Anyhow, I was just responding to Abe’s suggestion that providing market alternatives is the way to go. Personally, I have no respect for brand boycotts, and I don’t think they’re particularly good anticapitalist strategy. Precisely because the response is to talk about ‘reforming’ the sweatshops, and Nike et al develop one factory with well-paid workers to show off to the NGO’s, but the whole framework isn’t tampered with at all.

simply sneering is deeply unpleasant, I agree, as it usually ends is crass generalisations. And I do agree on yr point about there being a huge class/snob element in these judgements.

But your assumption that ethical consumption and/or veggie/organic-ness=wealthy annoying liberal is a load of crap. There are plenty of people who want to eat organic/consume ethically that don’t fit yr stereotypes.

Oh, and I would shop organic/ethically, but I can rarely afford to.

Think that has alot more to do with why it’s only wealthy people that tend do.

Shane, on the beanie: learn to knit. Ethical as it gets and cheap.

I’m a veggie-shoe-wearing-hippy as well. :p

I’m also in the market for a beanie. Does anyone know where I can get a decent beanie?

dude, note that I said that “Nikes or something more affordable”

ah, my bad, apols.

I have no idea where you grew up, Nik, but there are heaps of migrant

working class people who live in Bankstown (south west Sydney), with

otherwise next to no possessions in their homes, but who wear incredibly

expensive shoes. I don’t see how this observation is simplistic stuff that “could

only come from middle class people”. Unless I’ve totally missed the boat on the

hidden luxuries that underline the righteous terrain of alternaculture, I take it

as a given that the “rational” assumption that you simply wear rags when

you’re poor actually stems from the thrifty, grey, belt-tightening aspects of

“middle class” Protestant culture. Indeed, your stupid student wanker types,

unable to escape the assumptions of their cultural roots, have always

glamourised the “poor and dirty” look, which is kinda the weird mirror of

your “rich Nike wearers are lamely slumming it for ghetto cred” observation

(which, I agree, undoubtedly also happens).

From newie mate – he he he. Yeh, I agree with the organic vegie thing. I do think that its increasingly murky ground though. In England and Europe perhaps more than here, but increasingly I seem all sorts buying up organic, which I tend to think comes from a basic general ‘avoid the pollutants’ line – not a bad thing at all. And I agree its crap that the market prices are expensive.. on the tangental trip though, coles has pretty cheap organic products now. Not super cheap, but cheapish (like $1.90 for a packet of pasta, etc) – this is in Brunswick, so it could either reflect the growing demographic changes (more yuppies) or just a growth in demand generally, or a bit of both.

Re: prestige, I agree – there is always going to be a bit of both. Its always going to be a two way trip. I wasn’t meaning to imply that its either rags or riches, but I do think that not everyone is going to have the ability to buy expensive shoes even if they want them, and that there will always be more people with money buying the shoes than without. I wasn’t disputing the desire to own, though I think this is far from a uniform desire, or ever the desire of the (aggregate) majority –again, it depends on the exact locality. for instance, I have know idea what bankstown is like, but in newcastle your choice of footwear really depended on where you lived – down by the beach, amongst the surfies (who were mostly from poorer families in many ways), sneakers, like nikes, where pretty much non-existent (while I was there those weird black school shoe things were the in-thing), whilst out in broadmeadows (a ‘western’ suburb I guess where I mostly grew up) generic sneakers were the norm (imitations the rule). Things like nike’s et al were usually the preserve of richer kids. So perhaps what I should of said was prestige economies work in lots of different ways, and that while in some places the flow is rich trying to look poor (‘authentic mate!’), and poor trying to look rich, it doesn’t always work this way (lots of mechanics that I know via my brothers all make a point of dressing from best and less, wearing ‘good’ work footwear, etc, for example, but then lots of artists also were work shoes, and ferals, and leftisist student wankers… in fact, lots of the people I hung out with made a point of being ‘proudly poor’, a whole sort of ‘fuck you, ive got no money and I steal from vinnies’ thing). I mean, bogan is a great example of a counter to the mod – vollies, flannie and jeans – simple and not ‘branded’ in the expensive sense of the word. A counter to this is the whole bankstown deal… another is the whole convergence of the jean and short sleave shirt brigade every Friday night on newcastles streets (from best and less – actually probably the most popular brand), an example of a style built around not getting too ‘up yourself’ and poncy… there could be an endless sense of back and forth on this one.

But yeh, I should have been more careful in my words etc. I do think the relation of masculinity to prestige spending is pretty interesting though, as is the way nike mobilises prestige spending and identity construction (and the desires to escape capitalism, et al)

Long live hippies!

Sorry to ignore all important points.

I have no idea where you grew up, Nik, but there are heaps of migrant working class people who live in Bankstown (south west Sydney), with otherwise next to no possessions in their homes, but who wear incredibly expensive shoes. I don’t see how this observation is simplistic stuff that “could only come from middle class people”. Unless I’ve totally missed the boat on the hidden luxuries that underline the righteous terrain of alternaculture, I take it as a given that the “rational” assumption that you simply wear rags when you’re poor actually stems from the thrifty, grey, belt-tightening aspects of “middle class” Protestant culture. Indeed, your stupid student wanker types, unable to escape the assumptions of their cultural roots, have always glamourised the “poor and dirty” look, which is kinda the weird mirror of your “rich Nike wearers are lamely slumming it for ghetto cred” observation (which, I agree, undoubtedly also happens).

Look at the history of the post-war “working class culture” in western industrialised nations. Were Mods, who wore expensive Italian suits, ties and shiny shoes, simply stupid rich kids who were aping a mirage of “working class” culture that was simply invented by corporations? Um, no. While there were undoubtedly rich hangers on, the core experience that shaped this cultural phenomenon was working class kids who had newly entered the white-collar workforce as office shitkickers, etc — Negri’s transition from the “mass worker” to the “social worker” — who refused the tired, cloth-cap identity of “the working class”, which had always been an ill-fitting corporatist mechanism of control anyway. Hence the emphasis on cleanliness, sharpness, “modernity” and strangely expensive clothes. Now while I have no illusions that Nike’s all-encompassing marketing schemas are in any way comparable to the generative aspects of spontaneous working class subcultures, the point is that often, people without much money don’t want to look poor, and will make all sorts of sacrifices to do this.

Kill all hippies!

First off sorry I missed that “on its own terms” bit. Need to add that I can’t conceive of any situation where anything Adbusters could actually produce could succeed “on its own terms”… They make a glossy expensive anti advertising magazine for christ’s sake… That plus I’m a pragmatist, I generally don’t care whether things work on their own terms or not, like humans, organizations and movements are rife with internal contradictions, its part of the beauty of life, no?

I’m really interested in how we create “create real alternatives through the power of labour” and more importantly, will any of these alternatives be able to scale. There are plenty of localized and/or temporary instances, but I’ve yet to encounter a real alternative that comes to grip with the fact that their are 6 billion people in this world and that number is only going up. So what alternatives do you propose?

And finally is it essential that someone like Adbusters get it 100% right on the first go? Or are they allowed to experiment? To explore imperfect alternatives as a path towards slightly more perfect positions?