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backgrounds to discover Oceanic pasts and pre-

sents. It provides an engaging read for anyone

interested in Oceania, material culture, historic

anthropology, and colonial and pre-colonial

history.Elisabeth Betz

Sociology and Anthropology,

La Trobe University

Consumption and its Consequences

D. Miller.

Cambridge: Polity Press, 2012. x + 185 pp. notes,

index, London: Wiley ISBN 978-0745661070. AUD

$94.95 (Hc.); ISBN 978-0745661087. AUD $32.95

(Pb.)

Whats wrong with consumption? asks Daniel

Miller in the title of the opening chapter. His

answer, essentially, is not much.

Decades of ethnographic research into con-

sumption have given Miller a deep appreciation

of the poetry and beauty of the social meaning

invested in consumer objects. His writing is filledwith sensitivity and integrity to real experiences

of consumption (cf. pp. 6467) and he makes an

important call for more anthropological research

into such experiences (p. 62).

The book begins and ends with an entertain-

ing discussion between characters representing

different aspects of Millers personality about the

practical consequences of consumption. In

between is a recapitulation of his major theoreti-

cal and empirical contributions to the field. The

thrust of the argument here is this: the real rea-

son why people want things is not the determi-

nation of structures such as markets, inequality

and advertising. People want things because

things act as culture (p. 183) defined as the

idiom by which we become and subsequently

understand who we are (p. 63). If markets,

advertising and inequality disappeared, the

demand for goods would remain the same

because the underlying need to express societal

values (p. 39), social relationships and widercosmologies (p. 183) would remain.

One almost wants to join Miller in the auton-

omous space (p. 90) that he constructs for con-

sumption, and to think about it not as a

superstructure of production but rather in and

of itself (p. 90). From this space Miller throwsout some of the dirty elitist bathwater of some

approaches in Western Marxism, but the baby of

those approaches is also unfortunately missing

from the analysis: Miller studiously ignores con-

sumption as a driving factor in many economies

and the structural considerations that this gives

onto. Baudrillard in this account reducespeople

to mere mannequins who passively wear the

clothes that ensure the fashion industrys con-

stant profit (pp. 54, 57). People do not want to

feel like passive mannequins, Miller argues, and

they express this in their consumption choices

and so are not passive, Q.E.D. Miller creates

straw mannequins of the broader structural

arguments of Baudrillard and Bauman, and

whoosh, clunk, splash! Out they go with the dirty

water. With this, he turns the heteronomous

consumer into a mannequin more than Bau-

drillard or Bauman do. He avoids dismissing

that consumer as deluded, stupid fooled by

advertising (p. 137) but also avoids describingthe consumer as part of a relatively normal het-

eronomy (in terms of roles, for example) in

social life.

Miller has a problem with moral concerns in

consumption research, particularly if the

researchers are critical of consumption (p.

182). He makes use of an insecure scholar

trope to dismiss critical accounts. Here scholars

shore up their identities through their work,

projecting onto consumption what they wish or

need it to be (p. 182) and showing how deepthey are by showing how shallow everyone else

is (p. 107). If they engage in pure critique, then

their work is inevitably self-indulgent and

regressive (p. vii). Ironically, given his concern

with identity and the construction of values, he

provides no treatment of such identity politics in

the work of less critical scholars. If the reader

employs the insecure scholar trope, they may

detect an attempt in Millers work to identify

with rather than against consumer society. Incautious approaches of ecological economics this

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aversion is itself self-indulgent and regressive,

insofar as it is an escape from the questions of

the possible need for dis-consumption (a general

reduction in consumption) in the context of

ecological crisis and climate change.Another key feature of the book is what we

might call morality-washing, where moral

cleansing of consumption replaces or obscures

discussion of the practical consequences of con-

sumption. Advertising is okay because it is local,

not culturally imperialistic (p. 111) and because

people are not fooled by it (p. 137). Consump-

tion is okay because it is about love rather than

selfishness (p. 184), the social rather than the

antisocial (p. 184), because it is active and crea-

tive rather than passive (p. 108), and part of

authentic rather than inauthentic culture (p. 62).

Ethical consumption and downsizing, on the

other hand, are questionable because they are

self-interested (p. 155) and hypocritical in their

privilege (pp. 6, 13).

Morality-washing thus enables some of the

more prominent silences of the book. Firstly,

Miller does not discuss what kind of creativity

mass consumption allows in the appropriation

of meaning. Meanings may be appropriated onan individual or subcultural level without

impacting society more generally. Advertising

may not fool people, but what does it do to

their culture, consistently conveying as it does

the message that commodities are roads to iden-

tity, recognition and desire? Consumption may

be about love, but what about the parents who

must work longer hours and stay away from

their children in order to buy love for them, or

those who cannot afford to do so at all?

The reader must therefore ask of this bookthe simple question why consumption?. It

should be completely facile to point out that all

of the capabilities that Miller attributes to mate-

rial culturelove, creativity, identity, desires

and cultural valuescan also be expressed and

manifested through activities that do not

involve the purchasing and appropriation of

commodities. Miller does not address the extent

to which this commoditisation progressively

colonises our lives, nor the consequences of thatcolonisation.

