Empire of Things

by Frank Trentmann

  In the seventeenth century, Calvinists would sometimes interpret their financial success as a sign of belonging to ‘the elect’, even as their sermons continued to warn of excess and its temptations. In the years around 1900, Christian missions in Africa showed a similar ambivalence, as we have seen, on the one hand promoting material comfort alongside the Gospel, on the other bemoaning their new flock’s hunger for fashion and little luxuries.29 In the 1980s, Pentecostalists went a big step further and started to preach openly in favour of material riches. In 1981, when Adeboye took over the RCCG in Nigeria, the Church was poor and did not take offerings at all. Adeboye abandoned the asceticism of earlier Pentecostalists and introduced a new culture of giving for believers and for local churches, which now had to pay tithes to the centre – God, congregations were assured, would repay such investment many times over. In 2005, Adeboye announced that he had been mandated by God to set up a ‘Redeemers’ Club’ for members pledging the equivalent of £50,000. The sum of £5,000 bought a place on a cruise from Miami to the Bahamas on the SS Wonderland and an opportunity to hear Adeboye preach. Christ, he said, had died for our prosperity. His suffering provided us with infinite credit. ‘God is the God of the rich’: He wanted people to prosper and have ‘cars, a house, clothes, land, anything money can buy’.30

  The RCCG’s success illustrates the combination of factors at work in the Pentecostalist surge: charismatic preachers, a message of hope and prosperity at a time of economic uncertainty and weak states, and new media and skills. The RCCG maintains nine separate tape ministries, with audiocassette sermons in Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa as well as in English and French; a single sermon sells half a million audiocassettes in Nigeria each month. It also exploits the internet, video and digital technology. Instead of disco, there is ‘praise-co’ music. The Church has special arrangements for retail outlets with Nestlé Foods and 7UP as well as with local traders. And it has its own university and local business schools.31

  How does this symbiosis between religion and riches in the Christian revival compare with the relationships forged in other world religions? In the United States, commercialization also left its mark on Jewish life. For Jewish immigrants in the years around 1900, possessions were an important ticket into the new nation and showed that one was no longer a ‘greenhorn’ (oysgrinen zich). Chanukah, like Christmas, did not originally involve gifts, but by the 1890s both were becoming part of a new shopping season; new furniture and bedding was bought during Passover.32

  The life of the spirit was even more saturated with things in Asian religions, such as Shinto and Buddhism, which do not have a single creator deity and where the divine takes material shape in rocks, trees and also possessions. In Japan, religious rituals are tightly interwoven with the purchase of objects and gifts. Ceramic rabbits and bird statues, as well as practical objects such as cups and rice scoops, are bringers of good fortune (engimono). Standing on television sets or in alcoves, these good-luck charms help their owners to connect with deities, ward off evil and ease their return to normal life after an illness. In shamanic rituals in Korea, imported whiskey, toys and foodstuffs serve as ‘travel money’ to enable the living to make peace with their ancestors’ ghosts.33

  It has been Islam where the encounter between religion and consumer culture has given rise to the most heated debate, both within the Islamic world and in the West. The Iranian Revolution in 1979 at first seemed to herald a new clash of cultures between an Islamic republic and Western materialism. In the West, commentators began to diagnose a battle of ‘Jihad vs McWorld’, with traditional religious groups striking back at global consumer capitalism.34 In Iran itself, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who had led the revolution, gave his verdict in his final testament in 1989. Western advertising, radio, television and cinemas, he said, had been ‘successfully used to intellectually anaesthetize nations, and especially the youth’. For the last half-century, they had worked as ‘a propaganda tool against Islam’, not only marketing ‘luxury items’, cosmetics, drinks and clothing but promoting ‘a form of life as a prestigious model, so much so that to look like westerners in every aspect of one’s daily life became a status symbol’. This consumer-oriented lifestyle corrupted hearts and minds, leading to envy and social conflict, estranging men, women and the young, in particular, from their country, their culture and their religion. And fashion and the taste for expensive products translated into political dependence, because ‘cosmetics, entertainment, alcoholic beverages . . . toys and dolls’ and other ‘modish extravaganzas’ were paid for with the export of oil and other resources, leaving Iran a colony of the West.35

