Young Tel Aviv: A Tale of Two Cities

Chapter 3 | Tel Aviv's Consumer Culture

77 Chapter Three TEL AVIV’S CONSUMER CULTURE Every human society has some sort of culture of consumption, consisting of its own practices regarding how goods and services are used by its members. But “consumer culture” (sometimes called consumer society) is a phenomenon of the modern Western world. In a consumer culture, a large part of the population consumes far beyond what it needs for basic subsistence. People obtain goods and services primarily through economic exchange, and only to a small extent from self-production. Consumer societies view consumption as an acceptable and appropriate activity, and their members tend to judge others, and themselves, in terms of their consumer lifestyles. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, luxury items that previously had been enjoyed by only a tiny elite became obtainable to ever-larger swaths of the population. This came about through the mass production of such goods—or at least goods superficially resembling the handcrafted products that formerly had been too expensive for the masses. Industrialization increased the number and variety of goods available; marketing and distribution networks came into being. Rising wages and credit made these new products available and affordable.1 But the economic infrastructure was not enough. To grow and flourish , the new consumer culture needed a moral climate that would support it. Across Western societies, the Protestant ethic of salvation through restraint and self-denial was replaced at the end of the nineteenth century by a new therapeutic ethic that stressed self-fulfillment. This ideal was achieved through consumption for the sake of physical and mental health. In other words, the individual began to seek to actualize himself with the help of goods and services. Under the influence of romantic ideas, people purchased goods and experiences not just for the immediate sensual gratification they provided, but principally because they sought, through 78 y o u n g t e l a v i v material objects, to live their illusions and fantasies. Goods increasingly took on symbolic value, and their style, design, and marketing elicited in consumers emotions, desires, expectations, and aspirations. The individual began to fashion and cultivate himself and his image via the goods and services that he chose to purchase. The consumer culture was part of the emergent, burgeoning bourgeois ideal, but it gradually penetrated the working classes as well. A rhetoric of frugality, hard work, and sobriety was supplanted in the early decades of the twentieth century by one encouraging a lifestyle centered on pleasure. Advertising was at the vanguard of this new gospel; it was a medium that summoned the individual to take part in the consumption of attractively packaged goods as well as experiences associated with prosperity.2 The consumer culture is especially salient in the urban context. In the modern capitalist city, the processes of production and consumption are separated, as are the places and times devoted to work and to consumption . Consumption has become an inseparable part of urban life and behaviors ; in cities, shopping is a major leisure pastime. While in basic terms shopping is an economic activity, it also functions as social interaction and entertainment. In the urban environment, the symbolic importance of consumption is magnified because of the impression it makes on strangers and the ways in which it influences them. A person’s consumption of goods can construct his selfhood and enable him to be seen and judged, and to stand out against the anonymity of other people. Alternatively, one’s consumption can serve as a façade that conceals the inner life of the individual , a kind of armor that, in an alienated society, protects the individual from strangers.3 In Tel Aviv, the consumer culture manifested itself in part through the relatively large number of choices of goods and services available for purchase, and consumer values were promoted by the mushrooming art of advertising. Inevitably, the Zionist pioneering ethos of frugality and the pleasure ethic that characterizes modern consumer society did not sit well together. Stores, Markets, Peddlers Only a relatively small portion of a city’s land is occupied by retail establishments, but this small portion has a major impact on daily activity , lifestyles, transportation, and employment structure.4 During the 1920s Tel Aviv’s Consumer Culture 79 and 1930s, Tel Aviv became the country’s commercial and wholesale center , but it also developed a thriving retail sector. Retailing was a common Jewish occupation in the Diaspora, and many...