Category / consumerism

by crmayes

American Vegemite and the “In-Group”: Consumer Ethnocentrism Part 2

Vegemite is a culinary shibboleth of Australian-ness. Paul Rozin and Michael Siegal write that ‘Vegemite may be the best predictor of national identity of any food in the world. That is, if you eat Vegemite, you are almost certainly Australian’.

The cultural significance of Vegemite for Australia is demonstrated by the awkward, yet seemingly obligatory question put to foreign dignitaries – “do you like vegemite?” A quick Internet search reveals that Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama were recently asked for their opinion on the spread, and it formed part of wedding gift to Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge.

Despite this intimate bond with the Australian national identity, Vegemite has been owned by the US-based Kraft Foods since 1935. Partly in response to its American ownership, Australian entrepreneur, Dick Smith launched Ozemite in 1999 as an Australian-made alternative.

The Dick Smith Foods brand replicates other brands and products considered to be Australian, yet are now foreign owned. In outlining the rationale for this endeavor Smith asserted that ‘Australians are patriotic but at the moment the labelling is so deceptive you don’t know what’s Australian. What I can say to people “if you buy a product with a Dick Smith Foods on it – it’s as Australian as you can get”’. “As Australian as you can get” has become the slogan for the Dick Smith Foods brand.

Over the past 12 years Smith has built his brand on a form of ethnocentric consumerism. By appealing to patriotic sentiment, Smith uses and reinforces an “in” or “we” group to direct consumer behavior away from “them” – foreign owned foods, particularly Vegemite – and towards an identification with Australian made and owned foods. The economic success of Smith’s brand is questionable; it is not close to the size of Kraft and many of the products are more expensive.

Smith claims that he is not interested in making money – ‘I have enough money. I’m not greedy, I have adequate money’. Rather he explains that he is ‘doing all this work so a consumer can go into a shop and if it says Dick Smith, it literally means, it’s as Australian as you can get’. A clear focus of Smith’s initiative is to encourage Australian consumers to buy Australian brands and products for domestic economic security, but there is a strong underlying theme of national identity and pride.

With debates continuing over introduction of country-of-origin labelling in Australia, especially in relation to berries from China, the case of Dick Smith and Vegemite demonstrates that in addition to being a mechanism that protects domestic markets, knowledge of the country of origin (and country of ownership) has a potential to tie national or geographic identity to a brand, such as Vegemite. However, country-of-origin knowledge also provides an opportunity to build a brand and gain market share, as in the case of Dick Smith Foods.

While Dick Smith draws on the “in-group” aspect of consumer ethnocentrism, appealing to nationalism to establish a brand and market share, the example of “freedom fries” demonstrates the use of “out-group” to shape consumer behavior.

Part 1 – here

by crmayes

Consumer Ethnocentrism: Part 1 Country of Origin Food Labels

In 1989 my uncle returned from a trip to the US with a pair of basketball shoes that were not yet available in Australia. Having seen them on the feet of American basketball stars, my friends and I coveted these shoes, and I was the first to own a pair. Taking them out of their box, I noticed the label at the back of the tongue: Made in Indonesia. I was disappointed. These shoes were not from the land of Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan but from an island I knew little about, 3000

kilometers to the north of Australia. Rather than the genuine product and official brand of champions, I was in possession of a cheap imitation. My sense of disappointment was not alleviated when an older boy assured me that the shoes were in fact fake.

The revelation that my basketball shoes were not made in America was my first conscious encounter with globalised manufacturing and trade. The now commonplace statement, ‘Made in Indonesia’, took some of the sheen off the brand, which was so carefully manufactured in marketing and design offices far removed (geographically, economically and culturally) from the factories in which the shoes were manufactured.

Buying like “us”

While I would like to say that the disappointment I felt in learning that the shoes were made in Indonesia was due to concern for the conditions of the workers, this would be disingenuous and perhaps a bit much to expect of a 9 year-old. My disappointment was due to the otherness of Indonesia. These shoes were not made by people like “us” – me, my friends, Magic Johnson or Michael Jordan. They were made by “them” – people I knew little of, except that they weren’t in the NBA, didn’t play basketball, didn’t appear in the multi-million dollar commercials, and according to a friend’s father, were waiting for an opportune time to invade Australia. These feelings of parochialism, or perhaps more accurately racism and xenophobia, were an early expression “consumer ethnocentrism”.

