate change, modern mass consumption is just so wasteful, immoral, materialistic, hedonistic; mostly it’s a plot by capitalism to get people to do things they don’t want to do, have stuff they don’t want to have; it’s superficial and usually fattening. Climate change then becomes just one more stick to beat consumption. The very word ‘consumption’ means to be used up, burnt, have tuberculosis – consumption is not good.

By contrast, I study material culture within anthropology, and our first point of departure has historically been things like stone tools, canoe prows, textiles and pottery. This has tended to be seen as either morally neutral or – given its affinity to the arts – an expression of human creativity rather than of human destruction. It’s not that I want to detract from concern with climate change, but I don’t think we are going to be able to do much about consumption until we first try to empathetically engage with what goods actually do for people. To summarise my own approach, I think that what matters to most people is the quality of their relationships, and these may equally be relationships to people and to things. Objects help us create relationships to family and friends, and my most recent study was of how objects help us deal with the loss of people through death or divorce.

But there are also just the relationships to things we care about as things: homes, clothes, gardens, iPods and heirlooms. When psychoanalysts talk of object relations they invariably mean relationships to people. This is a pity. There is wealth of material culture studies out there which can help us understand the centrality in people’s lives of their relationships to and through things themselves.

Emma asks: It seems like material culture plays a much bigger part in society now than it ever did before. Do you think that there are any social benefits of an increasingly material culture? Do they outweigh any negative effects?

We sometimes forget that the increase in material culture is seen in most parts of the world as the acquisition of ‘wealth’ and escape from poverty, and that is simply because these material things facilitate a life most people feel they are otherwise deprived of. It is not easy to tell people they are deluded by a false promise, especially when in practice those from richer countries use this wealth of things at the same time that they condemn them. That is why we need to separate out harm to the planet from a more ambiguous asceticism, or ‘doing without’. But ultimately the end of poverty does not outweigh the destruction of the planet.

Andrea asks: Anthropology reveals fascinating insights into the world and people around us. Do you think you have to be naturally ‘nosy’ to be an anthropologist, or is it something that you develop as a skill within the job?

I think being interested in other people is a usual rather than an unusual trait, but then so is the desire not to be intrusive. What the anthropologist should develop is firstly a sensitivity that means you need to treat each person differently according to how they seem to find you, and secondly the ability to reassure people they will be protected by anonymity and other devices. But in the end most people are delighted to find someone with apparently endless patience when it comes to listening to their stories.

Daniel’s new book, Stuff , is a manifesto for the study of material culture and a new way of looking at the objects that surround us and make up so much of our social and personal life.

There is a nice cartoon of a father and son looking down the family driveway towards a large, modern house with two cars parked in front of a double garage and a huge plasma TV screen visible through the front bay window. Father has an arm around his son’s shoulders and proudly declares, ‘One day son, all of this … will be mine’. The punchline works (well, I like it anyway) because it draws on the common experience of cheap credit, routine indebtedness and material prosperity that the wealthy consumer societies perceive to be normal. Since 2007 though, the joke has worn very thin indeed.

Though some sociologists and economists long argued that a society built on continually rising levels of personal debt and consumerism could not last, the sheer pace of the credit crunch – a severe shortage of money or credit – beginning with large-scale defaulting on ‘sub-prime’ mortgages, plummeting house prices and falling consumer confidence, was still a major shock. Household banking names like Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual (both USA), Northern Rock, Bradford & Bingley and Royal Bank of Scotland (all UK) have closed or been effectively nationalised, whilst the global economy has entered a recession worse than any since the 1930s. Endless tales of greedy bankers taking massive bonus payments even as their banks failed have changed attitudes to the banking industry, maybe forever.

Hence, politicians now talk freely of an end to credit-led consumerism and tighter regulation of bank lending. UK Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, has spoken of the need for ‘a new age of thrift [in government] and personal responsibility’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/apr/27/david-cameron-conservatives-debt-spending). But just how likely is a radical change in consumer attitudes and behaviour in the wake of the credit crisis?

The possibility for immediate gratification, enabled by cheap credit linked to mass production, lies at the heart of our seductive consumerism. We no longer have to scrimp and save, live frugal lives of self-restraint or simply go without. Instead, we can have the things we desire right now and enjoy our lives today not tomorrow. After all, we only live once don’t we? Would the mass of people really turn their backs on this materialistic and, if we’re honest, highly pleasurable way of life? Sociologists have developed theories of the consumer society that may help us to answer this question.

In the short term, there is, no doubt, much tightening of belts (mine’s already pinching) and rethinking of personal finances. But over the long term, I think the consumer society will continue. That’s because, contrary to common assumptions, consumer societies are not defined as societies in which people buy a lot more things than in previous times. Sociology teaches us that, firstly, modern consumerism is driven by a ‘romantic ethic’ in a self-perpetuating cycle of 'desire–purchase–use–renewed desire'. That means it is an ‘idealist’ not a ‘materialist’ practice, and one that can never be satisfied by purchasing a specific product. We will continue to want, and to enjoy the very process of wanting, even if we actually buy a bit less.

Secondly, consumer culture is the arena where social status competition takes place and personal identities are created and changed. We don’t just buy things and use them, but find and express our very selves through our behaviour as consumers, rather than having them created for us at work. And because modern individuality is so highly valued, the consumer society remains the most attractive form for its expression. Ultimately, that’s why reports of its death may be somewhat exaggerated.

And don’t forget daughter, one day all of this really will be mine. Probably.

To read more, see Chapter 5, pp. 186-90 for theories of consumer society; Chapter 11, pp. 447-8 and 458-60 for class and consumerism; Chapter 20 as a whole for the sociology of work and economic life