Globalisation, Consumerism,
and Education
Michael Goheen
Trinity Western University
Langley, B.C.
In this talk . . .
• Deepen and expand on keynote
in three areas:
– Religious choices of
Enlightenment
– Making of consumer society
– Injustice of global market
• Open discussion on how it has
shaped education
Argument of the Keynote
• Conversion of West to new vision of
life: Progress by science and
technology to better world
• One version of that story was Adam
Smith’s economic vision
• Given social and economic shape in
the Industrial Revolution
• Dominant worldview in West in 20th
c.
• Produced consumer society
• Now major unifying power in
globalisation
Deepen and broaden keynote
• Religious choices of
Enlightenment
The Making of Economic Society
. . . at the time of the Enlightenment “we
begin to see the separation of economic from
social life. The processes of production and
distribution were no longer indistinguishably
melded into the prevailing religious, social,
and political customs and practices, but now
began to form a sharply distinct
area of life in themselves”
- Robert Heilbroner
Adam Smith’s vision
• Progress toward material
prosperity
• Scientific and technological
organisation of production
• Free market coordinates all
forces
• Economic growth: end of society
Every style of culture is in
turn related to the religious
question of how people view
the ultimate meaning of their
life and society.
- Bob Goudzwaard
Ultimate meaning of postEnlightenment West
• End: Economic growth, material
prosperity, consumption of
goods and experiences
• Means: Market, economic
processes, technology
Economic organisation of society
• Illustration of queen bee in
beehive
• Queen bee’s task to produce eggs
• Whole hive functionalised and
directed toward that task
Romans 1.18-32 and Our Story
• “Worshiped and served created
things”: Western culture more
and more focusses on economic
sphere of life
• “God gave them over”: Creation
of wealth, consumer society,
accompanying joys and ills
Classical Economics and Deism
• Deism separates laws from God’s
presence and authority
There “was no longer a divine lawgiver whose commands are to be
obeyed because they are God’s Laws
but are necessary relationships which
spring from the nature of things
(Montesquieu). As such they are
available for discovery by human
reason.” (Newbigin)
Classical Economics and Deism
• Deism separates laws from God’s
presence and authority
• Mechanistic economic laws—analogy
with physics
‘Equilibrium theory in economics is based
on a false analogy with physics’ (Soros).
‘ . . . analytical and mathematical reason is
not content to deal with physics or
astronomy; it must extend its operation
into [economic realm]’ (Newbigin).
Science of economics
The modern science of economics was
born. . . . It became the science of the
working of the market as a selfoperating mechanism modelled on
the Newtonian universe. The
difference was that the fundamental
law governing its movements,
corresponding to the law of
gravitation in Newton, is the law of
covetousness assumed as the basic
drive of human nature (Newbigin).
Abdication of Responsibility
The idea that if economic life is
detached from all moral considerations
and left to operate by its own laws all
will be well is simply an abdication of
human responsibility. It is the handing
over of human life to the pagan
goddess of fortune. If Christ’s
sovereignty is not recognized in the
world of economics, then demonic
powers take control (Newbigin).
Margaret Thatcher
• TINA: There is no alternative
• You can’t buck the market
Classical Economics and Deism
• Deism separates laws from God’s presence
and authority
• Mechanistic economic laws—analogy with
physics
• Adam Smith’s invisible hand
Self-interested individuals acting
according to self-interest harmony of
conflicting interests material prosperity
trickle down to prosper poor
Three Summarising Comments
• Free market is good but twisted by natural law theory
• Economic life is one part of social fabric but twisted by
totalitarian influence
• Market and economic processes are creational but
twisted by ‘messianic’ expectations
“. . . free markets are the best way of continuously
balancing supply and demand,” but in the
“contemporary ideology of the free market . . . we
have an example of something good being
corrupted.”
Newbigin
Religious Choices of
Enlightenment Vision
• End of human life: Material
prosperity
• Trust in market and
technological innovation to
guide us to better future
• Mechanistic understanding of
law
Deepen and broaden keynote
• Religious choices of
Enlightenment
• Making of consumer society
Consumerism: Pervasive and
foundational reality of our day
Consumer capitalism, both for
good and for ill, is a pervasive
and foundational reality of our
day.
- Rodney Clapp
Making of consumer society
• “. . . manufacturing,
production, and consumption .
. .” (Wells)
• “So, how did this happen?
Well, it didn’t just happen. It
was designed.” (The Story of
Stuff)
• Growing gap between
production and consumption
Consumption as a way of life
There was a huge gap . . . between production
and consumption. How to close it? Industrial
production’s momentum had already built up, so
cutting production was not feasible.
Manufacturers decided instead to pump up
consumption, to increase demand to meet
supply. But they realized
consumption was a way of life that
had to be taught and learned.
- Rodney Clapp
Making Consumption a Way of Life
• Planned obsolescence: Designing
stuff to break down or be unusable
quickly
• Perceived obsolescence: Instilling in
the buyer the desire to own
something a little newer, a little
better, a little sooner than is
necessary.
Advertising
• Average North American exposed
to 3000 ads per day
• Creating new desires
“Advertising aims to teach people
that they have wants, which they
did not recognise before, and where
such wants can best be supplied.”
