사회사업이 경계할 함정 : Consumerism

[정보원]

Consumerism 

Next, we need to consider the significance of consumerism in contemporary social work. What we mean by consumerism is the way in which developments in social work over many years now have led to an undue focus on service provision. The traditional focus of social work has been on problem solving and empowerment - that is, using our knowledge, skills and values to work towards empowering people to solve their own problems where possible, and to support them as fully as we reasonably can in addressing the problems they face. Consequently, a key part of traditional social work practice has been an emphasis not on providing or commissioning services, but on engaging in empowering forms of practice to avoid the need for services where possible. 

The emphasis on outcome-focused practice can be understood as, in large part, a counterbalance to this consumerist approach. For example, one of the present authors (Neil Thompson) has been involved in running many training courses around outcome-focused practice where participants have made comments to the effect of : 'I hadn't thought about it before, but I realize now that I have been driving to people's houses thinking about what services I could offer them, rather than how I could help them address their problems and their needs'. While such honesty came across as refreshing, the preval‎ence of such thinking was deeply concerning.

How to Survive in Social Work, Neil Thompson. and John McGowan, 2024. pp.52-53

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The Shift from Citizen to Consumer

A citizen is one who is a participant in a democracy, regardless of their legal status. It is one who chooses to create the life, the neighborhood, the world from their own gifts and the gifts of others. Many who have the full legal rights assigned by their country continue to wait for others to provide them with satisfaction and contribute little to democracy or the well-being of their community. At the same time, there are major contributors to community and democracy who do not enjoy the legal status of "citizenship." We would still consider these people to be citizens because they function as full participants in what is necessary for a democracy to work.

A consumer is one who has surrendered to others the power to provide what is essential for a full and satisfied life. This act of surrender goes by many names : client, patient, student, audience, fan, shopper. All customers, not citizens. Consumerism is not about shopping, but about the transformation of citizens into consumers.

When we go to the marketplace and the professional to seek satisfaction, something happens to our capacity to prosper and find peace of mind. Our premise is that these cannot be purchased. Our larger purpose is to describe a few powerful and simple actions to do something about this. To reclaim the role of citizen. To move from individualist/spectator into community. To go from addiction to choice. This is the shift that will simultaneously restore vital functions to the family and the neighborhood and reconstruct the competence of community - all of which come under assault in a consumer culture.

The Limits of Consumption

The essential promise of a consumer society is that satisfaction can be purchased. This promise runs so deep in us that we have come to take our identity from our capacity to purchase. To borrow from Descartes, "I shop, therefore I am." This dependency on shopping is not just about things ; it includes the belief that most of what is fulfilling or needed in life can be bought - from happiness to healing, from love to laughter, from rearing a child to caring for someone at the end of life.

In our effort to find satisfaction through consumption, we are converted from citizen to consumer, and the implications of this are more profound than we realize. This is clearest when we explore two particular consequences of a consumer society : its effect on the function of the family and its impact on the competence of the community.

One social cost of consumption is that the family has lost its function. It is no longer the primary unit that raises a child, sustains our health, cares for the vulnerable, and ensures economic security. The family, while romanticized and held as a cultural ideal, has been a casualty of the growth of consumption and therefore lost much of its purpose. Its usefulness has been compromised.

The second social cost is that, in too many cases, we are disconnected from our neighbors and isolated from our communities. Consequently, the community and neighborhood are no longer competent. When we use the term community competence, we mean the capacity of the place where we live to be useful to us, to support us in creating those things that can be produced only in the surroundings of a connected community.

When they are competent, communities operate as a supportive and mediating space central to the capacity of a family to fulfill its functions. A competent community provides a safety net for the care of a child, attention and relatedness for the vulnerable, the means for economic survival for the household, and many of the social tools that sustain health. If the function of the family is to raise a child and provide what we can summarize in the phrase peace of mind, then it is the community that provides the primary determinants of success of these functions.

In a consumer society, these functions are removed from family and community and provided by the marketplace ; they are designed to be purchased. We now depend on systems to provide our basic functions. For example :

■ We expect the school, coaches, agencies, and sitters to raise our children. We deliver our children in the morning and pick them up later in the day. Same-day service, just like the laundry.

■ We expect doctors to keep us healthy. We believe in better living through chemistry. We think that youth, a flat stomach, a strong heart, even sexual desire are all purchasable.

■ We want social workers and institutions to take care of the vulnerable. Retirement homes are a growth industry marketing aging as the "golden years" best spent in a resort-like environment with other old people.

What this means is that the space that the family and community were designed to fill has been sold and is now empty.

There is widespread recognition that the lost community has to be refound. You see the signs everywhere. Urban design focuses on community connections. Community builders and organizers exist in every city and town. Our intent is to move the conversation about community forward and remind ourselves what citizens can do to bring satisfaction into modern life.

The Abundant Community, Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods, John McKnight and Peter Block, 2012. pp.7-10

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