Liz revisited my Walmart/Starbucks Nation piece. In doing so, she reminded me that this piece failed to make its point. So i thought that i’d retry.
1. Both rural areas and cities have brands that they ascribe to; these are very different brands. There is a bi-directional disdain for the brands of the other group. Certainly, the brands bleed into both regions, but those brands tend to resemble certain class/regional expectations. Yes, i can get to a Walmart somewhere in the Bay Area, but i see a Starbucks on every corner. I’m always humored when my city friends go home to their parents and bitch because they can’t find a Starbucks. These are the same people (self included) who groan at the ever-present obviousness of Walmart.
2. Consistency of brands allows for easy mobility between regions. At this point, suburbia in most regions resembles the suburbia in other regions, provided that we’re talking about the same socio-economic level. Cities start to bleed together (and god knows airports do). What keeps most of this consistent has to do with brands. No matter where you go, you can find the Walmart/Starbucks of your choice. This provides for security in the shifting.
3. The tendency of city people is to critique the brands in the rural areas AND vice versa. There is a great article in my reader from a Kansas paper bitching about those Starbucks people. What i was trying to do was expose my own bias while realizing that there are branding wars on both sides. I have immediate disdain over Walmart, thinking that i have choice, but realizing that i live in a culture that moves from Starbucks to Safeway.
3. Historically, the image of the rural area was precisely what Liz is getting at – beautiful houses, streets with sidewalks, community. For most of the country, i don’t think this is as true as it was 20 years ago, mostly because of the consumption culture that is present. It certainly isn’t true where i grew up. When you don’t go to the corner store, you don’t talk to everyone in that small geographic region. When you go to the Safeways, you do your shopping without a community (unless we’re talking the Castro Safeway). Big corporate shopping institutions become very de-personalized, very anti-community in all regions. There’s often talk about how people in cities don’t know their neighbors; it saddens me that this is spreading.
4. My concern over consumption culture is connected to my concern over this election. There is a divide in this country and it falls along city/rural lines (with the suburbs trapped in the middle). When i’m visiting Walmart Nation, i’m visiting predominantly red nation. When i’m in Starbucks Nation, i’m visiting predominantly blue nation. It’s unbelievable because it is both a class and regional division that has resulted in entirely different lifestyles. It’s even more painful because historically the rural areas were as Democratic as it gets; today they side with the wealthiest Americans under the pretense that they have the same values.
More than anything though, the moral division in this country is branded on all sides. We have companies that cater to each of our values. They’ve figured out how to identify with us so that we’ll identify with them. Rural America used to pride itself on mom & pop everything, but that’s no longer the case.
My post was not supposed to be a judgment against rural/suburban culture. It was intended as an exposure of my own biases as i evened the playing field in conversation. I life in a “lifestyle consumption” culture which is just as despicable as a “bargain shopping” culture – they both play into the desires of corporate consumptions by playing on the moral views of two different groups.
Anyhow, i hope that clarifies what i was getting at.
i do see there are different brands between city and rural town. in city we have what we call cool places as well as in small town. the point here ppl see the brand differently. but with the globalisation and u mention about mobility before this, i think we are no longer travel only physically but virtually like culture and mentality also travel with no boundary.
danah, I think you make good and valid points here, and in the original article. What got me feeling curmudgeonly was the context of the post preceding the walmart/starbucks nation post, in which you said “It was definitely a week spent exercising patience and a zen no-comment attitude as i choked down rubbery meat and iceberg salad in Walmart Nation. Damn it’s good to be back in San Francisco.” Also the implication that out here in “Walmart Nation” that we have only homogeneity (“i don’t think i entered a single establishment this week that wasn’t a chain”).
It touched a defensive nerve in me, because there’s such a tendency to generalize about urban vs suburban, and not everyone fits the stereotype.
Liz – i guess that’s the point though… i’m part of that “lifestyle consumption” culture and what began as my dismissal and frustration at being in Walmart Nation made me reflect on the imperfections of my own culture. I couldn’t just dismiss that experience without challenging my own values.
