NEW RITUAL SOCIETY


INTRODUCTION 

Find out what are the most visited places of the earth is particularly indicative of human behavior and can reserve many surprises. Take, for example, the place of art. In 2011, according to the list compiled by the magazine The Art Newspaper, the Louvre in Paris turned out to be by far the most visited museum in the world, with over 8 million visitors a year, followed by the Metropolitan Museum in New York and the British Museum London, which stood at around 6 million per year. The first and only Italian institution among the top twenty in the world is the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, in nineteenth place, with just over 1.7 million visitors. 

The museums are not, however, the main center of attraction of the major human flows. Amusement parks are attracting an audience far more numerous. According to Disney in 2009, the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida has attracted more than 17 million viewers, two more than Disneyland in California: more or less as a whole totaled by the first three major museums. 

However, continuing in this unique Guinness Book of Records, the largest masses of people do not move nor with cultural tourism, or are looking for fun, but rather go in the direction of pure consumption. The primacy of the most popular it is for shopping centers, such as the West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, which has a retail area of 350,000 m.2, a total of nearly 500,000 m.2 and, according to Travel + Leisure magazine, an average of 28 million visitors a year. The structure contains almost a thousand stores, an artificial beach and an indoor amusement park, as well as skating rinks and water parks with submarines that explore an underground lake. The largest mall in America for the number of visitors, however, appears to be the Mall of America in Bloomington, owned by Triple Five Group, who also owns the West Edmonton, reaches 40 million visitors a year likely to increase considerably, so much so that was recently launched an investment plan of over $ 2 billion to double its current surface and bring it up to 480,000 m.2 it is a complex structure that comprises a large number of commercial attractions, starting from the theme park - originally called Knott's Camp Snoopy in honor of the creator of Peanuts, Charles Schulz, then from 2007 Nickelodeon Universe, following the agreement with the eponymous television network for kids - to continue with the Underwater Adventures in which you make a real and their journey through the reconstruction of resorts including a "diving virtual" one hundred meters on a conveyor belt to meet the more than 3,000 marine species in the aquarium. It is estimated that at least 30% of visitors to the shopping center are to be considered tourists. 

The number of tourists who visit the malls is therefore comparable to that of the visitors of the largest cities on the planet. In London, staying about 25 million tourists annually (data Finnat Bank, 2011), although it is estimated that its annual visitors are at least twice. The scepter of the most touristic place of the earth belongs, however, to Times Square in New York, a record that is part of the consumerist dynamic. Smaller than others, such as Red Square in Moscow or London's Trafalgar Square, Times Square owes its fortune to the organization of the New Year citizen, which took place the first time in 1907 Since then the square has often changed in appearance, to become the showcase of the current city, plastered with monumental illuminated signs, not surprisingly defined spectaculars, which give the actual nature of the open-air mall and which attract 39.2 million visitors (data Travel + Leisure 2010). 

However, the two biggest American malls are neither the largest nor the most popular in the world, since they are located, respectively, only at the twelfth and at the twentieth special place in the world rankings for the class, which now sees excel Asia. The first two shopping malls, in fact, are located in China, as well as in recent years has witnessed a remarkable development in countries such as Malaysia or the Philippines, where they were built nine of the top 22 global business centers such as SM Megamall Mandaluyong, which has a maximum capacity of 4 million people daily and sees approximately 500,000 visitors enter. 

Modern society is characterized more and more by the consumer. It is a generalized process as not always linear. Consumerism seems to require a certain degree of adaptation, at least in some regions of the world not yet fully integrated into the system of consumption. The largest mall in the world, is in fact the New South China Mall, with a retail area of over 650,000 m.2 and equally outsized expectations of business. Seven years after its opening in 2005, the half-deserted tunnels where they were provided 2,350 commercial harbor, only 47 stores are opened. Small group of visitors wander sadly among the reproductions “with sunny and zealous South California Coast and San Francisco, clear and enchanting Amsterdam, elegant and romantic Chomps-Elysees Ave (sic) in Paris, mysterious and passionate Venice, sensational and beautiful Caribbean coast and adventurous Tropical Rain Forest” (from the official website of the New South China Mall). The images of the flag-raising ceremony every morning that its employees put in scene sadly have been immortalized in Utopia, Part 3: The World's Largest Shopping Mall a video of the American documentary filmmaker Sam Green, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. 

