The Innocent Consumer Investigating the tension of the physical and digital realm of Consumer Culture
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“A Place For Everything” (Liam Young 2019, 45) - a space that contains everything the human mind desires to own all accumulated in one physical space, however not visible to the eye, hiding its overwhelming nature, only to present itself in form of one singular item, carefully selected, magically appearing at your doorstep. How could one resist ? In the current time of being, efficiency and comfort in order to purchase a variety of goods is the priority for the progressive society. For the state of that, the act of consumption for the consumer culture has shifted significantly from a physical to a digital space. From the perspective of the consumer it is a natural preference to choose one over the other. The digital shopping space gives one the freedom of having an overview of an indescribable amount of options to compare price and quality from, to easily select and purchase an item. For the whole experience one can physically stay in one place, not travelling and not being affected by any external elements. The effectiveness of the package arriving at a chosen location leaves the worry of transportation behind as well for maximum comfort. Whereas, a physical space for consumption requires one to know where to purchase the specific good, travel to the specific location selling the item, leaving the comfort of one's home, to then search for the item in store, possibly queue and transport the item back home. That experience of moving physically between a variety of spaces is perhaps accompanied by multiple unpleasant, unpredictable circumstances. The thought of the discomfort by these circumstances caused by exposure to the weather or force to interact with the public, causes the consumer to be reluctant, choosing physical over digital shopping. One company that is globally expanded and known for its highly used online shopping platform is Amazon.com,inc. The straightforward and user friendly platform attracts one to use online shopping as a time efficient method of shopping with the only physical movement required is clicking and scrolling . With only milliseconds of visual stimulation and information intake, the shopping experience is highly efficient and with the enormous amount of items from a variety of brands and private sellers all ordered in one list, the user has the power of what to consume not being restricted by place and time. From the lens of the individual, Amazon with its time efficiency, convenience and offer that prioritizes the needs of a society, founded on individualism and freedom of self-representation, when purchasing goods, is an ideal platform. The perspective from the user, however, can be described as an innocent consumer. When entering the multiple, complex, and paradoxical views of the online shopping company, Amazon, the user perspective only touches the surface. Tracing back to the place hidden, excluded from the shopping experience of the consumer, is the Amazon warehouse preferably called the Amazon fulfillment centre, a physical space in contrast to the digital space one is exposed to. 1 The physical space exists, however, not necessarily for the inhabitation and comfort for humans, but solely to contain thousands of commodities ready to be transported. In the UK one fulfillment centre is located in Rugeley, Staffordshire, a distribution center that ships up to 600,000 parcels per day stored in a warehouse that is around 455 m x 140 m covering 63,700 m2. 2
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ibid, 47
”This is what really happens in Amazon’s huge Rugeley distribution centre”,BirminhamLive, accessed March 21, 2020, https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/what-really-happens-amazons-huge-17360326 2
Ben Roberts, Amazon Fulfilment Centre, Rugeley, Staffordshire, UK, 2011
The warehouse was the first out of 32 fulfillment centers in the United Kingdom that offered tours to allow transparency, however only a very controlled and restricted insight after allegations regarding unethical working standards were made. Looking into the mysterious, ambiguous place from which most people comfortably receive their package from without being aware of the space, it reveals a surreal landscape of the future, that ,however, already exists in the present.3 With the the result of segregation between the consumer and the space, which stores the commodities being sold, the architecture becomes secondary. Inspecting the warehouse in Rugeley, the architecture seems to be meaningless in which it takes shape of a gigantic container painted in a light sky blue mimicking “a smear of summer sky on the damp of industrial landscape” hiding its nature behind its walls.4 Located at the edge of Rugeley and separated from the city by a canal, next to the Rugeley power station, the paradigm of the space pushed away from the consumer experience, that shows no transparency, is strongly articulated in its shape and siting. From its sterile external appearance, the internal space does not oppose the external architectural expression, however, it reveals something different.
