Digital Young

Every day, every weekend, I see people shopping with a fury and passion that sometimes are hard to understand. Studies about consumption are not new; I am not here inventing the wheel. Theorists say we are in a consumerism society. That we all are victims of consumption, that we cannot stand not to have the last of everything.

In Romania, we are now in a moment where purchase increases with every semester, year, at almost every segment of objects. But I do not want to say all sorts of generalities, this is not my purpose. What I want to say is that reading Daniel Miller’s book, A theory of shopping, made me understand better why this act is really repetitive and that something else is hiding behind it, something else besides all sorts of negative things that psychologists, economists etc talk about.

First of all, this is a great book. Not only that it brings a new perspective on things, but also because it is really well written. Even its author is an anthropologist and a teacher at University College of London, this book is easy to read, has a good writing and a great structure of ideas.

Second of all, it puts some questions to all the prejudices that we have when it comes to shopping. If you ask somebody why does he/she think that people buy so much, he/she will start saying that “Oh, today we live in a very bad society that drives us all to buy. We are all driven by a consumerist society into buying. Advertising is bad cause it tries to manipulate us.” And he /she continues with this kind of speech. Now, this speech for me is unusably because it contains only generalities. Secondly, it proves a superficial point of view on something that hides a lot of specific things.

Therefore, Miller puts a first question: Does shopping is an act of today? Well, not really. Shopping comes from a very long history. What did people use to shop, is it so different from today’s items? And the essential and key question: Why do people really shop? Is it just to fulfill a need (and here we enter in economical perspective of consumption, who classifies human needs) ? How does this need appear? If we were to listen to Baudrillard or Bernard Stiegel, both philosophers and essay writers, we would think that advertising makes us, shoppers, obsessive consumers. Well, I really would like to answer those two non-researchers (and this says it all) that shopping is a complex act, from which advertising is just a part.

So, do we shop because we have a need or just because… it is about something else? Starting from a research for a year on a street in North London, Miller makes a passionate description of various ways of how people shop. Everything comes to people. That’s why Miller starts his story describing people, his subjects of research. Let’s just say better, his friends. Why does he do this? Because, you see, what you are influences the way you shop. For instance, if you are a housewife, you would buy mainly things for home and children. That, as regular items to be bought. If you are a mom, then, it is food for the children, for the husband etc. If you are both of them, do you regular buy make-up, perfume and nice clothes? No, not really.

But this is not the only thing that influences your shopping. It is the shopping for the other persons in the house, your family (husband, children etc), but it is also the shopping for you. And here, at this second level, things get interesting. Why? Well, one thing Miller states is that even when we shop for us, we always shop thinking about other persons’ opinion. Meaning that I buy a dress thinking that my husband would like to see me in that kind of dress, because he likes that model better than another one that I liked better. And so on and so on. All these practices of shopping are described in his book. And another very interesting point: do we shop the same things, in the same way when we are alone that when we are with somebody else? Which influence does this somebody else have upon us and upon our final decision?

All this for a theory of shopping, a theory in which I strongly believe, because when I was reading the book, I surprised myself nodding because I found myself in a big number of cases and also I think his way of interpreting things is true, as I found the same thing on my field, regarding cell phone shopping.

“The thoughts that everybody has when purchasing are less profound, they are backed up by a mass of routine shopping that simply repeats previous experiences so these concerns only come to surface in a few instances. In these both cases, your shopping is dominated by your imagination of others, of what they desire of you and their response to you. It is about relationships to those who require something from you. Often, these are relationships of devotion, mainly routine devotion, that may be deep or may be superficial, and are mainly taken for granted, except where the choice becomes a sign that you have shown some concern.” (Miller, 1998: 3).

So, in his essay, Miller tries to make us see shopping as a sacrificial ritual because us, as shoppers, we sacrifice time, space and even our opinions and tastes in order to be liked by others. And of course, we do sacrifice money for that, thrift being a central figure in shopping act.

So, if you want to read something that could make your day more interesting, to give you a different perspective on things that you usually pass by, this is a great study and book for that. I really enjoyed it.