Hummer Owners Take The High Ground, Defend Overconsumption With Patriotism

This debate has already taken so many faces, and been argued so many times, that I cannot hope to add much more to it.

But I’ll try anyway.

A new study published by the Journal of Consumer Research has found that many Hummer owners excuse their large, oft-unnecessary H1 and H2s by crying patriotism and quoting American ideals like individualism. So are Hummer owners the morally righteous in the debate of anti-consumerism versus over-consumption?

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This is a debate that is a little close to home. Full disclosure; in March of 2007, yours truly wrote an article entitled Prius Outdoes Hummer In Environmental Damage. Long story short, I was wrong, used bad information, gained national attention, learned a valuable lesson about fact checking. The article has since been removed by my alma mater’s website, but it’s still out there for you to read if you are so inclined. I don’t recommend you waste your time, however.

Now with that out of the way, on to the article. Entitled “Consumer Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand- Mediated Moral Conflict,” the work was authored by Marius K. Luedicke (University of Innsbruck, Austria), Craig J. Thompson (University of Wisconsin–Madison), and Markus Giesler (York University, Toronto). They wanted to understand anti-consumerism sentiments towards brands like Starbucks, while at the same time delving into the starpower of over-consumption of brands like Hummer.

Hummer is no doubt a pariah for many of the ills of society. Take for example this webpage, Hummer Owners Suck. The Hummer brand lives up to its slogan, “Like Nothing Else”, with its exceptionally horrendous fuel consumption (I’ve heard as low as 8 MPG in the city, 12 on the highway), boorish looks, and excessive price. The owners’ apparently have an attitude problem too, though I would venture to say that depends on who you ask. Alternative fuel advocates especially hate the Hummer, citing it as a gas hog and everything that is wrong with American motor vehicles in general. But Hummer owners don’t see themselves like that at all.

Rather, they see themselves as something of American pioneers, taking all the attacks on their credibility in stride. According to the study, they often quoted founding American institutional myths like the “rugged individual” and the “boundless frontier.” All the anti-Hummer sentiment seems to have only further embedded, in their mind, the morality of their choice. It seems Hummer owners truly believe they are doing the right thing by buying a vehicle that they acknowledge they don’t really need.

The study goes on to say “Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American. The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals.”

I’ve gone this far without imposing my opinion on this piece (I think, but someone will probably say otherwise). So I just want to end with this. I live in America, where people are still free to waste their money on frivolous toys like the Hummer H2. How someone who relies so heavily on imported oil could ever relate to a “rugged individual,” I don’t know, but I guess some people don’t pay attention at the gas pump. But it is their money to waste.

Boundless frontier? Yeah, ok, I can buy that — I’ve yet to see anyone take a Prius off-roading — but is over-paying for an SUV status symbol truly American? I guess that is up to the “individual.”

This opinion may not exactly fall in line with everybody in the alt-fuel community, but another advantage of living in America is the right to express yourself. Still, I am open to hearing your opinions in a lively, RESPECTFUL, debate.

Source: Eureka Alert | Picture: GM

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