This appendix consists of additional labels for this entry:
Showing posts with label Consumerism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Consumerism. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Sunday, December 4, 2022
Croatia is banning shopping on Sundays
Tourism-Dependent Croatia Moves to Ban Shopping on Most Sundays
A Bloomberg headline.
Good for them.
A government spokesman stated; "We want to make it possible for retail employees to spend Sundays with their families”
More than 85% of Croatians are Roman Catholics. Sunday is, of course, the Christian day of rest, and Christians are supposed to take this seriously. Catholics, although they frequently don't, are definitely supposed to take it seriously, save for good reason to the alternative.
Here's out this shakes out in Europe, but as to large supermarkets:
By Imre Kristoffer Eilertsen - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107694359
What all can we tell from this? Well, perhaps not too much. Some of the results are surprising. The countries that are in red don't surprise me. All but two of the geographic areas depicted are Catholic or Orthodox, and that's part of their cultural heritage. But some of the green areas are too. And Norway is a highly secularized Lutheran country, albeit one with a very strong social conscience that they inherit from their Medieval Catholicism, even if they would prefer to pretend it come from their Reformation Lutheranism.
Partial restrictions in France don't surprise me, but in England they do, given as the UK is the birth place of the corporate capitalist economy.
In North American, "blue laws" are state by state, and province by province, but it would be rare to find restrictions in our "you are a consumer" shot 24 hours a day culture anymore. And of note, South American has no restrictions, even though you might guess that it would.
Well, kudos to Croatia.
Friday, November 29, 2019
It's "_______________" Friday!
"___________"?
Yes.
Today provides a really interesting example of global tensions in all sorts of things, consumerism and anti-consumerism among them.
In the United States today is often called "Black Friday", as its the day of the year a lot of businesses make a profit for the first time in a year, i.e., go into the black. That's because of Christmas shopping. A lot of people (not me) who have this day off use it to go to post Thanksgiving Day sales for Christmas.
It'd be tempting to decry this as a feature of the current era alone, but in truth Christmas shopping has been a huge deal for well over a century. Indeed the fact that this is so much the case belies the claims occasionally seen that consumerism didn't exist a century ago. It did.
What's new about Black Friday is the huge emphasis on a single day. That's come about in recent years.
And also coming about in recent years are reactions to that. In much of the Western world this day is also Buy Nothing Day, a day whose goals I'll observe simply by default.
Started as a protest against consumerism by an American family in 1968, Buy Nothing Day in that context is part of a larger Buy Nothing For Christmas movement. That no doubt in fact is an intellectual strike against consumerism, but it's also part of latent American puritanism which we've addressed here before. The Puritans were a joyless lot and opposed almost every public expression of fun (as we've noted before, they were not opposed to drinking, which a lot of their followers in later years have been, and they were very okay with private marital bedroom fun). They banned Christmas.
Something that urges people not to buy anything for Christmas at all and to just give gifts that don't involve purchasing are basically urging people to give nothing for Christmas at all, as people don't really have the time or skills in the modern world to knit socks for something for Christmas. Hence the joyless Puritan goal would be achieved, I suspect, and people observing it can accordingly be self smug about it.
Taking another approach is Small Business Saturday which always falls the day after Black Friday. The goal of it is to have people shop locally. It's goal is a consumerist one, but sort of a distributist consumerist one.
Black Friday now coincides with something called Green Friday, which appears to have varying goals depending upon where you are. For some, it's simply the first day of a weekend of environmental activism. For others, in other places, it's focused on sustainable, hence green, products.
In Ireland, however, it's a day to shop local, like Small Business Saturday, but within Ireland. I.e., it coincides with Black Friday, but with a "shop local" emphasis.
One of the interesting things about all of this is how its all hinged on American Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day in the United States is morphed from the European Catholic tradition of giving thanks for the fall harvest. Nothing consumerist about it at all. It survived the reformation no doubt in part because the very early Church of England simply carried forward, nearly intact, the Catholic faith although that didn't last long and was falling apart by the time Queen Elizabeth I took office. The overall surprising thing is that it survived the Puritans, which makes a person suspect that its somewhat disorganized nature didn't put in in their scopes for elimination. It was, and really remains, a pretty simple holiday and even now most people grasp that they're giving thanks for something.
The big consumer launch that follows Thanksgiving is sort of a calendar accident that has taken place simply due to when American Thanksgiving is. Other countries that still observe something like Thanksgiving don't have the same calendar date, of course. Indeed, the American date floated around for years. Canada's Thanksgiving, for example, is in October. Their harvest is also in October. German Erntedankfest is the fist Sunday of October. Poles have their Święto Dziękczynienia but it's been put on top of Thanksgiving in the US. Most countries had a Thanksgiving Day that was largely the same as the original American one, although quite a few no longer do. In a lot of countries that retain one, it's a day on their local liturgical calendar that falls on a Sunday.
It says something about American consumer muscle that Black Friday is something that exists clean across the globe now. Europeans who are observing a Buy Nothing Friday or a Green Friday (outside of the Irish example), are noting and participating, in some fashion, in an post American Thanksgiving economic boost even if Thanksgiving is foreign to their calendars in the American sense. It's another example of how American culture, and even counter culture, have become so dominant.
Christmas shopping crowds, Alabama, 1941.
Yes.
Today provides a really interesting example of global tensions in all sorts of things, consumerism and anti-consumerism among them.
