The Oxford Handbook of Political Consumerism 9780190629038, 0190629037
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The Oxford Handbook of Political Consumerism
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Contents
About the Editors
Contributors
1. Studying Political Consumerism
Part I Historical Routes of Political Consumerism
2. The Development of Political Consumerism in India: A Historical Perspective
3. Political Consumerism in the South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements: The Historical Role of Consumer Boycott Campaigns
Part II Theory and Designing Research on Political Consumerism
4. Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces for Politically Oriented Consumerist Actions—Nationally, Transnationally, and Locally
5. Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism
6. A Behavioural Economic Perspective on Political Consumerism
7. Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective
8. Veganism and Plant-Based Eating: Analysis of Interplay Between Discursive Strategies and Lifestyle Political Consumerism
9. Studying Media Within Political Consumerism: Past and Present
10. Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism
11. Globalization, Governance Gaps, and the Emergence of New Institutions for Political Consumerism
12. Conceptualizing Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain
Part III Industry Sectors and Political Consumerism
13. Political Food Consumerism Between Mundane Routines and Organizational Alliance-Building
14. Utilizing Political Consumerism to Challenge the 21st Century Fast Fashion Industry
15. Toy Consumption as Political Challenges for Making Dreams Come True
16. The Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism
17. Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism: A Review
18. Political Consumerism in the Oil and Mining Extractive Industries: Possibilities for Sustainability and Social Justice
19. Household Appliances and Electronics: Discussing the Relative Absence of Political Consumerism
20. Energy Devices and Political Consumerism in Reconfigured Energy Systems
Part IV The Geographic Spread and Practice of Political Consumerism
21. Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe: Leading by Example?
22. Political Consumerism in Southern Europe
23. Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe
24. Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures: Political Consumerism in North America
25. Politicizing Consumption in Latin America
26. Tracing Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East
27. Institutional Changes and Changing Political Consumerism in China
28. Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy: The Case of Political Consumerism in Thailand
Part V Democratic Paradoxes and Challenges in Political Consumerism
29. Undemocratic Political Consumerism
30. “Buy White—Stay Fair”: Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History
31. Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe
32. Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States
33. Problematic Political Consumerism: Confusions and Moral Dilemmas in Boycott Activism
34. Some Dilemmas of Political Consumerism: Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines
35. Prohibition, Legalization, and Political Consumerism: Insights From the U.S. and Canadian Cannabis Markets
Part VI The Problem-Solving Potential of Political Consumerism
36. The Successes of Political Consumerism as a Social Movement
37. Political Consumerism and Corporate Strategy Towards Sustainability Standard-Setting: In or Out of Sync?
38. From Moral Concerns to Market Values: How Political Consumerism Shapes Markets
39. Government Engagement With Political Consumerism
40. Mass Consumption and Political Consumerism
Part VII Conclusion
41. Political Consumerism: Research Challenges and Future Directions
Index
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T h e Ox f o r d H a n d b o o k o f
P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM
The Oxford Handbook of
POLITICAL CONSUMERISM Edited by
MAGNUS BOSTRÖM MICHELE MICHELETTI and
PETER OOSTERVEER
1
3 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2019 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Boström, Magnus, editor. | Micheletti, Michele, editor. | Oosterveer, Peter, editor. Title: The Oxford handbook of political consumerism / edited by Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer. Other titles: Handbook of political consumerism Description: New York : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018022159 | ISBN 9780190629038 (hardcover : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Political participation—Economic aspects. | Consumption (Economics)— Political aspects. | Politics, Practical. | Political ethics. Classification: LCC JF799 .O84 2019 | DDC 323/.042—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018022159 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Contents
About the Editors Contributors
xi xiii
1. Studying Political Consumerism Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer
1
PA RT I H I STOR IC A L ROU T E S OF P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM 2. The Development of Political Consumerism in India: A Historical Perspective Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman
27
3. Political Consumerism in the South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements: The Historical Role of Consumer Boycott Campaigns Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager
47
PA RT I I T H E ORY A N D DE SIG N I N G R E SE A RC H ON P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM 4. Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces for Politically Oriented Consumerist Actions—Nationally, Transnationally, and Locally Francesca Forno
69
5. Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism Mario Diani
89
6. A Behavioural Economic Perspective on Political Consumerism Sebastian Berger
111
vi Contents
7. Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg 8. Veganism and Plant-Based Eating: Analysis of Interplay Between Discursive Strategies and Lifestyle Political Consumerism Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva
135
157
9. Studying Media Within Political Consumerism: Past and Present Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst
181
10. Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism Magnus Boström
205
11. Globalization, Governance Gaps, and the Emergence of New Institutions for Political Consumerism Lars H. Gulbrandsen
227
12. Conceptualizing Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain Gavin Fridell
249
PA RT I I I I N D U ST RY SE C TOR S A N D P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM 13. Political Food Consumerism Between Mundane Routines and Organizational Alliance-Building Bente Halkier
275
14. Utilizing Political Consumerism to Challenge the 21st Century Fast Fashion Industry Kim Y. Hiller Connell
293
15. Toy Consumption as Political Challenges for Making Dreams Come True Mikael Klintman
313
16. The Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim
331
17. Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism: A Review Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar
349
Contents vii
18. Political Consumerism in the Oil and Mining Extractive Industries: Possibilities for Sustainability and Social Justice Mark C. J. Stoddart, Max Chewinski, B. Quinn Burt, and Megan Stewart 19. Household Appliances and Electronics: Discussing the Relative Absence of Political Consumerism Toke Haunstrup Christensen, Kirsten Gram-Hanssen, and Mette Hove Jacobsen 20. Energy Devices and Political Consumerism in Reconfigured Energy Systems Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet
367
389
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PA RT I V T H E G E O G R A P H IC SP R E A D A N D P R AC T IC E OF P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM 21. Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe: Leading by Example? Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger
435
22. Political Consumerism in Southern Europe Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno
457
23. Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás
479
24. Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures: Political Consumerism in North America Meredith A. Katz
515
25. Politicizing Consumption in Latin America Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti
539
26. Tracing Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti
559
27. Institutional Changes and Changing Political Consumerism in China Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer
583
viii Contents
28. Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy: The Case of Political Consumerism in Thailand Kanang Kantamaturapoj, Natapol Thongplew, and Suwit Wibulpolprasert
603
PA RT V DE M O C R AT IC PA R A D OX E S A N D C HA L L E N G E S I N P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM 29. Undemocratic Political Consumerism Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud 30. “Buy White—Stay Fair”: Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History Stefanie Affeldt
625
643
31. Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe Eleftheria J. Lekakis
663
32. Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States Bo Yun Park
681
33. Problematic Political Consumerism: Confusions and Moral Dilemmas in Boycott Activism Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral
699
34. Some Dilemmas of Political Consumerism: Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra
721
35. Prohibition, Legalization, and Political Consumerism: Insights From the U.S. and Canadian Cannabis Markets Elizabeth A. Bennett
741
PA RT V I T H E P ROB L E M - S OLV I N G P OT E N T IA L OF P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM 36. The Successes of Political Consumerism as a Social Movement Lara Monticelli and Donatella della Porta 37. Political Consumerism and Corporate Strategy Towards Sustainability Standard-Setting: In or Out of Sync? Luc Fransen
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793
Contents ix
38. From Moral Concerns to Market Values: How Political Consumerism Shapes Markets Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier
813
39. Government Engagement With Political Consumerism Erik Hysing
833
40. Mass Consumption and Political Consumerism Magnus Boström and Mikael Klintman
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PA RT V I I C ON C LU SION 41. Political Consumerism: Research Challenges and Future Directions Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer Index
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899
About the Editors
Magnus Boström is Professor of Sociology at Örebro University, Sweden, with a main theoretical interest and research profile in environmental sociology and political sociology. His research interests generally concern politics, representation, consumption, and action in relation to a broad variety of transnational environmental and sustainability issues. Michele Micheletti is the Lars Johan Hierta Chair of Political Science at Stockholm University, Sweden. She has conducted research on civil society, citizen engagement in politics, Swedish politics, political consumerism, and urban planning. She is currently conducting research on youth engagement in politics. Peter Oosterveer is Professor in the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University, the Netherlands. His research interests are in global public and private governance arrangements on sustainable food production and consumption. In particular, his work addresses consumer access to sufficient, sustainable, and healthy food from a sociological perspective.
Contributors
Stefanie Affeldt, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, Heidelberg, Germany Philip Balsiger, University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland Sigrid Baringhorst, Universität Siegen, Germany Elizabeth A. Bennett, Lewis & Clark College, USA Sebastian Berger, University of Bern, Switzerland Magnus Boström, Örebro University, Sweden B. Quinn Burt, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Simon R. Bush, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Max Chewinski, University of British Columbia, Canada Toke Haunstrup Christensen, Aalborg University, Denmark Kim Y. Hiller Connell, Kansas State University, USA Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager, International House Business College, Australia Donatella della Porta, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy Joost de Moor, Stockholm University, Sweden Mario Diani, University of Trento, Italy Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier, CNRS, Sciences Po, France Eke Eijgelaar, Breda University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands Francesca Forno, University of Trento, Italy Luc Fransen, University of Amsterdam and Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, The Netherlands Gavin Fridell, Saint Mary's University, Canada Laurent Glin, Africa Green Corporation, Benin Kirsten Gram-Hanssen, Aalborg University, Denmark Lars H. Gulbrandsen, Fridtjof Nansen Institute, Norway
xiv Contributors Emese Gulyás, Association of Conscious Consumers, Hungary Bente Halkier, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Lucas Huissoud, McGill University, Canada Erik Hysing, Örebro University, Sweden Mette Hove Jacobsen, Aalborg University, Denmark Piia Jallinoja, Tampere University, Finland Kanang Kantamaturapoj, Mahidol University, Thailand Meredith A. Katz, Virginia Commonwealth University, USA Mikael Klintman, Lund University, Sweden Sanneke Kloppenburg, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Machiel Lamers, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Zhang Lei, Renmin University, China Eleftheria J. Lekakis, University of Sussex, UK Wenling Liu, Beijing Institute of Technology, China Michele Micheletti, Stockholm University, Sweden Lara Monticelli, Copenhagen Business School, Denmark Jeroen Nawijn, NHTV Breda University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands Mari Niva, University of Helsinki, Finland Peter Oosterveer, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Didem Oral, Stockholm University, Sweden Bo Yun Park, Harvard University, USA Léna Pellandini-Simányi, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland Anna Cristina Pertierra, Western Sydney University, Australia Fátima Portilho, Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Cathy A. Roheim, University of Idaho, USA Gert Spaargaren, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Hari Sreekumar, Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli, India Megan Stewart, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada Mark C. J. Stoddart, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Contributors xv Dietlind Stolle, McGill University, Canada Natapol Thongplew, Ubon Ratchathani University, Thailand Bas van Vliet, Wageningen University, The Netherlands Rohit Varman, Deakin University, Australia Markus Vinnari, Tampere University, Finland Sarah Webb, University of Queensland, Australia Suwit Wibulpolprasert, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand Mundo Yang, Universität Siegen, Germany
Chapter 1
Stu dy ing P ol i t i c a l C onsum e ri sm Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer
Globalized trade opens up numerous opportunities for corporations to produce and market goods in ways inconceivable in the past. Today there are more affordable goods for sale and more different kinds of goods on the marketplace than imaginable in the past. Consumer society has become an integral part of most citizens’ lives globally. Consumption now plays a crucial role in constructing personal identities. While these developments have created economic growth and offered consumers more opportunities to enjoy various freedoms, they have also come at great societal costs. Clearly it is no longer possible to avoid thinking about how production and consumption affect broader societal affairs at home and abroad. The examples are numerous. Smart phones offer opportunities to connect with others close by and across the globe. This is a positive development. But, as discussed in this Handbook (see Chapter 18), the metals necessary for most electronics—coltan, tantalum, tin, tungsten, gold, and others—are often mined using forced labour in conflict areas in sub-Saharan Africa, and they are often illegally traded before ending up in our mobile phones. The negative developments do not stop there. Illegal mining for these metals has caused a considerable fall in the gorilla population in these areas. There is even a negative side to other forms of common consumer practices. Eating meat contributes to climate change, while cultivating soy to feed livestock is a major driver of deforestation in the Amazon basin. Savoring a chocolate might well be connected to child labour and slavery in the harvesting of cocoa for the global chocolate market in Western Africa. Problems with child labour, bad working conditions, and environmental problems associated with textile production are a daily part of the fast fashion industry (see Chapter 14). When consumers buy a smart phone, eat certain kinds of food, or decide to lift their spirits with new attire, they connect to serious societal issues at a distance. There are alarming reports on these matters. Civil society and
2 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer governments are reacting, and attempts have been made to raise consumer awareness about the societal problems linked with production and consumption. Political consumerism can be defined as market-oriented engagements emerging from societal concerns associated with production and consumption. Acts of production and consumption are, therefore, considered as more than purely private matters about business profit-making and individual consumer preference based on a cost-benefit analysis when buying goods. Most prominent therein is the relationships among goods offered on the consumer market and political events and developments, environmental and human rights problems and worries, and the ethics of production and manufacturing practices. Political consumerism also involves various moral challenges concerning religion, race, ethnicity, family, gender relations, animals, and our common future (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). In political consumerism, the strict separation between consumers and citizens and between economy and politics collapses. This crossing of the boundaries among these different spheres and the hybridization of social roles require extensive reflection and research on the phenomenon of political consumerism (Warde, 2015). An important assumption in political consumerism is that consumers potentially can and in certain circumstances do collectively influence societal developments through what they decide to purchase, what they decide not to purchase, and how they relate to consumption in general through discourses and lifestyle projects. Starting from social movements’ concerns and expanding into lifestyle politics and issues of ethical and sustainable procurement within public and private organizations, political consumerism has grown into a significant force for handling complex and tough problems in different domains of production and consumption and in transnational and multilevel settings. This Handbook includes six thematically divided parts. This introductory chapter introduces the study of political consumerism, the thematic parts, and summarizes the chapters within each part. The thematic parts focus on (1) historical routes of political consumerism, (2) theory and designing research on political consumerism, (3) industry sectors of political consumerism, (4) the geographic spread and practice of political consumerism, (5) democratic paradoxes and challenges in political consumerism, and (6) the problem-solving potential of political consumerism. The concluding chapter highlights important thematic issues within the chapters in each part and across parts, discussing research challenges and the future directions of political consumer scholarship. Before introducing the Handbook parts, the discussion briefly elaborates how the study of political consumerism has developed and introduces the four basic action forms.
Political Consumerism and Its Study Recent scholarship views political consumerism as a complex multilevel phenomenon. It involves numerous societal actors and structural conditions associated with
Studying Political Consumerism 3 consumption-related acts taking place within a wide variety of societal institutions on different levels of society. This scholarship acknowledges the interdependencies and interactions among actors and institutions in different contexts. It also points at the significance of similar practices even before the full development of contemporary and globalized mass-consumer society, as discussed in the first part on political consumerism’s historical routes. However, unlike the past, contemporary political consumer actors and institutions engage increasingly with the complexities of globalized production and consumption. The current understanding of the phenomenon leads, therefore, to an expansion of the original definition of political consumerism focusing primarily on individual consumers’ economic transactions. This more nuanced understanding concerns its action forms, levels of activity and institutional and structural prerequisites (Micheletti, 2010; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Researchers now systematically study four basic action forms: (1) boycotts (refusing to purchase a good based on societal concerns about production and consumption), (2) buycotts (purchasing a good for such reasons), (3) discursive political consumerism (communicative actions), and (4) lifestyle political consumerism (more profound changes in lifestyle practices) (Micheletti, 2010; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). These four forms demonstrate how the study of political consumerism has developed over time. They also illustrate that the orientations towards market-based practices range from confrontational to cooperative. Boycotts, also termed “negative political consumer action” (cf. Friedman, 1999), often involve a confrontational approach and rhetoric. The civil groups behind them tend to use strong critical arguments to mobilize individuals to boycott a particular good produced not only by a corporation but also, at times, even from a country. They put strong demands on their boycott targets and threaten to start or continue their boycott campaigns if their demands are not met. The decades-long Nestlé boycott is a good example (Bromberg Bar Yam, 1995; Johnson, 1986). Buycotts rely more on cooperative strategies; they are also termed “positive political consumer action” (cf. Andersen & Tobiasen, 2004; Friedman, 1999). Buycott campaigners ask consumers to purchase a particular good in the same category, for instance organic rather than conventional coffee. Over the years, buycotting activities have developed into stakeholder partnerships in which civil society organizations collaborate with corporations, and at times governments, thus demonstrating the structural ramifications of politicizing production and consumption with labelling schemes as the clearest example. Discursive political consumerism, the third form, is well known as confrontational culture jamming of iconic corporations and their clever logos and slogans. This can be humorous, confrontational antibranding communication that targets a transnational corporation for lacking a sense of societal responsibility for labour and environmental practices in its outsourced manufacturing in the developing world, as illustrated by the culture jamming attacks on Nike’s slogans and brand name (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 6). In this form of political consumerism, corporate brands are not only the target of activism but also its source, medium, and message board. Discursive tactics can help consumers reflect on their consumption practices and mobilize them into lifestyle political consumerism. This fourth form involves overhauling one’s lifestyle practices
4 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer in the consumption field. Thus, this form tends to include the other three action forms. It can develop into a deep general commitment that changes how a person lives her life. Good examples discussed in this Handbook are veganism, voluntary simplicity, and slow food (see also Pentina & Amos, 2011). An important contribution from this recent conceptualization is the recognition that political consumerism is a multilevel phenomenon, which involves more than an individual’s behaviour and practices. There is a greater focus on the phenomenon’s social-movement networking, institution building, international character, and the facilitating role played by the state. This trend signifies scholarly interest in political consumerism as a part of transnational governance relationships. Another important aspect is the organizational setting for political consumerism. Scholars map and analyse the civic groups and networks that communicate and mobilize for political consumer causes. They focus on how these groups raise awareness about the politics of various products and nudge individuals into using the marketplace as an arena for politics. Labour unions, environmental groups, human rights networks, and specialized groups emerging for specific causes are examples of civil society organizations involved in political consumerism. New institutional arrangements, such as labelling and product certification, form another significant part of contemporary political consumerism. Even government actors increasingly act as collective or institutional political consumers, although they are constrained by trade regulations, procurement legislation, and the obligation to use taxpayers’ money effectively. The ethics and sustainability of procurement activities is a growing field of concern within families, civil society, businesses, and governmental institutions. At times governments help facilitate political consumerism, as shown in several Handbook chapters. Noteworthy is the growth in the “self-interest” and “feel-good” framing of political consumerism, such as in the slow food movement and the marketing of organic and fairtrade products. There are different views on this development. Some scholars and societal observers consider this development as positive because it encourages a greater number of consumers to buy “better” goods; others consider it as negative because it encourages more consumption and “ethical fetishism” (Guthman, 2009), which is a kind of ethical whitewashing of the ideological causes historically behind political consumer campaigns. Nevertheless, political consumerism has given rise to new initiatives in organizing consumers and developing new governance arrangements. Particularly buycotting, which relies more or less on innovative rule-making initiatives, often begins outside governmental arenas (Bartley, 2007; Boström & Klintman, 2008; Busch, 2000, Cashore et al., 2004; Pattberg, 2007; Ponte et al., 2011). Additionally, there are important temporal and spatial components in political consumerism. They change through history and do not develop in the same way everywhere. Neither the category of politics nor the category of consumption remains constant over time, and both have different meanings around the world, as shown clearly in the Handbook chapters. Core macro-level processes, identified by terms like “globalization” (with economic, technological, cultural, and political variants), “individualization,” “postmodernization,” “reflexive modernization,” and “social acceleration” (Rosa,
Studying Political Consumerism 5 2013), capture the major shifts affecting societal affairs at multiple levels. They also shed important light on political consumerism’s background conditions. One core macro- trend is the diminishing regulatory capacity of government, which assumes both structural and cultural dimensions. Structurally, it involves the shrinkage of governmental (state) authority and action capacity; this development is compensated with more plural, transnational, and networking types of politics. The term for this development is “governance,” which implies a more complex and fluid political setting. Culturally, the change involves the emergence of more focused concerns for the global environment and global human rights, broad processes of individualization, that is, the personalization of politics associated with so-called postmaterialistic values. Importantly, the Handbook’s chapters also demonstrate an increased relevance of studying the impact of religious traditions and movements in political consumerism both historically and contemporarily (see Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 4, for an initial discussion).
Historical Routes of Political Consumerism The chapters in the first part explore two important historical examples that have inspired latter-day political consumer activities across the world. In their chapter “The Development of Political Consumerism in India: A Historical Perspective,” Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman analyse trends in political consumerism in India between the fifteenth and twenty-first centuries, a period coinciding with the country’s colonial era and independence period. Particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, political consumerism was a form of resistance against colonial rule, with Mahatma Gandhi’s campaigns as well-known illustrations. Noteworthy is that the same ideology, swadeshi, is now used to support a neoliberal, conservative, and nationalist political agenda. For instance, not eating beef was used to show Hindu superiority to counter colonial oppression, but nowadays this is used to suppress Dalits, Muslims, and other marginalized groups in modern India. The authors argue that, in the context of rapid economic developments in India, there is room for developing forms of political consumerism that fit this contemporary context instead of relying on the anticolonialist and nationalist forms of the past. Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager presents an extensive overview of South African political consumer activities during the apartheid era in his chapter “Political Consumerism in the South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements: The Historical Role of Consumer Boycott Campaigns.” As conventional democratic instruments to create political change became increasingly inaccessible and ineffective, the anti-apartheid movement developed market-based strategies to mobilize consumers in the struggle. When these activities were brutally suppressed in South Africa, international consumer boycott campaigns became a potential alternative. These consumer boycott campaigns did not create significant economic pressure
6 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer on the apartheid state. However, they did unite people, groups, and communities within South Africa and in the rest of the world in the struggle against a violent and discriminatory political system.
Theory and Designing Research on Political Consumerism Since political consumerism is an increasingly multifaceted phenomenon, its analysis requires a plurality of theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches, and empirical materials. There is not only one correct way to study the phenomenon, though some approaches have dominated over others. This part of the Handbook offers diverse theoretical and methodological approaches to studying political consumerism and insights into the role of major societal changes that have changed and moulded the phenomenon. The chapters—both individually and collectively—discuss the design of political consumerism research and ideas about research topics, including methodological advice and tips on appropriate empirical case material. The authors also openly discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their theoretical approaches. Some chapters encourage scholars to dare to be innovative; others challenge conventional theorizing of political consumerism. In sum, this part offers comparative insights into common themes while also identifying theoretical debates on best approaches for studying the phenomenon. Political scientists working on political consumerism have traditionally viewed the phenomenon as a form of political participation, focusing on the motivations of individuals to engage in market-based activities and comparing them with other forms of participation (e.g., voting and joining political organizations). An important finding has been that political consumers are generally highly politically active and that political consumerism complements rather than replaces (“crowds out”) conventional forms of participation. Surveys help these scholars gather data on the “who, how, and why” of individual political consumers’ participation (particularly in the easily measured forms of boycotts and buycotts) and analyse the importance of such common research factors as gender, socioeconomic status, political interest, knowledge, ideology, and worries. This research began in the northern hemisphere, but scholars have applied its design, survey questions, and even theoretical assumptions to studies of the Global South. Several Handbook chapters critically discuss how well this theorizing travels when studying other parts of the world. Protest and social movement scholarship represents another classical way of studying political consumerism. The focus of this part of the Handbook begins with a fresh look at this theoretical approach. In her chapter “Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces for Politically Oriented Consumerist Actions–Nationally, Transnationally, and Locally,” Francesca Forno discusses how the relationship between social movements and political consumerism has evolved. She shows how globalization and individualization
Studying Political Consumerism 7 processes, which are two major societal changes, have altered the way social movements engage with political consumerism, illustrating this with research on how social movement organizations and networks, after the short-lived Global Justice movement of the early 2000s, used political consumerism to reposition themselves. In certain countries, governmental austerity policies and degrowth spurred the building of new alliances for alternative production and consumption. Here political consumerism became a vehicle for creating and reinforcing solidarity ties, which helped implement collective action around distinctive political projects of local, sustainable community movements. Forno views this as a new social imaginary supported by a generalized value-based, alternative political lifestyle opposed to consumerism as a fundament of the dominant economic and political order. This illustrates how social movements use alter-and anticonsumerism to create new dimensions in politics. Can we speak of an emerging political consumer movement? Mario Diani’s chapter “Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism” helps with an answer by analysing whether a social movement can develop from forms of action primarily consisting of personal individual-oriented market-based actions. He defines social movements as having a collective identity reliant on relational processes involving a series of decisions, including resource allocation, collective representation, identification of opponents, solidarity feeling, and mutual obligatory bonds. Do these factors characterize political consumer groups? His analysis and empirical overview of different political consumer mobilizations (e.g., slow food, the Nestlé boycott, etc.) show that the political consumer repertoire of actions (the four forms) has organizational, community-building, and collaborative potential but generally tends to lack a strong source of collective identity persisting over time. Thus, as also underscored in Forno’s chapter, political consumerism is presently more a tool or method for organizing and mobilizing people than a political project in itself. Therefore, it should not be characterized as a full social movement. Behavioural economics is possibly the latest discipline to show interest in political consumerism. This research perspective combines economic logic with psychological, social, cognitive, and emotional factors to understand how we make economic decisions. Sebastian Berger’s chapter “A Behavioural Economic Perspective on Political Consumerism” views boycotting and buycotting as the exercise of prosocial preferences transcending the standard economic assumption about self-interested individuals. He stresses that altruistic motivations do not immediately trigger action because individuals need information on the role of consumption in societal developments (a kind of literacy), events and actions that remind them of this (issue saliency), and a sense of the importance of individual behaviour in problem solving (pivotality). Investment market experiments illustrate this. Berger discusses “nudging” (the designing of choice situations to steer individuals toward prosocial consumer choices). He maintains that more innovation in collective thinking is necessary to design choice situations that nudge more people to act in politically, ethically, and environmentally responsible ways in the marketplace. However, Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg disagree with Berger’s conclusion. Their chapter “Political Consumerism and the
8 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer Social-Practice Perspective” considers nudging as an outside trigger that simply attempts to push around consumers rather than to change their general relation to consumption. The social-practice approach poses an interesting theoretical contrast to Berger’s and other approaches by taking a strong theoretical stance against the Attitude, Behaviour, Choice (ABC) paradigm used in much consumer policymaking globally, including nudging. The authors assume instead that consumers can be assigned a more (pro)active or reflexive role in affecting social change “from the inside.” This sociologically inspired approach focuses on consumer-oriented everyday practices and how they can change for the betterment of society. They discuss the complexities and challenges involved in, for instance, encouraging people to ride a bike rather than drive a car, to use less energy, and to eat more sustainably. These choices involve many skills, more reflexivity, and a more complex series of decisions than is assumed in simple ABC policymaking and nudging. Illustrations of the difficulties in switching to a new, more sustainable, and political consumer-oriented–practice are offered in “Veganism and Plant-Based Eating: Analysis of Interplay Between Discursive Strategies and Lifestyle Political Consumerism” by Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva. This chapter gives additional arguments for how and why scholars should not classify political consumerism as an emerging social movement. While there has been increased mobilization around vegan and plant-based diets, the discursive and lifestyle modes of coordination lack a developed collective identity. Some plant-based-diet supporters are clearly opposed to eating animals for other-oriented values (e.g., animal rights). But flexitarians choose less meat-eating for other social reasons and/or self-oriented reasons (e.g., healthism, habitus). Savvy mobilization through social media and celebrities, and the aesthetic presentation of vegan and plant-based food as cool and healthy, explain its boost and popularity. Therefore, the authors view this new food practice as an assemblage of interacting actors engaging in political consumer actions as a way of living in neoliberal consumer society but without adhering to any coherent and common goal. Many Handbook contributions mention the significant role of the media and mediated relations in political consumerism. Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst’s chapter “Studying Media Within Political Consumerism: Past and Present” is, therefore, a particularly welcome contribution. Their topic is challenging. Scholarship on the media’s role in political consumerism is scarce. Along with the growing complexity and globalization of the phenomenon, the media have also evolved as have the theories for studying it further. The authors stress the media’s importance in helping actors and institutions overcome collective action problems or disconnections within political consumerism brought on by the more individualized and scattered nature of the phenomenon. A key finding is that scholars should not assume that political consumerism takes place only in the world of mass media (the old media situation). Today’s reality involves new alternative media and a rising importance of individual media consumers as coproducers (so-called produsers) of media content. They critically discuss exciting examples of “old” and “new” media school studies of political consumerism and identify important research gaps.
Studying Political Consumerism 9 Readers might get the impression that political consumer scholarship only involves researchers curious about individuals, families, and communities engaging with societal concerns. This is not the case. More scholars focus now on other aspects of the phenomenon, including the role of corporate brands and globalized supply chains. In his chapter “Rejecting and Embracing Brands in Political Consumerism,” Magnus Boström discusses the importance of high-profile brands in political consumerism. Indirectly, he also engages with Berger’s discussion on issue saliency: consumer knowledge of big brands explains why attacking them leads to media publicity that furthers the political consumer struggle. Culture jamming, identified as the most spectacular kind of discursive political consumerism, is an excellent illustration here. Boström argues that scholars should also consider how and why brands are important for understanding contemporary society and politics. He views them as a cultural resource for consumers (e.g., brand communities), a symbolic resource for corporations (symbolic capital), and a means of corporate cultivation (the branding process). Boström finds the concepts of frontstage (brands’ public face) and backstage (corporate reasoning on their reputation and legitimacy) useful for understanding business reactions to political consumer criticism and protests. He encourages more research on brand rejection to investigate lifestyle variants of political consumerism. Political consumerism also interests scholars of institutions and governance, particularly in relation to the effects of globalization processes. Two chapters directly address this topic. “Globalization, Governance Gaps, and the Emergence of New Institutions for Political Consumerism” by Lars H. Gulbrandsen discusses the critical importance of globalization processes in explaining political consumerism’s rise from the 1980s onward. He focuses on nonstate regulation and governance initiatives within sustainability certification. Important chapter themes are trade liberalization and neoliberal ideology, the growth of transnational advocacy networks involving (nongovernmental organizations [NGOs]), and the rise of global supply chains, all of which are key factors in the emergence of sustainability certification schemes in the forest, fishery, and labour sectors. Gulbrandsen argues for researching “governance gaps” (i.e., the distance between steps taken to address a collective action problem and a collectively optimal governance solution) when examining their rise and performance. He shows how nongovernmental and intergovernmental processes as well as organizations in complex systems of governance play instrumental roles in institutionalizing certification. Additionally, transnational corporations embrace sustainability certification to position themselves in competitive consumer markets and to give them maneuverability to put forth industry- friendly certification standards. Since tensions easily develop within certification schemes, it is important to study how involved actors understand and respond to them. Gavin Fridell’s chapter “Conceptualizing Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain” stresses the importance of carefully studying the role of values in global supply chains as an integral part of political consumer. The global value chain approach examines globalized networks and sites of labour and production processes and more directly integrates a southern and gendered-economy perspective into the analysis. Fridell argues for looking beyond the relationship between northern-based individual
10 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer consumers and consumer commodities (an exchange relation approach) to a much wider social relations approach. Examples from the global jeans and coffee industries illustrate how this approach enriches research on political consumerism’s impact (or effectiveness) as a mechanism for change. This theoretical perspective directs scholarly attention to the regulatory, cultural, and institutional environments that embed political consumerism, in particular power relations. This approach expands political consumer study. Fridell also gives some cautionary advice about the weaknesses of this approach, including the tendency to focus on lead firms, to neglect some industries, and to focus on market-driven projects like fair trade that reflect powerful northern fantasies about the exaggerated power of political consumers. In sum, the second part offers different scientific approaches that theoretically innovate the research field. The two chapters on behavioural economics and social practices offer conflicting advice to policymakers. Other chapters call for a more nuanced view of the drivers behind political consumerism and political consumerism’s significance for social bonding and connectivity. Scholars are encouraged to view certification as experimental governance and to develop research strategies to study governance efforts for coordination. The chapters also call for methodological innovations, including longitudinal and comparative studies (even across geographically stretched supply chains) and more fieldwork in order to gain a richer understanding of the different contexts involved in political consumerism.
Industry Sectors and Political Consumerism Political consumerism has developed differently in different industry sectors and for different types of goods and services. In some sectors there are prevalent boycott activities (e.g., fashion; see Chapter 14); in others there are more discursive political consumer actions (e.g., toys; see Chapter 15). In other sectors, there are many buycott arrangements, including ecolabels, fairtrade labels, and certification schemes (e.g., on food, see Chapter 13; on seafood, see Chapter 16). For political consumer research, it is important to learn more about what supply-and demand-side factors facilitate and inhibit political consumer activities and arrangements. Typically, these include technological, economic, cultural, political, and geographical factors. The third part of the Handbook is devoted to industry sector analyses. Even if industry comparison is an understudied topic in political consumer research, various scholars have engaged in these questions; often, however, they focus on one sector at a time. This scholarship, and the Handbook chapters in this part, apply some of the broad theoretical perspectives reviewed in the preceding part. First, the study and theorizing of new institutions, including a growing field that focuses on standards,
Studying Political Consumerism 11 certifications, multistakeholders, and public-private partnerships, provides new governance and regulatory frameworks for political consumerism in some sectors (see Chapter 11). This scholarship focuses primarily on buycott arrangements. For example, earlier research has documented the vast amount of organizing and legitimacy-seeking efforts required to build and institutionalize trustworthy buycotting arrangements in sectors such as food, forestry, and fisheries (Bartley, 2007; Bush et al., 2013; Cashore et al., 2004; Mol & Oosterveer, 2015; Spaargaren & Oosterveer, 2010; Tamm Hallström & Boström, 2010). Second, global value chain literature (see Chapter 12) emphasizes how economic globalization; increased offshore production; complex supply chains; and increased geographical, political, and cultural distance between production and consumption sites in many sectors create governance challenges and make it harder for consumers to perceive and address the social and environmental impacts of production (Boström et al., 2015; Bush et al., 2015; Locke, 2013). Political consumer arrangements are set up to cope with these challenges, which scholarship discusses in terms of responsible and/or sustainable supply chain management (De Bakker & Nijhof, 2002; Seuring & Mueller, 2008). A third research stream focuses more on the consumer demand side and on how political consumer action, or the lack thereof, relates to the provision of different types of goods and services. Social practice theory is growing as an analytical lens (see Chapter 7). The chapters in this part use the accumulated theorizing to study how different goods, services, and devices are embedded and interconnected in everyday life. For example, food should be understood as more than just something to eat. Only a larger contextual understanding of it helps in explaining if, how, and to what extent food can be an issue for political consumer consideration. A fourth topic of study, also seen in the chapters in this part, is how global/local social-movement mobilization and activism engage in boycotting and culture jamming that targets the reputation of large corporate brands (see chapters 9 and 10). Chapters in this part identify the opportunities and barriers of political consumerism as related to a variety of consumer products, services, and devices and study both supply-and demand-side factors and how they interact. They discuss how supply-side factors relate to sociopolitical factors, new technologies, public regulation, availability of credible information arrangements, and the extent and character of the public campaigns and framings connected to particular consumer products and services. The chapters in this part also evaluate how demand-side factors relate to societal values and norms; the dynamics of consumer culture; and new lifestyle experiments, movements, and practices. This part provides some answers as to why certain consumer products and services are more associated with politics, ethics, and morality than others and what types of problems are easier or more difficult to express through the politicization of consumer goods and the different forms of political consumerism. The concluding chapter gets back to this general comparison. Scholars generally consider food a successful example of mobilizing consumers, framed through a number of societal issues such as sustainability, public health, animal rights, and global justice. Bente Halkier’s chapter “Political Food Consumerism between
12 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer Mundane Routines and Organizational Alliance-Building” focuses on political food consumerism and highlights not just famous boycott campaigns (e.g., the Nestlé boycott) but also the dominant role of buycotting and lifestyle political consumerism in this sector. She also discusses how food consumption as a mundane and embodied type of consumption shapes political consumerism in this industry sector. Compared to food, the textile sector has less developed political consumerism. In the chapter “Utilizing Political Consumerism to Challenge the 21st Century Fast Fashion Industry,” Kim Y. Hiller Connell examines political consumerism in the context of the (fundamentally unsustainable) global fashion industry. The chapter provides a brief history of the movements against the socially, environmentally, and economically objectionable and politicized practices within the industry. The author then shows how the strategy of boycotts (and to a considerable extent discursive tactics) has been and still is the dominant form of political consumerism in the sector. Although buycotting and interesting new lifestyle experiments increase in importance, these forms face considerable barriers in becoming mainstream, and consumer engagement is still relatively low. The toy industry has historically been subject to a broad array of political consumer reactions. As Mikael Klintman argues in his chapter “Toy Consumption as Political: Challenges for Making Dreams Come True,” this is due to the fact that children constitute a particular consumer/user group. Concerns relate to certain values promoted via toys and games (e.g., violence, gender stereotypes), chemicals and other health hazards related to toys, environmental problems caused by toy production and disposal, and norms of mass consumption and aggressive marketing to children. So far, the concerns have mostly been channelled into discursive political consumerism and governmental regulation but not much on political consumer labelling. The chapter discusses reasons behind this pattern, as well as a number of facilitating factors (e.g., strong dependence on reputation in this sector) and constraining influences (e.g., long supply chains) that affect political consumerism in the toy industry. The seafood sector has seen a range of NGO-led boycott and buycott initiatives in the 2000s. In “The Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism,” Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim show that many of the buycott initiatives have been formalized into political consumer institutions and tools, such as certification and ecolabels, recommendation lists, improvement projects and benchmarks, and systems for traceability. A network of actors, including producers, retailers, celebrity chefs, and a broad sustainability seafood movement consisting of various NGOs and philanthropic family foundations, are involved in developing and shaping political consumerism in this sector. The above chapters focus mainly on tangible items—that is, goods. An intangible and complex social phenomenon such as tourism can also be commodified and hence become a field for political consumer actions. In “Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism: A Review,” Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar analyse the constraints and opportunities of political consumerism for sustainable tourism, a sector with significant social and environmental impacts, including climate change problems. But the role of tourist consumers in driving sustainable tourism has
Studying Political Consumerism 13 remained weak and inconsistent. There are initiatives such as boycotts, slow travel, conservation tourism, “voluntourism,” and a fragmented field of buycotting arrangements. Nevertheless, the authors present the sector as generally lagging behind with respect to sustainable consumption and political consumerism. They discuss, for example, explanations connected to the “home and away gap,” which is the willingness among consumers to participate in environmental pro action in and around the home while the transference of these practices to tourism contexts is often problematic (see also Barr et al., 2010). Difficulties include considerations of mobility and the complex organization of tourism services. Natural resource extraction industries is the topic of the next chapter, “Political Consumerism in the Oil and Mining Extractive Industries: Possibilities for Sustainability and Social Justice.” Mark C. J. Stoddart, Max Chewinski, B. Quinn Burt, and Megan Stewart focus on political consumer mobilization targeting oil and mineral extraction. They show that these actions are present where there are particularly dramatic examples of violations of social or environmental well-being, as well as clear corporate or government wrongdoers who can be targeted with, for example, culture jamming tactics. The term “blood diamonds” has become a powerful emotional metaphor. The chapter demonstrates the difficulties in achieving effective political consumerism in this sector because of the diffuse and pervasive nature of oil and minerals in contemporary consumer societies. However, the recent fossil fuel divestment movement is portrayed as innovative. One sector with perhaps even lower levels of political consumerism activity is household appliances and electronics, despite the massive social and environmental implications caused by their production, consumption, disposal, and rapid replacement. Various initiatives are described in the chapter “Household Appliances and Electronics: Discussing the Relative Absence of Political Consumerism” by Toke Haunstrup Christensen, Kirsten Gram-Hanssen, and Mette Hove Jacobsen. Political consumer efforts such as the Fairphone, sharing economies, or repairing movements occupy extremely limited niche markets. The chapter documents the relative absence of political consumerism in this field and discusses how it can be understood in relation to various social drivers (e.g., peer pressure) behind (increased) consumption (see also Chapter 40). Some of the chapters discussed so far have paid attention to the role of new technologies, particularly ICT, in providing new means for political consumerism. This part’s final chapter, “Energy Devices and Political Consumerism in Reconfigured Energy Systems,” focuses more systematically on this topic. Can political consumerism play a role in the transformation towards a low-carbon electricity system? By analysing the energy sector, Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet demonstrate how new technologies, deregulation, and privatization have opened up market spaces for western or northern consumers to influence the greening of energy provision and consumption. Electricity system reconfiguration creates a growing diversity of home- based energy devices that engage consumers in using energy in new and altered ways. Through smart meters, solar panels, and home batteries, passive energy users change
14 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer into “prosumers.” Energy devices thus produce new action possibilities for consumers to contribute to decarbonization of the electricity system as (collective) consumers and producers at the same time (prosumers). The two last chapters presented offer good illustrations of the relevance of a social-practice perspective for studying political consumerism. Seen together, this part’s chapters demonstrate the relevance of paying particular attention to political consumerism in different industry sectors and offer important insights into why opportunities and barriers of political consumerism differ. They show that these differences relate to both supply-and demand-side factors and to issues of culture, mass media, economy, technology, politics, regulation, and geography.
