Eating chocolate in your home, and at the same time saving lives: sounds like a sweet deal. Wearing a cute T-shirt, and at the same time sharing messages of hope: another win-win situation. But these offers to spend your way towards addressing the novel coronavirus pandemic read as just another form of regressive “compassionate consumption.”
Many corporations are now advertising special products that allow customers to show appreciation for essential workers and compassion for those physically, mentally, and financially harmed by the pandemic. One of the corporations that has invited us to shop pandemic products is Hershey’s. Under the banner of “Togetherness during the COVID-19 health crisis,” the U.S. chocolate giant rolled out a “superhero” chocolate collaboration with DC Comics this summer. The first batch, depicting cartoon heroes like Wonder Woman and Batman, will be sent to frontline workers, the “everyday heroes.” Meanwhile on Instagram, you can show your followers your appreciation by wearing rainbow-adorned “thank you” T-shirts, with all proceeds ostensibly going to health-care services in the United Kingdom. Shopping to show appreciation seems like one simple solution to a complicated problem.
As many people’s lives are made smaller by restrictions on who to meet and where to go, there is an understandable need to be part of a community of compassion. We want to show that we care. Giving priority to our consumer identities seems to make sense at this moment. After all, the story of COVID-19 has also been a story of consumer habits. Remember the toilet paper memes? People in many countries are also unhappy about how their governments are dealing with the crisis. In the absence of trust in governments, some hoped the private sector could step up to help address societal issues. This question has become even more pressing in light of the global response to the recent police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, which saw mass protests break out across the world. But all crises have winners and losers; and there is a distinct possibility that compassionate consumption puts us on the side of the powerful and exploitative, not the vulnerable and disenfranchised.
Brands solving societal problems
During the pandemic, brands have been providing equipment where chronically underfunded public services could not. Car companies like General Motors and Ford offered to source and manufacture ventilators. Clothing giants like H&M, Madewell, and Barbour have turned to manufacturing much-needed personal protective equipment (PPE) like gowns and face masks. Billionaire and millionaire philanthropists have also been donating, and many big brands have professed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. One might think that this is the kind of trickle-down economics that capitalist societies have been hoping for, with lightly taxed and regulated corporations and entrepreneurs free to allow the wealth they’ve accumulated to trickle down to the rest of us. After all, the societal problems of years of cuts to health-care services could not have been more evident during this pandemic. In the United Kingdom, for example, the National Health Service has been suffering from debilitating funding cuts: by 2021, the budget for public health services will have been cut by 25% from its 2015 level in real terms. It was only in February of this year that President Trump proposed a 10% cut to federal health-care agencies and programs for the next fiscal year.
The problem is that many big brands have not only enjoyed a corporate-friendly tax environment and a stabilizing network of international laws; they have also benefited from the mystifications of global value chains through clever marketing. Global value chains are the networks of resources and production, often across multiple countries, behind products and services. Tracking them allows us to see where value is added to a product, and where exploitation occurs in the interest of profits. Analyzing global value chains provides insight into workers’ interests — like decent pay, safe working conditions, health-care support, and a healthy balance between work and rest — and whether they are being neglected for profits. Paying workers too little or extracting resources without considering environmental impact, then marketing the product to a higher price, creates profits, or surplus value.
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June 25, 2020 at 06:22PM
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Compassionate Consumption: What Is It and Why It Won’t Solve Society’s Problems - Teen Vogue
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