Consumption as an Emotional Social

Control Device
Adriana Gil-Jurez
UNIVERSITAT AUTNOMA DE BARCELONA

ABSTRACT. This article discusses signs that, at least in the West, the consump-
tion metaphor is turning into the constitutive metaphor of our relations with
objects, with ourselves, and with others. This would probably be anecdotal
were it not that consumption has also taken on the character commonly
attributed to emotions: natural, inevitable, inexpressible, irrational, and spon-
taneous. This apparent lack of social features lends consumption enormous
strength and puts it in the position of a human need that requires no justifi-
cation. At the same time, the lack of social factors defining consumption justifies
deploying multiple mechanisms to control and manage subjectivity.
KEY WORDS: consumption, emotion, subjectivity

The relation between emotions and consumption is certainly noticeable, for

consumption is a process that requires and arouses emotions (Henthorne,
LaTour, & Nataraajan, 1993; LaTour & Henthorne, 1994; Olney, Holbrook, &
Batra, 1991) and because, as many authors have asserted, the impulse to consume
is not as rational as we used to believe (Baumeister, 2002; Dholakia, 2000;
Rook, 1987; Shiv & Fedorikhin, 1999). To consume is an embodied aspect of
self-interpretation that involves a process of signs and significations rather
than simply accumulation of information (Lash, 1993); it also combines phobias
and philia about hundreds of goods, feelings about oneself and others, and
endless desires of doubtful origin, even to ourselves. Consumption means relation
to an object; subsequently, in this article, I will argue that the concept can be
used as a metaphor for a large number of relations at the same time. Actually,
I will argue that the way in which I relate to myself and to others and how I
interpret others and myself is pervaded by the logic of consumption.

THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY VOL. 19 (6): 837857

The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
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838 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

Quite contrary to what is represented in consumer choice literature (i.e.,

Bettman, 1979; Engel, Kollat, & Blackwell, 1973; Howard, 1989; Nicosia, 1966),
consumption is a process that goes far beyond the moment in which a subject
decides to appropriate an outside object by buying it. Nor is it only a cause-
and-effect relationship, in which an external stimulus, the advertisement,
influences the subject to consume, as in ad impact studies (i.e., S.P. Brown &
Stayman, 1992; Macinnics & Park, 1991; Olney et al., 1991). In this article,
I will argue that merely buying an object is not to consume it; that to consume
it is the relationship I establish with it; and that this is a predominantly emotional
relationship. Consumption is what an object means to me, how it changes me
when I use it, how I need it to feel secure, how it hurts me not to be able to
buy it. In other words, how it moves me, how it fills me with emotion. For
most people in the West, and increasingly outside its hazy frontiers, the act of
consumption exists well before and after the shopping moment. What is
more, in contemporary Western-like societies, consumption acts as an
extremely effective emotional social control device, a truly dispositif, in
Foucaults words. Foucault (1994) defines dispositif as a thoroughly het-
erogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural
forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific state-
ments, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositionsin short, the
said as much as the unsaid (p. 299). Every single point can be applied to con-
sumption. Consumption is established in discourses, participates in social
institutions, takes place within architectural structures designed for it to take
place, is prescriptive (Lodziak, 2002), and is regulated by laws, administra-
tive measures, and scientific statements. Finally morals, and politics, are
always at issue when talking about consumption.
During the industrialization period in many Western countries, a somewhat
different dispositif was constituted and contributed to put men and women at
work. Industrialization brought brutal methods that had to be employed to
persuade individuals to spend long working days in factories (de Gaudemar,
1979; Polanyi, 1944/1957). It was the only way for the then new economy to
work as required. By contrast, the globalized late capitalist economy does not
need these methods to be brutal; it can count on emotions to move men and
women to consume.
At the end of the 20th century, there was an ongoing scholarly discussion
about the role of production and consumption in late capitalist societies. In his
much-cited book on consumer culture and postmodernism, Featherstone (1991)
described three different approaches to the subject. First, the production of
consumption approach draws on the work of the Frankfurt School. This
approach highlighted the inescapable role of production in late modern capitalism
to understand any possible form of consumption and subsequently any form of
popular culture. Second, the modes of consumption approach draws on
Bourdieus works, emphasizing the role of commodities as a means for classi-
fying the consumer within a social structure. The third one was called by
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 839