Ben Roberts, Amazon Fulfilment Centre, Rugeley, Staffordshire, UK, 2011
“Amazon Global Fulfillment Center Network”, MWPVL: Leadership in Global Supply CHain and Logistics Consulting, accessed March 21, 2020, https://mwpvl.com/html/amazon_com.html 3
Liam Young, Machine Landscapes : The Site and Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene (Chichester : John Wiley, 2019), 47 4
When entering the internal realm of the warehouse, the impression of what can be observed seems to be paradox, as it appears to be an organized chaos with mixed commodities perfectly arranged in thousands of identical shelves. However, the visual incomprehensive organization of the physical space is digitally perfectly organized through specific algorithms that are based on and regulated towards buying patterns.5 For the most efficient working space that revolves around these algorithms, the 63,700 m2 space is categorized into five different zones: receive, stock, pick package, ship. Out of five levels, four levels of the fulfillment center are entirely for stocking and distributing purposes creating a landscape of shelves. 6 With the scale of the space workers have to walk kilometer over one day to pick out specific packages working comparably like robots to carry out and run on algorithms for maximum efficiency and profit over one day. Amazon has denied any allegations of extreme poor working conditions, however over the years many accusations has been made from previous employers revealing their experience working for Amazon such as James Bloodworth who has published a book about working undercover for the Rugeley Amazon fulfillment center. Perceiving the space and the growth of Amazon as a capitalist driven global corporation, the warehouse conditions of walking through a space directed by algorithms that compares to the size of 9 football pitches, must not be comfortable working standards for any human experience given the architectural expression of being confined in a box with only a restricted amount of daylight. Additionally, a huge amount of pressure is put on the worker to move and act on maximum efficiency since they have to meet a specific minimum of a productivity target per day, which has been rising according to James Bloodworth. 7For the consumer to receive their package in an unbelievably short amount of time and the time being reduced to become shorter and shorter, on the other side of the screen, someone in a warehouse kilometers away is moving like a machine according to its algorithm for maximum sale. The contrast of spatial qualities and digital qualities that confronts on one end the seller and on the other end the consumer with almost no transparency in between seems to be very significant. Where for the digital qualities, the minimum amount of steps and physical movement is required for the consumer for the maximum amount of comfort, the person working in the physical space has to move miles a day. When observing the space and how it operates the work, most employers do, seem to be more suitable for machineries such as robots as the container like warehouses appears to have qualities of an uninhabitable architectural space. Even though many fulfillment centers have been replacing human workers with robots that move packages from one place to another becoming human exclusion zones8, more than 250,000 people are still occupied in Amazon warehouses to do the exact same job with amazon still advertising these job positions.9 With only machineries and non-humans behind the wall at a certain point, the
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ibid, 47
”This is what really happens in Amazon’s huge Rugeley distribution centre”,BirminhamLive, accessed March 21, 2020, https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/what-really-happens-amazons-huge-17360326 7 James Bloodworth, Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain ( Great Britain: Atlantic Books, 2018),13 8 Liam Young, Machine Landscapes : The Site and Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene ( Chichester : John Wiley, 2019), 48 9 “Our fulfillment Centers”,dayone: The Amazon blog accessed March 21, 2020, https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment/our-fulfillment-centers 6
sliver of transparency, the public is exposed to will only minimize which in reality benefits the global corporation. For Amazon, the digital platform leaves the consumer on the surface to innocently continue the corporation with Amazon raising the demand and profit and to expand further on the market place. “More than 20,000 small and medium-sized businesses worldwide on Amazon surpassed 1 million dollar in sales in 2017” (Jeff Wilke, 2018), meaning, businesses shift towards using Amazon to sell instead of just relying on an own independent space to sell goods entering the space of e-commerce. The outcome of the highly pushed and increasing productivity targets of the warehouse is to work faster and more efficient. This growth of business very much relies on the isolation of the individual consumer from the physical space and technologically controlled process. 10Through the archived large scale growth and high demand the expansion controls and influence the global market immensely with 268 fulfillment centers distributed over 19 countries, but overall 1116 amazon facilities.11For the fulfillment centers global consistency in operation appears to be not the only keypoint that these warehouses have in common, but the physical space as well as the structural organization is more substantially manifested technologically rather than physically. When analyzing Amazon in a simplified shape, however, the goal and strategy for its commercial nature is not out of the ordinary. The goal being economic growth, raising profit and for the strategy to control and attract more consumer. Characterizing the physical shopping space, such as the modern shopping mall designed by Victor Gruen, architectural elements were designed to create different layers of illusions to attract the consumer to gain more profit, but to let the consumer only see the surface. Through artificial lighting, enclosed air-conditioned spaces, the use of certain materiality, and other elements Victor Gruen created the selling machine.12 The digital space, for the same objective, creates illusions of individualized advertisement extracted from personal information and controls the consumer through algorithms. From the past of commercialized spaces, the places to consume shifted from a space that can be experienced to a utopian machine landscape in which the purpose of architecture in the future, that will have its foundation grounded on technology, becomes a question. Therefore, the future for physical shopping spaces, specifically small businesses becomes questionable. With the rise of digital use in a day and age where technology becomes the dependable foundation for society, the purpose and core of architecture would significantly transform.
