Week 2

I was not sure what to write about here seeing as I wrote about Kozol last time and I am beginning to tutor at the I Have a Dream Foundation on Thursday so I decided to relate some of my other coursework to this class, specifically the film Examined Life.

            This semester I am working on my economics thesis paper, which I plan to be an analysis of the market for collectable items. This market is difficult to define since just about any item can be collected. I have read some papers that describe the various things people collect ranging from empty beer cans to antique oarlocks. However, collectable items are different from things people collect in that collectable items are part of a set, presumably one outlined by the manufacturer but often retrospectively by antique enthusiasts. Russell Belk, author of Collecting in a Consumer Society, describes collecting as “the process of actively, selectively, and passionately acquiring and possessing things removed from ordinary use and perceived as part of a set of non-identical objects or experiences”.

            This topic may seem random since I do not consider myself a collector. However, I was led into this topic as a result of my family’s obsession with the Beanie Baby fad in the late nineties. When I was considering ideas for my project, I kept coming back to the idea of fads and how something people fight over in stores becomes something I keep in the back of my closet now. I shudder to think how much money was spent on my enormous Beanie Baby collection and wonder what made us purchase all of them. Since only in hindsight is really possible to identify a fad, I went in another direction. Collectables are so useless really and yet people obsess over them and get extremely attached to their collections.

            In some ways, collectors are seeking connections with other collectors, describing their feelings at interacting with other collectors of the same good as being the only time they feel they are truly understood. In other ways collecting drives people away. Examples are described in which collector’s children feel they are in competition with the collection for their mother or father’s attention.

            What really reminded me of this class and the film Examined Life had to do with what Peter Singer spoke about while he was walking down a street in a major shopping district of New York City. He was speaking about ethics and he said that when we choose to spend money on one thing we are choosing not to spend money on another thing. In other words, by choosing to purchase one more cup of coffee, I am choosing not to spend my money giving someone in an underdeveloped country clean drinking water. He says that the choices we make are unethical.

            Collecting is just an extreme example of our habit of surrounding ourselves with things. In another article by Russell Belk titled, Collecting as Luxury Consumption: Effects on Households and Individuals, we are introduced to Marsha and Julian, both avid collectors. Among their collections they own over two hundred antique oarlocks, six hundred doilies, over a thousand astronomy books, forty-seven rocking chairs, and more than two thousand plates, cups, and saucers (To be fair, they are an extreme example, though Belk differentiates between collectors and hoarders in that they do not collect randomly, others may perceive what they own as having value). They realize they have a problem when they are unable to fit a recent acquisition to their furniture collection into their house. 

            The couple ends up paying somebody to come and get rid of all their stuff for them. When they return to their house after it has been emptied, they express a feeling of emptiness. Without their things, Julian comments about his home, “It is cold out there, inhospitable, alien. There’s nothing there, nothing contained in nothing. Nothing at all” (478). I believe this statement says something about how we see our lives without the protection of things.