Featherstone the dreams, images, and pleasure approach. It was centred on

depicting the person as a consumer of meanings, images, signs, and symbols.
This approach was based on a mixture of postmodernist thought foundations
but at the same time reclaimed the analyses of the Birmingham Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies (Stauth & Turner, 1988). About 10 years later,
Warde (2002) considered that there had been a decline in interest in both the
consumption of production approach1 and the modes of consumption one.
In fact, since the modes of consumption approach took multiple directions, it
was difficult to recognize it as a distinct approach: for example, McGuigan (as
cited in Winship, 2002) describes only what she calls the productionist and the
consumptionist approaches, and for a while the discussion seems to have
continued only between these two approaches (see Billig, 1999).
Within the consumptionist approach, consumption is mainly a question of
symbolic processes, and it has to be considered the most important process
taking place in a postmodern world. Popular culture, understood as a consumer
culture, has to be accounted for not in terms of its complacency with capital-
isms needs and stratagems, but in its own value, because any possible resist-
ance and will to change has to be found within it. Proponents of this approach
argue that practices of consumption are active practices that can explain contem-
porary forms of social organization, including politics, economy, and identity.
Within the productionist approach, it is argued that modes of production
remain essential to account for, if one is willing to explain anything. For these
scholars, consumption is arguably more a question of following the dictates of
capitalist societies and their mode of organizing the economy than a question
of the free will of the consumers (see Lodziak, 2002).
However, to ask whether people are free to construct their own consumption
practices is as problematic as to ask whether people are free to work or not. Thus,
a post-productionist and post-consumptionist approach (Winship, 2002) seems
more appropriate in a context of expansion of consumerism (Warde, 2002); an
approach concerned with the discursive production of knowledgepowersubject
relations across different sites (Winship, 2002, p. 37). Actually, whether con-
sumption is or is not the main point to tackle when thinking of late capitalism is
nowadays a sterile discussion. Production is necessarily present, being a pre-
condition to consumption, and its role has to be enlightened too, but it is a fact
that consumption is a non-escapable practice, one of many, of course, and this
state of things has to be explained, or at least densely described.
Although one of the basic characteristics of the individual as a consumer is
that she constantly has to choose, this condition is not a chosen one. In late
capitalist societies, it seems that the only thing that free individuals cannot
choose is not to have to choose:
individuals are not merely free to choose but obliged to be free, to
understand and enact their lives in terms of choice. They must interpret their
past and dream their future as outcomes of choices made of choices still to
make. (Rose, 1999, p. 87)
840 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

In fact, what seems to make the consumer an individual is this freedom to

choose, because her own particular set of choices is what constitutes her indi-
viduality. Consumption makes it possible to re-create and sustain freedom of
individual choice and, in addition, makes it pleasurable, for restricted choice
is not only boring but also frustrating and constraining on identity creation.
Consumption commands choice; this is the arrangement which cannot
seemingly be transgressed.
Even the abstract negation of consumption is still part of the logic of con-
sumption. In this logic, citizens are often redefined as consumers (Michael,
1998; Trentmann, 2007), which is not anecdotal: democratic rights are
reduced to consumer rights and democratic co-determination is equalized
with consumer decisions. Although it is true that consumption has been for a
long time a site for action and mobilization, this view of the citizen-consumer,
anchored to a rhetoric of choice, has also been used to extend the invisible
hand of the market to social services (Trentmann, 2007, p. 150) and sustain
neoliberal forms of governance. For this reason, work has become, again,
more a matter of necessity than of emotional and personal fulfilment. A matter
of necessity in that it allows an income, which is a precondition in order to
consume and become a citizen. For the consumption dispositif makes possible
discourses that deny full citizenship, actually humanity, to the extremely
poor, as those who fail to consume also may fail to become full individuals,
having lost their capacity to choose (see Bauman, 2007, for a similar argument).
Work is no more seen as an emotive object, a means by which the subject can
build a valued, respected being, or, most importantly from which the subject
can give meaning to her life (Bauman, 2000; Sennett, 1998). This is nowadays
reserved for consumption.
Work is associated with competitiveness, evaluation, uncertainty, sacrifice,
flexibility, mobility, loss of social ties, and a constant race against time (Gorz,
1991, 1997; Sennet, 1998). We produce so that we can consume, because
through consumption we try to give meaning to our life. Work that bores, tires
out, and exploits is tolerated as a means to open up a possibility to consume
options. It is the means for us to consume an idea: freedom. This can also be
understood as the possibility to choose a lifestyle within which to consume
(Featherstone, 1987). The act of consuming has become so fundamental in our
lives because it has turned into a means of gaining freedom, which is exercised
in consumption. Work is not experienced as an option, but consumption is.
Even in the case where we are compelled to consume and compelled to
consume more (Lodziak, 2002), consumption presents itself as a mechanism
that assures choice, and in many countries antitrust laws guarantee it.
As Bauman (1998) suggests, individuals have ceased to build their identity
from production and now build it from consumption. That is, their identity is
no longer the answer to What do you do? but has shifted to the answer to
What have you got? Consumption re-creates our identity as free individuals
and, at the same time, reproduces the economy and the discourses sustaining
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 841

