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What is This?
ARTICLE
Abstract. In social theory, goods have usually not been included in the social world.
However, in the sociology of consumption, they have been seen as mediating social
relations and offering opportunities to make social distinctions. It is precisely the
symbolic aspect of goods that makes this possible. In helping to make these
distinctions, goods are only given a passive role in our lives. They only get to function
as markers of social differences, tastes, and so on. However, the use value of goods
cannot be reduced to their symbolic aspect. Generally speaking, the use value also has
two other aspects which I will call the ‘functionality’ and ‘productivity’ of goods. I am
going to argue that because goods also comprise these aspects, they are not just ‘dead’
or ‘asocial’ elements or phenomena in our everyday lives, but also play an active role in
our relationship to other people. Moreover, I will pay attention to the process of
appropriating goods. On the one hand, I will focus on how we internalize purchased
commodities (i.e. how we make them our possessions in the social meaning of the
word); and, on the other hand, I shall also draw attention to the ways in which we
surround our goods with the aura of ‘me-ness’ (i.e. how we externalize them). I will
then conclude by looking at the active role that goods play as our partners when we
try to cope with everyday life. They are ‘something in order to’, as Heidegger puts it.
We are therefore prone to treat them well,‘to take care of them’, and they may have
an even more important role in our lives than is usually thought.
Key words
appropriation process ● externalization ● functionality of goods ● internalization ●
‘me-ness’ ● object-centred sociality
In his magnificent tale The Fellowship of the Ring (1954–55), J.R.R. Tolkien
puts an ancient theme, the fight of good and bad, in a wonderful frame.1
27
The focus of this fight is the possession of a specific fairy ring. Most of the
story is about envying and fighting for this ring because it provides its
owner with great power. For instance, with the help of the ring, it is possible
to make oneself invisible, but at a high price: the possessor of the ring
becomes its prisoner. This view describes well the old and widespread belief
that the possession of some significant object and even the plain desire to
have it will have disastrous effects not only on the soul of a single human
being, but also on the existing social order. This view is not only a matter
of fairytales, but can be seen in the way that the same kind of fear that
these tales incorporate has been repeatedly reproduced when some signifi-
cant new good (car, radio, telephone, TV, mobile phone) has been intro-
duced into the markets (see Pantzar, 1996).
Although it is generally believed that goods have a marked impact on
our lives, they have not obtained a reasonable place in social theory, especially
in the analysis of our sociality (see Knorr Cetina, 1997; Preda, 1999). Of
course, one of the forebears of sociology, Marx, considered commodities as
alienated end products of collective workers that connected them in the
markets to people that were unfamiliar to them. His emphasis, however,
was more on the exchange value and the related social relations than on
the use value of commodities (Marx, 1972; see also Haug, 1979). Simmel
(and Veblen), in turn, paid his attention to the uses of goods, for instance,
in his analysis of fashion, and pinpointed their distinctive nature. However,
since such classic analyses, in most social theory, whether talking about
different strands of structural theories inspired by Parsons or ethno-
methodological theories based on Schutz and Garfinkel, our relations to
products are missing. It is not so much that these social theories do not
accept the existence of goods, but that they do not admit that goods play
an important role in a social world. This is the case in spite of the
commonly shared fact that ‘homo faber’ works and rebuilds the physical
world by utilizing tools and ‘homo consumens’ transforms it according to
his or her tastes and preferences.
The situation did, however, change in the late 1970s when sociology
became interested anew in consumption matters. It considered goods not
only to be one of the most important means to make and maintain social
distinctions, but also to be an important element in our identities
(Campbell, 1996; Ilmonen, 2001a; Warde, 1994). Until now, the way in
which consumption has been dealt with in the sociology of consumption,
which is my main frame of reference, has been relatively narrow. It still
leaves open the general question of the use of consumption objects. In this
article, I will proceed further and try to show that goods play a more
28
important role than is usually thought, that goods are not only a passive
means that can be utilized for whatever aim, but, on the contrary, that they
actively influence our lives and have, therefore, an important role in our
social networks. In this role, they may even counteract the trend of
desocialization related to the individualization process.
