weekly Objet library

First of all, there’s something to be said for the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi—embracing authenticity and appreciating things for being unique and imperfect. A rare, well-worn leather jacket from the 1970s is a hell of a lot cooler than a brand new one from a standard label bought at a department store, right?

The Japanese approach to cherishing and maintaining one’s possessions—a concept known as mono wo taisetsu ni (cherish your things)—ensures that vintage luxury pieces are often in excellent condition. This cultural respect for belongings translates into a robust market for vintage luxury, where the condition of items remains paramount.

The iron cage of consumerism:

• the profit motive stimulates a continual search for newer, better or cheaper products and services

• our own relentless search for social status lock us into an escalating spiral of consumerism

The language of cool is conveyed through a vocabulary of the new.

Confidence in our place in the social world hangs or falls on our ability to participate in consumerism.

We created these conditions [above ☝️].

The restless desire of the consumer is the perfect complement for the restless innovation of the entrepreneur. […] The ‘iron cage of consumerism’ is a system in which no one is free.

I want to argue of course that modern society has internalised a number of specific functions of world maintenance within the dynamics and organisation of consumerism.

The language of stuff:

• This is one of the key lessons from the sociology of consumption. It is now broadly accepted that material things are deeply implicated in the social and psychological fabric of our lives. This role depends heavily on the human tendency to imbue material artefacts with symbolic meaning.

• Mary Douglas (1976, 207):

  “[a]n individual’s main objective in consumption is to help create the social world and to find a credible place in it.”

If consumption plays such a vital role in the construction and maintenance of our social world, then asking people to give up material commodities is asking them to risk a kind of social suicide. People will rightly resist threats to identity. They will resist threats to meaning.