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KrisisJournal for contemporary philosophy

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ANDREA RDIG

THE CORE PROBLEMS OF CAPITALISM HAVE NOTHING TO DOWITH CONSUMPTIONDANIEL MILLER ON THE CRITIQUE OF CONSUMPTION ANDTHE WISDOM OF ANTHROPOLOGY

Krisis, 2012, Issue 1www.krisis.eu

One of the most intricate issues concerning consumerism and consumerculture is the question as to why we humans are so persistently attractedby buyable objects. Even the most ordinary shopping is characterized byan internal tension. There is hard to catch emotional drive in the act ofpurchasing, and also in the artifacts themselves, which are never only justgood(s) to use.

Countless theories try to explain and to unveil the bewitching power ofconsumer goods; they may draw on the now classical Marxist model ofcommodity fetishism, or on concepts such as psychological addiction ormarketing-seduction. One of the most compelling books Ive read in thiscontext is Daniel Millers A Theory of Shopping, for it combines empiricmodesty with dazzling unconventional hypotheses about what shoppingis.

Being rooted in anthropology, Miller explains the different ways of shop-ping behavior that he observed during an empirical study in 76 house-

holds in North London as expression of an underlying cosmology. Millersbook leads to the seemingly paradox, yet highly intense conclusion thatshopping resembles a religious ritual of devotion and sacrifice. Even if the

homology of sacrifice and shopping is not convincing in every respect, bybinding the act of consumption back to archaic societal structures, Milleris able to capture something of its hidden significance.

Daniel Miller, since long professor of material culture at UCL London,describes himself as an extremist anthropologist. In A Theory of Shop-

pinghe aims to undermine ordinary concepts and prejudices against con-sumption profoundly. In fact, it is one of his main objectives to disturb thenotion of shopping as hedonist and materialist behavior or, as he puts it,to oppose the myth of materialism and hedonistic greed (Miller 1998, 71).In contrast, he switches perspective in order to approach consumerismdifferently. This shift may resemble Michel Foucaults rejection of thehermeneutic question of what is it; accordingly, Miller does not claim to

ask what stuff means, but how stuff matters (see Miller 2010, 125). Allthe many studies on clothing, media, cars or homes which he undertookin regions as the Caribbean, India and London are deeply characterized bya wholehearted empathy towards his research-subjects. He never judges,especially not about taste or behavior.

It is a specific concept of the material world that substantiates Millers re-search and perspective. Contrary to representational theory, Miller claimsthat goods were not representations of meaning or signs of social distinc-tion but, in the first place, media of relationship. He uses Hegel's term ofobjectification to underline the so to say ontological dimension ofthe argument. People create themselves through the medium of stuff

(Miller 2010, 99). Objects not only mediate the self-relation of the subject,they also mediate its relation to others. Miller often argues that in his re-search he found those people, who are fond of things, in general are alsomore sociable. A strong relationship to others often associates with fulfil-ling relationships to the material world (e.g. Miller 2010, 87).

A second pillar of Millers theory of the material world is the convictionthat objects themselves are actors. As he argues, the creation of object andsubject, or of thing and user, is mutual. Miller emphazises a humility of

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KrisisJournal for contemporary philosophy Andrea Rdig Interview with Daniel Miller

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things. As subtle frames of everyday life they determine and form us in amuch more fundamental way than we usually notice. His close descrip-tions of urban dwellings in his book The Comfort of Thingsmakes clear,

that, we relate to things not in a freely chosen manner. Taste in things,preferences or likings are rooted in a deeper logic than the far too superfi-cial saying of the flat as mirror of the personality is able to express.Against this background the home-stories in The Comort of Thingsthat,at first glance, seem to be quite harmless unfold a captivating and radicalcharacter.

I do not seek for purity and principle Miller claims (Miller 2010, 156). Ex-actly the pretended easiness of his approach to material culture seems tocreate most challenging outcomes. This is, maybe, the inherent power ofclose description: It paradoxically creates a difference by observing in acompletely affirmative manner.

Literature

Miller, Daniel (1998) A Theory of Shopping. Ithaca / New York

Miller, Daniel (2009) The Comfort of Things. Cambridge.

Miller, Daniel (2010) Stuff. Cambridge.

Andrea Rdig: A great deal of your work is about a compassionate under-standing of the relationship of humans and stuff. Most of your theses likeshopping is love or people who like things are more sociable etc., op-

pose to a comfortable critique of commodities and a too easy disdain ofconsumption. What is wrong with the critique of consumption? You seemto find it hypocritical.

Daniel Miller: The idea that the critique of consumption is hypocritical isthat all those I know who make this critique actually assume in their ownlives a level of consumption that would appear extraordinary to any pre-vious generation. In short their actions do not support their words, andyet they dont seem to assume that they are shallow or deluded, but onlythat other people are. For the best evidence for the contradictions in thecritique see Kim Humphreys book Excess. But there are several brands ofcritique which I strongly support myself. One is the socialist critique ofconsumption inequalities, I value relatively equal consumption such as in

Norway and would bitterly critique unequal consumption that exists inmost countries, and I also support clear regulation banning forms of con-sumption and production that create climate change. My compassionateunderstanding is largely my interpretation of anthropology as an intrin-sically empathetic discipline.

