Spaces of Consumption
How have the places where we shop shaped our lives?
You’re not a person anymore, did you know that? In our modern political and economic language, we tend to talk about ourselves less in terms of our humanity than in terms of the role we expect to serve in society.
Corporations and governments don’t often call you what you are — a human being with dreams, fears, and a family. They call you by what they want you to do. You’re an end user. A voter. A worker.
Perhaps most of all, they call you a consumer. You’re probably so used to being called a consumer that you don’t really think about it very much. But calling ourselves consumers — rather than citizens, Americans, or just people — has pernicious effects. Studies have found that, when people think of themselves as consumers, they’re less likely to cooperate or share. A consumer mentality makes people less inclined to sacrifice and collaborate as citizens and more interested in getting a “good deal” from the government.
Though there’s growing pushback against referring to Americans as consumers, we do spend a lot of our time, money, and energy consuming. Modern people — especially Americans — accumulate a staggering amount of stuff. Our houses have more than doubled in size since the 1950s, but more than a third of us rent storage units because we…
