Robin Usher

CONSUMING LEARNING

CONSUMIR APRENDIZAJE / ^
Resumen
AI investigar ei iugar del consumo en ia educación es necesario cuestionar tanto el
lenguaje de la teoría critica de la manipulación conio el lenguaje del neoUberalismo de
la acción racional como formas de explicar la importancia del consumo en las vidas de
las personas y donde ha asumido un estatus central en el orden social contemporáneo.
Este trabajo sostiene que el consumo es una economía de señal en la que las prácticas
de significado, como las que tienen que ver con el estilo de vida, han adoptado un lugar
importante. El aprendizaje está estimulado por el deseo, que puede seguir muchos
caminos y tomar múltiples formas. Esto ha llevado a una disminución de la centratidad
de la educación institucional. Si las personas están posicionadas como consumidores,
se convierten en consumidores de aprendizaje. La participación en actividades de
aprendizaje no puede, por tanto, ser entendida por los educadores contemporáneos sin
referirse al consumo. Pero muchos dudan si el aprendizaje que se está llevando a cabo
'vale al pena ' realmente, lo que plantea la pregunta de quién es quien debe definir lo que
vale la pena. La situación contemporánea es frustrante para quienes buscan ia justicia
social y la transformación a través de la educación, porque nada parece suficientemente

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creíbie como para que merezca ei compromiso necesario para iograr esas metas. Las
prácticas de estilo de vida que surgen con ei consumo significativo son dificiies de
trabajar desde ei punto de vista educativo, aún cuando ia educación para prácticas de
estiio de vida ofrece, y de hecho brinda, grandes posibilidades para ios programas de
educación de personas adultas. Pero esto es ajeno al gusto y las sensibilidades de
muchos educadores de personas adultas. Una alternativa es trabajar con bolsas de
resistencia para la cultura del consumidor que impliquen el aprendizaje por parte de los
participantes, pero un aprendizaje más rizomático, un aprendizaje que despegue en
diversas direcciones.

LA CONSOMMATION D'APPRENTISSAGE

Résumé ^
En investiguant ia place de la consommation dans l'éducation il est nécessaire de mettre
en doute à ia fois la langue de manipulation de la théorie critique et ia langue d'action
raisonnable de néolibéralisme comme manières d'expliquer ia signification de la
consommation dans les vies des gens et ou la consommation a assumé une position
centrale dans l'ordre social contemporain. Ce document soutient que la consommation
est une économie de signe ou les pratiques du sens, telles que les pratiques de style de
vie, ont assumé une position importante. L'apprentissage est activé par le désir, qui
peut suivre beaucoup de chemins et prendre les formes multiples. Ceci a mené à un
amoindrissement de la centrante de l'éducation institutionnelle. Puisque les gens sont
placés comme consommateurs, ils deviennent des consommateurs de l'apprentissage.
La participation à l'étude ne peut pas donc être comprise par les éducateurs
contemporains sans référence à la consommation. Cependant beaucoup de gens
doutent que i'étude soit vraiment valabie, ce qui pose la question- qui peut définir ce qui
est vaiabie ? La situation contemporaine est frustrante pour ceux qui cherchent la
justice social et la transformation de recherche par l'éducation parce que rien ne semble
suffisamment croyable mériter l'engagement nécessaire pour atteindre ces buts. C'est
difficile de travailler pédagogiquement avec les pratiques en matière de style de vie qui
accompagnent ia signification de la consommation même si informer sur les pratiques
de style de vie offre, et en effet fournit, une grande possibilité pour les programmes
d'éduction pouraduites. Pourtant ceci est à l'extérieur du goût et des susceptibilités de
beaucoup d'éducateurs des adultes. Une alternative c'est de travailler avec tes poches
de résistance à la culture du consommateur qui nécessitent apprendre de la part de
ceux qui participent, mais une forme d'apprentissage qui est plus rhizomatique - un style
d'apprentissage qui prend une série de directions.