There is indeed something uncanny about material things and our beingso attracted to them. What do you think are the deeper reasons psy-chologically/anthropologically for the mistrust in materialism? Is it afear of being overwhelmed by stuff, of being alienated or petrified? Andwhat is reasonable about this suspicion?

D.M.: The critique of materialism is as ancient as the ritual of sacrificewhich was once ubiquitous in human society. Before we consume we ex-pect to propitiate the sacred origins of the world we are about to use up inthe act of consumption. Consumption takes away from the world whileproduction adds to it, so it is not surprising that we are fearful of its con-sequences.

You do favour a dialectical theory of material culture, the process ofmodernity in itself therefore were contradictory. The objectification of

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the human via things is a realization of the self as well as alienation, andconsumerism produces benefits as well as damages. One of the destructiveconsequences of mass-consumption however is the incredible increase of

production of stuff, of waste and of environmental devastation. Whatwould an intelligent critique of consumption look like? (I wonder whatwill be the arguments in your new book Consumption and its Conse-quencesannounced for 2012.)

D.M.: The final chapter of Consumption and its Consequences is con-cerned with climate change. I do not think the solution is a lifestylechoice with people opting for green consumption, climate change is tooserious to be left to choice. I strongly believe that the proper response isinternational regulation largely at the point of production and whichprevents deleterious forms of production and ensures that these limits toproduction and thus consumption apply equally to the rich and the poor,for example no cars should be built over a certain engine size, and danger-

ous chemicals should be banned at the initial point of production.

Apart from environmental questions people complain about a psychicexhaustion by the too much, too fast, too often. It seems humans cannotendlessly adapt to a constantly expanding supply of goods and ideas. Orcan they?

D.M.: In my new book Digital Anthropology (Horst, H. and Miller, D.Eds., Berg 2012), I argue that the reason why we need an anthropologicalapproach is that notwithstanding the amazing speed of digital culture,still more amazing is our capacity to take it for granted as a humdrumaspect of daily life in a very short time, which shows just how quickly and

how much we do indeed adapt.

How does the theory of material culture reflect on the impact of the digi-tal revolution anyway? Apparently we are drifting towards a more andmore immaterial culture are digital data stuff or are they somethingelse? Does this immaterialism change the logic of consumer culture?

D.M.: It is an illusion to think that the digital is immaterial. From modu-larity within computers to the structural constraints in Facebook there is

as much material constraint on digital as non digital forms, some thingsbecome more and some less tangible, some more commoditised and oth-ers less. The digital needs to be comprehended as a rapid expansion in the

dialectics of culture more generally following the arguments made as tothe dialectical nature of pre-digital consumer culture.

In your book A Theory of Shopping you describe the every-day-consumption in North London as a quite female activity. However, in

your other research you scarcely mention gender-aspects of consump-tion. Do you, in your fieldwork, observe gender-differences in consumerbehaviour and the relation/attraction to things? If so, how would youcharacterize them?

D.M.: Actually A Theory of Shoppingis full of gender related conclusionsand analysis. Muchof it has to do with the ways in which roles such asmother and housewife are interpreted. But my point is that unlike some

gender studies I did not look for gender as a point of departure and cer-tainly have no essentially assumptions as to its character. Rather my workargued that in respect to shopping cultural factors such as feminism havebeen less effective than we might have thought and the cultural expecta-tions of distinct gender roles retain considerable force.

How should one put the question of gender in consumption without re-producing clichs?

D.M.: If ones evidence is that peoples practice such as shopping largelyconforms to a clich, then I think one should make no attempt to avoidthis, rather it should be highlighted and we return to good historical and

other research that helps explain where the clich comes from and why itpersists.

Usually critique of capitalism goes along with critique of consumption.Do you think one should we distinguish both, a critique of capitalism andcritique of consumption?

D.M.: I think the two critiques have very little to do with each other andshould be separated. The core problems with capitalism including its pro-

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pensity to inequality and to unethical abstraction of the interests of fi-nance have nothing to do with consumption. The problems of consump-tion as in alienation from massive consumer culture would still exist evenif the production was other than capitalism

What would you say is the essential difference between consumer- andnon-consumer cultures regarding the relationship to things?

D.M.: The main difference in consumer culture is that we lose the rela-tionship to things that we possessed when we were ourselves involved inmaking them, and we should look for ways to reengage with that sense ofcommitment to the particular, which may be through productive con-sumption. On the other hand by handing over production to mass pro-duction we gain a wealth of goods that a craft tradition is incapable of cre-ating. The impact of capitalism is an entirely separate question, inConsumption and its Consequences I give my own critique of political

economy, which tries to show that capitalism is far more complex andindeed confused and plural than is evident from more traditional cri-tiques of capitalism.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License (Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0). See http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/nl/deed.en formore information.

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