Commodification -- Sightings

A new source of pride is hitting the nation -- in these dark and dismal times -- it's called "frugalism." Martin Marty opines today!

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Sightings 2/23/09



Commodification
-- Martin E. Marty

The Pope (John Paul II) was right. The World Council of Churches was right. The preacher down the block was right. The "moderate evangelicals" were right. The first had a perfect record against collectivization; the second had a mixed record, but was positive on this; the third reached a hundred or half a thousand per week preaching "You cannot serve God and Mammon;" the fourth were buffeted in response by evangelical kin who preached "the prosperity gospel" or the "gospel that God blessed only 'free enterprise.'" In their own ways their criticisms and warnings were directed against "commodification", whether of labor, leisure, or life. They were not whiners or grumps or exempt from the need for self-criticism, but they were serious, and therefore usually unheard and unheeded.

They do not lack platforms or pulpits today. We see illustrations and confirmations of the problems that occurred when devotion to commodities ruled and commodification set the terms for most of life. Colleague Jean Bethke Elshtain, in my aged and crumbling printout from the 2002 edition of Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture, celebrated the late Pope's Laborum Exercens, his "social encyclical" which "shares the basic assumption of Catholic social thought that God created human beings as brothers and sisters, not as enemies…" John Paul II demonstrated his difference from Hobbes and Machiavelli and Marx who "assume worlds of enmity, treachery, manipulation, and conflict." With the mortal struggle against Communism behind him, he took on orders called "Capitalist" and its cognates, and warned against the trend to measure everything as commodity, as hyper-ability to amass and worship wealth, et cetera.

Today Sightings has bulging files which document where "enmity, treachery, manipulation, and conflict" were consuming us. Documents now come not just from papal and conciliar warnings but in news reporting in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and your daily paper—if yours has survived. My breakfast encyclical on February 21st included a story by Tom Hundley in the Chicago Tribune. His account shows how pride, not long ago, focused on what luxuries one could buy and own. He quotes one Cecelia Dames, "an expat Midwesterner" who came back from Europe to a changed world. She observes: "Conspicuous consumption is out…Conspicuous frugality is in." Hundley reports on "the new braggers" who boast of their success in getting bargains at thrift shops, and are now scaling down the goodies they offer friends at parties

Hundley offers new terms—new to me, at least—such as "frugalista" and "luxury shame" ("a sense that even if you can still afford it, it's best not to make a show of it"). Dames: "Maybe [those who adjust, and brag] seem ostentatious about [frugality] because they have to embrace it." Paul Harris in Britain's Guardian: "For three decades, American culture has celebrated the glories of unabashed capitalism and the ideals of the rich. No longer. Frugalism is taking hold." What remains to be seen is whether the collapse of everything—of global markets, shopaholicism, et cetera—are replaced by culture-wide adjustments to a changed world, to fresh thought that can inspire more than bragging.

Sightings monitors media on fronts like these, and will report when reporters give accounts about trends that go deeper, adjustments in the soul and the visions of life that everyone has to come up with in these days of drastic and sudden change.

Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
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February's Religion and Culture Web Forum features an excerpt from Jeffrey Shandler's forthcoming book Jews, God, and Videotape: Religion and Media in America (NYU Press, 2009) wherein Shandler, professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, examines the use of new media by the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher hasidim. Formal responses to Shandler's "The Virtual Rebbe" will be posted throughout the month by Sarah Imhoff (PhD candidate, University of Chicago Divinity School), Faye Ginsburg (New York University), and Ellen Koskoff (Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester). http://divinity.uchicago.edu/martycenter/publications/webforum/index.shtml
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Indeed, if "frugalism" is just a trend, then there are larger trends, like global warming, that will prove much more than passing fads...

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