One of the major problems encountered when attempting to distinguish the causes of poverty is how poverty is defined. Bauman states, "The way we define the poor is a reflection of the kind of society we live in." He goes on to make clear that society defines values, which all its members ought to attain, and those that do not, are defined as poor. Consumerism is argued to be a significant cause of poverty in both developed and underdeveloped countries, although not in the same way. These days, poverty is created by society and is something that could be prevented; it is not simply a result of lack of resources.
The United Nations statistics showing the inequality in consumption are very shocking:
Today's consumption is intensifying inequalities and the dynamics of the consumption-poverty-inequality-environment nexus is accelerating. If the trends continue without change - not reallocating from high-income to low-income consumers, not encouraging goods that empower poor producers, not changing priority from consumption for conspicuous display to meeting basic needs, not shifting from polluting to cleaner goods and production technologies - today's problems of consumption and human development will worsen.
The fact is that the richest fifth of all people in the world consume many, many more times the amount of meat, energy, paper, vehicles, than the poorest fifth. For example, in the case of vehicles, the richest fifth own 87% whilst the poorest fifth own less than 1%.
Many problems such as damage to the environment, a change in people’s values, and the impact on the poorer nations because of the richer nation’s greediness are caused by consumerism and consumption in most societies.
Many items which used to be considered luxury have now been turned into necessities, for example, sugar, beef and bananas. To best see the problems caused by excess consumption of these goods which used to be consumed in much smaller amounts, we need to see how it affects the environment. The political and economic drivers in manufacturing sugar (for example, historically, sugar plantations encouraged slavery); its health effects today; its link with world hunger (since the land used to grow sugar and related support, for export, could be used to grow food for local consumption) this wastes labor, wastes capital and expends many resources. Beef, as sugar, is another clear example of colossal waste, in resources, environmental dilapidation, in contributing to world hunger, poverty etc. Some 70 to 80% of grain produced in the United States is fed to livestock. The banana industry in Latin America and the Caribbean also touches many other issues. Rainforest destruction is one consequence of the banana trade, dependent economies is another. In these cases, the local people go without food so that the bananas can be exported to the advantage of the already vastly richer countries. This leaves Latin America and the Caribbean nations without basics and reliant on Europe and America to ‘help’ them. Our industries may be competent for amassing wealth and making profits, but that does not necessarily imply that it is efficient for society.
As well as consuming unnecessary goods, the western world is also tremendously wasteful. Regardless of the widespread belief that poverty, particularly world hunger, is caused by a global food shortage, statistics show this is not the case and that in actual fact the world produces 2,500 calories per day for every individual in grain alone.
Poverty does also exist in developed nations and is escalating, and yes, it does also exist in Britain. As we entered the 21st century, more people were living rough in Britain and more children likely to be born into poverty here than anywhere else in Europe. Consumerism is argued to be one of the main causes of poverty in developed countries although the reasons for this are different. By buying what they are told they need, they think that they will escape from poverty when in fact it is this unnecessary consumption that makes life more difficult for them and which creates this increasing gap between the rich (those manufactures who receive the profits) and the poor (those who cannot afford to consume unnecessarily, but still do)
Another way in which consumerism correlates with poverty in ‘the west’ is through Bauman's theory of the poor as "flawed consumers." Bauman's key work in this area 'Work, Consumerism and The New Poor’ explains his fundamental idea that modern societies are built up around consumption rather than production and that this is a key problem. This shift from a culture of producers to one of consumers, Bauman maintains, has left the poor "without a useful function." As they are not capable of consuming goods that supply high profits for the producers, they are considered "flawed consumers" and investing in their survival is seen as a misuse of money. Moreover, if the more wealthy consumers begin to help the poor they too will have less money to spend on profitable products. In these ways, the poor are considered to be a great burden to capitalist societies. The writer John Berger pointed out that
“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.”