  We tend to think of the ‘luxury wars’ as a European debate that was over by the nineteenth century, settled in favour of consumption, growth and development. This is too parochial. The Iranian Revolution opened a new front. Like Rousseau two centuries earlier, Khomeini pointed to a causal chain between luxury, status-seeking and envy, social conflict, corruption and dependence. Unlike Rousseau – a profligate spender and lover of women – Khomeini also lived the idea and banished luxury from the new society. Film, books and media were censored. Almost half the cinemas in Iran were shut down or burnt in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. Alcohol was outlawed, and women’s hair and bodies disappeared behind headscarves and plain overcoats. In the 1979 revolution, the figure of the ‘warrior brother’ was matched by that of the ‘veiled sister’ and her weapon of the hijab and black chador.36

  After the head-on assault, however, there was rapprochement. The government accepted that it was impossible to stop Iranians from watching banned films in their own homes; a law against the private use of satellite dishes proved impossible to police. The late 1980s saw a revival of Iranian cinema, and the regime embraced it as a showpiece of Islamic culture. Women returned to take part in sports and appeared again in the stands as spectators. The 1998 World Cup gave proof that football mania had returned to the Republic. Iran beat the United States 2–1 before being itself knocked out of the competition; the winning goal in the eighty-fourth minute was scored by Mehdi Mahdavikia (‘the Rocket’), who went on to be Asian Footballer of the Year and to play for Hamburg SV. What has changed since 1979 is that, in general, more leisure happens within the family and friendship groups than in commercial spaces. Still, a lot of consumption continues, even if only as an escape from the morality policy. Iranian women might not be allowed to wear short dresses or colourful clothing, but they can buy branded sunglasses, lipstick and rouge. As a primary-school teacher explained in 2013, ‘women don’t have enough facilities here and wearing make-up for me and people like me is a kind of fun.’ Iran is the second-biggest cosmetics market in the Middle East, after Saudi Arabia, with a thriving trade in counterfeit products from China and Turkey.37

  The fundamentalist attack on the Western consumer lifestyle has received fresh publicity with the expansion of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria since 2011. ‘It is well known that the material societies today are built up on the ideology of an atheist,’ the all-female Al-Khanssaa Brigade stated in its manifesto on women in February 2015. Fashion and cosmetics were the work of Iblis, the devil, who was seeking to take away a woman’s clothes, ‘wishing to bring her from her Paradise of covering and decency, and encourage her to spend huge amounts of money to change God’s creation, demand that surgeons change the nose, ear, chin and nails’. It was only the establishment of the caliphate, an Islamic government, that restored decency and respect for women’s bodies, thanks to coverings and the full hijab which shielded their face from the eyes of corrupt onlookers.38

  Yet fundamentalism must not be equated with the Islamic revival, nor with Islam more generally. Most Islamic communities in the Middle East, Arabia and parts of Asia have developed working relationships with consumer culture. In the early 1980s, the Gulf region attracted Liberty, Marks & Spencer and other major Western shops. The following decade saw a boom in shopping malls. The two largest shopping malls in the world are in Dubai – the Dubai Mall,
built in 2008, has 1,200 outlets, including Bloomingdale’s, cinemas, an ice-rink and an aquarium. But the phenomenon reaches further. Oman got its Muscat City Centre mall, with a Carrefour. Ankara, in Turkey, can boast two dozen malls, even as Islamist politics has grown in strength. Hypermarkets have encroached on traditional souqs. From Saudi Arabia to Turkey, Ramadan in the 1990s and 2000s acquired the aura of a shopping holiday, like Christmas and Chanukah before it. Instead of celebrating at home or helping the poor and needy, the ritual of daily prayers and fasting is increasingly followed by sunset feasts, a trip to the mall or a visit to some night-time entertainment.39