the very Western idea of freedom. Being a consumer is something that

describes and defines us: that is, a framework which sustains and gives form
to our identity. In Western-like societies, it is almost impossible to imagine an
individual outside consumption. Whether she participates in a significant
manner in it or not, as not everybody is affluent enough to fully play the
game, without consumption there is no plausible identity. Consumption also
requires multiple emotions; it needs to be a grand emotive act in itself, for it
is individual identity which is at stake. At the request of the consumer herself,
these emotions appear to subject her to the kind of subjectivity that dominates
Western-like society. The important thing is the relation between the individual
and the significance that the objects (goods, lifestyles, images, relations,
experiences, etc.) have acquired for sustaining the individuals identity. That
is, what is at stake is not an influence shaping the being, but the being itself.
It has been claimed that we not only buy primary goods, but also consume
meanings (Baudrillard, 1970/1998), lifestyles (Miles, 2000, 2002), reference
groups (Bourdieu, 1979/1986), and identities (Dittmar, 1992). Within psychol-
ogy, Cushman (1990) argued that the changes that occurred in the post-World
War II era also involved a wide shift in the conception of the self, which could
be then considered as empty, that is, prepared to be filled with consuming
goods, calories, experiences, politicians, romantic partners, and empathic
therapists (p. 600). That is to say, it is not that objectswhether in themselves
or by virtue of their qualitiesbuild an individuals identities, but that the
individual appropriates objects, makes them her own, and no longer consid-
ers them external, but part of herself. Subsequently she cannot imagine herself
nor interact with others without them. This idea was expressed by William
James (1890/1952) when describing one of the constituents of the self, the
material self:
An equally instinctive impulse drives us to collect property; and the collec-
tions thus made become, with different degrees of intimacy, parts of our
empirical selves. ... and although it is true that a part of our depression at the
loss of possessions is due to our feeling that we must now go without certain
goods that we expected the possessions to bring in their train, yet in every
case there remains, over and above this, a sense of the shrinkage of our person-
ality, a partial conversion of ourselves to nothingness, which is a psycho-
logical phenomenon by itself. (p. 294)

The object loses its nature as an object and turns into a subjective component of
the individual. It could be said that the object is subjectivized. Moreover, other
individuals are also appropriated in the same way; they are objectivized as
objects of consumption, whereby they become part of the objective in the world
and of the subjective in the individual. In addition, each individual appropriates
herself, knows herself on these terms and becomes an object of care and con-
sumption in many aspects (health, education, self-knowledge, etc.). In Western-
like societies, nowadays, no identity seems possible without consumption.
842 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

On the one hand, being a consumer seems something intimate to the individual,
precisely because it is bound up with our emotions, but also, on the other hand,
it seems like something external to the individual because it is commonly related
to action taken as part of the interaction between the subject and the objects in
the outside world, often the consequence of an act of influence. However, as I
will argue in the following pages, neither are emotions so intimate, given that
they can be socially constructed, nor are objects of consumption so external,
because they exist only insofar as we appropriate them significantly.

The Social Dimensions of Emotions

Emotions, but also feelings, passions, desires, sensations, and so on, have
constituent social dimensions. When we talk about any affective process, we
are not only talking about a series of individuals physical processes, but
about the whole society in action (Fernndez-Christlieb, 2000; Gil, 2006).
Emotion is not a purely physiological activity, although it needs, and stems
from, a body, just as neither speaking nor eating is a solely physiological
activity, although vocal cords, tongue, or hunger are involved. Emotions have
corporal effects and depend on the body to express themselves. However, in
this respect, they are not too much different from language, which also
depends on the body. Still, emotions seem to comprise something extra,
which language cannot exhaust. Some authors have described this as their
capacity for action (S.D. Brown & Stenner, 2001), their ability to generate
immediate effects, to establish, by means of specific affective practices and
power relations, strategies to change body states and change social relation-
ships (Barbalet, 2001; Scheff, 1990).
To feel emotions requires and provokes participation in a series of social
practices. Around any manifestation of emotion, considerable social activity
takes place (even if the individual is alone) in order to mould it into a recog-
nizable social form. At times this means repressing it, denying its expression,
and even denying its very existence. At other times, it means fostering it, raising
it up for everyone to see. In both cases, it serves to sustain or change a given
social relation. Emotions are social because they belong to the symbolic
realm and acquire meaning in social interaction, in the practices that sustain,
reproduce, and change society and in the power relations that shape it
(Burkitt, 1997, 2002; Williams, 2001). In consequence, to feel emotions
requires socialization within a specific culture (Lutz & White, 1986), negotiation
with others, and reflection so that we can decide whether we are feeling the
appropriate emotion or we are in the appropriate situation to feel emotion
(Crawford, Kippax, Onyx, Gault, & Benton, 1992). Like language, emotions
open as many paths to social reproduction as they do to resistance; they sustain,
reproduce, or change social relations.
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 843

In Westernized common sense, emotions appear as individual, unspeakable

(Lupton, 1998), but manageable (Hochschild, 1983). If everyone feels in their
own private way their own private emotions, it is no surprise that a confes-
sional device can be identified also in the playground of emotions. So,
individualizing emotions stimulates to silence them, for we consider them
unspeakable, or at least difficult to express, and at the same time, this stimu-
lates a need to talk, examine, and interpret them, as has been the case for
sexuality (Foucault, 1976/1984). As Foucault (1976/1984) said, the confes-
sion became one of the Wests most highly valued techniques for producing
truth (p. 59). According to him, we live in a confessing society in which we
are compelled to confess every single aspect of our lives. Examination and
self-examination are completely incorporated into our lives and we do not
realize they are effects of power relationships. On the contrary, we tend to
think that truth, which is inside us, claims to be free, and confession helps to
achieve it. As Foucault stated:
the confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject is also
the subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds within a power
relationship a ritual in which the truth is corroborated by the obstacles and
resistances it has had to surmount in order to be formulated; and finally a ritual
in which the expression alone, independently of its consequences, produces
intrinsic modifications in the person who articulates it. (p. 61)