Of course not everyone fits into those stereotypes (hell, i know you’re going to be voting blue). I also know that it is possible to seek out heterogeneity, but that’s not the experience that i had while being toted around upstate NY by locals for a week.
a minor side point, but about “but i see a Starbucks on every corner”….
not in the Mission you won’t. the only real chain stores are the KFC on Valencia, and a Popeye’s on Mission, both of which stood before the influx of the youth bohemia of the early 90s, and their discontent with chain stores.
even the new Tmobile next to GoodVibes caught a very good deal of flack for moving in, and I’m actually surprised that there hasn’t been a protest about it.
some neighborhood brands just don’t exist.
The Bay Area is such a lovely place in part because of its status as an incubator of hip (and later “upscale”) retail capitalism. The Nature Company, Northface, Sierra Designs, Smith and Hawken, Peets Coffee (the proto-Starbucks incidentally… it was, I believe, Mr. Peet who showed that the franchise business model for latte-frappa-mocha-machiato-espressos with a twist of lemon will succeed)… there are dozens of stores that now create the similitude of suburban American Mall culture that were hatched in the Bay Area.
For the many years that I lived in Berkeley, Andronico’s on Solano was my local grocery store, and like the Castro Safeway (or the Marina Safeway for that matter) there was a sense of community and a chance to see your neighbors and friends there.
Here in Madison I live a little closer to Walmart nation, but we have a rule never to enter those doors. And when Whole Foods brought their act to town, we were tickled to shop there now and again. Our earlier experience had been with the Whole Foods in Mill Valley which – when we shopped there – was distinguished by having valet parking.
This sounds like rank lifestyle snobbery, but some good stuff is just good stuff and we should take advantage of it when we can… especially if it doesn’t kill too many acres of rainforest, if you get my drift.
one question about this (and I remember the original article):
are your comments here danah based on some sort of data ? I’m wondering how you can quantify the attitudes of such large groups and large regions without explaining how you came to these conclusions. Did you interview people ? Who in rural areas told you that they experience some sort of clash with the culture of cities ? Is the Kansas paper article the only real source for that comment ?
I’m not attempting to refute your opinions/comments, just wanting to find out how you arrived at your conclusions. I’m finding that I’m not in so much agreement with your point #3, although that is a popular opinion amongst people looking for such a division to begin with.
I myself have no evidence supporting this idea, but from talking to friends and relatives in Indianapolis, Missouri, Phoenix, New York city, LA, and Boston, most people are not aware of this division/critical-ness/clash of rural versus urban chainstore brands, and for the most part, they didn’t seem to care.
Just to balance some of the effects of reading “No Logo”, have you read the following? Fischer, C. S. (1982). To dwell among friends: Personal networks in town and city. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Your comments about the “loss of community to safeway” brought me back to that book, which explores the issues of “city/urbanism killed kinship and community” and finds some interesting points and counterpoints to it (I think it’s a must read for any person who wants to make claims about the differences between rural and urban). By the way, if you consider ideas of “familiar stranger” the “local” safeway may not be so facelessly communitieless as you paint it to be. In fact, I would argue that in many rural areas the Safeway can be quite communal (and its a despearte feat to get a good coffee because the local coffee-shop is the only one and they burn their beans every time the roast). After living in a town of 5000 people 3-hr drive away from the nearest city (in the form of Carson city Nevada), I could testify to that one. danah, I get the sense that you live in a city, and you’ve never actually lived in a very remote place (let alone were in a situation where you had to care for kids… that’s when suburbs gain a completely different color to them for most people).
Read that book, it may change some of your outlook and confirm some of your ideas at the same time. It was quite something when the nearest K-mart is approximately 30-40 minutes away and no Starbucks in sight. Places like that exist (although the one I lived in, has, since, acquired a Starbucks and a Whistler-like ski-village for good measure).
I lived for 6 years 20 minutes south of Walmart headquarters in Fayetteville, AR. I grew up in a town about the same size. I also lived in Bloomington, IN for 6 years and I’ve now lived in suburban Philadelphia for for almost 4 years. From a purely political and philosophical point of view, I did not like Walmart, but from a personal economic and time-saving point of view, I loved it. When I first moved to Fayetteville, I was a faculty spouse, with said spouse making half his salary until he finished the dissertation and with a kid to boot. At the closest grocery store, which was tiny and old, prices were often 50% higher than at Walmart and there was very little to choose from. So I often shopped at Walmart. But not exclusively. And Fayetteville had a nice downtown area, complete with one of the best coffee shops I’ve ever experienced.