Knorr Cetina, for example, maintains that understanding the issue of the
‘disembedding of modern selves’ in terms of human relations ignores ‘the
ways in which major classes of individuals have tied themselves to object
worlds’ (1997: 1). She is certainly right here, but she never mentions that
our object relations are necessarily different from human relations. Objects
do not speak back (at least, for the time being), unlike we humans. Still, they
may attract our attention and even become objects of passionate care and
great attraction. The main focus of this article is how this takes place.
In order to explore this question, I will first outline some general argu-
ments on the uses of consumption objects based on some features of ‘actor
network theory’. When goods are used, they will attain personal meanings;
this is my next theme. By utilizing the concept of appropriation, I shall
focus on the way that goods are internalized by consumers. This is, however,
only one side of the appropriation process. Therefore, I will round out my
main discussion by drawing attention to the externalization of personal
meanings and how they may become collective meanings and thus even a
basis for collective identities.
29
30
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human actors and goods are stabilized over time and tend to expand, as
Simmel (1993) points out (cars to petrol, petrol to petrol stations, petrol
stations to motorways and related restaurants, and so on).
In other words, goods contribute to the patterning of our social world.
Therefore, it is not right to reduce the social merely to human agents and
their relationships, but also to take our material surroundings into consider-
ation in the formation of this, as, for example, Sartre’s concept of the socio-
material implies (1976). This is why it is also not right to separate goods
and humans into totally different spheres, although they are generally seen
to belong to different moral spheres (see Kopytoff, 1986: 84). To say that
humans and our products go together does not mean, in the context of the
‘work of hybridization’, that we have to treat people as goods or instru-
ments. Goods do not have the duties, rights and responsibilities that we
usually accord to people, but they can be used for fulfilling these moral
aspects in our lives (see Law, 1992: 383).
When it is accepted that goods belong to the same sphere as humans
social methodological asymmetry in our commodity relations cannot be
defended (Law, 1992: 282; Preda, 1999). This means that, to a certain
degree,‘methodological assumptions that apply to human actors would also
apply to things’ (Preda, 1999) and that subject–subject relations cannot
claim superiority over subject–object relations (Reckwitz, 2002: 253). This
symmetry between consumers and goods must not be mixed with onto-
logical symmetry because it would allow us to assume that goods have the
same properties as human actors (i.e. that goods are intentional, reflective,
and so on). This, in turn, maintains a belief that a relationship between
human actors and products is asymmetric. However, it is only historical
obliteration, and, in that sense, a contingent situation that can be treated as
the great divide of modern times (see Preda, 1999).
Although goods are not intentional, the methodological symmetry
assumption implies that the materiality or functionality of goods forms the
frame of reference of our activity by setting the preconditions for us in
‘keeping company’ with products. In this sense, the functionality of goods
is their most crucial element. However, the functionality never determines
our action completely, although it restricts what can be done with goods.
Therefore, one part of the knowledge that is inscribed in goods includes
restrictions that are central to the skill formation that is learned by using
goods. Formal teaching helps to form these skills, but only partly; we learn
most of them by doing them. The end result of this kind of learning is
called ‘indeterminate’ or ‘tacit’ knowledge (Polanyi, 1962: 48).
Since human ties to goods might be very strong, they can hardly be
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still exist (and new ones will emerge), for instance, as symbols for sporting
clubs or in the coats of arms of noble families, their enforcing power on
the individuals belonging to those clubs and the kin is not the same as in
premodern societies. The individual adoption of totemic symbols and
related objects can no longer be taken as a given. This is especially true for
commodities on markets, although marketing people have for a long time
used totemic symbols (for example, Esso’s famous tiger). It is therefore
necessary to analyse how people make such goods their own.