This contributes to our belief that our emotional world is our true self, as it is
the truth from within, silenced by the power of social constrictions. Society
constrains us by repressing and silencing our emotional self, but personal
or professional confession can help the individual to find who she really is.
This induces individuals to articulate their emotional particularity. The result
is especially significant for individuals, since to have a known and well-managed
emotional self is of the utmost importance in order to be a normal, free, and
accepted member of society.
Discourses on emotions conflate with discourses on nature and the body
(Le Breton, 2004; Lupton, 1998), and this situation makes emotions seem
authentic. This is why on many occasions we are encouraged to show them
so that we look more natural, more genuine, and not false like the social, as
in social obligations, giving a negative connotation to what we learn
socially, which is considered a set of masks which hide our supposed true
nature. Consequently, emotions appear to be also what is not corrupted by
society, for they are believed to be innate. Unlike the social, emotions appear
originally unregulated. In this way, control, power, and hierarchy are fully
legitimized, because it is assumed that we need them in order to be civilized
persons in control of our emotions (Elias, 1936/2000; Freud, 1930/1961).
Being civilized implies complex control of different situations in order to be
able to discern when certain emotions have to be expressed or repressed and
844 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

to understand why the same emotions are accepted in one case but rejected in
another. As a result, emotions are also indicators of social norms, relevant
situations, and moral values under discussion, such as when a person is ill at
ease for not feeling the right thing in that particular situation. Hence, emotions
need to be deliberately controlled; otherwise, they could put us in embarrassing
or even humiliating situations, threatening not only our autonomy, self-control,
independence, and individuality but also our community. Encouraging occa-
sional and managed emotion display forms part of the practices that construct
and sustain contemporary subjectivity as a subjectivity based on control
(Hochschild, 1983; Rose, 1989). As a result, emotions should also be looked
at as (micro-)social control devices.

Feeling Consumption

Through consumption, products are incorporated into our self, and the inner
and the outer of the body become conjoined (Featherstone, 1983). As Nelson
(1989) states, taking the digestive metaphor of consumption to its logical
extreme, to consume is to embody (p. 159). Dramatically, in the case of
genetically modified (GM) food, the way in which what is consumed is incor-
porated into our body, and therefore into our subjectivity, becomes more
apparent. As a result, our willingness (or lack thereof) to consume or not GM
products goes well beyond any rational calculation, with emotions, especially
fear, being an essential component of that decision. For the consumption of
GM food implies an intuitive calculation of risks due to the lack of precise
information and/or the need of science training to make a more sophisticated
decision (Tulloch & Lupton, 2002). We may like or dislike not only the product
itself, but also the way it is manufactured.
Yes, consuming is affective, but not only that, consuming is also feeling
and expressing special emotions: the emotions of possession. Moreover, posses-
sion is usually understood as having power over whatever you possess and
may come accompanied with the feeling of being someone. It is no coinci-
dence that society is nostalgically criticized for being materialistic, or that it
is a consolidated topic to say that people are valued for what they possess and
not for what they are. After all, the main way that we Westerners can now
know what we are is via our possessions (our clothes, our music, our friends,
our partner, our car, etc.). Thus, the emotion of possession and the desire
which I consider an emotional feeling (following Averill, 1994)to consume
invade different realms of life: fascinated students, like any good audience,
expect spectacular, entertaining classes; postmodern lovers expect and
require the partner whom they have chosen with meticulous care to satisfy
their most intimate desires; fashion fans demand that their clothes identify
them as people with their own unique style and, at the same time, as belonging
to a certain category of like-minded persons. In these situations, when failure
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 845

to provide occurs, the emotions that invade the aggrieved could be described
as disappointment, much more similar to the way you feel in front of a
dysfunctional product you recently bought than to any of the ancient emotions
you could resent formerly: shame, humiliation, or anger for the breaking of a
personal promise.
From this perspective, it should come as no surprise that consumption might
be much more than simply emotive. Following similar arguments to those that
are used to consider why certain emotions are more basic than others (Ortony,
Clore, & Collins, 1988), we can draw a parallelism between basic emotions
and consumption understood as a fundamental process in our societies:

1. Consumption is learned early (between the ages of 2 and 3 years,

when children begin to ask for specific food, beverages, or toys).
2. Western people cannot survive without the possibility of consuming,
because it is the only mechanism for acquiring goods, including the
most essential.
3. Without consumption we are not individuals, we are not persons, we
are not anything recognizable, accepted, or respected (at least in the
mainstream liberal culture).
4. Consumption gives us access to other emotions (including to those
believed to be even more basic, such as the fear consumed in cinemas
and amusement parks or the anger which erupts when we consumers
see our desires unfulfilled).
5. Consumption is a strong driving force for actionit urges us to buy
and, even more impressively, encourages us to work so that we will be
able to consume.
6. The factors which trigger it are not simple, but nor are the ones trig-
gering emotions like happiness and sadness, satisfaction and dissatis-
faction, fear and anger, any more complex.
7. Finally, consumption enables us to attain more complex, subtle,
nuanced, and complicated forms of feeling.

