Market Demand

Market Demand[1]

 

Subliminal messages are spoken of in relation to manipulating and changing or managing values and behavior.  Audio and video recordings have often been the center of this debate.  Baudrillard’s summary statement about Galbraith (P. 39) addresses a premise “it is clear that the whole economic and psychosociological apparatus of market and motivation research … exists only to generate a demand for further market opportunities”.  Earlier discussions we have had indicate the potential abuse of poll data and market studies.  Here we see the concept that Galbraith speaks of in the “revised sequence” of the market (Baudrillard 1988:38).  Galbraith characterizes the revised sequence as shifting the definition of “need” or “reason” to purchase from the locus of the mind or “self” determined need of the purchaser to the directed concept of need which is constructed by the producer of goods and service.  He calls this a total dictatorship of the producing sector over the consumer or the masses.  Could the explanation of this be that new innovations (technology) of production have reduced the focus of capitalism upon Fordist concepts of “assembly line-type” production to produce a limited supply of goods because technology now allows for such vast abundance of production that the question of “how to produce enough?” now becomes “how do we dispose of all we produce?”  In other words in past eras public need or “wants” drove producers to enhance methods of production so there was enough product to go around and be shared by the masses.  Today due to technology business produce such large and consequently changing quantities of goods and services that the issue has become how to sell everything that is produced.  Has the system become one of built in product self-obsolescence?  One in which products must necessarily become outdated and outmoded within months or years in order to move the every producing widgets.  Is this why some may argue that much of the westernized world has become an “I want it” society?

 

Baudrillard challenges the view of Galbraith, however I see a meshing of what Galbraith postulates with that discussed by Baudrillard.  In considering the proposition of Galbraith it appears that this could complement the discussion that consumption is grounded in signification.  Signs (gestures, language, pictures) are all significant to advertising and marketing (P.48).  Consumption is driven by many factors.  Much of what Baudrillard recants regarding consumption is true in varying degree.  Perhaps because the masses although ideological are unique in individual analysis.  Ideological similarity and individual uniqueness are at the heart of marketing.  Therefore the “interest” or desire may be mythically peaked by signs of pleasure or status for instance.

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[1] Baudrillard, Jean F. 1998. “The Consumer Society.” Pp. 25-55 in Selected Writings.  Edited and with an introduction by Mark Poster. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Baudrillard and Consumer Society

The Consumer Age[1]

 

Baudrillard seems to postulate that over abundance of consumer goods, connected with media and marketing processes have lead to less social interaction for the sake of interaction and discourse and created infatuation with “things” or “technologies” and innovations.  Interaction with objects, even virtual objects has replaced human interaction to satisfy the need for “being”.  In effect objects may arguably be a primary method to “signify” our being or status in much of the western world.  The question resonates, not do I have an I-pod, but rather “Do I have the latest I-pod released this month?”

 

Has western society come to be wagged by the tail of the object?  In large degree I seem to see this in many of the people I associate with.  I know it is not the case in many people and certainly not so in many parts of the world, however it is a spreading phenomenon to “have the latest”.  So to speak keeping up with and surpassing the Joneses.”  Or, structured in the sociological format “conformity and competition” or need to alleviate peer pressure (P. 36).   I suppose this is basic analysis to explain some need for communication.  Communication after all is more than oral it may be written (signs) or it may be physical (body language, dress, gestures, which also include signs).  As such signs certainly include objects and the status they are accompanied by. 

 

The psychology of marketing that is discussed by Baudrillard is interesting (P. 31), there he discusses the placing of objects for display in the market window and the logical flow of goods to the climax.  He refers to this scheme as the calculus of objects in the marketing realm.  In this way marketers may use signifiers and pathways to lead the unsuspecting potential purchaser through a network of objects into the clutches of a trap of which they are unable to trace themselves out of (P. 31).  This appears to lay the impetus for the “belief” that the object is a sign of being and therefore “need”.  As noted elsewhere “pursuit of happiness” for “maximum satisfaction” otherwise a smacking of hedonism (P. 35).