Ethnocentrism is the attitude that distinguishes between an “in-group” and “out-group”. Terence Shimp and Subhash Sharma developed the concept of consumer ethnocentrism to ‘represent the beliefs held by American consumers about the appropriateness, indeed morality, of purchasing foreign made products’ [1: 180]. According Shimp and Sharma’s study on the psychology of ethnocentric consumers ‘purchasing imported products is wrong because, in their minds, it hurts the domestic economy, causes loss of jobs, and is plainly unpatriotic’ [1]. While Shimp and Sharma focused on the 1980s American automobile industry, I suggest that consumer ethnocentrism is increasing in the food industry through current debates over country-of-origin labelling and local sourcing movements.

Global Food and Ethnocentric Consumption

The global food system has led to an increase in ignorance and confusion about where food comes from and the conditions under which it is produced. This ignorance is manifest in at least two forms. First, a general ignorance about the way food is produced and where it comes from, i.e. what season does asparagus

grow or what part of a pig does bacon come from? And second, where geographically does the asparagus I purchased in the supermarket come from or a more complex question, where was my microwave dinner produced, and were the ingredients all from the same location? Unlike my basketball shoes, the country-of-origin labelling on food products is not as clear. And some food products may use ingredients, manufacturing processes and labor from a variety of countries.

Since the early twentieth century, the Commerce (Trade Descriptions) Act 1905 and Commerce (Imports) Regulations 1940 has enforced country-of-origin labelling for clothing imported into Australia [2], with similar legislation in place in the US (Tariff Act of 1930). However, these laws do not address the importation of food products. Over the past decade, country-of-origin labelling for food products has become a significant issue for consumer’s, workers’ unions and food companies in the US [3, 4], Australia [5-7], and the European Union [8, 9].

Country-of-Origin Labelling and Food Safety

There are a number of reasons why consumer groups and sectors of the food industry want country-of-origin labelling regulations for food products. A common reason is food safety. With the interconnection of the global food system, governments and consumers are concerned by food poisoning outbreaks, such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad-cow disease”, and possibility by the threat of cross-contamination [10]. The recent outbreak of Hepatitis A in Australia associated with Nanna’s Mixed Berries from Chinese factories has re-invigorated the country-of-origin labelling debate.

A second argument for the introduction of country-of-origin labelling is to protect domestic markets. For example, canned food company, SPC Ardmona, made 150 redundancies and closed a production factory in Australia. According to the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union this is partly due to a lack of adequate labelling laws that allow major supermarkets in Australia to stock cheap imported foods without being required to inform the consumer [7]. Furthermore, while the label may state “Made in Australia” this is allowed ‘even if only a few of the ingredients are grown in Australia’ [5]. As a result, companies that use local workers and ingredients are squeezed out of the market by cheaper imported goods.

Food safety and the protection of domestic markets are significant issues, yet they can also become enmeshed with more explicit manifestations of consumer ethnocentrism. With products and brands representing “us” or “them”. In Part Two, I discuss the example of “in-group” ethnocentric consumption in relation to Dick Smith’s response to Kraft Foods ownership of Vegemite. In Part Three I use the call for US consumers to boycott French products in response to the French government’s refusal to join the “coalition of the willing” to highlight “out-group” ethnocentric consumption.

