Writing

“The self embodies what the culture believes is humankind’s place in the cosmos: its limits, talents, expectations, and prohibitions… There is no universal, transhistorical self, only local selves.” –Philip Cushman, Why The Self is Empty

In the process of transforming the world into a corporate marketplace, globalisation sells mass-produced objects and lifestyles as replacements for local identities which have been lost or diluted. Corporate-designed consumer identities are marketed as universal, available at retail outlets worldwide. Material overconsumption and disregard for local environments is not the only earth-damaging aspect of this trend: losing connection to place, community, and history exacerbates the drive to dominate people and planet. Building identities on globalised consumer goods not only leaves people isolated, disempowered, and empty, it also makes them easily manipulated by corporate interests. They lose the motivation to hold corporations accountable for environmental and social recklessness, since challenges to corporate profits and hegemony are akin to personal attacks for consumers who hold deep loyalties to corporations. Dependence on corporate products and identification with corporate mythologies serve to indirectly justify any ‘necessary evil’ that might be connected with the consumption process.

By understanding ways in which globalisation replaces locally-based identities (connected to land, community, and history) with commodity-based identities (connected to products, lifestyles, and fantasies) I seek to connect some of the outer mechanisms of globalisation with its inner consequences on the human psyche.


The ‘Empty Self’ in a Fragmented Landscape

In his article Why the Self is Empty, Philip Cushman writes,

our terrain has shaped a self that experiences a significant absence of community, tradition, and shared meaning. It experiences these social absences ‘interiorly’ as a lack of personal conviction and worth, and it embodies the absences as a chronic, undifferentiated emotional hunger. [It] thus yearns to acquire and consume as an unconscious way of compensating for what has been lost: It is empty.

In addition to the human elements that Cushman mentions, in the modern world we also experience a disconnection to place – technology has muted the rhythms of the seasons and our bodies, transportation and communication have drastically changed the meaning of distance and time, unstable job markets uproot people from their ancestral homes or force them into long commutes, and even in areas where green spaces are available, children are often forbidden to play outside due to fears of perceived threats. Suburbanisation has subdivided regional identities into bite-sized pieces of individual property, easy to shuffle and re-place as necessary. As Erich Fromm observes, “the ego is felt as a thing we each possess, and… this ‘thing’ is the basis of our sense of identity.” Without a foundation rooted solidly to a sense of place, this identity is fragile and easy to manipulate.

Cushman goes on to note that “cultural conceptualizations and configurations of self are formed by the economies and politics of their respective eras.” Similarly, Fromm writes that “the norms by which society functions also mould the character of its members.” In our present economic system, people are valued for their labour and consumption, and land is valued as the site for it. The disconnection between the two reflects corporate globalisation’s need to constantly reconfigure its component parts. In order to facilitate this, people are taught to constantly reconfigure themselves independently of place, partly by being “becoming ‘filled up’ with food, consumer products, and celebrities,” and partly from “the need to experience new stimuli, because the old stimuli are flat and exhausted after but a short while.”

In their essay The All-Consuming Self, Allen Kanner and Mary Gomes describe the psychological results of constantly shifting imposed desires:

By the time [young people] reach adulthood, their authentic feelings are so well buried that they have only the vaguest sense that ‘something’ is missing. Having ignored their genuine needs for so long, they feel empty. But the emptiness is constantly denied.

Denying a sense of emptiness also reflects globalisation’s fragmenting effects: any psychological or physical malady is seen as anomalous and contained within the individual. If a person expresses a sense of emptiness, there is clearly something wrong with them and they are quickly advised on individualised treatments, usually forms of consumption themselves (exercise, therapy, medication, etc). Indeed, Fromm points out that

People who discuss their health do so with a proprietary feeling, referring to their sickness, their operations, their treatments – their diets, their medicines. They clearly consider that health and sickness are property.