  The Islamic revival itself has in no small part drawn strength from a strategic alliance with consumer goods. New Islamic products, even fashion, and new media and technologies have played a vital role in the diffusion of Muslim identity and lifestyle. The American Barbie doll, for example, was outlawed as indecent, first in Saudi Arabia in 1994, only to see its place filled by the Fulla doll a few years later, which arrived from Syria in a hijab, but also with lipstick and high heels. Fulla also sold prayer sets. The attacks on Pepsi and Coca-Cola did not do away with the sweet soft drink but saw its substitution with Zam Zam Cola in Iran and similar regional brands elsewhere. Muslim children play with videogames that light up with the ‘Name of God’ when enemy planes are shot down on the screen. For those who prefer old-fashioned games, there is the Quran Challenge Board Game, a ‘fun way to learn about the Quran’. There are prayer clocks, prayer dolls and even interactive prayer machines with sensors, digital camera and vibrating motors that track and improve proper body movement.40 The Islamic revival has been not so much anti-consumerist as about creating a distinctive style of consuming with its own range of products. The halal market – which certifies permissible use under Islamic law – has seen a rapid expansion not only in meat but also in everything from music and film to cosmetics and hotels; in the Middle East and Malaysia, halal cosmetics accounted for 20–25 per cent of sales in 2014.41

  In the last decade, there have been consumer jihads that boycotted foreign firms such as Nestlé and other brands for sponsoring American imperialism and helping Israel. But, even here, the target was the perceived anti-Islamic conduct of particular companies, not goods and appliances as such. In Turkey in 2008, Muslim shoppers turned against products by Beko, the large Turkish manufacturer of white goods, to protest at the parent company’s announcement that it would not hire workers with a moustache or beard, which are customary among Islamists. Fridges, televisions and appliances from other companies were fine.

  The single most important consumer item for popularizing Islam has been the audiotape. Cassette sermons are sometimes associated with fanaticism – they were originally used by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1970s. Since then, however, they have become a much wider fixture of public life, responding to the Quran’s particular sensibility for listening: ‘God seals the hearts of those who refuse to hear’ (Quran 7:100). In turn, they have created new religious spaces and communities. Sermons no longer emanate only from mosques but from loudspeakers in cafés, taxis and at home. The tapes drew a new generation to prayer. The most popular preachers (khutaba), such as Muhammad Hassan, have become media stars, although so far the genre has escaped the fate of a standardized culture industry and continues to circulate in tapes produced by small firms and under the oversight of the Council on Islamic Research. As a type of media, these tapes illustrate the capacity of religion to exploit entertainment technologies rather than surrendering to them. This has not been a one-way street, though. With new technologies came new genres of speech, and preachers started to sound a little bit like stars of television and the silver screen.42

  The veil, too, has undergone a fashionable makeover in the last couple of decades. The metamorphosis has been especially pronounced in Turkey, where unveiling had been an integral part of building a modern, secular state after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, in 1923, proclaimed the republic and abolished the Ottoman caliphate. While veils were not formally outlawed, their use was heavily stigmatized. Beginning in the late 1970s, the veil started to make a sudden comeback – and in cities and among young professional, educated women; not only in rural villages. For many, putting on a veil was a way of regaining security and respect at a time of deep political and economic turmoil; Turkey went through a major debt crisis, followed by a military takeover in 1980, hyper-inflation and, finally, under the auspices of the International Monetary Fund, threw open its market. Islamic faith, dress and all-female clubs offered stability and community. Like Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America, then, the revival of Islam was at least in part a reaction against liberalization and the uncertainties that came with it.