References

  1. Shimp, T.A. and S. Sharma, Consumer Ethnocentrism: Construction and Validation of the CETSCALE. Journal of Marketing Research, 1987. 24(3): p. 280-289.
  2. Australian Customs Service. Australian Customs Service Fact Sheet. 2007 [cited 2012 March 19]; Available from: http://customs.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/FS_clothing.pdf.
  3. Lusk, J.L., et al., Consumer Behavior, Public Policy, and Country-of-Origin Labeling. Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, 2006. 28(2): p. 284-292.
  4. Loureiro, M.L. and W.J. Umberger, A choice experiment model for beef: What US consumer responses tell us about relative preferences for food safety, country-of-origin labeling and traceability. Food Policy, 2007. 32(4): p. 496-514.
  5. Peacock, M. Food Labelling inquiry chair disappointed Federal Government drops key recommendations. PM 2011 [cited 2012 February 6]; Available from: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-01/food-labelling-inquiry-chair-disappointed-federal/3707464.
  6. Blewett, N., et al., Labelling Logic: Review of Food Labelling Law and Policy. 2011, Commonwealth of Australia: Canberra.
  7. Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union. SPC regional job losses show need for food labelling laws and watchdog on supermarkets. 2011 [cited 2012 March 19]; Available from: http://www.amwu.org.au/read-article/news-detail/749/SPC-regional-job-losses-show-need-for-food-labelling-laws-and-watchdog-on-supermarkets/.
  8. Miller, J.W., Country labeling sets off EU debate, in The Wall Street Journal. 2011, News Corporation: New York.
  9. Department of Environment, F.a.R.A. Country of origin labelling. 2011 [cited 2012 March 19]; Available from: http://www.defra.gov.uk/food-farm/food/labelling/country-origin/.
  10. Smith DeWaal, C., Food Protection and Defense: Preparing for a Crisis. Minnesota Journal of Law, Science and Technology, 2007. 8(1).
by crmayes

Lifestyle choice: a brief note

I’m currently completing a book manuscript called ‘The Biopolitics of Lifestyle’. So when Tony Abbott made his comments that Aboriginal’s living in remote communities are making a ‘lifestyle choice’, I thought “great, I may need to write another chapter”.

This is not simply a poor choice of words, but reflects a governmental rationality that seeks to place responsibility on to individuals. Education, health, welfare, employment all become ‘lifestyle choices’ for which the individual is responsible.

The affluent, gainfully employed, highly educated sections of society make good ‘lifestyle choices’, while the poor, sick, Indigenous and asylum seekers are characterised as making bad ‘lifestyle choices’.

Abbott is not the first to use this phrase to justify . In 2002, Philip Ruddock described asylum-seekers as making ‘lifestyle choices’.

“In the main, people who have sought to come to Australia and make asylum claims do not come from a situation of persecution; they come from a situation of safety and security,” he said.

“They may not be able to go back to their country of origin but they are making a lifestyle choice.” The Australian, ‘Ruddock blames “lifestyle” refugees’ by Alison Crosweller and Megan Saunders

This governmental rationality shifts responsibility away from governments and communities, and on to individuals. It also serves to trivialize some claims (living in a remote community or seeking asylum) by comparing them to frivolous consumer lifestyle choices (Pepsi or Coke, holden or ford, apple or pc).

Of course, when we talk about the Australian Lifestyle of ANZACs, footy, beach, sun, boats, and weekends, things get very serious. Governments use this notion of lifestyle to build monuments, go to war, and demonize minorities. But that is another matter all together.

In the current context the rationality of ‘lifestyle choice’ shifts responsibility onto individuals in remote communities and justifies the Western Australian government’s decision to cut services and remove people.

by crmayes

My Grandmother on the ‘Universal Food Chopper’ and Domestic Labour

Below is a short piece written by my Grandmother (Eileen Mayes, 1906 – 1993). It was initially published in ‘John Barnett’s All Ways on Sunday File’ in 1989.

This piece interests me not only for its familial connection and posterity, but its relation to recent trends questioning the new domesticity and women’s labour. 

Picture from a Mail Order Catalogue

Eileen Mayes 

Some time ago I found a mail order catalogue among old papers. There wasn’t much left of it, no cover and lots of the pages missing, but among those that were left I found a picture almost seventy years old.

She’s wearing a long dress with a frilled hem, a high-boned collar in pre-1914 style; she’s got a flower tucked gaily into her piled-up hair. She could be somebody’s Great-Aunt Gwendoline and she’s smiling sweetly as she demonstrates a Universal Food Chopper-Mincer to you.

It’s had a lot of use, this old catalogue, the pages worn and dog-eared with being turned over and over again and I wondered how often Great-Aunt Gwendoline had thumbed through them. Poor deat, even with her Universal Food Chopper she didn’t have much in her kitchen to smile about. Compared with modern kitchens, it would rank as a labour camp.