If genes and ideas can be property, why not sickness and health? The process of externalising and possessing gives people a sense of control in an unpredictable world. The stability once afforded by deep connection to place – and its accompanying knowledge of land, weather, food, history, community, etc. – is now marketed in the form of life insurance and stock options.

It is not only security resold to ‘empty’ consumers after losing touch with the local. Products and lifestyles are extolled as a means for building identities and communicating them to the world. Single items, of course, cannot constitute an entire identity, but they can be easily mixed and matched, like modular furniture or clothing accessories, to create the desired whole.


Identity Built on Things and Lifestyles

In a study of consumer education, J. Benn observes that “consumption… becomes a means by which human beings communicate and interact. Consumption is part of children’s and young people’s education and socialization, and plays a role in the development of identity and self-image.” But as literary analyst David Walker asks, “can a subject construct itself freely by consuming the goods placed at its disposal?” In the context of modern globalisation, the answer is no. If we build our identities on the act of consumption, we are limited in who we can be by what we can consume. Consumerism’s illusion, as articulated by Allan Durning, is that “there is a product to solve each of life’s problems, indeed that existence itself would be satisfying and complete if only we bought the right things.”

Following this illusion, “having more and newer things each year has become not just something we want but something we need. The idea of more, of ever increasing wealth, has become the center of our identity and our security, and we are caught by it as the addict by his drugs.” As hardcore addicts often withdraw from and ultimately destroy their homes and relationships in pursuit of a fix, our consumption-addicted society has withdrawn from its connections to other organisms and is in the process of destroying the planet. And, like hardcore addicts in the throes of addiction, we cannot help ourselves: “[advertising] creates artificial needs within people that directly conflict with their capacity to form a satisfying and sustainable relationship with the natural world.”

Cushman compares modern advertising to the community-based forms of advice and guidance that have eroded in our increasingly individualised culture. Many marketers indeed believe they are providing people with a valuable service by offering countless ways of fulfilling the needs their industry has invented. For instance, in an era of bothersome multiculturalism, commodities have a useful homogenising effect: Andrew Lindridge, in examining the consumption habits of Indian immigrants living in Britain, argues that “the consumption of products… may provide a means to culturally identify with other groups of people, [particularly British Whites].” That immigrants need to consume in order to “identify” with mainstream culture reveals how deeply our identities are bound up with the processes of consumption.

Lindridge states that “if consumers buy products for their symbolic and social significance in supporting and reinforcing their self-identity, the individual has then imparted a sense of meaning into the product beyond its utilitarian uses.” Placing the origins of a “sense of meaning” with the consumer again reflects the individualising effects of capitalism: meaning has been embedded in an object by marketers, but it is a consumer’s responsibility if they accept that meaning.

Indeed, most items are sold as parts of identity packages. Commodities are advertised to express particular lifestyles, with the implication that the lifestyle ‘comes with’ the purchase of the item. According to Cushman, “customers buy life-style in vain attempts to transform their lives because their lives are unsatisfying and (without massive societal change) ultimately unfixable.” However, I believe it is more than the urge to chase a dream lifestyle that drives consumption and the identities built on it. What we wear, eat, drink, listen to, read, watch, drive, and surround ourselves with are the elements we seemingly have control of in our lives. In a stressful world, this is no small feat.

Globalisation has taken much of the real decision-making power out of our hands, but left us with millions of tiny choices which take on a mantle of great importance. As Fromm notes, “even people who are property poor own something – and they cherish their little possessions as much as the owners of capital cherish their property.” Along the same vein, people who are limited in their real choices cherish their daily consumer exercises. One of my friends once said “America is the greatest country in the world because we have more choice than anybody else.” When I pointed out that America has millions of consumer goods, hundreds of television channels, but only two political parties, he said that politics don’t impact his daily life.

My friend holds a similar worldview to one that Kanner and Gomes describe: “material abundance is not only an assumed privilege and a right of the middle and upper classes but proof of the cultural and political superiority of the United States.” In the current historical moment, when many Americans feel vulnerable to perceived threats against U.S. hegemony, and a lack of confidence in American military and political might, they cling to material abundance for reassurance, even when it means going into debt. I see this as one element of the current political rhetoric about ‘lifestyle’ and ‘freedom.’

