Seeing past international affairs

The article by S. C. Jansen that I read on nation-branding opened up my eyes to an aspect of public relations that I was never previously aware of - the commoditization of individual countries.  According to the article, the phenomenon pervades much of the modern world.  I was surprised that the mention of nation-branding caught me so off guard; previously in this class, I had never been completely in the dark when my classmates mentioned other phenomena of mass and consumer culture (i.e. certain brands, the image of the single woman, etc.).

Yet the manifestations of nation-branding outlined in the article were not foreign to me - just the labeling of such activities as "nation-branding."  I was always aware that each country had a certain identity and certain traditions (food, clothing, religion, etc.) that others associated with it.  However, I had always thought of these as part of an original and organic culture - something that had no known source and simply evolved over the centuries.  The same applied to the diplomatic and trade-related interactions that I had observed and heard about in the past.  I thought of these as international politics and trade affairs.

In short, the concept of "nation-branding" had simply never occurred to me.  And how does Jansen define "nation-branding"?  It is the promotion of a country purely for commercial gain.  My notions of culture and international politics were certainly my reactions to the promotions of all of the countries of the world.  I simply did not recognize that all (according to Jansen, at any rate), were under the guise of commercial benefit.

Reflecting on this now, I wonder why this occurred to me.  Although it is still a question to ponder, I think that the commercial undertones were so imbedded in the world around me (or as promoted by these national and international masterminds) that I simply saw them as political affairs.  This deception is understandably unsettling.

Spectacle as a new phenomenon

When I first read Debord, I was immediately depressed because he comments on (what he considers to be) the degeneration of society.  The first section is case in point: "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation."  His use of the word "mere" makes the life as seen through representation seem lesser and worse than the original, "directly lived" life.

Perhaps I felt sad and empty because Debord was commenting on the society that I supposedly am a part of - apparently my everyday is nothing but illusion and representation of the original.  I had trouble accepting that my perceptions were never direct but just expressive images.

However, Debord's reasoning in the article is sound, and for the purposes of this article I will assume that his argument is correct: I do live in a society of spectacle - filled only with "mere representations" of all of the intangible concepts of life.  So moving on now, I want to investigate the other parts of the passage that I have highlighted above: "All that once was directly lived..."  So Debord assumes that in centuries past, the spectacle was nonexistent and all emotions and concepts were perceived in a perfectly direct way.  But what proof does he have for this?  What if the spectacle is not a relatively new development in society, but a phenomenon that has been occurring since the beginning of human history?

This thought did not occur to me while I maintained my first impression of the spectacle - a superficial way to run society in which the members simply lived in a haze of illusion (with of brands, billboard etc.).  I realized that I needed to move past my instinct to think of this superficial society as just a materialistic one.  I decided to expand my thinking by expanding the definition of the society of spectacle.  Couldn't the passage "All that once was directly lived has become mere representation" be applied to something society seemingly irrelevant to our previous focus and discussion on consumerism and materialism?

The first "something" that I thought of - and it ultimately served my purposes very well - was writing.  Writing, I have been told, is only a representation of the deeper concepts that are within the writer.  It is not possible to for the writer to directly express these inner emotions and ideas: fears, joy, anxieties, pride, etc.  He or she can only represent it in words in the best possible way.  Following directly from Debord's own words, then, writing is a type of spectacle. Writing has been a staple of human society for centuries, even before many claim that it became superficial and materialistic - full of illusion.  So were human lives ever directly lived, or just represented by illusion to a lesser degree?

Here I could conclude my argument that indeed spectacle has always been a part of our society - nothing to be alarmed about.  It is impossible to directly live life anyway.  

But here again I also see a big difference between the writer and the materialistic spectacle of today's society.  I think in the case of the writer, he or she still lives directly within himself or herself.  Even if others cannot experience the life directly, there is still something inside of each individual that is true and pure.  Perhaps Debord's point, then, is that in modern times even this inner truth is lost to that of representational elements.  Expression and conveying to others aside, the individual no longer lives his or life directly. 

         

Dissecting Brands

In No Logo, Naomi Klein states the following: "successful corporations must primarily produce brands, as opposed to products."  The passage prompted me to meditate on the word "brand."  Encarta dictionary states that it is "a name, usually a trademark, of a product or manufacturer, or the product identified by this name."  This is the technical definition; the more interesting one for me, however, is the second: "recognizable type of something."  I parsed this phrase in order to better understand it: "recognizable" makes sense to me - the consumer uses brands as a symbol in order to make judgements about the product at hand.  He or she would not be able to do this unless the brand was able to be recognized.  "Type of something" is harder to grasp; I know from this definition that brands are something recognizable.  Still, I felt that the definition remained vague and inconclusive.  What type, exactly, of something is a brand?