The process of making commodities our own occurs through an appro-
priation process. There are, however, varying uses of the concept of appro-
priation. In any case, most writers seem to agree that appropriation occurs
after a commodity is sold. When this takes place, it leaves the markets and
gives up its status as a commodity (the generalized system of equivalence
and change) and is taken possession of by an individual, a household or an
even larger group. In this phase, the good is singularized and given a ‘social
life’. Later, it can be removed to the markets and offered again the status of
a commodity (Kopytoff, 1986: 65; see also Appadurai, 1986). I will,
however, skip the latter phase and focus only on how this singularization
might take place.5
Vygotsky (who wanted to take further Hegelian and Marxian ideas
about our subject–object relations and to apply them to Russian psychol-
ogy) offers a good starting point for the analysis of the process of making
something your own. He was very keen to find out the general principles
that govern our individuation process and related mental processes. Accord-
ing to Vygotsky, ‘every function in child’s cultural development appears
twice, first on a social level, and later on an individual level’ (1978: 57). If
we generalize this principle, we will at first recognize our relations to
objects of the external world and only then will we internalize them. It is
therefore necessary to inspect the way in which we internalize objects that
are external to us. We must study how we make those objects our posses-
sions. By this, I do not refer to the formal juridical and economic owner-
ship of a ‘thing’, but rather to the subjective aspect in considering that a
‘thing’ is one’s own. The expression ‘my home’ illuminates this point well.
It implies that a physical phenomenon, a residence, has been transformed
to something personal (‘home sweet home’).
The internalization of goods is, however, only one step in an appro-
priation process. It is also necessary to examine how we project ourselves
on external goods or ‘objectivate’ ourselves in them; in other words, we
should look at how we externalize and transfer our desires, inner feelings
and social relations to objects. The result of this move from the inside to
36
the external world has, in market research, been seen as the creation of the
‘me-ness’ of things (see Schulz Kleine et al., 1995). I will start with the
internalization process.
As previously mentioned, the appropriation of goods starts after we
have bought a commodity. According to market research, consumers
become attached to an object almost instantly upon being endowed with
it (Beggan, 1992). It has been called the ‘instant endowment effect’.
However, Barone et al. challenge the instantness of this effect. In a series
of studies using several different objects, they failed to observe a consistent
increase in the perception of object attractiveness (1997: 282–4). However,
even if the effect of object valuation does not always begin immediately
following purchase, a deeper adaptation to ownership will occur with time.
This has also been shown experimentally. The length of ownership
increases the reluctance to give a thing up (Strahilevitz and Loewenstein,
1998: 276, 287–9). Thus, instead of an instant endowment effect, it is better
to call this mechanism simply an ‘endowment effect’.
There are many attempts by market research to explain the endowment
effect. First, it has been linked to the idea of ‘loss aversion’ developed by
Tversky and Kahneman (1991). According to them, people have a tendency
to place greater weight on losses than on gains of equal absolute magni-
tude. This can easily be observed in gambling and in risk taking in general
(Strahilevitz and Loewenstein, 1998: 278). It is, however, not easy to see
how this works with such possessions as, for example, old walking shoes,
although Strahilevitz and Loewenstein seem to think so.
The endowment effect has also been explained by referring to ‘famili-
arity’. The longer someone owns an object, the better he or she learns to
know it and interact with it. The more positive the experience, the more
eager he or she is to keep it. However, there is no reason to believe that
the positive experience of an object will remain stable over time; on the
contrary, it may become more and more negative in the long run, especially
if new kinds or a new generation of goods emerge on the market that may
be more effective and attractive than the old objects (see Harrison and
March, 1984). It may also be that, while the positive experiences remain
stable, there will be negative experiences as well (see Thaler, 1980). They
may not exceed the positive ones, but they may in any case diminish the
involvement in the old objects. Therefore, familiarity cannot explain (at
least, alone) people’s reluctance to give up their old possessions, even if the
possessions no longer work in the best possible way (see Ilmonen, 2001b).
What about a taste change? According to Strahilevitz and Loewenstein,
‘motivated taste-change suggests that the increases in valuation as a result
37
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usually the case when a strong emotion like fear, hatred or love overwhelms
us. The same happens when our action is prevented for one reason or
another. The target of involvement, in turn, rises into the foreground when
our attention is focused on solving a problem, on a specific situation or on
the way in which something happens. It is important to recognize, however,
that irrespective of whether it is the object of our involvement or our
involvement itself that rises into the foreground, both are always present in
our emotions. If one is missing, the feeling is extinguished.
