ABSTRACT
This chapter first discusses political consumerism and highlights its relationship to the market. It then introduces the concept of market-based activism to distinguish different modes of action that operate within markets. Market-based activism includes political consumerism (buying and refusing to buy products for political reasons), food collectives (e.g., community-supported agriculture, participatory supermarkets), and lifestyle activism (which takes many forms, for instance, veganism). In a second part, the chapter discusses different conceptions of social change and confronts these theoretical understandings of social change to modes of action identified in the first section. In a third section, the chapter presents transformative actions in the environmental movement – highlighting the democratic ideals of voluntary simplicity, ecofeminism, freeganism, and the commons. The chapter presents how specific modes of action associated with political consumerism and food activism carry varied understandings and ideals of democracy.
