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.

I was this weekend at my husband’s parental house. I found the family photo album. The two parents and the two children, a family portrait in these pictures. I want to talk about two radical changes that modernity and technology brought: first, the way of stocking photos; second, the personalization of photos.

The first phenomenon is global, only that in Romania, the process of changing has been slower. I talk about passing from physical photos, on a paper support, to a virtual one, on an electronic device (computer, cell phone etc). As you can see, pictures were from paper. You all remember this. But what stroke me was that my grand-parents keep pictures in a plastic little bag, which became brown or yellow due the time passing, and my parents kept pictures in the family album. There are two different ways of stocking memories unscripted on a piece of paper. Now, even the way that pictures look like obviously evolved in time. In the 20 or 30s of last century, when my grand parents were young, pictures had a brown-white color specificity. In the time of my parents, it was black and white. Colorful pictures appeared lately. Polaroid was a picture format too modern and very few people had this kind of object, mostly those who were living abroad and came to see their relatives during holidays.

So, this is an example for the first type of pictures that I talked about.

Black and white picture.

And Polaroid…

Maybe you will say that your family saw the same evolution in photography. In Romania, it was a little bit slowed down. And the way to stock pictures…

Yesterday…

My grand-parents’ style of stocking photos.

Today…

I think that the question is what mental changes cause the new technology? At which level can we talk about changes? It is true that something has been lost: the touch of pictures, the sensation of the paper. And still, this is the very essential transformation that new digital era imposes, if we talk about writing or taking pictures. Another change might be that having a photo camera about everywhere, we do not take anymore pictures where people had to pose, as in an old movie. Another one might be that stocking pictures on your computer, they can be moved really easy: on a cd, on a usb etc. These are maybe the functional advantages of the new media. But how are we today different of our parents or grand parents? Is there something that we can talk about? I would title a possible research From plastic bag to Photo camera. I would just mention one transformation: photos become something that can be changed easily, transformed, you can do whatever you want with them. They lost some characteristics as physical object, they are not so static and passive anymore. Maybe that’s why our parents sticked them in a family album, on a page. Because pictures were something static, passive, also formal, serious. I think that this is what they lost by transgressing on a new media.

Now, let’s talk about generation pictures. My childhood, until I was 9 years old, I spent it under communism. Being a child, I was not touched by lack of food or lack of heat. I thought that was normality, enjoying my childhood. During communism, there were very few people having their own photo camera. Therefore, the majority of people, when they wanted to make pictures in order to have family memories, they were going to a photo studio in town. For example…

The occasions to take pictures were when a child was born and all the family was reunited, or, more specific, important moments in their child’s evolution as a primary school student. Communism had implemented a specific school culture: when children were in kindergarden, pre-school system, they were made soimii patriei (country’s falcons), meaning that they acquired a new status, recognized by the school, parents and by the State. The investiture was made through a formal and serious celebration, with parents, relatives, teachers, principals. Children were also getting a new uniform: blue skirts or pants, orange shirts, blue ties and blue little hats. In primary school cycle, there were two sub-stages: 1st – 5th class, 5th – 8th class. When passing from 4th to 5th class, the child was passing from a system with a single teacher to a system with more teachers, each science with its own teacher. This new stage in a student life was also marked with a whole ritual; we became pionieri, in an approximate translation, pioneers. Our uniform changed; girls had dark blue dresses and, underneath, white shirts, and boys had a dark blue costume (pants and jacket). Something like this:

This was the investiture ceremony uniform; our daily uniform was a different one:

Another important event in a student life was the Santa Claus communist version celebration. All the class prepared a little show, where students were singing songs, reciting poems. After that, each student came to Santa, recited another poem and received a gift. Now, I said that communist version of Santa Claus was a different one from Western reality; we had Mos Gerila, which meant, in an approximate translation, Old Man Freezingly. Here’s a picture from this ritual:

And… same scene, another town, another family, another child, this time, me

And another ceremonial marked through pictures: 8th March, International Woman’s Day. In our country, it took another shape: Mother’s Day. And there were made special cards, with a little poem and child’s picture in the left part of this card. Here’s a sample:

Same scenes, but other families and other children. All our generation lived the same moments and the same events. We are the generation with the same presents received from our parents (a little piano, puppets), the generation who had the same objects, events, uniforms. And still, we were pretty different. These pictures lacked improvisation, capturing the moment, and most important, personalization. When I see now my colleagues’ childhood pictures, they have the same colors, represent the same events and scenes.

I truly think that things that I talked about here could be a perfect subject for an anthropology research. There are so many ideas and social, cultural transformations that could constitute for a student in anthropology a perfect field. Well, I am expecting for your suggestions or proposals.