The object-orientated nature of emotions means that an emotion can
be separated neither from the act of observing nor from the (pre)concep-
tions about the object of observation. Instead, emotions are connected to
the processing of information about the goods and to our ways of seeing
and experiencing them. Emotions also have a cognitive component. They
give us important information about our relationship to the object of
emotion, which is subjectivized (or internalized) in the experience and
allows us to act in subjectively meaningful ways in relation to it (Heller,
1977: 50; Hochschild, 1983: 30–1, 222).
Furthermore, we are prone to project our emotions onto consumption
objects. We relocate our feelings and desires in products (objects). Conse-
quently, they will entail a part of us, the aura of ‘me-ness’. This ‘me-ness’
is not only a virtual idea. In consumption, mass-produced commodities are
shaped and earmarked (individually or collectively) through embodied use.
We may either decorate or somehow configurate them in everyday use. Lupton
and Noble believe that these are the two major ways of appropriating
particularly personal computers in academic settings (2002: 11–21). Decor-
ation ‘includes adding external objects to the computer to achieve a person-
alizing or aesthetic effect’ while configuration means, for example, naming
the hard drive, remaking the background picture and arranging the set-up
of the computer (2002: 11, 15). It is very likely that these strategies apply
to most consumption objects and that they may vary according to gender,
age, and so on.
Appropriation strategies should not, however, be understood to mean
that involvement necessarily consists of a wicked relationship to goods.
Rather, the question deals with transcending the mere utilitarian or func-
tional aspect of goods. The decoration and configuration (or whatever
appropriation strategies there may be) of objects serve to extend the self
outwards in space and to form ‘a territory that surrounds the body’ (2002:
7), to enlargen ‘me-ness’.
Thus, involvement in and commitment to goods implies that goods are
not merely indifferent objects of our consumption. Because they have the
41
42
about our relationship to goods, but, if we want, it also provides others with
information about us and especially about our relationship to these goods.
We can even make this relationship explicit by informing others of new
ways to deal with the goods (make recipes, develop new styles, give new
instructions). Harré calls this phase ‘making known’ (1983: 258), but it could
also be said that the productive aspect of the good is emphasized. It is the
phase in which we present our individual style of handling a good to a
larger public. This step is always risky because we open our notion of goods
and our skills to use the goods (i.e. the ability to cook) to the evaluation
of others. In the worst case, they may consider us lunatics; in the best case,
they may praise us for a fresh innovation. When this happens, it is possible
that the innovation is accepted in the community as part of its cultural
heritage. If this occurs, it will become part of common wisdom that serves
as a social resource for the whole community.
To describe the process of appropriation more formally, I will utilize
Vygotsky’s and Harré’s ideas of the above-outlined process of internalizing
and externalizing goods. Harré uses two dimensions in order to describe
it. One is ‘presentation’ and the other is ‘realization’. One end of the
‘presentation’ dimension consists of public presentation and the other of
private presentation (to keep things for ourselves). ‘Realization’, in turn,
can be either individual or collective, as shown in Figure 1.
In presenting this picture, Harré accepts the Vygotskian psychology of
a child’s development as his starting point in utilizing language.8 Language
is, however, not an unchanging system of codes, but an endlessly changing
practice (parole) that moulds the language system. For instance, the first text
messages that were sent by cell phones in Finland no longer look like the
messages that are being sent today. The first messages imitated short letters
written in proper language. Today’s messages utilize all sorts of abbrevia-
tions and symbols. In order to understand these messages, we must learn
what the expressions stand for. They must, in a way, be collectively accepted
in order for them to work as messages. In general, Harré (1983) treats
language in an analogous way. Language to him is a developing system that
must become established, at least for a while. He therefore talks about
conventionalization as a process.
From the point of view of an individual consumer, conventionaliza-
tion goes on all the time and the circular process may start from any of the
cells in the picture. Because my focus is on the appropriation process, I will
start where Harré does. The consumer buys a good from the markets.
Although industries try to develop it with particular ‘ideal’ users in mind
and to anticipate typical uses of their products, they seldom succeed in this.
