Austerity and everyday life: Perspectives on practices of consumption and thrift

Alison Hulme, University of Northampton, Waterside campus, University Drive, Northampton NN1 5PH, UK.

Email: alison.hulme@northampton.ac.uk

States from the Puritan fathers to Voluntary Simplicity and up to the present, but essentially concludes that consumerism is the stronger historical strand and that consumers always returned to their previous habits (Witkowski, 2010). Calder (2013) calls these depictions of declining thrift 'the myth of lost economic virtue', but makes the point that it has not stood up well against more recent historical accounts that acknowledge contrary evidence and posit thrift as 'a surprisingly adaptable ethos operating across time and economic contexts' (p. 362). For Calder (2013), thrift is dynamic and versatile, and if only we could see the extent to which this has been the case throughout history, we could also see how it does not only belong to 'Puritans and moralists, but also to peasants, monks, revolutionaries, conservationists, environmentalists, civil rights activists, philanthropists, social protesters, and others committed to an ethos of restraint' (pp. 363–364). One could add to this that consumption too can be claimed by various historical strands and practices and is not thrift's Other in any simplistic sense, as the case studies that form part of this Special Issue will show.

Alongside the established narrative in which thrift slides into consumerism is the equally established and related narrative in which an age of scarcity gives way to an age of abundance. This asserts that the consumer revolution came about as a result of increased production due to industrialization and the mechanization it entailed, alongside increased demand for the products produced created by advertising and the Veblen-esque desire of lower social classes to emulate higher ones (Veblen, 1994 [1899]). These two phenomena are now broadly accepted to require one another if they are to explain the consumer revolution – rising availability of goods and rising ability to pay for them alone is no longer considered a viable explanation without the important addition of attitudinal change.

Most famously, Neil McKendrick et al. (1984) assert that social emulation was the key motive for the increased propensity to consume which was an essential factor in the Industrial (and therefore consumer) revolution (p. 11). For McKendrick then, Veblen's conspicuous consumption was the major driver in the consumer revolution and it was therefore the rich who led the revolution as their spending provoked the consumer desire of the middle classes and theirs in turn that of the lower classes. For him, social emulation saw the pursuit of luxuries rather than what Adam Smith calls 'decencies', and decencies rather than necessities (McKendrick, 1984: 98). He attributes this emulation to the onset of fashion in the middle of the 18th century and the speed with which trends suddenly started changing with regularity when previously they had remained stable for long periods. This narrative tends to portray the 1920s as the watershed moment when the

nineteenth century 'producer ethic' – an ethos of restraint, thrift, and work, arising from conditions of scarcity – was surpassed by a twentieth century 'consumer ethic' that took abundance for granted and found expression in lifestyles of release, therapeutic indulgence, and fun. (Calder, 2013: 357)

Underlying this 'myth of lost economic virtue', as typified by the work of Galbraith, Tucker and Bell who insist on a slide from frugality to spending, is a normative economic history that posits a shift from scarcity to abundance. This shift is typified by Simon Patten's (1968) argument that America went from being a society of scarcity to one of abundance, David Potter's (1954) insistence that American history and its 'national character' emerged from an economy of abundance, and again John Kenneth Galbraith's (1958) famous warning that the vociferous chasing of private wealth was based specifically upon the premise of an affluent society. The positing of history as a slide into degenerate spending due to an era of abundance unfortunately also enables the promotion of thrift as frugality on decidedly moral grounds. It is then not surprising that historically and in current times, thrift and consumption have both been aligned with moralizing discourses on individual responsibility. This is evident through political rhetoric, from Victorian self-help ideas, to wartime duty, to Keynesian economic necessity to consume, to current-day emphasis on individual economic responsibility of those on low incomes. All emphasize the need for individuals to behave in financially responsible ways if the economy is to survive. Under the current austerity, thrift is promoted as virtuous, moral and honourable in ways entirely comparable to Victorian ethics and their emphasis on the 'respectable poor' who although unable to attain 'niceties' managed to procure 'decencies' as well as necessities.

Of course, consumption has always been tied up with morals, but thrift as thriving has the ability to promote an ethics for living, as opposed to a more righteous kind of morality. This righteous morality can come from the political Right and Left; for example, it can be Puritanical (Right), or it can be the anti-capitalist morals of the Frankfurt School and its current-day equivalents (Left). Briefly, this latter can be seen as beginning with Veblen (1994 [1899]) and his insistence that consumption is motivated by false and shallow values, leading to wasteful and extravagant consumption that diverts capital from 'useful' ends. It was then taken up by Frankfurt School theorists such as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1997), and influenced Jean Baudrillard (2005) and more recent scholars. One constant theme is that the desire for commodities is about the pressures of modernity and some kind of malaise within society itself, that is, that consuming is some form of 'medicine' for human subjects struggling to live in current times. This stance, broadly speaking, comes not only from cultural elites who blame the 'fakeness' of mass culture but also from liberals who see it as symptomatic of the alienating nature of consumer capitalism, and indeed capitalism more generally.

