My Journey
Because each step of life is always worthwhile…Archive for Uncategorized
UK, The Land of Inspiration
It might sound weird, but I guess it all started with the death of Princess Diana in 1997. She was a figure of inspiration, not only for the people of England I guess, but also for many people in all over the world. Her death was such a great loss that made almost everyone at that time set his or her eyes on England, a big nation that has such a long history. It was a nation that ruled the world, and now its English rules the world. The great exposure to the Royal Family of England at that time really caught my interest and invited me not just to know some facts about UK, but beyond that to learn more about it, and to experience living in UK myself.
Living a half world away from UK doesn’t separate me from its pop culture. In fact, I grew up listening to Spice Girls, reading Harry Potter, and even having a crush on Prince William XD Lol… Those British pop cultures have been coloring my life and even become a part of me. Spice Girls’ songs for example, have spiced me up with the ‘girl power’ insight that makes me become a not-so-easily-giving-up girl who believe that girls can reach whatever dreams they may have. Thus, for me the British pop culture is much more than just an entertainment. It is also something that teaches me with some of the greatest values in life.
When I was 14, I started to read the Harry Potter series and I also grew up with the characters in the story. Through it, I learned about bravery, to stand up for my friends, and stand up for what’s right. I was very impressed with the imaginative world created by J.K. Rowling in the story, but as I’ve grown older, the real world in which the author lives catches my interest much more than the imaginative world she created. I start to gain more interest on the British pubs, the places that have given inspirations to so many great British authors including J.K. Rowling herself.
I have never been to the Great Britain but from the history lesson I got, I can tell that pubs are an inseperable part of the British life. Since I can’t tell when xD, public houses have become the common places for the British people to eat, drink, meet friends and share ideas, or just to relax. For many great authors, pubs are also a source of inspiration. Many British great authors got their inspirations while they were in pubs. J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter in a pub called “The Elephant House” in Edinburgh. Even the Father of English novel, Daniel Defoe, also got his inspiration for the story of Robinson Crusoe while he was in a pub! That of course makes me get more curious on UK as the Land of Inspirations. How I’d love to step my feet on the land and feel the magical experience myself…
So far is UK from my land, yet so great is its influence on me. Hitting on college, I choose English Literature as my major of study and get fascinated even more by the Englishmen’s high culture; their best thoughts and works such as Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park” or Dickens’ “Great Expectation”. My interest to all of those fine things from UK really makes me want to become a part of them even for just a few years of my life. O…how I’d love to walk in their shoes; to enter their pubs, to enjoy their meals, and watch their football. How I’d love to study in UK!!
On Consumerism
The article entitled “The Emergence of Modern Consumerism” talks about the development of consumerism, which covers the early patterns of consumption, industrial capitalism and consumption, the later developments, and the new consumers. The modern consumerism in the twentieth century is affected by the previous cultural values, primarily those of the bourgeois capitalists from Britain and Holland. According to Marx Webber in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, their movement to the United States and their social pattern there later become the foundation of modern consumerism.
The early patterns of consumption in a capitalist society firstly appeared in the seventeenth century in England. At that time, Puritanism influenced the emergence of a new production system which legalized free-wage labors and profit gain from commodities sale at a ‘free market’. In the eighteenth century, there was a Restoration of the monarchy in England, which also replaced some Puritanical values and supported the development of British capitalism. Clothing became an important subject that the consumption of related goods such as clothes and jewels increased. People became more aware of the ‘latest style’ as they began to know advertisements. The number of consumers increased since the urban middle classes stated to join the aristocracy and country gentlefolk consuming more and more products. It then triggered the development of larger scale industrial production in the nineteenth century. Changes in production and consumption created a new mode of production called industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century.
In the nineteenth century, consumers started to purchase products to shape their social identity. It became a way for them to show which social group they belonged to. Such social group appeared in the United States and Western Europe. An American sociologist Thorstein Veblen made the new wealthy middle class in America as his focus of study and he found out that they became a new leisure class who tried to imitate the lifestyles of the upper classes in Europe. Similar research was also done by Georg Simmel, who observed a group people who lived in Berlin, German, the early modern metropolis. Veblen and Simmel found out that the western societies had a new way of life with the emergence of new department stores in the centers of big cities. Many kinds of shops and facilities appeared to fulfill the social and psychological needs of those new wealthy societies. The metropolitan individuals who were anxious of facing the great social pressure featured the modern patterns of consumption in the society. They no longer consumed unimportant items, but they consumed in order to express their social identity.
Later, in the twentieth century, the metropolitan patterns of living also spread among the less wealthy groups. The consumption of items such as clothes, personal adornments, and expensive pleasurable pursuits became important for almost everyone. Such new way of life was followed by the mass productions pioneered by Henry Ford. Ford paid high salary to workers so that the working-class would afford buying his cars. Thus, he had created the idea of standardized product being produced for mass consumption, which became of central importance for modern capitalism started from the mid-twentieth century.
During the ‘Fordist’ mass production and mass consumption period, the new groups of consumers became more selective in purchasing products. Type of consumers became even more various. Therefore, sociologists and the people who worked for mass media and advertising classified consumers based on occupational class. The occupational class, which covers the income and social status, was believed to affect the pattern of consumption. Consumers were being divided into several categories based on the combination of income level, occupation, and related patterns of spending and consumption.
Since the 1950s, new kinds of consumers appeared with less external characteristics than the group of consumers from previous era. This new group is more affected by the internal dynamics which affected the social construction of a sense of identity for group members. It was a process of using items of consumption such as clothing, footwear, and music to define who was inside or outside of the group.
