Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Speaker 1: Bobelbaum here. It's hard to say exactly when it started,
Speaker 1: but in recent years there seems to be an increasing
Speaker 1: tendency in the United States to use the term consumer
Speaker 1: interchangeably with citizen, even when the discussion isn't taking place
Speaker 1: strictly in an economic framework, and some political experts say
Speaker 1: that this choice of words may reveal a subtle but
Speaker 1: worrisome shift in how we see ourselves and our role
Speaker 1: in American society, away from the notion of working together
Speaker 1: with others toward the common good, and toward a nation
Speaker 1: of individuals primarily motivated by self interest before. The article
Speaker 1: of this episode is based on How Stuffworks. Spoke by
Speaker 1: email back in twenty seventeen with Jason Sadowski, a senior
Speaker 1: lecturer in the Department of Human Centered Computing at Monash University.
Speaker 1: He said that using consumer interchangeably with citizen and a
Speaker 1: quote has become part of our default discourse, the normal
Speaker 1: way we viewed society and people just look at the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen presidential election. This consumer versus citizen language is
Speaker 1: often used when analysts and pundits talk about elections of
Speaker 1: voters are just consumers with preferences, and the election is
Speaker 1: a marketplace of products to choose from in the store.
Speaker 1: We vote with our dollar. We're told that elections are
Speaker 1: functionally the same thing. You just use a ballot instead
Speaker 1: of a buck to cast your vote. This understanding of
Speaker 1: democratic processes as a marketplace is just one more place
Speaker 1: where the citizen is overtaken by the consumer. Both words
Speaker 1: have been around for centuries. A citizen dates back to
Speaker 1: the thirteen hundreds, though it originally meant the inhabitant of
Speaker 1: a city and didn't take on its present meaning a
Speaker 1: person who has rights and responsibilities in the society until
Speaker 1: around sixteen ten. The word consumer arose in the fourteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: though back then it meant someone who squanders or wastes things.
Speaker 1: It took on a less pejorative economic meaning, that is,
Speaker 1: a person who purchases and uses goods and services around
Speaker 1: seventeen forty five. If you look at the appearances of
Speaker 1: each word in Google Books and gram Viewer, which isn't
Speaker 1: always accurate, but gives us a pretty decent idea of
Speaker 1: how often words were used in print in the English
Speaker 1: language from eighteen hundred onward. The word consumer seldom appeared
Speaker 1: in print until about nineteen hundred, but starting around then
Speaker 1: it steadily rose until it passed up citizen and frequency
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen twenties. The use of the word
Speaker 1: consumer peaked in the nineteen eighties, but it's still used
Speaker 1: more than one and a half times as often as citizen.
Speaker 1: How stuff Works also spoke via email with Michael Munger,
Speaker 1: director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke
Speaker 1: University's Political Science Department. He theorizes that the shift in
Speaker 1: usage had to do with the rise in the twentieth
Speaker 1: century of progressive politics. He said the progressives primarily saw
Speaker 1: citizens as being helpless trapped by large forces, especially corporations,
Speaker 1: that citizens couldn't deal with. Starting in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: politicians increasing use of sophisticated marketing techniques borrowed from sellers
Speaker 1: of products like breakfast, cereal, cars, and antiperspirants also may
Speaker 1: have played a role. Today, campaigns gather and analyze mountains
Speaker 1: of data to conduct micro targeting efforts, which look at
Speaker 1: individual voters attitudes and behaviors and what might be the
Speaker 1: best way to reach them. And the government itself is
Speaker 1: being judged as if it were consumer business. The American
Speaker 1: Customer Satisfaction Index rates twelve departments and agencies within the
Speaker 1: federal government on how people feel about the accessibility and
Speaker 1: efficiency of their services. In twenty twenty four, the federal
Speaker 1: government overall got a sixty nine point seven out of
Speaker 1: one hundred, a seven year high, up two point two
Speaker 1: percent over the previous year. And this isn't just semantics.
Speaker 1: The words we use can have an impact on how
Speaker 1: we live. A twenty twelve study published in the journal
Speaker 1: Psychological Science found that choice of words may exert a
Speaker 1: subtle influence on how we see ourselves. In one part
Speaker 1: of the study, people who answered a consumer response survey
Speaker 1: but tended to express more materialistic, self centered values than
Speaker 1: those who answered a citizen survey. In another part, the
Speaker 1: researchers presented subjects with the hypothetical situation in which people
Speaker 1: had to share water from a well and labeled them
Speaker 1: as either consumers or citizens. The subjects who got the
Speaker 1: consumer identity tended to distrust others more about sharing water,
Speaker 1: felt less in partnership with the other subjects, and felt
Speaker 1: less personally responsible compared with those who were labeled citizens.
Speaker 1: How stuff Works also spoke with Josh Pasek, a professor
Speaker 1: of communication in Media and Political science at the University
Speaker 1: of Michigan. He explained that this shift in terminology a
Speaker 1: quote seems to underscore a shift away from viewing Americans
Speaker 1: as having responsibility in our political system and toward a
Speaker 1: more individualist view of what it means to be American.
Speaker 1: Your job as an American citizen requires that you fulfill
Speaker 1: key democratic norms, such as being informed, deliberating about political issues,
Speaker 1: and participating in civic and political life. As an American consumer,
Speaker 1: your actions are relevant only to the extent that they
Speaker 1: respond to economic incentives. The responsibility to be engaged and
Speaker 1: participatory is not your own, but instead depends on a
Speaker 1: system that is oriented to bring you in. How Stuff
Speaker 1: Works also spoke via email with Frank Trentman, a professor
Speaker 1: of history at the University of London and author of
Speaker 1: the book Empire of Things, How he Became a World
Speaker 1: of Consumers from the fifteenth century to the twenty first.
Speaker 1: He thinks that the blurred distinction between consumer and citizen
Speaker 1: may make it tougher for people to come together to
Speaker 1: solve problems. He said, not all consumers see the world
Speaker 1: in the same way, and hence concerted action is difficult.
Speaker 1: All of this is why some people would like to
Speaker 1: see us go back to viewing ourselves as active citizens,
Speaker 1: not passive consumers. As political commentator Mark Shields wrote in
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, maybe it's time that Americans started insisting that
Speaker 1: leaders treat them not like consumers quote, but as citizens
Speaker 1: who recognize that we have, in addition to rights and privileges,
Speaker 1: real obligations and responsibilities. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article when and Why did America start calling its citizens consumers?
Speaker 1: On HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Khigh. Brain
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