For the innocent consumer, the knowledge of consequences and influences each individual carries with their consumption habits does not consequently change these habits.
Liam Young, Machine Landscapes : The Site and Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene (Chichester : John Wiley, 2019), 55 11 “Amazon Global Fulfillment Center Network”, MWPVL: Leadership in Global Supply CHain and Logistics Consulting, accessed March 21, 2020, https://mwpvl.com/html/amazon_com.htmlt 12 M. Jeffrey Hardwick, Mall Maker ( Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2010), 12 10
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Realistically speaking, most of the problematic aspects of Amazon regarding the impact on independent businesses, workers conditions and controlling algorithms are not unknown and has been talked about in the media frequently. If the consumer has the awareness, logically, they would act appropriately, however, the consumer might choose to stay innocent. And with the idea of that, it is not to blame on the individual who cannot seem to avoid the use of Amazon entirely, but to understand. What Amazon defines as a company with its values and its relation to the consumer culture is not enforced onto society, but rather what it demands, craves and has created. To comprehend the reasoning behind the dependence, society has on a company such as Amazon, one is confronted with the history of believes and values of society that has been rooted in them, despite the superficial shift of spaces whether it is the physical or the digital. The ethos of our present society can be traced back to postmodern ideals. Along the postwar reaction with the identity crisis questioning the self and the belonging as well as the reactive anti movement of modernist beliefs inevitably created the postmodernist condition of society.13 Whereas, modernism was founded on the notion of linearity, universal beliefs to settle on a common social structure grounded with enlightenment and rationality in order to find the truth, postmodernism rejects the modern paradigm.14 Instead, the postmodern doctrine follows individualism as liberation and fragmentation as well as in modernism the myth and religion. “The fate of an epoch that has eaten of the tree of knowledge is that it must… recognize that general views of life and the universe can never be the products of increasing empirical knowledge, and that the highest ideals, which move us most forcefully, are always formed only in the struggle with other ideals which are just as sacred to others as ours to us.”15(Max Weber, 9). The strong sense of subjectivity that guides society into heterogeneity through individualism leads to self-representation being each and everyone's own truth. Amazon, embodies the same concept spatially, the indifference of representing a unifying definition of the internal, instead what can be found is a chaos of commodities, symbols organized not by its nature but by buying patterns all heterogenic stored in a neutral warehouse. Giving the endless types of commodities in one fulfillment center, from a variety of brands and businesses, the individual is given choices. The choices defines liberation, liberation defines the self-representation and the self-representation is the one truth the individual can grasp. Amazon, through this perspective which is the one given most straightforwardly to the public, fulfills, therefore, the belief of society. As the focus of society relies on the self, the relationship towards commodities changes. “But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence… illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.” (Guy Debord 1994, 11) Parallel to the strong expression of illusion to the reality and self portrayal, rises the need of articulation through materialism accompanied by the rise of capitalism. A term that could define the framework is the neologism, sociatalism, a fusion of socialism and capitalism expressing socialized capitalism. 16 13
Robert G. Dunn, Identity Crisis: A Social Critique of Postmodernity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998),25 14 David Harvey. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, c1989), 9 15 ibid,1 16 Charles Jecks. Critical Modernism: Where is Post-Modernism going ? (Chichester: Wiley Academy, 2007), 15