Abstract

In investigating the place of consumption in education it is necessary to question both

critical theory's language of manipulation and neo-liberalism's language of rational
action as ways of explaining the significance of consumption in peopie 's iives and where

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it has assumed a central status in the contemporary social order. This paper argues that
consumption is a sign economy where practices of signification, such as those to do
with lifestyle, have assumed a significant place. Learning is energised by desire, which
can follow many paths and take multiple forms. This has led to a lessening of the
centrality of institutional education. As people are positioned as consumers, they
become consumers of learning. Participation in learning activities cannot therefore be
understood by contemporary educators without reference to consumption. But many
doubt whether the ¡earning taking place is really 'worthwhile', which poses the
question—who is to define what is worthwhile? The contemporary situation is frustrating
for those seeking social justice and transformation through education because nothing
seems sufficiently credible to merit the commitment necessary to achieve those goals.
The lifestyle practices that come with signifying consumption are difficult to work with
educationally even though educating for lifestyle practices offers, and indeed is
providing, great scope for adult education programmes. But this is alien to the taste and
sensibilities of many adult educators. An altemative is to work with pockets of resistance
to consumer culture that involve learning on the part of those participating, but a
learning that is more rhizomatic—a ¡earning that takes off in a variety of directions.

Consumption and Signs

'We can't let terrorists stop us from shopping.'

In education, as in the social sciences generally, consumption is sfill a difficult

and controversial topic despite the growing volume of scholarly literature on
the subject. While it is now accepted that consumption figures importantly in
the lives of people from all social strata, critical language still features strongly
in accounting for its significance. This is of course particularly the case with the
various brands of critical theory where the figure of the consumer as the dupe
of capitalism assumes a central place. Critical theory provides certain
infiuential paradigms of consumption, such as the Marxist where consumption
is seen as simply a refiex of production, and the Frankfurt School where it is
seen as alienated consciousness, the source of manipulation and passivity. In
other words, consumption tends to be signified as ideology, with ideology
critique the only appropriate response.

In contrast, at the other end of the spectrum, classical economic theory with
its assumption of the rational hero maximising utility through consumption is
at the heart of contemporary economic rationalism and, in being so uncritical,
it too is equally problematic. I want to argue that neither notions of consumers
as rational utility maximisers nor as deluded or duped victims of capitalism are
satisfactory. Therefore in any investigation of the place of consumption in
education we have to question both the language of manipulation and the
language of rational action as a way of explaining the significance of

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consumption in people's lives, in a contemporary social order where, whatever
we may feel about it, consumption has assumed a central status.

It is now a truism to say that we are all in significant ways affeeted by

contemporary consumer culture and consumerist discourse and images, even
when resisting these. They comprise the motor of contemporary capitalism and
they generate the core values and sensibilities of the social order. They are
multicultural and with the impact of space-time compression, unconstrained by
geographical boundaries. Furthermore, whilst readily conceding that not all
consume equally, with continuing gulfs between rich and poor, I want to argue
that consuming is not always, and of necessity, best understood as manipulative
or mystifying. Equally, however, contra the economic rationalists, I would not
want to argue that consuming is always a desirable thing. My position is
perhaps closer to one influenced by postmodem and post-structural
theorisations. Writers who draw on these theorisations (for example,
Featherstone 1991; Urry 1995; Usher, Bryant and Johnston 1997) have
highlighted the significance of consumption in the social order where it is seen
as having a variety of effects. On the one hand, there is the notion of fragmented
consumers who seek through consumption to stabilise, even if only temporarily,
a confusion of identities. On the other, this fragmentation and identity
confusion is seen as liberatory since the institutions that have hitherto defined
identity no longer have the same defining—and often repressive—power.
Identity, it is argued, can be constructed and expressed through consumption, a
mode of becoming that has become more prevalent in the contemporary social
order. Consumption, then, is seen as the dominant mode through which
individuals can creatively construct and express a fluid identity from a variety
of possibilities now open to them.

In the 'fast' culture of the contemporary moment, consuming becomes a

principal mode of self-expression, with the experience of social participation
often contingent on pattems of consumption. For many, experience is now more
rooted in processes of consumption than in production. It is what we consume
rather than our work or our occupation that is defining who we are. This shift
points to a significant difference between classical capitalism and what I refer
to as 'fast' capitalism where the latter has cultural as well as economic and
political effects. Whilst classical capitalism fostered an ethic of production, fast
capitalism fosters and indeed requires an ethic, and also an aesthetic, of
consumption. For Marxists, labour was always the source of creativity and
fulfilment; the argument now is that this is the role assumed by consumption.
In the process, what Baudrillard (1988, 11) refers to as 'images circulating as
true value', the bewildering circulation of signs that do not so much represent
the real but are the real—what I have referred to as 'fast' culture—this has now
become the most significant tendency in 'fast' capitalism. As lives become
shaped by signs that function without reference to a real outside themselves,
identities combine and recombine in an apparent free play.

