Cultural movements and the sociology of culture: The case of political consumerism

In what follows, I seek to clarify the term “cultural movements,” which is often used in a casual and imprecise manner. Cultural movements are not well understood in the field of cultural sociology, and the term is often applied anecdotally to such processes as artistic or style trends, to social changes of various kinds, or to activist movements. In fact, the imprecise use of this term is partly attributable to the considerable attention paid to two neighboring sociological concepts-cultural change and social movements (Rucht and Neidhardt 2002; Melucci 1984; Hall et al. 2003: 257). But whereas “cultural change” signals very general patterns of gradual, incremental, and unintended shifts in cultural sensibilities, and “social movements” designates the coordinated efforts of formal collectivities to effect specific legislative and social reforms, cultural movements can be understood as the generally intentional and loosely collectivized efforts of groups or networks of individuals, to effect gradual and subtle shifts in the habits and sensibilities that shape their own everyday conduct and the everyday conducts of others. Cultural movements are not unintended processes of cultural change, nor are they intended strategies targeting social or legislative reform through cultural methods. They are intended patterns of cultural transformation resulting from the innovations and disseminations of a group with restricted membership or a cultural vanguard. Participants in such movements foster collective identities around a shared program concerned with the reproduction, innovation, and circulation (and in some cases gatekeeping) of a cultural style, understood as a way of living, a way of acting in and experiencing the world, and a way of relating to oneself and to others. In this essay, I develop a more complete analysis of cultural movements through

the following steps: first, I offer a definition of cultural movements that emphasizes the ideal-typical status of the term and the inevitable blending that occurs between cultural movements and the neighboring concepts already mentioned-social movements and cultural change (pp. 650-51). Next, consideration of one important condition required for the emergence of a cultural movement-that culture itself appear to actors as a flexible rather than fixed feature of social life-will lead to a discussion of one particularly relevant theoretical framework for the study of cultural movements, centered on societal reflexivity as a condition linked to modernization processes themselves (Giddens 1991; Beck 1992) (pp. 651-54). On the basis of this understanding, I will discuss some

empirical considerations of cultural movements in relation to more pragmatically oriented social movements, particularly those emerging in the culturally rich fields of consumption and commodity culture (pp. 654-56). The latter phenomena, termed “anti-consumerist movements,” variously combine cultural and reformist agendas (Binkley and Littler 2008; Littler 2008). Finally, this chapter will conclude with a reflection on some of the limitations that confront efforts to use the lens of reflexive modernity to understand anti-consumerist cultural movements (pp. 656-57).