Liquid Life by Bauman Zygmunt;

Author:Bauman, Zygmunt;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2011-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

5

Consumers in Liquid Modern Society

Consumer society rests its case on the promise to satisfy human desires in a way no other society in the past could do or dream of doing. The promise of satisfaction remains seductive, however, only so long as the desire stays ungratified; more importantly, so long as there is a suspicion that the desire has not been truly and fully gratified. Setting the targets low, assuring easy access to goods that meet the targets, as well as a belief in objective limits to ‘genuine’ and ‘realistic’ desires – these would sound the death-knell of consumer society, consumer industry and consumer markets. It is the non-satisfaction of desires, and a firm and perpetual belief that each act to satisfy them leaves much to be desired and can be bettered, that are the fly-wheels of the consumer-targeted economy.

Consumer society manages to render non-satisfaction permanent. One way of achieving such an effect is to denigrate and devalue consumer products shortly after they have been hyped into the universe of the consumer’s desires. But another way, yet more effective, hides from the limelight: the method of satisfying every need/desire/want in such a fashion that it cannot but give birth to new needs/desires/wants. What starts as a need must end up as a compulsion or an addiction. And it does, as the urge to seek in shops, and only in shops, solutions to problems and relief from pain and anxiety is one aspect of behaviour that is not just allowed to condense into a habit, but eagerly encouraged to do so. But it also does for another reason. As the late Ivan Illich showed, most of the ailments that call for medical treatment today are ‘iatrogenic’ diseases – that is, pathological conditions caused by past therapies – the ‘waste’, so to speak, of the medical industry. But the same trend can be easily spotted in the consumer industry as a whole. Hazel Curry recently offered an excellent example of a universal trend: the medical profession has noted epidemics of ‘irritable skin’ that have spread with lightning speed and have affected 53 per cent of Westerners so far. Only some of the cases can be accounted for by the genetically determined phenomenon of ‘sensitive skin’. Most are cases of sensitized skin, a skin that has become sensitive ‘under the influence of a harsh skin-care regime’. In a society of consumers, the expansion of acne among the adult population can only mean an expansion of consumer demand and a market for consumer products. ‘Brands aiming to calm skin, such as Chantecaille, Liz Earle and Dr Hauschka, have enjoyed massive success in recent years. As a result bigger, established brands including Dermalogica, Jurlique, and most recently Carita, have launched similar ranges.’1 Susan Harmsforth, one of the foremost experts in the field and herself the founder of one of the brands, now advises the victims of these epidemics ‘to use one or two products from a mild line for one month’ and then ‘introduce one product or treatment a month under guidance of a therapist’.

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