An Idea Opposed to Another Idea is Always the Same Idea: Reconsidering the Materialistic Aspects of Voluntary Simplicity

In consumer research literature, voluntary simplicity is generally understood as a non-materialistic or an anti-materialistic lifestyle. Our study of Polish simplifiers stands in contrast to this view as it reveals the importance that possessions can have in the lives of our participants. The participants’ relations to objects reveal a form of materialism that we describe as negative (vs. positive) and that emphasizes non-accumulation while leaving possessions a central place in the lives of consumers. Voluntary simplicity can be defined as “the choice out of free will […] to limit expenditures on consumer goods and services, and to cultivate non-materialistic sources of satisfaction and meaning” (Etzioni 1998, 620). It implies regaining control over one’s own life and searching for meaning while avoiding mass consumption and accumulation (Elgin 1981; Zavestoski 2002). Voluntary simplicity is often associated with environmental values, ethical practices, material simplicity, distance from money, freedom, self-sufficiency, self-knowledge, and the spiritual world (Cherrier 2009; Cherrier and Murray 2007; Elgin and Mitchell 1977; Etzioni 1998; Gregg 1936; Huneke 2005; Leonard-Barton 1981; Moisander and Pesonen 2002; Shama 1981, 1985; Shaw and Newholm 2002). With such a conception of voluntary simplicity, it is not surprising to find close links between voluntary simplicity and materialism –or, specifically, its rejection– in academic works and other discourses on simplifiers (Etzioni 1998; Craig-Lees and Hill 2002; Nepomuceno and Laroche 2015, 2017). Unfortunately, this emphasis on a negative correlation between voluntary simplicity and materialism leads to a wrong assumption, namely that voluntary simplicity separates consumers from the material world. And yet, it would not be counterintuitive to think that the fewer possessions we have, the more we care about them and develop special relationships with them (Hill and Stamey 1990). Belk (1988) also points out that possessions are not mere objects but imbued with meanings that extend the self. Even the absence or refusal of objects can constitute a way of shaping the self (Lastovicka and Fernandez 2005; Hogg, Banister, and Stephenson 2009).