As Wilk argues, moral debate about consumption is an essential and ancient part of human politics, and an inevitable consequence of the unique way human relationships with the material world have developed. Therefore, 'there is no question that moralizing about consumption can be strategically deployed during class conflict, inter-ethnic strife, nationalist or fundamentalist agitation, religious anti-secularism, and even trade negotiations' (Wilk, 2001: 246). As McKendrick, Brewer

and Plumb (1984) point out, academics are all too easily unwitting accomplices in this ideological warfare, and need to be more aware of the ways in which this happens in order to better resist it. For many academics, this has meant a backlash against Frankfurt School fears about 'false needs' and 'manufactured desires', and a rebellion in the form of an acceptance of consumerism, or even a positing of consumerism as about choice and agency. Such backlash forgets the extent to which structures curtail peoples' buying and indeed non-buying habits and can easily fall into the trap of treating consuming as an uncomplicated act of agency, free of any socio-political limits or issues. What is more useful is analysis that recognizes a sense of agency on the part of the consumer while contemporaneously acknowledging the way in which celebrating consumptive choices as agency can all too easily become part of the more general imposition of the market upon society, as exemplified by Milton Friedman's now-classic argument that consumptive choices are related to democracy (Friedman, 1962).

Wilk's position provides a useful middle ground or, rather, is usefully different to both the spending as evil and spending as agency arguments. Rather than condemning the moral thread, he suggests that consumption is in essence a moral matter, 'since it always and inevitably raises issues of fairness, self versus group interests, and immediate versus delayed gratification' (Wilk, 2001: 246). So, while recognizing the worst aspects of morality on consumption, he also makes a case for maintaining morals, specifically in light of consumption practices that are 'socially, ecologically and personally destructive' (Wilk, 2001: 246). Usefully distinguishing between the economic aspects and the failure to acknowledge agency in the work of Marx (2013), Wilk (2001) argues that Marx's critique of consumer capitalism falls within the same moralistic tradition of social self-criticism, and that the concept of commodity fetishism causes us to disregard what people have to say about their own consumption and view all their desires as somehow 'false' (p. 248). However, importantly, he goes on to say that Marx's rationale is preferable to Veblen's or Freud's (1927), because he sees the desire for commodities as part of an economic system which exploits some and rewards others. 'Marx's moralism was therefore essentially political rather than social (Veblen) or personal (Freud)' (Wilk, 2001: 248).

This special issue looks at thrift and consumption as practices within everyday life, specifically in the context of the current austerity. In doing so, it aims to explore the way thrift is used in the West, in order to compare, contrast and gain understanding and inspiration into the ways consumption can be subversive, and thrift can be reclaimed in order to question austerity measures and create new solutions. It will focus on the impact of specific thrifty (or more accurately – frugal) and consumptive practices on specific groups within society.

Alan Bradshaw and Jacob Ostberg's paper asks whether the critique of consumerism is a fetish, entirely consistent with a brutal ideology of austerity. In 'Blaming Consumers: Ideology and European Austerity', they analyse the ideology of austerity as it spreads across Europe and reappears across diverse discourses. In particular, they discuss how it mobilizes the figure of the feckless

consumer, who has overspent, and will repent and accept austerity not just as an inevitable outcome of bad decisions but as holding the potential for moral redemption. For them, it is this logic at the level of the individual that enables governments to perpetuate austerity and the macros level. Bradshaw and Ostberg develop their argument by contrasting a Swedish television programme called Luxury Trap with the so-called 'bail-out' of the Irish state, as well as broader experiences of a pan-European discourse. Their paper seeks to persuade the reader that the prominence of what Lazzarato (2015) terms the negative subjection of the 'indebted man' has come to the forefront of current ideology.

