Use Value as a Cultural Strategy against Over-Commodification: A Durkheimian Analysis of Craft Consumption within Virtual Communities

Abstract

Craft consumption is a precarious practice since consuming mass commodities can inadvertently reinforce the overly commodified world craft consumers are seeking to balance and address. Conceptualizing guitar players as craft consumers, this article illustrates the struggle for balance within musical virtual communities. Virtual communities’ commodity discussions can fuel commodity desire and foster a type of consumptive anomie that members call ‘GAS’ (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). This anomie is countered by images, norms, and evaluative standards that critically invoke ‘use value’ to regulate member’s consumption. Using Durkheim’s concepts of ‘social facts’ and ‘discipline’, the article examines how online actors ‘use use value’ to curb their anomic consumption, differentiate craft from mass consumption, and critique problematic consumptive acts. Durkheim’s work, however, illuminates how Campbell’s individualistic and psychological account of consumptive desire limits his own analysis of craft consumption, for such an individualistic understanding cannot account for the collective phenomenon witnessed throughout this article.