Consumer Republic by Bruce Philp

Author:Bruce Philp [Philp, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7710-7006-8
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2011-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

It doesn’t take an anthropologist to see that New York City offers a glimpse of what consumerism might look like someday. To understand what I mean, though, you have to first get past the stereotypes about the city – that only very wealthy people live there, that it’s aggressively status-driven, and that it’s a temple to voracious consumption. Once you set aside all of this and walk the streets, even in the most plainly affluent neighbourhoods, a different picture starts to emerge.

You begin to realize that it’s very hard to figure out anybody’s social standing just by looking at their stuff. For one thing, ostentatious display is difficult to pull off. It’s not a city of big homes and groomed lawns, not a place where you can guess at someone’s disposable income by looking in their driveway. So many souls live there in so little space that relatively few bother owning real estate or a car. Even if they do, odds are that their real estate is an anonymous box in the sky, and their car is buried underground in a concrete bunker. For another, life is just plain expensive. New Yorkers spend more of their income on housing than almost anybody in North America, so what people buy with the remainder of their money is surely more considered. For yet another, there is simply infinite variety, of everything imaginable. There seems to be no cuisine, no article of clothing, no book or music, no appliance or piece of furniture that’s more than a subway ride away. And, finally, people are more apt to be subversive about making a statement with their stuff. It’s a place where off-duty movie stars are as likely to stroll around looking like bums as striving wannabes are to drip with branded ornament.

With less money to spend, less space to live in, and infinitely more choice, New Yorkers have developed a language for conspicuous consumption that’s richer and more subtle than you’ll find in most places. So, if you want to figure somebody out, you have to get close. You have to talk to them. You have to assemble the clues they offer you. You can’t write anyone off at a glance. Caught between the futility of trying to compete for bragging rights in a city where there’s so much money, and the impossibility of display in a city where the stage is so crowded, many New Yorkers seem to have decided somewhere along the way that being interesting is a better use of their energy than keeping score.

Which brings us back to those teenagers among the mastodons. What they understood and the citizens of New York City seem to understand – and what millions of other consumers asking themselves hard questions in the wake of recession are beginning to realize – is that it’s a big, complicated world out there, and that the only thing you can really call your own, the only thing you really have any control over, is your self. Status-driven

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