In the United States today is often called "Black Friday", as its the day of the year a lot of businesses make a profit for the first time in a year, i.e., go into the black. That's because of Christmas shopping. A lot of people (not me) who have this day off use it to go to post Thanksgiving Day sales for Christmas.
It'd be tempting to decry this as a feature of the current era alone, but in truth Christmas shopping has been a huge deal for well over a century. Indeed the fact that this is so much the case belies the claims occasionally seen that consumerism didn't exist a century ago. It did.
What's new about Black Friday is the huge emphasis on a single day. That's come about in recent years.
And also coming about in recent years are reactions to that. In much of the Western world this day is also Buy Nothing Day, a day whose goals I'll observe simply by default.
Started as a protest against consumerism by an American family in 1968, Buy Nothing Day in that context is part of a larger Buy Nothing For Christmas movement. That no doubt in fact is an intellectual strike against consumerism, but it's also part of latent American puritanism which we've addressed here before. The Puritans were a joyless lot and opposed almost every public expression of fun (as we've noted before, they were not opposed to drinking, which a lot of their followers in later years have been, and they were very okay with private marital bedroom fun). They banned Christmas.
Something that urges people not to buy anything for Christmas at all and to just give gifts that don't involve purchasing are basically urging people to give nothing for Christmas at all, as people don't really have the time or skills in the modern world to knit socks for something for Christmas. Hence the joyless Puritan goal would be achieved, I suspect, and people observing it can accordingly be self smug about it.
Taking another approach is Small Business Saturday which always falls the day after Black Friday. The goal of it is to have people shop locally. It's goal is a consumerist one, but sort of a distributist consumerist one.
Black Friday now coincides with something called Green Friday, which appears to have varying goals depending upon where you are. For some, it's simply the first day of a weekend of environmental activism. For others, in other places, it's focused on sustainable, hence green, products.
In Ireland, however, it's a day to shop local, like Small Business Saturday, but within Ireland. I.e., it coincides with Black Friday, but with a "shop local" emphasis.
One of the interesting things about all of this is how its all hinged on American Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving Day in the United States is morphed from the European Catholic tradition of giving thanks for the fall harvest. Nothing consumerist about it at all. It survived the reformation no doubt in part because the very early Church of England simply carried forward, nearly intact, the Catholic faith although that didn't last long and was falling apart by the time Queen Elizabeth I took office. The overall surprising thing is that it survived the Puritans, which makes a person suspect that its somewhat disorganized nature didn't put in in their scopes for elimination. It was, and really remains, a pretty simple holiday and even now most people grasp that they're giving thanks for something.
The big consumer launch that follows Thanksgiving is sort of a calendar accident that has taken place simply due to when American Thanksgiving is. Other countries that still observe something like Thanksgiving don't have the same calendar date, of course. Indeed, the American date floated around for years. Canada's Thanksgiving, for example, is in October. Their harvest is also in October. German Erntedankfest is the fist Sunday of October. Poles have their Święto Dziękczynienia but it's been put on top of Thanksgiving in the US. Most countries had a Thanksgiving Day that was largely the same as the original American one, although quite a few no longer do. In a lot of countries that retain one, it's a day on their local liturgical calendar that falls on a Sunday.
It says something about American consumer muscle that Black Friday is something that exists clean across the globe now. Europeans who are observing a Buy Nothing Friday or a Green Friday (outside of the Irish example), are noting and participating, in some fashion, in an post American Thanksgiving economic boost even if Thanksgiving is foreign to their calendars in the American sense. It's another example of how American culture, and even counter culture, have become so dominant.
Tuesday, November 27, 2018
November 27, 1918. The Consumer Economy appears and the Nation resumes a Peacetime Economy.
The Laramie Boomerang reported that the country was resuming a peacetime economy and cutting appropriations, which in fact was done very rapidly, and with a somewhat disastrous impact on the national economy and individual businesses. At the same time, the paper was reporting that a giant military commitment of 1,200,000 men would remain in Europe for the time being.
At UW, the campus military training detachment was standing down. Mass military training at UW came to an end.
The Casper newspaper, however, was focused on Thanksgiving, which in 1918 occurred on November 28.
To my surprise, Thanksgiving was clearly already associated with shopping, giving evidence to that phenomenon having existed much earlier than I would have supposed. Indeed, an occasional topic of historical focus in some areas of historical focus is when the consumer economy first appeared. Whenever that was (and its generally regarded as having its origins prior to World War One, it was clearly before 1918 as the stores in Cheyenne were going to be open to 9:00 this evening.
Thursday, December 4, 2014
Being Consumed - Catholic Stuff You Should Know
Being Consumed - Catholic Stuff You Should Know
In one of the occasional examples of synchronicity that pops up, the other day I posted on National Small Business Saturday and mentioned Distributism, the economic theory applying the principal of subsidiarity in my post. Then I ran across this podcast entry on Consumerism.
This is posted on Catholic Stuff You Should Know, and therefore it does address some religious themes, but only barely really, mostly focusing on Consumerism through a Distributist lens. To a slightly aggravating degree, early in the podcast the speakers excuse of their comments by noting Communism when in fact those comments that they feel might be controversial aren't Communist or Socialist at all, but rather purely Distributist. That they'd discuss Distributism isn't too surprising on one hand, as the economic philosophy was developed by Catholic thinkers, but to hear it discussed is fairly surprising as so few people know what it is.
Anyhow, for a really Distributist discussion of Consumerism, here's one.
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