The Geographic Spread and Practice of Political Consumerism Scholarship on political consumerism must be sensitive to different structural and cultural characteristics. Political consumerism is often associated with the social-liberal welfare state and market-based capitalism in the northwestern part of the world. To better understand the phenomenon generally, it is important to also ask about its presence and character in other geographical areas. Are there inhibiting and/or facilitating factors in other political contexts that play a role in its emergence elsewhere? Such differences may affect its significance in specific regional or national contexts. By comparing the forms and spread of political consumerism in different countries and regions, we can further enhance our knowledge about the conditions under which it thrives or fails. Political consumerism flourishes primarily in the northern hemisphere where concerns about the negative effects or consequences of continued technological and industrial development and of growing international trade became increasingly apparent in the 1980s. At the same time, governmental institutions came under pressure because they did not prove to be effective enough in dealing with environmental and social problems. There were governance gaps. Moreover, these countries generally had well-educated populations, at a certain level of well-being, with free access to various means of communication. Against this background, political consumerism burgeoned in Northwestern Europe and the United States as an innovation in solving complex problems concerning human rights and environmental degradation (Micheletti, 2010; Micheletti et al., 2003). In other geographical areas, political consumerism, as shown in this part, takes different shapes and forms. In some emerging economies, like South Africa, the growing middle class has become an important target for various ethical consumption initiatives (Harrison et al., 2005; Hughes et al., 2015). Making connections between transnational networks with global concerns and their local expressions is essential for successful transformations in production and manufacturing practices. In some countries,
Studying Political Consumerism 15 political consumerism seems less steered by recognized altruistic ethical or political concerns and more by individualistic worries about personal and family health and safety (Hoi et al., 2009; Oosterveer et al., 2007). Nevertheless, these self-oriented concerns may be expressed in political consumer initiatives seeking to transform production practices. A rather different development in market-oriented consumer activism is forthcoming in countries that have undergone recent economic and financial crisis (Lekakis, 2015). The chapters in this part contribute to a comparison of the global spread and practice of political consumerism’s four forms. They offer data on its presence and practice in different regional and national settings and include empirical material as well as some methodological advice for studying the phenomenon in specific geographic areas. The chapters address the regions that have dominated the debate and scholarship (e.g., Northwestern Europe and North America) and include regions where political consumerism is a more recent phenomenon (e.g., Central and Eastern Europe) and where it takes different forms (e.g., the Middle East, Africa, and Asia). The regions that have received less attention are particularly interesting because they include countries with booming economies (China and Thailand) or developing ones (Middle East and Africa), with different political histories (Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America), and with different political consumer strategies (Southern Europe and Latin America). Northwestern Europe is the first geographical area reviewed. Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger, in their chapter “Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe: Leading by Example?,” illustrate political consumerism’s spread and diversity in this region, which has been extensively studied. They use the wealth of available empirical data (in particular, of a quantitative character) to illustrate the depth and spread of the different forms of political consumerism. Still, they find it difficult to assess the phenomenon’s political impact and to evaluate whether political consumerism is a valuable and effective strategy for solving societal problems. Southern Europe has witnessed a different kind of political consumerism. Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno start their chapter, “Political Consumerism in Southern Europe,” with the observation that surveys generally show a lower rate of political consumerism in Southern European countries. However, a closer examination shows that consumers here may focus less on boycotts and buycotts and instead invest more in communitarian and local collective actions not easily measured in surveys. Therefore, political consumerism should not be considered as individualistic but to include collective organization of food production, distribution and consumption. This “social turn” broadens the concept of political consumerism and has great potential to encourage new forms of empirical research. Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás’s chapter, “Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe,” questions whether political consumerism in Eastern Europe can simply be understood as lagging behind Western Europe and shows this is not the case. When mapping political consumerism in these countries, they observe some important consumer-oriented activities embedded in everyday life. Consumers make choices requiring little or no additional costs, such as
16 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer energy-saving options. Several conditions, including consumer willingness to engage in political consumerism and to further expand such forms of political consumerism, are present in Central and Eastern Europe. North America is another region with a long history of market-based political activism. Meredith A. Katz shows in her chapter “Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures: Political Consumerism in North America” how early consumer boycotting and buycotting campaigns were organized in the United States by women’s organizations to protect workers’ rights. Her historical overview leads to a discussion on contemporary forms of political consumerism using social media and a plea for more research on these innovative instruments for political consumerism. Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti, in their chapter “Politicizing Consumption in Latin America,” stress not only that political consumerism in Latin America relates to the production of labelled goods for the northern market but also that the region has a unique tradition of politicizing consumption. In particular, the social movements opposing the neoliberal capitalist system incorporate political consumerism in their repertoire but focus their actions rather on the parliamentary arena than on the market. Africa and the Middle East constitutes the region reviewed by Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti in “Tracing Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East.” They describe different initiatives that illustrate how (forms of modern) consumption in Africa are discussed in moral terms, often related to excessive (western) lifestyles and corruption. Africa is at the same time, as a producing continent, also linked to global supply chains that make political consumer behaviour possible in richer countries through fairtrade and organically labelled products. In the Middle East and North Africa, religious controversies are very prominent. To understand this region’s political consumerism, it appears necessary to study the connections with economic, religious, and political dynamics around the world. Two chapters on Asia conclude this part. First, Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer show in “Institutional Changes and Changing Political Consumerism in China” how the communist political system with its limited economic freedom has made way for rapid economic development and a rise of the middle classes. The unique Chinese institutional context gives political consumerism a particular framing, especially with respect to state-market dynamics as the government is still leading while private initiatives are less prominent. Still, it remains an open question whether or not consumers will, in the future, be politically motivated in their everyday consumer choices and opt for more environmentally friendly products. In the chapter on Thailand, “Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy: The Case of Political Consumerism in Thailand,” Kanang Kantamaturapoj, Natapol Thongplew, and Suwit Wibulpolprasert review several recent cases of political consumerism, which illustrate its diversity in Thailand in terms of actors involved, forms used, and agendas set. In doing so, they portray the importance of social media in Thailand for mobilizing consumers. These chapters underline the importance of keeping an open view on the multiple ways in which political consumerism may acquire its particular form in the Global South where political systems and cultures differ.
Studying Political Consumerism 17 Seen together, this part’s chapters offer interesting insights into the significant geographical, economic, and political diversity involved in political consumerism globally. There are differences in the dynamics and relationships in the field of political consumerism and in how and why it is being regionalized.
Democratic Paradoxes and Challenges in Political Consumerism Political consumerism scholars typically study the phenomenon as a new form of globalized democratic governance and democratic responsibility-taking on the part of consumers individually and collectively. Often they equate political consumerism with ethical or sustainable consumption. Whereas this research tradition has studied many challenging issues around the realization of ethical/sustainable consumption, it can be criticized for not seriously addressing examples that do not include a democratic spirit or promote democratic societal development. This part thus focuses on how political consumerism can hinder the pursuit of democracy by threatening political and social equality and supporting undemocratic ideologies and values. The chapters discuss how political consumerism can promote and even institutionalize discrimination and undemocratic practices as well as how it may marginalize ethnic and racial groups economically and socially. It is of utmost importance to consider how and why political consumerism is currently also being used as an excluding mechanism in the globalized world. The part’s chapters show several historical and contemporary examples of public and civil society campaigns that pit societal, ethnic, or religious groups against each other. Some campaigns promoting nationalism, nationalistic movements, and national or regional protectionism occur at a time of crisis (Lekakis, 2015) or during a nation-building process (see Chapter 30). In both cases, movements promote the buying of domestically produced goods instead of imported ones. While such boycotts and buycotts might seem appropriate in certain circumstances, in others they lead to nationalist protectionism (e.g., “Buy American”) and even discrimination of certain societal groups, as witnessed by historical anti-Jewish boycotts (see Chapter 29). This part also explores ambiguous or sensitive cases of political consumerism. There is a broad variety of such kinds of political consumerism. Some sensitive cases of political consumerism campaigns may aim at promoting social justice while indirectly mobilizing support for discrimination. An important example discussed in the Handbook is the global “boycott, divest and sanction” (BDS) movement to pressure Israel to change its policy on Palestine and the Golan Heights (see Chapter 33). Other ambiguous cases concern the balance between environmental and social concerns (see Chapter 34). Policies, movements, and actions, including consumption for “the environment,” may neglect issues of social justice and democracy or even be associated with antidemocratic framings (see Fischer, 2018, on the ambiguous nature of
18 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer environmental democracy). Within political consumerism, it is not uncommon, for instance, that buycott arrangements promoting ecological values fundamentally neglect or even reject issues around poverty, social conflicts, and justice. Simply assuming that “eco” is good may be extremely illusory. The first chapter of this part, “Undemocratic Political Consumerism” by Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud, elaborates on some novel concepts for this area of study, including consumer ethnocentrism, consumer animosity, and consumer racism. It furthermore discusses general problems in conducting research on more problematic contemporary political consumerism. Reasons connect to conceptual factors, for instance that terms such as “ethical” and “moral” consumption make researchers bias their attention towards only democratic forms. Other related reasons concern research design and political consumerism’s operationalization and measurement, such as in the construction of survey questionnaires as well as difficulties in finding information and conducting systematic analysis of undemocratic cases. These difficulties relate to the fact that undemocratic usage is often less visible and, therefore, challenging or even unsafe to study with conventional methodological strategies and empirical materials. Because of such conceptual and methodological limitations, scholarship so far has presented an image of political consumerism that fails to include all relevant facets and variants. This and other chapters in this part offer reflections on the ability of conventional ways of theorizing and measuring political consumerism to distinguish between its democratic/ undemocratic or problematic/unproblematic cases. The part continues with a historical chapter. Political consumerism has been involved in various ways in colonial relationships. As Stefanie Affeldt shows in “‘Buy White—Stay Fair’: Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History,” colonial products enabled a race-based demarcation (i.e., a white supremacy), but this took shape in different ways between different colonial powers. She focuses on how racist political consumerism was applied in a particular way in early-20th-century Australia in the sugar industry by scrutinizing the White Sugar campaign and the Buy Australian-Made campaign. Both show how Australian consumers were asked to express national identity, pride, and loyalty by consuming locally manufactured products. These campaigns fused everyday culture with the political programme of the time and contributed to the emergence of an imagined racist community of consumers. Moving to contemporary times, Eleftheria J. Lekakis in “Poltical Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe” explores the intersection between political consumerism and nationalism through three cases of nationalist struggles in Europe: a British boycott-halal campaign, a Catalan cava boycott in Spain, and a German product boycott in Greece. Located at different societal levels of struggle (local, regional, and national), these cases illustrate contradictions and tensions at the intersection between political consumerism and nationalism as well as the ideological ambiguity inherent in nationalism. This chapter elaborates on various concepts for understanding the ambiguities involved, including consumer nationalism, economic nationalism, banal nationalism, and everyday nationhood as well as how universalistic and particularistic aspects of nationalism can interact.
Studying Political Consumerism 19 The U.S. context is strikingly different from the European one. In American history, both political consumerism and racial conflicts, with the important heritage of the slave economy, have been substantial. Thus, the intersection of these two phenomena is worth much more theoretical and empirical scholarly attention. Bo Yun Park in “Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States” notes the lack of research around this intersection and suggests conceptual and empirical avenues for more research. Studies of such political consumerism approaches, she argues, should include theorizing symbolic and social boundaries, considering struggles among both ethnoracial minorities and majorities; direct and indirect consequences of racial issues; and, finally, how the racial dimension intersects with age, education, income, and gender. She moreover shows that both white supremacist groups and various ethnoracial minority groups in the United States have used different forms of racialized political consumerism, including boycotts, buycotts, discursive actions, and selective investments. In the chapter “Problematic Political Consumerism: Confusions and Moral Dilemmas in Boycott Activism,” Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral discuss why political consumerism, particularly boycotts, can be confusing and problematic through a discussion on the Disney Company boycott in different historical times and the contemporary movement against Israeli settlements in the Palestine territories (BDS). These cases are seen as more problematic than other well-known boycotts against, for instance, Nestlé, Nike, and the apartheid regime in South Africa. They theorize how political consumerism can involve moral dilemmas and explain why such dilemmas are particularly salient in boycotts rather than in buycotts and discursive actions. Reasons include the tendency for various boycott campaigns to express unclear or inconsistent demands and messages directed to the identified targets (wrongdoers) and thus to create confusing messages to consumers as well as easily attract unintended and unwelcome supporters. Even if buycotts generally imply fewer moral dilemmas, they may nevertheless involve several problematic aspects. This is exemplified in the chapter “Some Dilemmas of Political Consumerism: Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines”? by Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra, which focuses on ecotourism at a UNESCO World Heritage site on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. This is a good example of how environmental and social dimensions do not always cling together. The chapter demonstrates the relevance of taking into account factors such as social class, social cleavages, and the marginalization of certain groups (e.g., indigenous peoples or local populations facing poverty) when conducting research on the problematic aspects of political consumerism. The authors show how several dilemmas related to these factors are involved in ecotourism in this country. Finally, this part includes a case on how the dynamics of political consumerism shift in relation to a particular good: cannabis (marijuana) in the North American context (Canada and the United States). Elizabeth A. Bennett in “Prohibition, Legalization, and Political Consumerism: Insights From the U.S. and Canadian Cannabis Markets” focuses on how a good’s legal status and public discourses interact with demand-and supply-side dynamics in political consumerism. These dynamics shift through processes of prohibition, semilegalization, and new legalization. Political consumerism
20 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer here involves issues of normalization and alternative lifestyle consumerism. She shows how a controversial topic like cannabis involves challenges for producers, consumers, and social movement organizations to engage in political consumerism. By exploring the role of racism and other types of undemocratic stereotyping and intolerance, as well as nationalism, religion, class struggles, and politically/culturally sensitive practices in the broader aspects of political consumerism, this part provides many new conceptual, methodological, and empirical insights for further researching more problematic aspects of the phenomenon.
The Problem-S olving Potential of Political Consumerism Increasingly, the problem-solving potential of political consumerism is discussed among social scientists and in public debates. These discussions demonstrate the need for more firm analytical perspectives for systematically studying the power of consumers and political consumer activities. This part’s five chapters focus on this large topic and contribute ideas about the stringent assessment of political consumerism’s effectiveness through different analytical and disciplinary perspectives. They evaluate whether, how, and why political consumerism is or can be a driver of societal change. For instance, what role do civil society campaigns, governmental efforts, and corporate initiatives play in creating broad public awareness about the role of consumers, consumer behaviour, and consumer-oriented mechanisms to solve societal problems? This part also addresses the important topic of political consumerism’s limitations in filling the governance gap (i.e., solving complex globalized societal problems). Through examples and general discussions, it develops scholarship on measuring the impact/effectiveness and limitations of political consumer action and institutions. The part begins with a chapter by Lara Monticelli and Donatella della Porta, “The Successes of Political Consumerism as a Social Movement.” Unlike studies focusing on individuals’ engagements in market-based political activities, they focus on political consumerism as “collectivized individual action.” Here, factors such as political opportunity structure, social movement organizations, and framing processes play a central role. An important contribution is their interpretative compass with six main features (type, domain, nature, target, timing, and duration) that systematizes the complex, multilayered process of political consumer activism from its mobilization to its outcome and effects. The compass helps evaluate some standard examples (fairtrade and antisweatshop activism), others that relate to the 2008–2009 financial crisis (solidarity purchasing groups and time banks), and the degrowth movement (transition towns and ecovillages). For political consumerism to be effective, the authors find that interaction between political consumer–oriented social movements and their political, cultural, and institutional environment is critical. For example, an important effect is
Studying Political Consumerism 21 that emerging alternative and grassroots practices explicitly criticize the foundational paradigms of the market and overcome the classic dualism between producers and consumers. Two chapters in this part address the question of how political consumerism affects the corporate world. Luc Fransen’s “Political Consumerism and Corporate Strategy Towards Sustainability Standard-Setting: In or Out of Sync?” surveys political consumerism’s role in ongoing corporate activities to promote private sustainability standards organizations (PSOs). He discusses how political consumers are not the only factor driving corporations into more social and environmental responsibility-taking in the form of sustainability standard-setting in industry sectors. Other important considerations having little to do with political consumer pressure are the government’s role and corporations’ own business strategies. Fransen shows that many PSOs dominating some industrial sectors are developed and run by businesses only. Several PSOs do not offer a consumer label on their products as evidence of their compliance with a sustainability standard. Two factors explain the unimportance of political consumer action: first, the increased engagement of governments and intergovernmental organizations with PSOs; and, second, the self-interest of firms. Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier also addresses the corporate world in her chapter “From Moral Concerns to Market Values: How Political Consumerism Shapes Markets.” Unlike Fransen, whose focus is business strategy, her economic sociological approach considers political consumerism’s impacts on more basic market structures and practices. Her focus is on contentious forms of valuation and how and why they modify the structure of opportunities for market actors, lead some companies to change their practices or products, and influence market competition. She argues that individuals’ engagements in boycotting and buycotting have limited direct effects on fostering corporate or societal change. Instead, such activism can have an indirect effect by producing and circulating symbolic, normative, and material resources for valuation. For her and other authors in this volume, markets can be locations for the emergence of moral economies that challenge existing economic practices. Several Handbook chapters mention the role of government. Erik Hysing’s “Government Engagement With Political Consumerism” reconsiders the conventional theorization of political consumerism as filling governance gaps. Through industry sector examples, he shows how governments help structure, incentivize, facilitate, and legitimize labelling schemes and even sometimes favour one scheme over another (e.g., fishing and forestry). Governments also promote buycotting by integrating labelling schemes into their public procurement policies and practices. This might imply that governments are finding innovative ways of taking more proactive responsibility for globalized production and domestic consumption. However, Hysing emphasizes how governmental involvement in political consumerism can have negative (side-) effects by promoting national protectionism and making it more difficult for small southern farmers who cannot afford to certify their products with voluntary labelling schemes. In sum, governments are intimately intertwined with political consumerism both intentionally and unintentionally.
22 Magnus Boström, Michele Micheletti, and Peter Oosterveer The final chapter by Magnus Boström and Mikael Klintman, “Mass Consumption and Political Consumerism,” tackles the part’s topic differently by addressing the problematic relationship between political consumerism and mass consumption. Here the term “citizen- consumers” and the difference between alterconsumption and anticonsumption are discussed. They relate six factors tied to mass consumption and political consumerism’s effectiveness. Interesting findings include how anticonsumption practices (freegans, dumpster divers, and secondhand shopping) are highly dependent on the mass consumption of others. Even successful political consumerism is dependent on people buying political consumer goods at a large, stable rate. Thus, the mass-consumption context and forces both obstruct and facilitate political consumer practices. In sum, the chapters in this part provide nuances for understanding the effectiveness of political consumerism as a force for societal change. Governments and corporations are crucial in the phenomenon, and political consumer efforts can have intended and unintended, direct and indirect, short-and long-term, as well as unexpected and negative side-effects.
Conclusion Political consumerism has developed in many different directions: geographically, conceptually, methodologically, in multiple sectors, at multiple levels, and involving multiple disciplines. Political consumerism’s diversity and spread may encourage many consumers and activists to use the market as an arena for politics and societal affairs. But its varieties also create challenges for scholars to make sense of the phenomenon. Critical questions arise about its appropriate conceptual framing. The Handbook also offers methodological reflections in studying political consumerism in different countries and sectors, measures to evaluate its effectiveness, and scholarly problems in studying the antidemocratic use of political consumerism. These key topics and others are taken up again in the concluding chapter.
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Pa rt I
H I STOR IC A L ROU T E S OF P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM
Chapter 2
T he Devel opme nt of P olitical C on sume ri sm in India A Historical Perspective Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman
It is now well accepted by scholars that political ideology plays an important role in consumption, which often becomes an arena for expression of political choices and beliefs by consumers (e.g., Crockett & Wallendorf, 2004; Varman & Belk, 2009; Zhao & Belk, 2008). Ranging from apparently rational and high- involvement choices, such as deciding where to live, to mundane behaviours such as household provisioning, consumption is driven by political underpinnings (Crockett & Wallendorf, 2004). Consumers also employ ideology to resist the market and to engage in acts of anticonsumption (e.g., Varman & Belk, 2009). Ideologies such as nationalism and appeals to national identity can considerably influence consumers (see Chapter 31) and turn them into activists against corporations. Moreover, marketeers and advertisers can also employ such ideologies to further their causes and promote their products. Advertisers are adept at co-opting ideology in order to position their products in ways that appeal to consumers (e.g., Zhao & Belk, 2008). While highlighting the role of political ideology, Crockett & Wallendorf (2004) suggest, political ideology might constrain consumer decisions by limiting the choices available to them. In this view, political ideology is not always consciously employed by consumers to make political statements. For example, poor consumers may choose cheaper local products over more expensive foreign products due to a lack of resources and not because of solidarity with local businesses. However, we do not see the politics of consumption even in its unreflexive form as a constraint. Consumption as an everyday activity has the potential to mobilize people and materialize ideologies that challenge dominant interests. The chapter shows how political consumption can be most enabling in shaping social practices that lead to social transformation. The phenomenon of
28 Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman political consumerism details ways in which consumers, citizens, and political activists employ varied strategies to demonstrate political beliefs and bring about political change in the market space (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Further, Stolle and Micheletti (2013) suggest that political consumerism has four manifestations: boycott, buycott, discursive strategies, and lifestyle politics. Boycotting is the rejection of some types or forms of goods to further political causes, whereas buycotting involves following particular guidelines in purchasing and buying labelled goods. Discursive political consumerism uses communicative strategies to highlight injustices to consumers and to convince corporations to change (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008). The fourth form of political consumerism is one that is closely intertwined with consumers’ lives. In lifestyle politics, consumers commit to making choices in daily consumption that conform to their political beliefs and further the causes they believe in (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). This chapter discusses political consumerism in the Indian context and finds that the four forms of political consumerism are prevalent in India, albeit in varying degrees. The discussion particularly draws upon the role of consumption in India’s nationalist struggle against British imperialism to examine the politics in consumption. It further expands the compass of the analysis by examining some of the more recent postcolonial trends in political consumption in the country. This chapter attempts to understand the historical origins of political consumerism in India and link these to its present manifestations. The historical analysis offers a more nuanced understanding of present-day political consumerism in India. The chapter is organized as follows: first, it provides a brief historical background on India’s colonial experience to place the issue of political consumerism in context; and subsequently it delves into the major manifestations of political consumerism and the historical, social, economic, and political forces that impel these manifestations. As scholars have pointed out, political ideology is not static. It constantly morphs in response to actions by the state, consumers, marketeers, political entrepreneurs, and other sociopolitical actors. The chapter also looks at these changes occurring in the arena of political consumption, concluding with a prognosis for the future of political consumerism in India.
An Overview of the Indian Context India is the seventh-largest country in the world. It is also the second most populous with a population of 1.21 billion as per the latest census (Business Standard, 2015a). The Indian economy has been growing in the recent past, at a fairly rapid pace, and the gross domestic product (GDP) growth is projected to be 7.6 percent for the 2016– 2017 financial year (Economic Times, 2016). However, this growth rate is also accompanied by widespread poverty and high levels of inequality in consumption. Estimates on the prevalence of poverty vary due to the differences in measures used, but it is safe to conclude that poverty and its accompanying deprivation are serious concerns for the country (Patnaik, 2007). At the other extreme, recent neoliberal economic policies
Development of Political Consumerism in India 29 have led to mention of a large number of Indian businessmen in the Forbes’ list of the richest people (Blankfeld, 2016). Critics argue that such policies have also contributed to exacerbation of poverty and rampant ecological destruction (e.g., Patnaik, 2007; Shrivastava & Kothari, 2012). The poor have limited access to the basic amenities of life such as food, clothing, and shelter. Research indicates that neoliberal policies have resulted in a decline in per capita consumption of food grains in the country (Patnaik, 2007). In terms of share of overall household consumption, food and beverages (45 percent) and housing (12 percent) are the items on which maximum expenditure is incurred (World Bank, 2017). Moreover, as Chakravarty (2017) points out, nutrition levels are not adequate among large sections of the Indian population. The richest 5 percent of the urban population spend about 3,000 Indian rupees each month per capita on food consumption, which is about nine times higher than that spent by the bottom 5 percent of rural consumers. However, as Chakravarty (2017) suggests, even richer consumers do not consume much of goods such as fresh fruit, indicating that even this segment of consumers cannot be said to be indulging in overconsumption. In addition to economic inequalities and disparities, India has substantial social unevenness based on caste, gender, and religion.
Tracing the Origins of Political Consumerism: A Historical Analysis It is important to have a sense of recent Indian history, and particularly the history of consumption, to understand the prevalence of political consumerism and the trajectories it takes in the contemporary Indian nation-state. Of particular importance is the fact that India is a postcolonial society. The colonial encounter has significantly impacted Indian society and consumption and continues to do so. Scholars such as Partha Chatterjee have lamented the entrapment of the Indian citizen as a perpetual consumer of modernity, which is always produced in the West (Chatterjee, 1997). The attempts by Indians to break out of this impasse led to the past being imagined in ways that challenge Western notions of modernity. Such reimaginations of the past do not necessarily displace Western hegemony but often feed into it as a form of self-orientalism that impels present-day consumer decisions (Mazzarella, 2003; Nandy, 1983). While India was formally subsumed under the British Crown only in 1857, the country encountered colonialism in its early forms many centuries prior to this. We can demarcate the late 15th century up to 1857 as the “early” colonial period (Robins, 2006). The earliest colonizers of this period were the Portuguese. During this period, Indian merchant communities often acted as middlemen between British and Portuguese traders and Indian producers. Importantly, for purposes of this analysis, the manufacturing capabilities of Indian industry started diminishing, leading to widespread deindustrialization (Bagchi, 2006; Habib, 1995; Sreekumar & Varman, 2016).
30 Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman Local producers and sellers faced declining business due to competition from manufactured products imported from England. Moreover, as Bagchi (2006) suggests, Indian manufacturers were at a disadvantage vis-à-vis imports due to the duties imposed by the (colonial) administrators. Partly due to these reasons, by the 1840s, India was transformed from an exporter of handloomed textiles into a producer and exporter of primary goods (Banerjee, 1999). The arrival of the East India Company, and subsequent British control over India, led to wide-ranging political and economic changes. In the domain of consumption, new products entered the Indian market, and a clearly identifiable “Westernization” started occurring in social life and, more markedly, in consumption habits. Some scholars argue that British products, attire, and ways of living became strong symbols of modernity, and Indian goods and lifestyles became characterized as premodern and even primitive (Prakash, 1999). New products such as tea and coffee became entrenched in the Indian consumption world. These products displaced traditional Indian consumption goods such as neeragaram (rice gruel), handloomed cotton cloth, and healthier unhusked rice. Consumption habits changed, leading to myriad anxieties among consumers (see Varman & Belk, 2009; Venkatachalapathy, 2002). As vehicles of a Western and imperial modernity, the new products posed a serious threat to the ostensibly more “authentic” Indian way of life. Interestingly, while these new products disturbed social hierarchies and institutions such as caste, they did not fundamentally alter them. Rather, these new consumption forms got co-opted by existing gendered and caste-based social structures. For example, as Venkatachalapathy (2002) suggests, coffee was a drink that was adopted across caste and class divisions. Nevertheless, it was consumed by pouring into the mouth rather than sipping from the cup, so as to avoid the cup coming into contact with the saliva and consequent caste pollution. Some other scholars have a more nuanced reading of colonialism (Bhabha, 1994; Chatterjee, 1989, 1999b). According to Bhabha, a colonized subject is both similar and the Other. Bhabha (1994) labels this as ambivalence and, in an important departure from Said (1978), argues that the colonized never completely subscribe to the colonizer’s representations. Ambivalence is always a sign of resistance and subversion. In a similar vein, Chatterjee (1999b) argues that, in response to colonialist displacement, the nationalist elite created a separation between material and spiritual domains. While in the material domain of institutions, production, and the state, the colonizer was to be imitated, in the spiritual domain an Indian essence was valorized. According to Chatterjee (1989, p. 624), in the discourse of nationalism the material/spiritual distinction was condensed into an analogous, but ideologically far more powerful, dichotomy: that between the outer and the inner. The material domain, argued nationalist writers, lies outside us—a mere external that influences us, conditions us, and to which we are forced to adjust. But ultimately it is unimportant. The spiritual, which lies within our true self, is genuinely essential. It follows from this that as long as India took care to retain the spiritual distinctiveness of its culture, it could make all the compromises and adjustments necessary to adapt itself to the requirements of a modern material world without losing its true identity. Therefore, while men adopted Western attire to signify modernity, with
Development of Political Consumerism in India 31 the onset of nationalist struggle in the early 20th century, women were expected to wear Indian clothing to protect the traditional core (Ramamurthy, 2008). This also helped to challenge the colonial trope that deemed local products and customs inferior (Kenny, 1995; Sharma, 2006). Therefore, at any point in time colonial experience was marked by domination and resistance. It had its circuits of hegemony and fault lines of subversion. Such a process unfolded despite attempts by the British to discursively suture the setting by laying claim to modernity. In the domain of consumption, such subversion was uneven, with Dalits (or untouchables) not buying into upper-caste nationalist forms of consumption, such as khadi and choosing to adopt Western products as markers of emancipation (see Gupta, 2012). The emerging nationalist consciousness among Indians culminated in the earliest manifestation of nationalism through the establishment of the Indian National Congress in 1885 (Chatterjee, 1999b). With this major political development, important national leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru emerged on the political scene. India’s movement toward political independence from the British Crown started in earnest. The seeds of political consumerism in the colonial period were sown by the massive disruption in social and economic life caused by the highly asymmetrical encounter with the British. With the now emergent forms of nationalism, the resentment against colonization could be channelized and mobilized toward political ends. Political consumerism in the colonial period had arrived on the Indian consumption scape. Subsequent sections of the chapter will describe the earliest forms of this political consumerism and trace the ways in which these forms have morphed over time to culminate in their present-day manifestations.
Gandhi and Early Forms of Political Consumerism Mohandas Gandhi was a major influence in India’s movement for political independence. More importantly, for purposes of this chapter, Gandhi played a key role in Indians’ relationships to capitalism, consumption, and modernity. Civil disobedience was one of Gandhi’s important contributions to the Indian society and polity. Gandhi used objects of consumption for political mobilization. An example of this approach was the Salt March or Dandi March he undertook in March–April 1930 to protest against the British salt tax. According to Gandhi, salt was a necessity for all including the poorest of the poor, and the imposition of a salt tax by the colonial government was highly exploitative. He and his followers undertook a march from Ahmedabad to Dandi to produce salt as an act of defiance. Gandhi’s attitude toward consumption reflected his beliefs about an ethical and humane society. It was also grounded in his ideas about satyagraha (roughly translated as “pursuit of truth”). In this view, self-imposed suffering becomes a means of protest, and Gandhism advocated abstinence from certain
32 Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman types of food, liquor, or other luxuries as necessary for serving others (Hardiman, 2003). Further, Gandhi’s critique of consumerism was rooted in a broader critique of industrial society. Industrial production and the craving for excessive consumption feed off each other and Gandhi was a strong proponent of minimalistic consumption, which alone could break this vicious cycle (see Boström and Klintman, this volume). Here, Gandhi expresses his discomfort with overconsumption: A certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary, but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of help. Therefore the ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare. (Gandhi, 1958, quoted in Chatterjee, 1999a, p. 87)
As a form of lifestyle political consumerism, Gandhi valorized voluntary simplicity. In the rejection of dependence on industrialization and Westernization, he saw true freedom from colonialism. Unlike Gandhi, Nehru felt that industrialization could be socialized and turned to the benefit of society. But for Gandhi, it was impossible to have a benign form of industrialization. The industrial mode of production was inherently evil and would harm society if left unchecked (Chatterjee, 1999a). This translated into an antagonistic attitude toward machinery and a desire to replace modern industrial production with self-sufficient village handicraft. Despite his support for large Indian businesses, Gandhi felt that India had a unique opportunity to abandon the path of industrial development followed by the West, and instead rely on a model that emphasized small-scale communitarian living with a focus on the production of goods only for immediate consumption, beneficial exchange, and reciprocity (Veeravalli, 2014). Although Gandhi firmly believed in capitalist relations of production, the small self- sufficient village was his ideal. This communitarian ideal is a setting where consumers can escape the market and rely on nonmarket exchange. As Kozinets (2002) points out, consumers in contemporary industrial societies often desire to escape the market into a more communitarian setting. Further, such settings encourage interpersonal and even intracommunity gifting (Weinberger & Wallendorf, 2012). Gandhi’s alternative modernity was symbolized by the charkha, or spinning wheel, and khadi, the coarse cotton cloth that was produced by this spinning wheel. Khadi was used as a powerful symbol of indigenous resistance against the British, and it continues to symbolize Gandhism and cottage industries even in the present day. Khadi also emphasized labour, and such labour could be traced to a concrete end-product. Moreover, it promoted a decentralized economy, where artisanal skill was of prime importance (Veeravalli, 2014). However, as Chatterjee (1999a) points out, khadi that was produced in the villages was meant for internal consumption and not for sale. While khadi was a politically potent symbol, and offered a ready means to literally wear nationalism on one’s sleeve, it was economically problematic. The product could not be popularized because of the high amount of labour involved and the simplicity of the technology. Khadi was eventually almost completely abandoned even by the Congress Party (Ramagundam, 2008).
Development of Political Consumerism in India 33 Toward the 1920s, Gandhi launched the Constructive Programme, a project that he held on to until his last days. This programme had three pillars—swadeshi (home- based production), sarvodaya (commitment to public welfare), and aparigraha (nonpossessiveness) (Hardiman, 2003). Of these, the ideology of swadeshi is most important to our analysis, since this ideology continues to be enacted in present- day India, albeit in forms that Gandhi himself did not envision. As Veeravalli (2014) points out, many people perceive swadeshi or indigenous production as a form of Indian ethnocentrism. However, Gandhi’s notion of swadeshi was fundamentally different, and meant that “a man’s first duty is to his neighbor” (Veeravalli, 2014, p. 109). The next part of the chapter will show how this fundamental subversion of the swadeshi ideology informs present-day Indian consumption and the politics surrounding it.
