Category Archives: anthropology

The Neurology of Consumer Compulsion

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It is self-evident that mass consumption is a main driver of relentless economic growth, the utopian goal of capitalism, and this has obvious ecological implications as we over-consume the Earth.  But why do we feel compelled to consume far beyond what we truly need? 

In a provocative new essay on the Great Transition Initiative website, neuroscientist Peter Sterling explores “Why We Consume:  Neural Design and Sustainability.”  It is an evolutionary scientist’s argument for how human beings are neurologically wired and what we might do about it. What is the biological substrate for our behaviors as homo economicus and as social cooperators?  Why do we (over)consume? 

Sterling points to such obvious social factors such as our desire for social status and a good self-image, all of it fueled by advertising.  But while these feelings of satisfaction invariably wane, they invariably surge forward again and again: “Something at our neural core continually stimulates acquisitive behavior,” he writes, adding that “we urgently need to identify and manage it.”

Sterling notes that we all have neurological circuits that are periodically bathed in dopamine as a reward for satisfying behaviors. More than a “pleasure center,” these neural responses serve as a reward for human learning and adaptation in a highly varied environment. It is the decline of our highly varied environment that may be responsible for our consumerist obsessions.

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Anthropologist Harry Walker on the Lessons of Amazonian Commons

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Sometimes it takes anthropologists to ask the really deep questions and help us imagine another world. That became clear to me after listening to Dr. Harry Walker, an anthropologist at the London School of Economics, give the prestigious Malinowski Memorial Lecture in late May. 

Walker has long studied the people of Peruvian-Amazonia, with special attention to “the nature of the self and its relationship to interpersonal and political processes.” His provocative, thoughtful lecture, “Equality Without Equivalence: an anthropology of the common,” is a meditation on the deep clash between our modern, western ideas of liberal equality and private property, and the different modes of being and knowing that are nourished in commons.

The talk essentially juxtaposes Walker's conclusions about aboriginal commons against the context of representative government and market economics, helping to reveal the peculiar ideals of humanity embedded in the liberal polity.  (Thanks, Miguel Vieira, for alerting me to Walker's podcast!)

A bit of background:  Walker is the author of Under a Watchful Eye:  Self, Power and Intimacy in Amazonia, which is described on the author’s website as an exploration of

the pervasive tension in Amazonian societies between a cultural prioritization of individual autonomy and uniqueness, and an equally strong sense that satisfaction and self-realization only come through relations with others. In seeking to understand the inherently shared or ‘accompanied’ nature of human experience, it brings together considerations of child care and socialization, relations with nonhumans, and concepts of power, in order to show how agency and a sense of self emerge through everyday practices involving the cultivation of intimate but asymmetrical relationships of nurturance and dependency.

Walker’s one-hour talk is too long and complex to summarize here, so I will focus on some of his concluding insights. He noted that a central theme of Amazonian commons is the idea of “living well” – to organize one’s life and productive efforts in such a way that it “imbues life with a sense of meaning, purpose and direction.” The point is to strive for “a state of happiness and tranquility,” especially with loved ones.

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The Capacity to Perceive the Commons

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I increasingly think that anthropologists may have some of the deepest insights into the commons because they have the courage to pierce the veil of cultural norms.  This point was brought home to me by a wonderful essay by anthropologist T.M. Luhrmann of Stanford University in the New York Times.

“Americans and Europeans stand out from the rest of the world for our sense of ourselves as individuals,” she wrote.  “We like to think of ourselves as unique, autonomous, self-motivated, self-made. As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz observed, this is a peculiar idea.”  By contrast, she noted, Asians tend to perceive things in more holistic, contextual ways. 

Social psychology experiments confirm many of these findings about people’s perceptions of interdependence and individualism.  Show Americans an image of fish swimming amidst various seaweed plants, and they will more likely to focus on large fish in the foreground.  But show the same image to Asians and they are more likely to remember first the sea plants and other objects.    

Context or foreground?  People who live in market-based cultures seem to have trained themselves to focus on the salient individuals while literally failing to see or remember the background.  Why might this occur?

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