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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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Signs of the Times Australia / NZ edition — lifestyle, health, relationships, culture, spirituality, people — published since 1886 |
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Shopping has become a national and international pastime. True, the exchange of products in various forms has been a part of civilised society back to the beginning of recorded history, but only in the past century has shopping become such an all-consuming activity. Indeed, it is intriguing to realise how many of the shopping practises we take for granted are relatively recent developments. For example, the first supermarkets opened in the 1930s, although this style of shopping did not become popular until after World War 2.
This is the cultural history presented by Thomas Hine in I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers. In fact, Hine argues, shopping has been elevated to such a position in our society that it is the underpinning of our economic, social and entertainment systems. Hine examines shopping and its history from nine different perspectives. He sees in shopping expressions of power, responsibility, discovery, self-expression, insecurity, attention, belonging, celebration and convenience.
However, each of these motivations for shopping ultimately leads to the same situation: “We’re all buying more or less the same chair,” writes Hine. “But we’re doing so for sixty-two different reasons. . . . We are engaged in a mania of consumption. More and more people own houses that are larger and larger, and ever more crowded with stuff.”
Hine describes contemporary society as an ever-expanding “Buy-o-sphere” in which the avenues for shopping are becoming more numerous. He considers the emerging role of the Internet for more targeted advertising online shopping. The Buy-o-sphere is an all-pervasive realm of temptation and consumption.
Of particular interest is the evolution of contemporary economies to the point where the report of consumer spending is one of the most anticipated economic indicators. The focus on such information as important to economic health has inverted the historical emphasis on carefulness in times of hardship or emergency. In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, shoppers—particularly in the US—“were encouraged to think of their purchases as a blow against terrorists.” So now, we’re told, we can go shopping for the good of our country: here’s shopping as a patriotic act.
But, as it is, that’s how the system works. “Most people are able to convince themselves, at least temporarily, that it is absolutely crucial to buy items they don’t really need. Indeed, our economic health depends on shoppers’ ceaseless lust for the inessential.” In this regard, the primary role of advertising is to manufacture insecurity, the lurking suspicion that our lives are somehow incomplete and that the particular product promoted is just the answer to that lack.
Hine devotes a chapter to Christmas and the role it plays in the shopping year: one-third of each year’s retail spending happens in the six weeks over the Christmas season.
However, Hine again points out the relatively recent origins of Christmas as we know it. He also investigates the complex maze of gift shopping and its social function, when we are told the value of gifts and how much care we take in choosing and wrapping them are indicators of the worth we recognise in the relationship. It is another intriguing facet of our shopping habits.
When reaching back into pre-history, which it does particularly in the early stages of the book, I Want That! places too much unquestioned reliance upon evolutionary theory. This is a flaw in Hine’s arguments, which he recognises to an extent.
In discussing supposed pre-civilisation origins, he comments, “These speculations are amusing, but they rest on shaky underpinnings . . . the hunter-gatherer hypothesis is an oversimplification that is becoming less useful to anthropologists—if not marketers—every day.” It is an admission that calls into question significant components of his earlier conclusions.
However, I Want That . . . is an intriguing study. It is concise and insightful, revealing much background for many of our shopping habits that often go unquestioned in contemporary society.
With shopping such a dominant aspect of many of our lives, I Want That! gives us cause to stop, think and question—and that is both necessary and worthwhile.
I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers—A Cultural History, Thomas Hine, HarperCollins Publishers, 2002, 222 pages.
Extract from Signs of the Times, July 2003.
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