Swadeshi and Political Consumerism The swadeshi movement was launched in Bengal and other parts of India in the early 20th century (Sarkar, 2010). At the level of rhetoric as well as that of action on the ground, the movement sought to persuade consumers to boycott foreign-made cloth, specifically cloth that was made in Manchester and other mill towns of the United Kingdom. The swadeshi movement was an early example of the boycott form of political consumerism. It can be argued that the movement also had elements of buycotting in the form of preference for indigenous cloth. Further, the rhetoric employed in swadeshi employed a form of discursive political consumerism, since it involved creatively using economic and historical facts to portray the British administration as exploitative. For example, Gandhi (2015, p. 75) laments the effect of Manchester on Indian industry in his Collected Works: It is difficult to measure the harm that Manchester has done to us. It is due to Manchester that Indian handicraft has all but disappeared.
Gandhi here is lending voice to the famous “drain thesis” about the British colonization of India. According to this view, British exploitation had led not only to the crippling of Indian industry but also to a large-scale flow of wealth from India to Britain. While India contributed to 22.54 percent of world GDP in 1600, by 1870, its share had dropped to 12.25 percent (Maddison, 2001; Robins, 2006). This considerable drop in India’s contribution is attributed to systematic exploitation by the East India Company and later by the British Crown. There is also a change in pattern of trade during the colonial period, documented by economic historians. Before British colonization, India was an exporter of manufactured goods and an importer of primary goods. This pattern reversed itself after the British established themselves (Chaudhuri, 1982; Dutt, 1992; Raychaudhuri, 1968).
34 Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman The appeal of swadeshi was based on the drain thesis, and it urged consumers to boycott foreign products and use Indian goods. In this view, the best way to counter the drain was to use products made in India, and in the process, contribute to Indian handicraft and industry. Khadi played a key role in this campaign. The coarseness of the fabric was valorized and cast as indicative of simplicity and authenticity. Khadi could also symbolize one’s affiliation by indicating whether the consumer believed in social well-being or personal comfort (Ramagundam, 2004). The wearer of khadi signaled belief in a lifestyle that involved simplicity, reduction of needs, and belief in the self-reliance of the emergent nation. The purchase of khadi did not involve adherence to labelling or other guidelines. However, buycotting of the product was easy for consumers, given its distinctive appearance and availability at designated retail outlets. However, the campaign to achieve sartorial unity across India through khadi was only partially successful. Then, as now, the swadeshi campaign was riven by caste, class, and gender divisions. Due to the immense diversity of the country in terms of caste, community, and language, along with widespread economic and class inequality, the attempt to forge an overarching national identity has always been problematic. Gupta (2012) talks about the divisions in the swadeshi movement and the ways in which the movement played on extant caste, class, and gender hierarchies. Swadeshi clothing fit neatly into a patriarchal discourse, which attempted to control women’s sexuality and valorized traits such as self-denial and purity, simultaneously placing a disproportionate burden on women who had to become the symbols of these virtues (Chatterjee, 1989; Gupta, 2012). The discourse conveniently fed into emerging national anxieties about Western cultural onslaught, specifically manifested in the behaviour of women. The discourse of the “chaste and pure” Indian woman who engaged in thrift, dressed in plain khadi clothes, and carried herself in a “simple” manner was accompanied by a parallel discourse casting the Westernized woman as a “bad housewife” who wasted her husband’s money and overindulged herself by bathing in Pears soap, using sunglasses, and wearing makeup (Gupta, 2012). It is evident that these anxieties are relevant in the present day, with fringe right-wing groups attempting to police women and couples who visit “Westernized” spaces, such as bars and pubs, and celebrate “Western” occasions such as Valentine’s Day. A prominent and widely publicized attack occurred in 2009, when a right wing-group assaulted women and men in a pub in the southern Indian city of Mangalore. The leader of the outfit brazenly claimed to be the “custodian of Indian culture” (Times of India, 2009). However, a section of Indian women launched a campaign centred on resisting such policing by dispatching women’s undergarments to the members of the outfit (Susan, 2009). While the modality of this protest was arguably peculiar, the campaign received huge publicity and resulted in the local government taking action against the attackers. Such violent attacks and countercampaigns reveal the ongoing tensions in the rhetoric surrounding Westernization and cultural pollution in India. Venues such as pubs and discos, and women wearing Western attire, continue to cause cultural anxieties. Women on their part engage in an ongoing resistance to the attempts to control their bodies and sexualities. Interestingly, political parties across
Development of Political Consumerism in India 35 the spectrum, professing different ideologies, are seen to be engaging in such moral policing. For example, several political groups claiming association with the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have attacked pub-going women and couples acting romantically in public. These protesters claim that pubs and shopping malls are similarly destructive of the “true” Indian culture and are allowing young men and women to intermingle with each other. This form of intermingling of women and men is perceived to be violating some of the very foundations of Indian culture. Such inventing of traditions is not merely confined to the BJP but also includes other political parties. Thus, Ashok Gehlot (Daily News & Analysis, 2009), former chief minister of Rajasthan who belongs to the Congress Party, observed: Every street and every city has big liquor shops with big signboards and there are shops close to schools and religious places. The previous BJP government had pushed youth towards pub culture and boys and girls roaming round in malls holding hands. I want to end this culture.
It is evident from the above rendition of Indian culture that malls have become arenas that are allowing young men and women to meet each other, and their public show of physical intimacy is considered particularly un-Indian. This conservative interpretation of the Indian culture is also similar to anticolonial discourses in the freedom struggle in which Indianness was essentialized in a specific Hindu past (see Panikkar, 2006). Thus, as a savior, Gehlot has taken it upon himself to end the foreign cultural contamination by protesting against shopping malls. It is further evident from the above narrative that Gehlot blames the BJP for contaminating Indian culture by facilitating the proliferation of shopping malls. This discourse of shopping malls hints at an ironical convergence in Indian polity in which both right and centre-left parties ambivalently facilitate creation of shopping malls and also revile them as arenas of cultural imperialism (Varman & Belk, 2012). Shopping malls, with their large retail outlets prominently featuring brands of Western origin, serve as very visible symbols of the West. Moreover, the presence of women and couples in such malls blurs the sacrosanct inner-outer distinction that ostensibly preserves the “true” Indian culture (Chatterjee, 1989). Hence, while governments in power, with an eye on GDP growth, encourage the proliferation of malls, party workers and other footsoldiers engage in protests on the ground in attempts to maintain cultural purity. It has to be clarified, however, that the attempted cultural policing is an almost complete inversion of Gandhian swadeshi, which was primarily directed at an occupying foreign power and emphasized nonviolence and absence of coercion (Hardiman, 2003). The swadeshi campaign also had a religious fault line. Gandhi had shrewdly imparted a quasi-religious aura to the campaign by emphasizing self-suffering and borrowing from Hindu concepts such as brahmacharya (restraining the senses). This religious aura helped the movement gain mass support and enabled its followers to uncomplainingly bear with inconveniences and hardships that mass struggle inevitably entailed. It also helped to unify a diverse and divided society such as India against British imperialism
36 Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman (Nandy, 1983). However, as Gupta (2012) points out, the imagined and self-sufficient nation was predominantly upper-caste and Hindu. Hindu nationalists often used the swadeshi campaign as a vehicle to promote resentment against Muslims and encourage economic boycott of that community. Gupta (2012) highlights the usage of the campaign to encourage the boycott of Muslim manihars (bangle makers). As Muslims, Dalits too could not be co-opted into the campaign. For these erstwhile outcastes of Indian society, Western attire and education provided a welcome escape from the ignominy of their past. As Gupta (2012) points out, it is no coincidence that Dalit icon B. R. Ambedkar was always conspicuously dressed in a Western suit, whereas Gandhi had to struggle to de- Westernize himself. In a more recent development, the 2014 general elections in India elected a government with strong majoritarian inclinations and an ideology that emphasizes a homogeneous nation-state. This has been accompanied by a renewed sense of cultural nationalism, with little patience for alternative discourses or dealing with the complexities of a heterogeneous nation. The new middle class has become increasingly vocal. While estimates of the size of this middle class can at best be a guess, the National Council for Applied Economic Research estimates this number to be 150 million (NCAER, 2014). It would be problematic and naïve to characterize this class as homogeneous. However, researchers such as Kaur (2014) suggest that the emergent Indian middle class is marked by political, economic, and social conservatism. In such a milieu, issues like economic and military security take precedence over social justice or inequality. There is little tolerance for nuanced views or dissent. Platforms such as social media have exacerbated the problem and provided dissenters and even hate-mongers of all hues with a forum to publicize their views. This vocal section of India’s population has read the ideology of swadeshi as a form of belligerent and muscular nationalism. The religious fault line in the swadeshi ideology comes to the fore in prominent, albeit regressive forms of political consumerism. Boycott has been employed as part of this political consumerism, sometimes against the country’s own citizens. An example of this is the controversy over Aamir Khan and Snapdeal. Snapdeal is a major player in the Indian e-commerce space. The site claims to be India’s largest online marketplace, with over 35 million products across 800-plus categories (www.snapdeal.com). The company had signed up the popular Bollywood actor Aamir Khan to endorse its brand (“Bollywood” refers to the Hindi movie industry, based in Mumbai). In 2015, Khan, in a public gathering, voiced his fears over what he perceived as the prevalence of antiminority sentiments in India. Reacting to this statement, large numbers of consumers uninstalled the Snapdeal app from their smart phones (Reddy, 2015). The hash tag #Appwapsi (literally meaning “return the app”) on Twitter was created by consumers to aid in the boycott of Snapdeal (Hindustan Times, 2015; Twitter.com). The boycott appears to have worked, with Snapdeal releasing an official statement distancing itself from Khan and his comments (Reddy, 2015). Further, in 2016 the company did not renew its endorsement contract with Khan (Hindustan Times, 2016). The Snapdeal controversy reveals a new form of nationalism and new means of boycotting that spread through the relative anonymity provided by social media such as Twitter and Facebook.
Development of Political Consumerism in India 37 Boycotts based on nationalism are sometimes directed against agents outside the country. Pakistan and China are popularly perceived by consumers to be nation-states hostile to India, and recent boycott attempts have been made against these countries or people belonging to them. The 2016 Hindi movie Ae Dil Hai Mushkil starred Pakistani actors Fawad Khan and Imran Abbas in relatively minor roles. A few right-wing political parties threatened to vandalize theatres screening the movie and urged a public boycott of the movie, since it starred actors from a country perceived to be hostile to India (Livemint, 2016, Pathak, 2016). However, unlike the Snapdeal issue, consumer participation in the cause appears to have been limited. Another example for boycotting based on nationalist sentiments is the call by the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), an Indian nonprofit organization, to boycott Chinese goods. The campaign was launched in 2015, and the spokesperson of the SJM said that the dumping of products by China, especially during the Diwali festival, had affected Indian artisans and resulted in a loss of jobs (Business Standard, 2015b). This campaign again appears to have been limited in its reach, though some reports claim that sales of Chinese lamps and decorative items fell (Dattagupta, 2016). China is India’s largest trade partner, with an estimated $72 billion of trade occurring between the countries (Sachitanand & Goyal, 2016). Moreover, Chinese goods, given their enormous cost advantage and sheer ubiquity, are extremely difficult to avoid. Given these factors, it is not surprising that the call to boycott Chinese goods has met with limited success. India started pursuing a neoliberal economic agenda from the 1990s onwards, with emphases on privatization, organized businesses, and a reduction of the role of the state in providing public utilities. The Gandhian idea of swadeshi cannot be fitted easily into such an economic milieu, and actors employing swadeshi have modified the rhetoric surrounding it to suit the new economic realities. Let us examine the ways in which swadeshi has morphed with reference to its prime symbol—khadi. The Khadi Village Industries Commission (KVIC) was established in 1957 to produce and sell khadi. The organization comes under the purview of the Ministry of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises of the Government of India. As our earlier review suggested, khadi was celebrated for its coarseness and simplicity, and early nationalists pitted it against the more fashionable and stylish cloth imported from England (Gupta, 2012). However, this is no longer a tenable appeal, and the KVIC now attempts to position khadi as fashionable. The CEO of KVIC in a recent interview stated that khadi is now a “fashion statement” (Venkatesh, 2015). The organization is actively trying to sell khadi to younger consumers. In a recent public appearance, the prime minister of the country urged consumers to purchase khadi, suggesting that the new khadi was ready to compete with corporate products, and implicitly suggesting that the perceived lack of style and coarseness of khadi was a thing of the past. The minister even evoked the catch phrase “Khadi for fashion,” contrasting it with the pre-Independence clarion call of “Khadi for nation.” This rhetoric explicitly attempts to position khadi as an alternative fashion, which also has within it an air of national identity and patriotism. The earlier themes of sacrifice and simplicity have been jettisoned for a new rhetoric that lends itself better to the present consumer culture and neoliberalism.
38 Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman With regard to the “new swadeshi,” the government of India campaign named “Make in India” is of particular interest. The Make in India website lists the campaign as a major national initiative for investment, innovation, skill development, and the development of manufacturing infrastructure (http://www.makeinindia.com/ home). The symbol of the campaign is the outline of a lion, with its body filled with machinery such as cogs and wheels. The Make in India lion provides an interesting contrast with Gandhian and pre-Independence notions of swadeshi. It represents in many ways an almost complete departure from the Gandhian notion of simple instruments and self-sufficient village units, and explicitly evokes heavy industry and multinational capital. The representation of cogs and wheels offers a marked contrast to Gandhi’s spinning wheel, with its emphasis on individual labour and simplicity. The aggressive posture of the lion indicates a resurgent nation ready to compete with other countries for investment and production. Corporations and marketeers have been quick to latch on to the Make in India theme. For example, a recent ad for BMW proclaims “BMW. Proud to Make in India.” While these initiatives are not consumer-driven, they reveal the changing economic landscape under neoliberalism and the attempts by elected governments as well as corporations to market themselves to citizens and consumers in ways that suit this environment. We see that the meanings of swadeshi have changed over the years, and as Mazzarella (2003, p. 11) points out, these meanings have been “stretched to new levels of flexibility.” Such a tendency can be particularly seen in recent debates about consumption of food, which is discussed in the next section as an illustrative example of political consumerism.
Food and Political Consumerism in India Food is consumed by humans for nourishment as well as pleasure. Food consumption also connotes the social capital and status of the consumer. Food can be consumed alone or in the company of others. Further, the choice of what food to consume is dictated by environment, upbringing, culture, marketer activity, and personal preferences. Consumers have an intimate relationship with food since it is ingested into the body. At the same time, food consumption often takes place in a social milieu. Given these complexities surrounding food and its consumption, it has been employed often by political actors and consumers as a marker of hierarchy, identity, and difference. The prevalence of vegetarianism is an important factor to be kept in mind when analysing the relationship between food consumption, political affiliation, and identity in India. Religious, caste, and even economic differences among consumers are often associated with the degree to which they practice vegetarianism. Importantly, Indian vegetarianism is not to be confused with veganism as practiced in the West. Vegetarian Indian diets not only accept but encourage the use of a variety of dairy products such as milk, butter, ghee (clarified butter), and curd. It is difficult to estimate the prevalence of vegetarianism in a country the size of India. For our purposes, the Hindu-CNN-IBN
Development of Political Consumerism in India 39 survey pegs the number at 31 percent of the population, with a higher prevalence of vegetarianism among the Brahmin caste and in northern India as compared to southern India (Yadav & Kumar, 2006). These figures reveal a clear caste and even geographical pattern in the prevalence of vegetarianism. The practice of vegetarianism can be classified as a form of lifestyle politics. The vegetarian lifestyle in India is primarily practiced by upper-caste Hindus and is often accompanied by religious, social, and economic conservatism. Importantly, unlike in the West, in India such a lifestyle does not connote concern for animals or the environment. Rather, Indian vegetarianism is primarily motivated by religious and caste beliefs. However, as suggested in the following discussion, such beliefs have been employed by political actors to further their own causes. Food politics in India often took the form of consumer concerns about the influence of various types of food on temperament and masculinity. Ancient Indian texts such as the Bhagavad Gita classified food into sattvic and tamasic forms. According to this classification, tamasic foods are cold and stale, producing sloth, while sattvic foods are nutritive, savory, and produce calm (Achaya, 1994; Varman, 2016). In this classification, vegetarian foods are often sattvic, while meats, especially meats such as beef and pork, are considered highly tamasic. This classification is often used by organizations that propound yoga and Ayurveda, such as Art of Living (e.g., https://www.artofliving.org /yoga/yoga-and-food/types-food). This discussion is not concerned with the merits of the classification here. Rather, the point is that such a classification lends itself easily to categorizing the people who consume different types of foods. Colonialism resulted in new anxieties among the middle classes, which gave rise to new tropes around food consumption. It was in Bengal that the East India Company initially entrenched itself. A newly educated middle class emerged here, torn between modernity and tradition. The colonial project resulted in multiple anxieties centred on masculinity and the body. The relative absence of meat in the Indian diet was noted by early British writers, and such reports attributed the physical weakness of Indians to this absence of meat. This resulted in a clandestine desire to consume meat among the Indian middle classes, for many of whom meat was religiously proscribed. The 19th-century activist Swami Vivekananda urged Hindus to consume meat so that they could build bodies strong enough to resist the British (Das, 2015). The desire for physical strength was so intense that even Gandhi in his childhood experimented with meat consumption, only to abandon it later and advocate a vegetarian diet (Gandhi, 2013). In order to counter the discourse surrounding meat eating and strength, the colonial Indian middle class started constructing an imagined past, unsullied by industrialization and contact with the British. In this invented past, villages teemed with healthy people, food was plentiful and nutritious, there were no diseases, and even women were strong enough to chase away bandits (Chatterjee, 1997). A colonial-era Bengali poem extols the virtues of tradition and a meatless diet: You fancy that non-vegetarian races are strong. The Aryans who once ruled the world, Never had fowl curry. (quoted in Ray, 2013, p. 403)
40 Hari Sreekumar and Rohit Varman As revealed in this short poem, the Hindu upper castes of colonial India evoked tradition to justify their vegetarian diet. In a discourse employed to offset perceived British superiority, these elites categorized meat eating as barbaric and blamed such a diet for the cruelty of the British (Ray, 2013). While meat itself was problematic, the most visceral hatred was reserved for beef, which was considered an alien food, and moreover was consumed by Dalits and Muslims (Jha, 2015; Manoharan & Varman, 2018; Ray, 2013). Beef and its consumption became a means of differentiation among caste Hindus, Muslims, and Dalits. Beef consumption was blamed for the shortage of cows, since the Englishmen and Muslims “had eaten all the cows” (Chatterjee, 1997, p. 8). Ambedkar (2009) attributes untouchability to consumption of beef. Accordingly, in a more recent development in Indian dietary habits, upper castes ostracized Dalits, who were consumers of beef. Colonial-era anxieties are enacted in the political sphere of present-day India in an almost unchanged fashion. While cow slaughter and beef consumption have been problematic issues in India, of late, some of the state governments of the country have started legislating against beef, banning not only its production but even its consumption (e.g., Punwani, 2015). While writers and the intelligentsia have protested against such a ban (e.g., Sukumar, 2015), it is evident that the governments which have imposed such bans have done so for sound electoral reasons, and they possibly have the support of a large section of caste Hindu consumers. The cow has a sacred status in Hinduism, and while scriptural support for this is rather scant (see Jha, 2002), the animal continues to be revered by a large section of consumers. Banning beef thus makes a lot of political sense. To resist such bans, student organizations and Dalits have organized “beef festivals,” where beef is conspicuously consumed (Das, 2015; Economic and Political Weekly, 2012). Dalit student organizations have also demanded that beef be included on food menus in colleges, and they have attempted to forge an alliance with Muslims on the basis of shared consumption of the food and collective marginalization (Das, 2015). Dalit attempts at gaining autonomy in food consumption, and removal of the food stigmas attached to them, have been ongoing since the pre-Independence period (see Ambedkar, 2009). This movement is countered by an urge among ascendant Dalits to emulate the food habits of upper-caste Hindus (see Das, 2015). Such emulation or Sanskritization results in Dalit identities becoming subsumed under those of mainstream Hindus and the elision of discrimination.
In Conclusion This chapter has provided an overview of recent political consumerism in India by tracing its colonial origins and highlighting its present-day manifestations. While examining political consumerism in India, one must keep in mind the relatively high levels of material deprivation and poverty in the country. Arguably, the consumption space in
Development of Political Consumerism in India 41 India has not yet attained the scale and diversity seen in the West. At the risk of oversimplification, the discussion has suggested that the majority of Indian consumers view increased consumption as a positive influence and actively desire such consumption. Moreover, political consumerism in India has strong roots in the country’s colonial past, and in certain quarters it is closely intertwined with upper-caste Hindu beliefs. The discussion has highlighted acts of boycott, buycott, and discursive strategies employed in contemporary India, primarily motivated by nationalistic aspirations. Given the complexities of India’s colonial history, and the heterogeneity and sheer size of the country, political consumerism in India follows its own trajectory that differs from Western forms of political consumerism. There are several ways in which political consumerism needs to expand to include some pressing socioeconomic issues. There have been protests against multinational companies such as Coca-Cola (see Varman & Al-Amoudi, 2016; Varman & Belk, 2009). The soft drink manufacturers Coca-Cola and Pepsi have been the targets of boycotts in some parts of the country, such as the southern Indian state of Tamilnadu, where retailers, traders, and a section of consumers called for a boycott of the companies for allegedly exploiting the scarce water resources in the region (Narasimhan, 2017). However, such protests have by and large remained marginal. Political consumerism in India is yet to take cognizance of pressing issues such as environmental degradation, corporate misdemeanours, or workers’ rights. The Indian economy is growing at a rapid pace, and it is likely that the global footprint of the country will become substantial in the near future. As India moves toward greater economic growth, the hope is that there will be an emergence of new forms of political consumerism that emphasize equality and emancipation, address ecological degradation, and support the causes of the marginalized.
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Chapter 3
P olitical C onsume ri sm i n the Sou th Afri c a n a nd B ritish Anti-A pa rt h e i d Movem e nts The Historical Role of Consumer Boycott Campaigns Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager
South Africa has a complex history that can evoke both sadness and inspiration to those who recall or study its recent past. The modern history of this nation is still largely defined by the rise of the apartheid state and the legacy of the opposition movements that worked to achieve its eventual downfall. In their struggle against white minority rule in South Africa, both local and international opposition movements incorporated political consumerism into their strategies to undermine the apartheid state. This was enabled through the use of consumer boycott campaigns that had the dual purpose of placing economic pressure on South Africa as well as creating solidarity movements that could unite people from various backgrounds and political orientations to support the common cause of ending apartheid. During the apartheid era in South Africa, consumer boycott campaigns were also used by disenfranchised black South Africans as a means of voicing their opposition to the white minority government. Although these boycotts were supported by national resistance movements, they were mostly organised by local community leaders and black civil society groups. These boycotts not only focused on consumer products sold within white-owned retailers and shops but also targeted various industries and sectors—such as transport, housing, and agriculture—in which black labourers were mistreated or people of colour were discriminated against. However, following the Sharpeville massacre in March 1960 and the brutal repression of internal opposition movements, there was a shift in strategy in which armed
48 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager resistance, strikes, and mass protest began to play a more prominent role in the local struggle against apartheid. As the apartheid government began to suppress local resistance movements in the 1960s, the call for boycotts against apartheid was taken up internationally. This chapter will specifically focus on the role of the British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) in the establishment of international boycotts against South Africa. There are several reasons why this particular movement provides a suitable case study for this chapter. Of all the nations where anti-apartheid movements were established, Britain was the country that had the closest ties with South Africa. Its colonial presence stretches back to 1795, when it first annexed the Cape Province and then subjugated the rest of the region, eventually forming the Union of South Africa in 1910. Through this union Britain assisted in the establishment of a legal framework that then made South Africa an independent dominion of the British Commonwealth (Bauer & Taylor, 2005). Apart from these historical and political ties, Britain was also one of South Africa’s largest trading partners. By 1959, Britain supplied over 30 percent of the country’s imports and received nearly 28 percent of its exports (Gurney, 2008). The close ties between these two countries also contributed to making Britain a base from which many South African exiled activists launched their international resistance campaigns against the apartheid state (Ndlovu, 2004). It was also in Britain that South African exiles assisted in the establishment of a consumer boycott campaign as a means of expanding their opposition movement to the outside world. The organising committee of this campaign eventually evolved into the British AAM, which targeted a large variety of South African export products such as fruit, wine, and textiles. This movement also established disinvestment campaigns to compel international companies to cease their operations in South Africa and further expanded the boycott tactic to also include sports and cultural boycotts. Expanding on this narrative, the chapter will be structured into six sections. The first two sections will discuss the rise of consumer boycott campaigns in apartheid South Africa and how one of these campaigns eventually spread to London and assisted in the creation of the AAM. The following two sections will then discuss how violent state suppression in South Africa resulted in the rise of other means of local protest and led the AAM to expand their use of the boycott tactic. The final two sections will then focus on the resurgence of local resistance in South Africa and how both local and international consumer boycott campaigns assisted in the fall of apartheid. However, before commencing with this chapter, it should be noted that in the decades-long struggle against apartheid, there were a multitude of groups and individuals who played a key role in the establishment of consumer boycott campaigns in South Africa and Britain, as well as many more who supported similar campaigns in other parts of the world. Unfortunately, given the limited size and scope of this chapter, only a very brief history of the South African and British consumer boycott movements could be accommodated.
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 49
The History of Consumer Boycotts in Apartheid South Africa Apartheid was a system of racial segregation in South Africa in which the legal rights of the black majority were restricted and white minority rule was maintained. Although racist and discriminatory laws existed since colonial times, apartheid became an official government policy after the National Party took power in the 1948 general election. Following their victory, the new government enacted legislation that divided the South African population into four racial groups. The aim of this legislation was to increase government control over nonwhites, who constituted 80 percent of the country’s population (Van der Westhuizen, 2007). In what has become known as “Grand Apartheid,” the national borders of South Africa were redrawn. Numerous scattered areas were designated as African “homelands” where black South Africans were expected to form self-governing states—outside of which they were considered migratory workers with no political or citizenship rights. Essentially these homelands acted as labour reserves for “white South Africa” that still retained 87 percent of the land and included all the country’s major cities, harbours, mines, and transportation networks (Magubane, 2004). Beyond the borders of these reserves, the movements of black people were highly regulated. They were denied access to skilled occupations and higher education, which forced them to accept the worst-paid positions in urban industrial, municipal, and domestic employment (Lodge, 1983). The laws that governed the mass segregation of races were coupled with a policy that became known as “Petty Apartheid,” which aimed to fully segregate the country along racial lines by banning interracial marriage and establishing separate amenities such as whites-only beaches, benches, and post office queues. In conclusion, apartheid could be seen as a system that aimed to exploit African labour whilst denying Africans basic rights as citizens and ensuring they remained subservient to the white population. It is not surprising that black South Africans began to retaliate against this system. Although resistance by South Africa’s indigenous population against the previous Dutch and British colonial governments stretched back to the 17th century, the creation of an organised African political resistance movement was enabled in January 1912 through the creation of the African National Congress (ANC). Initially, the ANC sought inclusion within the existing political framework, petitioning the white minority government to implement policies that could further the rights of African citizens (Bauer & Taylor, 2005). However, following the election victory of the National Party in 1948, the ANC retaliated by adopting what they called a Revised Programme of Action through which they mobilised the African population and applied more assertive tactics such as boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience campaigns (Magubane, 2004). In developing this
50 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager new strategy, the ANC also studied the methods adopted by the Indian independence movement. According to Magubane et al. (2004), the ANC’s new approach was greatly influenced by the anticolonial struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, which also supported nonviolent resistance and made extensive use of boycott campaigns to undermine British rule in India. Apart from adopting these new tactics, the ANC also expanded their support base by assisting in the formation of the multiracial Congress Alliance, whose joint membership included all the ethnic groups of South Africa and which continued to support the call for consumer boycott campaigns. As will be discussed in the following section, the first of these campaigns was not initiated through a predefined strategy by the Congress Movement but evolved spontaneously as black communities began to realise that their combined purchasing power gave them a voice that the government could not ignore. Prior to the Congress Movement’s adoption of consumer boycott campaigns as a formal strategy, black South Africans already made extensive use of boycotts as a means of political expression. These boycotts did not result from nationally coordinated campaigns but rather from informal protests led by local communities. It was specifically the emergence of “bus boycotts,” launched against public and private transport companies, that created more awareness of the boycott tactic as a method of resistance. These local bus boycotts first arose in the mid-1940s and eventually grew into substantial boycott movements by the late 1950s. As will be discussed in the next section, it was one of these campaigns that eventually convinced the Congress Movement of the potential of expanding consumer boycotts against the apartheid state. In January 1957, one of the most successful and highly publicised bus boycotts was launched against the Public Utility Transport Company, which also serviced a black township, Alexandra, located 15 kilometres (km) outside of Johannesburg. According to Lodge (1983), bus boycotts in South Africa were a direct result of the harsh economic conditions that existed in urban townships such as Alexandra. In Johannesburg alone, nearly 80 percent of black families had incomes below the level needed for meeting their basic subsistence needs. These conditions worsened as a result of apartheid urban planning, which ensured that black townships were far removed from city centres. This made transport a major budget item for most black families. Within the context of these socioeconomic circumstances, the Alexandra boycott was launched in response to a 25 percent bus fare increase, which would have become an intolerable financial burden on an already impoverished community. In a mass meeting on January 6, 1957, Alexandra residents resolved to boycott the buses until fares were restored to their original level. The next day buses ran virtually empty as 15,000 people walked the 30 km return trip from Alexandra to Johannesburg. This required waking at three in the morning and arriving home after nine in the evening—a routine that was repeated every weekday for the next three months. During this boycott, each day presented a visually dramatic scene where thousands of people formed a steady procession and marched through several kilometres of white residential areas, singing songs and shouting “Asinimali” (we have no money) and
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 51 “Azikwelwa” (we will not ride). The black people of Alexandra now became visible to the rest of South Africa as the media gave notable coverage of the event. When similar protests began to spread to other areas in South Africa, the government viewed the Alexandra boycott as a major threat and mobilised the police to harass the community and suppress the boycott. The police stopped private taxis and vehicles carrying those boycotters who could afford alternative transport and detained more than 500 people on minor traffic infringements. They continued their harassment within Alexandra itself, raiding the township twice and detaining more than 14,000 people under some pretext, from defaulting on tax payments to illegal residence. These police interventions did not succeed in quelling resistance, and residents continued to support the boycott. Eventually, it was the private sector who interceded after companies complained of lowered productivity due to the physical exhaustion of their workforce. The Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce then devised an agreement by which it would subsidize fares for two months, after which the government would pass legislation that forced employers to pay a transport levy for their workers. The success of this campaign alerted the Congress Movement to the potential of expanding consumer boycotts into national campaigns, capable of exerting greater pressure on the white business community. In an ANC conference held in May 1959, the idea was promoted to organise a nationwide boycott against what they termed “nationalist goods” produced by companies known to support the incumbent National Party government (ANC National Anti-Pass Planning Council, 1959). While the planning phase for this new campaign was initiated at the conference, the ANC also used this meeting to call for an immediate consumer boycott campaign. This campaign aimed to confront the government’s use of forced labour and the exploitation of black farm workers. The “potato boycott,” as it would later become known, proved to be one of the most effective consumer boycott campaigns launched during the apartheid era. The boycott was initiated in response to what became known as the government’s “nine pennies a day scheme,” which aimed to increase the supply of farm workers in South Africa’s less-populated farming regions (Muller, 2010). Under this scheme, unemployed black men living in urban areas were arrested, coerced to sign three-month labour contracts, and then forced to work on white-owned farms—many of which were situated in the Eastern Transvaal where most of South Africa’s potato crop was grown. Living in squalid conditions and following months of hard labour, these men would then be released and paid the meagre amount of nine pennies for each day worked. When the full extent of this programme was exposed by the liberal press, the ANC decided to intervene and called on the country’s black population to boycott the sale of potatoes. The boycott gained momentum in Johannesburg after several protests were organised at markets throughout the city. During the next three months, thousands of shoppers refused to buy potatoes or potato chips, eventually leading to an 80 percent decline in the sale of potato chips at food outlets serving the city’s industrial workers. The boycott soon presented a crisis to the Potato Board of South Africa. When major townships in Johannesburg and Pretoria also refused to accept their produce,
52 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager the board tried to boost sales through a “buy-one-get-one-free” campaign. When this failed, the board instituted an embargo and advised farmers not to send their produce to the market. In what could be seen as a last desperate attempt to rid themselves of this surplus produce, the board eventually supported a proposal of selling potatoes as cattle feed. The government responded to these protests by amending the legislative framework of their forced-labour scheme. Regardless of these changes, the use of convict labour still continued in various parts of the country. The ANC realised however that the potato boycott could not go on indefinitely, as they knew that farmers would eventually reduce the production of potatoes and simply switch to growing export crops. Nevertheless, the success of this particular boycott campaign now motivated the Congress Movement to continue with their plans of boycotting “nationalist goods” and also moving their campaign beyond the shores of South Africa.
The Call for an International Anti-Apartheid Boycott Since its founding in 1954, the Congress Movement continuously assessed the potential for gaining political support from the outside world. By the end of the 1950s, the movement’s leaders had determined that the apartheid system might eventually collapse through the combined pressure of an organized movement within South Africa and an outside world that was shifting in favour of African self-determination (Gurney, 2000). The plan was to continue with a local programme of action, which included tactics such as boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience campaigns, while also supporting international movements to isolate white South Africa from the rest of the world. This included assisting those movements in establishing international consumer boycott campaigns against the export of South African fruit, wine, and other consumer goods. When the ANC proposed a consumer boycott during their April 1959 meeting, targeting those companies that openly supported the National Party, activists also saw this as an opportunity to extend the campaign into the international arena. This shift in thinking is evident in the meeting’s report, which concluded that “when our local purchasing power is combined with that of sympathetic organizations overseas, we wield a devastating weapon” (ANC Anti-Pass Council Report, 1959). This call was heard by individuals and organizations from across the globe. In the ensuing four decades, the internal struggle against apartheid was supported by a growing international solidarity movement that used the boycott as a means to isolate white South Africa from the outside world. Even though they did not share the experience of living under apartheid, international activists showed extraordinary commitment to help end the injustice caused by this system. By the time South Africa gained democracy, a transnational anti-apartheid network had been established that connected
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 53 thousands of groups and organizations in more than 100 countries, making it one of the most influential social movements of the postwar era (Thörn, 2006). Because of the close ties between Britain and South Africa, London in particular became a crucial node in the transnational anti-apartheid network. As will be discussed in the following section, it was from London that the first consumer boycott against South Africa was launched, and it was from this particular action that the British Anti- Apartheid Movement was born. However, it should be noted that British anticolonial movements had already begun to form in the early 20th century, eventually leading to a network of organizations across the political spectrum that included the Committee of African Organisations (CAO), Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF), Christian Action, and several others. Although these groups were always heavily opposed to South Africa’s white minority government, their protests escalated after 1948 when the National Party won the election and began to implement its apartheid policy (Gurney, 2008). Many of these protests were led by prominent churchmen such as John Collins, Michael Scott, and Trevor Huddleston, who first gave rise to the idea of an international boycott campaign against South Africa as far back as 1954. Although the response to these initial appeals led to limited material success by the late 1950s, they did assist in establishing the ideological groundwork for the coming boycott movement in Britain (Skinner, 2009). A possible reason for why the initial response to these calls was fairly limited at the time is the fact that there wasn’t a continuous tradition of consumer boycotts in Britain. Although boycotts were launched by abolitionist leaders against slave products in the early 19th century, this wasn’t emulated by other prominent campaigns in the years to follow (Gurney, 2000). According to Gurney (2008), the boycott campaign in Britain only gained momentum after exiled members of the Congress Movement began to arrive in Britain, bringing with them an extraordinary commitment to further their cause outside South Africa. Since the beginning of the 1950s individual South African anti-apartheid activists began to arrive in Britain as exiled members of the Congress Movement. These expatriates then began to internationalize the 1959 boycott campaign that was then being launched in South Africa (Gurney, 2008). To further their agenda, the South Africans turned to their fellow exiles in the CAO, who provided space in their London offices. In June 1959, after obtaining approval from the Congress Movement, the South Africans established a Boycott Sub-Committee within the CAO. In that same month the committee held a public meeting in London, notifying their intent to launch a British consumer boycott campaign against the sale of South African fruit and other imports (AAM Executive Committee Report, 1961). Since the initiation of the boycott committee, the South Africans understood that for such a campaign to be effective they must establish a British base. For this reason, the committee members had the vision to create an autonomous and democratically run British movement, which had at its heart a close relationship with the Congress Movement (Gurney, 2000). To support this vision, they partnered with Christian Action, who agreed to provide financial and administrative support. The committee
54 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager then set out to establish a nonpartisan movement that could appeal to people of any or no political affiliation to stand united in their protest against apartheid. To help achieve this goal, the committee called for a conference that aimed to attract a wide range of organisations and sponsors. Letters were sent to trade unions, religious organisations, co-operative societies, civil society groups, and politicians representing all of the country’s major political parties (Gurney, 2008). The success of this outreach was evident when, on January 17, 1960, more than 250 representatives from 168 organizations attended the conference in London. During the meeting, delegates were asked to also establish local boycott committees that could mobilise their communities and picket major shopping areas. The movement grew rapidly, and in the ensuing four weeks 160 local committees were established (Gurney, 2000). With the boycott movement gaining momentum, the first campaign was now scheduled to take place in the month of March 1960, when fruit imports from South Africa were set to arrive. To ensure that the British public was made aware of the approaching boycott campaign, the committee published its own newspaper. In February 1960, the first issue of Boycott News was released in Britain. The front-page article, with the headline “A Direct Appeal from South Africa,” cited leaders of the Congress Movement calling on the British public to support the approaching boycott campaign (Boycott News Issue 1, 1960). To maximise its appeal, the organisers stressed that the campaign was centred on a moral issue and that supporting the boycott could provide individuals with a way of showing their personal repugnance for apartheid (Gurney, 2008). However, the committee also made it clear that, although the campaign could be considered a “single issue movement,” there were multiple ways for individuals to become involved. In the article with the largest headline, titled “What You Can Do to Help the Boycott,” several recommendations were given to readers. These included raising awareness by discussing the boycott at local clubs or member organizations, convincing local shopkeepers to support the boycott, distributing flyers to friends and neighbours, organizing community meetings, and protesting to local chambers of commerce and co-operative societies (Boycott News Issue 1, 1960). Following these instructions essentially meant that participation in the movement also took on the form of “lifestyle politics,” as undertaking these tasks meant that boycotters were starting to integrate political action in their everyday lives (Thörn, 2006). As lifestyle politics can include both personal lifestyle choices based on political or ethical considerations as well as mobilizing fellow citizens to support similar choices (De Moor, 2014), these instructions by the AAM appeared to facilitate the creation of a participative form of lifestyle politics that required more from their followers than simply changing their own consumer behaviour. Further to the introduction of lifestyle politics, this article by the AAM also appear to support another form of activism known as “discursive political consumerism,” which is defined as the “expression of opinions about corporate policy and practice in communicative efforts directed at business, the public at large, family and friends, and various political institutions” (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, p. 41). Although not implicitly part of its
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 55 strategy, the AAM’s support in establishing lifestyle politics and discursive political consumerism amongst its members helped to ensure that the news of the boycott reached a much wider audience. Within two weeks of publication, the boycott committee was informed that sales of Boycott News had reached 100,000 and that over 1.2 million leaflets had been circulated (Gurney, 2000). On February 28 the boycott month was launched with a rally in Trafalgar Square, where 15,000 people gathered to hear speeches from prominent politicians and movement leaders. The boycott received widespread media coverage during most of the boycott month, making apartheid a political issue that was now discussed not only amongst members of the public but also among prominent politicians. Although the Conservative prime minister, Harold MacMillan, denounced the boycott in his famous “Winds of Change” speech, the Labor Party fully endorsed and supported the campaign (Gurney, 2008). Apart from its political successes, the boycott’s economic impact was also evident. Nineteen co-operative societies removed South African products from their shelves and twenty-two local government councils refused to purchase South African goods (Gurney, 2008). To counter a drop in sales, many shopkeepers began to hide the country of origin label on South African products or to sell them at significantly reduced prices (Boycott News Issue 3, 1960). All these factors combined led to a two-million-pound contraction in trade and falling prices for South African produce (Lodge, 2011). Although these successes were noteworthy, the campaign committee was also aware that the boycott would not inflict serious harm to the South African economy. Rather, the boycott leaders saw the campaign as a means to raise people’s awareness of apartheid and give them a way of taking personal action against it (Gurney, 2000). Also noting the difficulties in enacting government sanctions, the boycott committee did not initially call for the British government to take direct action against the apartheid state (Gurney, 2008). However, this was set to change as the international community soon became aware of the level of oppression black people had to suffer under apartheid. As the British boycott month came to a close, the media brought news of the mass killing of unarmed protesters in South Africa.