 

In discussing the drugstore I think of what a marvelous qualitative study it would be to travel to Dubai and spend a year roaming the new Mall of the Emirates in Dubai, the largest mall in the world, where you can shop, eat, hear concerts and enjoy leisure activities like “ski” the indoor slopes:  http://www.malloftheemirates.com/ .  How will this westernized mode of consumption be reflected in the culture in the UAE.  Granted about 50% of the population of Dubai is transitory foreign construction workers.  If consumption of things is driven by social dynamics of “keeping up with the Joneses” or according to social hierarchy and in relation to a system of values how will the society of the UAE be transformed, or even will it change.  In other words what is it that signifies the U.S. American?  What signifies the Arabian citizen of Dubai?  What will be the pressures to become deviant or remain “standardized” to normative ways and beliefs, (the Ideal of Conformity)?

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[1] Baudrillard, Jean F. 1988. “The Consumer Society.”  Pp. 29-55 in Selected Writings.  Edited and with an introduction by Mark Poster.  Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

Speech With Out Response

Speech without Response[1]

 

Baudrillard points out a very good point in his definition of communication as a two way exchange rather than the emission of a point without ability to respond in a synchronous way.  Historically television, newspapers, and to a lesser extent radio were like this, certainly in 1988 when Baudrillard writes.  Granted people could write the editor and in some instances “call in” to live television and radio, but even in this context not everyone who wanted to “respond” could do so.  Time and location limited this true exchange that defines a communication dialog.  The computer was once that way for most users.  However the computer with e-mail, texting, blogs, chat has changed this to a large degree.  Still this ability is not available to all the masses.  Some people do not have Internet.  Another change since 1988 is the proliferation of new audio/visual content exchange on the Internet.  Examples are Current TV, Link TV and interactive websites.  Recently I was able to (supposedly) text with Queen Rania of Jordan during her virtual time at her Facebook website.

 

In reading The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media I can see why Webster[2] writes as he does and seems to say that to Baudrillard the world is inauthentic or at least fails to convey a productive reality that can be used.  Baudrillard seems to portray society as a “lost society” (P. 210).  He uses the example of polls to explain his position but I am not sure I agree whole heartedly with him.  In saying this I do agree that much of the “data” published is a poor reflection of what it was to measure, but not all of it so.  He notes (P. 210) that reality is obscured by simulation and this leads to uncertainty “which results not from the lack of information but from information itself and even from an excess of information.  It is information itself which produces uncertainty, and so this uncertainty, unlike the traditional uncertainty which could always be resolved, is irreparable.”  But rather than be useless, there is need to highly scrutinize.  Rather than being an inevitable stifling of society there need to be more educated and questioning.  Baudrillard rather implies that society will become entertained and placid in the obscene waste of the social. 

 

Perhaps his analysis is maintainable.  Perhaps the masses are or will become docile, ignorant of truth/fact and non-opinionated (other than in satisfying their own self-centered desires) that the masses will be stratified to a new social low leaving a social stratum of intellectuals and discerning individuals to direct social order!  Perhaps this is at the heart of the reference to Beau Brummel (P.216).  However, do people really want “someone” to specifically tell them what to think, do, and when?  Perhaps the rebellion of such direct delivery of course would be the result.  Perhaps a more indirect and subtle method of management and manipulation (or more acceptably “persuasion”) would be acceptable to the masses?  Baudrillard’s discussion of the moral law and need to know personal will, choice, liberty, deliberation, desire is interesting.  Knowing your own will (or even a society or group knowing its own collective will) is integral in a technological sense to innovation.  Has media collectively harnessed, restricted and limited the range of the “will” and clouded ability to determine desire, choice and liberty (P 214)?   Perhaps the query about indirect methodology deserves an affirmative answer.

