Identity and its relationship with consumerism

1. Introduction and Foundation of the Topic

Assuming a certain identity also requires accepting the approval and disapproval of others in a specular game that never ends. This evaluation depends on the dominant common sense in society that defines the guiding values of social relations, as well as the institutions destined to produce social order. The acceptance of said evaluation by the socialized comes from the recognition of the others as significant in principle by imposition, although this significance later admits a selection conditioned by the search for confirmations and social, economic and ideological compatibilities.

The differences of the societies come from their peculiarities and characteristics, which are called culture and constitute the identity of the society.

The human being from birth consumes as a way of satisfying their basic needs. But as the individual develops, these basic needs are added to new needs of social origin for reasons external to their nature, but to create an identity.

This will be the process explained below.

2. Socialization and Consumption

The individual is born with a predisposition towards sociality, and later becomes a member of a society. It assumes the world where others already live, understanding momentary subjective processes and understanding the world in which it lives.

Socialization can be defined as the broad and coherent induction of an individual in the objective world of society or in a sector of it.

In every society there is a daily life and every man, whatever his place in the social division of labor, has a daily life.

The individual is born in specific social conditions, in specific systems of expectations, within specific institutions. You must learn to use things, appropriate the systems of use and the systems of expectations. Not all learn to use things and institutions, to orient themselves within the framework of systems of equal use. The more dynamic society is, the more man is obliged to continually test his vital capacity.

Primary socialization is the first that the individual goes through in childhood; through it she becomes a member of society.

Secondary socialization is the acquisition of role-specific knowledge, which means the internalization of semantic fields that structure interpretations and routine behaviors within an institutional area.

The character of a secondary socialization depends on the status of the body of knowledge in question within the symbolic universe as a whole.

An important circumstance that may pose a need for intensification is competition between those in charge of defining reality in various institutions. There is competition from what will subjectively appear as the "materialistic" and "mass culture" world of "competitive struggle" with the need for "artificial techniques" dominated by a monopoly.

3. Identity and Market

The instability of modern society is compensated in the home of dreams, where with scraps from all sides we manage to manage "the language of our social identity."

Identities have exploded, but in their place is not the void, but the market, and those who cannot carry out their transactions there are left out of the world.

The desire for the new is something inexhaustible, it is imposed in perpetuity: Whoever has the money to invest in it as a consumer is a kind of collector in reverse. Instead of collecting objects, he collects acts of acquisition of objects, while the collector of the old type withdraws objects from circulation and use to treasure them. For the collector in reverse, his desire has no object that can shape him, because there will always be another object that calls him. Collect acts of buying and selling.

There are also those excluded from the market, who can dream of imaginary consumptions.Transient identity affects both the reverse collectors and the less favored imaginary collectors: both think that the object gives them something that they lack on the level of identity.

That which makes them desirable also makes them volatile. The instability of the objects originates from the knowledge of fashion who codifies them each season. Time was abolished in the common objects of the market because they are completely transitory.

Objects create meaning beyond their utility or beauty, or rather, their utility and beauty are by-products of that meaning that comes from the mercantile hierarchy.

The score of a brand, a label or a signature always has other foundations, in addition to its material qualities, its operation or the perfection of its design. The freedom of those who consume them arises from the market's need to become permanent consumers.

Childhood has almost disappeared and early youth lasts until after the age of thirty.

Youth culture is built within the framework of an institution, traditionally devoted to young people, which is in crisis: the school, whose prestige has been weakened both by the bankruptcy of traditional authorities as well as by the conversion of the mass media into space of a symbolic abundance that the school does not offer. The market takes over and courts the youth after having established it as the protagonist of most of its myths.

Actual consumers or imaginary consumers, young people find in the merchandise market and in the symbolic goods market a repository of specially prepared objects and fast speeches. The speed of circulation and, therefore, accelerated obsolescence combine in an allegory of youth: in the market, goods must be new, they must have the style of fashion, they must capture the most insignificant changes in the air of the times.