The Suppression of Nonviolent Resistance by the Apartheid State On the morning of March 21, 1960, in the small township of Sharpeville outside Johannesburg, 5,000 protesters led a peaceful march towards their local police station. As the protesters were not in possession of their identity documents (which was a punishable offence for black people who moved outside their designated urban areas), their intention was to request the commander to arrest them en masse. Upon their arrival at
56 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager the station, more people joined the protest. When a scuffle broke out at the fence surrounding the station, the police opened fire. When the shooting ended, 69 people lay dead and 186 were wounded. The majority of those killed were shot in the back as they fled (Lodge, 2011). When news of the massacre spread, mass protests erupted across the country and thousands of people burned their identity books in retaliation. Unable to exert control over the black population, the government declared a state of emergency on March 30, 1960, giving itself the power to arrest anyone without charge or trial. The government then passed legislation that banned major African opposition movements declaring membership to these organisations as punishable by up to ten years in prison (Magubane, 2004). When the state of emergency was lifted, the minister of justice was given the authority to also banish community leaders who showed signs of supporting insurrection as well as identify areas where residents could be barred from holding public meetings. These measures also effectively prohibited targeted communities from staging public protests or allowing their leaders to meet and plan the organization of consumer boycott campaigns (Fullard, 2004). The Sharpeville massacre therefore became a decisive turning point in South Africa’s history. With the banning of African opposition movements and restrictions on nearly all forms of public political activity by the country’s black population, it became exceptionally difficult to launch internal resistance campaigns against the apartheid state. According to Magubane (2004), the events at Sharpeville marked the climax of a decade of mounting, nonviolent resistance to apartheid and signalled the opening of a much more brutal and intensive phase of state repression. This caused the majority of African resistance leaders to consider previously used methods of opposition both redundant and untenable. In the months following their banishment, the two African resistance movements began the process of forming their respective armed wings and also laid the foundations for the future mass mobilisation of the black population through labour and civil unrest. The apartheid government’s brutal repression of nonviolent resistance made it apparent that the Congress Movement couldn’t change South Africa’s political system through economic and moral pressure alone. Following the Sharpeville massacre, it became clear that the boycott tactic was, for the time being at least, no longer suitable as a major form of protest. The significance of the ANC’s call for an expanded boycott campaign is that it was taken up by Britain and a growing international solidarity movement (Gurney, 2000).
The Expansion of International Boycott Movements Similar to Sharpeville being recorded as a watershed in the history of South Africa, the event has also been considered as the starting point for the international anti-apartheid
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 57 movement (Thörn, 2006). Following the massacre, Sharpeville was on the front page of newspapers around the world, leading to widespread outrage at the South African government and condemnation of its apartheid policy. Having resolved to continue its campaign in the wake of the Sharpeville massacre, the British Boycott Committee agreed in April 1960 to rename the organization the Anti- Apartheid Movement for the purpose of continuing a public campaign against apartheid (AAM Executive Council Report, 1961). After the formation of the AAM, its leadership argued that the moral pressure of the consumer boycott was no longer sufficient to persuade the South African government to abandon its apartheid policy. The AAM now moved beyond appeals to individuals and organisations to boycott South African goods and called on the British government to impose full economic sanctions against the apartheid state. Apart from supporting the call for sanctions, the AAM also expanded its boycott strategy, aiming to further isolate “white South Africa” by dismantling its social and cultural ties with the rest of the world. The AAM, in cooperation with other anti-apartheid organizations, began to lobby cultural and sporting federations, eventually leading the Olympic Committee to suspend South Africa’s all-white team and major writer guilds to ban the distribution of their plays and films to South Africa (AAM Annual Report, 1969). These expanded boycotts were also supported by the United Nations (UN), when in 1968 the General Assembly requested all states to suspend sporting and cultural exchanges with apartheid South Africa (United Nations, 2017). The AAM also applied a different method of boycotting South Africa by calling for widespread disinvestment from the country and using public demonstrations to pressure companies to cease their operations in South Africa. The Barclays Boycott was the AAM’s most prominent disinvestment campaign. When the bank eventually sold its South African subsidiary in 1986, it was seen as a major coup for the British movement (AAM Annual Report, 1988). However, following the 1960 boycott month, the AAM’s national committee also began focusing their attention on alternative methods of resistance, while giving its local branches the autonomy to continue with separate campaigns in their own respective regions (AAM Executive Council Report, 1961). These smaller boycott campaigns were organized by local community members who would form pickets outside local stores that sold South African produce. Although these pickets allowed for continued pressure on local businesses, they also ensured a continued culture of activism against apartheid and helped to establish a sense of solidarity among local AAM members. In the two decades following the initial boycott, the AAM’s national committee focused primarily on intensifying government sanctions and expanding its international network to further isolate South Africa from the international community. It was only with the lack of action by the British government to impose economic sanctions that, in 1981, the AAM relaunched its national consumer boycott campaign. The movement now referred to consumer boycotts as “the people’s sanctions,” noting that it could be an effective method of winning support amongst the general public for a stronger government policy against South Africa (AAM Annual Report, 1981).
58 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager However, this renewed focus was set not only to gather support from consumers but also to place pressure on major supermarket chains to cease the selling of South African goods. One of the first targets of this new campaign was a women’s apparel store, Next, which sold a variety of South African clothing products. The AAM decided to launch a campaign, setting up pickets outside Next stores and distributing leaflets to shoppers that showed which products to avoid. This drew unwanted attention for Next, which subsequently cancelled a six-million-pound contract with South African textile companies and also led its major competitor, Richard Shops, to do the same (AAM Annual Report, 1985). When the AAM launched similar campaigns against major supermarket chains such as Sainsbury’s and Tesco, the results were also positive, as both companies put in place measures to reduce their stock of South African fruit products. When the British Cooperative Retail Society also decided to support the boycott campaign, the import of South African fruit began to drop significantly (AAM Annual Report, 1986). These measures eventually forced South African fruit exporters to use false country of origin labels, leading the AAM to establish a Consumer Boycott Unit in 1987 that devised methods for the public to identify mislabelled products (AAM Annual Report, 1987). However, by this time South Africa had already undergone major political changes that had led the apartheid government to seek a negotiated settlement with local opposition movements. These changes were due to an upsurge of internal opposition that also saw an expansion of local consumer boycott campaigns.
The Resurgence of Local Opposition and the Fall of Apartheid Within South Africa, the period of the early and mid-1980s was distinguished by the rapid expansion and escalation of political protests. At the start of the decade, the ANC operated as a clandestine movement while aboveground political organisations were generally limited to small groups of activists in some of the country’s major metropolitan areas (Seekings, 2010). However, during this period the harsh socioeconomic circumstances of the country’s black population were further worsened as a result of heightened inflation and a stagnating economy. This exacerbated their daily struggles around issues such as unemployment, lowered wages, rising prices, and increased rates and taxes. Dealing with these issues led to an expansion of black civic associations and labour unions, which began to mobilise local communities and workers to voice their frustration and demands to the apartheid government. By1985, civic and labour organisations were established in all major cities and industries, culminating in the establishment of national movements
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 59 such as the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) (Gibbs, 2010). The emergence of civic associations also led to a resurgence of boycott campaigns. During this period, one of the most effective tactics employed by civic leaders was the “rent boycott,” through which residents of black townships refused to continue paying their utility bills and rent for government housing. Initially, the government responded by evicting nonpaying residents from their homes. This measure soon proved futile as rent boycotts spread to major cities across the country and communities responded en masse. Within Soweto, Johannesburg’s largest black township, more than 80 percent of the population stopped their rental payments to local authorities (Housten, 2010). This era also saw the reemergence of consumer boycott campaigns in South Africa, as civic leaders mobilised their communities to shun white-owned retailers and support black shopkeepers in local townships. Initially, these boycott and buycott campaigns were used as a means to counter price increases and address local socioeconomic issues (Housten, 2010). Later into the decade, some civic associations also saw the potential of intensifying consumer boycott campaigns by linking local demands with national political demands. In July 1985, the Port Elizabeth Black Civic Organization (PEBCO) called on the city’s local townships to boycott all white-owned retailers, with the demand that the apartheid government end workplace discrimination and open public facilities to all races. When the boycott took effect, white retailers in the city lost nearly one-third of their revenue (Ackerman & DuVall, 2000). The government responded by detaining the boycott leaders as part of a nationwide crackdown on local activists and dissidents, in which troops were also stationed in townships and curfews were established. In response, PEBCO increased their demands to also include the release of boycott leaders and the removal of military personnel from townships. For the next four months, the city’s black population continued the boycott, leading the local chamber of commerce to intervene and negotiate a deal between PEBCO and the government. After the authorities released PEBCO leaders and withdrew troops from local townships, the community agreed to temporarily lift the boycott with the intent of reinstating the campaign within the following year (Ackerman & DuVall, 2000). The widespread reporting of this boycott and PEBCO’s ability to obtain concessions from the government led regional civic associations to consider the possibility of further expanding consumer boycott campaigns. In May 1986, the UDF invited local civic leaders to a national conference with the intent of further coordinating their activities and adopting a plan for initiating a national consumer boycott campaign (Seekings, 2010). However, the ambition of the UDF to launch a national campaign was soon obstructed in the face of intensified state repression. In the same period during which local civic movements began to assert greater influence in national politics, there was a marked increase in labour action and social unrest within South Africa. Following the establishment of COSATU in 1985, more than half a million workers engaged
60 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager in labour action, leading to nearly 2,000 work stoppages in the following two years (Teoh et al., 1999). This was coupled with protests that erupted in townships across South Africa, as the country’s black youth began to retaliate against the country’s security forces and instigated riots that damaged thousands of buildings and vehicles (Housten, 2010). In the face of mounting resistance by South Africa’s black population, the apartheid government instituted a state of emergency in June 1986. In the ensuing crackdown on local opposition movements, the government also targeted the country’s civic associations. During the three and a half years in which the state of emergency was upheld, the South African police arrested and detained most of the country’s black civic leaders. By 1988, the crackdown caused such severe disruptions to the work of civic associations that it forced UDF leaders to go underground and form a clandestine movement (Seekings, 2010). However, by this stage the apartheid government began to lose its hold on power. Due to mounting pressure from both internal and external political opposition movements, the country’s economy was on the verge of collapse. The escalation of internal resistance against the apartheid state caused substantial disruptions to the South African economy. This was not only due to the increase in work stoppages and the cost of suppressing violent uprisings. As labour and civil unrest began to spread, foreign companies also began to question their involvement in South Africa. According to Schwartzman (2001), foreign investors, following a purely economic criterion, shunned locations plagued by social unrest. This fact caused additional concern for the apartheid state, as labour and civil unrest swept through the country in the 1980s. By 1984, foreign capital contributed 47 percent to South Africa’s Gross Domestic Capital Formation, which meant that continued foreign investment and loans played an important role in maintaining economic growth and stability (Schwartzman, 2001). This also made South Africa vulnerable to a shift in sentiment by foreign investors and banks. Following the onset of violent protests and the declaration of a state of emergency, more than 250 foreign companies closed their local operations and major foreign lenders refused to renew their loan agreements with South Africa (Levy, 1999; Seidman, 2003). This was exacerbated by the onset of government sanctions by major trading partners such as the European Community, the United States, and Japan—all of whom were also obliged to support a mandatory arms embargo adopted by the UN Security Council against South Africa (United Nations, 2017). These developments, together with the advance of organised black labour in South Africa, also severely impeded the activities of local businesses. This led local industry leaders to place further pressure on the apartheid government to find a negotiated settlement with African opposition movements. By 1988, a dialogue was established between high-ranking government officials and the jailed leaders of the ANC, in which Nelson Mandela played a leading role. This eventually led to an opening of negotiations for a new constitution and a peaceful transition to democracy. On May 10, 1994, following the country’s first democratic elections, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the president of a new and democratic South Africa.
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 61
The Role of Consumer Boycotts in the Struggle Against Apartheid There are a number of different opinions and theories on what caused the ultimate demise of the apartheid system as well as the role opposition movements played in achieving this outcome. These causes are usually divided between “internal” and “external” factors that include the escalation of local resistance against the apartheid state and increased international pressure that resulted in further disinvestment and sanctions (Thörn, 2006).When considering the contribution of consumer boycott campaigns in the struggle against apartheid, it is also useful to consider the individual roles that they played within the South African resistance and international anti-apartheid movements. Within South Africa, the disenfranchised black community was denied access to conventional means of political participation. This left them with few peaceful options by which to voice their grievances except through tactics such as strikes, boycotts, and civil disobedience campaigns. However, such tactics were countered with brutal repression by the apartheid government, leading to the rise of armed resistance and increasingly violent protests. Eventually, it was the escalation of civil and labour unrest that destabilized the South African economy to the point where both local and international business concerns placed additional pressure on the apartheid government to find a negotiated settlement. The consumer boycott was another means by which black South Africans could apply economic as well as discursive political pressure to facilitate change. This method proved to be an effective tool for impoverished black communities to address issues such as price increases and poor service delivery, while also creating public awareness of the poor socioeconomic conditions under which black people suffered during apartheid. One of the reasons for the success of local boycotts was the strong sense of communal identity that existed in many of South Africa’s townships. Although centralised planning and organisation were required to implement a consumer boycott campaign, communities were able to continue rallying their members to support the boycott regardless of whether their leaders were detained (Lodge, 1983). With the rise of civic associations in the 1980s, decentralized decision-making and the wider participation of local communities were further enabled. This allowed local communities to establish organising structures capable of withstanding disruption by the state and to sustain prolonged boycotts. This was especially damaging to local business concerns, with industry associations and chambers of commerce playing a leading role in solving the conflict by directly lobbying the government to provide concessions. However, attempts by South African opposition movements to implement national campaigns were continually undermined in the face of increased state repression limiting their overall economic effect in comparison to other forms of protest.
62 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager Nevertheless, it should be noted that although the violent crackdown on peaceful protest within South Africa may have caused disruptions to internal opposition movements, it was these actions by the apartheid government that caused widespread outrage in the outside world and led to the establishment of a global anti-apartheid movement (Thörn, 2006). Prior to the Sharpeville massacre, international solidarity movements such as the British AAM tried to apply moral pressure on South Africa’s white minority, using consumer boycotts in the hope that it would lead to a shift in sentiment and changes in government policy. As the brutality of the apartheid state became more evident, the AAM realised that greater outside economic pressure was needed to enable change. This led to further demands that governments and companies withdraw their support from South Africa (Gurney, 2008). Compelling governments and international companies to change their stance on South Africa required extensive effort. The mass withdrawal of business and financial support from South Africa in the 1980s was not only a result of increased labour strikes and civil unrest. It also took concerted social-movement pressure, across continents and over decades, to persuade the international business community to accept a sense of social responsibility for their regional operations and reconsider their continued involvement in South Africa (Seidman, 2003). Within Britain in particular, the AAM had to counter powerful vested interests and lobbying groups that supported stronger economic ties with apartheid South Africa. One of the factors that allowed the AAM to effectively oppose these interests was its mass mobilisation of the British public through the use of consumer boycott campaigns (Ndlovu, 2004). While the overall aim of these campaigns may have been seen as placing economic pressure on South Africa, it also had the purpose of creating public consciousness of apartheid and establishing a culture of activism against it (Skinner, 2009). This is also confirmed in a report by the National Committee of the AAM, which noted that consumer boycott campaigns were a “linchpin of grass-roots oriented activity” within the movement and an effective way for raising awareness of apartheid by “getting the message on to the streets and into the minds of the public” (AAM Annual Report, 1990, p. 17). According to Thörn (2006), activists argued that in the long run such active participation by citizens would also develop public consciousness to the point where governments would be further pressured to impose economic sanctions on South Africa. However, although the boycott of South African goods was certainly an individualized form of political action, it required a collective organization and a collective articulation of its political meaning (Thörn, 2006). To ensure widespread support, the AAM made it clear from the beginning that it was a movement centred on one issue that could unite people across the religious, social, and political spectrum. Soon after its inception in 1959, the British Boycott Committee made a public statement, noting that it represented “a truly national movement, in which the people of this country are free, for once in a while, to forget their domestic
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 63 political wrangles in order to devote themselves to a great cause” (Gurney, 2000, p. 139). It was this underlying cause, the ending of a racially exclusive and violent system of government, that allowed the global anti-apartheid movement to achieve such widespread appeal and unite organizations that had socially diverse support bases and sometimes conflicting ideological and political orientations. In the case of the global anti-apartheid movement, sustained activism came in response to “a particularly egregious and oppressive form of racial exclusion,” which represented a systematic, overarching grievance that could evoke far greater sympathy internationally than those causes that aim to correct global social imbalances around labour rights and fair trade (Seidman, 2003, p. 402). Nevertheless, the socially diverse collection of groups that made up the global anti- apartheid movement required more than a common goal to unite them. A shared collective identity is also required to establish an effective social movement, which can be a weak element within a “movement of movements” such as the AAM (Thörn, 2006). Regardless of this potential limitation, such a shared identity was created within the global anti-apartheid movement. This was partly achieved by connecting individual action to transnational collective action that also emotionally connected grassroots activists in different parts of the world. Consumer boycotts played a key role in this regard as it was an act through which “the individual could feel that s/he became part of a global community of solidarity activists,” all engaged in the same activity to achieve the same goal (Thörn, 2006, p. 202). Consumer boycott campaigns therefore played an important role in the struggle against apartheid, not necessarily as a means of applying significant economic pressure on the apartheid state but rather as a means to unite individuals, groups, and communities within South Africa and the wider world by giving them a weapon through which they could jointly resist a violent and discriminatory system of government. According to Schwartzman (2001), regime change usually occurs as a result of armed occupation or through economic, social, and political pressure that is supported by global and civil society interactions. Although boycott campaigns may not be considered as a “single factor” that can lead to regime change, it could be seen as part of the totality of social processes that is needed to ensure a peaceful transition from a violent regime to a democratic form of government.
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64 Johan Nicolaas Wilhelm de Jager AAM. (1987). Annual report. London: Anti-Apartheid Movement. AAM. (1988). Annual report. London: Anti-Apartheid Movement. AAM. (1990). Annual report. London: Anti-Apartheid Movement. Ackerman, Peter, & DuVall, Jack. (2000). A force more powerful: A century of non-violent conflict. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. ANC. (1959). The report of the national Anti-Pass Planning Council to the Mass National Conference held at Johannesburg on 30th May, 1959. Johannesburg: Historical Papers Research Archive. Bauer, Gretchen, & Taylor, Scott. (2005). Politics in Southern Africa. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. De Moor, Joost. (2014). Lifestyle politics and the concept of political participation. In Conceptualizing Political Participation (p. 23). Mannheim: PARTIREP. Fullard, Madeleine. (2004). State repression in the 1960s. In S. A. Trust (Ed.), The Road to Democracy in South Africa: 1960–1970, Volume 1 (pp. 341–390). Cape Town: Zebra Press. Gibbs, Pat. (2010). Race and ideology in Port Elizabeth: A view from the Northern Areas. In S. A. Trust (Ed.), The road to democracy in South Africa: 1980–1990, volume 4, part 1. Pretoria: UNISA Press. Gurney, Christabel. (2000). A great cause: The origins of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, June 1959–March 1960. Journal of Southern African Studies, 26(1), 123–144. Gurney, Christabel. (2008). In the heart of the beast: The British Anti-Apartheid Movement, 1959–1994. In S. A. Trust (Ed.), The road to democracy in South Africa: International Solidarity, Volume 3 (pp. 22–33). Pretoria: UNISA Press. Housten, Gregory. (2010). The ANC’s internal underground political work in the 1980s. In S. A. Trust (Ed.), The road to democracy in South Africa: 1980–1990, volume 4, part 1. Pretoria: UNISA Press. Levy, Philip I. (1999). Sanctions on South Africa: What did they do? American Economic Review. 89(2). 415–420. Lodge, Tom. (1983). Black politics in South Africa since 1945. New York, NY: Longman. Lodge, Tom. (2011). Sharpeville: An apartheid massacre and its consequences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Magubane, Bernard, Bonner, Philip, Sithole, Jabulani, Delus, Peter, Cherry, Janet, Gibbs, Patt & Thozama, April (2004). The turn to armed struggle. In S. A. Trust (Ed.), The Road to Democracy in South Africa: 1960–1970, Volume 1 (pp. 341–390). Cape Town: Zebra Press. Magubane, Bernard. (2004). Introduction: The political context. In S. A. Trust & T. Papenfus (Eds.), The road to democracy in South Africa: 1960–1970, Volume 1 (pp. 1–52). Cape Town: Zebra Press. Muller, Cornelis. (2010). Dealing with a hot potato: The commemoration of the 1959 Potato Boycott. Historia. 55(2), 76–98. Ndlovu, Sifiso M. (2004). The ANC and the World. In S. A. Trust (Ed.), The road to democracy in South Africa: 1960–1970, Volume 1 (pp. 541–571). Cape Town: Zebra Press. Schwartzman, Kathleen C. (2001). Can international boycotts transform political systems? The cases of Cuba and South Africa. Latin American Politics and Society, 3(2), 115–146. Seekings, Jeremy. (2010). The origins of national organisation among civic organisations in South Africa, 1979–1990. In S. A. Trust (Ed.), The road to democracy in South Africa: 1980– 1990, Volume 4 Part 2 (pp 1436–1646). Pretoria: UNISA Press. Seidman, Gay W. (2003). Monitoring multinationals: Lessons from the anti-apartheid era. Politics and Society, 31(3), 381–406.
South African and British Anti-Apartheid Movements 65 Skinner, Robert. (2009). The moral foundations of British anti-apartheid activism, 1946–1960. Journal of Southern African Studies, 35(2), 399–416. Stolle, Dietlind, & Micheletti, Michelle N. (2013). Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Teoh, Siew H., Welch, Ivo, & Wazzan, Paul. (1999). The effect of socially activist investment policies on the financial markets: Evidence from the South African boycott. Journal of Business, 72(1), 35–89. Thörn, Håkan. (2006). Anti-apartheid and the emergence of a global civil society. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. United Nations. (2017). www.un.org. Retrieved September 12, 2017, from http://www.un.org /en/events/mandeladay/apartheid.shtml. Van der Westhuizen, Christi. (2007). White power and the rise and fall of the National Party. Cape Town: Zebra Press.
Pa rt I I
T H E ORY A N D DE SIG N I N G R E SE A RC H ON P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM
Chapter 4
Protest, S o c ia l Movem ents , a nd Spaces for P ol i t i c a l ly Oriented C on sume ri st Actions—N at i ona l ly, Transnati ona l ly, and L o ca l ly Francesca Forno
Social movements are among the main actors through which, historically, communities have given voice to their social and political demands (Fox Piven, 2008). Unlike parties or interest groups, these actors are better represented as systems of nonformalized relationships among a plurality of individuals, groups, and associations rather than as one structured organization. As often emphasized, these networks allow for the circulation of resources (information, expertise, and material resources) that are fundamental for collective action and for the development of shared interpretational frames, as well as providing preconditions for the development of mobilization and for practising specific lifestyles at the same time (della Porta & Diani, 2006). The characteristics of these networks may vary from loosely connected to dense and highly integrated. The action of social movements may also appear transitory or long- lasting and may take violent or nonviolent forms. As often stated, all these characteristics depend on the objectives they pursue and on the external context in which social movements are formed and operate. The degree of opening and closing of the opportunities systems towards the instances put forward by these actors is of fundamental importance with regard not only to their organizational structure but also to the range of tactics (the “repertoire of actions”) they choose to utilize (Kriesi et al., 1995).
70 Francesca Forno Although studies of social movements have traditionally concentrated on “visible” moments of protest (della Porta et al., 2007; Tarrow, 1998; Kriesi et al., 1995), such as for example public demonstrations, strikes, marches, and occupations in which activists gather in public spaces to make their voices heard, an increasing number of studies have recently started to acknowledge the political importance of collective mobilization of market-based actions, therefore of actions that do not take the way of the street (de Moor, 2017; Forno & Graziano, 2014; Guidi & Andretta, 2015; Kousis & Paschou, 2017; Schlosberg & Coles, 2015; Wahlen & Laamenen, 2015). Besides traditional consumer organizations that seek to protect customers from corporate abuse (such as unsafe products, predatory lending, or false advertising), political consumerism has also been increasingly employed to achieve diverse political and social goals. Calls to citizens to take action in their role as consumers have been made by social movement organizations of different types, either to build transnational awareness so as to step up pressure on corporations or to facilitate the purchase of goods/services that meet specific ethical criteria. This chapter contributes with a theoretical discussion of the relationship between social movements and political consumerism, and it provides an illustration of how various forms of economic activism have been deployed by SMOs over time and in diverse organizational fields. The next section focuses on changes occurring in the repertoire of protest over different historical periods, emphasising some distinctiveness of political consumerism that appears to make it a particularly suitable form of contentious action in present times. Then the discussion highlights the importance of the Global Justice Movement (GJM) for the diffusion of market-based actions and for the proliferation of the grassroots economic experiments observed in recent years. After an illustration of the main features of alternative economic networks as spaces for ethical decisions and consumerist action, four types of sustainable community movement organizations will be described. The chapter concludes by considering some main criticisms often directed at social movement organizations working through and within the market and discussing some research challenges created by the emergence of more local forms of political consumer activism.
Political Consumerism and the Modern Repertoire of Protest Social movement organisations (hereafter SMOs) choose their tactics according to the desired end and by considering the system of opportunities (political, economic, and cultural) characterizing the external environment within which they find themselves operating (Wahlstrom & Peterson, 2006). Tactics represent important routines for SMOs. In order to be effective, social movements’ strategies need to be emotionally and morally salient in people’s lives.
Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces 71 Historically, fundamental changes in the so-called repertoire of protest arose with the advance of capitalism and the formation of the nation-state. Developed by Charles Tilly in his research dedicated to the study of the characteristics of contentious actions in different historical periods and territorial contexts (Tilly, 1986, 1995a, 1995b), the concept of the repertoire of protest refers to the set of ways in which individuals and groups manifest their claims. The metaphor of the repertoire, which Tilly borrowed from Goffman (1971), was to highlight how when people are mobilized they tend to use forms of action that are familiar to them and that seem to be particularly successful in terms of visibility and resonance within a wider public. Like in a theatre play, what individuals do depends on what they have learned to do and what others expect them to do. This is why the existence of a given repertoire of action limits people but at the same time makes it possible for them to act together (Tilly, 1986). A fact that also explains why the repertoire of protest usually changes very slowly and, in general, when it does so is that new forms of action tend to build on the edge of well-established practices. In addition, Tilly’s historical research has shown that the repertoire of protest changes because of shifts occurring in the interests at stake, the social organisation, and opportunities for action (Tilly, 1986). These findings appear to be also relevant to better understand the increasing adoption of market-based actions among contemporary social movement organizations. Due to the specific configuration of interests, social organization, and the opportunities for mobilization, the forms of struggle typical of the mid-seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries had a parochial character, as protest was addressed to local representatives of national actors. They were also specific and direct, in the sense that protest actions relate to specific situations and targets. Forms of protest typical of this period varied for example from food riots and collective field invasions to armed rebellion against tax collectors. In the 19th century, the old repertoire was replaced by the modern repertoire of protest. The reduction of the influence of local patrons over the destinies of the people as well as the process of centralization that followed the formation of the modern nation- state in fact made traditional forms of contention ineffective, driving social movement organizations to test new pressure strategies. Unlike earlier forms of protest, the type of pressure exerted by new action strategies—such as strikes, demonstrations, public gatherings, occupations, and so on—was indirect and often mediated through means of communication and power groups (Lipsky, 1968). New forms spread in fact with the development of media and the growth of the role of political parties, trade unions, and other national associations (Tilly, 1986). Compared to earlier forms, these actions were cosmopolitan (as they targeted interests and issues shared by different localities and that were directed to actors whose power extended across wide areas), modular (meaning that they were utilized by different groups to pursue different goals), and autonomous (meaning that they were able to establish contact between different centres of power and could be started directly from those who put forward the claim). While variants of the modern repertoire of protest continue to be the strategies predominantly used in conflict situations to this day, confirming how protest forms tend to
72 Francesca Forno remain stable over time, the increasing adoption of market-based actions by different movement organizations can be read as a further adaptation to the changing balance of opportunities and constraints contemporary movements now have to confront (Balsiger, 2014; Forno & Graziano, 2014). In other words, contemporary political consumerism can be better explained by looking at the same contextual changes considered by Tilly and therefore examining the changes that occurred in the configuration of the interests at stake, social organization, and opportunities for action. In particular, by “disembedding” the economy from its social, cultural, and political contexts, the processes of globalization and individualization have led to significant changes in the relationship between work, production, and consumption (Bauman, 2007; Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 2009). The greater ease in the movement of goods and services as well as increased economic competition (see Fridell’s contribution in this Handbook), while limiting the political and redistributive capacity of nation-states, has also made some forms of protest (such as the strike) less effective. Moreover, this new international configuration, exacerbated by the transformation of traditional channels of interest mediation (especially political parties and trade unions) and by the end of the great ideological narratives of the 20th century (the traditional ideologies of left and right), has made collective action more difficult to organize and sustain. It seems to be this very situation that has pushed social movement organizations towards the identification of new sites and forms of pressure and a greater use of market- based actions. As often highlighted, contemporary social movement organizations simultaneously face two types of challenges: firstly, they are confronting institutions that are less able (or willing) to mediate new demands for social justice and equity emerging from various sectors of society; secondly, given the highly individualized structure of contemporary society, they struggle to build bonds of solidarity and co-operation among people, bonds that are a fundamental resource for collective action (D’Alisa et al., 2015; Forno & Graziano, 2014). It is in this context that politically inspired lifestyle choices have become an important component of contemporary social movements’ repertoire of action and discourses. Given the centrality taken on by consumption in late capitalist societies, it does not come as a surprise that many contemporary social movement organizations have increasingly started to appeal to individuals in their role as consumers and have identified “political consumerism” as an important form of action through which to bring about social change. As is often argued, in advanced capitalist societies consumption has come to define a growing portion of people’s lives and has become increasingly central in the formation of individual and collective identities (Bauman, 1998; Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1991; see Chapter 40). If we focus on the various dimensions of political consumerism, we may in fact fully grasp its peculiarities and potentials. More specifically, the modus operandi of political consumerism distinguishes it from other forms of protest not only because it shifts the
Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces 73 locus of conflict from the state to the market but also because it incorporates the three logics of protest of the modern repertoire of action at the same time, namely the logic of numbers, the logic of damage, and the logic of bearing witness (della Porta and Diani, 2006, pp. 170–178). By practising certain values and actions, political consumerism aims to resocialize wrongdoers and change business activities through the “power of numbers” (DeNardo, 1985). Through boycotts, transnational activists have been able to publicize grievances and build new transnational awareness across borders to pressure corporations. While globalization has stretched the distances between workers and consumers, boycotts have helped individuals to consider the conditions under which goods are produced in an increasingly global market (Collins, 2003; Micheletti, Follesdal, & Stolle, 2006). In response to boycotts, some major corporations have made real efforts to improve working conditions or their environmental standards, either because they feared that transnational campaigns might blemish their image and hurt their sales or because they recognized the validity of activists’ concerns (Spar & La Mure, 2003). Moreover, both boycott and buycott campaigns can empower participants by spreading a sense of belonging to a community (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015). To the logic of numbers, political consumerism also adds that of the logic of material or commercial damage (or, alternatively, advantage). By pushing citizens to make use of their purchasing power, SMOs seek to inflict as much damage as possible to their opponents in a way that is reminiscent of the strike. As when workers block production through strike action to damage the employer and force negotiation, by choosing what to buy or what not to buy, citizens in their role as consumers can damage or encourage producers to change their production policies. Through the strategy of naming and shaming, SMOs have put the spotlight on the abuse of several multinational companies that were considered “enemies” (see, e.g., Chapter 10). Among the most famous boycotts in recent years were that against Shell, criticized for polluting the North Sea and the Niger River; Nike, accused of subcontracting production to small enterprises in Indonesia and Vietnam that use child labour; Novartis, condemned for denying life-saving treatment to millions of (poor) people who needed it; and McDonald’s, picked out for supposedly using the meat of animals raised extensively on antibiotics (Friedman, 1999; Seidman, 2007) (see other chapters in this Handbook for additional examples). Finally, these actions also incorporate the logic of bearing witness. As della Porta and Diani argue, “Presenting consumption as a potentially political act, ethical consumerism stresses the central role of individuals in taking responsibility for the common goods in their everyday life” (della Porta & Diani, 2006, p. 177). Moreover, by practicing certain values, social movement activists aim to demonstrate that political consumerism can be important not only as an instrument of political protest but also to prefigure and experiment with an alternative and desirable ecological, sustainable society (Goodman et al.. 2012; Veron, 2016; Yates, 2011; see Chapter 28).