Oh, she had a refrigerator, at least that’s what the catalogue calls it – ‘Holds 66 lbs of ice’, and if she wanted ice cream there was the ‘Gem’ freezer with ‘solid oak bucket’ to provide it – and plenty of exercise in the making! However, she had one advantage over us today: her cooking utensils, though primitive, were cheap; a nutmeg grater cost a penny, a rolling pin was ninepence or a ‘Colonial’ one could be had for sixpence. Her glass preserving jars came from America and her knives, says the catalogue, were ‘best English steel’. These, of course, had to be cleaned constantly by hand on a knife board, price sevenpence in the catalogue. An English Knife Cleaner was a bit more expensive. This was a circular contraption in which you stuck the knives and then turned a handle. The catalogue says ‘As used by the King’, conjuring up a delightful picture of a portly King Teddy stashing his gold-plated knives into the machine and merrily turning the handle.

Poster for Landers, Frary & Clark, the “Universal food chopper, and a few of the things it chops,” New Britain, about 1899.
Poster for Landers, Frary & Clark, the “Universal food chopper, and a few of the things it chops,” New Britain, about 1899.

Husbands are conned into ordering a cake-mixer: ‘Every newly-married husband should buy one. It turns a poor cook into a Good Cook.’ This little miracle worker, hand-driven by the ‘little woman’, naturally, costs no more than the marriage licence, a mere seven and sixpence.

There’s a complicated little number illustrated, an apple-peeler-corer-slicer, which, although it costs only two and threepence looks as though it might need a mechanic to set it up each time.

And then a item that recalls a quiz show. What is a Turk’s Head? A brand of tobacco, the name of a pub, or the upper part of a decapitated European? It’s a brush for sweeping walls, ‘All hair, price five shillings.’

And what a trial of strength washing day must have been for Great-Aunt Gwendoline! Whilst the water heated (she could use the bellows, price two and tuppence, if the fire was sulky) she’d collect her tin tub and the rubbing board (latest American, 1/3). She’d fill the troughs (best Karri) and perhaps get out a packet of Wyandotte ‘invaluable for washing clothes as it takes the place of soap’, then goes on to add somewhat ominously, ‘It also removes paint.’

What marvellous muscles Great-Aunt Gwendoline must have developed!

First there was the washing machine, clumsy, on four wooden legs looking as though it might serve as a churn in an emergency, and with a large wooden handle propelled – how did you guess? – by woman-power.

Finally when all the shirts and embroidered petticoats and drawers and household linen was starched and dry, there was the ironing. Flat irons cost a shilling, polishing irons to add further lustre – our Gwen must have been a tiger for work – at one and three. The man who made the irons was called Saddler, and his irons as ‘Sad’ irons. How appropriate.

Above the wood stove, on the mantle shelf, is the American alarm clock, price two and threepence, telling the long day is over. The hanging lamp, not so pretty as the one of flowered china and dangling glass pendants in the parlour, is lit and strkes an answering glow from the beautiful copper kettle. ‘Very best copper, price eight shillings.’

How incredibly hard you worked – and how lucky we are to be living in 1975 with all its labour-saving devices! And yet, I wonder – was Great-Aunt Gwendoline? – But that’s another argument and nothing to with a Mail Order Catalogue.

by crmayes

The Pseudo Ethical Scrooge and Immunity from Change

In Western societies such as Australia, UK, or the US, Christmas is a consumer driven festival with a slight veneer of religious significance. One does not need to be a Max Weber or Emile Durkheim to draw this conclusion.

In step with the proliferation of Christmas identities such as Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus), Carol-ers, elves, reindeer, and snowmen etc. a relatively new addition has emerged: the Pseudo Ethical Scrooge. Distinct from the regular Scrooge or Grinch, the Pseudo Ethical Scrooge does not dislike Christmas per se, but what they regard as unethical spending on consumer goods. These Scrooges make statements such as “if everyone in [insert country] didn’t buy gifts for one year and instead gave money to [insert ngo] then we would eradicate [insert catastrophic event] undeniably.”

Despite strong arguments that the eradication of events such as famine or poverty don’t occur through mere donations or redirection of fundings – see here – it is difficult to deny the Pseudo Ethical Scrooge’s point. People do buy a lot of stuff during this period. Some of the stuff is good, some is useful, some is edible and a lot is utter crap. Almost all of it is unnecessary. However, almost all of the stuff that fills our shopping carts (real and virtual) for the other 364 days of the year is unnecessary. This is the point that these Ethical Scrooges neglect, and through this neglect reveal themselves as no more sincere than a ‘peace on earth’ Hallmark card.