  In the early 1980s, the tesettür style of covering, an outfit characterized by a large scarf that covered head and shoulders and a long, dark, shapeless overcoat that covered everything else but the hands, spread rapidly; the large scarf also set it apart from the smaller ones worn in the countryside. It was now that the Turkish government banned veils from schools and public buildings. Instead of retreating, however, the veil found fresh commercial support. The career of the tesettür since is testimony to the ability of fashion and Islamic lifestyle to work together. Once modest and plain, the scarf and accompanying overcoat have gained a splash of colour and a stylish cut. In 1992, Tekbir, a large Islamic clothing company, sponsored the first tesettür fashion show in Turkey. Tekbir’s mission was to attract women to the veil by making ‘covering beautiful’. Headscarves became smaller. Overcoats were trimmed or altogether replaced by tighter, body-hugging jackets and pants. Inevitably, there has been tension between piety and fashion. Luxury scarves with French and Italian designer labels are not liked everywhere. To some housewives and Quran instructors in poorer neighbourhoods in Istanbul, they display a self-indulgence not befitting a ‘true’ Muslim woman, who is meant to be moderate and altruistic. A growing number of wealthy and professional women are donning a veil in Turkey and elsewhere. Veiled middle-class women who have several dozen stylish outfits in their wardrobe relax in beach-side resorts, play tennis during the day and go dancing in the all-female disco at night.43

  In Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim majority, university students today go to Quran study sessions and talk about their fashionable headscarves. Veils are decorated with carefully chosen accessories. NOOR, an Islamic women’s magazine, advertises ‘girly accent’ floral sunglasses, and fashionable models in the ‘Shadow of Preppy’ alongside exhortations of ‘worship to Allah’; it also gives the latest tips on interior design. A thirty-five-year-old Indonesian woman who bought up to seven headscarves a week explained to an anthropologist in 2008 why she was so irritated by teenagers who wore oversized headscarves (jilbabs): they made Islam look ‘rigid, unfashionable, whereas in fact our God likes beauty’.44

  Piety and style, then, were not automatically enemies. They could be friends. Here was an argument for spiritual beauty that was not so different from the Christian defence of material possessions that we encountered earlier: if God’s beauty manifested itself in the material world, it was only natural for his followers to want to express their piety by surrounding themselves with beautiful things.

  Contrary to the idea – still popular in the West – that modernity must lead to secularization, religion has proved remarkably vibrant and innovative. Consumer culture has been one source of that innovation, clearly discernible in recent revivals but already visible in earlier centuries. Mainstream religious institutions have suffered, especially in Christendom, but religious experience is alive and well today. Products, entertainment, taste and fashion have played a vital role in communicating and, indeed, asserting religious faith and identity. The religious revivals since the 1970s have, similarly, demonstrated the remarkable ability of consumer culture to adapt itself to new realities and work with a range of communities of faith. As with secular ideologies, so with world religions: consumption has proved an extremely flexible partner. The belief
that the world of the spirit is ‘higher’ than the ‘base’ world of things and that the true believer should aspire to the former and resist the temptations of the latter is long-standing. Yet, in the real world, religious life does not exist in a purely spiritual form. It is saturated with things. Affluence, and development more generally, are not only a challenge for religion but also an opportunity.

  15

  Throwaway Society?

  In the world’s oceans today, some 18,000 pieces of plastic are swimming on the surface of every square kilometre of water.1 On International Coastal Clean-up day in 2011, 600,000 volunteers scoured 20,000 miles of coastline for rubbish. By the end of the day, they had collected almost 10 million pounds in weight. Their haul included 250,000 items of clothing, a million pieces of food packaging and several hundred TV sets, mobile phones and bicycles. That year, the United States alone produced 210 million tons of municipal waste – enough to fill a convoy of garbage trucks and circle the equator nine times. Just the food thrown out by British households each year could fill almost 5,000 Olympic pools.2

  We appear to be drowning in waste. The thesis of the ‘throwaway society’ was the natural twin of the ‘affluent society’. Americans had barely had time to sit down in front of their new television sets and grab a cold drink from the fridge when Vance Packard, in 1960, launched his attack on The Waste Makers. The United States, Packard warned, in what became a bestseller, had developed into a ‘hyperthyroid economy’, where ever greater artificial stimuli created ever greater wastefulness. A disposable lifestyle was taking over, defined by plastic, one-way bottles, tins and convenience meals. Cars were no longer prized for their working engine but for their fashionable looks, dumped for a new one the minute styles changed. Packard did not have a problem with change as such, as long as it was related to functional improvements. His target was planned obsolescence dictated by fashion and the pursuit of change for change’s sake.