ABSTRACT
The nature of consumer culture requires consumer education to become political, necessitating that people consciously seek to critically analyze and question the taken-for-grantedness of consumer capitalism (Sandlin, 2005). This entails a critical pedagogy that examines power relationships, especially those related to the ideology of consumerism (McGregor, 2008c), a deep form of structural violence, oppression, and abuse of power (McGregor, 2003a). Consumption is inextricably linked to human, non-human, and environmental oppression (Sandlin, 2005). A more politicized consumer education can help consumers become empowered world citizens concerned with sustainability, solidarity, justice, peace, and the human condition as it is shaped by human consumption. Once it becomes popular, this new politicized consumer education can become the norm, moving in from the margins of an education system that currently favors a neoliberal, freemarket, competitive approach.
