The ways in which rubbish can be said to have value in a consumer society - Essay Example

Therefore, the level of income of the modern people is of crucial importance of them, because it is a determinant factor of their further self-identification and social relation within a society (Taylor et al 2009, p. 118). Consequently, every individual is not isolated from the rest of the society when he is making his purchases. Vice versa, all modern people are participants of a consumerism culture. Currently, people are guided by their consumerist values. It means that we are driven to buy and consume more and more products.

We think that if we buy more, our lives would be better. Consumerism has been triggered by the emergence of mass markets, a speed development of technologies. In other words, consumerism implies that the rising incomes should be spent on the growing output. What is value? Goods and products are believed as having no value, because rubbish quantity is ever-growing nowadays. Therefore, in order to pacify the processes of consumerism, it is relevant to develop more tolerant attitude to goods and products and revalue rubbish.

In accordance with Thompson (1979), rubbish can be opposed to the categories of valued elements of material culture as invisible and unvalued rubbish. In other words, valued and unvalued products create a system of value of a material culture. Rubbish is thus an internal category, which lays “in-between” valuable categories. . There is a newly emerged “rubbish business”, which earns its profits from collecting and disposing rubbish (Taylor et al 2009, p. 121). This business concerns recycling technologies, second-hand resale of unwanted things, donations to charity organizations, things passing on relatives and friends, Internet auctions etc.

These are the channels for rubbish revaluation (Taylor et al 2009, p. 128). Therefore, rubbish is a concept with an unstable value. A negative value of rubbish has been often underlined by different researchers. This tendency can be explained by its “uselessness”, “embarrassing”, “peripheral place of rubbish in our lives” etc. Therefore, there is not one to blame but us for such a low value of rubbish. There is an urgent need to throw rubbish away from our homes or to revalue, transform and explore new approaches to rubbish.

It is not too hard to revalue rubbish with regards to the current fashion trends and economical situation. A variety of options for such treatment change to rubbish is suggested by Taylor et al (2009) in the book “Making Social Lives”. Revaluate rubbish Why not to re-discover our rubbish? Revalue it and maybe to find a new use of it? In accordance with some researchers (Taylor et al, 2009) it is impossible to get rid of rubbish completely. We spend lots of our time on rubbish reorganization and management.

For Thompson this is not a problem. He claims that constant dealing with rubbish results from alternative economic decay of things and physical decay of things: “In an ideal world… an object would reach zero value and zero expected life-span at the same instant, and then… disappear into dust. But, in reality, it usually does not do this; it just continues to