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 But—and this, 1 think, is very important-—consumption has to be thought of
not simply as the consuming of goods, but in a more semiotic way in terms of
the signs and significations with which consuming is indelibly imbued. Here
consuming becomes a meaningful activity where nothing is consumed purely
and simply on a tiinctional basis. Consumption always involves the giving and
taking of meaning and is the means by which meanings are shared. Thus
consuming is not so much for use or need. Rather what is consumed—be it
goods, objects or images^—^are signs that communicate something to others, that
code behaviour by structuring actions and interactions, and that bring forth
individuals.

If we think of the consuming of signs rather than of things (although signs

are themselves material) the implication is that goods of whatever kind only
make sense in terms of their sign values. To say this about consumption is to
say in effect that because consumption always involves meaning, it is cultural.
For example, in order to experience a "need' and to act on it by consuming, we
must be able to interpret or give meaning to our experiences and our situation,
and these are socially constnicted interpretations. Consumption is articulated
within specific and meaningful ways of life—for example, no one simply eats,
they have 'dinner' or a 'snack,' no one simply eats 'food,' they eat 'bread' or
'foie gras', no one simply buys a car, they buy a Ford or BMW, where owning
the latter means something quite different from owning the former. Things are
not taken up just for their use or function but as signs in order to communicate.

Consumer culture is therefore material and semiotic. an economy of signs,

where individuals and groups through what and how they consume
communicate messages about position and worth, and where consumption is
articulated within specific ways of life. Consumption is thus a signifying
mechanism and a process for the cultural production, reproduction and
communication of social relations and social order. Bourdieu and Passeron
(1977) remind us that consumption is a set of socio-cultural practices that do
not simply express, but rather actually construct; consumption establishes
differences between and within social groups through a defining of both how to
consume and what to consume, and in the process linking identity with
consumer practices.

Consumption shapes identities where what is consumed and how it is

consumed function as a sign of identity that both differentiates (signifying
particular difference from others) and shows solidarity (signifying the same as
particular others). Consumption can do this because it is more flexible and
dynamic than production or occupation in shaping identity. There is a greater
fluidity in the cultural 'supermarket' where choice and variety are multiple.
Lifestyle choices are constantly and rapidly changing. In providing
opportunities for self-expression, these choices then stimulate a desire for
further consumption. Thus identities can be experimented with and with

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consequent less commitment than before to any singular fixed identity. We can
call this an aestheticisation of life that involves a whole range of practices of
the aesthetic where the emphasis is on lifestyle and its enhancement.

Many sites have become centres of aesthetic consumption—urban areas, re-

developed and gentrified; shopping malls; museums; theme and heritage parks.
These centres of consumption flourish where lifestyle concems manifested
through consumption rather than production become significant. The infiuence
of fashion, image and 'taste' pervade an increasingly all-embracing consumer
culture that affects all social groups, although some more than others. The point
here is that these are not simply physical sites. Above all, these centres of
consumption are also semiotic, they signify and provide spaces for new
experiences and the (re)formation of identities. This is why many argue that
lifestyle has now replaced other forms of hierarchical social categorisation
where its practices have become significant in shaping people's subjectivity
and, through that, their sense of identity.

What is consumed, then, has an exchange or sign value, a meaning that

signifies something about the consumer in the context of a social system that is
based on a sign economy. In the economy of fast capitalism, meaning is
generated and distributed through the organisation of eonsumer objects. A
usefiil way of thinking about consumption, therefore, is as a common language
through which cultural significations are expressed and interpreted, where
individuals 'buy' their identity or their 'being' with each act of consumption.
Baudrillard thus sees consumption not as a passive 'using up' of produced
items, but as a framework that enables active relationships within a cultural
system (Baudrillard 1996). This language or semiotic 'system of objects' is a
stmctural and differential logic of signs that defines the social order. He argues
that everything exists within this logic, a logic that constitutes the signifying
fabric of our everyday existence. Looked at this way consumption is not exotic
but the everyday. It is the prime mechanism for the cultural production and
reproduction of social relations and social order. As such, it is a material and
semiotic process, carried out through the social practices of everyday life.

Baudrillard refers to consumattvity as the 'code' that stmctures the social

order of fast capitalism. This code or structural force links together consumer
culture and fast capitalism. Consumer culture projects a hyper-real worid of
constantly proliferating images, or what Baudrillard calls 'simulacra', that are
consumed as a desirable reality. Representation has become media-ted to the
point where it becomes more real than the real. Baudrillard refers to simulacra
as copies or models that nonetheless no longer have referents, that are re-
produced as hyper-real. While simulacra are not without meaning, their
meaning—given that it is not anchored to an extemal object or referent—
becomes multiple and even undecidable. In other words, simulacra are
weightless, decontextualized signifiers-. Although copies, they are nonetheless

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material because they shape the way the real is perceived; or to put it another
way, they generate meanings in all spheres of everyday life. Hence, everything
becomes culturalised, or open to the possibility of endless semiosis.

