We Are What We Buy

We are what we buy

We live in an era of constant change, where things evolve with a speed so high that we can hardly keep up with it. We are faced with a wide-range of choices in every field of our lives and we constantly have to educate ourselves in order to make the best decisions. Specifically in the field of shopping people encounter so many options that sometimes the reasons of a purchase can say as much about a person as ethnicity, religion or gender can. In order to consume we have to produce first, therefore Lowenthal`s statement is completely reasonable: “We called the heroes of the past “idols of production”: we feel entitled to call the present day heroes “idols of consumption” (Lowenthal, 1961: 115).

In the early 1940`s, “Critical Theory” stated clearly that there is a movement from production towards consumption. Lebow (1955) says that “our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction and our ego satisfaction in consumption”.

Featherstone(1991) states: “Consumption cannot be regarded as merely hedonistic, expressive and impulsive, however much this features in the advertising and lifestyle imagery”. “It clearly involves consumers in calculation, comparisons and research: in short, consumer culture involves knowledge” (Featherstone, 1991). People tend to pay attention to the ethical background of the production of goods they purchase, such as low payments, poor work conditions or exploiting underdeveloped countries. Featherstone(1991) also underlines that “consumption can no longer be seen as an innocent act, but as part of the chains of interdependencies and networks which bind ...

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...rtant things in human development. Education, social background, family history are what influence most the decision. People may have all the resorts necessary for purchasing whatever they want, but in the absence of those mentioned earlier they cannot make a subtle difference between the good and the bad, they cannot spot the vulgar or the “kitsch”.

In conclusion, “we are what we buy” is definitely a motto of the world we live in, but we should look at the depths of this phrase. Looking beyond the superficial, we buy what we choose and we choose based on many criteria so at the end we are what we choose. As Danielle Todd(2011) said: “this is what I am because I chose it”. “Consumption tends to be presented as a creative, symbolic force that plays a crucial role in shaping identity into what Anthony Giddens(1991) calls a “narrative of the self” (Gerda Reith, 2004).