Two signs pho­to­graphed in a depart­ment store that’s about to close.

taken with cam­era phone

To the left, big, bold let­ters and col­ours: the store is clos­ing down and everything must go, “step right up, bar­gains galore”. Thrill at 20% off a new kettle. Take home a pot­tery owl, only £42.99 (down from £59.00). It’s an excit­ing chance, you con­sumer mon­key. Be seduced by these prices.

taken with cam­era phone

The second is a dif­fer­ent appear­ance of emo­tion in cap­it­al­ism; this is not the cap­it­al­ism of the roman­ti­cised com­mod­ity exchange dis­cussed above (Illouz, 1997), nor quite the cold intim­acy of man­aged emo­tion in cap­it­al­ism (Illouz, 2007). It’s the organ­isa­tion appeal­ing to sen­ti­ment, to empathy, to feel­ing and not sen­sa­tion. Fevre (2000) sug­gests this is rare, arguing that the tri­umph of ‘com­mon sense’ as a form of reas­on­ing means that ration­al­ity is imposed in places where it ought not be. That is, an organ­isa­tion might eas­ily fail to make the case for care, see­ing the job losses that res­ult from the store clos­ing as merely the inev­it­able out­come of reces­sion: there’s no use cry­ing over spilled eco­nomic inev­it­ab­il­it­ies. After all, it’s com­mon sense that unem­ploy­ment rises in reces­sion, but never mind, there’ll be a recov­ery even­tu­ally. Cer­tainly, it seems that some of the cus­tom­ers have to be reminded to see past this, to con­nect the bar­gain to the pain. I can’t help think­ing that there’s a few people mak­ing decisions about cut­ting the budget defi­cit who could do with a copy of this sign in their office.

Ref­er­ences

  1. Fevre, R. W. (2000) The Demor­al­iz­a­tion of West­ern Cul­ture . Con­tinuum, London.
  2. Illouz, E. (1997) Con­sum­ing the Romantic Uto­pia: Love and the Cul­tural Con­tra­dic­tions of Cap­it­al­ism . Berke­ley: Uni­ver­sity of Cali­for­nia Press.
  3. Illouz, E. (2007) Cold Intimacies: The Mak­ing of Emo­tional Cap­it­al­ism. Polity Press, London.