With the proliferation and accelerated circulation of images, hyper-reality is

now no longer a limited experience but rather the major condition of
contemporary life. Consumerism, the motor of sign values, is the contributing
factor in creating this hyper-reality, with hyper-reality in its turn reinforcing the
sign economy of consumption. With the consumption of images as signs,
thoughts and feelings intertwine with the desire induced by images. For
Baudrillard, the code of consumativity marks a ceaseless movement such that
the consumption of images is never satisfied—there is always a lack, an endless
desire to possess the real but where there is no real, only its image or simulacra
(Baudrillard 1988). It is thus the desire to consume rather than the act of
consumption that is significant here. Consumption marks a move from the
satisfying of necessity, which can be satisfied, to desire, which can never be
satisfied. Desires are depthless, unsatisfiable and any fulfilment is always
temporary, with desire continually renewed.

Furthermore, as capitalism grows ever more competitive in trying to extract

additional sign-exchange value for commodities, the circuitry of signification
speeds up—there is an accelerated velocity of semiotic particles passing
through the circuits of capital (Agger 1989) and culture is turned into
commodity signs. Culture too becomes 'fast,' as it is turned into commodity
signs—what I referred to earlier as 'fast culture'. Meaning becomes dispersed
and fragmented. Capitalism also puts people in a competitive position with one
another, so it is not so much that each desires a specific object or image, but that
each desires what the other desires. To put it another way, people desire the
desires of the other.^ When fulfilment can only be found through a world of
simulation, there will always be more sign images to be consumed and more
desires to be attended to, with fulfillment indefinitely postponed. Thus comes
about the dispersion and fragmentation of identity and meaning as processes of
cultural commodification feed an accelerating circulation of signs in the sphere
of culture.

The consumption of signs in conditions of fast culture and fast capitalism

must inevitably involve a constant yet unstable re-positioning of subjectivity
and a consequent re-forming of identity. As a result, subjectivity becomes a
task, a performance, rather than a given—something always in process.
Becoming rather than being becomes the ontological priority. Experience
becomes contingent and fiow-like rather than coherent and determinate. New
forms of experience proliferate, with experience generating further experience.
Sensibilities are attuned to the pleasure of constant and new experiencing,
where the flow of experiencing becomes its own end rather than a means to an
end, part of a constant making and re-making of a lifestyle. The unified.

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coherent and sovereign self of modernity, the firm ground for the fixing of
identity, becomes a multiple discontinuous self traversed by multiple meanings
and whose identity is continually in a process of re-formation.

In his infiuential characterisation of late modernity, Giddens (1990, 1991)

argues that matters of identity become urgent questions in need of an answer
rather than answers that can be drawn from meanings that are already available
in a pre-given social order. With the greater range of decisions that people have
to make in relation to identity formation, an existentially and semiotically
troubling situation arises where the very uncertainty and ambivalence which
give rise to the need to make such decisions actually makes decision-making
less secure and therefore troubled. Here Giddens fashions contemporary times
as entailing a troubling 'risk' with a consequent stress in coping with this risk
but where the need to cope is the source of ¡earning which^—since risk is always
present—is therefore lifelong. However, whilst broadly agreeing with Giddens'
argument I would like to put forward two qualifications. First, following the
thread of my argument so far, the proliferation and consumption of signs, far
from being simply existentially troubling can also be existentially pleasurable,
as is the need to continually re-make identity. There is risk but it is one of not
being able to signify oneself in desirable ways, of not being able to respond to
lack and desire—^the pursuit of which involves learning that never reaches an
end. Learning here is about pleasure and creativity and I shall return to this at a
later point.

The second qualification departs somewhat from the thread of my argument

so far but is not incongruent with it. It is to do with what Campbell (2005) has
called the 'craft consumer'. In this type of consumption the product consumed
is both made and designed by the same person who is motivated by a desire for
creative self-expression but where consumption involves an element of skill
that is intrinsic to the activity. Individuals consume principally out of a desire
to engage in acts of self-expression. Campbell points to examples of this craft
consumerism such as DIY (do-it-yourself), gardening, cooking and clothes.
These consumers want to create their own aesthetically significant products.
The point is that they already have a clear and stable sense of identity and it is
this that generates their consumption.