Racism at the doors of some clubs shows social differences, the market chooses those who will be in a position to choose in it, although it makes its speech as if they were all the same and this is reinforced by the media.

Real inequalities are overlooked to build a stratified culture. The egalitarian impulse that is sometimes believed to be found in youth culture has its limits in social and racial, sexual and moral prejudices.

As an example, Beatriz Sarlo proposes when shopping:

Shopping is opposed to a landscape of the «center», its proposal for a space capsule conditioned by the aesthetics of the market, all shopping centers are the same, you eat, drink, rest, consume symbols and merchandise according to unwritten instructions but absolutely clear. The sense of orientation is lost. This is irrelevant because these traps of chance are a sales strategy. Those who use the shopping to enter, reach a point of buying and leaving immediately contradict the functions of their space.

Shopping is all future: it builds new habits, it becomes a point of reference, it accommodates the city to its presence, it accustoms people to operating in shopping. It produces an extraterritorial culture from which no one can feel excluded: even those who consume less use the shopping perfectly and invent some unforeseen uses. These visitors, which the shopping machine does not contemplate but whom it does not expel either, admits them to a «plebeian freedom»

This space without urban references is full of neocultural differences. Adolescents, for example, for the exhibition and freedom of movement and a sum of styles that define an adolescent aesthetic.

For his part, Humberto eco proposes "mass culture" as the free and intensive circulation of products. Since mass culture for the most part is produced by groups of economic power in order to obtain benefits, it remains subject to all economic laws that regulate the manufacture, distribution, and consumption of other industrial products. The cultural characteristics of the products themselves and the inevitable persuader to persuaded relationship.

Mass culture is an industrial fact, and it experiences many conditions typical of any industrial activity.

The problem with mass culture is that at present it is maneuvered by economic groups that pursue profit-making purposes and carried out by executors specialized in supplying what is considered to be the best way out, without a massive intervention by men of culture taking place. the production.

4. The Role of Education in the Formation of Identity

The word education has sometimes been used to designate the set of influences that nature or other men can exert, either on our intelligence or our will. She understood everything we do for ourselves and everything others do for us in order to approximate the perfection of our nature.

There are two typical modes of learning, the first is a learning by familiarization, the second is the result of a rational, calculated pedagogical work that implements a means-end realization and uses specialized knowledge, agents and resources.

There are customs that we are obliged to accept, if not, children, when they become adults, are not in a position to live among their contemporaries, with whom they are not in harmony. There is no town in which there are not a certain number of ideas, feelings and practices that education must instill in all children, regardless of whatever social category they belong to. Even where society is divided into closed castes one from the other. Each society becomes a certain ideal of man. Education has the function of raising in the child:

1 ° A certain number of physical and mental states that the society to which it belongs considers that they should not be absent in any of its members.

2 ° Some physical and mental states that the particular social group also considers that they must be present in all those who make it up.

If education primarily has a collective function, if it aims to adapt the child to the social environment in which he is destined to live, it is impossible for society to be disinterested in such an operation.

The school develops cognitive attributes in students, it can also be seen as the transmitter of social norms that individuals later accept as legitimate guidelines to govern their behavior.

Regarding the relationship between school and society, there are several types of theories and research that emphasize conflict. First, there are the theories of the dual and segmented labor market. The main activity of schools is to teach the status of a particular culture, and as a special group that always controls education. It can be used to select members for the elite or as a means of identifying and monitoring low and middle employees.

5. The Power of Consumption

We understand by power the probability that a man or a group of men have of imposing their own will in a community action.