(Thompsons Red Book on
Advertising, 1901)
Advertising and the Gospel of
Consumption
• Average North American
exposed to 3000 ads per day
• Creating new desires
• Creating dissatisfaction
Creating dissatisfaction
The early part of the 20th century was the
advent of the consumer economy. [B]usiness
leaders realized that in order to make people
“want” things they had never previously
desired, they had to create “the dissatisfied
customer.” Charles Kettering of General
Motors was among the first to preach the
new gospel of consumption. GM had already
begun to introduce annual model changes in
its automobiles and launched a vigorous
advertising campaign designed to make
consumers discontent with the car they
already owned. “The key to economic
prosperity,” Kettering said, “is the organized
creation of dissatisfaction.” (Jeremy Rifkin)
Advertising
• Average North American exposed to
3000 ads per day
• Creating new desires
• Creating dissatisfaction
• Selling the good life
Advertising and related media have served
and still serve as important shapers of an
ethos that the good life is attained through
acquisition and consumption, and that would
have its inhabitants constantly yearning for
new products and new experiences (Rodney
Clapp).
Why sociologists study consumerism
• Inequality of consumption (1/5
population accounts for ½ of
consumption)
• Commodification of many areas of
life
• Critique of injustices of economic
globalisation that feeds consumerism
• Heavy cost of consumerism on the
environment
- Douglas Holt and Juliet Schor
Deepen and broaden keynote
• Religious choices of
Enlightenment
• Making of consumer society
• Injustice of global market
Economic Globalization
• Economic Enlightenment vision
• Global market
• Unjustly created market
Unjust global market
• Market is created:
– Response to God’s ordering
word
– vs. deistic, mechanistic view
of economic laws
• Unjust market: Third World
exclusion
– Excluded from capital
Exclusion from Capital
• Growth of financial industry
– 17% annually (vs. 3% in real
market)
– 10% of economic transactions to
95%!
• Repercussions for Third World
– Excluded from capital needed
– Investment concentrated in
wealthier countries
– Decisions made not basis of need
but on fastest and biggest profit
Unjust global market
• Market is created
• Unjust market: Third World
exclusion
– Excluded from capital
– Excluded from currency
– Excluded from decision-making
power
– Excluded from markets
“The United States and Europe
have perfected the art of arguing
for free trade while
simultaneously working for trade
agreements that protect
themselves against imports from
developing countries.”
- Joseph Stiglitz
Asymmetric globalisation
. . . free trade has not worked because we have
not tried it: trade agreements of the past have
been neither free nor fair. They have been
asymmetric, opening up markets in the
developing countries to goods from advanced
industrial countries without full reciprocation.
A host of subtle but effective trade barriers
have been kept in place. This
asymmetric globalization has put
developing countries at a
disadvantage. It has left them worse
off than they would be with a truly
free and fair trade regime.
- Joseph Stiglitz
Unjust global market
• ‘Asymmetric globalization’
(Stiglitz)
• Market is created
• Unjust market: Third World
exclusion
– Excluded from capital
– Excluded from currency
– Excluded from decision-making
power
– Excluded from markets
– Excluded from resources
Trickle down?
The response of our industrial machine is to
expand its markets by creating new wants and
new appetites amongst the people who can
afford them. We are thus caught in a paradox
in which we have created an industrial system
capable of meeting the basic needs of all the
world’s people but are in fact using it largely
to foster further growth in the
demand by the wealthy minority for
goods and services well beyond what
we need or is good for us.
- Maurice Strong
Unjust global market
• Market is created
• Unjust market: Third World
exclusion
– Excluded from capital
– Excluded from currency
– Excluded from decision-making
power
– Excluded from markets
– Excluded from scarcities
– Excluded from own resources
• Crippling third world debt
Number One Moral Issue of Day?
The “massive economic imbalance of the
world” is “the major task that faces us in our
generation” and “the number one moral issue
of our day. . . . The present system of global
debt is the real immoral scandal, the dirty little
secret—or rather the dirty enormous secret—
of glitzy, glossy Western capitalism. Whatever
it takes, we must change this situation
or stand condemned by subsequent
history alongside those who supported
slavery two centuries ago and those
who supported the Nazis seventy
years ago. It is that serious.
- N.T. Wright
Impact of Economic Idolatry
• We are often blind to economic and
consumer powers at work in culture
– Fish in water
– Myth of Christian society
– Myth of secular, neutral culture
• We often underestimate power of
entrenched educational practices and
structures (leadership, testing,
curriculum) that support an economic
and consumer worldview
Impact of Economic Idolatry
• We face parental expectations
arising from consumer society that
bring economic pressure
• We are sometimes hostage to state
funding and testing along with a
corresponding vision of academic
excellence that is deeply indebted to
consumer society
• We sometimes measure our success
almost exclusively by state testing
and the universities our kids get into
Impact of economic idolatry
• Consumer society can often marginalise
continuing education for teachers (lack
of time, priority, and funding that arise
from economic pressure, disinterest and
pragmatism of teachers)
• We marginalise subjects in the
curriculum that don’t raise test scores
and academic profile of school
• We devote disproportionate energy and
space to economic issues in planning,
meetings and literature