Buying our way into humanness: consumerism and the dehumanisation of the poor.

• Author: Ndiaye, Dieynaba Gabrielle

Introduction

Between 2000 and 2012, Abdoulaye Wade, then president of Senegal, undertook a series of public works in the capital, of which was the renovation of the Corniche Ouest, a highway going from Almadies, one of the fanciest neighbourhoods in the city, to downtown Dakar, the business centre. The Corniche Ouest has since become a pleasant highway with an ocean view, shiny SUVs, an upscale shopping mall, a high-end hotel, an outdoor fitness area, palm trees, luxury homes and buildings which house the World Bank, foreign embassies, and the like. What is not seen are run down buses, overflowing sewers, overcrowded markets and neighbourhoods, garbage dumps, people busy trying to make ends meet through odd jobs, which one may pass on an alternate route through the much poorer Medina neighbourhood.

Poverty has different meanings. According to the International Poverty Line, to be poor means to live on less than $1.90 a day, an estimate of the amount necessary to satisfy basic needs. Poverty can also be determined by examining living conditions. When comparing the two neighbourhoods I have described above, it is clear that they reflect different standards of living. One can easily establish that access to education, proper healthcare, food, or adequate housing differs between the people living on the Corniche Ouest and those living in the Medina. Those meanings of poverty refer to its objective, measurable, material aspects.

In this article, I examine poverty as a subjective experience in the context of neoliberalism and its corollary the consumer society, using a social psychology approach. The consumer society is a social context in which all aspects of life (relationships, emotions, meaning, social worth) are determined by what one can buy on the market. Social psychology is a discipline that investigates how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of people are influenced by the real or imagined presence of others (Allport 1985). Social psychology provides a unique perspective: like other psychology sub-disciplines, it focuses on constructed or experienced "reality" rather than on "objective reality". Besides, it stresses that human beings are fundamentally social, and that this sociability has important consequences for both their inner worlds (thoughts and feelings) and their observable behaviours.

Thus, rather than asking: how many people in the Medina neighbourhood live on less than $1.90 a day or have adequate healthcare? This approach is about asking, for instance: how might someone who lives on less than $1.90 a day feel about themselves and their life? How are they seen by others? How are their social interactions influenced by their poverty? What does it mean, for the self and for others, to be someone who can afford the brands sold in the Corniche Ouest's shopping mall? Neighbourhood status, clothing brands and cars may seem superficial compared to adequate food and healthcare, which other meanings of poverty may focus on. However, to the extent that they can determine social worth in the consumer society, they have profound psychosocial consequences. Thus, someone may be living with considerably more than $1.90 a day yet feel very poor and experience psychological distress because they cannot afford the goods that the consumer society says they need in order to be valued.

Although social psychology might seem well suited for the study of subjective experiences of poverty, the latter has not received much attention in the literature for several reasons. First, social psychology (psychology as a whole, one might say) focuses on individual and interpersonal processes. Poverty is usually treated as an individual attribute (economic status of the research participant or perceived economic status of another person, etc.), but it is rarely analysed at the societal level.

Second, true experimental design has become the preferred research method in social psychology. As mainstream social psychology became increasingly obsessed with true experimental design, it has, since the 1950s, given up societal and historical phenomena to focus on immediate, controllable, interindividual microphenomena (Oishi, Kesebir and Snyder 2009). Contrasting mainstream social psychology with what the liberation psychologist Martin-Baro had wanted it to be, Aron and Corne (1994:3,5) summarised the state of the former as follows: "Psychology had become infatuated with methods and measurements [...] and blind to many of the structural determinants of individual and group life, including its own allegiances to the privileged and powerful. [...] Psychology has created a fictionalised and ideologized image of what it means to be human, based on its own ahistoricism and bias toward individualism. This false image presents the individual as bereft of history, community, political commitment, and social loyalties."

The third issue is psychology's own neoliberal bias. The extensive use of true experimental design, the gold standard in research, may suggest that social psychology provides an unbiased perspective on society. However, social psychologists live in societies dominated by neoliberal ideology. As a result, the body of knowledge they produce reflects and even supports the neoliberal agenda instead of studying it more critically. Adams, Estrada-Villalta, Sullivan and Markus argue: "By studying psychological processes independent of cultural--ecological or historical context and by championing individual growth and affective regulation as the key to optimal well-being, psychologists lend scientific authority to neoliberal ideology, grant it legitimacy, and amplify its influence--even if they might intend to do otherwise" (Adams, Estrada-Villalta, Sullivan and Markus 2019:190).

Thus, the social psychology literature would benefit from more work examining the impact of neoliberalism on psychological processes. Despite those limitations, social psychology can provide unique insights into how neoliberalism, consumerism and poverty may be experienced by human beings with minds, who analyse and construct their worlds, and who are fundamentally social.

Neoliberalism and consumer society

Cabannes (2013) offered a rich historical analysis of neoliberalism, linking its beginnings to the decline of Fordism. Fordism was the dominant economic system for thirty years after World War II (1945-1975). Workers accepted difficult working conditions (chain work in the automobile industry) in order to increase production. In exchange, companies provided stable employment and good wages. The government was responsible for social security and oversight. Fordism was quite successful, and in many northern countries, real Gross Domestic Product grew substantially in that period. In France, for instance, this period was referred to as "les trentes glorieuses" (glorious thirty years), testifying to the country's prosperity in that period. However, from 1973 onward, Fordism suffered several blows, including an oil crisis in 1973, a recession in 1975, inflation, and market saturation. As...