ABSTRACT
Everyday consumption is commonly viewed as largely disconnected from the more consequential realm of politics. Ethical and green variants aside (Chapter 7), mass consumerism remains rampantly individualistic, hedonistic and self-serving, contrasting sharply with the more altruistic and civic virtues assumed in liberal democratic notions of ‘citizenship’. As we will see in this chapter, the binary between consumption and citizenship is problematic, not least because more sophisticated accounts on the history and politics of consumption suggest otherwise. Consumer movements, for instance, have been largely responsible for the abolition of the slavery movement, gender equality and, more recently, the advancement of social and environmental justice across commodity supply chains (e.g. Newholm et al., 2015). Everyday consumers, both through their purchasing choices and non-choices, and through more organised forms of political participation (e.g. Micheletti and Stolle, 2004), are fundamental yet often neglected actors in the institutional nexus of corporations, national and transnational institutions, markets, third-sector organisations and social movements.