We can now highlight three significant features of consumption. First, it is

always incomplete^it always precipitates an absence. Second, it neither knows
any bounds nor respects existing boundaries.* Third, meaning or signification,
although reaching a temporary anchoring-point, is ultimately always deferred.
Relating this to the economy of fast capitalism, the cultural economy of signs
bears a structural resemblance to the conventional economy of commodities
that gave birth to it. Goods and services are invested with iconic difference and
value to make them stand out, to signify difference.

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 What emerges very clearly and very significantly is that consumption has to
be seen as a complex and multi-dimensional semiotic as well as material
process. To sum up so far:

• Consumption is active and generative; 'consumption is eminently social,

relational and active rather than private, atomic or passive' (Featherstone
1995,24).
• The image is the dominant commodity sign form. It is signs rather than
commodities that are consumed.
• The contemporary consumer society is based on a new type of
communication: the multiplicity and proliferation of signs. Consumption
is about communicating.
• We need to understand the significance of the cultural meanings in what
people do when they consume and the role that consumer choices have
in certain social practices.
• We need to understand how meanings and identity are generated and
distributed through these practices.
• Consumable objects no longer signify simply in terms of their material
qualities and functions but rather they signify in terms of self-expression
through a variety of lifestyle practices.
• Consumption is about desire and the perennial failure to satisfy desire
completely. It is because of this that paradigms of consumption based on
rational choice or manipulation and false consciousness are problematic.

The implication that I want to draw out here is that consumers should not be
seen as passive victims or as rational utility maximisers but rather as actors
within a social system that is perpetuated by its use no matter for what end.
Consumption and its attendant social order survive as a language or logic
through which consumers choose to 'speak' and which they perpetuate in so
doing. That consumers 'speak' in this way is not to be accounted for simply by
pointing to the usual paradigms of consumption, sinee these neglect the
dimension of desire that is manifested in consumption and to which even
oppressed groups are not immune.

Furthermore, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that rather than always

being victims and dupes of consumer culture 'consumers can resist the
dominant economic order, even as they consume its outputs, its commodities
and its images' (Gabriel and Lang 1995, 139). In the practices of everyday life,
people can transgress economic rationality and subvert the existing order by
using consumer objects for purposes different to those intended for them by
their producers—in effect, resisting through consuming—and this is itself a
mode of self-expression (de Certeau 1984). In other words, through
consumption one can engage in meaning-making of one's own, which does not
simply reflect the meanings of those who produced that which is consumed.
Baudrillard argues in his usual fatalistic way that consumer society is

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specifically designed to deflect and incorporate resistance to the extent that
everything is consumed, including resistance to consumption. There is some
merit in this argument given that resistance is itself semiotic, a lifestyle practice,
a means of identity seeking and formation. Bourdieu (1984) points out that so
much meaning has become so heavily invested in consumption because the very
existence of the bourgeoisie is at stake. On the other hand, it is also the case that
consumers do manage to evade mechanisms of discipline and they can take
advantage of opportunities to trace out unforeseeable and unreadable paths.

It is perhaps too much to expect that consumers, even if they desired to, can
subvert the market or circumvent its power. Social transformation in the
contemporary moment is more likely to occur through pockets of resistance
such as ecological and counter-cultural movements, gay, lesbian and cyber-
communities. Globalisation and electronic media enable rather than hinder this
kind of resistance. It is worth recognising also in this context that anti-
consumerism is itself a lifestyle choice and one whose practices involve
learning.

What Does All This Mean for Learning?

What indeed does all this mean for learning, and how do fast capitalism and
signifying consumption impact on learning and knowledge? It seems to me that
what Baudrillard is pointing to with his notions of hyper-reality and simulation
is a loss of finalities, or to put it another way. the loss of the foundations of
knowledge. Knowledge therefore has to be seen as decentred with a consequent
valorisation of multiple forms of knowledge and ways of knowing. And with
this comes a re-signification of learning. Finalities lose their meaning because
they have to assume the existence of an unmediatcd real. Baudrillard's
argument is precisely that there is no unmediated real. There is a real, but it is
a hyper-real^ and with the hyper-real there can be no finalities. Consequently
learning is more rhizomatic than arboreal, taking off in a variety of directions
rather than being bound by the pre-defined goals of modernity's educational
project (Deleuze and Guattari 1988).