Those of us associated with the University–and I eventually became a graduate student there–felt ourselves to have urban attitudes, but we also liked the small-town friendliness of the area. Most of us were able to live within walking distance of the University and downtown and frequented the shops and restaurants there. Many of us also shopped at Walmart.
I love the advantages of the urban area we now live in. The Walmart is far, far away (I do miss the low prices sometimes). There’s a Starbucks around the corner. There are hundreds of good restaurants–though I’ve yet to find a Thai restaurant as good as the one in Fayetteville. And I love the museums and shopping at unique stores.
What I miss, though, is that sense of community that I had in Fayetteville–and which is probably disappearing now with the building of a Target and a Kohl’s and a strip mall to surround them. There’s probably even a Starbucks there now. Here, no one walks anywhere (in the city proper, there’s a little more walking, but of the urban kind). Because there are so many options, you don’t run into people at the coffee shop or in the Thai restaurant. That said, our whole neighborhood does turn out at the bus stop every morning. But then we rush off in our SUVs and minivans with our urban attitudes (me included).
What I find terribly ironic about WalMart is that the low prices that have been the major draw for their customer base are a function of the same forces that drive the jobs out of the areas to which they cater. At what point will we wake up to the fact that we can’t have our cheap electronics and eat them too? … Or something like that. You get the point. We want decent wages, but we want to buy our clothes and household goods at prices that can only be achieved by sweatshop labor. I don’t think of myself as the “Buy American, dammit!” sort, but I’d like to know that the people who produce my purchases get to go use the bathroom when they need to. Hmmm … maybe that $3.00 cup of coffee is fairly priced after all.
Irina – i’ve actually lived in suburbs, rural areas and driven across this country 13 times talking to people. I grew up in a version of suburbia. I’ve also spent weeks/months at a time living with people in places like Indiana, rural PA, and the Berkshires. (We won’t talk about the amount of time that i spent in rural Nevada ::wink::) I moved to the city when i went to college. I agree that i’ve never had kids that motivate me to engage in “white flight.” I’ve also read and taught “To Dwell Among Friends.”
Mike – i’ve not done any formal data collection, no. This is my blog, not a journal. It is for me to reflect on personal observations and to throw them out there. Biases are written all over the place here and this isn’t even my topic of study.
I’m reflecting on what i’ve seen not trying to prove a theory. I’m making broad sweeps and i’m fully aware of it.
As for familiar strangers and the Safeways… i think that familiar stranger culture used to happen at those zones but most of them support too many people to actually be helpful even in that regard. This certainly happens at more local regions, but as Walmart Super Centers replace even the Safeways of the country, this gets harder and harder. When i was staying with my ex’s family, we would drive 45 minutes to get groceries at the Walmart Super Center – the only place for groceries between his place and Walmart were the gas stations. This is fairly normal. But even being 45 minutes away, that’s where people went. [The last grocery store had been removed only a few years earlier.]
When i drove cross country the last time, the only places we could park were at Walmarts. I actually had a map of all of the Walmarts within 20 miles of 70, 80, 90. Those are the hubs of most of those regions. It is where everyone comes, but because there are people coming from so far, it’s not a community gathering place. It’s an anonymous zone.
Good points. But remember that people in the small towns complain about Wal Mart and the damage it does even as they shop there, and god knows city people complain about Starbucks.
I think Starbucks does a LOT more social damage in the big cities than it does in my hometown and the suburbs around it, where there really was no cafe culture before Starbucks and Borders (with its in-store cafes) came to town.
I’m gonna ramble about this until I begin to discern why it is that I regretfully agree with your definition of a brand-divided America…
Redmond,Washington: it’s halfway between Seattle and God, a place where you can find sidewalks on both sides of the street, a red house, a blue house, a coffee house boheme, a Safeway, and a Home Depot (but no Wallmart yet). We’ve got safe schools, budget problems, small time drug busts, corporations, underpaid professionals, too many police but not enough police, and more than enough stuff to complain about.
