First published in the UK in 2013 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2013 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2013 Rami Gabriel
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the
British Library.
Cover designer: Holly Rose
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Melanie Marshall
Typesetting: Planman Technologies
ISBN 978-1-84150-644-9
EISBN 978-1-84150-777-4
Printed and bound by Hobbs the Printers Ltd, UK
To Hani and Olfat,
For bringing us to the New World.
The single name that appears on the cover of a book is a bit misleading. Rather than being considered the author of the book, it is more accurate to consider that name to represent the compiler, or lead strategist of the book, for nothing is done alone.
I have been extremely fortunate while writing this book to be a member of the Humanities, History, and Social Sciences department in the school of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Columbia College Chicago. My colleagues provided expertise, guidance, and support. Many of the fields of research I engage in in this book were fairly new to me and required reading in a number of areas within which I had little familiarity, the direction provided by my colleagues cannot be overstated, I thank them all.
Stephen T. Asma and Tom Greif in the Research Group in Mind, Science, and Culture are great friends and mentors, whose intellectual breadth, moral support, and wisdom are invaluable. The following colleagues provided expertise and insight throughout: Kim McCarthy (Psychology), Andrew Causey (Anthropology), Kate Hamerton (French History), Joan Erdman (Anthropology), Glennon Curran (Law), Teresa Prados-Torreira (American History), Julia Brock (American History), Robert Watkins (Political Science), Anthony Madrid (Poetry), Peter Khooshabeh (Psychology), Rojhat Avsar (Economics), Christena Cleveland (Psychology), Liza Oliver (Art History), Jeremy Thorpe (Theoretical Physics). Our past chairs Lisa Brock and Cadence Wynter along with Dean Deborah Holdstein provided steadfast support over the last four years. Our current chair Steven Corey provided support for this book during its final indexical stage, I thank him.
My family (and especially my mother, father, and sister Dina) have been involved throughout the process of writing this book, supplying me with translations (thank you, Gabman inc.), love, laughter, sustenance, and shelter, I thank them endlessly. Liza Oliver edited each chapter and provided outstanding advice, insight, and emotional supportI thank her. The past four years of hard work would have been intolerable without the respite and reward of music and friendship, I thank the following musicians and friends for their talent and the indelible camaraderie of trying to create something beautiful: Beau Sample, Steve Gibons, Alfonso Ponticelli, Peter Khooshabeh, Bryan Pardo, Gil Alexander, Jake Sanders. Also, the city of Chicago, its great public institutions, and its talented denizens, a blanket thank you to the best city in America.
This book began in 2007 as a paper on a panel with Andrew Causey and Bill Hayashi at the Chicago Cultural Center. It has developed into what it is today through discussion with friends and colleagues, observation, papers given at The International Interdisciplinary Social Sciences conference in Athens, Greece in 2009, University of Illinois, Carbondale in 2009, the Unitarian community in Winnetka in 2010, the popular culture association in San Antonio, TX in 2011, publication in the Journal of International Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, and, of course, reference to the mountains of knowledge compiled by other scholars. I hope that this book can be as helpful to someone as other books have been to me.
Completion of the empirical project reported in chapter six depended upon collaboration with my undergraduate mentees as part of the Undergraduate Research Mentorship Initiative. Jordan Compis was an ideal mentee; her work speaks for itself, always clear, efficient, and on time. Michael Haas was a mentee during the initial stages of the project. Roger Dimitrov provided excellent consultation on all matters statistical. The actual advertisements we analyzed were secured through the diligence and kindness of Karim Gabriel (our man in Cairo) and the Zamalek sector of the Gabriels. Many of the French advertisements were secured by Hani Elias Saba Gabriel. Dr. Mona Abaza from the Department of Sociology at American University of Cairo was a gracious resource for this chapter. Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer of the book manuscript and my ever-reliable editor Melanie Marshall at Intellect books. Thank you to Holly Rose for her collaborative spirit in building the cover of the book. And thank you to the Columbia College Chicago library for supporting my research.
Every step in the writing of this book depended upon the assistance of other people. But the mistakes, they depend solely on my oversight.
This is a book about the relationship between the self and consumer society in America. There are many books and articles that explain consumerism in the twentieth century through politics, economics, and sociology. This book is about both the psychological roots of consumer society in the selfwhy we buyand the reciprocal influences between self and society.
My personal relation to these questions may shed light on the approach I ultimately take. As a disaffected teenagerespecially during my ten-year sojourn in CaliforniaI conceptualized consumption as a simple and somewhat mindless activity that entailed the playing out of messages programmed into consumers by an increasingly monolithic corporate culture. I found this state of affairs to be a sad substitute for more authentic, traditional, and family-based emotional experiences. The meaning I derived from life came mostly from family, intellectual endeavors, interaction with other disaffected youths, and the joy, depth, and release of music.
My view of consumption reflected my position in society, first as a rebellious teenager and then later as a struggling graduate student living in an affluent city. During that period, I did not buy on principle because, by and large, objects did not do anything for me. I say by and large because there were a few things that I collected intently: books, cassettes, and CDs. Somehow, these did not seem like commodities to me, rather I thought of them as vital components of my education; for example, I just needed to know who John Coltrane was and I simply had to read the nineteenth-century nihilists for the sake of curiosity. Within the context of my life, there was something about these artists that resonated with who I was and what I cherished; these objects and the ideas within them did something for me at a deep level. Getting the new record of my favorite band was exciting, finding a used copy of a book of French poetry was exciting; these objects were not a superficial part of my life.
Looking back at the relationship I had with these objects in the context of the study of the nature of consumption I engaged in for this book, it becomes apparent to me that what was central to my acts of consumption was the meaning the objects had in my life as a part of my identity as a budding intellectual and musician. After contextualizing my own consumption habits with their intrinsic social meaning, it became harder to see consumption as a sad substitute for other emotional experiences, or as brainwashing by corporate monsters. I read books and studied music so that I could interact with intelligent and learned people at an appropriate level; my consumption had a social context. Once I began to appreciate this, it became easier to see how other acts of consumption could be viewed in the same light; consumption was a means of creating meaning for each consumer within his or her own social context and, in particular, in terms of his or her identity.
