Quiz 6 Consumer Culture

Consumption and Hygiene

• Many practices and consumer practices are intended to protect our outer surfaces and keep things out of our bodies- hygiene products

• Hygiene: Term from Greek hygieinos (“healthful”); linked to goddess Hygieia.

• 1855: hygienics as a science (establishing & maintaining health).

• Hygiene became linked to cleanliness- removal of contamination for a healthy body

• Cleanliness was not originally part of hygiene.

  • Bathing was taboo in early modern period

  • Hygiene=cleanliness was a late 19th century development and created a more disposable society 

Moral Economy of Thrift

• Gavin Lucas

• The disposal of waste as an economy

• A moral economy reflects “proper” behavior or values 

• Households produced little waste until the 19th century

• Victorian era: thrift & efficiency in household management (Mrs. Beeton, Book of Household Management

  • Proper housekeepers were expected to be frugal and efficient- to waste nothing

• Housekeeping was rebranding as household engineering

• Women as housewives were judged by thriftiness 

  • How well they would reuse and dispose of things in a sustainable way

• Created jobs: rag pickers, tinkers, recyclers.

• We used to have a thriving recycling economy but by the 1920s, rubbish was unhealthy

  • Concern for reducing waste was replaced for health/cleanliness

Moral Economy of Hygiene

• Gavin Lucas

• 19th–20th century shift: health (as cleanliness) > thrift.

• Miasma theory of disease (disease spread by odors/vapors).

  • Germ theory eventually replaced this

• Sir Edwin Chadwick → first sanitary engineer; public health laws (1842) to remove waste.

• Municipal waste collection replaces individual household management.

• Distinctions between body waste vs. other household waste introduced.

• Plain white fixtures (like toilet) valued as “pure” and “sanitary.”

• Rise of hygiene products, soaps, cleaners, appliances.

  • Presented many new opportunities for marketing- people buy things to clean

• Disposable products (toilet paper, Kleenex, Band-Aids) marketed as clean/safe.

  • Single-use=clean=healthful 

Disposable Containers and Packages 

• Gavin Lucas

• One use products replaced reusable ones

• Shift to one-use sanitary wrappers to guarantee germ-free safety

• Especially prevalent in healthcare industry → landfill/incinerator waste.

Extended Body & Extended Self

• Builds on question: “Is my body me?” → body as more than skin-boundary.

• Hygiene taught us health = cleanliness, but boundaries are fuzzy.

• Question: Can we ever keep body boundaries free of contamination? (Superman fantasy).

• Idea of fuzzy boundaries comes from biology: organisms are not discrete, but open

Fuzzy Boundaries (Carl Knappett)

• Canadian archaeologist (reading).

• Biologists show organisms have “fuzzy” boundaries with the environment.

• Example: skin is not an absolute boundary → bodies are leaky, porous, relational.

• Applied to humans: body + tools/prostheses create hybrids with extended capacities

  • Extension of the body and the self

  • The object is independent but it transforms the person

  • ANT: Agentive capacities emerge from an assembly of actants

  • Hybrid: Human + extension, the Great Divide has prevented this recognition

  • The hybrid has more capability than the individual object and human by themselves

• Prothesis: Artificial device added to replace a missing part of the body

Hybrids

• Combination of human + technological extension.

• Can be externalized (cane, wheelchair, crutches, scooter, sari).

• Or internalized (knee implant, cochlear implant, fingertip magnet, insulin monitor).

• New entity with more capacity than human or object alone.

• Challenges Great Divide by rejecting strict separation human/object.

Case Study – The Sari (Danny Miller, Stuff)

• Clothing mediates body ↔ environment.

• Mastery of sari = maturity + Hindu woman identity.

• Requires skill, constant adjustment → wearer is always aware of it.

• Pallu = “third hand,” prosthetic quality: strains water, lifts hot objects, holds baby

• Woman + sari = hybrid with increased agency.

• Miller: “The sari wears the woman.” Agency belongs to the assembly.

  • It increases its agency by having the woman wear it

Clothing & Second Skin

• Clothing as prosthesis → extension of body/self.

• Mediates boundaries, not just protection but agentive.

• Examples: sari, uniforms, fashion shaping identity.

• Concept extends metaphorically: cars as second skin → human-car hybrid (driving expands agency).

Cyborgs

• Term: cybernetic organism (1960, originally about astronaut suits).

• Machine parts are sensate, they communicate to the human body parts

• Cybernetics = communication + automated control.

• Human + machine with feedback loop (sensory/interactive).