Therefore, the relationship between consumption and emotion is so intimate

that the former is taking on, little by little, the characteristics of the latter: that
is, the character of a practice that is crucial for the constitution of the self.
The emotions that consumption arouse are well suited to its purpose of
keeping the wheels of the economy turning. When some economists used the
term Homo oeconomicus, they did not realize that this model was perhaps
useful for describing survival conduct in such a hostile environment as indus-
trialization, but that it could not describe the behaviour of a person created in
consumption. Emotion is so crucially necessary for consumption that a new
speciesHomo emotionalis, perhapsis better suited to this new situation.
This does not mean that contemporary subjectivities are balancing to the
opposite side of the old polarity rational/emotional, but that that polarity does
846 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

not make sense anymore for a consumer is rationally involved in the satisfaction
of her desires. The consumer, naturally born as a Homo emotionalis, must be
someone who feels that what she desires to consume is her law and that nothing
can get between her and her desires of consumption. To put it in a very direct
form, Bauman (2001) uses a Deleuzian version of desire:
The spiritus movens of consumer activity is not a set of articulated, let alone
fixed, needs, but desirea much more volatile and ephemeral, evasive and
capricious, and essentially nonreferential phenomenon; a self-begotten and
self-perpetuating motive that calls for no justification or apology either in
terms of an objective or a cause. Despite its successive and always short-
lived reifications, desire is narcissistic: it has itself for its paramount
object, and for that reason is bound to stay insatiable, however tall the pile
of other (physical or psychical) objects marking its past course may grow.
The survival at stake is not that of the consumers body or social identity,
but of the desire itself: that desire which makes the consumerthe consuming
desire of consuming. (p. 13)
Of course, this consuming desire does not come from our most animal inside; on
the contrary, it comes from our most social side. We do not simply desire to eat,
we desire chocolate ice-cream, or at least, we wonder about which of the socially
established eating pleasures will comfort us in that particular moment.
Consequently, this desire, inherent to any particular act of consumption, is born
with a social burden inherent to its own practice, when the desire concretizes it
as a desire for something specific, rationally agreed to be perfect in that situation.
Consumption has a socially constructed emotive layer that turns it into a
most real experience, because emotion always ensures individuals possession
of the truth. Emotion legitimizes individuals consumption desires by making
it clear that they come from inside. Inner feelings appear authentic because
they do not seem to depend on society (Averill, 1983). For the individual
concerned, desire is never false. If no one can call our emotion into question,
if no one is legitimated to tell us what our true feelings are, this proves the
authenticity of our individual life. The individual is increasingly convinced of
her powerful inner side and, hence, of the force of her desire. For this reason,
emotion is not only the gratification obtained when consuming; emotion
conforms the very act of consumption from its inception, and translates
consumption into a real, meaningful experience.

Consumption as a Social Control Device

In the same way as we can regard emotions as (micro-)social control devices, we

can also apply this to consumption, not only in its sociological or economic
dimension, but also, precisely, in its affective dimension. Actually, in
Westernized late capitalist societies, the way in which I relate to myself and to
others and how I interpret others and myself may be enlightened by the metaphor
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 847

of consumption as relationship. To see this in more detail, we will focus on a few

forms of contemporary consumption: consumption of objects, consumption of
oneself, consumption of others, and, of course, consumption of emotions.

Consumption of Objects
Creative processes of appropriation mediate the relationship between people,
things, and places (de Certeau, 1988), up to the point that many authors have
suggested that we appropriate objects to construct our identity (Belk, 1988;
Csikszentmihlyi & Rochberg-Halton, 1981; Dittmar, 1992; Firat &
Dholakia, 1998; Livingstone & Lunt, 1992; Tomlinson, 1990). Moreover, the
consumption of objects is fundamental to maintain diverse forms of subjec-
tivity (Hand & Shove, 2007; Jantzen, stergaard, & Sucena Vieira, 2006).
Nevertheless, according to Bauman (2001), the relationship between objects
and people is not as instrumental as it used to be:
to avoid confusion, it would be better to follow that fateful change in the
nature of consumption and get rid of the notion of need altogether, accepting
that consumer society and consumerism are not about satisfying needsnot
even the more sublime needs of identification or self-assurance as to the
degree of adequacy. (p. 13)
The relationship between consumption and objects is not only functional, but
also meaningful and, particularly, emotional (Lupton, 1998). This is not only
because advertisers and sellers want to encourage us to buy their products by
evoking emotions, but also because we desire the objects which we do not yet
possess in order to experience different emotions and because peoples affective
states change by providing them with actual objects and experiences to consume.
A superficial look at advertising rapidly teaches us that the same words used
by lovers, particularly words evoking love and pleasure, are used to describe
shampoos, detergents, or milk in cartons. Anyone would think that this trivializes
feelings, but it seems to do the contrary. It fills them with content; we love our
lovers as we love a shampoo because the promise held out by the product is the
same as the promise offered by the lover and because, chronologically, Western
subjects get to know the products and advertisements first and their lovers later.
The difference is that lovers are less stable, as common sense tells us that lovers
have an inside that can let us down, whereas the product is intended to be always
the same and not to let us down. This perceived faithfulness might be the reason
why the product is more appealingat least until the manufacturer decides to
change it or discontinue its production, which can be a terrible and frustrating
experience to many consumers. As Bauman (2001) comments,
there is a nearly perfect fit between the characteristics of commodities
the consumer market offers, the fashion in which it offers them, and the kind
of anxieties and expectations which prompt individuals to live their lives as
a string of shopping expeditions. (p. 24)
848 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

