The right kind of materialism

Nobody wants to be thought of as materialistic. Back in the late 1970s, academics Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton conducted lengthy interviews with several dozen families about their possessions, asking them a battery of detailed questions about which were most important to them and why. A number of their subjects insisted that the researchers had their priorities out of whack – material objects aren’t important, people and human relationships are. But one of the themes that eventually emerged from their work, described in their book, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self, is that some objects matter a great deal. It’s worth lingering a moment over what it was that made some things mean more than others —and why not all materialism is the same.

Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton interviewed members of three generations of 82 families, asking their subjects: “What are the things in your home which are special to you?” Their interviewees mentioned a total of 1,694 objects, divided into 41 categories. Objects in the top 10 categories accounted for around half of the total mentioned: visual art, photographs, books, stereos, musical instruments, TVs, sculptures, plants and plates. The subjects gave 7,875 reasons why their chosen things were special, and these were divided into 11 broad “meaning classes,” such as “memories.”

Part of what the authors found was that the most meaningful objects were rarely chosen on the basis of some intrinsic, rational property, like marketplace value, cutting-edge quality, simple aesthetic pleasure or anything that an economist might describe as “use-value” or “utility.” They were chosen instead for connections to something else: family or social ties, a particular episode in the narrative of the subject’s life, perhaps religious faith or some other belief system affiliation. That is to say, their “meaning” tended to be a function of what the thing represented.

Csikszentmihalyi has continued to address materialism in some of his work, extending ideas from that earlier study, in particular by way of what he calls “psychic energy.” This essentially means attention, or simply what we choose to think about. “Objects are generally tools,” he wrote in
his contribution to a book Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World.

Devoting “psychic energy” to objects can make sense, he argued, if it is part of an effort to “transcend self-interest” and “reach outside (our) own needs and goals and invest in another system, thus becoming a stakeholder in an entity larger than (our) previous selves.” Problems arise when people use “material goals and experiences” not to reflect , but to construct who they are. The Meaning of Thingsdrew a distinction between “instrumental” materialism and “increasingly expensive symbolic demonstrations of our autonomy and power,” which the authors gave the label “terminal materialism.” If you are a terminal materialist, you surround yourself with what you wish you were.

Those two versions of materialism seem vastly different, but in practice they are easily confused, especially in contemporary, ad-soaked consumer culture. We are thirsty for meaning, for connection, for individuality, for ways to tell stories about ourselves that make sense. Meanwhile, all brand-makers generally have to sell is a product that may have use-value, but is hardly equipped to fulfil those needs. We know customised sneakers or a new car or deodorant can’t really make us more of an individual; we know that mutual admiration for the same T-shirt brands or electronic devices aren’t really forms of community. But as one contemporary ad agency executive has put it: “Few stronger emotions exist than the need to belong and make meaning. And brands are poised to exploit that need.”

There’s no point, of course, in demonising branding professionals, simply doing their jobs as effectively as they can. But there’s also no point in decrying “materialism” in general, either. Chances are there are objects in your life that do mean something to you. The crucifix, the wedding ring, the diploma and the trophy are some obvious examples of things that exist purely to join us to — to symbolise — something else (a belief system, a union, an achievement, a memory). It’s up to us to make sure we’re being the right kind of materialist.