43
PUBLIC PRESENTATION
Figure 1
The preconceived actual user is confronted with the ‘ideal’ user (see
Woolgar, 1991, 2000). The result is necessarily not as anticipated because,
after the purchase, the personal adaptation by every consumer of the good
starts, whether the good is conventional or new (see Lehtonen, 2001; Miller,
1998). This implies a personal or collective appropriation of the good,
which in turn changes the consumer’s relationship to it. It becomes more
or less personal.
Let’s take a new bike as an example – not a special mountain or racing
bike, but quite an ordinary bike with a few gears. The bike takes its time
to teach you to adapt to it and learn how to ride it: how to sit on the
saddle, what movements the pedals make, how the gear system works in an
optimal way, and so on. After we have overcome this phase, we no longer
need to pay attention to the technical side of cycling, but can start devoting
ourselves to the endowment of the enjoyment of riding and to our bike
44
(Ilmonen, 2001b: 21–2). Consequently, both our approach to this good and
its use get individual or group-based features. We may mark it somehow,
for instance by attaching a shopping basket of a special colour, or decorate
it in a particular way, as is often done with old bikes. These singularizing
decorations may include special tribal symbols: flags, colours and names, as
do the so-called ‘grandpa mopeds’ in Finland. In the best case, these features
may include some innovative aspects, for instance new electric fixtures. To
‘make known’, however, does not necessarily imply this. Innovation is
usually only a byproduct of ‘making known’. The main aim is to show
others that you are capable of mastering the good. However, sometimes
this is not enough. We might also need some papers such as a driver’s or
gun licence that show that we are proper consumers of a special group of
products.
In order to ‘make myself known’, I will give another example. Food
shopping is one of our everyday practices (Lehtonen, 2001; Miller, 1998).
It is a common headache for all of us (however, mostly for housewives) to
ponder, for instance, whether to buy some raw materials or stick to ready-
made foods. In both cases, the next step is to decide how to prepare the
food and what additional items need to be purchased. In deciding this, we
may lean on some familiar recipe. However, in many cases, we cannot use
the recipe as such because not all family members like it because they may
suffer from some kind of allergy or because all the required ingredients are
not available in the market. Therefore, we must somehow modify the recipe
in order to please the needs and desires of all family members. Because we
might not be master cooks à la Bocuse, we must rely on trial and error. It
takes a while to internalize how to modify the old recipe to best please all
the family members. After a couple of successes, we might feel personally
satisfied about producing something completely new and feel that it is
worth sharing with our friends and neighbours. If they enjoy the new
recipe, they might recommend it to their friends. In this way, the recipe
becomes slowly conventionalized and the circulation process continues
endlessly.
Some large companies even try to systematically use consumers’ ideas
for product development. It depends on the willingness of the consumers
to accept these innovations (see Klein, 2000). Callon et al. put it in a
nutshell, thus: ‘The products they buy are tested in their home; collective
evaluations are made; learning takes place, which gives rise to evaluations.
More broadly, our consumers are caught in social networks in which tastes
are formed, discussed and mitigated’ (2002: 203). Goods mediate these
networks. Products play an important part in our social lives, but not all
45
goods reach that position. Therefore, it is probably right to state that, ‘in
the economy of qualities, competition turns around the attachments of
consumers to products whose qualities have progressively been defined with
their active participation’ (2002: 212). If this attempt to attach consumers
to products, for instance by marketing, does not succeed, consumption
objects will not be appropriated. Instead, they remain with the status of a
commodity (until they are thrown away as waste).
CONCLUSION
I have tried to briefly outline that (at least some) goods have a central place
in our social world. They are not external to it, but a necessary part of it.
Much of our activity labeled as consumption entails work (or a ‘work of
hybridization’) that is a profound condition of our existence. In addition,
the consumption process does not take place only according to our wishes,
but goods also put claims on us. We must consume them in a sequential
order and take into consideration how they react to our acts. The proper-
ties of the electric oven and the pot that we use to make soup, for instance,
put limits on what we can do with them in every phase of the cooking
process. Sometimes our interaction with goods is so tight that it is difficult
to say on whose terms this interaction takes place. This is as far as the so-
called actor network theory (theories) takes us.
