What is nostalgia, and how does it guide our consumption and voting decisions?

What is nostalgia 

In her excellent 2002 book, The Future of Nostalgia, Svetlana Boyn delves deeply into the concept of nostalgia. She notes that nostalgia works with "associative logic." By this, she means that we like things and objects that remind us of cherished memories. While remembering nice things is pleasant, nostalgia is accompanied by a bitter sense of loss. What is lost is usually some intangible good: lifestyle, mood, or milieu. We long for what we have lost and mourn the impossibility of returning (impossibility of mythical return).

Romantic nostalgia is directed to some state on the borderline between the past and utopia. It is unsystematic. We do not miss all the things about our past. In nostalgic recollections, we forget the unpleasant elements of the past. Nostalgia seduces us to see things in a romantic light.

Nostalgia was a cultural fashion trend in the early 20th century, when educated people reminisced about their lost youth, lost springs, dances, and opportunities. Poems were written, paintings were painted, and flowers were dried. This salon-worthy nostalgia was playful and dynamic. Nostalgic artifacts were collected into private collections; the past was souvenirized. Private collections were used to imagine other times and other places and dive into armchair nostalgia. Even ordinary everyday objects were given a radius of art objects, inspired by cracks and other imperfections as signs of a time lived. 

While nostalgia no longer governs our culture as it did in the early 20th century, it has not disappeared. The more uncertain the future, the more people will miss the past and precise times. 

Beneficial, harmful, and harmless nostalgia

Boym divides nostalgia into harmful and beneficial (or harmless). Nostalgia is practical when it is reflective; that is, when we consider past times, what we could learn from them, and how to build a better future. This is healthy nostalgia. If some objects or images personally remind us of pleasant memories, there is nothing wrong with that. Harmful nostalgia glorifies the past, where only pieces of history are picked up. These pieces are used to build an idealized understanding of the past. We then want to return to this imaginary past. We are obsessively enthusiastic about significant symbols and talk about big truths and traditions taking on mythical proportions. This harmful nostalgia is not progressive. It is not possible to go back to the past. Moreover, this is not logical because these nostalgics want to avoid going back to the actual past but to some romantic imagination of the past built of only good elements.

Nostalgia in consumption decisions

Many marketers take advantage of nostalgic feelings. They appeal to our images of dinners at grandma's, childhood summers, and happy family memories. If we buy items loaded with nostalgia, they might remind us of those moments. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. The company gets the money, and you get an item that reminds you of lovely moments. A little more dubious is that many people do not know how marketers use nostalgia in their marketing and product development. Our subconscious makes these nostalgic buying decisions on our behalf. 

Nostalgia in voting decisions

According to several studies, far-right and populist parties use a lot of nostalgia in their argument. It appeals to their voters, who are often uncertain about their future in a changing world. These voters long for an easier and more precise world. For example, Laura Huhtasaari, an MEP from the True Finns Party, has campaigned with the slogan "Finland Back." Former U.S. President Donald Trump wanted to “Make America great again,” and Russian leader Vladimir Putin seems to be pursuing the same, according to Time magazine. 

A mythical and glorified past is also pursued in Germany, especially in the anti-Islamic far-right PEDIGA group. Similarly, in Poland, the far-right PIS party wants to return to the good old world. Turkish leader Recep Erdogan wants to make Turkey great again. He longs for the time of the Ottoman Empire when Turkey ruled large territories on three different continents. Viktor Orban also wants to make Hungary great again. The problem is that there are inevitably losers in these nostalgic geographic expansion games in the real world. Let's hope these are only rhetorical election tactics. 

References 

Boym, Svetlana (2002):" The future of nostalgia" 

Francesco Melito (2021): "Finding the roots of neo-traditionalist populism in Poland: "Cultural displacement" and European integration," a presentation in the seminar" 2nd Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation", May 6-8th, 2021, Helsinki.  

Sabine Volk "Resisting leftist dictatorship? Memory politics and collective action framing in the far-right populist PEGIDA movement", a presentation in the seminar" 2nd Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarisation", May 6-8th, 2021, Helsinki.