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[1] Baudrillard, Jean F. 1988.  “The Masses: The Implosion of the Social in the Media.” Pp. 207-19 in Selected Writings.  Edited and with an introduction by Mark Poster.  Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.

[2] Webster, Frank. 2006. Theories of the Information Society. 3^rd ed. London: Routledge.

Giddens on Consequences of Modernity

Notes:  “The Contours of High Modernity”[1]

 

Obviously Giddens rejects that we have moved from a modern society to a post-modern or informational society.  Rather he promotes that we are still in the modern age perhaps a “high modern society”.  Giddens takes no small amount of time to discuss three conceptions regarding society and modernity.  These three concepts are “institutional diagnosis of modernity”, “society as the primary focus of sociological analysis”, and “the connections between sociological knowledge and the characteristics of modernity” (10, 11).  Then proposes that in order to understand what makes modernity what it is we must not follow these concepts (16).

 

Rather Giddens says that what makes modernity what it is relates to three other “sources”: Modernity and ‘time and space’; ‘disembedding’ of social systems; and ‘reflexive ordering and reordering’ of social relations” (17). 

 

Time & Space.  Both pre-modern and modern society have time and space.  With modernity became uniform and in the last decades has become coordinated.  Space used to be closely connected with place, such as the act of going to work meant traveling from home to the office or company.  Once there you were in the place fulfilling your function (space) at a given time.  In the current age (ICTs) technology has enabled us to disjoin space and place.  As Giddens mentions “advent of modernity increasingly tears space away from place by fostering relations between ‘absent’ others, locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction…. it becomes increasingly phantasmagoric” the society is enabled to be socialized through sometimes quite distant points (19).  This “distanciation” seems to me to relate to a concept of “virtual” reality which we have discussed earlier.  Much like telework, telemedicine, and other such “distance” mediated activities, even a class conducted via Blackboard!  This frees up opportunity to interact, allows organized society to connect in greater and newer ways, and world-wide associations are brought together at one time thereby allowing many different historical trends to converge into a new reality.

 

Disembedded Systems.  Upon this concept of time and space is constructed the concept of disembedding of social systems.  Two types of disembedded systems are proposed: symbolic tokens (things for exchange) and expert systems (ways to organize social environments or large amount of material).  Giddens uses money as the example of the symbolic tokens process.  Money has been taken out of the local realm of negotiation and exchanged purchase.  Now money is more than simply a check or even a credit card.  The Concept of money that allows an otherwise exchange of perhaps unrelated items or services may only be a “digital string of numbers”.  The medium of exchange once recognized “currency” (commodity money or bank money) is no longer needed in order to allow people to consummate a transaction.  Now those who may never meet, nor physically exchange currency may come together in hyper-text and consummate a deal or purchase a product on e-bay (money proper).

 

Money is one example, but the crux of the thought is that for the disembedded mechanism to function there must be trust and faith (a type) within the institutions of modern society.  Institutions are of course “abstract” social concepts that assist society to flow and function properly.

 

Expert systems are ways to organize and manage.  Expert knowledge is integrated into the society so that it is continuous and ever present (27).  Examples are OSHA safety rules, Housing Inspections, Building Codes, Judicial System, Utility Companies, the transportation system, communications system, our pay check, insurance, and other daily services and regulations we normally do not think of each day of our lives.  We have faith that these things exist and will assist our lives.  In other wise we respect a concept of “authority” or superior construct that makes sure our world turns each day.  We accept and rely on this social order although we never perhaps are able to actually define the processes.

 

Trust.  Faith leads to trust and trust bridges the gap to confidence.  Trust is associated with absence of space and time.  There is a definitive definition of trust at page 34.  Trust and risk are associated.

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[1] Giddens, Anthony. 1990.  “The Contours of High Modernity.” Pps. 1-34 in The Consequences of Modernity.  Cambridge: Polity