The Birth of a Consumer Society? Dr Chris Pearson Slide 2 Slide
3 Lecture questions: How and why did a consumer society emerge in
France over the course of the nineteenth century? What were the
meanings given to consumerism? Slide 4 Lecture outline Emergence of
a consumer society Gender and consumerism Reactions to consumerism
Slide 5 Society of mass consumption: a radical division between the
activities of production and of consumption, the prevalence of
standardized merchandise sold in large volume, the ceaseless
introduction of new products, widespread reliance on money and
credit, and ubiquitous publicity. Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds
(1982), 3 Slide 6 Once people glimpse the vision of commodities in
profusion, they do not easily return to traditional modes of
consumption We who have tasted the fruits of the consumer
revolution have lost our innocence. Rosalind Williams, Dream Worlds
(1982), 3 Slide 7 Consumer Society Desire for and consumption of
mass- produced goods Consumer choice targeted by marketing and
publicity Individual and social identities (partly) based on
consumption Cultural as well as economic aspects Slide 8 The roots
of French consumer society (1) Last decades of the ancien rgime,
Parisians became part of a consumer society bed linen, plates,
mirrors Changes in clothing servants and artisans aping upper
classes aspiration for higher standard of living Daniel Roche,
People of Paris (1987) Slide 9 The roots of French consumer society
(2) 1840s (final decade of July Monarchy) Economic changes:
expansion of railways, new industries, mechanisation of textiles
Social changes: increased education Market for cheap publications
and clothing David Pinkney, The Decisive Years in France (1986)
Slide 10 Balzac on the grocer: He is civilization in a shop,
society in a paper bag. His is Enlightenment in action, life itself
distributed in bottles, packets and jars. Slide 11 Symbol of
consumer society during the Second Empire : Le Bon march department
store The roots of French consumer society (2) Slide 12 Louvre
department store, opened 1855 Slide 13 Universal Exposition 1855
Slide 14 Slide 15 The economics behind the rise of the mass
consumer society Development of mass produced goods and falling
labour costs Rising wages and falling food prices A Parisian worker
who had 100 francs to spend in 1850 had the equivalent of 165
francs by the early years of the twentieth century Slide 16 Main
features of the mass consumer society Democratization of luxury? No
- different model of consumption, complete with advertising, mass
entertainment (cinema, cafes etc), parks, and new mass-produced
goods Consumption in central Paris, production pushed to the
outskirts Slide 17 The Printemps department store, est. 1865 Slide
18 Slide 19 From the ceiling were suspended rugs from Smyrna with
complicated patterns that stood out from the red background. Then,
from the four sides, curtains were hung.and still more rugs, which
could serve as wall hangings, strange flowering of peonies and
palms, fantasy released in a garden of dreams. Zola, Au bonheur des
dames, 122-3 Slide 20 Slide 21 Slide 22 Slide 23 Department stores
and identity Late 19C Paris: population united by shared experience
of visual spectacle (Schwartz, Spectacular Realities [1999]) Bon
march reflected and shaped middle class identities being bourgeois
meant having the right clothes, furnishings etc (Miller, The Bon
march [1981]) Slide 24 Slide 25 Site of the former Dufayel store in
the 18 th arrondissement (now a bank) Slide 26 Slide 27 Slide 28
Slide 29 The aims of advertising: To inform, to create need and
desire, and to convince consumers that the advertiser could best
meet those needs. Leora Auslander, Taste and Power, p.354 Slide 30
Slide 31 Advertising absolutely should modify its language and
style according to the class of society that it intends to affect.
Advertisers must learn to speak differently to the financier than
to the secondhand shoe salesmen La Publicit moderne (1906) Slide 32
Slide 33 Slide 34 Gender and Consumerism (1) Female department
store clerks image of them as sexually and morally suspect Pierre
Giffard (1882): they were a group of women who inevitably became
depraved or deprave others. Not quite working class, not quite
bourgeois Slide 35 Gender and consumerism (2) Bourgeois female
shoppers caused anxiety Blurred boundaries between public and
private spheres Fearless female shopper vs. dutiful and passive
housewife Female shoppers created bourgeois class identity Walton,
France at the Crystal Palace (1992) Slide 36 Gender and consumption
(3) Ligue sociale dactetuers (or Social league of consumers) Run by
Catholic women aiming to bring Catholic morality to the market
place Educate elite shoppers to better the lot of the working
classes M.-E. Chessel, Women and the Ethics of Consumption in
France in F. Trentmann (ed). The Making of the Consumer (2005)
Slide 37 Criticizing consumerism Traditionalists lamenting cult of
individual and other facets of the modern consumer society Supposed
aesthetic decline of France mass produced goods replaced luxury
items Sociologists such as Pierre Maroussem lamented decline of
artisan workshops and exploitative practices of department stores
Slide 38 Taming consumerism The love of fashion, when it is
regulated by reason and guided by a sure and delicate taste,
becomes a lovely form of art, the most feminine of the arts. And it
is also a social good. Marcelle Tinayre in Femina (1910) Slide 39
The importance of taste In the vision of market representatives,
taste fundamentally transformed consumption from a social hazard
into a social good through the subordination of self-interest to
higher aesthetic and moral goals. Taste, in short, not only
civilized the market by creating civic-minded consumers, but
conferred on the market the power to civilize: to further refine
French taste. Lisa Tiersten, Marianne in the Marketplace (2001),
233