74 Francesca Forno
When Consumption Becomes Political Political consumerism is not new. Boycotts in particular were also used frequently by social movements of the past. Some highly publicized examples of historically significant boycotts are the boycott of British goods in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia following the assuage of the Stamp Act in 1765 during the American Revolution; the anti-Nazi boycott of German goods invoked by the American Jewish community in the 1930s and early 1940s; the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott during the U.S. civil rights movement; and the United Farm Worker boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the late 1960s (Friedman, 1999; Micheletti, 2009). With regard to buycotts, particularly important was the crucial, pioneering role of environmental movement organizations, especially for the development of green labels that in some countries dates back to the 1980s and even earlier. Particularly in countries such as Austria, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, environmental organizations were in fact crucial in the development of labelling and certification for everyday consumption but also in sectors such as forestry (Boström & Klintman, 2011; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Traditionally more widespread in North America and Northern Europe (see Chapters 21 and 24), since the mid-1990s political consumerism has however experienced major growth also in contexts where it had long been a niche phenomenon (Ferrer-Fons, 2006; Forno & Ceccarini, 2006; Koos, 2012, see Chapters 22, 23 and 25). The spread of political consumerism was strongly influenced by the events that followed the so-called Battle of Seattle (the demonstration against the WTO in 1999 that took place in Seattle, Washington). By identifying the market as a privileged arena for political activism, the Global Justice Movement in fact opened up space for experimentation with consumerist action (della Porta, 2006; Micheletti, 2003). Moreover, the success of some boycott campaigns as well as of certain movements such as fairtrade and organic organizations (Krier, 2006; Wilkinson, 2007) signalled the growing willingness of citizens to act politically in their role as consumers. It was during these years that the term “political consumerism” became increasingly important both among social movement actors and in academic debate. In this regard, it is important to emphasize that the growth of political consumerism recorded in the second half of the nineties confirms the existence of a close connection between the spread of new forms of action and cycles of mobilization (Freeman & Johnson, 1999; Kriesi et al., 1995; McAdam, 1995; Tarrow, 1995, 1998; Traugott, 1995). Cycles of protest are rapid expansions of social movement action on a geographical scale, the diversity of social groups participating, and the amount of disruptive activity. These special “moments of madness” (Tarrow, 1993) occur when multiple social movements or social groups engage in sustained protest clustered over time and spanning across a wide geographical boundary (e.g., on a national scale). Although cycles of protest have an irregular frequency and may vary with regard to their duration, studies that
Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces 75 have analysed the temporal evolution of mobilization have often shown that these moments are characterized by: (a) the rapid spread of the protest from the more mobilized to less mobilized, (b) the territorial expansion of the conflict, (c) the emergence of new social movement organizations and the reactivation of those more established, (d) the creation of new dominant interpretive schemes, and (e) the invention of new forms of collective action (Tarrow, 1995). By participating as co-organizers in major social events and protests, from Seattle to Genoa, from the Social Forum to the Marches for Peace, since the late nineties the organizations involved in boycott and buycott actions have risen to a place among the central players of the Global Justice Movement. The joint action in the campaigns and countersummits of the various organizations active in protests against neoliberal globalization has clearly favoured the exchange of content and experiences, on the one hand, and fertilization of forms of protest among different actors on the other (della Porta, 2003; Diani, 2005). To many, economic activism appeared to be not only a way to contrast neoliberalization and economic globalization but also an efficient response to the growing interest in global issues as it represented a means to address issues the scope of which is not confined to territorial or national boundaries (Diani, 2005). It is precisely this situation that seems to have facilitated the spread of pressure strategies, previously a prerogative of specific groups, across a wider spectrum of SMOs. The cross-fertilization (della Porta & Mosca, 2007; della Porta & Piazza, 2008) of the repertoires of actions among different SMOs was one of the key features of the antiglobalization mobilization cycle. The diffusion of political consumerism was made possible by the socialization of practices that occurred during the various gatherings that also continued into the 2000s. During this period, political consumerism began to extend to an increasingly large number of people and actors. After Seattle, political consumerism in fact began to be incorporated in the repertoire of actions by a variety of groups, not only those specifically involved in the promotion of changes in consumption habits and behaviour but also by pacifist, religious, workers’, and anti-Mafia groups (Forno & Gunnarson, 2011; Forno, 2015; Micheletti & McFarland, 2011). However, as is known, the Global Justice Movement was rather short-lived (della Porta, 2007). The lack of institutional allies, the internal and problematic differentiation among the various components of the movement, the violence with which certain demonstrations were repressed, and the disappointment of activists for the negative outcome of the great popular mobilization against the war in Iraq in 2003 led to a rapid decline in transnational mobilization. Nevertheless, the protest cycle developed throughout the nineties left significant changes in the culture and practices of many social movement organisations and in society at large. Furthermore, when mobilization declined, many activists brought back not only a different worldview to their territories but also a new arsenal of tactics. The end of the cycle, which scholars date occurred between 2003 and 2005 (della Porta & Mattoni, 2015), was followed by a substantial repositioning of some social movement organizations from the global to the local scale of action (Forno and & Graziano,
76 Francesca Forno 2014). It is at a local level that political consumerism has continued to spread and expand, thanks to the rise of several new initiatives aiming at raising awareness regarding the need for a more sustainable lifestyle and for new systems of material flows, capable of optimizing production processes so that materials and energy are used more efficiently (Schlosberg, forthcoming). In other words, today’s political consumerism is not only deployed by SMOs to build transnational awareness across borders and to step up pressure on corporations but also to facilitate the construction of new alliances between different actors, often starting from a local level that often takes on the form of alternative production and consumption networks (Forno & Graziano, 2014). There are various examples of such initiatives. Among the most important are new consumer-producer cooperatives, community-supported agriculture, solidarity purchasing groups, ecovillages, voluntary simplicity, slow food, barter groups, urban gardening, degrowth, and transition town networks. As is often pointed out, in several initiatives that mushroomed after the end of the alter-globalization wave of protest, political consumerism moved beyond the idea of “individual responsibility-taking” (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013), to be used as a tool to help to bring various collectives together, helping them to develop common strategies of territorial and economic intervention, in the name of the common good and of sustainability (Cembalo et al., 2012; Conill et al., 2012; Gibson-Graham 2006; Graziano & Forno, 2012; Migliore et al., 2014). Thus, for an increasing number of social movement organizations, rather than being an end unto itself, political consumerism is utilized as a means through which to construct and reinforce solidarity ties in order to implement collective action (Dubuisson-Quellier et al., 2011) around distinct political projects (see Diani’s contribution in this Handbook). This is the case, for example, of so-called Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), which are emerging in several countries, and where various groups and movement organizations work together with the aim of creating sustainable local food supply chains by encouraging the formation of localized food- buying groups and pop-up markets (Goodman et al., 2012).
Alternative Economic Networks as Spaces for Civic Learning and Grassroots Economic Experimentation The repositioning of some social movement organizations from the global to the local scale of action observed after the downturn of the GJM can be read in the light of the latency-visibility model (Melucci, 1996). According to this model, networks and activities do persist even when movements are not mobilizing, and it is during these latent phases that new meanings and identities are often forged and new repertoires of action are put to the test. As Melucci (1985) argues, visibility and latency are mutually
Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces 77 constructive. It is in fact during the phase of latency that solidarity ties and new cultural frameworks are often created, in turn becoming essential resources for further mobilization and new cycles of contention. To capture such “movement-building dynamics” as well as describing how movements evolve during periods of latency, Staggenborg uses the concept of “social movement community” (Hassan & Staggenborg, 2015; Staggenborg, 1998). More than the concept of social movement, which is often interpreted as a “sustained interaction with authorities and other targets” (Tilly, 1984), the notion of the social movement community helps to better grasp the interaction between various political cultural elements that help to sustain social movements. As Staggenborg puts it: “A social movement community (SMC) consists of networks of individual, cultural activities, institutional supporters, and alternative institutions as well as SMOs and other actors that support movement goals” (1998, p. 182). Within recent debate on collective action and various forms of activism, the concept of sustainable community movement organizations (hereafter SCMOs) has been proposed to indicate those forms of economic activism that mobilize citizens primarily via their purchasing power, trying to build alternative, productive, and sustainable networks of production, exchange, and consumption (Forno & Graziano, 2014). Through political consumerism, such grassroots initiatives create new economic and cultural spaces for civic learning and consumerist actions that aim to construct and sustain alternative markets based on knowledge exchange, loyalty, and trust. As Grasseni (2013) argues, “especially in a context of the general breakdown of trust in institutions such as banks, the state, and quality guarantors, confidence is established on the basis of proximity and direct collaboration” (Grasseni, 2014, p. 184). In other words, these networks facilitate both the circulation of resources (information, tasks, money, and goods) and the construction of common interpretations of reality, thus simultaneously providing a framework for collective action and enabling the actual deployment of alternative lifestyles (Forno et al., 2015). With some differences due to their contexts of origin, such networks share several common traits regarding both their motivations and organizational structures. All these experiences start out from a critique of the individualized consumerist lifestyle and support sustainable ways of production and consumption, based on simpler and more sober lifestyles. Here it is often pointed out that the current standards of consumption damage the environment, contribute to climate change, and use up resources at an unsustainable rate (see Chapter 40). These experiences also tend to share a common understanding that attention paid excessively to the price of products has undermined the guarantee of labour standards and accentuated exploitation of workers, with the aim of reducing the overall unitary cost of labour. Alternative economic networks also share the idea of the need to abandon ecologically destructive economic systems in favour of more sustainable forms of production based on the valorisation and revitalization of the local economy. Moreover, although their focus is primarily on the local level, they are not “parochial” in the sense that within these organizations “the local is not usually idealized as a space insulated from power relations and
78 Francesca Forno anomic global capitalism but is acknowledged as a publicly contested site of political- economic struggle, exploitation and accumulation” (Goodman et al., 2012, p. 8). Although SCMOs are hugely indebted (also in terms of activists) to movements of the past (della Porta, 2007; Forno & Graziano, 2014; Forno & Gunnarson, 2011; Guidi & Andretta, 2015), unlike earlier mobilizations, they are more oriented towards building constructive and thoroughly organized alternatives within contemporary capitalist societies by acting simultaneously on cultural, economic, and political levels. On a cultural level, SCMOs promote alternative lifestyles and values to oppose consumerism as an economic order that encourages the endless consumption of finite resources in the name of exponential economic growth. Through the organization of activities such as farmers’ markets, conferences, festivals, guided visits to local producers, and a skilful use of new and old media, they are also creating and promoting a “new social imaginary,” which implies a particular way of organizing production and consumption and a prioritization of environmental, cultural, and consumerist values (Latouche, 2010; see also Chapter 40). Defined as such, social imaginaries refer to the “creative and symbolic dimension of the social world, the dimension through which human beings create their ways of living together and their ways of representing their collective life” (Thomson, 1984, p. 6). Giving importance to economy relations based on sharing, gifts, and conviviality, such as the “new social imaginary,” is fundamental in order to generate, sustain, and spread such alternative economic projects. On an economic level, these experiences encourage greater economic self-sufficiency as well as facilitating the construction and sustainability of alternative economic circuits, which favour services and products that respect certain ethical standards, such as fairtrade and recycled goods, and the consumption of local, seasonal, fresh, traditional, and often organic produce. Attention is also given to supporting supplies from renewable energy sources to reduce reliance on fossil fuels (insulation, efficient appliances, carpooling, and community transport). On a political level, through the promotion of political consumerism, such networks experiment with innovative models of environmental regulatory governance based on voluntary actions and participation, which, instead of imposing a certain kind of behaviour coercively, aim to support and promote more sustainable developments in practice. As demonstrated, being a part of such organization can also encourage the diffusion of more collaborative attitudes, fostering interest in politics among participants and enhancing members’ sense of social efficacy (Forno et al., 2015, p. 83). Furthermore, setting bridges between local consumer practices and local representative politics, SCMOs can help their members to develop new civic awareness and democratic competences. Certain alternative economic networks have also turned into sorts of lobbying organizations, and in some cases they have even supported civil electoral lists participating in local elections (Graziano & Forno, 2012). Even though such movements do not mobilize and structure their claims primarily through contentious activities, to a certain extent the contentious dimension of these networks can be seen as embedded in their social and economic networking activities.
Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces 79 It is in fact through solidarity exchanges that these organizations support strategies of direct action (Bosi & Zamponi, 2015) such as information sharing, awareness raising, educating, and lobbying. As Papaoikonomou and Alarcon observe, such networks represent life alternatives and forms of resistance to the traditional marketplace (Papaoikonomou & Alarcon, 2017). The SCMOs in fact try to go beyond capitalist settings by encouraging ongoing and direct relationships among different actors (workers, producers, and consumers) based on solidarity and reciprocity rather than economic convenience (i.e., utility or profit maximization). For example, sustained community agriculture organizations create and consolidate local social relationships between producers and consumers, which is also characterized by the presence of a monetary exchange (i.e., buying specific products) but is primarily cantered on the social relationship created and not on the commercial one. Put differently, within the networks created by these movement organizations, the commercial or economic exchange is a byproduct of a social exchange (relationship) and not vice versa (Forno & Graziano, 2014; Graziano & Forno, 2012).
Types of Sustainable Community Movement Organizations While they may differ in many respects, SCMOs share the notion that the modern industrial economy and agricultural system are damaging both the environment and society, and that the solution is to reorganize consumption and production in terms of new provisioning systems based on principles of participation and solidarity. While political consumerism, in all its variants (boycotts, buycotts, discursive actions, and lifestyle changes), is a common approach within SCMOs, some have a more radical attitude towards consumption, that is, not simply aimed at finding means for alternative forms of consumption but also supporting discourses and actions with the aim to reduce consumption. In other terms, political consumerism in alternative economic networks can take two directions: one that can be labelled “alterconsumerist,” supporting alternative (i.e., environmentally and social justice–friendly forms of consumption), and one that can be labelled “anticonsumerist” (Iyer & Muncy, 2009), that is, against consumption per se (see Chapter 40). Using two key dimensions of differentiation—scale (or space) of action and attitude towards consumption—Forno & Graziano (2014) proposed an inductive classification of the various types of organizations engaged in the construction of discourses and alternative economy projects. Table 4.1 summarizes the results of such classification, giving evidence of a variety of SCMOs that have grown over recent decades, creating spaces for political consumerist actions. Of course, it is important to note that these are not mutually exclusive categories, in that the same SMO could work on a different scale
80 Francesca Forno Table 4.1 Types of SCMOs Attitude towards consumption
Scale of action
Alterconsumerism
Anticonsumerism
Global
Fair Trade Clean Clothes Campaign
Groups Promoting Degrowth Simplicity Movement
Local
Farmers’ Markets Community- Sustained Agriculture Slow Food
Transition Towns Ecovillages
Source: Forno & Graziano, 2014.
of action as well as adopting or promoting both alter-and anticonsumerist practices and discourses. The first possible type of SCMOs is represented by an alterconsumerist attitude and a predominant global scale of action. This is the case, for example, of fairtrade circuits with the Global South (Goodman et al., 2012; Raynolds et al., 2007) that were particularly important during the 20th century. Examples are fairtrade organizations as well as coalitions, such as the Clean Clothes Campaign (Balsiger, 2014), dedicated to improving working conditions and supporting the empowerment of workers in global industries through lobbying, awareness raising, and creating new economic and cultural spaces for the trading, production, and consumption of goods whose ethical and aesthetic alternative qualifications distinguish them for products conventionally supplied by international trade, mainstream food manufacturers, and supermarket chains (Goodman et al., 2012). Another possible type is represented by those SCMOs that have an alterconsumerist attitude and act predominantly on a local scale. Key examples here are all those alternative food networks that have grown intensely over recent decades. As is often argued, such experiences represent a grassroots response to the incumbent crisis affecting the food system, intrinsic to the historic development of the organic movement. Organizations such as solidarity purchase groups, community-supported agriculture, Slow Food, and new consumer-producer cooperatives aim to bring about a process of relocalization and resocialization of food production-distribution-consumption practices, with a view to the construction of a more environmentally sound, socially just, and economically sustainable local food system (Brunori et al., 2011; Dubuisson-Quellier & Lamine, 2008; Goodman et al., 2012). A third type, characterized by an anticonsumerist attitude and a local scale of action, is represented by ecovillages and transition town initiatives (see Chapter 36). Both these experiences seek a sustainable lifestyle aiming to minimize human ecological impact. Ecovillages are intentional communities whose goal is to seek alternatives to a socially and environmentally destructive economic model. People who create or move into an ecovillage see consumerist lifestyles, the breakdown of traditional forms of community, damage to the environment, and human overreliance on fossil
Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces 81 fuels as trends that need to be changed to prevent social and ecological disaster. While living in ecovillages entails living in a community, the term “transition town” refers to grassroots local group projects that aim to increase self-sufficiency to reduce the potential effects of energy depletion, climate destruction, and economic instability. Since the emergence in 2006 in Totnes (in the United Kingdom) of the first transition town initiative, numerous similar projects have spread mainly across the United Kingdom, Northern Europe, North America, and Australia (Sage, 2014). Finally, a fourth type, characterized by an anticonsumerist attitude and a global scale of action, includes those movement organisations promoting a radical view of political consumerism such as voluntary simplicity and degrowth. Although diverse in many ways, both these movements, which have also significantly gained in popularity over the past two decades, claim that saving the environment will require radical changes in how our society functions and interacts with the planet. Voluntary simplicity means taking the decision to live more simply, to consume less and better, and to work less and devote more life energy to relationships and cultural activities. It involves various economic practices such as more sustainable household management, eating foods that are seasonal and indigenous to the area in which one lives, recycling, reselling, reusing, repurposing, and repairing (Alexander & Ussher, 2012; Shaw & Moraes, 2009). While the focus on sustainable economic practices—sharing work and consuming less while devoting more time to art, music, family, nature, culture, and the community— is also central to the perspective of degrowth activism, this movement presents itself as a radical political, economic, and social project based on ecological economics and anticonsumerist and anticapitalist ideas (Asara et al., 2015; D’Alisa et al., 2014), which aims to become an “interpretative frame for a new (and old) social movement” (De Maria et al., 2013, p. 191). Contrary to some expectations about political consumerism being closely associated with higher levels of wealth, the current economic crisis seems to show that it can be given further impetus by austerity concerns faced by individuals and communities (Conill et al., 2012; D’Alisa et al., 2015; Guidi & Andretta, 2015; Kousis, 2017). Buying food directly from producers, going to local markets or swapping food in an urban warehouse, living in an ecovillage, or taking part in a swap group in fact today seem to represent not only a way to respond to a search for a meaningful life but also a means to help people to better cope with a financial crisis (Castells et al., 2012; Kousis, 2017).
Concluding Reflections on the Evolution of Political Consumer Social Movement Activism Over the last few decades, political consumerism has been utilized not only by movements calling citizens’ attention to the abuse of workers’ rights in the global supply
82 Francesca Forno chains, in order to put pressure on international corporations, but also increasingly by several new grassroots organizations acting mainly at a local level. The spread of local initiatives can in part be read as a consequence of the limited capacity shown by the GJM to exert influence on international institutions and transnational decision-making. The degree of opening and closing of the opportunity structures towards the demands put forward by movement organizations has in fact proved to be very important in determining the organization and tactics of action used by these actors. As has been often observed, social movements tend to become visible and expand in situations where the political, economic, and social opportunities are neither fully open nor completely closed to these actors’ demands (Wahlstrom & Peterson, 2006). As Melucci (1985) argued, periods of latency and visibility often alternate in the dynamics of social movements. Moreover, visibility and latency constitute mutually constructive moments in the actions of social movements, as it is often during the phase of latency that solidarity ties and new cultural frameworks are created, in turn becoming essential resources for further mobilization and new cycles of contention (Melucci, 1996). As far as this is concerned, several authors have stressed the prefigurative potential of alternative economic networks as spaces for experimentation and innovation. As recently argued by Schlosberg, the political consumerism at play in what they call “sustainable materialist movements” is not simply about exerting pressure on the responsible party but “a form of responsibility that aims to replace detrimental material flow with practices that are distinct from problematic corporations and products, in order to become part of a reconstructive collective practice of consumer responsibility, and part of new sustainable flows of material goods through communities and households” (Schlosberg, forthcoming). Alternative economic networks have faced a number of criticisms. In particular, it was argued that by focusing on self-determination and self-changing strategies, these experiences divert civic action from real economic and social problems, promoting political-ideological formulas that can channel social discontent away from the real targets, such as national and international institutions (Rosol, 2012). In similar ways, other critics have stressed the limits of these movements in terms of their transformative potential and efficacy. For instance, Goodman et al. (2012), while discussing the case of Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), argue that these experiences are often the expression of the middle and upper classes, which are often scarcely politicized and more interested in preserving their own health and identity. From here comes the claim that community-organized collective consumption is destined to remain a niche on the edge of the market, with limited or no impact on how society functions, and that it is easily co-opted by corporate marketing strategies (see Chapter 38). With regard to these criticisms, empirical studies have showed how usually those engaged in such organizations often also tend to be active in other forms of participation. For instance, among members of the Italian Solidarity Purchase Groups, various studies have found that many of them have had previous participatory experiences in other social movement or voluntary organizations (Forno et al., 2015; Guidi & Andretta, 2015). Moreover, the political activities of SCMOs often include mobilization against
Protest, Social Movements, and Spaces 83 environmental, economic, and urban policies at a global and local level, along with environmental organizations, grassroots associations, and trade unions (Guidi & Andretta, 2015). As Schlosberg and Coles (2015) argued, “food movements in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia aim to build new circulations of localist food economy, but continue to lobby and protest for changes in state, national and transnational food policy as well. Again, one form of political engagement does not simply replace other; new materialist political action is not a zero-sum or an either/or” (p. 174). Finally, while on the consumption end these experiences often indeed look like an expression of the middle and upper classes, this can be radically different on the production end, where there are often small-scale producers at risk of being excluded from the market. By joining people, who may even initially hold different and possibly even conflicting views about how society and its economic system should actually work in order to become more sustainable and fairer, starting from material and often daily needs, these networks appear to offer new spaces of apprenticeship for a new type of consumer citizenship (Grasseni, 2013, 2014). Overall, in our individualized and fragmented societies, these groups represent an important way for people to bond together, building social capital and multiplying their potential to act. This is evident from the way in which many groups feel the need to evolve, expand, and set up more complex initiatives than collective purchasing among a small group of friends. Of course, such experiences are not all the same, and some networks may be more successful and more long-lasting than others. Differences may depend either on how the various initiatives are constrained by and in turn affect the polities and economies within which they are embedded, on the form and sustainability of their organizations as well as on external or preexisting organizations, and on activists’ motivation to act and their capacity to mediate between instrumental and noninstrumental rationales. This means that further research should continue to span the usual micro-macro divide in social movements and collective action so as to shed light on the internal, external, and organizational characteristics of alternative economic networks. In particular, on the micro end, major issues concern how people come to decide to join these initiatives, the importance of instrumental and noninstrumental motivations to act, and the interactional processes whereby action comes about and meanings are constructed and shared. These matters deserve much more research attention. On the meso (or middle) level, research should focus more on the constraints and consequences of tactics and strategies; on the role played by preexisting social movement organizations; on projects of alternative economies; and on the impact of professionals, professionalism, and academia. On the macro level, research should continue to investigate the role of local, national, and international contexts in fostering the observed forms of market-based mobilizations as well as the potential similarities and differences between them in different settings. While case studies and qualitative methods, like in-depth interviewing and participant observations, need therefore to continue to investigate actors’ motivations and discourses as well as the internal contradictions that often seem to impede several local
84 Francesca Forno initiatives to scale up (or scale out), a more accurate picture of the changing and complex nature of political consumerism (nationally, transnationally, and locally) needs to be gained through longitudinal and comparative studies. In particular, further research will need to shed more light upon the trajectories that similar initiatives follow in different countries by looking more systematically at the linkages between new and preexisting social movement organizations as well as on how the system of opportunities (political, economic, and cultural) weigh upon the diffusion of political consumerist actions.
Acknowledgements I am indebted to Paolo R. Graziano for many ideas developed in this chapter and to Cristina Grasseni, Silvana Signori, and all CoresLab researchers for countless discussions on political consumerism and grassroots mobilization.
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Chapter 5
Mode s of C o ordi nati on in P olitical C onsume ri sm Mario Diani
As argued in the Introduction to The Oxford Handbook of Political Consumerism, political consumerism is best conceptualized “as the use of the market, market mechanisms and consumer actions to modify, improve and change institutional and/or market practices that are found to be ethically, environmentally, or politically objectionable.” From the point of view of social movement theory, this renders it akin to a distinctive repertoire of collective action, which has been extensively used across modernity in support of a broad variety of causes, dating back at least as early as the American Revolution and the antislavery mobilizations of late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (della Porta & Diani, 2006, chap. 7; Tarrow, 2011, chap. 5; see Chapter 4). From a political science perspective, political consumerism may be treated as a distinctive form of political participation (e.g., de Moor, 2017a; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Both approaches prompt a number of interesting questions, ranging from the personal and/or systemic traits that facilitate or hinder adoption of political consumerist behaviours (Baek, 2010; de Moor, 2017b; Ferrer-Fons & Fraile, 2013; Stromsnes, 2009; Yates, 2011) to the opportunities for individual action conducted independently from organizations (Earl, Copeland, & Bimber, 2017) or the role of alternative consumption as a response to the scarcity experienced by specific communities (Forno & Graziano, 2014; Kousis & Paschou, 2017; see Chapter 4). At the same time, the attention to consumption practices may provide the basis for specific forms of collective action that not only use a consumerist repertoire but also define themselves in reference to consumption. Over the last few decades repeated references to “consumer movements” have been made from a variety of angles. These have included attempts to change specific patterns of production and consumption in the food chain, as in the case of organic and fairtrade movements (Raynolds, 2000), as well as critiques of dominant styles of consumption in a market-dominated society
90 Mario Diani from a strong moral and ideological standpoint (e.g., Kozinets & Handelman, 2004). More broadly, mobilizations by citizens to protect or extend their access to basic collective goods and services have sometimes been framed as “collective consumption movements” (Castells, 1984). In addition, consumption styles have been identified as a key component of movements oriented to personal rather than political change (e.g., Melucci, 1996). One feature often associated with contemporary mobilizations in general is indeed the highly individualized nature of contentious action: many contemporary conflicts aim at the preservation/creation of spaces of autonomy for the individual through collective action, rather than at the protection of collective (class, national, etc.) interests (see, e.g., Melucci, 1996); even actions oriented towards strictly collective goals are often performed on a largely individual basis, also courtesy of the new technologies that have supposedly reduced the coordinating role of organizations (see, e.g., Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; Earl & Kimport, 2011). These remarks apply particularly well to consumerist action, given the highly individualized nature of consumption. Such individualization has prompted some analysts to conclude that consumerism would not even qualify as a form of democratic collective action, given that it stems from personal or parochial considerations (Baek, 2010, p. 1066). Whether consumerism is inherently democratic or not falls outside the focus of this chapter (see Chapter 31). There are indeed many examples of consumerism oriented to reduce specific social groups’ opportunities and undermine democracy (Baek, 2010, pp. 1068–1069), both historical (e.g., the Nazis’ boycott of Jewish shops and professionals) and contemporary (e.g., the boycott of Walmart by the U.S. Christian right in the 2000s following its inclusive policy towards LGBT people) (see Chapter 33). However, this is ultimately a normative issue that has no direct bearing on the specific forms taken by consumerist collective action. What matters, instead, is to acknowledge the multifaceted nature of consumerism as a style of political action that may consist of both strictly individualistic and collective activities, with a variable involvement of individual activists and organizations responding to various combinations of personal and public concerns (see, e.g., de Moor, 2017a; Earl, Copeland, & Bimber, 2017). In order to do so, one must look systematically at the different forms through which collective action is promoted and coordinated among the multiplicity of actors mobilizing on issues linked to consumption (“consumerist action fields”). Simple references to “consumer movements” or “consumer movement organizations” may be more confusing than illuminating. It is worth noting that, regardless of their starting point, when analysts have referred to “consumer movements,” they have mostly done so in a pretty loose way. They have not tried to differentiate movements from other forms of collective action, but have used the expression to refer generically to the sets of actors (individuals, groups, and organizations) that include consumption-related practices in their repertoire and/or define themselves and morally justify their actions in reference to consumption. In doing so, they have adopted—if largely implicitly—an “aggregative” approach to collective action (Diani, 2015, chap. 1), whereby the profile of a collectivity is deduced from the properties
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 91 of its elements. This has not prevented them from reaching substantively important conclusions, whether on the profile of consumerist activists (e.g., Ferrer-Fons & Fraile, 2013) or on the role of consumer organizations (e.g., Forno & Graziano, 2014). However, by focusing on the properties and the strategies of the specific actors (individuals or organizations) interested in consumerism, researchers have paid less attention to coalition work and the multiple connections that run (or do not run) between those actors within broader organizational fields (e.g., Holzer, 2006) (see Chapters 36 and 38). This chapter fills this gap by proposing a framework, based on the concept of “mode of coordination” (Diani, 2013, 2015), to capture the different logics of collective action that often coexist, in variable combinations, within consumerist fields. The next section introduces the basic mechanisms through which collective action gets coordinated. Then, four different modes of coordination are introduced: social movement, coalitional, subcultural/ communitarian, and organizational. After a short illustration of how to empirically explore modes of coordination within collective action fields, drawing upon the tools of social network analysis, the chapter concludes by highlighting some important implications of this approach.
Coordinating Collective Action: Basic Mechanisms A mode of coordination of collective action (henceforth, MoC) consists of “the relational processes through which resources are allocated within a certain collectivity, decisions are taken, collective representations elaborated, feelings of solidarity and mutual obligation forged” (Diani, 2015, pp. 13–14). Two broad classes of mechanisms may be associated to such processes: one focusing on resource allocation, the other on boundary definition. In particular, resource allocation refers to the multiple ways through which actors allocate their material and intellectual resources, choosing among different, sometimes conflicting goals and various tactical and strategic options. For example, individuals may (or, usually, have to) choose between many different possible causes to support. They may join existing organizations, create new ones, or stay away from any organizational involvement; they may decide what kind of action repertoire to adopt; what public events (if any) to attend; and how much time and energy to devote to a specific activity. All these choices are shaped by the networks people are connected to but also create opportunities for establishing new ties and getting in touch with new social milieus. The same holds for organizations, which are regularly faced with dilemmas related to their issue priorities, to their choices of tactics, and to their alliance-building strategies. They may adopt more or less formalized structures, aim for different balances between volunteers and professional members, prioritize confrontational or lobbying tactics, concentrate on certain goals to the detriment of others, look for support from specific social and political sectors rather than others, and frame their activities in quite different ways.
92 Mario Diani Apart from obvious limitations generated by resource availability and external opportunities, such choices are also dependent on relational factors: they are shaped by previous network patterns operating in a certain organizational field but also facilitate the activation of new connections while discouraging others (for example, disagreement on tactics is a major obstacle to alliance building: Diani, 2015; van Dyke & McCammon, 2010). While no social actor is, strictly speaking, totally isolated from others, the mechanisms of resource allocation described in the preceding discussion may take place in quite different relational settings, in particular for organizations: the decisions regarding priorities, strategies, and tactics may take place primarily within specific groups or associations or may imply sustained exchanges and negotiations with other organizations. This tension points to important differences in the ways collective action is coordinated. At the same time, interactions within a field also reflect different styles of boundary definition. This expression could be seen as a combination of cognitive and emotional mechanisms. Any type of collective action requires a definition of an actor in relation to its opponents as well as to some sometimes sympathetic, sometimes neutral publics. Such definition may hugely vary in sharpness and exclusiveness; yet it is difficult to think of collective action in its absence. Attempts to promote collective action on public interests that attract in principle broad support can be problematic due to a difficulty in specifying the contours not only of the collective actor on behalf of whom one wants to speak but also of that actor’s opponents. In the past, environmental movements have often been characterized as “consensus movements,” whose goals could hardly be challenged in principle, and because of this relatively limited in their mobilizing capacity in the absence of major external threats such as natural disasters (see, e.g., Diani, 1995). Attempts to forge identities, capable of sustaining specific consumers’ movements in opposition to specific adversaries, might well face similar difficulties. At the same time, the emergence of the populist right in the late 2000s has carried with it explicit anti-environmental feelings such as climate change denialism or hostility to responsible consumption, most visibly in Trump’s USA. This might facilitate in the mid-term the forging of more salient collective identities around previously consensual currents, including consumerism. Boundary definition occurs through multiple mechanisms. They are basically ideational, as the distinctive features of a collectivity, its links to the past and to the future, are defined through processes of cultural and symbolic creation and transformation (della Porta & Diani, 2006, chap. 4). This is evident, for example, in the link that the rhetoric of the slow food movement establishes between contemporary lifestyles and food practices, rooted in a tradition that should be protected and revitalized (Siniscalchi, 2013). At the same time, cultural production and identity formation occur through relational mechanisms, as culture and relations mutually constitute each other (Mische, 2003). Similarly to what we discussed for resource allocation mechanisms, boundary definition may concentrate on specific groups or associations (in which case members will identify primarily with one group and/or the group will refer primarily to itself rather than to the set of actors engaged in similar causes or issues); or instead it may take a broader, more inclusive approach, in which the identities of specific groups or associations coexist with broader, encompassing identities. That’s what
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 93
Coalitional
Social movement
Organizational
Subcultural/ Communitarian
Intense
Resource exchanges in the organizational field
Limited
Intense
Limited Boundary work in the organizational field
Figure 5.1 Modes of coordination of collective action. Source: Adapted from Diani, 2012; reprinted by permission © 2012 by Cambridge University Press.
happens, for example, when a group with a clear, distinct profile also feels part and represents itself as a component of a broader movement. An important type of relational mechanism linked to boundary definition consists of the distribution of individual multiple memberships and involvements (Diani, 2015). By joining multiple activities and/ or associations, that is, by creating intersections between social circles (Simmel, 1955), individuals establish connections between them that are at the same time cognitive and emotional: they highlight, in other words, not only the continuities and compatibilities in their agendas but also the solidarities and the bonds between different associations. The variable focus of mechanisms of resource allocation and boundary definition— whether they take place primarily at the level of collective action fields or of specific groups or associations—defines four basic MoCs (Figure 5.1). They have been labelled “organizational,” “subcultural/communitarian,” “coalitional,” and “social movements” (Diani, 2012, 2015). Taken together, they provide a framework for a more nuanced analysis of the dynamics going on in the consumerist collective action field, beyond the generic label “consumer movements.” References to the distinctive features of an MoC in the following discussion will be to its analytic properties, not to its empirical manifestations. Only a limited set of consumerist actions fall neatly in one or the other category. Most of the times, specific episode of consumerist action will see variable combinations of different modes.
Social Movement Modes of Coordination Given the tendency to use the expression “consumer movements” to refer to any instance of collective action on consumption issues (or even to the use of a consumerist
94 Mario Diani repertoire to pursue other goals and other issues), it may be useful to start off with a more restricted view of a social movement as a distinct MoC. According to the MoC model (Diani, 2012, 2015), social movements are defined by the coupling of dense networks of informal interorganizational exchanges and processes of boundary definition that operate at the level of broad fields rather than specific groups/organizations. As such, they combine features of different organizational models, like that of “network organization” (e.g., Podolny & Page, 1998) or “partial organization” (Ahrne & Brunsson, 2011). As far as resource coordination is concerned, several elements are worth stressing. First, social movements consist of a multiplicity of formally independent actors. They may differ substantially in issue priorities, organizational forms, and amount of resources they command. However, despite these differences and the fact of conducting many mobilizations on their own, organized actors involved in social movement processes regularly engage in joint initiatives and campaigns. These may range from one- off protest events to activities stretching over longer periods and involving multiple campaigns. For example, boycotts in South Africa during apartheid started off back in the 1950s mainly as attempts promoted by specific local communities to target specific goods or services, such as local transport companies, and only with time were woven into broader strategies on a national and eventually an international scale (see Chapter 3). While the set of actors involved in any event tends to vary, organizations may end up cooperating on a recurrent basis on different campaigns. This generates relatively dense networks of interorganizational collaboration. In a social movement MoC, transaction costs tend to be high as the terms of such collaboration are informal and need to be renegotiated each time a new mobilization is being planned. Prospective participants need to agree on issues that may include the selection of specific goals, the choice of the most appropriate tactics and mobilizing messages, the identification of the social sectors to target for support, and the contributions that each coalition partner is expected to give. This requires a considerable investment in both time and political capital, as the potential for fission and fragmentation is always present. At the same time, however, from repeated instances of collaboration across different campaigns some informal routines may emerge. This reduces transaction costs and generates a coordination model akin to a network organization in which the terms of the exchange are determined by mutual social control and trust rather than legal arrangement, as may happen in business organizations (Podolny & Page, 1998). Individuals also contribute significantly and distinctly to resource allocation within social movement networks. Through their multiple memberships they keep lines of communication open between groups and associations, both within the consumerist field and across other collective action fields. By participating in various campaigns and events they also contribute to weaving those initiatives into broader and sustained collective efforts. Individual activists’ and sympathizers’ multiple involvements also contribute to boundary definition. Processes of boundary construction and identity building are essential because they secure the continuity of social movements over time and space. Social movements exist, in other words, because actors mobilized within them and at least some opponents and/or observers are capable of locating in a broader picture
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 95 actors and events that operate in different localities at different points in time. This is particularly important in the case of actions on consumer issues that can easily be reduced to individual acts of consumer behaviour (de Moor, 2017a; Dubuisson-Quellier, Lamine, and& Le Velly, 2011) (see Chapter 38). Boundary construction is also essential because it provides participants with the necessary motivations to act. While this has usually been explored at the individual level (Melucci, 1996; Pizzorno, 1978), exchanges between organizations and long-term alliances may also be facilitated in the presence of shared identities and similar definitions of the boundaries of collective actors. Like resource coordination, even boundary definition often takes a multidimensional, complex form. A social movement MoC usually sees the coexistence of dual mechanisms of boundary definition at both the organizational level and the movement level. The presence of movement identities, that is, of boundaries that encompass a multiplicity of actors, does not mean the disappearance of more focused organizational identities. Identifying with a specific organization like Slow Food does not rule out the possibility that the same individuals also feel part of a much broader movement for alternative food. Organizational and broader identities may often coexist, more or less peacefully. Of course, it is always possible that (sectors of) movements with pronounced hostilities towards bureaucratic organizational models claim to identify with “the movement” as a whole, not with any specific organization acting within it. This seemed to be the case in so-called affinity groups in the global justice movement (McDonald, 2002). It is also possible that specific group identities take priority over broader movement identities: for example, a vegan group might not feel part of a broader food movement to the extent that the latter’s identity does not necessarily rule out the consumption of meat (see Chapter 8). As social movements are loose networks of multiple actors, their boundaries are defined by processes of mutual recognition and social construction. Individuals may be associated with a movement to the extent that they recognize each other, and are recognized by other actors, as parts of that particular collectivity. It does not suffice that they adopt certain lifestyles, hold certain values and opinions, or show willingness to engage in certain actions as individuals. These are useful indicators of the spread of consumerism as a set of values or a repertoire of action, but that does not translate automatically into a movement identity. Likewise, organizations do not belong in a movement because of their issue priorities, their strategies and tactics, or their organizational profile. They do belong because they define themselves as part of that movement and are perceived as such by significant others. For example, there is nothing in a purchase group that makes it part of the alternative food movement unless its members as well as external observers recognize it and its actions as such, and unless both the organization and its members are connected to other actors and initiatives on the same ground. In this sense, individual multiple memberships can operate as an important signal of the perceived proximity and solidarity linking different independent organizations. Boundary definition is indeed sustained by activists’ multiple affiliations and involvements in several experiences through membership, personal connections, and participation in activities (Carroll & Ratner, 1996).