If psychologists are currently able to describe compulsive buying as

compensatory behaviour (Dittmar, 2005; Neuner, Raab, & Reisch, 2005), it is
because compulsive buying stems from the social understanding that
consumption guarantees a full affective life.
The complexity lies now in the fact that we do consume objects, but also we
can turn everything that we consume into objects: ourselves and all those with
whom we have relationships. The emotions of consumption make consumers
and at the same time may turn the rest of the world into objects of consumption.

Consumption of Oneself
Some of the objects we consume turn us into objects of consumption for
ourselves at the same time. For example, self-help and personal growth
books, which have been bestsellers for years, including books on emotional
intelligence (Goleman, 1996, 1998), focus on emotion management. They
prompt us to discover ourselves, to predict ourselves, and to control ourselves
as we think fit, or at least to mould ourselves in the image we and others have
of ourselves. From these books, we can learn how to control our emotions and
how to communicate them properly. We can train ourselves to recognize
situations in which it is appropriate or inappropriate to express them.
Obviously, a tamed lion is no longer a wild beast, but it is essential that
spectators believe that it is one to sustain the tension; as we know, the show
must go on. The same occurs with emotions: we say that they must be man-
aged, but at the same time we maintain a discourse about their wild and
primitive side, which can never be tamed. This duality allows emotions to
perform their function as a social control instrument. Whenever soap operas
or wars require it, emotions can be deployed savagely and without control;
if not, they must be kept under control for the good of society and peace.
Persons described as emotional fulfil these requisites exactly: they are fit for
sociality (compassionate, open, expressive, etc.) but maintain a capacity for
uncontrollability (like in a nationalist riot or a social episode of impulsive
buying during Christmas).
Emotion is constructed in different consumption situations: for instance,
we can adapt to a specific situation by choosing the particular products we
need to consume at each time and occasion. Books on how to develop our
human potential want to guide us through every situation and aim to give us
the tools to design and shape ourselves in line with the particular require-
ments of any circumstances. We turn into our own object so that we can
become better subjects. Our own emotions have even come back into fashion,
now that they have been brought back into the social world as consumer products.
The almost emotion-free utopia Walden Two (Skinner, 1948/1962) is not possible
nowadays, since emotions are not wasteful anymore.
The interest in controlling emotions until they were almost eliminated had
to do with their interference in the world of production: they distracted men
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 849

and women from their objective activities and made them waste time on
sensitivities and romanticisms. However, once placed at the disposal of con-
sumption, they acquired renewed sense and were put back into circulation.
Emotional intelligence is a construct that makes it possible to manage the self
and get the most out of interpersonal relations in order to triumph. As Iranzo
(1999) put it, subjects driven from the inside, especially those closest to the
Protestant ethic, can immediately identify with Golemans conceptualiza-
tion of emotions. From the point of view of emotional intelligence, emotions
are chaotic, ambivalent events that must be subjected to intelligent control,
which does not belittle them, but contains them and manages them in order to
have the capacity to defer immediate gratification and to control and channel
impulses profitably [italics added] (Iranzo, 1999, p. 19).
Moreover, those who cannot express their emotions or who do not know
them and wish to let them blossom can always consume the variety of
professionals who specialize in finding them inside other people.
Alongside emotions offered la carte (supplied as packages of happiness,
humour, hate, action, violence, intrigue, etc.) in the form of films, virtual
games, saloon sports, raves with designer drugs, fashion, and UV rays with
massages, the body shares the quality of object of consumption with emotions.
Emotions and the body are objects which can be bought and contemplated, as
we see in pornography and its derivatives, from beauty contests to television
series such as Baywatch. On a par with emotions, the body has likewise come
back into fashion because so many products, objects, and scenographies are
needed to keep the body natural, healthy, and ecological that it has become
completely profitable. The shop windows for displaying themindispensable
for establishing contacts with other bodiesare also paid for (discothques,
shopping centres, bars, etc.), and, since it is said that a picture is worth a thou-
sand words, plastic surgery, gymnasia, diet foods, and the entire cosmetics
industry have much to offer to the bodys image. The performing self in
consumer culture engages in body maintenance as a means of presenting
itself to others (Featherstone, 1983), but this cannot be done outside consump-
tion. In a recent advertisement which showed many bodies of different races,
the voice-over said that the important thing is not the colour of the skin, but
that it is moisturised with cream X. Today, those incapable of taking care of
their own body, for example fat people, may find themselves marginalized.
As Sennett (1977) argued, in this day and age, appearance and bodily pres-
entation are believed to reflect the inner-self. Moreover, Bordo (1995) found,
when analysing jurisprudence in bodily integrity, that the body was consid-
ered to be no mere physical entity but a self embodied. Hence, the disgust
some people feel towards the homeless may be caused neither because they
are not producers anymore nor because they may belong to a lower social
class, but because they fail to take care of their body.
That is to say, today our bodies are a consumable part of what we are: the
self performs itself through the control of its body, which is consuming it in
850 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

