Collective Action, Consumerism and the Market Place

I've been sick all week and haven't had the energy to follow-up with things actively. I'm also a bit stuck with what to do next, and curling up in bed with a bottle of Buckley's seems a lot easier (and that's saying something)! Is this what community development will always be like- surely there will be times where other people passionately want to join together for a cause? The highway land has been rezoned- so now what? I guess I might need to think about alternative options... maybe a petition (though I've discussed this with several people and no-one wants so far wants to help get it going, though they're happy to sign it...). I could look at a going-local campaign, and trying to find others interested in this (perhaps this would be easier for people than fighting a supermarket- I think petitions and protests scare people). I could link up with other groups in other places experiencing the same things, with the hope that at some stage other people here will see the importance of the issue! I'm not sure why people see a protest or confrontation as such a bad thing. I'd rather this over allowing big business to just waltz into town under the impression that everyone wants them here. I wish I'd grown up in the 70s; people seemed to protest about everything back then, and people seemed so passionate about things (maybe I'm generalising)! Maybe capitalism & big companies are a hard thing to fight~though equal rights for women, homosexuals and racial minorities are pretty tricky issues too! Maybe its because we're all implicated in the perpetuation of big businesses, so that many of us want to consume and want to consume cheaply, and so to fight off something that we get pleasure from (even if we wish we didn't get pleasure from it) is difficult.

I've been thinking a lot, and talking to people a lot, lately about the way that perhaps these businesses (monopolistic chain-stores like Coles/Woolies/Wal-Mart/Shell-Oil/insert whatever you want) are not just organisations "out there" separate to us... but are actually "us", or symbols of who we are now. I was looking through one of my favourite textbooks called "Inequality in Australia" (I know, what an awful title for a favourite book!) and found some interesting ideas: feel free to read ahead, if you're interested in this sort of stuff.

Anthony Giddens (1991) discusses, in this book by Greig, Lewins and White (2003:33-35), the way consumerism has increased with the loss of fixed sources of identity, which were once based on the structures of industrial capitalism and the bourgeois nuclear family. In today's world the weakening of these structures has lead to us losing fixed sources of identity, and we are now free-floating individuals, with multiple identities and changing conceptions of self. Giddens argues that consumerism is essential, and not only for survival in terms of food etc, but in order to signify who we are through the exchange of symbols. In this way what we buy often has no purpose for our survival- and he uses the example of Nike shoes- not because we need them, nor do we jog in them, but because they symbolise something~ they portray us as healthy, wealthy and prestigious through their very use. Giddens calls this "hyper-reality" because we are no longer living in the material world, and instead, who we are depends on the signs and images we use- those who don't participate are excluded.
Greig, Lewins and White (2003) however, look at this a bit more broadly when they talk about the way that, as individuals, we still can not escape the social, cultural and historical forces of the world and that our access to resources sways our ability to take part in the exchange of symbols~ we are not all free to buy Nike shoes, nor are we all in a position to go to the gym daily or to afford botox, because we are not all in an economic position to do so. The authors discuss the way that the body, and the symbols we attach to it, are in fact a product of the way society is organised, and that societies need people to conform to certain ideas of normality, thus ensuring people are constrained by the structures of society. This is not only in terms of our bodies either, but also our gender, culture and life chances.

I find this stuff really fascinating. The authors talk about the way that even though individual act in certain ways, use symbols in certain ways and think of themselves as free bodies~freely deciding what to consume~these are not purely initiatives of individuals. Now-a-days there is such a culture of individualism that it would perhaps come as quite a shock to people to read these sorts of things. How does this relate to the Woopi Green Thumbs Project? Well its complicated I suppose. I guess it helps me to understand why there is such a push for big businesses, selling cheap products and cheap food, and why people try to have all their needs met by the market place. But it also highlights to me why consumerism is such a complex phenomena, and how trying to protest against it~ and bring people collectively together to try and stop it~ could be tricky (even though inequality is perpetuated by it). Any further suggestions would be appreciated!