In addition to offering reassurance that their life is stable in a chaotic world, “consumer practice serves to temporarily alleviate the anguish of an empty life. The purchase of a new product, especially a ‘big ticket’ item such as a car or computer, typically produces an immediate surge of pleasure and achievement, and often confers status and recognition upon the owner.” Particularly in a context where tangible signs of achievement (such as harvest or hand-crafted goods) have become rare for the average person, the phenomenon of indulgence as reward, consolation, or simply a break from monotony makes sense. And in a society which fetishises newness, “economic agents (what used to be called people) are driven constantly to replace possessions, experiences or accessories, which wear out unacceptably in use.”

Of course, the constant consumption and disposal of consumer goods depends on an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude towards production and waste that has been cultivated by globalisation. As Kanner and Gomes note, the “ability to find meaning and grace in a materially humble life is a hallmark of ecological sanity that has been undermined and nearly destroyed by the messages of corporate advertising.” The satisfaction once gained from connection to place – which also involves sticking around to deal with the consequences of one’s actions – has been co-opted by the short-term pleasures of acquisition, possession, and display.

In disconnecting from a sense of local place, globalisation has commodified a sense of the exotic, selling us the opportunity to escape homogenised lives by collecting artifacts of distant lands, or identifying with distant ancestors whose original cultures have been diluted and repackaged by the tourism industry. It also promises that technologically-driven ‘global communities’ can replace the experience of locally-based communities, reinforcing the notion that localities are merely backdrops for human interactions, infinitely interchangeable sites to ‘plug into’ global networks.


Identity Built on Exotic Places and ‘Global Communities’

Ethnolinguist Monica Heller writes about the “commodification of authenticity” in the cultural “products” of ethnolinguistic minorities – a sense of authenticity is cultivated as a selling point for music, crafts, food, dance, historic re-enactments, festivals, and other spectacle. Notions of what counts as authentic often shift over time in the manner of fashion trends, and these notions are often compromises between history and the demands of tourist-consumers. She specifically focuses on francophone Canada, Cajun Louisiana, and Cherokee reservations in the United States, but a similar commodification is taking place across a wide range of cultures.

I would argue that this commodification of authenticity quickly becomes a commodification of authentic identity, inviting affluent Western consumers to pick and choose elements of exotic cultures to incorporate into their own identities. Cultural markers, divorced from the locality in which they arose, become status symbols. In this way, I can attempt to fill the void left by an unfulfilling culture with African and Balinese batik cloths, Indian saris and Navajo jewellery, Celtic and Caribbean music, Thai and Ethiopian food, etc (never mind that most consumer products are made in ‘exotic’ third-world countries). This is cultural imperialism in a postcolonial free-market world: by raising demand for products of perceived cultural “authenticity,” Western consumers effectively subsidise their fantasies of what other cultures should be. In consuming those products without any connection to their historic, geographic, or cultural context, they are as empty as any other commodified status symbol.

The rising interest in genealogy reflects a similar trend amongst those seeking not exotic ‘other’ cultures, but exotic personal histories. As linguist Greg Dickinson notes,

The contemporary moment is characterized by a deep desire for memory. The shift of identity from traditional familial, community and work structures to ‘lifestyle’ along with the fragmentation and globalization of postmodern culture engenders in many a profoundly felt need for the past. The loss of a culture of memory has been met by the rise of ‘memory places.’

These “memory places” – spaces designed specifically to evoke nostalgia and a sense of watered-down ‘history’ – show that globalisation has managed to commodify even our desire for connection to place. Heller describes “heritage tourism” in some regions in Ontario, where “the local is what is marketed, but it is also what has value principally within supra-local networks, partly because of its translocal and even transnational resonances.”