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Subcultural/C ommunitarian Modes of Coordination Social movements are not the sole promoters of collective action, however. It is also possible to think of subcultures/communities as a distinct MoC. Although the importance of social movement communities has long been recognized (Forno & Graziano, 2014; see Chapter 4), researchers have normally emphasized their role as preconditions of collective action and the ways in which communities facilitate interorganizational coalitions. Yet, we can also think of communities as a peculiar way to promote collective action independently from, or in the absence of, organizations. In this particular model the role of organizations, and especially interorganizational exchanges, in resource allocation is limited, while boundary definition involves multiple actors and forges broad solidarities. These feelings emerge from the interactions between individuals involved in various forms of community life. In authoritarian regimes, dissenters have often met and operated under the cover provided by legitimate settings so that even the most repressive authorities could not easily control them. In the buildup to the 1848 insurrection, Milanese citizens expressed their hostility to the Austrian imperial administration through specific consumerist practices like abstaining from smoking or indulging in cultural consumption of Verdi operas, which spoke to the growing sense of Italian national pride (Stamatov, 2002; see Lekakis in this volume). On many occasions, settings linked to consumption have provided significant opportunities for assembling to critics of ruling regimes, from the bazaar in 1970s prerevolutionary Iran to culinary societies in Franco’s Spain or the network of theatres in Czechoslovakia before the collapse of Communism (Glenn, 2003; Rasler, 1996). Even in democratic countries, dense subcultural networks may strengthen identity feelings and facilitate spontaneous, informal mobilization when dense organizational structures are not in place or available, for whatever reason. Participants in the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s only partially met through organizations; they also relied heavily on informal occasions such as those offered by reading groups, venues promoting alternative lifestyles, and cafes or bookshops (Haunss & Leach, 2009; Melucci, 1996). Beyond representing a favourable ground for experimenting new forms of cultural consumption, those outlets often provided the settings in which specific consumerist campaigns were organized—such as those against apartheid in South Africa. The notion of community is not necessarily linked to a specific place. Nor does it necessarily imply diffuse rather than specific relations: epistemic communities, or communities of practice, are characterized by distinctive interests and/or moral orientations, around which interaction develops (Eyerman & Jamison, 1998; Haas, 1992). The spread of the internet has enormously facilitated these forms of coordination. Specific epistemic communities have played a crucial role in the promotion of mobilizations on a transnational scale on issues such as internet governance (Pavan, 2012) or creative commons (Fuster Morell, 2010).
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 97 It is easy to see how this model fits the experience of consumerist collective action. Consumerism rests on communities of people that share specific sets of values and specific types of knowledge. The emergence of veganism for example has been made possible by networks of individuals willing to challenge a food model focused on meat and to share their practical knowledge about alternative diets based on vegetables. It has been hugely facilitated by the spread of the internet, which has enabled the forging of lifestyle communities across space, bringing together people with similar orientations (see Chapter 8). Consumerism is also a style of action centred on a notion of individual responsibility. It calls upon individuals to play a distinctive role in the pursuit of collective goals. The importance of online campaigning for consumer action has long been recognized (Hollenbeck & Zinkhan, 2006) as a powerful tool to involve individuals in specific campaigns on a scale that would be otherwise inconceivable in the absence of large organizational structures. Data from a survey of the U.S. population collected in 2011 show that over 70 percent of those who had participated in boycotting or boycotting actions in the previous twelve months had done so on a strictly individual basis, without the mediation of any organization (Earl, Copeland, & Bimber, 2017, p. 141). We can also find elements of a subcultural/communitarian MoC in collective action fields in which organizations are present. They do not always cooperate given their different empirical focus, but at the same time they share a general sense of solidarity as part of the same collective enterprise. The profile of the field of groups active in alternative food practices in France in the 2000s (Dubuisson-Quellier, Lamine, & Le Velly, 2011) illustrates these dynamics, in particular the tensions between organizational and broader identities. The three major organizations around which the field centred had quite distinctive areas of intervention: the Fédération Artisans du Monde (FADM) focused on fairtrade practices in support of producers in countries of the South; ConsoResp, an offspring of Attac France, promoted a militant critique of economic globalization that also took the form of classic protest activities; and finally, the Associations pour le Maintien d’une Agriculture Paysanne (AMAP) coordinated hundreds of local consumer groups supporting local farming. These different components were by no means homogeneous in their approaches, and there were indeed some potential contradictions between some of the practices advocated by the different groups, for example between the promotion of fair trade across continents, and the priority assigned to local farming (on this general tension, see also Raynolds, 2000). Still, the different components of the field seemed to manage to build some level of shared identity, in particular on the need to educate the public and increase its appreciation of the moral and ethical dimensions of consumer behaviour (Dubuisson-Quellier, Lamine, & Le Velly, 2011, p. 307). The fact that activists were also involved in more than one of the major organizations also helped to strengthen a common identity. While sustained interorganizational collaborations might not have been easy, given the different focus of the main players in that field, a strong solidarity was nonetheless present and sustained individual activists’ multiple involvements.
98 Mario Diani
Coalitional Modes of Coordination Another factor that needs to be recognized is the role of other MoCs, differentiating, for example, between social movements and coalitional dynamics. This may sound confusing, as movements and coalitions are frequently treated interchangeably. In terms of resource allocation, coalitional processes are actually very similar to social movements: both consist of multiple, often heterogeneous, independent actors, pooling resources in pursuit of some shared goals. At the same time, there are some important differences, the most important one being that organizations may become involved in dense collaborative exchanges with groups that have similar concerns, yet without necessarily coming to share a broader identity or an extended time perspective. Coalitions are best conceived as “joint action among two or more parties to achieve a common goal . . ., or alliances that are temporary and fluid, dissolving or changing as goals or members’ self-interest is re-defined” (Kadushin et al., 2005, p. 258). To mount a coalition, it is sufficient to agree on a specific goal and some kind of moral rationale for it, as well as on a general understanding of the collectivity one wants to mobilize. It is not necessary to develop a sense of “we” extending in time and space. Participants in a coalition may well hold strong identities of their own but need not to weave them into a broader narrative. In general, the boundary definition processes on which coalitions are founded are temporary and locally circumscribed. Once a specific goal has been achieved (or it has become clear that it cannot be achieved), a coalition may disband without major consequences on the identity of people and organizations involved in it. Even coalition work that lasts over time does not necessarily generate specific identities. A major example is provided by the recurrent boycotts of Nestlé products that have taken place since 1977 in opposition to its massive promotion of powdered milk in developing countries, blamed for increasing rates of infant mortality (Boyd, 2012; Sethi, 1994; see Chapter 33). Such activities have been promoted by a variety of actors or “stakeholders.” For example, in the United Kingdom these have included specific campaigning organizations like Baby Milk Action; major nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like Oxfam or Save the Children; and businesses, educational institutions, local authorities, faith groups, and interest groups.1 The fact of cooperating in sustained initiatives over time has certainly not resulted in a specific identity focused on the hostility to Nestlé’s policies (that would have been surprising, given the relative narrowness of the issue). Of course, it is certainly possible that actors who have been involved in a coalition in pursuit of a very specific goal then elaborate on their experience and develop a new understanding of themselves and their role that brings them to new forms of broader collective identification. Consider local groups that start off opposing very specific environment- threatening projects, later coming to identify with broader environmental movements; or groups that start off opposing military interventions in the Southern Hemisphere on ethical grounds and later turn to broader criticisms of neoliberal globalization. But this signals a shift from a coalitional to a social movement MoC, rather than questioning the analytic distinction between the two models of managing collective action.
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 99 The distinction between coalitional and social movement MoCs is particularly important in the case of consumerist collective action even when the issue is not as specific as it was in the case with the Nestlé boycotts. First, it is not always easy to forge broad collective identities around issues and actions that are not primarily contentious (in the sense of challenging other actors’ power) and are also heavily exposed to market dynamics that facilitate the individualization and fragmentation of social practices. Although the groups engaged in the French alternative food scene of the 2000s managed to develop some shared identity, this process was by no means automatic and was constantly hampered by the inevitable presence of market logics affecting people’s actions and self-representations (Dubuisson-Quellier, Lamine, & Le Velly, 2011). At the same time, many of the collective action events and campaigns in which consumer groups are involved are actually focused on other goals, such as human rights or antiglobalization, and consumption is mostly relevant as a repertoire rather than as a primary source of collective identity. Groups and organizations challenging South African apartheid since the 1950s in the West advocated the boycott of the South African economy as a primary form of action, targeting individual consumers to convince them to boycott outlets that traded South African goods and pressurizing governments and big business to cut economic exchanges with the apartheid movement. However, this could not be framed as a “consumerist movement”; rather it was a broader human rights, antiracist coalition adopting consumerist styles of action. In Latin America, even before the 2008 crisis, consumer organizations have often joined forces with other organizations in broad coalitions challenging the World Trade Organization and International Monetary Fund neoliberal policies and their implementation by national governments on the continent. Yet again, the fact that issues linked to individual and collective consumption were addressed does not mean that one could speak of “consumerist movements” operating on the basis of a major identification with consumerism. If any movement identity was present in those mobilizations, it was rather of a global justice, anticapitalist kind (Pereyra, Pérez, & Schuster, 2017; Wickham Crowley & Eckstein, 2017). From a very different standpoint, the boycott of Walmart by the U.S. Christian right or moral conservatives like the American Family Association, following the firm’s public commitment not to discriminate against sexual minorities, certainly adopted a consumerist repertoire but could not be regarded as an instance of consumerist movement: the identity connecting its participants was based on a particular set of moral values, not on consumption.
Organizational Modes of Coordination Finally, note that despite the widespread use of the expression “consumer movements,” a lot of consumerist action actually takes place within the boundaries of specific organizations, that is, in contexts in which the key relationship develops between individuals
100 Mario Diani interested in a particular type of good and the organizations providing such goods. In this context, both the goods and organizations are very broadly conceived. The former may range from access to particular material goods (e.g., food produced in sustainable ways) to opportunities for participation (e.g., the chance to express one’s ethical convictions or political stances through boycotts or buycotts) to the practice of alternative lifestyles in specific communitarian settings. The latter may be similarly diverse, including entities ranging from the very informal to the highly bureaucratic—from a very precise, issue-specific set of activities to an organizational model that covers many aspects of members’ lives. The common trait between such a heterogeneous set of actors and demands lies in the fact that it is perfectly possible to think of a consumerist action merely as a relationship between an activist/sympathizer/consumer and an organized actor. Several dimensions of consumerism are actually of the strictly individual type. They do not require automatically the activation of broader multiple alliances between organizations or the forging of broader identities. When people go to a cooperative shop to buy fairtrade groceries, respond to calls from an organization to boycott products by a multinational brand, or join purchase groups, this does not necessarily imply involvement in activities promoted by other groups or the development of solidarity bonds with a larger movement (although that may happen). Even collective experiences, involving many aspects of one’s life and thus very different from individual ethical shopping, may in principle reflect an organizational MoC. Joining an alternative commune may take this form if the communal setting is driven by sectarian, world-rejecting principles or just simply shows no particular interest in engaging with other entities holding similar values. As for organizations, they may operate primarily on their own terms without necessarily developing particularly strong identity bonds to other groups or without engaging in systematic negotiations with other actors on matters of strategies or tactics. Purchase groups as the gruppi di acquisto solidale (GAS) in Italy (Forno & Graziano, 2014) or organizations like Fair Trade International, whose membership consists of networks of national producers (Raynolds, 2000), certainly represent issues linked to consumerism. Still, their features as organizations do not automatically qualify them as social movement organizations unless they are explicitly involved in broader collaborative networks and distinct solidarities with actors mobilizing on similar issues. Unless this happens, they are more conveniently treated as interest organizations rather than as social movement organizations (see Chapters 4 and 36). It is worth stressing that earlier formulations of social movement theory, most notably resource mobilization theory in its original formulation (McCarthy & Zald, 1977), actually viewed social movements as sets of preferences that had to be converted into collective action by political entrepreneurs (whether individuals or organizations) endowed with the necessary skills and resources (see also, in explicit reference to critical consumption, Yates, 2011). In doing so, they put forward a view of collective action dynamics that is actually closest to an organizational MoC. While the resource mobilization model provides a powerful tool to explore the conditions under which collective action is generated, it does not help in capturing the peculiarity of social movements
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 101 vis-à-vis other forms of action. It may, however, help in identifying the commonalities that may be found between radical and moderate groups, organizations oriented to the market, and organizations oriented to the political sphere. The important point to retain from this discussion is that it is not the properties of individual actors (be they individuals or organizations) that make a consumer movement; it is the relational pattern connecting those actors. The fact that significant numbers within a population express commitment to consumer issues and engage in consumerist repertoires is an important precondition for the emergence of movements, but it is not sufficient to generate a movement dynamic. What makes a social movement is the involvement of individuals in multiple activities and their identification with a broader set of issues and actors than the ones serving their specific needs and demands, not their adoption of consumerist repertoires per se. Likewise, organizations may well be working on consumption-related issues, but if they do so only in order to become the owners of some specific issues in indifference, if not hostility, towards other organizations, then the use of the term “social movement” is analytically misleading. Nor is the participatory or protest orientation of an organization enough to generate a movement dynamic: if such organizations operate primarily on their own, they are best characterized as protest organizations, possibly as sects, but the distinctive features of a social movement MoC are likely to be missing. Going back to the examples of gruppi di acquisto solidale or Fair Trade International, the point is not to classify them once and for all as driven by an “organizational” or a “social movement” logic. The point is to recognize that their status as social movement organizations or coalition partners, rather than as self-contained organizations, depends ultimately not on their features, their repertoires of action, or the values they support but on the relational dynamics in which they are involved.
Consumerism Within Collective Action Fields The typology introduced in the previous sections provides the foundation for a research strategy that approaches consumerist collective action without rigid assumptions about the nature of the actors promoting it. Instead of reducing political consumerism to the actors that make the most explicit reference to it, this strategy explores it as a system of relations, involving all the groups and organizations (possibly, individuals too) that express a political interest in consumption issues and consumerist approaches. In particular, a consumerist movement will not consist only of the “usual suspects,” whose dominant identity refers to that kind of activism: it will consist instead of all the actors, involved in a distinct relational pattern. Conversely, having a set of actors cooperating on consumer issues will not be sufficient to conclude about the existence of a consumerist movement in the absence of a shared identity and distinct mechanisms of boundary definition.
102 Mario Diani Social network analysis (not necessarily in its quantitative version: Dominguez & Hollstein, 2014) provides a powerful set of tools to systematically map collective action fields (Ansell, 2003; Diani, 1995, 2015; Eggert, 2014; Osa, 2003). Data from a broader study of citizens’ organizations networks in British cities in the early 2000s (Diani, 2015) illustrate this approach. The project explored both interorganizational ties and the connections between organizations, created by their core activists’ multiple memberships and personal relations. The latter were taken, following a Simmelian logic, as major indicators of boundary definition.2 In Bristol, for example, 21 organizations interviewed out of 134 claimed an interest in issues linked to food but not in genetically modified organisms (GMOs); 30 claimed an interest in both issues. Figure 5.2 reports the network of all the 51 organizations interested in food (the black nodes correspond to the organizations interested in both generic food issues and GMOs). Even a superficial inspection identifies a few key properties of this field. First, a number of organizations were disconnected from the others, that is, not involved in any resource allocation exchange with other actors in the same field. While they were connected to other organizations in the broader civil society network, they did not have any distinct link to actors specifically interested in food; nor were they connected to each other by their core activists’ multiple memberships and personal bonds. Those groups seemed to coordinate primarily following an organizational logic, that is, resource allocation and identity definition both took place within single organizations rather than implying sustained exchanges with other actors in a specific food field. At the same time, the overall pattern of alliances was relatively dense; this suggested that in terms of resource allocation some degree of coordination existed
Figure 5.2 Alliance network of organizations interested in food issues in Bristol in the early 2000s (black nodes are groups interested in both GMO and generic food issues; white nodes designate groups only interested in the latter).
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 103 between most if not all organizations interested in food. Third, not all the actors playing a central role in this network could be primarily characterized as organizations focusing on food: the network included political parties like the Greens, major environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace, and community associations alongside specialist organizations such as the Soil Association, Organic Coop, or City Farms. Before jumping to conclusions about the existence of an “alternative food movement,” additional questions should be addressed: While the network of cooperative ties seemed relatively dense, was it also nonrandom? In other words, did the fact of sharing an interest in food significantly increase the probability of two organizations cooperating among themselves rather than with other civil society groups? And, did the interest in the two different kinds of issues shape the network in similar ways? Finally, what could we say about processes of boundary definition created by multiple memberships? Looking at the networks of organizations interested in different issues separately suggests a quite different distribution of ties in the two cases. As such, organizations interested only in generic food issues did not seem connected in particularly distinctive ways (Figure 5.3); in contrast, interest in GMO food generated a dense network of collaborations (Figure 5.4). This was also illustrated by the distribution of collaborations within and across the two sets of organizations, as well as from either of them to other civil society groups with no interest in food (Table 5.1). The distribution of ties was not random, and the ratio between observed and expected ties was much higher among groups interested in GMOs than in the others (Table 5.1). At the same time, moving attention to the boundary-defining ties created by multiple memberships reveals that the distribution of those ties did not show any particular pattern within civil society (Table 5.2).
Figure 5.3 Alliance network of organizations interested in generic food issues in Bristol in the early 2000s.
Figure 5.4 Alliance network of organizations interested in both GMO and generic food issues in Bristol in the early 2000s.
Table 5.1 The Salience of Food Issues in Bristol Civic Networks, All Cooperative Ties Observed/Expected 1
2
3
1. Not interested in food
0.78
0.94
0.85
2. Food but not GMO
0.86
1.46
2.27
3. Both food & GMO
0.49
1.94
3.21
Significance = 0.000100
Table 5.2 The Salience of Food Issues in Bristol Civic Networks, Multiplex Ties Only Observed/Expected 1
2
3
1. Not interested in food
0.87
0.93
0.87
2. Food but not GMO
1.18
0
1.89
3. Both food & GMO
1.39
1.21
0.62
Significance = 0.25
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 105 This analysis suggests that (a) it was not interest in food per se that shaped civic networks but the more specific interest in GMO food; and (b) such interest was strong enough to generate distinctive networks in terms of resource allocation but not to define specific boundaries. In other words, the analysis identified coalitional modes of coordination rather than social movement dynamics. As cursory as it is, this example should hopefully illustrate the dividends associated with an analytic strategy that takes a relational rather than an aggregative approach to collective action fields. A systematic exploration of the relational processes going on in consumerist action fields may indeed help researchers to recognize the multiplicity of logics of collective action followed by actors with an interest in consumer issues, instead of simply assembling them under the generic category of “consumer movements.”
Conclusions Looking at political consumerism from the perspective of modes of coordination implies some important change in our conceptualizations of the phenomenon. First, it emphasizes the need to differentiate political consumerism as an action repertoire from political consumerism as a distinct political project that can provide the basis for specific collective identities and solidarities. In many cases—possibly, in most cases—of collective action in which consumerist repertoires are used, they support causes that address other types of issues—peace, industrial relations, human rights, racism, etc.—and are promoted by groups that do not define themselves as consumers. Second, and most distinctively, looking at modes of coordination points at the fact that not all collective action that develops using consumerist repertoires or addresses consumption issues automatically take the form of “social movements.” Collective action is also—and, perhaps, primarily—coordinated through other relational models. It may take the form of coalitions on specific issues that do not result however in consumerist identities; it may be conducted primarily by organizations with formal boundaries, focused primarily on their own identity and interested in securing their ownership of specific issues rather than building broader movements; or it can also take the form of specific subcultures in which people sharing distinctive lifestyles and identities organize, independently from organizations, around agendas which they have themselves elaborated. This questions the value of speaking indiscriminately of “consumer movements” as a general category. The crisis of class politics since the 1970s had prompted scholars to search for replacements of working-class movements as major political actors. While environmentalism and feminism were usually singled out as the most likely candidates, the concept of consumer movements was sometimes mentioned in an attempt to bring under a common framework a variety of initiatives linked to consumption (e.g., Mayer, 1989). While in some phases in some countries (in particular in the United States
106 Mario Diani in the 1980s and 1990s under Ralph Nader’s leadership) the reference to consumers has provided the basis for major political actors (Mayer, 1989), as a rule the reference to “consumer movements” seems analytically overstretched. Rather than assuming the existence of consumer movements as the mere aggregation of all forms of activism somehow linked to consumerism, it is advisable to start from the exploration of broad consumer action fields and look for the relations that bind (or do not bind) those actors to each other. A network approach offers a number of analytic tools to systematically map the web of multiple ties that connect consumerist actors (or to highlight the disconnectedness of a consumerist field). These tools are now widely available, as social network analysis has grown impressively over the last decades and is increasingly part of the standard social science curriculum (de Nooy, Mrvar, & Batagelj, 2004; Knoke & Yang, 2008; Scott, 2000; Scott & Carrington, 2011). At the same time, some notes of caution are in order (although in fairness they are common to virtually any style of social research). First, a formal network analysis of the structure of consumerist fields like the one introduced in the previous section needs to be supplemented with a qualitative exploration of the logics of tie building: What are the mechanisms that bring together certain styles of consumer activism but not others? What conditions facilitate the weaving of specific issues into broader agendas and ultimately the emergence of large coalitions and possibly movements, and what factors prevent such developments? What are the bases of solidarities and shared identities among consumer activists? These and related questions are best addressed through some type of mixed strategy that combines quantitative and qualitative exploration (della Porta, 2014; Dominguez & Hollstein, 2014). Another important warning refers to the fact that we should never try and to rigidly fit a specific example of consumerist action into one of the boxes of the MoC typology. Rather, it should be accepted that different MoCs may be at play within any instance of consumerist action and eventually explore how they combine and how their relative weight changes over time. For example, it would make little sense to ask whether Slow Food is a “social movement” or not. In reality, it seems to present a combination of traits, some of them rendering it closer to a formal public interest organization, with clear boundaries and a dedicated staff, others to a loosely coordinated subcultural network of likeminded individuals, sharing specific lifestyles (Bommel & Spicer, 2015; Siniscalchi, 2013). Like all instances of collective action, consumerist action is an inherently complex phenomenon. Researchers will be better off by taking such complexity seriously in their research practices.
Notes 1. http://archive.babymilkaction.org/pages/endorsers.html#education, accessed on July 9, 2017. 2. See Simmel’s (1955) well-known argument about the role of individuals as ties between different social groups through their multiple involvements.
Modes of Coordination in Political Consumerism 107
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Chapter 6
A B EHAVIOURAL E c onomi c Perspecti v e on P olitical C on sume ri sm Sebastian Berger
A plethora of research has pointed out how justice and fairness concerns around consumption influence consumers’ choices in markets. More than ever, global inequalities, poverty, and work conditions are a salient cause of concern to many consumers and also motivate political consumerism (e.g., Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005). The rising popularity of applying behavioural scientific theory and methodology in issues surrounding consumer choice and welfare has strongly influenced the field of political consumerism and related fields such as consumer protection (e.g., Lotz, Christandl, & Fetchenhauer, 2013; Pigors & Rockenbach, 2016; Poelman, Mojet, Lyon, & Sefa-Dedeh, 2008; Vecchio & Annunziata, 2015; Zander & Hamm, 2010). More specifically, behavioural economics, which is a subfield of economics devoted to the study of economic and social behaviour while incorporating more realistic assumptions about human nature into its modelling, plays a distinctive role in these research endeavours. Therefore, this chapter builds on theory, methodology, and empirical results from this line of research to augment an understanding of political consumerism. It shows how behavioural economic thinking has not only delivered new research results but also novel policymaking tools (e.g., nudging) that may be used to facilitate the emergence of political consumerism in modern markets. Section two describes theoretical ideas, methods, and empirical findings derived from economic experiments that may enrich an understanding of the motivational (i.e., individual) and institutional (e.g., market-based) foundations of political consumerism that may be observed in many modern markets. Furthermore, this section moves beyond the mere understanding of how consumers behave in markets and discusses applied behavioural scientific research that has been brought into the domain of public policy and therefore enriched the policymakers’ toolbox. The term for this method has been coined as “nudging” (Thaler &
112 Sebastian Berger Sunstein, 2008), which refers to using psychological and behavioural economic insights to guide consumers’ decision-making without classical, coercive policy tools such as taxation or prohibition. Therefore, nudging is often referred to as “libertarian” or “soft” paternalism (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) as it takes a paternalistic influence without breaching liberties, supposedly preserving freedom of choice. In the third section, some behavioural scientific results demonstrating political consumerism in consumer and financial markets are highlighted, and it is shown how these selected results offer a better understanding of consumer behaviour. Section four discusses real-world factors associated with political consumerism or the lack thereof, and section five concludes by discussing strengths and limitations of the behavioural economic approach and avenues for future research. To sum up, the aim of the chapter is to provide an overview of the behavioural and experimental economic research that has influenced thinking about political consumerism and thus to enrich the multifaceted view on political consumerism. Importantly, readers from sociology and political science may see strong parallels to theoretical ideas from their own fields, including organized irresponsibility (Beck, 1988) or the relevance of social practice theory in sustainable behaviour (e.g., Mol & Spaargaren, 2000; Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012; Spaargaren, 2011; Spaargaren & Oosterveer, 2010; see also Chapter 7). An important qualification for the chapter is that findings from political consumerism beyond the reach of behavioural economics and psychological science (e.g., Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005) are not included in this analysis. Hence, the chapter is written from the perspective of behavioural economics, mostly relying on analytical concepts and a theoretical background of economics and economic psychology.
Prosocial Preferences and Political Consumerism in Modern Markets: Theory, Methods, and Empirical Evidence From Behavioural and Experimental Economics Before embarking on a journey of how behavioural economic insights provide a good foundation for understanding political consumerism by looking at prosocial preferences on a more abstract level, it has to be noted that political consumerism is, within the present analysis, investigated from the perspective that it reflects a nonselfish consumer choice. This means, for example, that acts that merely aim at the self (e.g., a woman boycotting a company that has mistreated her by showing disrespect in a service interaction, purchasing fair trade because it subjectively tastes better) are not viewed as pure
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 113 acts of political consumerism resulting from a prosocial preference (i.e., a preference for the welfare of others). However, a similar act of behaviour may qualify as political consumerism if the motive for one’s behaviour does not root in the self (e.g., a woman boycotting a company that mistreats women in general by showing disrespect in service encounters). This is an important conceptual prerequisite for the behavioural economic analysis offered in this chapter, because otherwise, political consumerism can easily and cynically be understood and modelled with the help of pure rational choice theories alone. Of course, research points to several routes by which acts typically defined as prosocial political consumerism (e.g., the purchase of fairtrade goods) may easily be reduced to serving one’s self-interest. For example, research found that people typically consider ethical goods as healthier (e.g., Schuldt et al., 2012) and more tasty (e.g., Lotz et al., 2013) and if purchases serve these goals alone, they are hardly seen as serving the welfare of other people. That said, the question whether people are at all willing to engage in acts of political consumerism requires some sort of other-regarding, so-called prosocial preferences (e.g., Andreoni, 1990; Bolton & Ockenfels, 2000; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999). The term “prosocial” in this case speaks to concerns about others that transcend the standard assumption of economics that individuals are first and foremost motivated by benefits for oneself (i.e., selfishness). Research results on prosocial preferences are one of the founding pillars of modern behavioural economics that tries to incorporate more realistic assumptions about behavioural into economic models of consumer choice.
Prosocial Preferences in Individual Decision-Making Before behavioural economics took interest in human prosocial behaviour, it had been widely investigated in social psychology (e.g., Batson, 1987; Batson & Powell, 2003; Darley & Batson, 1973), sociology (e.g., Simpson & Willer, 2015, for a review), and biology (Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1971). However, the developments in experimental economics provide a particularly suitable analytical approach to show drivers (i.e., positive personal or situational influences) as well as inhibitors (i.e., negative personal or situational influences) of political consumerism. Most findings presented in the context of political consumerism rest somehow on the idea that people are not purely interested in maximizing immediate benefits for the self. At times, they act in the broader interest of others out of genuine altruism (i.e., their honest preference for the welfare of others) or reputational concerns (i.e., serving their perception in their social group; e.g., Simpson & Willer, 2015, for a sociological perspective). Research in experimental economics started with contributing very basic laboratory results showing that people sometimes care about the welfare of others. Contemporary research, building on variations of the general paradigms, identifies more specific behavioural mechanisms, which are detrimental for political consumerism to emerge. Hence, behavioural economics may provide tools to predict such behaviour or to prescribe how
114 Sebastian Berger decision-making surroundings could be “engineered” (Bolton & Ockenfels, 2012) so that political consumerism may be promoted. Early contributions to this literature presented theories largely based on experimental results involving abstract money-distribution tasks (i.e., economic games). This research highlighted three motives for social preferences. First, people sometimes (financially) care about the welfare of others (e.g., Andreoni, 1990; Andreoni & Miller, 2002). Second, they have some degree of aversion also against advantageous inequality, which translates into a willingness-to-pay to reduce said inequalities (Bolton & Ockenfels, 2000; Fehr & Schmidt, 1999). Third, they aim to maximize social outcomes for their respective groups rather than maximizing their own earnings (Charness & Rabin, 2002; Engelmann & Strobel, 2004). One of these highly stylized experimental paradigms, for example, is a simple distributional task coined the “dictator game.” In this decision task, two people form a dyad. It is then randomly decided who of the two players acts in the role of the dictator and who acts in the role of the receiver. The dictator is endowed with a sum of money (e.g., $10) and decides how much (if any) to distribute to the receiver. Although “standard” (i.e., selfish) preferences would suggest that dictators keep the entire endowment for themselves, average distributions to the receiver are over 20 percent of the endowment (Camerer, 2003). Results like these have challenged traditional economic assumptions and called for increasing work in modeling economic behaviour following more realistic, empirically observable assumptions. A central characteristic of these early models is that final distributions about wealth are the unique determinant of behaviour (Dana, Weber, & Kuang, 2007). In this framework of outcome-based prosocial preferences, welfare for others is a simple “consumption good.” Translated to political consumerism, purchasing a more expensive, fairtrade-labelled coffee that ensures higher payments to a producer is merely a revealed preference for the welfare of that producer by a particular consumer. This type of political consumerism is easily captured by economic theories incorporating social preferences (e.g., Bolton & Ockenfels, 2000), which solely depend on the outcomes of economic decisions. Subsequently, however, a large literature emerged around the empirical finding that outcome-based social preferences might not suffice to capture humans’ economic and social behaviour correctly. Particularly interesting were a series of experiments demonstrating a seemingly “illusory” preference for fairness (e.g., Dana, Cain, & Dawes, 2006; Dana, Weber, & Kuang, 2007; Lotz, Schlösser, Cain, & Fetchenhauer, 2013). This research shows how even marginal adjustments to simple economic games provide striking differences in behaviour although outcome-based theories of social preference would not predict such a difference. In the authors’ own work (Lotz et al., 2013), for example, the authors simply changed a few details of the dictator game and observed differences in average transfer rates. For instance, changing the rule that dictators had to take a part of the endowment away from the receiver, rather than to give some of the endowment to him or her, provided differences in behaviour that particularly emerged for people who possess a low justice sensitivity. Justice sensitivity (Schmitt et al., 2005)
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 115 is a personality trait that captures individual differences in how readily people perceive situations as justice-relevant and how strongly they react to injustice emotionally, cognitively, and behaviourally. Thus, our research showed that differences in games probably vary along the lines of the subjective differences in how situations are perceived as involving injustice if acting selfishly. Similar, but perhaps even more surprising, is that people are sometimes even going out of their way (i.e., they accept a cost) to avoid situations that compel them to give, as if they are “crossing the street to avoid a beggar” (Dana et al., 2007). People may know that if confronted with a situation that triggers their own “altruism,” they may pay to avoid that situation altogether. Applying this finding to the domain of political consumerism, one should observe more such acts when consequences of political consumerism are more salient and easily attributable to a source. For example, when a barista directly confronts a consumer suggesting either conventional coffee sourced by child labour or a fairtrade alternative, the consumer may feel compelled to purchase the fairtrade coffee and give in. However, the same consumer may quite likely choose the conventional alternative in a supermarket aisle when no one is watching. From Dana et al. (2007), it follows that a person may strategically avoid this particular café and shop from the supermarket to avoid his or her own “altruism” despite liking the café very much. It is rather obvious that these highly stylized experimental economic games may seem far away from actual acts of political consumerism. Still, there is much to be learnt: Whereas many people possess some level of prosocial preferences that facilitate the emergence of political consumerism, other external mechanisms (give vs. take frames, lacking attributional clearance, as in Lotz et al., 2013) exist, which allow prosocial behaviour to appear or disappear. Another reason is that people may choose to be deliberately ignorant about the moral consequences of their behaviour because they know that reducing this ignorance would trigger costly moral behaviour. For example, results in experimental economics suggest that it may not suffice to give people the chance to acquire information about the ethicality of their consumption or investment choices voluntarily as the literature shows consistent results about humans’ systematic use of “moral wiggle room.” “Moral wiggle room” refers to the moral grey-zones in which a certain behaviour is not clearly unethical, but it would be easy to reveal information about said behaviour being ethical or not. Based on simple economic games, it is shown that, for example, minimal room to remain ignorant about the consequences of one’s acts is enough to reduce fair behaviour significantly. For instance, Dana et al. (2006) show that if people in dictator games can remain ignorant about the size of a distribution pie (e.g., $10 vs. $20), they frequently choose $5 because it might be the fair thing to do. In fact, it would be seen as a fair split if the total pie was $10, but unfair if the total pie was $20. Interestingly, even if experimental participants can reveal—at no additional cost—the true size of the pie, they frequently forgo this opportunity to maintain a positive self-concept that they may have been fair, but they will truly never know. From this experimental economic literature, it follows that humans possess some level of concern for others that may affect the individual willingness to forgo a personal gain in exchange for a positive social externality. However, it also provides an explanation
116 Sebastian Berger why people in the real world may not necessarily always be in line with outcome-based models of social preferences. Especially the moral wiggle room literature shows how fragile social preferences can be. When making decisions about financial investments or consumption choices, typically it is easily possible to avoid situations that trigger people’s altruistic behaviour. Importantly, the knowledge of this experimental economic literature opens the door for an active design of decision-making environments that facilitate behaviour in line with outcome-based social preferences. For example, if no moral wiggle room exists, then researchers frequently observe social behaviour. Therefore, one line of research in behavioural science (i.e., “nudging”) is attempting a systematic manipulation of the decision-making environment to “produce” desired behaviour by applying psychological insights, which is discussed in a later section.
From Individual Decision-Making to Collective Choice: Emergence of Political Consumerism in Modern Markets Decisions typically do not take place in a social vacuum but crucially depend on the decision context in which they are made. Economic decisions—in the majority of the world’s societies—occur within (competitive) markets. Typical consumption and investment decisions are organized through markets and we routinely make our economic decisions in such markets (consumption, financial, labour, etc.). But perhaps the market in itself imposes a situational variable that affects individual moral behaviour. This question of the effects of markets as institutions on individual moral behaviour has been one of the most controversial ones in the history of economics, philosophy, and sociology. Karl Marx (1904) famously posits that markets obstruct the moral quality of individual decision-making through an alienation and exploitation of the workforce. Similarly, Max Weber (1978) questions the ability of markets to produce morality, because markets typically emphasize self-interested behaviour of market participants. Adam Smith (1776), in stark contrast, suggests that the welfare production of market interactions do not depend on morality but on selfishness. He famously states that it does not depend on the “benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Milton Friedman (1962) further suggests that political freedom is a result of economic freedom and that, therefore, the “business of business is business.” Resulting from these diverging thoughts by popular scholars, there is a strong contemporary debate about whether markets enable socially responsible behaviour or inhibit such. Behavioural science has therefore attempted experiments that systematically manipulate people’s exposure to market interaction to show causally how markets in themselves affect individual behaviour (e.g., Falk & Szech, 2013a). Many results proposing the existence of “prosocial preferences” based on the previously cited experimental games all rely merely on individual decision-making. Although these results
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 117 suggest that people sometimes care about social welfare, this does not necessarily mean that decisions made within competitive markets—be it consumer, financial, or other markets—provide outcomes in line with these individual decisions. The most prominent recent experimental results on the moral decay in markets is delivered by Falk & Szech (2013a). Experiments based on a highly vivid moral behaviour— killing versus saving a mouse—suggest that markets actually erode moral values. This conclusion stems from the observation that individuals demand higher amounts of money in individual decision-making tasks than they do in a market interaction to forgo the opportunity to save the life of a mouse. The basic setup of the experiment is that people can accept monetary rewards that are paid to them conditional upon allowing a mouse to be killed. Varying whether decisions take place individually versus in markets, the result is that many more mice die in market interactions compared to individual decision-making. The price of a mouse’s life (i.e., a quantitative measure of morality) is also lower in markets than in individual decision-making, suggesting that market mechanisms erode the morality of its members. From this result, one may be sceptical about the possibility of political consumerism to emerge in competitive markets. However, Bartling et al. (2015) show that—although markets provide less socially responsible behaviour than individual tasks—participants in experimental markets internalize negative externalities on third parties by accepting higher prices for consumption goods. This is a technical way of stating that people may overpay to secure benefits for a third party, for example to the producer of coffee beans when shopping for fairtrade coffee in a supermarket. Taking a market design perspective, Kirchler et al. (2015) provide evidence that systematic regulations of markets (i.e., the setting of particular rules) also lead to outcomes that are more favourable from a moral point of view. Pigors & Rockenbach (2016) study the emergence of political consumerism in an economic laboratory setting. Although the laboratory may be criticized as an artificial decision-making environment, tight control over the situation allows interesting insights into causal pathways that facilitate or hinder the emergence of political consumerism. First, it is shown that in the absence of competition, consumers are largely motivated by selfish preferences and go with whatever maximizes their monetary utility. Only when competition is introduced (i.e., an alternative for consumers) are they willing to punish immoral producers by doing business with someone else who behaves morally less problematic. Interestingly, the results are affected by the quality of information given to consumers. Using different forms of information about production conditions, the researchers show that information is crucial in competitive markets. Applying these results to political consumerism, it seems that direct information about production conditions can promote political consumerism in competitive environments where producers face the risk of losing the business of market participants who possess social preferences. This motivates, for example, consumer protection initiatives that transparently display ethicality of products as a label or the work of NGOs, which inform consumers about production standards of their cherished products.