To help me answer this question, I went back to Klein's quote.  She places brands in opposition to products.  To me, products are the tangible objects that we buy and sell.  They have no intrinsic value, for they are just bundles of wood or stone or plastic or paper.  If brands are the opposite, then they must be an intangible something.  So now I had narrowed down my options considerably in my quest to figure out the nature of the brand; it was not a concrete object - the threaded LaCoste logo on a polo shirt itself is not the brand, it is the product - but a figurative and metaphorical entity.

These types of "somethings" abound in everyday life - romance, for example, has been immortalized in countless works of literature and the arts.  War is a complicated force of unity and disunity.  Pride can never be described satisfactorily but can definitely be pinpointed when it fuels conflict, emotional pain and solidarity.  They are the silent concepts whose role in our lives are unmistakably significant but whose exact nature we can only grasp ephemerally.

So these concepts are all of the same type, but - as demonstrated by the diversity of concepts above - each concept has a unique nature.  What is the concept of the brand about?  I think that the definition is two-fold: one from the perspective of the consumer and the other from that of the vendor.  For the consumer, it connotes all that the product promises to deliver; these promises span the spectrum from that of a clean shave to that of a heightened sense of fitness, ecstasy, sexiness, intellect, etc. etc. etc.  For the vendor, it is the vehicle through which these promises and ideas are delivered to the consumer.  The executive directors at LaCoste know that a green alligator with a curved tail promises the consumer a feeling of well-off and trendy athleticism - the epitome of preppy.  And the consumers who buy Harley-Davidson motorcycles are promised a feeling of rough-edged manliness.  

In this way, I think that brands are a new abstract entity introduced by modern industrial society.  They are visual cues that convey a certain lifestyle and image - the option to be tough or cute or smart.  They are a unique phenomenon.     

Sifting through Modernity

Modernization can be perceived in two ways. On the one hand, it is an important concept that many argue pervades much of society today.  On the other hand, it is also a movement over time - a product of human history.

I think, though, that in order to fully understand modernity, I should try to evaluate it from both angles at the same time.  In order to do this, I think the key is to consider how people at different points in history felt about modernity.  In this way, I will be able to define and understand modernity as it evolved over time.

In the introduction to All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity, Marshall Berman categorizes the history of modernity into three phases: from the sixteenth to late eighteenth centuries, from the 1790s until the late 19th century, and finally from the twentieth century until the present day.

Berman goes on to say that as the era of modernity wore on, the people of the world became more and more accustomed to the consequences of modernity: industrialization and mechanization.  In the first phase, most people didn't know what hit them and were bewildered by all of the new ideas.  By the twentieth century, the people were accustomed to the concept of innovation and therefore more comfortable when introduced to new technologies and even ways of life.  This idea, while introduced in the context of Berman's article is not new to me; the idea of people in the "old days" accustomed to simple technology in a modern city - such imaginings and lines of thought are familiar.  Berman's next point is also unsurprising: although more comfortable with the myriad of new innovations, the people of the last phase have, as he says, "...lost touch with the roots of its own modernity."  This alienation has been talked about since - and I say this for the purposes of keeping the discussion in a historical vein - approximately the 1950s.  A prime example is the emergence during this time of counterculture and anti-industrial movements (most prominently, the beatniks).

What is new for me here, then, is the existence of a glaring paradox - a contradiction which was most likely present there all along but which I noticed only recently.  By Berman's first argument, people became increasingly aware of their world and knowledgeable about it's inner workings; after all, what 16th century housewife would know how to operate a microwave or be able to type a document on Microsoft word?  But at the same time, people have become increasingly separated from their own world (to quote Berman: "...we seem to have forgotten how to grasp the modern life from which this [modern art] springs.").  How can people become more knowledgeable about their world - more steeped in its many complexities - and at the same become alienated from it?

This is an issue that we have touched upon several times in class.  I've decided that in this blog entry I will come up with my own reason for this alienation.

I think that there are several factors that have contributed to this phenomenon.  Following the historical vein once again, I think that the modern third phase is simply too distant time-wise from the beginning of modernization.  Despite any sort of traditions or heritage that may have been passed down across the generations, people today have simply forgotten about the source of the consumer force that drives their society today.  Another reason for the alienation, I think, is the loss of community.  I think that an important aspect of a successful community is the presence of a strong and personable authority figure.  While we still have personal figures - the president, members of the government, parents, etc. - much of what was once solely run by real people has been replaced by machines and other impersonal practices.  Where people once sought feedback from their authority figures and thereby strengthened the sense of comraderie and community, they now receive much less feedback - there is very little reciprocation.

