Review session: Wednesday, May 8 at 11:00AM, Beaven 125

I. The Value of Consumption and Fashion

A. Negative attitudes toward fashion and consumption, revisited

1. Fashion is selfish
2. Fashion is superficial, appearances can be deceiving
3. Fashion and shopping are vulgar, robotic parts of mass culture, manipulated by capitalism and advertising
4. Shopping and consumption are feminine, not real work
5. Shopping is fun
6. Shopping and consumption are forms of cultural imperialism
7. Consumer desires fuel exploitative labor regimes

B. These ideas are wrong, or, when they are right, they make fashion and consumption even more important to understand

 

II. Bangladesh: The High Cost of Fast Fashion

A. Rana Plaza collapse in 2013 killed over 1100 people.
B. 2013: 80% of Bangladesh's exports = clothing
C. Today: second largest exporter of clothing in the world, after China
D. Vertical integration and subcontracting

1. Flexible production
2. Third party inspection
3. Plausible deniability?

E. Working conditions

1. Early 2013: $38 monthly minimum wage; late 2013: $68; late 2018: $95; current union calls to raise it to $200
2. Long hours can include 20-hour shifts
3. Schor: 17 cap in US cost 1.6 cents in labor to produce

F. "We have not been led into this world of material closeness against our better judgment. For many of us, especially when young, consumerism is our better judgment. We have not just asked to go this way, we have demanded. Now most of the world is lining up, pushing and shoving, eager to elbow into the mall. Getting and spending has become the most passionate, and often the most imaginative, endeavor of modern life. While this is dreary and depressing to some, as doubtless is should be, it is liberating and democratic to many more" (Twitchell 1999: 290).
G. Consumer reactions to factory collapse
H. Problems of distance

1. Is domestic production the answer?
2. Moon on LA Jobber Market

I. Juliet Schor's critique

1. 1990s, 75-80% of the American public felt that we were too materialistic
2. Kids being killed for jackets, demanding $100 sneakers
3. Community activities replaced by mall visits
4. Environment can't sustain consumption levels, global warming
5. Labor conditions, return of sweatshops
6. Too much work, too little time for family, friends, or community

J. Consumption demands more consumption in pursuit of the new
K. Cycle of work and spend, constant dissatisfaction
L. The materiality paradox

1. Rediscovering true materialism
2. Anthropological research on circuits of exchange

 

III. Turning the Lens on Ourselves

A. Two positions

1. Study importance of fashion and consumption
2. Consumption and fashion dominate us and cause misery

B. Problem of blame: Melania Trump's stilettos
C. The implicit privileges of Schor's true materialism

 

IV. Is Fast Fashion Really the Problem?

A. Pham, "The High Cost of High Fashion" (article title) vs. "the high cost of cheap fashion"
B. Calls to boycott scapegoat consumers: "Anti-fast fashion stances give rise to racist, class-biased, and ahistorical myths about garment workers, budget fashion consumers, and luxury fashion. And in doing so, they leave intact the very practices they're intent on decrying."

1. Emulation is central to fashion sales
2. Working conditions are the same in high end and low end
3. Working conditions could be better in low end because of inspection, labor orgnanizing, etc.
4. Spending more money on fewer clothes won't change production, but it will cause consumer debt and loss of ability for self-expression through clothing
5. The stereotype of the poor Third World woman in need of rescue
6. Fast fashion producers are often also fast fashion consumers

C. Structural change, not just individual change

 

V. The Power of Fashion...Industry

A. Powerful images, unclear material origins
B. Fashion has a means to take things outside it or oppositional and turn them into fashion
C. What happens when the solution to the problem of consumption or fashion is more consumption or fashion? Causumerism, compassionate consumption, greenwashing, and ethical capitalism: Slavoj Zizek
D. Effects of fashion and consumption are ambivalent ==> make informed, conscious choices, confront ambiguity and contradiction, but also recognize problems of critiques that don't focus on structural change
E. Veblen's insight: fashion industry needs to persuade us that what we already have is not good enough