118 Sebastian Berger Finally, research suggest that financial markets in particular may have it harder to produce morality compared to other markets. Cohn et al. (2014) show that when financial professionals are subjected to an experimental priming that highlights their identity as a member of a financial market, they behave less honestly than participants in a control condition that does not make their identity salient. Thus, situational variation in thinking about oneself as a member of the financial market versus not as a member has an effect on moral decisions. To summarize, experimental economic research shows that social preferences of individuals exist, though they may sometimes decay when opportunities arise to avoid the cost of one’s own morality. Furthermore, some people may actively seek out situations that prevent triggering of one’s own prosocial behaviour. Additionally, being exposed to a “market” itself can deteriorate socially responsible behaviour and acts of political consumerism. However, research points to how important institutional details of markets (Kirchler et al., 2015), such as the exact level of competition and the amount of information given to market participants (Pigors & Rockenbach, 2016), matter greatly and that new approaches in behavioural science (e.g., market design, nudging) may help to promote moral outcomes and enable political consumerism.
Nudging Political Consumerism Nudging (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008) is the prescriptive branch of an otherwise descriptive research field. Whereas in the infancy of behavioural economic research, the focus was on describing where human behaviour diverges from traditional assumptions, nudging is interested in designing choice situations to match behavioural outcomes to the strategies of the nudger (e.g., the government). As briefly discussed in the introductory section, nudging refers to using psychological and behavioural economic insights to guide consumers’ decision-making without classical, coercive policy tools such as taxation or prohibition. Therefore, it takes a paternalistic influence without breaching liberties, supposedly preserving freedom of choice (for an ethical debate of nudging, see, e.g., Bovens, 2009). Supporters of nudging define it as a choice-preserving method that softly guides human decision-making by systematically exploiting the human psyche. Nudging strategies are now in abundant use to improve retirement savings (e.g., Choi et al., 2004), to increase sustainable behaviour (Ebeling & Lotz, 2015), or to help consumers make healthy choices (e.g., Hanks, Just, & Wansink, 2013). Therefore, it deserves a discussion within the domain of the behavioural economic foundations of political consumerism. For example, psychological research has repeatedly pointed out the strength of the “status-quo effect” (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991; Samuelson & Zeckhauser, 1988), which refers to the human tendency to stick with initial options regardless of their
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 119 inferiority. Nudge-based policies, for example the strategic application of opt-out versus opt-in rules, utilize this knowledge by designing the status-quo actively through “opt- out systems” as mentioned in the pension example discussed above. For example, research has shown that if people are, by default, registered as organ donors, but have the chance to opt-out at any time, donor rates are much larger than a system in which one has to opt-in in order to be a donor (Johnson & Goldstein, 2003). Similar results have been found in cases of enrolment into retirement plans (e.g., Beshears et al., 2009) or green-energy plans (Ebeling & Lotz, 2015), among many other applications. A nudge- based policy would now systematically rely on policies that incorporate opt-out rules when it is socially beneficial. Within the context of consumer choice, other nudge-based policies focus on increased salience of the healthiness of consumers. With rising levels of obesity in many of the world’s countries, fighting the obesity pandemic (Hanks et al., 2012) is an important policy goal. Behavioural science shows how consumers may respond to easily digestible, salient information (a traffic light showing sugar, salt, and fat content by green, yellow, or red signs) much more strongly compared to complicated and detailed information (such as the amount of sugar, salt, and fat in grams per 100 grams or similar information). Within the scope of political consumerism, consumer protection agencies may design (and often already do so) the decision architecture in a way that allows for political consumerism, for example with the help of government-initiated labels that signal animal welfare. In fact, the broad uptake of political consumerism in some areas such as coffee consumption may directly follow effective nudges that have been put into place. Thus, a key issue of political consumerism may be the effective use of nudges by its promoters (NGOs, consumer protection agencies, the government, etc.). For further analyses of labels and other arrangements that can have a nudging effect, see for instance the chapters on food (see Chapter 13), seafood (see Chapter 16), and energy devices (see Chapter 20).
Experimental Evidence of Political Consumerism in Consumer and Financial Markets Psychological research on justice shows the importance of justice and morality in people’s lives (Lerner, 1980). There is abundant evidence that highlights the significance of people’s justice concerns and shows psychological tools to deal with injustice (Lind & Tyler, 1988; Lotz, Okimoto, Schlösser, & Fetchenhauer, 2011; Tyler, 1994; van Prooijen, 2010; Wenzel, Okimoto, Feather, & Platow, 2008). For instance, research shows that people are routinely prepared to sacrifice their own resources to achieve justice, either
120 Sebastian Berger when directly involved (Turillo et al., 2002,) or when in the role of third-party observers (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2004; Lotz et al., 2011). It is therefore not surprising that this basic human concern for justice is also reflected in our consumption and investment choices. Routinely, when consuming a cup of coffee or tea, when purchasing t-shirts, or when going on vacation, consumers increasingly not only actively enquire about production and labour conditions but also increasingly make their consumption decisions with explicit concern about its ethical or political implication—therefore displaying acts of political consumerism (Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005). Consequently, many ethical labels emerged, which facilitate navigation through the abundant range of consumption choices. A central result from research addressing political consumerism is that many consumers display a willingness to pay extra for products that are ethically certified by a governmental organization or NGO and given some sort of ethical label such as the “Fair Trade” label (e.g., De Pelsmacker, Driesen, & Rayp, 2005). Studies investigated the psychological antecedents (e.g., emotions, personality differences, cognitive foundations) and consequences (e.g., moral cleansing, postpurchase satisfaction) of political consumerism (e.g., Eskine, 2013; Mazar & Zhong, 2010), delivering useful insights for our understanding of people’s justice motives in their role as consumers (Lotz & Fix, 2014). Whereas in consumption markets, ethical concerns have been robustly shown to affect people’s decision-making, it is less investigated how these results around political consumerism translate to financial behaviours (e.g., investments into unethical firms). Obviously, people are not only in the role of consumers but also function as lay investors in global markets (for instance, if they are building a retirement fund or saving for their children’s college education). Therefore, the following question arises: When investing in a company producing what the consumer frequently purchases as fair trade, do these consumers in their role as lay investors equally care about the fairness of production standards? Alternatively, do they merely focus on the financial return of their investment? Is it possible to translate the findings of political consumerism to a field that may be coined “political investorism”? Although some research has been interested in the ethical and political aspects of finance, it rarely focuses on the consumer finance part. Instead, it focuses almost exclusively on the institutional level (e.g., Schueth, 2003; Sparkes & Cowton, 2004). Importantly, thus far, financial research predominantly speculates about the willingness of nonexperts to trade off financial returns to adhere to their fairness concerns (Glac, 2009, 2012; Renneboog, Ter Horst, & Zhang, 2008), and very little research has directly investigated individuals’ willingness to trade off personal gains (i.e., interest rates) with positive social externalities (see also Lotz & Fix, 2014). However, bits of evidence suggest that lay investors’ behaviour is affected by various elements other than the objective attractiveness of the financial return (Fama & French, 2007). Among them are product and brand evaluation (Aspara & Tikkanen, 2010), country of origin (Morse & Shive, 2011), and even the aesthetics of financial
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 121 documents (Townsend & Shu, 2010). This research has, for example, shown that many investors have a “home bias” (e.g., Morse & Shive, 2011), meaning that investors prefer to invest in an asset from their own country rather than a similarly attractive asset from abroad. Perhaps more fascinating is the influence of irrelevant attributes such as the paper that asset information is printed on. If the documents appear more valuable (e.g., because they are thicker), people tend to have more confidence in the asset (Townsend & Shu, 2010). These examples show that, like in their consumption choices, people are also biased by extrinsic product attributes, and the question arises if labels as in political consumerism may not influence people’s financial choices as well. People also hold certain moral views against particular forms of investment behaviour, for example, profiting on others’ harms (Lotz & Fix, 2013). This research shows that people view it as ethically more questionable to profit based on others’ losses versus their gains (i.e., they morally object to short-selling strategies). And, finally, when directly asked, people’s concerns for justice or their moral convictions can lead to a willingness to accept lower interest rates (Lotz & Fix, 2014), similar to a higher willingness-to-pay for fairtrade goods. These research findings match the emerging trend that many financial intermediaries explicitly offer “ethical” funds for individual investors to invest their money in. This research also provides a psychological foundation explaining why people may be unwilling to invest in industries that sell goods that many view as unethical (e.g., arms, tobacco, pornography, etc.) or speak up for divestment from such industries. In related research about how laypeople perceive the economy, researchers found a robust tendency of laypeople to base their judgments on perceptions of fairness. For example, a large body of literature indicates differences in experts’ and laypeople’s judgment about key aspects of economic policy (Baron & Kemp, 2004; Caplan, 2008; Enste, Haferkamp, & Fetchenhauer, 2009; Gangl, Kastlunger, Kirchler, & Voracek, 2012; Haferkamp, Fetchenhauer, Belschak, & Enste, 2009; Jacob, Christandl, & Fetchenhauer, 2011; Kemp, 2007, 2008). More generally, it was shown that laypeople process economic phenomena such as growth and inflation differently from experts (Christandl & Fetchenhauer, 2009). Particularly relevant for a behavioural economic understanding of political consumerism is that laypeople’s perceptions of the economy are significantly influenced by what they deem fair. For example, laypeople accept policy measures not on grounds of selfishness, as posited by traditional economic theory or overall efficiency (i.e., like economic experts), but rather on the grounds of individual judgments of fairness (Haferkamp et al., 2009). For instance, in the case of capital and labour mobility, professional economists generally support measures based on efficiency argumentations (Alston, Kearl, & Vaughan, 1992; Coughlin, 2002; Jacob et al., 2011). Quite to the contrary, laypeople tend to endorse more regulatory activities (Kemp, 2007), such as the protection of domestic workers with minimum wages or bans on immigration, due to fairness considerations (Haferkamp et al., 2009). All of these principles may serve as a motive underlying people’s acts of political consumerism.
122 Sebastian Berger
Real-World Decision Making: Barriers for Political Consumerism and Potential Solutions Thus far, this chapter predominantly relied on ideas and results from experimental economics such as (fragile) social preferences and particular market rules that may promote or inhibit the emergence of socially responsible behaviour in financial markets. However, several real-world inhibitors of political consumerism may exist that prevent individuals from actually behaving in line with general preferences for political consumerism. This means that despite a general readiness to engage in acts of political consumerism, certain “behavioural realities” exist that show less than optimal levels of such acts. First, financial and economic illiteracy may cause people to engage in less political consumerism than they wish simply because they lack an understanding of the complexities in modern markets. Using the analogy from the ability to read, financial literacy is a measure of how competently humans navigate the financial world. Second, even if people do understand the complexity of (financial) markets, psychological research shows how people typically act by using simple heuristics and, therefore, seemingly trivial aspects such as the lack of salience of ethical consequences may reduce people’s political consumerism because their actions’ consequences are not constantly in their minds. Third, reduced pivotality of one’s own behaviour (i.e., the certainty with which one’s actions are causal with respect to the outcome) may be particularly low in complex markets and therefore inhibit people’s political consumerism. These three factors may be addressed to promote socially responsible finance in consumer markets. To illustrate detrimental effects of low financial and economic literacy, lacking salience of ethical consequences of one’s investments as well as the generally low levels of pivotality in modern markets (e.g., what Beck, 1988 coined as “organized irresponsibility”), a newspaper report published in 2011 shows a fascinating piece of journalism (Uchatius, 2011). The journalist meticulously follows the track of his (state- subsidized) pension fund. Initiated by a regulatory update designed to subsidize the personal retirement fund investments in Germany (i.e., the Riester-Rente), Uchatius reports his experience when signing on for the pension fund. First, he is advised to rely on the services of an insurance agent, who offers him various fund-based investment plans that will lead to a long-term investment over the course of his career while providing a decent pension after his retirement. Nowhere in the process was Uchatius able to make a transparent and informed decision about which assets to invest in. He merely had the choice between arbitrary options labelled in a nonsense manner, such as Top Pension Plus or High Chance Pension Extra, which are made-up names for consumer pension funds investing in a broad class of assets. Later, he followed the tracks of his pension plan and interviewed fund managers about the companies they invested his money in. He learnt that one of the investments was into a conglomerate
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 123 that—although producing dozens of ethically unquestionable products—also produced internationally banned cluster munition. Uchatius took the journey to a village that had been attacked by such weaponry, and the story ended by him directly being confronted with a victim of a bomb, which he may have helped finance and whose earnings make him enjoy his retirement in peace. Thus, the journalist directly connected his own retirement earnings to the fate of a war victim, highlighting that even mundane decisions have important ethical consequences. This powerful story unravelled a common problem in modern markets—people do not fully understand what they have invested in or what they consume. Above all, it is very difficult to assess whether he should feel at blame about the victim’s fate. In fact, the way the system of private retirement insurance was set up, no one seems ultimately responsible. Decision makers at each step do not make a conscious decision that takes into account externalities of others. While the retail banker informs the lay investor about different returns of different standard funds, the bank sources funds that perform well and the fund manager invests in large companies, possibly under ignorance about their entire product landscape. It seems that the system is largely built on a supply chain that—by design—takes out individual responsibility about investments in the process (see also Beck, 1988). Recent developments in behavioural science may even inflate the issue. One of said problems in many industrialized countries is the risk of old-age poverty. This is why the German government thought about the pension system in the first place. Many nudge-based policies would suggest highly effective automatic enrolment plans to such retirement funds. People are signed-up for a standard plan unless they choose to opt out (Beshears et al., 2009). In these cases, the decision inertia—the principle that is targeted by policy makers—leads to substantial investments into assets that the investor (i.e., employee) has never actively decided for. The main decision problem was: “Do nothing and stay with the standard plan” or “Opt out of the standard plan.” Whether each asset in the standard plan is ethical was likely not a concern, because it was not sufficiently salient to the investor. Thus, such nudge-based strategies may inflate Beck’s (1988) fear of organized irresponsibility to a much larger degree as pivotality is even more reduced. How can one be blamed for doing nothing at all?
Financial and Economic Literacy as a Primary Skill in Markets Out of the many chores people in the modern world have to fulfil, managing one’s personal finances and coming up with and executing a financial planning strategy, may be one of the least preferred ones. Retirement age may seem far away and there are always more important things to do than caring about finances that become relevant only in a few decades. Thus, learning about basic financial aspects of retirement plans can seem daunting for many individuals. And in fact, recent surveys (Lusardi & Mitchell, 2014)
124 Sebastian Berger find that most people lack even the most basic knowledge regarding financial decisions. Lusardi & Mitchell (2014) came up with a three-question financial literacy quiz, tapping into basic mechanisms such as compound interest, real interest rate, and portfolio selection. Participants in the surveys have to answer questions such as the value of an investment portfolio of $100 that receives an interest rate of 2 percent annually over five years, with answering options being larger than $102, exactly $102, or less than $102. In Germany, for example, calculations such as this belong to the mandatory curriculum of seventh grade. Therefore, there should be a large share of the population able to correctly answer such questions. However, the results of the research are frustrating in the sense that a large portion of people do not possess the very basic capabilities to correctly answer such questions. Globally, the largest share of participants who correctly answer all three questions is found in Germany (53 percent) and Switzerland (50 percent). In Russia, 96 percent of the respondents were unable to answer all three questions correctly. In the United States, only 30 percent were able to answer all three questions correctly. Thus, there is a broad lack of financial literacy on a global scale and, even in the best-performing countries, about half the population is financially illiterate. Given this challenge, motivating individuals to care more deeply, not only about the basic mathematics of investment but also about the social quality of their investments, can be a difficult endeavour. One of the consequences of this low financial and economic literacy may be a deficient interest in personal finance. Because it is seen as overly difficult, people may entirely shy away from caring about their investments. From this inertia, it may follow that the same people who tremendously care about the ethicality of their consumption choices also shy away from actively managing their retirement funds and end up with standard retirement plans that may result in stories like presented above. Therefore, a potential indirect factor in the promotion of political consumerism and more mindful choices in markets is to increase financial and economic literacy in the population. If people possess sufficient knowledge to discuss financial and economic issues competently with an adviser, it may present an opportunity for a discussion of ethical principles of one’s financial investment strategy. Financial and economic literacy seems a necessary precondition for more advanced topics of laypeople’s financial behaviours.
Salience as a Prerequisite of Political Consumerism Salience refers to the ease in how something reaches someone’s conscious awareness. Even if people have made the mindful decision to go about their lives being as ethical as possible, they happen to invest in assets that they would otherwise see as unethical. One reason for that may be the lack in salience of the ethical consequences of one’s decisions (Kahneman et al., 1982; Tiefenbeck et al., 2016), which leads to suboptimal decisions compared to their stated attitudes. Salience is thought of as a psychological lever overcoming bias in decision making. For instance, Kehr et al. (2015) show that changes
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 125 to the presentation of privacy aspects in the moment of making data-sharing decisions can help consumers to make more optimal decisions. Tiefenbeck et al. (2016) show that lacking salience is one reason why people waste water and energy and that helping consumers by means of real-time feedback provides decision making in line with one’s attitudes and leads to dramatic environmental benefits. Thus, as salience has been repeatedly identified as a relevant psychological variable, it is safe to assume that reducing salience bias in economic decision-making may also help in reducing the attitude- behavior gap (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1977; 1980). An interesting aspect is that most people would say that unethical consumption or investment choices are not their preferred option. Yet, they often end up with outcomes that are not in line with these claims. Recent work in environmental behaviour (Langenbach, Berger, Baumgartner, & Knoch, 2017) shows that cognitive science can help to understand this puzzle. The research finds that very basic cognitive processing ability (e.g., working memory) can be used to predict whether pro- environmental attitudes translate into corresponding green behaviours. Hence, a psychological approach to increase the levels of political consumerism may be to aim for reduction in the need for working memory capacity. High salience of decision consequences is said to do just this. For example, when receiving real-time feedback on their CO2 emissions or energy use while in the shower, people find it much easier to cut their shower short (Tiefenbeck et al., 2016). Hence, when making ethical or political consequences particularly salient, one should observe a strong increase in corresponding acts of political consumerism.
Pivotality and Responsibility in Modern Markets Behavioural economics has delivered ample evidence about how being pivotal (i.e., causal) in a decision crucially affects the ethicality of outcomes. For example, Falk & Szech (2013b) show that institutionally imposed diffusion about who is responsible for moral transgressions increases the likelihood of immorality to occur. Modern globalized markets are a paramount example of how morality is systematically being diffused. As has been described above, nowhere in a consumer’s decision-making process does individual responsibility play a large role. Consider again the use of automatic enrolment schemes. Most likely, the employee consents to participating in an investment plan while trusting in the ethicality of his or her employer. However, the company may just rely on standard mutual funds that do not particularly care about the ethicality of the investment and may argue that it is a consent to the ethicality of the underlying assets if people invest in the chosen product. Therefore, market outcomes matching each involved person’s need for ethicality may never appear because of the particular institutional environment and in no way relate to anyone’s true social preference. Thus, an interesting factor to promote political consumerism may be to increase the perception of people in markets as the pivotal players in this market.
126 Sebastian Berger
General Discussion This chapter presented a behavioural economic perspective on political consumerism by showing how its theorizing, empirical approaches, and results contribute to a better understanding of the topic. Starting out with very basic results of the experimental economic literature, it was shown that humans possess “prosocial preferences” that provide a suitable theoretical background for political consumerism, in which they not only focus on monetary rewards for the self but also take into account the welfare of others. The reasons for this are caring about others, aversion against inequality, or preferences that take into account the joint social outcomes. However, behavioural economic research on social preferences also suggests that such preferences are highly unstable and that motives to “appear nice” if necessary, but to avoid costs of altruism if possible, strongly oppose insights from theories of outcome-based social preferences. What followed was a summary of the debate whether competitive markets—as an allocation instrument— are detrimental for individual morality or not and thus affect the emergence of political consumerism. Experimental results on the topic are divergent. Whereas Falk and Szech (2013a, b) as well as Bartling et al. (2015) present evidence in line with the hypothesis that markets erode socially responsible behaviour, other research finds that markets may— under some conditions—facilitate morality. Particular market designs (Kirchler et al., 2015; Pigors & Rockenbach, 2016) may support the emergence of morality in markets. Crucial behavioural requirements for political consumerism are an increasing pivotality of decision makers as well as salience of relevant decision criteria and outcomes. As was shown, it matters tremendously whether or not an economic agent believes his or her action to be pivotal for the outcome. Modern markets—quite the opposite—seem to systematically reduce pivotality and salience of the ethical and political consequences of one’s actions. As has been shown, an investment in a retirement fund may not involve any ethical consideration at all and, perhaps, sometimes even happen “automatically” (e.g., Beshears et al., 2009). Salience itself—as has been described—is a strong factor in ethical decision-making and therefore affects political consumerism. Research in environmental behaviour shows that people strongly respond to behavioural interventions that tackle salience (Tiefenbeck et al., 2016) and that people with high cognitive skills more easily behave in environmentally friendly ways (Langenbach et al., 2017). For instance, when people are provided with direct and real-time feedback while they take their showers, they significantly and dramatically reduce water and energy use. Although showering behaviour and investment behaviour seem largely unrelated, there are similarities. In both cases, behaviour may incur a negative externality, which we typically try to avoid by means of socially responsible behaviour. While reducing water and energy use during a shower decreases people’s environmental footprint people, internalizing negative externalities in consumer and investment behaviour may be effectively accomplished if the salience of ethical consequences were also more transparent while making consumption or investment decisions.
BEHAVIOURAL Economic Perspective 127 When taking a justice perspective on political consumerism, it seems clear that humans possess the basic motivations and ability to behave in socially responsible ways in markets. However, there are many psychological barriers, which regulators or private companies need to overcome when trying to promote political consumerism. Of course, moving from theory or single incidents of experimental evidence to the complex real world of modern markets presents a particular challenge. However, there are already attempts to increase political consumerism among consumers. One such attempt is the strategy of “nudging” that systematically exploits human psychology to achieve its goals. It seems that nudging is a particularly effective approach to put the knowledge of behavioural economics to use in the area of political consumerism.
Suggestions for Future Research There are several potential streams of future behavioural economic research on political consumerism. First, one line of research can continue to investigate how behavioural interventions in line with a “nudging” strategy help to strengthen political consumerism. This chapter discusses several inhibitors of political consumerism (e.g., financial illiteracy, lacking salience, or pivotality) and future research on nudging can show how manipulations aimed to reduce these inhibitors can help to promote political consumerism. Another line of research can investigate individual characteristics associated with political consumerism (e.g., personality) and how heterogeneity can help to understand various stages of political consumerism. Are there consistent individual differences in the willingness to accept a personal cost for the benefit of others? What are personality characteristics involved with leadership in political consumerism (e.g., who starts a political consumerist movement)? Finally, it is interesting to study both individual and situational variables at the same stage (person x situation interactions). It is also worth investigating if certain individual characteristics are associated with political consumerism in specific situations. This would, for example, help to understand differences between individual decision- making and decision-making markets. Finally, perhaps the most challenging task for future research is to integrate the various streams of distinctive literature—both in terms of scientific discipline and topics of interest—into a coherent theory of political consumerism.
Strengths and Weaknesses of Behavioural Economics in the Study of Political Consumerism The behavioural economic approach is not without weaknesses. Although a particular strength of the approach is the deep fountain of behavioural paradigms used to study the research questions, sometimes our knowledge is still sparse on how well these laboratory
128 Sebastian Berger insights translate into the real world. However, increasing behavioural economic work is directly conducted in the field, and corresponding evidence helps to estimate how well the phenomena discovered in the laboratory may be used for active designs of policy (e.g., nudging) or how well they augment our understanding of the world. Another weakness of the behavioural economic approach is its reluctance to integrate more knowledge about psychological and sociological mechanisms underlying behaviour. Owing to the fact that many conclusions are drawn simply by observing behaviour (hence the term “behavioural economics”), effects of markets on emotion and cognition are largely left to other disciplines. Whereas emotion and cognition have been used as independent variables in behavioural economic research, it would be interesting to see how certain economic realities affect such variables. For example, acts of political consumerism such as boycotts typically require emotional antecedents (i.e., anger, contempt, or disgust), but behavioural economic research has thus far not focused on investing such issues. To sum up, behavioural science in general, but behavioural economics and psychology in particular, may provide many ideas and insights not only to understand political consumerism better from an individual and market perspective but also to utilize research results to actively design consumption and investment choice environments to promote it. Ideally, behavioural economic thinking is integrated into related fields to tackle future questions in the field of political consumerism and beyond.
Acknowledgements This paper has benefited from research assistance by Zita Spillmann and Annika Wyss, which is gratefully acknowledged.
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Chapter 7
P olitical C on sume ri sm and the So cia l - Prac t i c e Perspec t i v e Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg
Political consumerism is a rapidly emerging and evolving phenomenon that has mostly been understood as a political activity: as using markets, market mechanisms, and consumer action to achieve changes in practices and institutions that are considered unethical, unsustainable, or politically objectionable (see Chapter 1). It is mostly conceptualised as political action that takes place outside of conventional political arenas. It comes therefore as no surprise that the focus of scholarly attention has been on the political dimensions and political impact of political consumerism. Most research and debate therefore addresses issues such as democracy, power, legitimacy, and effectiveness and the roles of individual and organized citizens, consumers, and activists in taking action (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013) and includes surveys on the spread of political consumerist principles and activities (Micheletti, Stolle, & Follesdal, 2003; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Political consumerism has much less been studied from a social practice perspective as developed within sociology. But this chapter argues that studying political consumerism as organized social behaviour may lead to additional insights. Political consumerism is social in two respects. First, it is political consumerism, which means it entails organized social behaviour in the domain of politics and thereby involves engaging with existing and evolving political institutions and actions in a wider and transforming societal context. As institutional and social action targeted at political reform, political consumerism goes beyond individualistic choices and behaviour. Second, it is political consumerism, which means that the organized social behaviour involved takes place in particular (parts of) value chains and relates to the engagement of consumers with respect to products, objects, infrastructures, and services
136 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg (i.e., in relation to different sociotechnical systems). Political consumerism is expressed through direct and indirect interventions in particular (parts of) value chains and social networks to enhance sustainability and address ethical and political concerns. These interventions involve embedded social relationships with providers, other consumers, and various institutions at the site of political action. Further developing this social practice perspective on political consumerism may contribute to better understanding socially embedded political consumerism and its role in fostering social change. The aim of this chapter is therefore to demonstrate the added value of a social practice perspective for research on political consumerism. Due to the research background of the authors, the illustrations are from environmental impact–related forms of political consumerism. The chapter starts with an introduction to social practice approaches and their sociological perspective on political consumerism. The sections to follow expand on this perspective by applying the social practice approach to cases of political consumerism in the domains of energy, food, and mobility. The concluding sections build upon the findings of the case studies to develop a more elaborated social practice–based understanding of political consumerism.
Social Practice Approaches: Key Concepts and Assumptions When studying how citizens enact different forms of political consumerism in their everyday lives, we argue social practice approaches are particularly useful. Social practice approaches have been developed within sociology to study social reproduction and change. On the theoretical level, these approaches are distinct from other sociological, political, and economic perspectives by not putting the individual human being and her decision-making central in their analysis but instead focusing on the social practices in which individuals are embedded (Kennedy & Hauslik, forthcoming). By focusing upon practices instead of individuals, it is possible to move beyond them and offer an alternative to the so-called Attitude, Behaviour, Choice (ABC) paradigm (Shove, 2010) that reigns in many policy circles in Europe and the United States. Neither do social practice approaches focus exclusively on social structures in ways suggested by engineers and politicians in the field of social and environmental change. So practice theories claim to move beyond the agency–structure divide by exploring processes of reproduction and change through social practices that are regarded as the sites or locations where social change actually occurs (Spaargaren, 2003). The growing body of literature on practice theories (Warde, 2005, see, i.e., Halkier, 2009; Nicolini, 2012; Schatzki, 2002; Shove, 2003; Spaargaren, Weenink, & Lamers 2016; ) contains rich insights also for studying consumer practices, including political consumerism, particularly because of their focus
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 137 on everyday life on the one hand and the embedded nature of situated consumption practices on the other. The discussion will shortly turn to some core concepts and assumptions of practice theories. Different authors have defined social practices in different ways. In an attempt to avoid scholarly debates on definitions, the discussion uses a broad working definition proposed by Spaargaren et al. (2016, p. 8): [S]ocial practices are shared, routinized, ordinary ways of doings and sayings, enacted by knowledgeable and capable human agents who—while interacting with the material elements that co-constitute the practice—know what to do next in a non- discursive, practical manner.
This definition explains that a social practice is social and not individual. It is carried by human agents and contains both material and nonmaterial elements. The elements included in social practices are categorised in different ways. Here we rely on Schatzki (2002) who summarises them as: doings and sayings and material arrangements that hang together, organized by practical understanding, general understanding, rules and teleo-affective structures. Nicolini (2012) offers useful definitions of these elements. Practical understanding refers to ‘the knowledge that derives from being a competent member of a practice’ (p. 165); general understanding refers to the identity of the practice in terms of ‘reflexive understandings of the overall project in which people are involved’ (p. 167); rules refer to the ‘programmes of action that specify what to do’ (p. 166); and finally, teleo-affective structures refer to ‘how (practices) should be carried out’ (p. 166) or the specific direction of how practices are unfolding together with the ‘affectivities’ or emotions that actors attach to these goals and directions. Taking a social practice approach to consumption means first understanding consumption as organized social behaviour embedded within chains and networks of production and consumption. This means that the focus is on a particular category of social practices, i.e. consumption practices. Defining consumption as a particular category of social practices is disputed however by Alan Warde (2005)—the father of the recent upsurge in sociology of consumption. Warde argues that consumption should not be regarded as a practice in itself but as an aspect of almost every social practice. In all social practice material resources are being used and this brings along particular environmental or social consequences. However, these consequences are not the purpose of the practice, nor are practitioners always conscious of these consequences. In response to this argument, we agree that every social practice involves the use or consumption of resources, resulting in environmental and social impacts. Beyond this general statement however we argue that there are ‘practices of consumption’ which form a particular kind of social practices because of their general understandings: they are recognized as such by participants who are enacting or performing these practices. Practices of work and art, etc. also consume resources and produce wastes, but they are recognized as being different from consumption practices as we know them. So our theoretical argument here is that consumption practices deserve attention as a specific
138 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg category of social practices since they are performed and recognised as such by practitioners (Halkier 2009). Consumption practices cover and are distributed over a range of domains or fields. Most research and policy reports on (sustainable) consumption distinguish food, housing, mobility or transport and leisure/holidays as such fields. This is not just because practices in these fields share some aspects that are relevant for sustainability transitions, but also because citizens and consumers recognize these fields and use the categorizations themselves. For instance, ‘eating’, ‘eating out’, ‘shopping for food’, ‘cooking’ or ‘procuring food’ are recognized practices of food consumption in a similar way as commuting, biking, walking, parking or travelling by train are recognized as mobility or transport practices. A final conceptual remark on practice approach is the suggestion to always combine two modalities for studying (consumption) practices: as performances and as embedded entities. Only by combining these two modalities of ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’ (Nicolini 2012; Weenink &nd Spaargaren 2016) on social practices, it is possible to get an in-depth understanding of their characteristics and dynamics. Zooming in refers to having the methodological lens focused on the performances of specific practices situated in particular time and space. For example, along the value chain one can zoom in on situated practices of production, consumption, processing, retailing, etcetera and use all kinds of (most of the times qualitative) methodologies to provide an in-depth description and analysis of the ways they are performed. Zooming in on practices means focusing on the actual ‘social and material doings’ (Nicolini 2012, p. 221) of situated actors. Methodologically this means observing actual practices and reconstructing ‘their (i.e. practitioners’) practical and meaningful constructions of their social reality’ (Schmidt 2016, p. 53). These actual performances need to be connected with their normativity, i.e. the proper way of performing a particular practice. Such criteria are both implicit and public but noticed and used by practitioners, hence they can be ‘rendered observable in order to be grasped and reconstructed’ (Schmidt 2016, p. 54). Zooming out on the other hand, refers to having the methodological lens focused on the relations and interdependencies between different practices that hang together in specific bundles. According to Nicolini ‘all practices are involved in a variety of relationships and associations that extend in both space and time, and form a gigantic, intricate, and evolving texture of dependencies and references’(Nicolini 2012, p. 229). Since for practice theorists the material dimension of the social has to be given explicit treatment and emphasis, Schatzki refers to this evolving texture in terms of wider practice-arrangement bundles. Arrangements or material arrangements for Schatzki always accompany social practices and co-determine the ways in which they develop. For instance, preparing food is always connected to the use of kitchen utensils and to kitchens themselves as locales or sites where the practice is performed. The practice of preparing food is closely connected to other practices like shopping for food, storing food and eating food, and it is important to always consider the bundle of practices in the food domain as hanging together in particular ways. Finally, food
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 139 practices hang together not just with other food practices in food networks or chains but as well with practices of energy provision and consumption, practices of transport and storage, etcetera. The study of consumption practices then proceeds along two lines of research—performances of individual practices and interdependencies between sets of practices—while emphasizing the inherent connections between the material and the social dimension of social life. Methodologically this means the use of several methods at the same time whereby qualitative methodological tools are mostly used when studying practice performances while mixed (quantitative and qualitative) methods seem more productive when studying bundles of practices.
The Added Value of Social Practice Approaches for Political Consumerism When discussing the relevance of practice theories for political consumerism as a social phenomenon, we need to connect our analyses of consumption practices to processes of “becoming and change.” Political consumerism is about the ways in which organized groups of consumers are involved in dynamics of social change in bundles of consumption practices. When discussing political consumerism, issues of “reflexive agency”and “power” are crucially important. Too often, the involvement of citizen-consumers in processes of environmental change is “organized” by policy makers, companies, and even nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) through trying to induce changes in social practices from the outside, suggesting that the best possible role for citizens is to (not) accept the kind of innovations suggested to them. The literature on nudging and on the diffusion and acceptance of technological innovation is crowded with examples of passive consumers and outside triggers. In political consumerism literature, however, citizen-consumers are assigned a more (pro)active, activist, or at least reflexive role in organizing social change “from the inside” of the social practices that are the main targets of environmental innovation. When starting from a political consumerist point of view, how then do we connect the role of citizen-consumers as participants to the practice with issues of agency, power, and social change from a sociological, social practice perspective?
Agency, Performance of Practices, and Social Change: The Example of Buycotts and Boycotts First, it is important to note that practice approaches are not confined to only “micro-dynamics of change” as, for example, when studying the changing performances of situated practices. Cooking in the 1960s is different from cooking in 2020, and cooking in Kampala is different from cooking in Berlin. Studying the changing performances of
140 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg social practices is important but only half of the story. Next to changing performances within individual practices, social practice approaches also contribute to analysing social change in terms of the meso-and macro-dynamics of social change in larger bundles of social practices or practices-arrangements. The empirical cases discussed in this chapter show how political consumerism can be studied by alternating between zoomed-in analyses of performances and zoomed-out analyses of changing bundles of practices. In the discourse of political consumerism, the concepts of boycotts and buycotts are often used to illustrate the specific meaning of political consumerism (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Discussion of boycotts and buycotts illustrates that political consumerism is about (groups of) people using their agency and power to influence the decision making of (groups of) social actors on issues that directly impact on the everyday lives of themselves and other citizen-consumers. When political consumerism is directed at improving or adding to existing forms of public and collective decision-making, a political science– based perspective on environmental governance seems the most relevant point of view. A sociological, social practice–based approach to political consumerism contributes first by analysing in some detail what practices of boycotting and buycotting entail in terms of the actual performances being delivered; and, second, by connecting the forms of agency enacted in boycott and buycott practices with processes of agency, power, and social change in the wider bundles of practices to which the boycott and buycott practices relate. So what kinds of “doings and sayings” are at stake when studying particular boycotts, such as not buying fruits from apartheid South Africa (see Chapter 3) or uncertified aquaculture products from Asia (see Chapter 16)? In such cases the focus is on the performance of the actual practices of boycotting: who is taking what kind of action at what particular moment and what is needed, in terms of equipment, expertise, and social relations, to make the boycott work? A clear example is the Montgomery bus boycott (see Chapter 32), which forced boycotters to completely rearrange their everyday lives and reorganise many practices (e.g., walking to work required much more time and changed eating and sleeping practices). After this first question on changing performances, there always has to be the follow-up question on how the boycott of this particular item or service is connected to social change in wider bundles of practices such as related practices of production, trade, or retailing of products and services. In this second analytical step, the buying of fairtrade products might be shown to be much less consequential for everyday consumption routines when compared to the buycotting of locally produced food, particularly when citizen-consumers get involved in the production, distribution, and overall promotion of local food.
