buy nothing to save the world

Here's an article I had in the examiner last week, on the 23rd November, the day before international buy nothing day. The end product, in the paper itself, was very much shorter, so it's great to have the opportunity to get the full length version out there. And no, the very striking intro wasn't used in the paper itself. (Note: in the spirit of freedom, the day itself and the original 'share stuff for free' web ethos, most of the links below are to wikipedia)

here goes:

Don�t buy this paper tomorrow. Instead, go to the library and read it for free. Why? Because newspapers are available free to read in libraries, and tomorrow is International Buy Nothing Day. Tomorrow is a day where people in over 60 countries are, well, trying really hard to buy nothing.

I first came across buy nothing day walking down O�Connell Street in Dublin in the late 1990s. A smiling dreadlocked man was standing outside McDonalds, giving out what looked like discount vouchers for the fast food joint. Curious at the contrast between his dreadlocks and McDonalds discount vouchers, I took one of the vouchers and read it.

First things first: as a McDonalds voucher, it looked very realistic, right down to the glossy paper and uniform size of each and every one of the sheets. ��1 off the price of your burger� proclaimed the voucher. Nothing too unusual there. Then the catch: �each �1 comes off the wages of the person serving you!� Despite the obvious prominence of this wording � reasonably big font, front of the voucher - people were taking them, wandering in, ordering and presenting the vouchers at the counter. Needless to say, this wasn�t going down too well with the staff. The smiling dreadlocked man was, after a while, moved on by what were fairly bemused but nonetheless annoyed security staff.

Officially, buy nothing day began in Canada in the early 1990s, with the Adbusters Media Foundation being the day�s most prominent proponents since its inception. Adbusters, who manage a network of over 100,000 members, describe themselves as �a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age�. They produce a 120,000 circulation magazine and run a large website which in many ways acts as a hub for events like buy nothing day.

Adbusters and the �Culture Jamming� they carry out are an example of what sociologists call the cultural turn in social movements. Previously social movement theory suggested that movements are about �the hard and the obvious�: economics, politics, marches and joining organisations such as trade unions, Amnesty International and so on. Today however, sociologists suggest that movements can be as much about the everyday, the cultural and the life-world as they are about card-carrying and flag-waving. The way you do things is as important as the point of doing things. As Marshall Mcluhan said as far back as 1960: the medium is the message.

Culture Jamming is what happened to me and others on O�Connell Street that day in the late 1990s. It�s roots can be traced back to the Situationists (Marxist, Letterist and post-modern artists and agitators from the mid 20^th Century), to a band once sued for its U2 parody by Island records called Negativland, and to politicised practical pranksters everywhere, throughout time.

In large part, Culture Jamming is about using the recourses, imagery and the iconography of consumer culture against itself.

Perhaps Adbusters most striking work is their actual adbusting. Their subversion of well-known corporate imagery through spoof ads is a very prominent example of Culture Jamming. Adbusters are famed for taking an obvious advert, or brand logo, and tweaking it to tell a different story - a previously hidden, or less obvious story. So, for example, Adbusters have famously played on famous alcohol and cigarette adverts, icons or logos, from the clear bottle of Absolut vodka to Camel cigarettes� Joe Camel (referred to as Joe Chemo), to create searing images of drink driving and cancer. Often their aim is also on food, oil and environmental issues more generally.

Buy nothing day globally isn�t organised in a top down or command and control way. People do their activities and tell others about them through formal and informal channels. Shopping malls have been a key focus, with zombie walks, free credit-card cut ups, �free nothing� samples, fake parking tickets for SUV�s, die-ins at fast food joints and eco-orientated flash mobs.

A die-in is an event where a number of people, in a premeditated fashion, act as if they have just died, with varying degrees of theatrics and realism. A flash mob is a relatively large group of people who, aided by the use of modern communications technology, gather unexpectedly in a public place, perform an unusual act for a short period of time, then quickly disperse (Pillow fight clubs and mobile clubbing are perhaps the most well known of flash mobs).

In Ireland, Galway has been the main focus of buy nothing day activities over the last few years. This year if you happen to be on Shop Street tomorrow, you may stumble across the buy nothing day people. There are plans for street theatre from 2pm as well as events in the Galway One World Centre (2^nd Floor of Bridge Mills), including free films and a barter fair.