The phenomena of the distribution of power within a community are represented by "classes", "estates" and "parties." Classes represent only possible bases for community action. A specific causal component of their possibilities of existence is common to a certain number of men, insofar as this component is represented exclusively by lucrative interests and the possession of goods, under the conditions determined by the market. It is the most elementary economic fact that the way in which the power of possession over goods is distributed within a multiplicity of men who meet and compete in the market for exchange purposes creates by itself specific probabilities of existence. According to the law of marginal utility that governs mutual competition,it excludes the non-possessors of all the most valued goods in favor of the possessors, and in fact monopolizes their acquisition by the latter.

"Possession" and "non-possession" are the fundamental categories of all class situations, as well as the "meaning" they give and can give to the use of their assets, above all their monetary assets. It is economic interests, interests vested in the existence of the "market" that produce the class. "

It is postulated that we are far from tending towards integrated societies, but that fractionation and exclusion are increasing. The situation is much more complex. Traditional inequities are added to new ones, producing a social dynamic in which individuals and families struggle to integrate or not be excluded, in a context of increasing vulnerability and weakening of the channels of inclusion. Social inclusion, as well as exclusion, is divided into different spheres of political, economic, social and cultural life. Political inclusion / exclusion is directly linked with what can be called formal citizenship and with the participation or not as citizens in the progress of society. Economic and social inclusion are related to participation in collective life and two axes can be distinguished: on the one hand,the one that refers to employment and social protection. On the other hand, the one that takes into account individual and collective interrelations in the context of what has been called social capital and that demarcates social inclusion. The phenomena of poverty, which imply the inability to participate in the consumer market, such as unemployment and various forms of informal and precarious employment, constitute a fragility, weakening or rupture of economic relations.such as unemployment and various forms of informal and precarious employment, constitute a fragility, weakening or rupture of economic relations.such as unemployment and various forms of informal and precarious employment, constitute a fragility, weakening or rupture of economic relations.

6. Identity Crisis in Argentina

The crisis in the society-state relationship emerged in Argentina from 1976 on and progressively spread over time, severely modifying the living conditions of Argentines and impacting the experiences and identities, beliefs and interests of the different sectors.

In the 90s, social exclusion was consolidated. Increasingly wide sectors of the population remain on the margins or decisively fall from them as a result of the state's abandonment of its regulatory and redistributive functions.

There is also the social anomie related to mechanical solidarity, which implies a lack of acceptance of the norms, and the anomie linked to organic solidarity implies an inability to cooperate. Both anomies then express an intense problem of integration of Argentine society.

Examples cited, both with regard to transgression of legal norms and uncivilized or unethical customs, express that Argentine society has problems of social integration.

Martha Mancebo proposes resocialization since the changes allude to a drastic transformation of society. Living in the new society requires harmonizing subjective reality with the new reality.

The fallacy of the freedom of the market is also revealed: when it is dominated by monopolies and oligopolies, there is no free flow of supply and demand, but users who are unable to exercise their rights of choice in the face of the cynical indifference of the powerful.

The dissolution of the very notion of nationality is verified in their spasmodic reappearances during the World Cup. The disappearance of "mirrors" that constitute a strong reference inhibits the generation of identities. The loss of both rational and affective identification with the supposedly representative institutions of the rights of citizenship from the inability to exercise them can be included in a process of de-citizenship. Given the extent of the exclusionary phenomenon that implies loss of identities consistent with citizen participation, we can conclude that the majority of Argentine society is in this condition.

7. Conclusion

Man is driven to consume products, and more subtly, images, ideas, ways of life beyond his will, guided by parallel phenomena such as fashions.

In the consumer society, producers promote new sales techniques to encourage impulse buying and manage consumer decisions. Those who do not have the possibility of acquiring the goods that are offered, experience their lack as an authentic social exclusion, since the consumer society proposes the identification of the social position on the basis of the possession of certain goods.

Only a minority is aware of the loss of sovereignty to be able to decide what they want to consume. She is really a subject, she has created an identity, one who knows what she wants, who is capable of formulating objectives, and developing and executing individual and collective strategies to achieve them, who knows how to reflect on and evaluate her practices and skills