order to make it consumable. We have to work on our bodies; we have to

make them measure other objects of consumption, to the standards necessary
in order to be desired by any competent consumer. We exercise social control
over our bodies to consume and be consumed: exhibited in order to be
admired by bodies other than our own and admiring others bodies in order to
perfect our own bodycare technique. One consequence is that a person who
wants to control her life must also control her body, because the construction
of her self is bound up with the construction of her body. As Bordo (1997)
argued, anorexia could be related to superimposing on women an ideal of
control based on the masculine model. In this way, a woman who wishes to
control anything in her life but cannot find this capacity for public control in
hardly any aspect of her everyday life is left with the sole possibility of
controlling her body; literally consuming it to the bone.

Consumption of Others
We have constructed this emotional feeling (Averill, 1994) that is desire as
something that we simply have or cease to have or which is simply aroused in
front of an appropriate (desirable) body/object. Nevertheless, Harvey and
Shalom (1997) assert that desire as that intimate, deeply compelling and pro-
foundly private experience also has its public face, which emerges in contro-
versies and arguments around issues of group identity, agency and justice
(p. 3), for the bodies/objects that arouse our desire are not always socially
appropriate or we do not desire them in the appropriate way or at the appropri-
ate moment. This apparent desynchronization between desire and social order
has often been seen as proof that desire indeed goes its own way, deviating from
the natural and socially appropriate. Deignan (1997) in her analysis of the
metaphors of desire argues that we fear it for its potential to disrupt our lives:
desire is talked metaphorically as a wild animal, and as the dangerous and
elemental forces of water, fire and electricity .... Thus desire appears uninvited
and takes us over; we are not responsible ... for sinful desire (p. 40). Actually,
this idea of an independent desire answers for our new capacity to consume
other people instead of establishing personal relationships. We consume
because we desire tothat would be, in brief, the ideology sustaining the pos-
sibility of consuming other people. It is in this sense that we consume the peo-
ple who perform emotional labor: therapists, teachers, bank tellers, secretaries,
flight attendants, hairdressers, health service workers, waiters, religious workers,
librarians, lawyers, counter clerks, and so on (see Hochschild, 1983, for an
extended list). We consume them literally; we demand their particular emo-
tional involvement and the authenticity of their deployment of emotions, but we
do not care who they are, what their opinions are, demands, or anything con-
cerning their job if it is not related to our act of consumption.
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 851

This relationship, similar to the relation we find between a consumer and a

commodity, is better exemplified by the consumption of porn industry products,
prostitution, or table dancing, where the other is directly fantasized as an object:
Emotional consumption is a result of fantasy production on the part of the
consumer in a dialectical relation with the person providing the emotional
labor required in a service industry [it is] a dynamic interaction between
a consumer and a service provider. (Egan, 2005, p. 104)

We can see, then, that when consuming other people it becomes increasingly
difficult to establish frontiers between who is consumable and who is not.
Moral values can go in the opposite way of desire, and the battle between
them does not have an easy ending. Dangerous subjects become socially con-
figured as such through a desire constructed as deviated. Obviously, the devi-
ated fulfils the function of marking the social norm: the madman marks the
frontier with madness because the concept does not suffice on its own; the
homosexual marks heterosexuality; the delinquent marks the law.
Sacralization of youth in the abstract as an object of consumption not only
produces anti-wrinkle products and puts them at customers disposal, actu-
ally, infantilizing the female body or the massive eroticisation of little girls
(Walkerdine, 1997) produces models with childlike bodies that we demand to
consume. Dramatically, in this last case, the model is supposed to embody the
norm and, as a result, the paedophile marks the latest frontier of desirable
objects.
However legitimate they may be, at least in terms of the degree of satis-
faction which they bring, a quick look at the most common fantasies (as collated
in Maltz & Boss, 1997) promoted in erotic culture (literature, film, painting,
etc.) leaves the common denominator of ownership and objectification of the
other in the name of the individuals own satisfaction. The passion and fan-
tasies that feed it are supposedly individual, despite the fact that they affect a
more than significant percentage of the population. Of course, the base passions
re-created in erotic fantasies are also sold to us as emotions beyond discourse,
as natural; the product of uncontrollable impulse; directed by hormones or, if
these base passions refer to the male gender, genetically programmed.
However, the only socially accepted way of satisfying these fantasies is to
resort to more or less freely established relations of convenience, through the
consumption of the other.
Apparently, the Western value of respect of the individual is slowly turning
into respect of the desire; just as we recognize our own desires, so we
recognize those of others. If consuming this desire leads to satisfying rela-
tions, then consumption will be elevated as a model for relations, as the norm,
and, consequently, any member of the community will be converted into an
object of consumption for others.
852 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

