When Did We Start Calling American Citizens 'Consumers'?

Sometime in the 1900s, Americans began referring to themselves as consumers more often than as citizens. Learn how this mindset can make a real difference in how we take responsibility for our communities in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/american-citizens-versus-consumers.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brainstuff Lauren
Bobelbaum here. It's hard to say exactly when it started,
but in recent years there seems to be an increasing
tendency in the United States to use the term consumer
interchangeably with citizen, even when the discussion isn't taking place

(00:23):
strictly in an economic framework, and some political experts say
that this choice of words may reveal a subtle but
worrisome shift in how we see ourselves and our role
in American society, away from the notion of working together
with others toward the common good, and toward a nation
of individuals primarily motivated by self interest before. The article

(00:46):
of this episode is based on How Stuffworks. Spoke by
email back in twenty seventeen with Jason Sadowski, a senior
lecturer in the Department of Human Centered Computing at Monash University.
He said that using consumer interchangeably with citizen and a
quote has become part of our default discourse, the normal
way we viewed society and people just look at the

(01:07):
twenty sixteen presidential election. This consumer versus citizen language is
often used when analysts and pundits talk about elections of
voters are just consumers with preferences, and the election is
a marketplace of products to choose from in the store.
We vote with our dollar. We're told that elections are
functionally the same thing. You just use a ballot instead

(01:29):
of a buck to cast your vote. This understanding of
democratic processes as a marketplace is just one more place
where the citizen is overtaken by the consumer. Both words
have been around for centuries. A citizen dates back to
the thirteen hundreds, though it originally meant the inhabitant of
a city and didn't take on its present meaning a

(01:51):
person who has rights and responsibilities in the society until
around sixteen ten. The word consumer arose in the fourteen hundreds,
though back then it meant someone who squanders or wastes things.
It took on a less pejorative economic meaning, that is,
a person who purchases and uses goods and services around
seventeen forty five. If you look at the appearances of

(02:16):
each word in Google Books and gram Viewer, which isn't
always accurate, but gives us a pretty decent idea of
how often words were used in print in the English
language from eighteen hundred onward. The word consumer seldom appeared
in print until about nineteen hundred, but starting around then
it steadily rose until it passed up citizen and frequency

(02:37):
in the late nineteen twenties. The use of the word
consumer peaked in the nineteen eighties, but it's still used
more than one and a half times as often as citizen.
How stuff Works also spoke via email with Michael Munger,
director of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics Program at Duke
University's Political Science Department. He theorizes that the shift in

(02:59):
usage had to do with the rise in the twentieth
century of progressive politics. He said the progressives primarily saw
citizens as being helpless trapped by large forces, especially corporations,
that citizens couldn't deal with. Starting in the nineteen sixties,
politicians increasing use of sophisticated marketing techniques borrowed from sellers

(03:23):
of products like breakfast, cereal, cars, and antiperspirants also may
have played a role. Today, campaigns gather and analyze mountains
of data to conduct micro targeting efforts, which look at
individual voters attitudes and behaviors and what might be the
best way to reach them. And the government itself is
being judged as if it were consumer business. The American

(03:46):
Customer Satisfaction Index rates twelve departments and agencies within the
federal government on how people feel about the accessibility and
efficiency of their services. In twenty twenty four, the federal
government overall got a sixty nine point seven out of
one hundred, a seven year high, up two point two
percent over the previous year. And this isn't just semantics.

(04:10):
The words we use can have an impact on how
we live. A twenty twelve study published in the journal
Psychological Science found that choice of words may exert a
subtle influence on how we see ourselves. In one part
of the study, people who answered a consumer response survey
but tended to express more materialistic, self centered values than

(04:31):
those who answered a citizen survey. In another part, the
researchers presented subjects with the hypothetical situation in which people
had to share water from a well and labeled them
as either consumers or citizens. The subjects who got the
consumer identity tended to distrust others more about sharing water,

(04:53):
felt less in partnership with the other subjects, and felt
less personally responsible compared with those who were labeled citizens.
How stuff Works also spoke with Josh Pasek, a professor
of communication in Media and Political science at the University
of Michigan. He explained that this shift in terminology a
quote seems to underscore a shift away from viewing Americans

(05:16):
as having responsibility in our political system and toward a
more individualist view of what it means to be American.
Your job as an American citizen requires that you fulfill
key democratic norms, such as being informed, deliberating about political issues,
and participating in civic and political life. As an American consumer,
your actions are relevant only to the extent that they

(05:38):
respond to economic incentives. The responsibility to be engaged and
participatory is not your own, but instead depends on a
system that is oriented to bring you in. How Stuff
Works also spoke via email with Frank Trentman, a professor
of history at the University of London and author of
the book Empire of Things, How he Became a World

(06:00):
of Consumers from the fifteenth century to the twenty first.
He thinks that the blurred distinction between consumer and citizen
may make it tougher for people to come together to
solve problems. He said, not all consumers see the world
in the same way, and hence concerted action is difficult.

(06:22):
All of this is why some people would like to
see us go back to viewing ourselves as active citizens,
not passive consumers. As political commentator Mark Shields wrote in
twenty twelve, maybe it's time that Americans started insisting that
leaders treat them not like consumers quote, but as citizens
who recognize that we have, in addition to rights and privileges,

(06:44):
real obligations and responsibilities. Today's episode is based on the
article when and Why did America start calling its citizens consumers?
On HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Patrick J. Khigh. Brain
Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with ho stuffworks
dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more

(07:06):
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