We live in a consumer society. This means we no longer live in a society of producers, a society which assesses your worth by what you do or make. Where once almost everybody who stepped out of doors to go to work could not avoid proclaiming their social class and/or their trade, in the streets and malls of today people seek to proclaim membership of consumption classes, the only requirement for which is to be able to afford the recognized badges of the different levels. In deindustrialized communities in which the majority of residents are trapped below a ceiling of promotability and earning power by lack of non-manual skills and of educational credentials, the badges of success in social competition have become the consumption items of higher earning groups, knowledge of which is mediated to them by television. Their dependence for a sense of membership of modern society on such badges as designer clothes, expensive furniture, conspicuous gift giving (especially at Christmas) and keeping up with the peer group arguably does the same kind of harm to their financial health as their smoking and drinking do to their physical health. As financial ill-health is an acute stressor for general health, this section offers some evidence as to the extent and seriousness of this new form of disease [87].
A perceptive diagnosis came from a 20 year old health agency worker – perceptive because of the way the outside (to be emphasized) is shown to be related to the inside (to be concealed).
1 Family life in Dundee is all about image. Getting enough together to get a holiday, or other things. You have to have the latest gear, you have to keep up, computers for the kids, flat screen TV, whatever. If you don’t have them people would look down on you. In our house, it had to be a settee full of presents at Christmas. That was how my parents showed how well they did for their kids, plenty presents. You don’t just need the same as others, you need more. They couldn’t have us going out and telling folk that we hadn’t got much for Christmas. It would have made them look really bad. It’s all about image, you see. They still do it now, with other things, now that we are all away from home. It’s double glazing, central heating, a new three piece, that sort of thing now. You would almost think that they were trying to cover over their lives. All this stuff makes them good on the outside, but on the inside, it’s all battering the kids and fights with the wife. Not just arguments, fights, especially if the dad’s been drinking.
A social worker echoed both the importance of image and the clear role of conspicuous consumption as a social proxy for absent private feelings of self-worth.
2 I’d say that increasingly image is important. I really dislike Christmas, because there is so much pressure for families to give what they think they have to. It’s more about being able to say that they did well for their families [88] . People have no self worth, that’s what image is all about. You cannot be valued as yourself, therefore you have to have other ways of demonstrating that you count.
The power of the moral pressure exerted by Christmas in both these accounts was confirmed by two young mothers and a community nurse:
30 I have to plan carefully, I don’t have the money just to get what I want. I start to buy really early for Christmas, I’ve got him [son, 3] a computer already. It’s at my mum’s in case I get burgled again.
32 All the money I have goes on him, eh wee man [to the baby, lying on the carpet in his Next T shirt, Next jeans and Next baby shoes]. I worry about money most of the time, about how I will manage Christmas. I’ve been giving money every week to my Dad to keep for me so I’ll have some to buy things for Christmas.
3 Christmas is an awful time, they’ll tell you about all this stuff, all bought on the never-never. Things are made available to them, but they will be paying them off for ever. It’s the only way they have of getting things when they want them. They don’t seem to think that they should do without if they can’t afford it.
These competitive lifestyle behaviours seemed to have become compulsory. In the world of ownership of things, people were forever afraid of being judged to have fallen behind. 18 Everyone has to have the best gear and that can cost a lot. You have to be able to give your kids these things. (Police officer)
1 People have really high standards, they want a good job so that they can get the things that their folks never had. They all have one goal, to be better than other folk.
Maintaining one’s place in this compulsory lifestyle competition could in many cases only be sustained by borrowing money.
1 It’s a big thing if you can work towards a couple of weeks abroad in the summer. People want furniture, that sort of thing, they are houseproud. Not in the sense of doing housework, more that they want things for their houses. If other folk get a new suite, then they have to get one, even if it means getting a loan. The problems only really start when you have to borrow to pay off that loan. There is a lot of debt. Everybody has a loan, it’s just a way of life.
10 It all comes back to money. People need to prioritize what they spend their money on, instead of going after lifestyles which they can’t achieve. Again a lot of that is down to the TV and people getting bombarded with adverts for interest-free credit or good HP deals, it gets thrown at them. People don’t think ahead, if they want it they have to have it now. Folk are in so much debt. Some girls and older women use that as their reason for having terminations, they can’t afford to be pregnant. (Medical practitioner)
41 The TV dominates the lives of the poor – it stunts any ability they might have to talk to each other. TV is everything – it’s their lives. Most folk have Sky. All the kids are in designer clothes, putting their parents into debt. Parents give in to peer pressure, they are getting bothered about things younger and younger. This is a modern phenomenon. (Minister of religion)
In a situation in which having things is so important, one way of avoiding debt is to steal things from those who already have them. One way of avoiding prison is to steal from those who you can be pretty sure won’t report it, under the noses of people who you have ways of making sure won’t report you. No wonder people feel a reduced sense of personal efficacy if they can be materially wiped out – the ‘food out of the fridge’ – and not be able to do a thing about it.
