I have vivid memory of an incident from my early teen years. At the time, The Gap was all the rage. All the rich kids had stylish Gap clothes — cool t-shirts, colored denim button-ups, and especially their trademark jeans. I wasn’t a poor kid by any means, but having liberal Bobo parents, they were more interested in spending on trips to Europe, meals in Chinatown, and books (lots and lots of books) than in buying their kid some status signifying clothes. For a birthday or when we happened across an outlet store (truly a place of shame for a teen), I might get a little something from The Gap. But that was it; certainly not something you should get used to.
At about that time, a Swiss friend of my parents — a tall and athletic, charming and sardonic fellow named Jean-Francois — visited us for a couple of weeks. During his visit, he was determined to see an American-style enclosed mall, a phenomenon that had yet to arrive in Europe. So, one night, much to Jean-Francois’ delight, we visited one of the larger malls America has to offer. The image from that visit that really sticks with me is J-F buying seven (!) pairs of Gap jeans, repeating, “It is unbelievable how inexpensive!” The idea that what was to me an extravagant item could be purchased with such abandon led me to believe for sometime that your average western European was wealthy beyond imagination.
The following summer, we visited Jean-Francois in Geneva and he made a bit of a show of telling us how the jeans had worn out too quickly. Disposable, he called them.
This story illustrates a dramatic difference between Americans and Europeans. Americans have a vastly different approach to the accumulation of commodities. As Ritzer (following Weber) notes, we place a tremendous emphasis on quantity over quality. While Europeans have begun to adopt our habits in recent years (with the Brits leading the charge), traditionally, they favor quality over quantity.
As an example, let’s look at the case of t-shirts. I estimate that I own in the ballpark of thirty t-shirts of various types (e.g., old soccer league tees, undershirts, colorful summer t-shirts). I don’t think that this makes me very abnormal among Americans. By contrast, most European friends of mine own no more than
five t-shirts, each costing vastly more than my entire collection. While I have a lot of t-shirts, they have next to no value. Whereas I acquire t-shirts like Swiffer sheets attract dust and chuck them when they inevitably rip in the armpit, t-shirts sold in Europe cost far more, but are “built to last”.
It is often said that Americans have a disposable culture, but rarely is it acknowledged that underlying the quality of the item and our behavior in purchasing a shit-ton of these items is a fundamental difference in values from our European neighbors. Americans value having a lot of stuff and getting a bargain on it above all else. Europe — at least for now — approaches commodities in a more functional manner, hoping to buy something once and have it last.