Similarly, in New Delhi have opened in the first quarter of 2011, six new centers, but their percentage of commercial lease does not exceed 10% in the best cases, as well as about half of the spaces of shopping centers opened in the previous year are still empty. This suggests that at least consumerism does not state anywhere in the same way, but require different times and ways to adapt to different realities and often changing. Analyze consumerism, its origins, the ways of its development and the social facts that revolve around it, means not only trying to make a contribution to the understanding of some of the most significant aspects of contemporary life, but also consider what are the social facts that exert a more profound influence on the culture and mentality of today. 

It is not enough, in fact, to recognize the central role of consumerism in the twentieth century and the consequent remarkable development of the new "cathedrals of consumption", as they were defined the modern shopping centers and the set of new tools that revolve around the consumption to them (Ritzer, 1999). It is also and above all to identify, in addition to the main features of the modern world of consumption, also those assumptions that have allowed such a development, that is to say, therefore, also why modern man has proved so permeable to the new world of consumption. 

We tried to clarify the main stages of the affirmation of the consumer society, in order to define the essential characteristics for which consumerism has become a key element in the current social order and, in large part, unavoidable. Consumerism is a widely debated topic in the field of sociology, as well as the idea that the secularization of society are established real "civil religions", the last of which the "religion of the market" (Loy 1997). With the shallowness that sometimes characterizes modern scientific research toward religion, there was still a discussion that go into the details of the new religion, and especially of consumption, but not limited to highlight a generic link between consumerism and ritualism (Douglas, Isherwood 1979, Rook 1984 ). 

The modern "religion of consumption", in fact, seems to be much more effective and pervasive when he takes a ritualistic character, sometimes replacing the traditional religions, sometimes giving rise to genuine syncretism, willingly adapts to different social contexts. 

The roots of this perspective are clearly already in '"Protestant ethic" of Weber, although in our opinion the modern consumer society is structured in practice only since the Great Depression of 1929, because only in this age the ethics of capitalism is transformed into a large "pseudo-religion" of the masses. If the need for rituals and rhythms and rules of life is constitutive of man and their absence produces failure, sociologically defined as "anomic", consumerism has managed to alleviate this disease of modern man, though operating only in symptomatic, without completely removing the causes of evil. We will see that psychoactive substances have entered the mechanism of consumption to help overcome the difficulties contemporary psychic, as evidenced by the use of amphetamines, drugs and alcohol, often straddling the border between the licit and the illicit. 

 

The different lifestyles and consumption, in practice, tracing the contours within which it moves or tries to respond to contemporary culture and could not be otherwise in a world where malls have become the most popular places on the planet. During the twentieth century art, literature, photography, cinema, have lived with the consumer society, forming and transforming in connection therewith. Rather than address the problem of culture in general terms, I try to recognized the main lines of development of some of the major cultural areas. The art system, in particular, has had to deal with the widespread problem of disenchantment and re-enchantment of the cultural, attending a series of strategies to regain the work of art's the aura of distinction and consideration lost in the consumerism era. The North American literature, and finally, with its utopias and dystopias, pointed out some of the lines of development taken by the culture of consumption in subsequent years. His visionary character still permeates the imagination of advanced societies. Starting in the seventies and especially from the nineties onwards, we have entered a new stage of consumption, marked by the passage from material to immaterial and digital production in the "informational" society of the network. Apart from a few hints, go into the details of this new configuration of consumption would have burdened the structure of this volume. We plan to address the issue in a forthcoming publication.

Bansky, Shop Until You Drop, London 2011.

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