Redmond is a good dream and a bad dream. It is the communal manifestation of that Talking Heads song: “This is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife.” Redmond is a dream that sticks in your craw like a stern teacher’s double-edged praise…”you’re a good dreamer.”
Is Redmond the un-American dream?
Americans appear to measure day-to-day success by how long it takes to drive to work at Wallmart and how much it costs to buy a quadruple two percent extra hot vanilla fairshare venti latte at the airport.
The StarbucksWallmart divide is very real. It is also an illusion. As such, it is as easy to identify as it is simple to dismiss.
Red vs. Blue is manufactured. The Wallmart horde versus the Starbucks legion is as painfully, illogically real as was Blue versus Gray. The divide that separates Seattle from Walla Walla or San Francisco from Truckee is not slavery, or brand identity, or even geography; it is imagined community.
The thing that really sticks in my craw is the sense that the WallmartStarbucks divide is less imagined by us than manufactured by “them”.
Great discussion. Sean, I think you made an excellent, straightforward point: Very few people on either side actively like Starbucks or WalMart.
But for matters of comparison, WalMart is I think rarely considered a part of the cultural fabric by rural people themselves. It’s more akin to a necessary evil, a tradeoff in exchange for… basically less development, and by that I mean fewer people, fewer stores, and all that comes with.
Whereas Starbucks–or, let’s say specialized, niche stores–are actually one of the benefits to urban living. More choices commercially, more choices culturally. The comparison between rural and urban cultures through these two brands isn’t quite valid (though interesting, for sure) because they are never valued in the same way. A cappuccino drinker would never say, “Thank God for traffic,” when she returns to the city, just as a cowboy would never say “Alright! WalMart!” when he gets back home.
At the same time, the whole issue of comparison creates Other, as Korby points out. I do believe that the division between rural and urban seems to be growing more drastic, but I think the attitudes that perpetuate that perception are a form of primitivism, from both sides.
And speaking of cappuccino and cowboys: The tensions between rural and urban seem to be a favorite for Tim Holt.
Noticed-pre-election backed-up aggregate.
Which Depeche Mode album am I? By an ace, it’s “Music for the Masses” over “Violator” (via writerpunk)Guardian UK’s “Outrage at guns for sterilisation policy” (via Agonist), Strobe Talbott’s “Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb” (via Amit…
I am doing a paper on how Starbucks ruins small community buisnesses in small cities. Myself, I live in a city that has gone from having a poplulation of 5000 to a poplulation of 15,000. This in just my eighteen years of existance. With the bigger, better houses being built I find there is a 2 new grocery stores, (Albertsons and Safeway), a new video store (blockbuster) and seven coffee shops, (four of which being Starbucks). These openings have cost a local grocery store, video store and a local coffee shop to go out of buisness. It rotten and I want to do anything I can to stop such a thing. What are my chose’s? To not drink coffee or eat food or even rent any movies? What’s left? I was wondering if anyone could give me references to more information that could help this paper and to qualify my allready demeamor toward the “in your face” buisnesses? Thank you, Ashley p.s. my email is ashley.turner@pcc.edu
I am doing a paper on how Starbucks ruins small community buisnesses in small cities. Myself, I live in a city that has gone from having a poplulation of 5000 to a poplulation of 15,000. This in just my eighteen years of existance. With the bigger, better houses being built I find there is a 2 new grocery stores, (Albertsons and Safeway), a new video store (blockbuster) and seven coffee shops, (four of which being Starbucks). These openings have cost a local grocery store, video store and a local coffee shop to go out of buisness. It rotten and I want to do anything I can to stop such a thing. What are my choice’s? To not drink coffee or eat food or even rent any movies? What’s left? I was wondering if anyone could give me references to more information that could help this paper and to qualify my allready demeamor toward the “in your face” buisnesses? Thank you, Ashley p.s. my email is ashley.turner@pcc.edu
I LOVE WAL-MART AND YOU WILL NEVER EPRICIATE IT LKE I DO