Unlike the Dickens Scrooge who proclaims ‘a pox on all your houses’* and goes to bed in a cold empty mansion, these Pseudo Ethical Scrooges inform us of the catastrophe to which we all contribute while still participating in the party. Like a vegetarian lecturing on the vice of meat eating, while wolfing down the last pork roll.**

To be clear, I am not talking about activities like the TEAR or Oxfam Gift Catalogues, but the cheap comments made in a falsetto register that use global poverty as a vehicle for self-love. I use cheap and falsetto intentionally. Like the gifts received in the office KrisKringle and drunken attempts to sing ‘O Holy Night’ – these concerns over the Western excess and global poverty are little more than inexpensive, poorly constructed and weak thoughts broadcast through a false register that mimics sincerity.

Exhibit A: Starvation Ornaments 

Exhibit B: Popular ‘web-posters’ juxtaposing starving children with Christmas consumerism***

Exhibit C:

The problem is not drawing attention to the excesses of Western consumerism or the suffering of others, but the use of ‘poverty-porn’ as an immunity mechanism that enables rather than prevents further consumption.

The early practice of smallpox inoculation serves as an example of this practice. In order to be protected against small-pox, an individual would have smallpox scabs rubbed into incisions on their body, delivering minimal infection yet immunity from the disease. Similarly, by exposing oneself to the graphic horrors of global poverty in the context of excessive of consumerism, the effect is not a revaluation of values, but protection from such a revaluation, thereby enabling the continuation of consumer practices.

Through ‘poverty-porn’ the Pseudo Ethical Scrooge is able to cleanse their conscience of the guilt associated with excessive consumption, continue with the festivities and avoid the difficult process of revaluing and restructuring their existence for the other 364 days of the year.

To be clear, the conclusion here is not that global poverty or excessive consumption should simply be ignored, or even that the Pseudo Ethical Scrooge is a kill-joy.  Rather the consumer excesses that take place on every other day of the year AND the systemic injustices of global trade, resource distribution and political economy require sustained critical reflection. Critical reflection that doesn’t come through a song or an image.

Giving gifts to friends and family – with or without acknowledging the symbolic significance – is an important cultural practice. To refrain from this practice for the sake of global poverty, could be a noble gesture, but it could also preclude the formation of significant bonds and relations. These bonds not only characterize us as humans, and enrich life, but also provide the conditions for the communal and social change necessary to confront problematic issues like consumerism and poverty.

So I will be giving my family and friends Thomas Pogge and Amartya Sen books for Christmas. Just kidding- you’ll still get your iPads and Steve Jobs biographies.

*I know Scrooge didn’t say this – but Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet.
**OK, I admit I may have been this person…oops
*** I won’t provide an image because I think these posters are crass but you can see some here

by crmayes

Searching For My True Self Yesterday: Present-nostalgia in Win Butler’s Lyrics

Over the past six years Arcade Fire has (for some) become something of a barometer through which certain aspects of popular social and cultural trends can be understood. I suggest that a close listen to Win Butler’s lyrics reveal the repetition and layering of particular motifs dealing with the transition from adolescence to adulthood, or in Butler’s parlance from ‘kids’ to the ‘modern man’. These themes are not exclusive to Arcade Fire and reflect a strong thread in contemporary culture that valorises and commemorates a past that has barely passed. This valorisation of the near past or what I call ‘present-nostalgia’ is also evident in the lyrics of Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom, embodied by Michael Cera and Zooey Deschanel, and dispensed through Urban Outfitters. Despite diverse examples Butler’s lyrics provide the clearest window through which to peer on the phenomenon of present-nostalgia.
The trend among mid-to-late twenty year olds who long for adolescences despite only very recently leaving adolescence is represented in Butler’s lyrics by the tension between the world of ‘kids’ and the world of the ‘modern man’. The ubiquity of ‘kids’ in Butler’s lyrics and the tension with adulthood represents a distinctive use of nostalgia in the contemporary.  Clearly nostalgia has played an important role in the commemoration of the past in a variety of art forms, however, what is distinctive about the nostalgia employed in Butler’s lyrics and the contemporary indie scene more widely is the quotidian or everyday subject matter, temporal proximity to the present, and distrust toward the future. In the next few posts I will explore these features of present-nostalgia.