In this condition, rather than the search for truth or deep meaning—the
pursuit of a truth—learning becomes instead a response to desire in the pursuit
and consumption of a range of truths and an involvement in truth-making
practices. In some ways this is bad news for education. I shall say more about
this later. In this situation, experience comes to be seen 'not as an unmediated
guide to "truth" but as a practice of making sense, both symbolically and
narratively, as a struggle over material conditions and meaning' (Brah 1996,
116). Given the proliferation of signs and meaning-making possibilities, it is
little wonder that practices of signification, such as those to do with lifestyle,
have assumed such a significant place.

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 At the same time, none of this need be understood as a refusal of knowledge,
even though it may not signify 'leaming' as conventionally understood. It is
perhaps better seen as 'a reformulation of what the desire for knowledge might
be about'(Game 1991, 18). These reformulations may include a desire for tmth
as revelation, tmth as advocacy, tmth as resonance as well as tmth as
correspondence, and even for tmth as the renewed search for foundations.^ The
point is that no one of these tmths can claim to speak the whole tmth, and it is
recognised that they cannot, even though many would still wish them to do so.
The possibility and the recognition of multiple tmths is disturbing for some
whilst for others it may be a pleasure, as are the multiple possibilities for the re-
formation of identity that underpins the desire to seek out multiple forms and
sites of knowledge.

What all this signifies is an openness rather than a closure, the desire to
assert a definitive tmth, even though in a time of openness many will still desire
definitive tmths and will continue to seek them. Earlier, 1 spoke of the aesthetics
of the sign value economy and culture. In this social order, leaming is energised
by desire which can follow many paths, ratber than teaming govemed solely by
the pursuit of universal tmth (science), unproblematic democracy (citizenship),
self-realisation (personal development), spirituality (religion) or even the more
obvious leaming demands of the market. It is not so much that these latter
disappear, far from it, rather it is that they no longer constitute quite the
dominant and exclusive significations of leaming that are fore-grounded as
'worthwhile' and valuable. These become just a part of the desire to leam which
can take multiple forms. ;"

Given this, it is perhaps not coincidental that there has occurred a

continually growing trend characterised by the increasing ubiquity and multi-
directionality of leaming and with a corresponding lessening of the centrality of
institutional education. The practices of the quotidian are themselves fore-
grounded as leaming activities. There is an increasing diversity, multiplicity
and de-differentiation characterising the landscape of leaming, and a
reconfiguring of teaming opportunities away from what educators think is good
for leamers to what leamers themselves consider valuable and value-adding:

Educational practitioners . . . become part of the 'culture' industry,

vendors in the educational hypermarket. In a reversal of modemist
education, the consumer (the leamer) rather than the producer
(educator) is articulated as having greater significance and power
(Usher er a/. 1997, 107-108).

Thus as people become increasingly positioned as consumers, they also become

signified as consumers of leaming. My argument then is that participation in
leaming activities, coupled with the increased significance of non-institutional
leaming, cannot be understood by contemporary educators without reference to

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consumption. To follow Baudrillard's argument, learning is now coded by
consumption—or to put it another way, to learn is to consume. Linked to this is
the widespread and continuing impact of a variety of forms of electronic media
that at one and the same time are becoming increasingly sophisticated and
increasingly accessible and available. This increases the range of learning
options, catering to all tastes and interests and previously unavailable, now
waiting to be consumed. Indeed one could argue that learning activities have
become consumer goods in themselves, purchased as the result of choice within
a marketplace where learning products compete with those of leisure and
entertainment and are often indistinguishable from these.

As 1 have noted eariier, unlike the mass consumption of modernity,

consumption now signifies a choice for difference and difference as choice, the
different and distinctive within a signifying culture that stimulates dreams,
desires and fantasies in developing the life project of the self. It is in this sense
that learning comes to be signified in tenns of lifestyle practices:

... knowledge becomes important: knowledge of new goods, their

social and cultural value, and how to use them appropriately. This
is particulariy the case with aspiring groups who adopt a learning
mode towards consumption and the cultivation of a lifestyle. It is
for groups such as the new middle class, the new working class ,
and the new rich or upper class, that the consumer culture of
magazines, newspapers, books television and radio programmes
which stress self-improvement, self-development, personal
transformation, how to manage property, relationships and
ambitions, how to construct a fulfilling lifestyle, are most relevant
(Featherstone 1991, 19).

Knowledge (what is learnt) has itself become a sign, a commodity, a product in

its own right, that can be purchased and consumed for its economic and cultural
value—capital which can confer competitive advantage and /or status or at least
alleviate the fear of falling behind, either economically or culturally. One
implication of this is that knowledge needs to be made readily consumable by,
for example, pricing, marketing and packaging it attractively—which at the
same time generates claims about 'dumbing down'. To put this another way,
knowledge must have the appropriate signifiers for learners, and what
constitutes 'appropriate' will vary with the variety of lifestyle practices
concerned.