In order for the rich to live at the standard that they do, the majority have to go without, and this is one of the most important (if not the most important) causes of world poverty, even though it is overlooked or denied by a good number of people. Those considered poor today are not poor in the same way that is generally thought; one is poor not simply due to low income but largely due to the fact that this shortage of income means that, you are incapable of participation in society based on its norms and values. “The new poor are excluded from the consumption-based norms of society and therefore suffer the shame, guilt and envy of their failure”
Until the consumer society emerged, “the condition of poverty has meant direct jeopardy to physical survival- the threat of death from hunger…disease or the lack of shelter”and in many parts of the world this is still the case. However, poverty is also a social and psychological circumstance. “The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied... but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing”. Poverty is now, in Western society the exclusion from what is considered as ‘normal life’. In a consumer society, this ‘normal life’ is consumers trying to achieve the pleasure that they think they must have in order to be happy. “A happy life, as defined by consumer culture, is life insured against boredom…in which constantly ‘something happens’” Largely, a problem is that the poor live within the same culture as the rich and their poverty is exasperated by economic growth; If civilization is progressively defined by thriving consumption then the poor are defined as unsuccessful consumers – those who have neither the resource nor (as it is assumed) the intellect to contend equally and appropriately in a world dominated by consumption. The poor today are excluded from the consumption-based normalities of society and consequently suffer the humiliation, guilt and resentment of their failure. However, unlike the poor of the past, the new poor face additional indignities and degradation.
Firstly, the new poor share the same cultural space as their successful equivalents. Most specifically, they are exposed to the same advertising billboards. They cannot evade their poverty and as a result their own sense of failure. Secondly, they are alone in their poverty; the poor of the past could communicate their despair within a collective group that was equally deprived of the resources to be ‘normal’. Today, however, there is no collective unity between the poor – merely individualised misery. Finally, the new poor have no social reason. In previous eras, the poor’s role was as a back up for when the market needed them and could employ them at necessary times, and this meant that society saw some worth in investing in them. Some sociologists use the term ‘underclass’ to designate the poor. Marx and Engels called these people “the ‘dangerous class’, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society” This underclass is measured by wellbeing, teenage pregnancy, high truancy, drug addiction, crime and drug addiction. Bauman has of late cast doubt on this assumption that there is an underclass with ‘nonstandard values. He proposes that the phrase ‘underclass’ is an ‘invented category’ which, unfortunately, belongs
"..To the imagery of a society which is not all-embracing and comprehensive…Underclass evokes an image of a class of people who are beyond classes and outside hierarchy, with neither chance nor need of readmission; people without role, making no useful contribution to the rest, and in principle beyond redemption."
There certainly are different views from different people, as many think that it is largely the poor’s fault that they are poor whilst others think that it is a result of consumerism and social exclusion. From a humanistic point of view, it is said poverty is often a matter of behaviour (linked with the underclass theory), some would also say that poverty does not exist but that some people are ‘too unequal’. This idea is often expressed in Nordic countries and it is thought that it can be solved by ‘better access to services and…behavioral readjustment”. These people are essentially avoiding blame. An asocial point of view would be to day that poverty is a legal status, or having a low income or what economists say it is. These people are simply relying on the facts in seeing what poverty is.
In conclusion, it is important to see that the word poverty covers a wide range as in some cases it relates to the society around you but in most cases the poverty is a blindingly obvious poverty, otherwise known as absolute poverty. In both cases, much of the problem is consumerism. With absolute poverty it is less direct, though more obvious in that consumerism means that there is an uneven distribution of necessities, as the rich have everything they want (and if they do not have it, they will get it), whereas the poor do not even have the vitals that they need in order to survive. Relative poverty, however, exists in the midst of the rich people and often goes unnoticed, or at least is not recognised as poverty. In comparison to the rich people whom the poor are exposed to every day, and the advertising and pressure which everyone is put under to consume is overwhelming particularly for those who cannot afford what they are told that they need, these people do indeed suffer poverty at the hands of consumerism. In the case of relative poverty, the influence of consumerism is more direct but in the case of absolute poverty, we can obviously give examples of how consumerism often ruins the lives of many in the undeveloped countries. It is in developed countries such as the UK where people suffer at the hands of consumerism with much less recognition.
There is a contrast between the two types of suffering; those in the third world suffer more physically whereas those in the west suffer mentally in that they feel like an underclass and they feel as though they are not good enough because they do not have everything that they are told by consumerism, that they should have.
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