The Rebel Sell
 |
|
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Published | 2004 |
| Publisher | Capstone |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 225016316 |
The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture Can't be Jammed (released in the United States as Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture) is a non-fiction book written by Canadian authors Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter in 2004. The thesis of the book is that counter-cultural movements have failed to effect any progressive political or economic consequences; thus counter-culture is not a threat to "the system".
Potter and Heath argue against the notion that consumerism is driven by conformity; instead, they state we are largely motivated by competitive consumption, which is an attempt to attain status distinction through the products we buy. They suggest it is the nonconformists, not the conformists, who are driving consumer spending. They claim this has led to the "rebel consumer". Since all goods depend on exclusivity for their value, a purchasing arms race is always in existence as consumers struggle to outdo one another: if you lag, you become mainstream. They note, the image of rebelliousness and critique of mass society has been one of the most powerful forces driving consumerism for the past forty years. Far from being 'subversive,' being a rebel consumer has had no political or economic consequences and is simply a form of status distinction.
Following their claim that conformity isn't something perpetuated by mainstream media, Potter and Heath identify other sources of conformity using work from Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Sigmund Freud. They describe conformity as the byproduct of simple market preferences, or alternatively, an attempt to resolve a collective action problem. For instance, they claim school uniforms successfully curb the fashion 'arms race' created between students when no restrictions are in place, and they are not utilized to remove individualism, as many counter-cultural figures have suggested. According to Potter and Heath, social customs provide security that saves us from a constant need to recalculate the significance of our surroundings. For example, thanks to rules of traffic, a pedestrian can generally safely stand on a sidewalk, without needing to calculate at each instance whether an oncoming bus might stay within its lane or whether it might hit the pedestrian. Thus, rules are by no means inherently oppressive: the undesirability of many facets of society (such as consumerism) are, if anything, caused from the 'bottom up'. To Potter and Heath, some rules may be beneficial, and some rules may be useful.
...
Wikipedia