30 We lived in the Ardler Multis before, that wasn’t much better, they’ve been blown up now anyway. I don’t feel any safer living here, I was broken into the week after I moved in. They took everything, the TV, video, CDs, my trainers, his toys, even food out of the fridge. I have put locks on all my doors now. Nobody hears or sees anything, so it’s not worth reporting. I didn’t have any insurance, so there’s no point in reporting it. (Single mother, 23)
Likewise for those who suffer personal violence but are advised by the police that if they try to do something about they will likely suffer more. It is good to be given insight into the social mechanisms underlying the persistence of ‘one law for the rich, and another for the poor’.
32 A group of girls from the bottom of Whitfield did me when I was about 14. I just got a good kicking. My face mostly, but my body was aching after it. My mum phoned the polis, but they said I was better just forgetting about it because if they found out that I had reported them they would come after me, and I think they Kent where I lived. I was too worried to do anything else about it. It happens all the time. (single mother, 20)
One positive fact about peer groups for teenagers is that they can function as collective defence groups against the widespread violence. It may partly be the need not to be isolated (and therefore at risk of being set upon by bullies) which drives youngsters into the consumption dynamic inseparable from membership of the in crowd. Two social workers confirmed the physical and social risks run by young people whose parents were not prepared to bankroll their peer group membership.
40 I wouldn’t say there are many in [housing scheme] who don’t have what I call non-essential items. All the kids have the right trainers, clothes, they all have their own TVs and videos in their rooms.
JW Where does the money come from for these things?
They just seem to get them, parents seem to give in, or give up, willingly to get them them. The peer pressure is so great if you haven’t got things, the right trainers, etc.. It’s not just that you’ll get a slagging, it’s physical too, bullying and so on. They’re made to feel outcasts, there’s a few I can think of in the scheme, through lack of cash or support from their parents.
21 The must-haves? Designer clothes are the main things, I’d say. I heard two boys talking about a third whom they were ostracising because he was wearing stonewashed jeans. I spoke to them about it and they said “Well, they are last year’s”. It was obviously quite justified in their eyes.
Another social worker and a community nurse both saw this phenomenon as general; everybody made statements with their consumption, consciously or not. The consumer society is society-wide.
4 Most people’s parents are the same, they have their priorities mixed up. Nowadays you’ll see people with R reg. cars but their house will be scabby, they’ll all have a video, they see that as an affordable luxury. Actually, they probably don’t see it as a luxury at all, they probably see it as a must have. They lack the ability to see beyond ‘oor hoose, oor street, oor area’. What matters is having the right colour of shell suit or the right kind of track suit trousers. They are spending their money on what matters to them in the great scheme of things. We are just the same, we’re all part of the same culture, whether it’s upgrading our computer or hi-fi or whatever. We are just as immersed in what matters to us. (social worker)
For the community nurse, this necessity to make a statement through purchases opened the door for vulnerable people to be exploited by the giants of the consumption industry.
39 Image is everything in [Scheme]. That’s no different from elsewhere — whether 10 Downing Street or 10 [Scheme] Avenue. Professionals need to stop being so judgmental, stop seeing punters as any different to themselves. The only difference is the rung on the ladder. The desirable items are less grand – any car, as against a flashy sports car or people carrier. They are really no different. I take great exception to the judgement people make — that our lives are more acceptable than theirs. Some of our hire purchase things would get paid, but they’re still hire purchase just the same. Society thinks it’s OK for us. It’s the same with food and cooking, we all look down on our families for not cooking — but the mums in Broughty Ferry who don’t cook aren’t thought of in the same light. Whether it’s Marks and Spencer’s or Farmfoods it’s still ready-made or pre-prepared, it’s just the quality that’s different. People are paying off different consumer items — but it’s still an HP culture — whether you are paying off your three-piece or paying off your house, or your home gym equipment, it doesn’t matter. The clubby doesn’t matter — it’s just a way of getting things you can’t afford. Because people are made to believe that ‘being somebody’ rests with having certain things.
This leads to exploitation of people. Look at BT selling answerphones or other types of phone offers — society uses the people on the scheme, it’s exploitation of vulnerable people. They ‘give away’ things, knowing that people won’t be able to pay, it will only be a matter of time before people get goods repossessed or have their phones cut off. That doesn’t matter though – the vendors have got their commission for the sale. (community nurse)
Children learned to play their dual consumption role in family life from very early on: ‘dual’ from the fact that as well as being consumers in their own right they themselves were statements, advertisements for their parents’ success, as we have just seen with the wee man on the carpet in his Next everything. Receiving so much, inevitably they learn to keep asking, and come to identify their parents with the giving of things.
