Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

Objects in Flux
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This understanding – that acts of consumption are, in themselves, productive
– has over the past 30 years become widely accepted. As Don
Slater states ‘most of us… are very far from being mindless consumerist
zombies. We can and do reinterpret, transform, rework, recuperate
the material and experiential commodities that are offered us’ (1997,
p. 211). A number of terms have been advanced that seek to better describe
this productive, participatory aspect of consumption; on various
occasions consumers have been recast as prosumers (Toffler, 1970,
1980) and produsers (Bruns, 2007, 2008). The emergence of these
terms should not, however, be taken as indication of a collapse in the
binary division between production and consumption, for although
these terms describe a specific shift in the nature of consumption, the
fact remains that centralised processes of mass-production and their
associated modes of consumption continue to dominate contemporary
capitalist society. That acts of consumption are themselves productive
does not generally alter the power relations that exist within this
dynamic or the subjugated nature of the consumer. While this research
finds clear indications of individual agency within acts of consumer
production it also recognises that the field of consumption is a highly
controlled domain. As de Certeau asserts, acts of consumer production
remain contingent on dominant economic structures: ‘power relationships
define the networks in which they are inscribed and delimit the
circumstances from which they can profit’ (1984, p. 34). As such,
consumers operate in a domain that is not their own, yet within this
domain they establish a degree of plurality and creativity; adopting a
tactical approach, they turn the situation to their own advantage.
In aligning the practices of hacking and modding with de Certeau’s
claim that consumers ‘make something’ of the goods and services they
consume, there is a risk of appearing stupidly literal. The ‘making’
that concerns de Certeau is of an entirely different order, one based
in everyday actions or ‘ways of dwelling’, that ‘shows itself not in its
own products (where would it place them?) but in an art of using those
imposed on it’ (1984, p. 31). Yet despite de Certeau’s insistence on
the ‘quasi-invisible’ nature of consumer production, everyday acts do
produce material artefacts. De Certeau recognises as much when he
speaks of la perruque (the wig), a practice where employees disguise
their own work as the work of their employer. The products of this