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.
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