Whether consumers seek connection to completely foreign cultures or to their own ancestry, exotic commodities are often substitutes for experience of place. Kanner and Gomes note the sense that “buying something is the next best thing to making it.” Buying souvenirs (no matter how kitschy) is the next best thing to experiencing a place, and usually the only option available for those without the means to travel. Walker describes this as “buying into the dream that, by consuming a product, one can partake of an otherwise inaccessible reality.” He goes on to note that “the seduction of cultural codes tell us of ‘the way it is’ in places we will never get to.” However, the hoarding of trinkets from a faraway land is usually less about connection to that land and more about reinforcing fantasies. Celtophiles in America usually gloss over the warlike elements of ancient Celtic culture, and have little interest in recent history or modern politics in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Aficionados of Egyptian culture tend to fixate on hieroglyphics and pyramids, forgetting that Egypt is a modern Muslim nation. Art enthusiasts are often ignorant of post-Renaissance Italian history, and neopagans who call on native American deities often do not know one tribe from the next. These patterns run through countless representations of cultural identities, and reflect globalisation’s need to abridge complex histories into simplistic sound bites. In simplified form, these histories become as portable and interchangeable as any other commodity or anonymised place.

Anonymous settings are ideal for the cultivation of ‘global communities.’ Urban ethnographer Matthew Rofe writes that

The erosion of spatial boundaries has liberated social experience from the constraints of the local… the technological advances underpinning globalisation have effectively eradicated space, thereby reconfiguring formerly accepted notions of social and cultural identities… [and] heralding the emergence of multiple global communities.”

He calls the local/global dichotomy a false one, arguing that “much of what is considered to be global is in effect translocal.” However, in order to facilitate the kind “translocal” interactions that corporate globalisation favours, people across geographic distances must hold similar values and worldviews. Localities must therefore be homogenised, and people must experience places as interchangeable. Only after these elements are in place can people identify more deeply with global communities than with local communities.

Buying certain items is one way of connecting with a perceived global ‘community’ – just as objects are marketed to express certain lifestyle traits, they are marketed to express solidarity with others who have similar lifestyles (and by extension, beliefs, personalities, etc). By wearing a certain brand of jeans, or driving a certain type of car, consumers can feel part of a larger ‘community’ of people with similar tastes.

Rofe goes on to state that

The emergence of more flexible community forms which function beyond the strict constraints of territory engenders an appreciation of communities as constructions of the imagination... What globalisation affords is the opportunity to communicate and even interact with similar communities beyond the local.”

However, the erosion of stable local communities has given rise to ‘flexible’ communities that ultimately exist at the benevolence of corporate and political interests. Even with the most radical aims and autonomous operations, today’s globalised networks are precariously dependent on large-scale infrastructure and access to technology. As demonstrated by recent events such as the FBI seizure of UK Independent Media servers and Comcast’s blocking of e-mails containing the URL of afterdowningstreet.org, even the most ‘grassroots’ style organisations can be severely undermined by withdrawal of access to infrastructure. In an article for Information, Communication and Society, R. Hassan notes that

cyber-utopian dreams of other, possible worlds made virtual through information technology are at best naïve, when it is realised that the information revolution… has conceived and developed technologies with primarily profit, productivity, surveillance, labour-saving, and escapism in mind.

Conclusion

Corporate globalisation’s ideal operations depend on people and places that are homogenised, interchangeable, and easily transformed to meet its needs. Severing the connection between people and place has contributed to a sense of emptiness that must constantly be filled with consumer goods. The flow of goods soothes not only desires and needs, it promises to fulfill our fundamental yearning for identity. No longer able to identify with a sense of place, consumers are invited to build their identities around objects, lifestyles, fantasies of faraway cultures, and imagined global communities. This further divides them from the connection with land and history that would facilitate a reversal in the global ecological crisis that has been fueled largely by overconsumption. In order to move towards “ecological sanity,” we must reclaim our sense of place and connection to land, history, and community, for as long as we build our identities on the goods we consume, we will be psychologically incapable of limiting our consumption.