Consumption of Emotions
The works of Elias (1936/2000) clearly express how the process of civilization
and constitution of the modern individual demanded development of emotional
control. External coactions were transformed into self-control of emotional
expression, and this gave birth to a modern individual who had to control
herself to demonstrate that she could be autonomous and civilized. Controlled
emotions can also be consumed as if they were any other object: executives
practise (calculated) risk sports; (safe) sex is sought in bars and discothques;
and, tourists aspire to consume (malaria-free) authenticity when travelling. In
post-industrial society, although individualism is exacerbated, emotional con-
trol is changing slightly: it is not disappearing, but it is formalizing a series of
spaces in which a certain controlled decontrol of emotions is permitted
(Wouters, 1989); these spaces are set aside for the consumption of emotions.
As Wouters commented, this controlled decontrol is not only becoming per-
mitted, but is even becoming mandatory. In practice, anyone who does not
know how to enjoy her emotions may be accused of not being spontaneous
and of not knowing how to amuse herself properly. Still, the requirement is
that these must be experiences with a calculated risk, which is why those who
do not control their decontrol sufficiently are also disliked. This is why
young people who suffer an accident of some kind, with drugs for example,
tend to be held in low esteem.
One example of these spaces created to consume emotions are the new cathe-
drals of the 19th and 20th centuries, department stores, in which we gape at the
multitude of products on display without any kind of modesty. However, these
are not the only spaces where consumption is turning into a religious experi-
ence, according to Ritzer (1999); so are fast-food restaurants, fashion-shop
franchises, mail-order sales, discount supermarkets, popular cruisers, casinos,
theme parks, and theme restaurants. In summing up his conference, designed to
advise the tourist industry, Bordas (2003) made the following analysis:
In this lecture the author looks at the implications that the dream society
phenomenon has for the tourist industry. Once the information society has
been taken on board, western society will tend increasingly towards a society
of this kind, a society in which the emotionalvalues, emotions and feelings
will assume far greater importance than the rational. The new tourist will be
looking not for services but wanting instead experiences that will satisfy the
emotional system.
We produce so that we can consume, because this is where emotions can be found.

Conclusions

Today everything appears to be consumable. Consumption has turned into

the model of our relations. If in the past production relations were the
GIL-JUREZ: CONSUMPTION AS AN EMOTIONAL SOCIAL CONTROL DEVICE 853

model, which structured families, for example, now consumption relations

are. Actually, we can see a growing trend in applying the consumption
metaphor to more and more different levels, even at a political level, as it
appears from the motto of the March 2003 assembly of the National
Council of Catalan Youth, which was: Consume commitment!
Subsequently, I have proposed studying consumption as an emerging
social control device. The relevance of using consumption as a metaphor
stems from the central nature of consumption in contemporary Western-
like societies (Bauman, 1998). Consumption shapes the type of relations
that we are prepared to establish in most aspects of our everyday life. If in
modern or industrial consumer society all that was necessary was to sus-
tain production, which was what was responsible for the workers sense of
identity, in our globalized society consumption is now necessary to shape
subjectivities. Without consumption there is no possible performance of
the self. Consumption is no longer just a trivial relation between a person
and the objects that the person possesses but a fundamental relation by
which subjects define themselves as consumers and the rest of the world as
objects of consumption.
In this article, I have tried to show that emotions function as a social
control device. In many cases they act as reproducers of the social struc-
ture, for it is no coincidence that the appropriate emotions are equivalent
to the dominant values of society. It should nevertheless be mentioned that
every limit is a possibility: emotions are also enablers of social change. A
good illustration is disgust and its social and political consequences
(Miller, 1997): we feel disgust on a cultural and ideological basis, which
enables us, for instance, to feel disgust for the extremely rich as well as for
the extremely poor. We sustain and reproduce society, but not passively,
for we reflect and act to resolve the contradictions and produce intelligi-
bility as our emotional system is built. The play of emotions has important
personal and social consequences: that is to say, emotional disqualification
disqualifies the individual as a person. This enables us to understand how
consumption has been naturalized, how it has been turned from an eco-
nomic necessity into a vital necessity. The old idea of the rational con-
sumption of Homo oeconomicus is now useless in understanding the force
of consumption that penetrates every area of life. Only an understanding of
the processes that have converted consumption into a new emotional social
control device can give us the tools to understand its logic and to decide
whether to succumb to its siren songs.

Notes
1. Although the work of Lodziak, clearly established in the consumption of pro-
duction approach, was published in the same year of 2002.
854 THEORY & PSYCHOLOGY 19(6)

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. I would like to thank Joel Feliu and Carlos Silva as

well as the reviewers from Theory & Psychology for their insightful
comments on the earlier draft of this article.

ADRIANA GIL-JUREZ has a Ph.D. in social psychology. She is currently

teaching as a part-time lecturer at the Social Psychology Department of the
Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona. She leads the research group
JovenTIC, which studies youth consumption practices of ICTs, and her
research interests also include the social construction of emotions.
ADDRESS: Universitat Autnoma de Barcelona, Departament de Psicologia
Social, Edifici B, 08193-Bellaterra (Barcelona), Catalonia (Spain). [email:
adriana.gil@uab.cat]