ABSTRACT
The term political consumption is often used for practices of consumption pertaining to aims beyond consumerist, utilitarian considerations, like that of balancing quality to price in buying decisions. The term implies that some forms of consumption are seen to involve acts of moral judgement and are attempts to influence matters and issues normally assigned to political institutions and processes. The actors involved in political consumption have often been denoted consumer-citizens, implying not only that they use a consumer role to express concerns usually ascribed to a citizen-role, but even more literally, that they vote at the check-out. The social-anthropologist James Carrier has also noticed the middle class profile of what he calls ethical consumers, which in many ways (but not all) appears to cover the same persons we so far have called political consumers.
