Page 270 - Cultural Theory

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••• Cultural Citizenship •••

ethics, and is not so much concerned with political ideology as by an individualised
‘right to enjoy, not a duty to suffer’ (Bauman 1998: 31). The ability to be able to make
different kinds of pleasurable choice then becomes the dominant principle, or what
Castoriadis (1997) called, ‘social imaginary’ amongst those who are not currently
excluded from the labour market. The language and duties of citizenship, in this con-
text, become overrun by the seductive rather than the disciplinary logics of con-
sumer society.
Crucially, support for the welfare state becomes run down through the privatisa-
tion of ‘individual’ insurance, a refusal to pay high taxes, and the progressive crimi-
nalisation of the poor. The de-politicisation of the vast majority of society, those
living under the pleasurable engagements of consumption, has converted ‘the poor’
into society’s new ‘other’. Despite occasional ‘carnivals of charity’ (witnessed
through mass mediated appeals) the poor become simultaneously ‘air-brushed’ out
of sight and demonised within our culture. In an age of flexible capitalism, the poor
no longer act as a reserve army of labour and are better seen as the waste products of
consumer society. We live in a world dominated by a huge consumer fun house that
has little use for ideological debate or the most obvious losers of the economic sys-
tem. The under-class in a society of post-ideological consumerism is the new enemy
to be kept outside of the places and spaces where the affluent enjoy themselves.
Bauman reminds us that if we are to consider the question of politics within con-
sumer societies we can only do so if we acknowledge the link between a culture
of pleasurable consumption and the progressive polarisation of advanced capitalist
societies.
Similarly, Ritzer (1999) has argued that the development of new means of con-
sumption (malls, the internet, the privatization of public space, catalogs etc) has
increased the number of opportunities to consume within modern society. This has
led overdeveloped Western societies into a condition of hyperconsumption.
Increasing levels of personal debt, expansion of credit systems, and a decline in the
level of saving and the spread of American style consumption patterns fuel contem-
porary consumption across the globe. The increasing spread of sanitised and
homogenous practices of consumer behavior is however masked by entertaining
forms of distraction and simulation that have become progressively utilised to hide
from consumers the ways in which they are being duped and exploited. Through the
use of spectacles, simulated events or celebrity endorsement consumers are being
entertained while they shop. This creates the sense of consumption as fun. Yet Ritzer
argues that while consumers may resist such suggestions the only real winners from
this situation are the profit margins of global corporations.
Bauman’s and Ritizer’s political vision, which is arguably an extension of some of
Daniel Bell’s arguments, offers little prospect of ‘repoliticising’ consumer society
other than through the recovery of more substantive ethical visions. For Bauman
(1999), and indeed many others, the citizen has become the consumer. Once the
market and pleasures of consumption gain precedence over our shared abilities to act
within the public sphere then we know that citizenship is withering on the vine. The
market leaves each of us to pursue our own individualised version of the good life,

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