4 Families are just part of the place where you live. They are people who give you things. That 10 month old, he had his Adidas trainers on. It would be better for his feet to have nothing on, but children have become an extension of their parents’ fashion statements. They are part of the adult image. What is so sad, is that the real priorities are missed. (Youth worker)
16 Things that matter to people are material things, consumerism. There is a huge media influence. Young people make demands because their peers have things, trainers etc. and their own TVs. Parents have peers too, who they need to let know that they are doing right by their families, you see it in the pub, younger and older men, talking about that kind of thing. (Voluntary association worker)
The professionals’ view was that the things were displacing the people, that material acquisitions were concealing the need for better relationships within the family. It was their very visibility that made consumer items such good evidence to put forward that people were ‘doing right by their families’. But, in the community balance sheet, the relational side appeared to them to be invisible. For instance, although in agreement that money is important, this social worker also believes it to be significant that locally the experience of good relationships may not be widespread. So, if good relationships have to be worked for, how do people who’ve never known such a relationship know what to work towards? And where will the skills come from to work with?
2 This having to have things devalues relationships. Money becomes more important and having a good time is your aim, that’s the norm, that is what everyone wants to do. The value of a good relationship is less important. It hasn’t been people’s experience, I suppose, and people come to think that it doesn’t really matter if the relationship doesn’t work out.
The widespread relational incompetence and rising importance of the personal ownership of things were seen to be having evolutionary impacts on local society. A youth worker presented a view which implied that the dominance of the local niche by conspicuous consumer culture, ‘the Great American Dream’, was bringing with it a new form of family: smaller, more resembling the media ideal of perfection on the outside, but internally more fragmented and less secure in its interpersonal relationships. The reduction in size and increase in privacy were also raising the pressure: individualism was gnawing away at group commitment.
13 Families are different now from the kind of family we were, in Menzieshill. They were big families. I knew a lot of folk who had five or six brothers and sisters. We all have much smaller families. I think families are more fragmented now, there seems to be a lot more of people looking out for themselves, buy your own house, these things would seem to be rooted in the image that you have to portray of having the perfect family set-up. It’s all part of the Great American Dream. I’ve worked with girls who are only interested in getting the biggest pram possible from the clubby. It’s exactly these things that people are trying to cover up. If you have a pram, or a stereo, or a TV that looks good, then you draw attention away from the fact that your relationship might be about to fall apart.
Shifting up a level diagnostically, this youth worker then put forward the view that public service agencies were evolving in a similar way. Just as the solidarity for which working-class Dundee was once famous has been replaced by a competitiveness which is as harmful to people’s well-being as it is ruinously wasteful, so the formerly collaboratively integrated public services are now also in competition with each other, each devolved management trying to fend off cuts in funding by demonstrating effectiveness and maintaining their public reputation: ‘image is everything’. Where agencies have become obliged to fight for a safe position on a league table of cost-effective service deliverers, they have an interest in distancing themselves from resource-greedy high-risk cases who threaten to drag down their standing in the league. One consequence of this was an observed reluctance to waste resources in meeting the needs of young people in difficulties [89].
13 I don’t think statutory agencies make things any easier, though. They seem to see young people as a group to be dealt with. We see it if we phone on behalf of young people, we often get a much better response, even if we are asking for the same thing. GPs seem to be particularly bad for that.
More and more, these kind of agencies, schools are probably the worst, are obsessed with their reputation. They exclude more and more young people from the school system. We’ve seen loads more young people on part time time-tables, it’s as if the schools don’t know what to do with them. Young people know that, too. I don’t know how it makes them feel. I saw a side of this when I worked in the Alcohol Project. Schools would say, we don’t have a problem with drugs, booze, truancy in this school. They are just denying the problem, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. They are so concerned about what an admission of this kind would do to their reputation. It’s becoming more like a business empire than an educational establishment. The image is everything, and they have to keep their place in the league. They have to be impressing people, even if it means denying the truth. The government keep that going too, what you see is more important than what is actually going on. You see it in the PPAs idea, what is happening is all surface and no substance.
What is the larger system within which these dynamics can be best located? One candidate is the model proposed as the organising framework of this report, the social reproduction system understood in its functional form, with the family as the core social agency specialized in socialization for society. The problem then becomes a bigger one, but also one more easily understood, because more complete. Not all postindustrial families, as we have seen, have yet developed the full range of skills and resources for the long-haul, adult-forming role newly allocated to them by a functionally differentiated society. In addition the redundancy effects being imposed by economic change on skill-lagged communities trap them in what becomes a vicious cycle of restricted family culture, educational failure, and social marginality. Rather than finding committed efforts to overcome this aggravating handicap, we are told that, at the moment that families with little experience of raising adolescents need their support most, schools begin to exclude their children and GPs begin to treat them as a low-priority category. Within their new resource-defending terms of reference, such behaviour needs no justification: it is simply the professionals’ survival strategy. But within the larger social-system perspective of supporting the child-raising function in alliance with the family…- what do we conclude? Are these institutions there to defend themselves? Or to defend society as a whole, enabling it to manage the constant process of self-transformation made obligatory by the runaway global economic system? If the latter, why do we have an accountability system that rewards such institutions for neglecting their basic tasks? As the youth worker had realized, when image becomes everything, substantive value gets pushed aside, whether within American Dream families or league-topping service agencies. People were being displaced everywhere.
