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By Borrelli (registered) | Posted July 01, 2010 at 13:55:15
Kiely: "We have been divided, individualised, and converted from citizens to consumers." --> Absolutely. Consumerism reflects the relationship between an individual and a product and/or its creator, whereas citizenship refers to an individual's relationship with a community. The past 50-plus years of unbridled consumer capitalism has broken down people's relationships with one another, especially their communities; we've been atomized, socially, so that we now relate to products (material, cultural, etc.) more easily than we do to others.
We're all guilty of this to some extent (I admit, I spend my 4hrs a day on public transit relating to the music on my iPod, and only rarely chat with fellow commuters), but it's such a normalized practice. That's why I think it's important for us to normalize the flexing of our citizen-muscles, and social-capital scholars like Putnam have been suggesting for years that the breakdown of small, seemingly unimportant social/civic associations (from neighbourhood Bridge nights, to formal participation in Lions or Kiwanis Clubs).
Big protests may excite us the same way going to a big concert, sporting event, or other mass-meeting of people, but it's so very rare that change occurs on such a grand scale. I think politicians like Obama give us hope that grand aggregations of individuals can affect change, but an Obama-figure is a once-in-a-generation occurrence, yet it's the civic/community/grassroots infrastructure built up through less glamorous, smaller organizing that forces issues at the local level that allows societal change to happen on a constant basis.
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