In 'Intensive Mothering in Hard Times', Benedetta Cappellini, Vicki Harman and Elizabeth Parsons explore data collected as part of a specific study into mothers on low incomes and their attempts to make ends meet, especially in light of the guilt and responsibility they feel on an individual level. They look at Italian and British mothers on low or reduced incomes and particularly observe the ways in which they internalize intensive mothering discourses through a process of ethical self-formation. By interviewing and observing participants during their everyday food shopping, everyday coping strategies in the supermarket and the home and how these relate to the individual's identity with motherhood are explored. Their paper explains how this self-formation involves detailed self-surveillance and self-discipline and a constant negation of their own needs in place of other individual family members, and indeed the family as a whole. They provide an analysis of contradictory emotional effects such as pride and self-worth alongside stress and anxiety, developing a theory that mothers under austerity operate within an 'optimistic affective regime' in order to make sense of these contradictory effects and retain a sense of agency and control over their lives and those of their families. This is not to say though that Cappellini et al. see this way of managing as acceptable. Indeed, they argue that such affective regimes may be pernicious in their effects, causing mothers to be held in a kind of relation with their own lives from which they are unable to escape and which is usually unfulfilling. Importantly, they tie this scenario to current austerity, arguing that such strategies of 'doing good mothering', by enacting practices of self-control and disciplining the self, lead to more traditional gender inequalities being reinstated in the low-income home.

Tania Lewis' paper looks at positive stewardship of waste in Northern suburbs of Melbourne. She describes how suburban households are often caricatured in the Australian media as spaces of political disengagement, privatization and hyper-consumerism, but is keen to point out how in recent years major Australian cities have become home to a range of grassroots movements and practices – from urban farming and backyard permaculture to food hubs and neighbourhood swap schemes. Such practices aim to create alternatives to mainstream commodity consumption. Lewis looks specifically at one such practice, that of kerbside sharing and reuse of hard waste such as old furniture. Her paper discusses the findings of video-based ethnographic research undertaken with a wide range of households in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne. Her analysis is centred on the perceived

changing norms and values around responsibility and 'stewardship' of discarded commodities, and issues of sustainable and 'ethical' consumption. Essentially, she argues that such practices mark the emergence of an everyday materialism that is very much linked to local cultures and value systems that aim to challenge existing capitalist economies while intersecting with them.

Depictions of de-cluttering in Australian popular culture is the central topic of Susie Khamis' paper. Her paper argues that over the past decade of popular culture, the idea of thrift has been reimagined as 'Zen-like and stylish eschewal of clutter, surplus goods and the disposable ephemera of mindless consumerism' typified by contemporary interest in and emphasis on 'wellness' and 'mindful' living. For Khamis, this tends to be framed in positive 'uplifting' ways and, unlike the Occupy movement, is based on the logic of political economy rather than pop psychology. De-cluttering then reflects an (apparently) highly sophisticated position in which individuals are in charge of their own consumptive choices and are seen as having almost complete agency. This ridding of the negative connotations of thrift (e.g. as miserly or serious), to be replaced by uplifting depictions of it (as fun, chic and ethical), is what Khamis very usefully calls the 'aestheticization of thrift'.

In her paper 'Mother, consumer, trader: Gendering the commodification of second-hand economies since the recession', Emma Waight explores how in Western contexts, 'hand-me-down' and sharing economies of children's clothes, toys and equipment remain one of the most normalized cultures of second-hand consumption. In particular, she analyses the strategies used by mothers to realize the most economic value from these economies in current austere times with the increased possibilities offered by the democratization of informal buying and selling spaces. Drawing on an ethnographic study of mothers participating in nearly new sales in the United Kingdom, her paper provides an analysis of the complicated and competing moral logics that influence mothers' everyday consumption, use and disposal of children's goods. Waight argues that the provision of material goods for children is a 'thrifty skill' as mothers think of future re-sale value as well as immediate value, and in doing so are attempting to keep pace with the 'commodification of childhood'.

Finally, the editor's own paper explores the attitudes of pound/dollar store shoppers and the ways in which what she calls 'consumptive thrift' (spending to save) has become embedded in popular culture. In 'The hedonic delights of frugality: Pound store shopping in austere times', Hulme provides an analysis of ethnography carried out in low-income parts of south-east London with those who regularly shop in pound stores. Her article posits that there is a culture of bargain seeking that is unique to the current era and quite unlike previous eras in its outright admission of seeking quantity and disposability. The importance of spontaneity and the guilt-free spend are analysed in light of the emphasis on the individual to be able to emphasize their economic autonomy and creative choices in a way that aids the economy while maintaining individual economic responsibility.

As a collection of papers then, this special issue aims to re-assess thrift (specifically in the light of consumption) and re-claim it from the highly moralistic

discourses and ideologies that have so often made use of it. On a more pragmatic level, it aims to explore current everyday practices of consumption and thrift and the ways in which they can create new relationships with consumption and our sense of economic responsibility. So, it is an attempt to escape both the 'pro' and 'anti' consumption stances, and instead to focus on ridding both consumerism and thrift of moralizing rhetoric. As such, it seeks to challenge the way thrift has been hi-jacked by historical and present-day rhetoric of austerity, and ask new questions about what consumerism means by taking inspiration from a variety of thrifty practices in various locations.