Learning then is integral to lifestyle practices and within these practices

works through an expressive mode. It is individuated with an emphasis on self-
expression and marked by a stylistic self-consciousness. Aestheticisation, the
self-referential concern with image and the constant and pleasurable remaking
of identity necessitates a learning stance towards life as a means of seif-

Convergence, Volume XL¡, Number 1. 2008

40
expression and identity. In the process individuals are themselves positioned as
meaning-makers, as 'designers' (Kress 2003). From this perspective, the
semiotic view of people as makers of meaning recodes the cognitive view of
people as mentalistic learners.

With lifestyle practices, every aspect of life, like every commodity, is

imbued with self-referential meaning; every choice an emblem of identity, each
one a message to ourselves and to others of the sort of person we are. A good
case in point is the contemporary emphasis on the body as a focus for identity.
The body is itself now a commodity to be consumed, the youthful, fit body an
image that signifies (Watson 2005). Here, consumption is a signifier of the need
to make oneself different and to identify with those aspired to, where everything
consumed signifies an aspect of an aspiration. Related to this, we witness also
the growth of activities related to the fashioning of a new identity—
assertiveness training, slimming, bodily well-being, creative writing,
interpersonal skills, counselling, re-birthing, makeovers and spirituality. All of
these can now be seen to be embedded in practices that are signified as
'learning'. • • •

These lifestyle practices, then, are practices of signifying consumption and

moreover of consumption which is potentially unending, since, although
deniable, desire—based on lack^—is never satisfied. There is always the need
for new experiences and hence more learning. It is the very openness or
multiple significations of experience, rather than its potential for classification
and hence closure or fixed signification into pre-defined learning, which
provides the vehicle for the fuelling of desire. There is an endlessness to
learning therefore, lifelong and lifewide. .- '•

Lifestyle practices are not confined to any one particular social or age group,
nor are they purely a matter of economic determination. Economic capital
certainly plays a part in infiuencing the capacity of individuals to be more or
less active in their lifestyle practices but cultural capital is just as significant.
Indeed as Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) argue, cultural capital is as—if not
more—important for identity and social positioning. These practices are
themselves a way of acquiring and enhancing cultural capital. The significant
characteristic of lifestyle practices is a self-conscious and refiexive adoption of
what can be termed a learning mode, a disposition or stance towards life, a
'lifelong' learning integral to the sensibilities, values and assumptions
embedded in these practices that provide the means of expressing identity. Thus
as well as the economic imperative there are other equally significant aspects of
contemporary learning, now more akin to a discourse for the governing of life,
where the 'conduct of conduct' entails the adoption of a design sensibility to
one's life and self.

Convergence, Volume XLI, Number I, 2008

41
 Relating leaming to consumption means locating leaming in a cultural
economy of signs where consumer choices are communicative practices and
where leaming becomes a marker, an expressive means of self-development. In
this sense, leaming does not necessarily signify education. With the piay of
desire, and with leaming as the fulfilment of desire, leaming becomes oriented
to specific leamer-defined ends, rather than being tied to the educational
project's search for enlightenment, tmth, deep meanings, or some end pre-
defined by the educational system, unless of course these too are recognised as
desirable. Equally, education need not necessarily signify leaming, unless being
signified an 'educated person', usually through credentials, is considered
desirable, an important aspect of identity formation, or if it acts as a means of
distinguishing self from others and a means of desirably identifying with other
educated/credentialised persons.

Bad News for Adult Education?

There is a certain irony in the fact that leaming should be blossoming

throughout the social order in the midst of a consumer society. As far as
leaming is concemed, this is something which adult educators have wanted and
worked hard for. With the help of ubiquitous, time-space compressing
electronic media the dream of leaming that is just-in-time, just-when-needed,
and always-there is now capable of realisation. Yet there is not the contentment
one would have expected, mainly I suppose because many doubt whether a lot
of the leaming that is taking place is really 'worthwhile'. But that poses the
question—who is to define what is worthwhile? And therein lies the problem,
for institutionalised education of all types and all levels no longer has the
authoritative last word and therefore whilst it can keep on trying to be the
gatekeeper and patrol the boundaries its success is likely to be fairly limited.
This situation is a feature of postmodemity and is probably why education has
found it so hard to come to come to terms with it. r. •