All of these thoughts on the reason for this alienation does not give any solutions to the problem, however.  This is something that I hope to continue to ponder and hopefully to figure out.  

My first taste of consumption

While consumption has been an integral part of my life since the day that I was born, I've never considered it intellectually until this class.  To evaluate consumption is slightly overwhelming - how do I analyze something that is such an inherent part of the community that I live in?  Because it is an important aspect of my society, it shows up in many forms and is therefore hard to pinpoint and study.  

So in order to create some order in this madness, I have decided to first analyze consumption as an abstract notion - in other words, not in terms of the newest line of Gucci or the billboard by the highway.  This also means that I will dissect "consumption" into abstract concepts and analyze them as an intellectual exercise.  I think that I am drawn to this mode of evaluation because it is the one with which I am most familiar: like formulating a thesis for a paper in order to give it structure, I am trying to categorize the many facets of consumption in order to learn the way it ticks.

The first order in this intellectual exercise is to set some guidelines for the inquiry.  First off, there is the issue of the role of consumption in people's lives.  While some argue that consumption is merely an activity in an individual's life, others claim that it is the life itself - a lifestyle and culture with deep roots.  For the purpose of analyses, I will assume that consumption is a lifestyle.  I do this because I believe that this definition of consumerism is much more profound than that of merely selling and buying - of producing and consuming.  This broader definition has more factors to contemplate and is therefore more appropriate for the inquiry.

Secondly, my method, as noted above, will be to categorize the various aspects of consumerism that have been called to my attention through readings, etc. - especially of note is the reading Delectable Materialism: Second Thoughts on Consumer Culture by Michael Schudson.  Schudson also labels various approaches towards consumerism; more specifically, they are various critiques of the consumer lifestyle, and he calls them the Puritan, Quaker, Republican and Antibourgeois critiques.  My categorization will follow a similar pattern.  Instead of labeling by religious and social philosophy, however, I've decided to do so by individual-societal relationships.  In other words, I will categorize these various aspects of consumption by how they represent the relationships that individuals have with themselves, with each other, and with the greater society as a whole.  I thought that this would be especially appropriate because one of the purposes of this class, as mentioned on the first day, is to move from an individualistic to a societal understanding of consumerism.

The first area of consumerism up for analysis is depicted in what Schudson calls the "Puritan critique."  The Puritan "worries about whether people invest an appropriate amount of meaning in goods"(253).  To me, this is the personal aspect of consumerism in its purist form - it deals with an individual's relation with the good (the instrument) - which, according to the Puritans, is a spiritual experience.  The inherent value of an object depends solely on the position of the individual evaluating it.

The Quaker critique focuses on the "objectionable features of the products themselves, usually their wastefulness or extravagance."  At first glance, this approach seems to be a product-centered one; it seems to evaluate the products at face value - as objects.  Upon closer examination, however, the Quaker critique is also a type of personal consumerism relationship.  It is about how much and in what way an individual values the things he or she consumes.  Nonetheless, I will grant that it deals with personal relationships in a more indirect way than the Puritan critique - it is human spirituality as reflected through the objects of consumption.

The Republican critique moves past the confines of the individual and focuses on societal relationships - i.e. an individual's relationship with others.  As Schudson says, it is a critique of the "corrupting influence on public life of a goods orientation in private life."  So a Republican critic would consider the contribution that an individual consumer would have on the running of the greater society.  More particularly, it seems to assume a negative standpoint - highly anti-consumption: the consumer lifestyle ultimately "corrupts" the greater society.

The fourth and final critique - the antibourgeois - attacks the inhumanity of the consumer-driven economic system: "...however beneficent the economic system may appear from the side of consumption, it rests on the exploitation of workers in the capitalist system of production."  This, I feel, is the political perspective on consumerism; it deals with the class conflicts that are the necessary byproduct of such a society.  Unlike the other critiques, which consist of relationships between individuals and others and the greater society, the antibourgeois critique takes into account the political and historical significance of consumer society.

Breaking up consumerism into these various veins of thought has certainly afforded me with a deeper understanding of this new type of society.  I have found that categorizing the different perspectives on consumer society, and then comparing the groups - an almost Aristotelian method of analysis - is a great way to start my journey of intellectual discovery in this class.