Films will include a documentary called Affluenza, a film about how the quest for affluence leads not to happiness but to ever greater affluence-chasing, very little actual happiness and an array of negative societal effects.

One of the issues buy nothing day comes up against is whether it is about literally buying nothing, or about changing consumerism. Should consumers buy different stuff, or less stuff? I asked one of this year�s Galway organisers, Somhairle MacAoidh, a vegetable market gardener, part-time student and local food, environmental and cycling activist.

�We should above all else reduce the amount of things we buy. Do we really need 3 TVs or 3 cars, loads of new clothes that may never get worn? That�s before everything else. But when we do buy, we need to consider things like local products. Personally I feel it�s important to support small local traders. Smaller companies tend to be friendlier, the money tends to be kept more in the community, and we have more control over where the product, for example food, comes from�.

Recently, there has been a slight shift in focus for the global buy nothing day. Tomorrow, Adbusters as an organisation suggest that buy nothing day has moved from being an escape from �the marketing mind games and frantic consumerism that have come to characterize modern life�, to focusing on �the new political mood surrounding climate change�.

Kalle Lasn is the co-founder of the Adbusters Media Foundation: �So much emphasis has been placed on buying carbon offsets and compact fluorescent lightbulbs and hybrid cars that we are losing sight of the core cause of our environmental problems: we consume far too much.�

He expands: �Buy Nothing Day isn't just about changing your routine for one day. It�s about starting a lasting lifestyle commitment. With over six billion people on the planet, it is the responsibility of the most affluent � the upper 20% that consumes 80% of the world�s resources � to set out on a new path.�

I asked Adbusters campaign manager, Paul Cooper, if choosing a specific ecological cause contaminated the purity of the original message: �I think buy nothing day supporters have always had in mind two components: a psychological one and an ecological one. The psychological component came be summed up by pointing out that economic growth, participation in the rat race, etc, has not caused people to feel generally happier. More consumption, less satisfaction. The ecological component points to the straightforward fact that consumption is the driving force behind industrial pollution and climate change. Some consumption is unavoidable--of course--but there's a lot of cheap plastic junk from overseas sweatshops moving through the malls that harms the environment, benefits no one, and is ultimately just a symptom of a culture-wide mental illness. You can help the shopaholics and help the planet at the same time, and there's no contradiction there�.

Inevitably, much discussion in Ireland on the merits or otherwise of buy nothing day is conducted on line. Voices claiming to be farmers market stallholders who only operate on a Saturday have occasionally criticised the day. For some, Saturday is their only day of trade, and they are, they would suggest, exactly the type of thing that buy nothing day is supposed to be about: buying stuff that is socially embedded and often better for the environment. What happens if you are one of the good guys, but you only trade on a Saturday?

What happens, activists claim, is that they send people who chat to them on the day towards the farmers� market anyway: In other words, if you are going to buy you may as well buy there, and then start replacing the supermarket with the farmers� market, on your way towards possibly even growing your own vegetables too.

The day can also be accused of being an exemplar of pointless tokenism in the face of massive obstacles, if you believe change should be primarily political and overt. But with oil prices going through the roof; climate change; land competition between grains, animals, biofuels and urban development; 12% of the Irish population having used STADs (sedatives, tranquilizers or anti-depressants) and the rapid rise in various strands of ethical consumerism, buy nothing day could also be seen as yet another reminder that, as never before, humanity is shaping what surrounds it, for better or worse.

For more free reading, go to:

http://olivermoore.blogspot.com

http://adbusters.org/bnd

http://www.indymedia.org and type in �buy nothing day�

http://youtube.com and type in �buy nothing day�

And finally, a few facts on consumption:

• The global organic market is worth an estimated �30 billion, rising at a rate of up to �5 billion each year. (IFOAM report 2007)
• The average UK citizen causes the emission of 750 tonnes of Co2 in their lifetime.
• The average avatar, or virtual alter-ego on the on-line world Second Life , uses up considerably more energy that the average real person in Brazil (1752kWh vs. 1015kWh) (The ObserverMagazine, May 20^th 2007 p. 75)