That goods are tightly bound to our social lives is, however, only a
precondition for our commitment to them and for the ways in which they
may participate in the construction of our identities. In order to proceed
further from this point, it is necessary to open up the old general philo-
sophical question of subject–object relations and to attempt to overcome
it by trying to create an understanding of sociality mediated by goods. In
tackling this problem, I have utilized the Vygotskian ‘psychologized’
Hegelian theory of a child’s learning of cultural products (language). To
commit to some good presupposes that we make it our own; in a word,
internalize it. Internalization is a process during which we first learn to
utilize the good cognitively. When our experience with the good grows,
our skills in using it improve and our relationship to it changes – it will
become more and more personal and subjective. This change can be
described with the help of Vygotsky’s concepts of meaning and mind,
whereby meaning stands for a shared cultural meaning and mind for the
personal interpretation and application of it. We meet commodities on
markets, where marketing and consumers themselves construct more or less
shared meanings of these commodities.9 After the purchase, the appropri-
ation of these goods takes place. It is a process that will end when we treat
46
these goods as our own. They get an aura of ‘me-ness’ (or catch our mind),
as market researchers like to put it.
Depending on the nature of our experience during the appropria-
tion process, we will approach the good in a special way. If our experi-
ence is positive, this approach strengthens our emotional bonds to the
good, but it might also be so innovative that we want to show it to others.
It is being suspended from their evaluation, whether or not it eventually
becomes common property that can be applied in the production of new
goods. This implies that it is consumption as such that provides the
impulse and knowledge to improve goods. Many large international
enterprises therefore intentionally utilize consumer groups in order to get
feedback about their products and to create goods for the next gener-
ation.
Notes
1. Kalevala, which Tolkien knew very well and probably used as a source for his own
ideas, could also be used here as an example. The mighty blacksmith Ilmarinen
created a sort of machine of wealth, a ‘sampo’, that evoked much envy, gave a
reason to start a war and, in the end, led to the destruction of this machine.
2. I will exclude all disposable goods from scrutiny here.
3. However, car makers are already producing cars that do not simply react to drivers’
efforts. They may, for instance, slow down at bends whether drivers want them to
or not.
4. Bateson has developed a systemic view of interaction between humans and non-
human materials. He considers, for example, how, in the process of cutting down a
tree, man and tree form a feedback system. The tree has an ‘active role’ in this
process in the sense that man must constantly take into consideration the changes
in the chopped tree if he is to do his job successfully. However, according to
Bateson, the western observer is not looking at tree-cutting in this fashion; rather,
he says that ‘I chop the tree’ and even believes that ‘I’ is separate from the tree that
is cut (1972: 318).
5. Some words of warning are necessary here. Not all commodities are singularized.
This applies to disposable products and some everyday utensils such as washing
powder and clothes pegs.
6. It is worth noting that in experiments conducted by Strahilevitz and Loewenstein,
subjects were not given an opportunity to actually use the objects (1998: 286).
7. It is illuminating that this kind of activity is labelled ‘housework’ rather than
‘consumption’, but naturally consumption usually implies a lot of work.
8. Archer challenges this starting point. She claims that privacy and practices come
before social and collective realization (2000: 114–17). It is hard to assess who is
right in this question. However, both are more interested in theories about the
morphology of a child’s development than in how we as beings who have already
been socialized into the role of a consumer face the existing world of goods.
Because I deal with the latter issue here and because my focus is on the
47
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Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
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Kaj Ilmonen has been a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Philosophy and Social
Sciences, University of Jyväskylä since 1994 and, before that, was at the University of Tampere.
His main fields of interest include social theory, social movements, industrial relations and the
sociology of consumption. Recent publications include: Trust in the Modern World (Sophi,
2002; with Kimmo Jokinen); ‘Sociology, Consumption and Routine’, in Ordinary Consumption
(Routledge, 2001; edited by J. Gronow and A. Warde); ‘A Social Movement of the Mature
Stage of Post-industrial Society?’, Work, Employment & Society (14[1]: 137–157; with P.
Jokivuori). Address: University of Jyväskylä, PO Box 35, 40014 Finland. [email:
Ilmonen@yfi.jyu.fi]
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