• Fictional examples: Darth Vader, Borg, Bionic Man/Woman, Daleks.

• Not same as robots/androids (no organic part).

• Fear of cyborgs rooted in master/slave metaphor (Langdon Winner): machines overtaking humans.

  • Hybrids breach the human-object boundary

Real-Life Cyborgs

• Everyday examples:

  • Grandma with hearing aid, replacement hip.

  • Bluetooth headset users.

  • Dialysis patients → machine takes on “living” qualities by merging with body.

• Hospitals full of cyborg relations (life-support, monitors).

Biomechatronics & Hybridity

• Biomechatronics = bio + mechanics + electronics (new “hybrid age”).

• Knappett disagrees this is new → argues humans always lived as hybrids.

  • These are all fuzzy objects

• Example: first stone tools 3+ million years ago.

• Tools extend bodies/capacities → agency extension shared between human + tool.

Fuzzy Boundary

Between organism and the environment

Fyborg (Alexander Chislenko)

• Definition: functional cyborg → organism with technological supplements (e.g., VR visor).

• Knappett: we are all fyborgs, always have been.

• Human-tool hybridity essential to humanness.

Amber Case – Cyborg Anthropologist

• TED Talk: We are All Cyborgs Now.

• Technology creates “second self”: bodily + mental extension.

• Virtual connections = part of human identity.

• Argues: hybridity makes us more human, not less.

Ergonomics

• Coined in 1949 (Greek ergon = work + “onomics” from economics).

• Definition: designing/arranging objects so bodies interact efficiently & safely.

• Also called human engineering → “engineering” humans by shaping equipment to maximize worker capacity and efficiency

• Origin: workplace design (post-WWII); goal = efficiency & injury reduction.

• Now used widely in consumer products (furniture, tools, prosthetics, medical devices).

• Marketed as health/therapeutic benefit → “better for your body.”

Ergonomics in Consumer Culture

• Ergonomic products marketed as superior → consumers often choose “ergonomic” over standard.

  • They conform and benefit bodies

• Examples: shovels, keyboards, computer mice, furniture, prosthetics.

• But → raises question: whose body are these designed for?

• Assumes “generic” body, but bodies differ by age, ability, culture.

Case Study – Getting a Grip (Torrens, McDonagh-Philp & Newman)

• Designed ergonomic tableware (knives, forks, spoons) for elderly with poor motor skills.

• Approach: evidence-based, observational study (assisted living facilities).

• Different from typical design (evidence-based): observed how elderly actually used utensils before designing

• Goal: assistive technology → booming consumer industry (e.g., tremor-stabilizing spoons).

• Limitation: didn’t consider table manners/etiquette → important cultural differences. There is not a general way to hold a knife and fork

Body Techniques (Marcel Mauss, 1934)

• Wanted to know culturally variable ways people move/position/use their bodies

• - Called them culturally variable body techniques

• Motricity: How people move their bodies

• Learned through practice → ingrained habits.

• Facilitated by material props (knife/fork, high heels, hammocks, head balances).

• Body techniques, objects, and activities function together in a way that is efficient

• Origin of idea: WWI trenches → soldiers of different nations couldn’t use each other’s shovels.

• Examples: walking/running with slippers, sleeping in hammocks vs. beds, posture differences.

Ergonomics vs. Body Techniques

• Ergonomics: objects shaped to fit human body (design adapts object to human).

• Body techniques: humans adapt their bodies to fit objects (reverse adaptation).

• Langdon Winner’s “reverse adaptation” connects here (though Mauss described it much earlier).- said it was new but its not new

• Both are efficient, but:

  • Ergonomics = technical efficiency.

  • Body techniques = cultural efficiency + meaning.

    • Mauss- humans learn from a young age how to adapt their bodies to objects habitually used

Habitus (Mauss)

• Term coined from Latin habitud (habit/custom) + exis (acquired ability).

• Definition: ingrained bodily habits developed through repeated practice with objects.

• Example: learning to hold scissors → becomes automatic over time.

• Habitus = efficiency + meaning → culturally structured, embodied ways of being.

L’homme Total (Mauss’s “Total Human”)

• No meaning or mind in ergonomics- where is culture in ergonomics

• Humans are a synthesis of three dimensions- comprehensive view of being a human

  • Social being (person, influenced by others).

  • Biological being (body).

  • Psychological being (mind, sense of self).

• Consumption = culturally variable, embodied ways of living with things.

• Humans = not machines, not “bundles of muscle,” but integrated beings.