With the constant change of trend and need to redefine the self, consistency is uncertain and ones truth is constantly shifting, in need of new symbols, meaning, products. This perpetual demand fuels the capitalist systems, such as Amazon, to grow, expand, intrude, and the pace of it is proportional to the need to redefine ones presentation. The identity crisis of the innocent consumer, in contemporary times, in combination with the technological development enabling fast consumption and no limit in time and space, allows fast economical growth. Additionally, technology supports globalization and the idea of no border which appears to be unifying for the global society, however can be exploited by the market and capitalist system for global market control. “Globalization promises a leaner, more efficient economy, one that will ensure growth and be beneficial to all the nations of the worlds, in the long run at least, despite that short-term costs to a few people”.(Subhabrata Bobby Barnajee, Stephen Linstead 2001, 4). Since the globalized market of Amazon is digitalized, the physical commodity is detached from the reality of the consumer. The only exposure is given through images reducing the meaning of the object as a symbol. “Postmodern concerns for the signifier rather than the signified, the medium rather than the message, the emphasis on fiction rather than function, on signs rather than things, on aesthetics rather than ethics, suggests a reinforcement rather than a transformation of the role of money as Marx depicts it.”(David Harvey 1989, 102) Consequently, Amazon came to exist in its present shape and scale, and grows further. It represents ideals highlighted in postmodernist conditions of society expressing its high values in self representation as the truth. Deeply rooted in the innocent consumer these values drive his actions on one level of the capitalist system. Because that level of the system is highly digitalized, Amazon, successfully is able to dissociate the consumer from reality in the moment of action or consumption preserving the innocence in that timeframe. The exclusion of knowledge or awareness in that intangible, but virtual shopping period, gives Amazon power to control the consumer, who is on another level aware and not innocent. In that moment of the simply action of clicking and deciding on purchasing a specific product , the innocent consumer does not decide to contribute to the negative impact Amazon causes . Nonetheless, the high use of Amazon facilitates the shift towards a digital society through globalization and the introduction of technology. The physical space manifested through architecture and its elements is dissolving and with that, the reality, the consumer is disconnected from, giving him the innocence. Without the physical experience and connection of space and time, the mass society fueled by algorithms, dissociates how they consume and what they consume with the reality, fetishizing and imposing symbols on commodities leading to mass consumption allowing dependence on Amazon and its expansion. Therefore, in our acts and habits and thinking and values, there will always be a sense of paradox. Through moral values integrated in us as human beings and values integrated in us through society, fundamentally created in a line of historical events that accumulate to a complexity unable of being deciphered for an answer, the tension in our action, speaking and thinking is, was and will always be accompanied by duplicity.
“So long as the realm of necessity remains a social dream, dreaming will remain a social necessity. The spectacle is the bad dream of modern society in chains, expressing nothing more than its wish for sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of that sleep. “ (Guy Debord 1994, 18)
Bibliography Barnajee, Subhabrata Bobby., Linstead, Stephen. “Globalization, Multiculturalism and Other Fictions: Colonialism for the New Millenium ?”,Organization,8,4(2001):683-722. Bloodworth, James. Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low Wage Britain. Great Britain: Atlantic Books, 2018. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. New York: Zone Books, 1994. Dunn, Robert G. Identity Crisis: A Social Critique of Postmodernity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.t Hardwick, M. Jeffrey. Mall Maker. Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2010. Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, c1989 Jencks, Charles. Critical Modernism: Where is Post-Modernism going ?. Chichester: Wiley Academy, 2007. Mozingo, Louise A. Pastoral Capitalism: a History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes. Cambridge, Mass : MIT Press, c2011 Singh, Prasidh Raj. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. Orissa: National Law University, 2010. Stone, Brad. The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. London: Corgi Books, 2014. Wallace- Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth. Great Britain: Penguin, 2019. Young, Liam. Machine Landscapes : The Site and Architectures of the Post-Anthropocene. Chichester : John Wiley, 2019. Online Resources: BirminhamLive. ”This is what really happens in Amazon’s huge Rugeley distribution centre”. Accessed March 21, 2020. https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/what-really-happens-amazons-h uge-17360326 dayone: The Amazon blog. “Amazon’s Economic Impact in the UK”. Accessed March 21, 2020. https://blog.aboutamazon.co.uk/jobs-and-investment/amazons-economic-impact-in-the-uk dayone: The Amazon blog. “Our fulfillment Centers”. Accessed March 21, 2020. https://www.aboutamazon.com/amazon-fulfillment/our-fulfillment-centers MWPVL: Leadership in Global Supply CHain and Logistics Consulting. “Amazon Global Fulfillment Center Network”. Accessed March 21, 2020. https://mwpvl.com/html/amazon_com.html