Earlier I spoke of postmodemity as a condition where leaming was not the

pursuit of a tmth, but rather a response to the desire to consume a range of
truths. I commented there that this was bad news for education and I meant by
this that education has traditionally been about the pursuit of a tmth. Once that
goes, the stability, solidity and rigour of leaming goes also and that is probably
why many adult educators question the worthwhileness and indeed the
legitimacy of much of the learning embedded in consumer society's lifestyle
practices.' - - . >

The thing about postmodemity is that it has a double aspect. On the one
hand virtually anything is acceptable and in this sense postmodemity is
liberating, happily accommodating the leaming embedded in the lifestyle
practices of the consumer society. On the other hand, however, anything is also

Convergence, Volume XLI, Number I, 2008

42
suspect and this is extraordinarily frustrating for those seeking social justice and
transformation because nothing is sufficiently credible to merit the commitment
necessary to achieve those goals. In this situation, lifestyle practices are
difficult to work with in achieving those goals. In the hyper-real culture of
consumer society, organising action for political and social change and doing
this through adult education is consequently also very difficult.

We are all now painfully aware of the downside of consumption—pollution

and conspicuous waste being the least of it. There is plenty of scope here for
adult education programmes. Having said this however, no one, least of all
educators has the power to wish it away. As McCracken (1990, 72) points out,
*the meaning of what is accomplished by consumer processes are important
parts of the scaffolding of our present realities. Without consumer goods,
certain acts of self definition and collective definition in this culture would be
impossible'.

In this situation it is difficult to see a clear way forward in programme terms.

Of course, educating for and in lifestyle practices offers, and indeed is
providing, great scope for adult education provision, as indeed does the
vocational market. For those who see adult education as a dollar making
enterprise consumer society provides unparalleled opportunities. But obviously
that is not to the taste and sensibilities of many. Perhaps the way ahead here is
to work with the pockets of resistance to the consumer society that I referred to
earlier and that involve teaming on the part of those participating, but a learning
that is more rhizomatic than arboreal, a learning that takes off in a variety
directions. This kind of learning, driven to a very large extent by the continuing
development of the electronic media, offers significant scope and new
opportunities for adult education.

Robin Usher is Professor of Research Education at RMIT University, Meiboume,

Australia. He can be reached at <robin.usher@rmit.edu.au>.

References
Agger, Ben. 1989. Fast capitalism: A critical theory of significance. Urbana:
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Baudrillard, Jean. 1988. The ecstasy of communication. New York;

Semiotext(e).

Baudrillard, Jean. 1996. Selected writings. Cambridge: Polity Press.

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43
 Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of
taste. London: Routledge.

Bourdieu, Pierre and Jean-Claude Passeron. 1977. Reproduction in education,

society and culture. London: Sage.

Brah,Avtar. 1996. Cartographies of diaspora: Contesting identities. London:

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Campbell, Colin. 2005. The romantic ethic and the spirit of modern
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de Certeau, Michel. 1984. The practice of everyday life. Berkeley, CA:

University of Califomia Press.

Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1988.^ thousand plateaus. London:

Athlone Press.

Featherstone, Mike. 1991. Consumer culture and postmodernism. London:

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Featherstone, Mike. 1995. Undoing culture: Globalisation, postmodern i iy and

identity. London: Sage

Gabriel. Yiannis and Tim Lang. 1995. The unmanageable consumer. London:
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Game, Ann. 1991. Undoing the social. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The consequences of modernity. Cambridge: Polity

Press.

Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and self identity: Self and society in the
late modern age. Cambridge: Polity Press. \

Kress, Günther. 2003. Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.

McCracken, Grant. 1990. Culture and consumption: New approaches to the

symbolic character of consumer goods and activities. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press. ., '.

Uny, John. 1995. Consuming places. London: Routledge.

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Watson, Nigel. 2005. Postmodernism and lifestyles, in The Routledge
companion to postmodernism, edited by S. Sim, 3 5 ^ 4 . London: Routledge.

Notes
^ George W. Bush, September 2001

^ A copy of a copy which has been so dissipated in its relation to the

original that it can no longer be said to be a copy. The simulacrum,
therefore, stands on its own as a copy without a model.

^ Baudrillard has also argued that ultimately people desire and seek to
consume the myth of consumption.

* In this, it is a mirror of a fast capitalism, which is characterised by a de-

territorial ising fiuidity and mobility.

5 Consumerism is the contributing factor in creating hyper-reality. The

hyper-real is a world of constantly proliferating images or 'simulacra' that
are consumed as a desirable reality.

^ It could be argued that fundamentalists of all religions are embarked on

such a renewed search.

' There is a further irony here in that adult education has always been
related to lifestyle practices.

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