CROSSROADS IN CULTURAL STUDIES
Fourth International Conference
June 29 - July 2, 2002, Tampere, Finland

Consumer Culture, Cultural Politics and the Circulation of Value

Organiser: Anne Cronin

Cronin, Anne (Lancaster University, United Kingdom) CONSUMPTION IN CRISIS: ADVERTISING, CONTROVERSY, AND THE "NEW, IMPROVED" CONSUMER
This paper explores a moment in the cultural politics of consumption that articulates a perceived crisis of agency. This rhetoric of crisis intensifies the sense that the self's free will is compromised or contaminated through the consumption of 'bad commodities' such as cigarettes and alcohol. This is mirrored in the circulation of discourses of 'shopaholism' or addiction to shopping. In parallel, it places a renewed emphasis on (and drive for regulation of) advertising images as key motivational forces in individuals' behaviour: more than ever, advertisements are seen as 'dangerous images' and debates about advertising explicitly express concerns about maintaining the correct or 'healthy' distance between representation and reality. I explore firstly how this frames new relations between advertisements and commodities, images and materialities, and, secondly, how utopian dreams of reforming an ideal (consuming) self are born out of that very moment of imagined crisis.

Hickman, Tim (Lancaster University, United Kingdom) THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ECONOMY OF DR. LESLIE E. KEELEY'S "GOLD CURE"
Leslie E. Keeley, promoter of the "Bi-Chloride of Gold Cure" was-by far-North America's best known drug addiction cure doctor at the turn of the twentieth century. He began experimenting with potential cures for habitual drug and alcohol use as a Civil War physician and in 1879 he and a partner opened the first Keeley Institute in rural Dwight, Illinois. Between 1892 and 1900 the Keeley Company generated income of more than 2.7 million dollars, and over 500,000 alcoholics and addicts took the Keeley cure between 1880 and 1920. This paper will explore the cultural resonance of the Keeley Gold Cure within its historical context, noting particularly how gold, consumed as a cure for uncontrollable consumption, circulated as a signifier of authenticity, a token whose value lay in its power to redeem the self to and for itself.

Hides, Shaun (Coventry University, United Kingdom) THIS MORTAL COIL: VALUE, LOSS AND PRESENCE
This paper explores a series of related theoretical constructions of capital and its attendant cultures of consumption. Following Benjamin's argument - capital as a kind of dream state and Zizek's notions of symptom, substance and subject, I examine the 'ends of the circuits of consumption'. The analytics of commodity fetishism (ur-critique of consumer cultures) are re-appraised within the consideration of the ends of the possession's quasi-cultural "lives". Consideration of the discourses, practices and regimes of power, articulating the relations between categories of 'waste' 'momento' and 'relic', is instructive in understanding the broader circuits and exchanges of value, upon which 'consumer cultures' subsist. The end of the possession's 'life' in 'waste' and the end of the possessor's life marked by the 'momento', or 'relic', constitute crucial moments wherein the values of 'consumer cultures' and broader cultural circuits of value and meaning simultaneously coalesce.

Moor, Elizabeth (Goldsmiths College, United Kingdom) BRAND VALUES: WORK AND CONSUMPTION IN THE CREATION OF CULTURAL MEANING
Brands and branding have become increasingly significant to both economic and popular discourses in recent years. This paper will assert their significance to cultural studies through a consideration of two key features - firstly, their circulation within the spaces of everyday life and experience rather than conventional advertising media; secondly, their function as strategic interventions into the circulation of meanings and values which attempt to blur the boundaries between different layers of 'value' in order to create and secure markets. These themes will be developed with reference to empirical material from interviews with branding consultants, and with case study material from a series of recent marketing events. This material will be used to make more concrete points about the work that goes into creating brand 'values', how these different layers of 'value' get materialised in commodities, and the ways in which consumer experience is put to work in elaborating and re-circulating a range of brand(ed) meanings.

Tyler, Imogen (Lancaster University, United Kingdom) THE CULTURE OF NARCISSISM: GENDER AND CONSUMPTION IN THE "ME DECADE"
'In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption' (Carter, 1980:1237). 'Narcissism has become one of the central themes of American culture' (Lasch 1980:25). In the late Seventies, a consensus emerged within both US elite and popular culture that the Nation was in crisis. I will argue that many of the representations of crisis circa 1976-1980 were articulated through discourses of narcissism, and particularly through claims of selfishness and over-consumption. I will discuss the ways in which these discourses were used to condemn the increased political visibility of women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals by repeatedly figuring them as the new narcissists -- these figures were produced as narcissistic through an emphasis on their imagined liberated consumptive practices and the impact of these practices on the family and the Nation.