On Sat, 14 Nov 2009, Eric Beck wrote:
> My poorly formulated objection here has been to talking about
> consumption in terms of identity: these people consume these things.
Surely if you absolutize it like that it's wrong. But isn't that a straw man? To say that a person's entire identity is solely determined by a small set of consumption goods and leisure time activities is wrong by definition; personal identity is by nature complex and has to account for all sides of us. But would you deny that your leisure time activities and discretionary choices are part of how you express who you are?
More specifically, you recently posted on a Facebook a long list of things you'd done on one day of your vacation. By definition, they were all leisure time activities. Now imagine someone were to ask themselves, "What sort of a person is Eric?" and then read that wide-ranging list of consumption activities on Facebook. Don't you think she would learn something of who you are? To be sure, she couldn't know you from the mere recital of a list. You can't really know someone without, well, knowing them. But I daresay this list of leisure time activities reveals more about you, is more informative and more intriguing, than a similarly detailed list of your paid workday activities. (And if the reverse is true, it would be the exception that tells much about you: you've got a much different job than the rest of us!)
To me that seems to mean that consumption goods and leisure time activities (which are really two poles of one process) are signs of your identity. No?
So what's the objection? That our class position, determined by our place in the production and distribution process, places real bounds on our consumption choices? No argument from me there -- or from anyone else, I don't think. But I don't see how that invalidates the sifting of consumption activities for meaning. Or gainsays that they are signs of collective identities. Or that individual identities are at least partly expressed through the way we each mix and match among them. And perhaps especially in the ways we on the individual level harmonize tastes that on the collective level are perceived as being in opposition. Or vv.
Michael