Miller briefly discusses the ecological limits to

consumption but he does not take a firm posi-

tion on the severity of anthropogenic climate

change (indeed he introduces some David Hul-

me-inspired scepticism though he leans towardsaction), leaving the books proposed solutions

wanting. He thus leaves dis-consumption off the

agenda, opting instead for piecemeal reforms to

weed out bad substances and practises. The most

forcefully argued suggestion is for the provision

of primary and secondary education programs

on the supply chains of consumer products (pp.

140141). He also calls for more government

regulation of capitalist commerce (pp. viii, 176).

He advocates an ethical concern for the future

of the planet and a sustainable environment

(viii) even alongside a strong argument that eth-

ical consumption (which does not include dis-

consumption) can be contrary to the practical

side of such ethics (p. 87).

So who should read this book? You should if

you talk about the mannequins who work fifty

hours a week and drive to shopping malls on

weekends. Read it as a challenge to dip your cri-

tique in a cold water of empirical engagement.

Read this book if you are a marketer and youfeel impotent (but skip pp. 109115 where the

strong hypodermic model of advertising is

replaced with something like a cake icing tube

model). It will give you a better idea of the

potent desires invested in consumption, and per-

haps inform your further attempts to harness

these to the purchase of commodities.

Read this book if you are a graduate student

and you are depressed by environmental prob-

lems. It may help you to get over your distaste at

vacuous consumer culture as you adjust to yournew, more harmonious life in it.

Read this book in combination with Confront-

ing Consumption (Princen et. al. 2002)for a less

morality-washed view, grounded in ecological

economics, of the consumption problem and

some potential solutions. Read Millers straw

mannequins such as Zygmunt Bauman who, far

from depicting climate change as merely some

kind of moral retribution for the crime of suc-

cumbing to affluenza (p. 22) presents in Con-suming Life a cogent critique in terms of

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dissatisfaction in consumption, commoditisa-

tion, social stratification and democratic politics.

Read David Graebers Possibilities: Essays on

Hierarchy, Rebellion and Desire (2007) for a cri-

tique of the naturalising of consumption as theexpression of social desires.

Lastly, read this book if you have any interest

at all in a field whose importance to the world

and to anthropology, for better or worse, is abso-

lutely paramount.

Simon Burns

School of Social and Political Sciences,

University of Melbourne

Cultural, Development and Social

Theory: Towards an Integrated

Social Development

J. Clammer.

London: Zed Books, 2012. viii + 291 pp., bibliog.,

index. ISBN 978-1780323145. USD $34.95 (Pb.)

As an anthropologist teaching in a development

studies program, I found this book refreshingand illuminating. It pushes the boundaries on

many points in a field that all too often has pro-

ven itself to be staid and all too often wedded to

the neoliberal growth model associated with

mainstream development agencies around the

world and multilateral organisations, such as the

United Nations, the World Bank, and the Inter-

national Monetary Fund.

In the first chapter (Transforming the dis-

course of development: cultures, suffering and

human futures), Clammer, a discipline broker

between anthropology and sociology, sets the

stage for the rest of the book by noting that at

the beginning of the second decade of the 21st

century, the world continues to be a place of

growing social inequalities between and within

nation-states. This reinforces huge issues of

poverty; ethnic, social and gender inequality;

abuses of human rights, massive environmental

degradation and global warming; unsustainable

resource depletion; illiteracy and lack of accessto education; woefully inadequate health care;

and conflict and wars (pp. 34). Although he

recognises that much work in cultural studies,

literary and art criticism, sociology and presum-

ably anthropology is trivial and narcissistic given

the woeful state of much of humanity and theglobal eco-system due to corporate globalisation,

he faults development studies for tending to

neglect many of the more progressive ideas in

the social sciences and humanities and exces-

sively embracing conventional economics.

The author in chapter two (On cultural stud-

ies and the place of culture in development)

argues that conventional development thought

has only recently become to recognise culture as

a reflexive concept that touches on the existential

aspects of human life. He asserts that culture is

relevant to the development experience in that it

recognises real people, individuals with emo-

tions, memories, stories and values, who suffer

and seek meaning in their suffering (p. 48).

Clammer argues in chapter three (Aid, culture

and context) that aid policies fostered by inter-

national development agencies, NGOs, and busi-

nesses tend to promote corporate globalisation

rather than critique it or offer alternatives to it.

Nevertheless, he maintains that an emancipatorypolitics is flourishing as evidenced by numerous

social movements and gatherings, such as the

World Social Forum, that in one form or other

challenge the global status quo. In chapter five

(Reframing social economics: economic devel-

opment, post-development and alternative

economics), Clammer argues that economic

anthropology has the potential to provide devel-

opment practitioners with alternatives to

current forms of globalized capitalism, more

ecologically responsible modes of being in theworld, and forms of sociality that overcome the

fragmentation and alienation of some much

contemporary life (pp. 115116). He laments,

however, that to date an anthropology of utopias

remains a virtually non-existent endeavour and

that anthropologists have tended to cede the

study of intentional communities and social

movements to sociologists.

In chapter six (Culture and climate justice),

Clammer argues that environmental/climate jus-tice requires that humans learn to live in

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Book Reviews