Missives

illegalsoul:

guerrillamamamedicine:

champagnecandy:

secretarysbreakroom:

“Ethical shopping flatters us that our everyday buying is doing good’, argues Heartfield. Such ethical transactions represent a form of ‘status affirmation’. And as is the case with all forms of status affirmation, these green shopping habits are acts of social demarcation. Through adopting the identity of an ethical shopper, someone who cares and who reflects on what they purchase, green consumers are self-consciously marking themselves off from their moral, and incidentally their social, inferiors. Their denunciation of their fellow human beings who wear trashy throwaway cheap clothes and eat cheap food is a modern-day version of the paternalistic lectures made by Victorian do-gooders. Ironically, green protest against consumerism doesn’t represent the rejection of consumption, but rather its moralisation. From a sociological perspective, green consumption can be seen as a new form of conspicuous consumption. This is consumption for effect. Consumption apparently must no longer be an impulsive act of buying – rather it has become a massively over-examined experience, and both a moral statement and an affirmation of status and identity. In the nineteenth century, theories of commodity fetishism noted the growing tendency for people to live through things – commodities appeared to acquire a life of their own through the working of the market. In the world of green consumerism, the fetish of commodities acquires an unprecedented significance. Things are assigned human and ethical significance. Thus we have the stigmatisation of certain foods as ‘evil’ and the rendering of other products as ‘ethical’.”

—

- from Frank Furedi’s discussion and analysis of Heartfield’s book “Green Capitalism.”

(via joannecostello)

adding to the reading list

(via materialworld)

(via so-treu)

Or, as champagnecandy said back in January: 

When our identity as “one of the good ones” becomes more important than reaching others, organizing suffers. It creates hierarchies instead of breaking them down. It creates that kind of elitism that makes people so angry—because they’re right, we are looking down on them. It becomes a kind of affirmation of who we are and why we’re different and better.

….

Yet somewhere along the line we’ve stumbled into a world where self-flagellation over personal privilege replaced examination of privilege as a social issue. Because that’s what privilege is. It’s the way the world treats you based on how you look/speak/where you come from. Beating yourself up for your privilege is just another way to keep your politics centered on you, you, you.

As Guerrilla Mama and State of Emergency point out, all of this is more ritualistic, more religious, than political. Clean living–”right living” if you want to get Buddhist about it—is personal. Religion, spirituality, all of it is personal—haven’t we been trying to argue that for years, for the separation of church and state? If the ritual of recycling cans or only shopping at the local food co-op is important to you, then go ahead with it: make your life easier and more fulfilling any way you can. But it becomes pernicious when it allows you to feel separate and better than others. As Jello Biafra likes to say, doing something is always better than doing nothing, but it shouldn’t become an excuse to sit in the corner with your arms folded, feeling better than everyone else.

I swear I was reblogging this before I realized she was quoting me!!! Awwww. Anyway, bolding in the top graf mine, for TRUTH. 

lolol—that’s awesome. :P reblogging for truth in context of the g8/g20 protests.

I know you guys won’t miss those vuvuzelas!