This Just In - Voluntourists & Locavores- You're Just Flaunting Your Wealth And Status In New Ways

[hatrack]

Gosh, can't argue with that, now can we?

EDIT


Andrew Potter: What it is is, in a sense, a successor form of status display, succeeding the old conspicuous consumption that we're all familiar with. And what has happened, I think over the past 30 or 40 years, there's been a shift in the culture where as we got wealthier, it actually became less socially acceptable to just sort of, like, engage in raw displays of how much wealth you have or what great taste you have. And so we engage in what I call "conspicuous authenticity," displays of consumption or experience that sort of express what a deep person, how spiritual you are.

Vigeland: What are some examples of that?

Potter: Things like volun-tourism or eco-tourism. The idea that you're not just going traveling somewhere; you're going there to actually help out the locals. Or you're going there to help preserve the planet. I think the current fetish for the locavore craze -- local eating, local meat, local produce and so on -- is an expression of that as well. This idea that I'm not the kind of person who shops just to own something. I shop to sort of sustain a local community that matters to me and my kin.

Vigeland: Well, what's wrong with conspicuous authenticity? What's wrong with eco-tourism?

Potter: Oh, there's nothing wrong with it at all. Except, one of the problems is, like all what economists call "positional goods," it's valuable only to the extent to which other people can't really have it. Especially in the food, the locavore movement, one of the most important aspects that people talk about is "I've got this butter, right, that you can't buy in the open market. You need sort of social connections to get it." What I'm trying to point out is that when you wrap up your consumption in a sort of moralizing guise, it ends up sort of being almost a more pernicious form of status-seeking, because it makes it seem like you're actually better than other people and not just simply better connected.

Vigeland: You talk a lot in the book about how marketers and brand strategists are tapping into this these days. Can you give us some examples of that? I mean, obviously, you spent a lot of time talking about Whole Foods.

Potter: Yeah. I talk about Whole Foods... What's amazing, the beginning of chapter four actually lists about 50 different products and services or goods or people that have been promoted on the grounds that they're authentic or they have authenticity. I mean, everything from chain saws to Sarah Palin has been sort of claimed to be authentic in one way or another. And so it's a great marketing strategy across the board.

EDIT

http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/03/pm-the-new-holier-than-thou/

[jpak]

1. "I've got this butter, right, that you can't buy in the open market." You need connections to shop

at farmers markets?

who knew?

The stuff I bought at my local farmers market this morning was cheaper than the local (open) supermarket.

and I walked there

[Kolesar]

3. "it's valuable only to the extent to which other people can't really have it. "

"Marketplace" needs to look a little wider to find something newsworthy to broadcast.

[XemaSab]

4. You took the snark right out of my mouth

:D

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Depends on how you want to look at it.

I buy an apple grown in a local orchard and sold at a local farmers' market.

I can take satisfaction from supporting a local business entity and not subsidize corporate farms with their genetic shannigans and pesticides. Or I can take home that apple and "bemoan" that it cost $1.50, thus showing off my ability to pay for such a pricey fruit.

To eat safely and healthy, I have to pay whatever the market demands. I wish local food cost less, but it doesn't. By choosing carefully what I buy and eat, it can possibly lead to a more vital future when I am a senior. I don't feel like a "yuppie", being politically correct, etc.

[stuntcat]

6. yah

No one knows whether I buy my things from the farmer's market or not, I can't imagine bragging about how local my food is. The Environment is why I'm vegan, but I never talk about it with people, mostly just my closest family knows.

'Voluntourism' did always seem silly to me kinda, considering the fuel it takes to fly anywhere. I feel very wasteful for the trips I take now, buying those probably meaningless carbon offsets just to make myself feel a little better :( I'm sure a lot of people would call that ridiculous.

We've learned to be so conspicuous in all our consumption, I guess it's natural to be conspicuous with our anti-consumption too? :shrug:
It does depend on how you want to look at it.

[Warpy]

5. While I'd love to eat locally

quite honestly, the local stuff from the desert is restricted to beans, chiles, and the small and hard apples in the fall that aren't much to eat but which supply great cider for about 3 weeks every year.

Backyard produce is horribly expensive here because of the amount of expensive water that must be poured on it to keep it alive and producing.

People don't have swimming pools out here because they can lose 2 inches of water a day to evaporation in warm weather. It gets really expensive to keep them topped up.

So we rely on stuff coming up from Mexico, produce which is easily as good as the California stuff I've eaten elsewhere and about as local as we're going to get.

But yes, it takes a hell of a lot of money around here to be a non consumer, a locavore, and a full time volunteer.

[kestrel91316]

7. More evidence that NPR is in the hands of the RW, trying to gin up

resentment against us "elitists" who give a fuck about the planet and our fellow humans.