Business
For centuries people have used objects to signal their social standing and to build and perform who they are. A well-off household's stock of paintings, earthenware, curtains, chairs, linen and napkins announced its place in society. The urge to display yourself through possessions is old and lasting, not a modern invention.
Mass desire for goods was not a postwar Western invention that spread outward. Parts of China, Japan and Africa developed their own rich consumer cultures. Colonised peoples were active, skilled consumers in their own material worlds, not only exploited suppliers.
Where a product comes from is sold as a story, not simply stated as a fact. Producers learn to act out tradition, local care and rustic farming. They use cues like tweed, sheepdogs, cheese wrapped in paper rather than plastic, and a little soil left on vegetables to signal freshness.
Ever more goods and ever more time spent buying them are piling the planet with waste. This is unlikely to change without a cultural revolution away from the habit of buying, using and discarding. Fixing it means imagining different ways of living, with matching changes to housing, transport and culture.
What people buy and use is not set mainly by personal taste. States, empires, wars, taxes and migration decide which goods reach people, at what price, and in what patterns. Personal preference works inside limits that politics has already drawn.
Choosing what to buy is a weak tool for changing a system that already sets the choices on offer. Seen across centuries and civilisations, consumer power and personal taste reach only so far as forms of political pressure. They cannot do the work of collective action.
Modern societies now treat people more as consumers than as workers or citizens. Economies rise and fall on spending, and even public services are offered like products on a supermarket shelf. What we consume has become central to personal identity and to political debate.
Comfortable consumption at the centre of an empire often rested on labour and resources taken from its edges. A grand structure of commerce and naval power could stand on a base supplied by others. Empires shaped what people consumed both in their colonies and back home.
Consuming is a whole life cycle, not a single moment at the till. It runs from desire and buying, through use and collecting, to throwing away. Each stage carries its own costs and meanings, and the final stage leaves its mark on the planet.