Agency, Power, and Social Change: Citizen-Consumer Responsibility for Environmental Change Political consumerism offers an alternative to mainstream consumer policy approaches that are based on the assumption that information provision will lead to changing
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 141 attitudes and thereby behavioural changes. These ABC approaches are criticized by many not only because they are shown to be utterly ineffective but also because they put all the blame and responsibility for the environmental impact of consumption practices on the plate of individual citizen-consumers (Shove, 2010). In the political consumerism literature, citizen-consumers are given a more active, reflexive role in environmental change without however losing sight of the power relations and responsibility for environmental changes among different groups of actors in chains of production and consumption. For a more sustainable energy system, energy companies, governments, and end-users of energy are all (to be made) responsible. Behavioural changes, lifestyle changes, and individual decision-making processes have to be connected to upstream innovation and decision making by producers, processors, retailers, and so on. Social practice approaches are particularly helpful in analysing different forms of political consumerism in relation to lifestyle changes and technological innovations in everyday life routines as enacted by citizen-consumers (see Chapter 20). Becoming a flexitarian, vegetarian, or vegan food consumer (see Chapter 8) entails significant lifestyle changes which are dependent on many other social practices and have impact on them as well. Social practice approaches offer several instruments to study these processes of transformation without lapsing into individualist approaches that overestimate the “power of the consumer” in relation to the power of economic and regulatory stakeholders in food systems. To make possible a sociologically nuanced and more detailed discussion of the power relations involved in political consumerism for environmental change, see Figure 7.1a and Figure 7.1b, which visualize the flows of information and power through chains and networks of production and consumption. Figure 7.1a illustrates the distinction between information flows concerning “direct” and “indirect” environmental impacts in production-consumption chains and networks. This distinction is relevant, because according to a political consumerism perspective, consumers should not only be dealing with information about the
Info flows
Providers
Disposal
Use
Access
Direct impacts on the environment
Provisioning
Production
Design
Indirect impacts on the environment
Consumers
Figure 7.1a Information flows through chains and networks of production and consumption. Source: Spaargaren & Van Koppen (2009).
142 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg Power flows Consumers
Disposal
Use
Access
Direct impacts on the environment
Provisioning
Production
Design
Indirect impacts on the environment
Providers
Figure 7.1b Relative power of consumers in influencing environmental impacts within production-consumption chains. Source: Spaargaren & Van Koppen (2009).
environmental impact they cause themselves, in the phase of “direct use,” but also work with information flows concerning pressure on the environment that is caused by other actors (mining companies, farms, transporters, manufacturers, etc.) in the phases preceding the actual consumption phase and about impacts after disposal (recycling, landfill, incineration, etc.). At the so-called consumption junction (Schwartz- Cowan, 1987)—the circle in the middle—political consumers interact in direct ways with other supply chain-actors on the kind of information that is relevant and the formats for (im)material provisioning to be used. So in political consumerism approaches, citizen-consumers take an active role in co-organizing information provision and use on environmental impacts throughout entire chains and networks of production and consumption. But political consumerism is not just about information and monitoring of environmental impact. It is also about mobilizing, decision making, and implementing change. In this process, the division of power between citizen-consumer groups and their allies on the one hand, and stakeholders involved in provision of products and services on the other, must be made visible and enacted upon as visualized in Figure 7.1b. Citizen- consumers can act upon the direct environmental impact that is under their direct control. However, citizen-consumers can also use their power to act upon environmental impacts that emerge elsewhere in the chain. The fact that they do not have control over these indirect impacts does not have to prevent them from developing all kinds of strategies to codesign technical and social innovations to be implemented by other stakeholders in the chains. This is exactly what political consumerism is about when thinking about buycotts and boycotts that build on the wide range of environmental labels that refer primarily to environmental impacts generated during the phases preceding final consumption. Also concerning issues of power, the consumption junction is again a fascinating site for doing research and policy making on environmental changes. This consumption junction is a node in networks or a connection in a chain where both providers and consumers take part in social practices of consumption. Think about such cases as supermarkets; showrooms where kitchens, bathrooms, or cars are bought and
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 143 sold; citizen juries codeciding about water management in neighbourhoods;1 or food councils addressing local/regional food provision.2 The empirical illustrations provided in the next sections aim to show that, in political consumerism, issues of agency, performance, and power can be confronted effectively when using a social practice approach to consumption. The discussion starts with the consumption of domestic energy.
Political Consumerism in the Domain of Household Energy Energy consumption by households takes a significant share of overall energy consumption and is therefore an important target for climate change policies.3 Many cities, municipal authorities, energy cooperatives, housing corporations, energy companies, and homeowners associations worldwide seek to reduce the climate impact from domestic energy consumption by offering subsidies for renewable energy, taxing nongreen energy sources, developing labelling systems for homes, and organizing massive campaigns to engage householders in the energy transition. Although the greening of domestic energy consumption has become an accepted and legitimate policy target in the eyes of energy providers, governments, and citizen-consumers alike, the actual CO2 reductions realized so far lag behind the ambitious climate goals as agreed upon in the context of the 2015 Paris agreement.4 A further deepening and intensification of policy strategies for low-carbon housing and dwelling is needed, especially with respect to private homeowners who have to decide themselves about making structural investments and about engaging in new forms of collaboration that contribute to the greening of domestic energy consumption. The development of so-called smart grids is regarded as one of the promising routes towards a more sustainable regime of domestic energy consumption. Smart grids are fuelled by information communication technology to allow not just for the use of different energy sources (wind, solar, hydropower, bioenergy) and new energy storage technologies but also for creating new social relations among different groups of actors involved in energy production, distribution, storage, trade, and use (see Chapter 20). Smart grids and new blockchain technologies hold the promise to accelerate the energy transition at decentralized levels of neighbourhoods, blocks, and individual homes in the near future. The technological and social conditions for the transition towards a low-carbon form of housing seem to be present in many countries—not just in Europe but in an increasing number of countries around the world as well. Most uncertainties regarding the realization of climate targets seem to originate from the “human factor.” The new, low-carbon energy lifestyles of urban populations in particular imply considerable changes in the set of domestic energy practices that together make up households (Naus, van Vliet, & Hendriksen, 2015). Ways of heating, cooling, and lighting the home; washing behaviours
144 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg (both dishes and clothes); and ways of cleaning homes and bodies will all be affected by the low-carbon energy transition. The energy transition therefore cannot take place behind the backs of domestic citizen-consumers. When this transition occurs, consumers will not only start using different energy sources but also enrol in new practices (such as e-driving and energy storing); new rhythms of infrastructure use (such as intensifying consumption at times when renewable energy is available); and new social relations of energy production, storage, and use (such as sharing a battery with the neighbours). Since the human factor is such a decisive factor in making the energy transition work, it is noteworthy that little is actually known about forms of engagement of domestic citizen-consumers with the energy transition or what this means for policymaking. The kind of involvement asked for is rather demanding, and for that reason it cannot be dealt with in terms of a mass communication campaign. If not properly fine-tuned to the demands of householders, technologies like smart meters and devices for storage of self- or locally produced renewable energy will not be easily appropriated and given a place in domestic social practices. In order to develop a more elaborate view on potential roles for domestic citizen-consumers in the smart-grid energy transition, the social practice approach to political consumerism must be of direct relevance in ways as outlined in the previous sections. The following discussion will apply this approach to the case of domestic energy consumption by looking first at performances of social practices and then developing a political consumerism perspective to the energy transition at decentralized levels.
Performances of Social Practices: What Does Energy “Mean” to Householders? In their elaborate discussion of the nature of domestic energy consumption and its openness to social change, Naus et al. (in preparation) suggest making an analytical distinction between two categories of social practices, which are both relevant for the energy transition but in crucially different ways. The first category of “domestic consumption practices” refers to all social practices that make up a household, including ordinary, recurring tasks that are routinized and taken for granted. In line with practice theory, a household is not defined in terms of members and functions but rather in terms of a number of doings and sayings attached to the home as a locale of interaction. When enacting social practices as outlined in Table 7.1, householders perform the practices without “thinking energy” all or most of the time. When lighting and heating their homes, they want to create a nice, comfortable ambiance when having breakfast or watching TV; when charging their electric car or bike, they aim to arrive at work on time; and so on. In the domestic consumption practices discerned, energy features as an “ingredient” (Shove & Walker, 2014) or “resource’ ”(Spaargaren, 2011) that enables the performance of the practice. For the practice-participants, in this case householders, energy—and its particular uses—it is not normally an object of attention in and of itself: “people think warmth, coolness, freshness and light instead of energy” was the slogan used by
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 145 Table 7.1 Social Practices Involved in the Organization of the Home Domestic consumption practices
Examples
Food
Growing, buying, storing, cooling, cooking and conserving food; having lunch or dinner; shopping for food; doing the dishes; watering the kitchen garden; having a barbecue or a picnic.
Mobility
Walking to the bus stop; storing and using a bike or a car; repairing and maintaining bikes and cars; charging e-cars or e-bikes; updating routing devices; planning a trip; using the city bike system; buying a car; commuting by train or car.
Cleanliness
Cleaning up the dwelling; vacuum cleaning the floor; doing the laundry; ironing clothes; taking a shower or a bath; doing the dishes/timing the dishwasher.
Leisure
Watching TV; reading a book; surfing the web; playing (online) games; gardening; booking a holiday; having a party.
Ambiance
Heating, cooling, ventilating, and lighting indoor and outdoor spaces; shopping for appliances; DIY; having a garage sale.
Source: Naus & van der Horst (2017).
one of the major Dutch energy companies early this century. In a way similar to the Alan Warde–initiated discussion on the definition of “food practices” (see the preceding discussion), one must consider when and how people do think and politicize energy when being involved in (re)creating their homes, their families, and their lifestyles. Again, it is not recommended that one should just forget about energy practices and their sustainability aspects. The issue of low-carbon housing is too important for many, including householders and other stakeholders participating in social practices in and around the home, to simply be dismissed. So instead of forgetting about energy practices, one should make a distinction between domestic consumption practices based on energy, but without dominant teleo-affectivity, on the one hand and so-called Home Energy Management (HEM) practices on the other. In the case of HEM practices (Table 7.2), energy consumption and its climate impact is indeed a major topic of concern for citizen-consumers since energy itself is at the heart of the teleo-affectivities of these social practices. The reason why people engage in HEM practices and the rationales guiding their actions all have to do with the greening of their domestic energy consumption. These practices play an important role in the governance or steering of domestic consumption practices in the direction laid down by the goals of the broader smart-grid energy transition. In the performances of HEM practices, energy
146 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg Table 7.2 Home Energy Management (HEM) Practices Emerging in Smart Grids. Energy monitoring
Reading energy bills; using digital interfaces and apps; comparing energy-use patterns over days, weeks, years, and in relation to other households; identifying energy leakages; learning about stand-by uses; comparing energy performances of appliances.
Co-production/self- production of energy
Having a set of PV-panels installed on the roof of the house; participating in neighbourhood or apartment- block-related PV-panels as managed by citizen-groups or local energy cooperatives.
Energy sharing/trading
Sharing technologies and information with neighbours, with residents of the apartment block, with members of the housing cooperation, or with citizen-committee; buying and selling energy; participating in a virtual energy company or community.
Timing of demand
Flexible use; remote control of domestic appliances (e.g., dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, boilers, heating and cooling machines, coffee machines, lighting).
Energy storage
Storage of renewable energy in particular in and around the home; optimizing domestic energy patterns for optimal use of self-produced and stored renewables.
Energy conservation
Improving the efficiency of energy infrastructures; developing energy saving and thrifty routines.
Source: Naus & van der Horst (2017).
consumption is foregrounded by technologies, behaviours, and teleo-affectivities in a way that is negotiated by both domestic consumers and other actors involved in the provision of (renewable) energy. When studying the performances of HEM practices, we not only come to know more about the agency of domestic citizen-consumers but also learn a lot about the ways in which domestic consumption practices are embedded in wider chains and networks of social practices. For that reason research on HEM practices is key to understanding the dynamics of agency, power, and social change in the context of wider energy systems involved in domestic energy consumption.
HEM Practices and Political Consumerism: Who Is Responsible for the Energy Transition? Home Energy Management Practices as Mediating Practices An important characteristic of HEM practices is the fact that they are typically situated at the interface between households and the larger energy system. That is, they tend to
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 147 Connections
Connections
Strong
Strong
Medium
Medium
Light
Light
Domestic Consumption Practices
Home Energy Management (HEM-) Practices
Production and Distribution Practices
Figure 7.2 Home Energy Management (HEM) practices at the interface between the home and wider energy systems. Source: Naus & van der Horst (2017).
emerge in between domestic consumption practices on the one hand and wider production and distribution practices on the other (Figure 7.2). We argue that this intermediate position of the HEM practices, as developed by Naus and Van der Horst (2017), is of great relevance when analysing political consumerism in the context of decentralized smart grids. First, HEM practices show how practices of production, distribution, and regulation of energy influence the performances of domestic consumption practices: they interlace with domestic consumption practices in various ways. For example, when householders decide to turn on the washing machine only at times when sufficient solar energy is available, specific energy production practices are being integrated into domestic laundry practices. Second, as “mediating practices,” HEM practices are not only involved in the reproduction and innovation of a range of domestic consumption practices but also in the legitimation and reproduction of wider systems of energy production and distribution. Producing, storing, and using local energy for instance affects conventional, centralized production and distribution systems and their practices in rather direct and challenging ways. In terms of power relations, HEM practices thus not only represent the transformative powers of (organized) households but also confront the powers of energy companies and regulators. Thirdly, we suggest investigating the set of HEM practices with respect to their explicit role in the governance of social practices in the smart grid. What kind of projects and programs do the HEM practices put forward for the steering and directionality of both domestic consumption practices and wider production and distribution practices? In other words, what specific kinds of teleo-affective structures are involved in HEM practices? Are the practices and their participants oriented towards optimising grid efficiency, enlarging the portfolios of renewables, increasing domestic autonomy and privacy, reducing energy bills, promoting local collaboration and sharing, or towards
148 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg particular combinations of these goals? When seeking to connect with HEM practices, strategies for the governance of social change in smart grids will become more real and realistic because they take into account the complex interrelations in system rationalities and household rationalities. Fourth and finally, in the context of governance, it is of special relevance to ask questions on the division of power and responsibilities. Who is in charge? And, who is (made) responsible for what kind of project or programme? The suggested distinction between domestic consumption practices and HEM practices, as well as the mediating functions assigned to HEM practices, make it possible to investigate issues of power, surveillance, empowerment, and loss of autonomy involved in smart grid development in more detail. A seemingly simple question like “who is turning on the dishwasher, and at what time?” brings in not just strictly technical questions regarding the software of the dishwasher and the maximum use of renewables but also questions regarding the changing relationship of power between households and energy providers (e.g., issues of political consumerism).
Political Consumerist Practices in the Domain of Food Food is a popular domain in political consumerist research and action (see Chapter 13), and also social practice perspectives have been applied here. This subsection discusses on two important food consumption–related social practices: everyday food consumption practices and practices at the point of retail to analyse how consumer practices are embedded in larger bundles of practice.
Everyday Food Consumption Exploring food consumption practices is important especially when trying to understand their disruptions and change (Brons & Oosterveer, 2017). Although food practices are generally highly routinized as a large share of these practices takes place at a nondeliberative level (Warde, 2016), creating and organizing more sustainable food consumption practices often involves reflexive consumer action. Alunni (2016) compared food consumption practices that included meat, others without meat, and a third category with irregular meat consumption (flexitarians) (see Chapter 8). She found that these practices are dominated by the component of meanings and less by issues of availability or price of alternative food items.5 In particular, the presence and continuous exposure to nonmeat consumption constitutes a driver for change: for some practitioners, in fact, the tight (everyday) contact with nonmeat
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 149 eaters favoured the change toward less or no meat consumption. Practices were also influenced by the wider social context, which turned out to be an obstacle for change because the wider social context emphasized the difference between the “standard” practice of meat consumption, performed in a more unconscious way, and the “unusual” practice of nonmeat consumption, which therefore involves more reflexivity and is more consciously recognizable when being carried out. This gives the practice of meat consumption a certain flexibility in its performance, whereas nonmeat consumption is performed in a much more “rigid” manner. For example, in meat consumption practices it is easier to go without meat for one day than in nonmeat consumption practices to eat meat for one day. Brons and Oosterveer (2017) show that accessing sustainable food is characterized by plurality and contains different modes of recruitment, engagement, and bundles of practice. To understand access, it is crucial to dig deeper than the observable behaviour that is performed and to disclose underlying meanings, ends, and connections. Access to sustainable food is not the outcome of a singular practice. Rather, accessing sustainable food is connected to numerous other practices in many different ways, such as mobility and the sequencing of multiple other practices. For instance, collecting a food box with fresh local produce may require particular effort when consumers need to be at particular locations at a particular time. When, however, collecting such a box can be part of already existing routines, such as going to the university for students, this hardly requires any additional effort. This means that access does not depend on one single aspect only, such as price or awareness, but rather involves the continuous negotiations and dynamics within and between different social practices.
Access Food at the Point of Retail One important location for these dynamic interactions between practices is the point of retail because it is here where actors higher up in the chain, such as processors and retailers and their practices, encounter consumers and their everyday social practices. Many modern retailers have subscribed to the importance of food sustainability, but there is a huge variety of practices of accessing and defining sustainable food in different supermarkets and in different countries as well as with respect to the involvement of consumers (Spaargaren & Oosterveer, 2010). There are considerable variations in the number of sustainable food products on offer, the centrality of sustainability in retail practices, and the commitments and qualifications of shop staff and consumers (Lyons, 2007). Retailers such as Whole Foods Market originally were part of the environmental movement and did not consider themselves retailers selling food only for profit. Thereby they tried to distance themselves from conventional retailing firms such as Walmart. So in their communication, Whole Foods tried to actively involve consumers in a common struggle for the creation of a more sustainable future and “engage with
150 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg the local community, protect the environment, distribute the food of local farmers, promote employee well-being, and service customers’ desire for delicious food they can feel good about” (Johnston, 2008, p. 248). They state that customers can become “advocates for whole foods.” Buycotting sustainable food and expressing a sustainable food lifestyle gets greatly facilitated this way. Other retailing firms, such as Walmart, choose to operate differently and promote sustainability behind consumers’ backs.” Walmart decided in 2005 to completely reorient its strategy on sustainability and claims nowadays that “our approach accelerates us towards our three aspirational goals: to create zero waste, operate with 100% renewable energy and sell products that sustain our resources and the environment.”6 The company argues that about 90 percent of the environmental impacts occur within the supply chain and therefore the company radically needed to change its supply chain management, logistics, and relations to rural areas. This strategy does not engage the consumer in any active way but intends to serve the customer by providing high-quality, low-cost products in a responsible and sustainable manner. This way, political consumerist buycotting sustainable of food at Walmart becomes difficult. Accessing safe and healthy foods is a major social and political issue in Vietnam and many other countries going through processes of modernization, industrialization, agricultural intensification, and urbanization. In response governments steer food retail away from traditional, local wet markets to modern forms of retail, because they are convinced that modern retail secures better consumer access to safe and healthy food (Reardon, Timmer, & Minten, 2012; Wertheim-Heck, Vellema, & Spaargaren, 2015). These governments expect that modern retail is better capable of securing the safety of food (Wertheim-Heck, Vellema, & Spaargaren, 2015). However, Vietnamese consumers continue to visit local wet markets to buy their fresh foods and vegetables. These Vietnamese consumers demonstrate their specific skills and competences in handling food insecurity and food risks within locally embedded and well-established practices (i.e., buying particular foods from particular sellers at fresh markets) (Wertheim-Heck, Vellema, & Spaargaren, 2014). Their historically embedded skills and competences enable everyday food shoppers in Vietnam to deal with the uncertainties of modernity within their daily lives that include numerous practices that have to be combined. In political consumerist terms this means that by buycotting their familiar traditional wet markets for accessing fresh foods and including this in their modern urban lifestyles, urban consumers in Vietnam limit the possibilities for public and private policymakers to enforce the transformation towards a Western-style modern retail sector involving super-and hypermarkets (Wertheim-Heck, 2018). Accessing sustainable food in modern retail involves the wider bundle of practices that constitute food supply chains and networks (Oosterveer, 2012; Spaargaren, Oosterveer, & Loeber, 2012). Continuing retail practices that are well-embedded in everyday lives proves an effective strategy to resist transformations towards less well- embedded food retail practices. Multiple, sometimes competing, sets of practices of accessing sustainable food are being cocreated by consumers and retailers.
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 151
Political Consumerism in the Domain of Mobility Compared to food, mobility has received only little attention in the literature on political consumerism (Verbeek & Mommaas, 2008). In travel and mobility research, green transformation in everyday mobility is an emergent topic, and there is a recent trend to use a social practice perspective (see Cass & Faulconbridge, 2016; Greene & Rau, 2018; Nijhuis, 2013; Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012; Watson, 2012). Work in this field approaches ways of doing travel as mobility practices (Watson, 2012) and distinguishes practices such as cycling, walking, flying, driving, and using buses or trains. Each of these mobility practices requires specific skills and competences and includes different material elements and meanings. Driving a car, for example, requires skills such as knowing the traffic rules and knowing how to drive; requires material elements such as cars, roads, and traffic lights; and involves meanings such as autonomy and freedom. A social practice perspective enables the study of the stability of everyday mobility practices as well as the ways in which citizen-consumers seek to make their mobility practices more sustainable and how they thereby reconfigure the wider sociotechnical mobility system.
Everyday Mobility Practices A social practice perspective entails a shift from a focus on individual behaviour to an understanding that travel and mobility are social activities that are embedded in everyday life. Here, existing work has shown how people often travel together with others (Jensen, Sheller, & Wind, 2015; McLaren, 2016), and with the goal of accomplishing other social projects such as getting to work or school or shopping (Cass & Faulconbridge, 2016; Greene & Rau, 2018; Peters, Kloppenburg, & Wyatt, 2010). A practice approach also highlights that mobility practices never exist in isolation but are always bundled with other practices in time and space (Watson, 2012). The practice of driving by car to work, for example, may be connected with other practices such as parenting (dropping a child off at day-care) and shopping (passing by the supermarket on the way home). Zooming in on the performance of everyday mobility practices thus shows that people enact everyday mobility practices in order to organise their everyday work and family life and do not necessarily consider the energy consumption and CO2 emissions connected to these practices.
Mobility Practices in the Context of the Wider Mobility System In performing everyday mobility practices, people reproduce and potentially reconfigure the wider sociotechnical mobility system. To understand how consumers act
152 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg upon environmental information and make politically conscious green(er) choices, it helps to look at the various consumption junctions where political consumers interact with the providers of mobility products and services. One example of the consumption junction is the showroom where consumers purchase a car. Nijhuis (2013) found that the provisioning of environmental information in Dutch showrooms increased over the past decade and that consumers are increasingly knowledgeable about the environmental qualities of cars. Another type of consumption junction is provided by the growing number of apps and digital platforms through which providers of sustainable mobility products and services encounter consumers and their everyday practices. This includes public transport trip planner tools, the provisioning of real-time information about the location of buses and trams, and apps to organise car sharing and bike sharing. Such ICT-driven sociotechnical innovations increase the accessibility and convenience of sustainable mobility practices and lifestyles (Schwanen, 2015). At the same time, practice approaches have shown that information about environmental impacts and access to a wider range of mobility options does not automatically lead to greener choices by consumers. Practice theory understands changes towards low-carbon mobility not as a matter of a one-off buycott of an electric vehicle or of individual green lifestyle choices but as the successful recruitment of people to alternative practices (Shove & Pantzar, 2007). Examining processes of recruitment directs attention to how the spatiotemporal, social, and infrastructural organisation of everyday life inhibits and promotes the greening of mobility practices. Recruitment in greener mobility practices can be more difficult if this requires people to make changes in the organisation of their everyday life. For example, shifting from car to bicycle commuting may mean that people need to go shopping for groceries at another time or leave work earlier in order to get home on time to cook diner for the family. Rau and Sattlegger (2018) show how for families with young children the car is often seen as necessary for the spatiotemporal coordination of everyday life, which makes it challenging to adopt car- free mobility practices. A focus on recruitment also helps to explain why some “acts of political consumerism” gain popularity relatively quickly. One explanation for the relative success of car sharing as compared to shifting to buses or bicycles is that car sharing “taps into the same materials, meanings and competences, often recruits the same practitioners, and assumes a similar position in the same bundles and complexes of practices as automobility” (Kent & Dowling, 2013, p. 91). Practice theory thus offers a socially embedded understanding of travel and mobility choices and activities that could (or could not) be interpreted as political consumerism.
Conclusion and Discussion This chapter has introduced social practice theory and its potential use as a conceptual framework for analysing political consumerism. The cases of home energy use,
Political Consumerism and the Social-Practice Perspective 153 food consumption, and mobility were developed to illustrate this more concretely. The critical contribution from social practice approaches is the shift away from a focus on individual behaviour and isolated decision-making towards an understanding of consumer practices as social activities that are embedded in everyday life. A social practice–based approach encourages the study of the actual performances of boycotting and buycotting practices and connecting them with processes of agency, power, and social change in the wider bundles of practices to which they relate. Among the strengths of this approach is its recognition of the everyday, routinized character of consumer practices, highlighting also more mundane examples of politically motivated consumption and anticonsumption activities (see Chapters 19 and 40). Taking a social practice perspective helps in understanding that a focus on changing individual consumer behaviour through information campaigns or awareness raising is severely limited because this behaviour cannot be isolated from its everyday context. It also shows how using nudging as a strategy to create behavioural change recognizes the routinized character of consumer practices but reinforces the passive role of consumers. The perspective also acknowledges the possibility that meanings, understandings, and values may change as a result of transforming social practices and not just the other way around. Social practice approaches can contribute to developing strategies that strengthen the more active and reflexive role of consumers required for more encompassing social and environmental change. Social practice perspectives underline the embeddedness of daily human behaviour. Everyday practices, such as heating homes, eating food, and commuting, are all situated performances of particular practices. In addition, these situated practices are part of wider configurations of practice-arrangement bundles. In these configurations of bundles of practices, power is being made and remade. Hence power is situated at particular locations in the bundle while the sources of power are also specific to particular bundles. So consumer power, the object of political consumerism, refers to the locations at which consumers use particular resources to steer certain practices towards more sustainable, ethical, or social modes of perfermance. Putting agency, power, and change central in the analysis of relevant consumer practices guides analysis and research to a better understanding of the actual performance of these practices and where and how concerns about social and environmental issues can lead to changes in consumer practices. Such research may identify particular changes that more easily fit into existing practices while others require much more complex transformations of existing (bundles of) practices and therefore are more difficult or even unlikely to be successful. Social practice approaches can also contribute to studying (consumer) agency in wider bundles of practices by focusing on the (re)distribution of power in particular supply chains and networks, as exemplified in studying the performance of practices at the consumption junction. This may strengthen the reflection on and the study of power in (particular) practices embedded in supply chains.
154 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg
Notes 1. Citizen juries are set up to have a group of ordinary citizens to discuss scientific evidence on a particular controversial issue (e.g., genetic modification in food production), interview experts, and formulate an advisory to policymakers. 2. Food councils exist in many forms but in general they bring together local stakeholders collectively discussing local food politics and proposing more sustainable ways of producing and accessing food. 3. For instance, in the European Union household consumption represents about 25% of total energy consumption (http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php /Energy_consumption_in_households, accessed February 16, 2018). 4. See: http://bigpicture.unfccc.int/#content-the-paris-agreemen (accessed February 16, 2018). 5. This study made use of the distinction between practice elements proposed by Shove, Pantzar, and Watson (2012). They differentiate between “meanings,” “materials,” and “competences” as practice components. 6. https://corporate.walmart.com/global-responsibility/sustainability/ (retrieved January 28, 2018).
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156 Peter Oosterveer, Gert Spaargaren, and Sanneke Kloppenburg Shove, Elizabeth, Pantzar, Mikea, & Watson, Matt. (2012). The dynamics of social practice: Everyday life and how it changes. London: Sage. Shove, Elizabeth, & Walker, Gordon. (2014). What is energy for? Social practice and energy demand. Theory, Culture & Society, 31(5), 41–58. Spaargaren, Gert. (2003). Sustainable consumption: A theoretical and environmental policy perspective. Society and Natural Resources, 16(8), 687–701. Spaargaren, Gert. (2011). Theories of practices: Agency, technology, and culture: Exploring the relevance of practice theories for the governance of sustainable consumption practices in the new world-order. Global Environmental Change, 21(3), 813–822. Spaargaren, Gert, Lamers, Machiel, & Weenink, Don. (2016). Introduction: Using practice theory to research social life. In Gert Spaargaren, Machiel Lamers, & Don Weenink (Eds.), Practice theory and research: Exploring the dynamics of social life (pp. 3–27). London and New York, NY: Routledge. Spaargaren, Gert, Oosterveer, Peter. (2010). Citizen-consumers as agents of change in globalizing modernity: The case of sustainable consumption. Sustainability, 2(7), 1887–1908. Spaargaren, Gert, Oosterveer, Peter, & Loeber, Anne. (2012). Sustainability transitions in food consumption, retail and production. In Gert Spaargaren, Peter Oosterveer, & Anne Loeber (Eds.), Food practices in transition: Changing food consumption, retail and production in the Age of Reflexive Modernity (pp. 1–33). New York, NY and London: Routledge. Spaargaren, Gert, Van Koppen, C.S.A. (Kris). (2009). Provider strategies and the greening of consumption practices: exploring the role of companies in sustainable consumption. In Helmut Lange & lars meier (Eds.), The new middle classes; globalizing lifestyles, consumerism and environmental concern, (pp. 81 –100). Dordrecht: Springer. Spaargaren, Gert, Weenink, Don, & Lamers, Machiel. (Eds.). (2016). Practice theory and research: Exploring the dynamics of social life. New York, NY and London: Routledge. Stolle, Dietlind, & Micheletti, Michele. (2013). Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Verbeek, Desirée, & Mommaas, Hans. (2008). Transitions to sustainable tourism mobility: The social practices approach. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 16(6), 629–644. Warde, Alan. (2005). Consumption and theories of practice. Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(2), 131–153. Warde, Alan. (2016). The practice of eating. Cambridge: Polity. Watson, Matt. (2012). How theories of practice can inform transition to a decarbonised transport system. Journal of Transport Geography, 24(Supplement C), 488–496. Weenink, Don, & Spaargaren, Gert. (2016). Emotional agency navigates a world of practices. In Gert Spaargaren, Don Weenink, & Machiel Lamers (Eds.), Practice theory and research: Exploring the dynamics of social life (pp. 60–84). London and New York, NY: Routledge. Wertheim-Heck, Sigrid C. O. (2018). Consumers, food security, and transformations in food retail in Vietnam. In Terry Marsden (Ed.), The Sage handbook of nature (pp. 676–700). London: Sage. Wertheim-Heck, Sigrid C. O., Vellema, Sietze, & Spaargaren, Gert. (2014). Constrained consumer practices and food safety concerns in Hanoi. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 38(4), 326–336. Wertheim-Heck, Sigrid C. O., Vellema, Sietze, & Spaargaren, Gert. (2015). Food safety and urban food markets in Vietnam: The need for flexible and customized retail modernization policies. Food Policy, 54, 95–106.
Chapter 8
Veganism a nd Pl ant-B ased E at i ng Analysis of Interplay Between Discursive Strategies and Lifestyle Political Consumerism Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva
In recent years, veganism and different forms of plant-based diets have undergone a significant change in terms of media attention, consumer interest, commercial opportunities, and food products available in developed economies. Veganism has turned from a poorly known vegetarian submovement into a way of life praised by some of the world’s top celebrities, businesspeople, and politicians (Doyle, 2016; Joy & Tuider, 2016). Veganism is a rather strict lifestyle where animal-derived products are avoided as much as possible in all areas of life. This lifestyle has now evolved into a popular and flexible way of following a plant-based diet. Hence, in addition to veganism, various diets where meat, fish, dairy, and egg consumption are reduced, but not abandoned, are also currently celebrated as part of more sustainable ways of eating. It is precisely this variation that characterizes the phenomenon at hand and plays a role in the ways in which contemporary political consumerism enters people’s lives. The following discussion analyses both veganism and more “middle-ground” forms of plant-based eating. The latter includes followers of various solutions, such as vegetarians, who more or less consistently follow a meat-free diet, and flexitarians, who do not avoid meat altogether. The chapter analyses the evolution of the images and practices of veganism and examines what kind of political consumerism and consumption veganism, vegetarianism, and other forms of plant-based eating more broadly constitute.1 The discussion offers a conceptualization of veganism and plant-based eating not only as political consumerism (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013) but also as part of a contemporary celebration of consumer choice (Guthman, 2008), alternative hedonism (Soper, 2008), and
158 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva cross-national food communities (Bildtgård, 2008) enabled by social media connectivity (van Dijk & Poell, 2013). The first section discusses cultural positions and meanings of meat-and plant-based eating in Western societies and the adverse effects of meat consumption in order to understand the forms that veganism and plant-based eating currently take. Thereafter, the chapter analyses the contemporary mobilization around veganism and plant-based diets and the ways in which they are presented and promoted by various actors and in various spaces. This analysis demonstrates how these manifestations resonate with the four forms of political consumerism: boycotting, buycotting, discursive political consumerism, and lifestyle political consumerism (Carvalho de Rezende, 2014; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013) and, in particular, the intersection between discursive and lifestyle political consumerism. Due to the fact that veganism and plant- based choices may and do often have other, nonpolitical, self-regarding, and practical motivations, the discussion includes the demarcation between political and nonpolitical veganism and plant-based eating. In the concluding section, some ideas for further research on plant-based diets and political consumerism are discussed. The focus is on Europe and North America, where veganism and plant-based eating as political consumerism prevails most significantly. In Western societies, food-related consumer choices and political consumerism are located within a nexus of various actors, interests, media publicity, policy initiatives, marketing by food industries and grocery stores, and food cultures as well as activities and messages by food-related nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) (Jallinoja, Niva, & Latvala, 2016). The private realm of food-related choices is deeply integrated with public spaces, such as social media and conventional media. Moreover, the contemporary image of veganism and the increased media publicity around it has occurred as a result of several historical developments, such as the history of vegetarian eating in Western societies. In its current form, the roots of veganism may be tracked down to the “countercuisine” and “back to the land” lifestyles of the late 1960s (Belasco, 1989; Kauffman, 2018; Johnston & Baumann, 2015) as well as green consumerism of the 1980s (Gabriel & Lang, 2006). The following sections tie the current situation with these historical and cultural underpinnings.
The Challenged Cultural Position of Meat Eating Currently the cultural position of meat is ambivalent. Meat is at the same time praised as a core component of a proper meal and criticized for its adverse effects on the environment, human health, and animals. As to the cultural significance of meat in Western societies, meat has long been socially highly prized (Fiddes, 1991; Freeman, 2014); taken as a token of progress, prosperity, and health (Bakker & Dagevos, 2012); and associated with masculinity and strength (Twigg, 1983). For instance, meat holds a focal role in a “proper” meal, exemplified by rituals such as the “head of the family” slicing the
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 159 meat at the Sunday dinner table. Meat holds symbolic value that can be even more important than its nutritional value (Fiddes, 1991). The same cultural spirit is also exemplified by meat-praising discourses on television shows by celebrity chefs, which tend to strengthen the value of meat as an archaic element of society and as a masculine food (Buscemi, 2016). Joy (2010) has suggested that current meat-eating patterns are rooted in a belief system in which meat eating is seen as the “natural” thing to do with no need for reflection. At the same time, the relation to meat is codified by taboos—for example, not all meat is considered edible (Douglas, 1966/1985; Sage, 2014). In agricultural societies, meat consumption was very low for most people (Smil, 2002). For some time now in Western societies, meat has been a product available for everyone, instead of holding the previous status as a luxury product (Fiddes, 1991). This process, which has been termed a “meatification of human diet” (Sage, 2014), is shown by the increasing consumption of meat during recent decades (Allievi, Vinnari, & Luukkanen, 2015; de Boer, Helms, & Aiking, 2006; Natural Resources Institute Finland, 2017). However, consumption of poultry, in particular, has increased, whereas that of beef is declining, as shown by Finnish consumption statistics from the 1970s onwards (Natural Resources Institute Finland, 2017) and for Europe since the 1990s (European Environment Agency, 2016). The high value associated with meat has been reflected in the mostly negative and suspicious public perceptions of followers of veganism and plant-based diets. In the United States in the nineteenth century, it was believed that vegetarianism might make one go insane, become emaciated, or die (Iacobbo & Iacobbo, 2004). Negative images of vegetarians as ascetics, weaklings, self-depriving neurotics, food cranks, and freaks prevailed in the early twentieth century (Iacobbo & Iacobbo, 2004). Analyses of newspaper reporting on veganism in the United Kingdom in 2000–2005 (Lundahl & Henkel, 2017) and in 2007 (Cole & Morgan, 2011) show several negative stereotypes of vegans as ascetics, faddists, sentimentalists, and hostile extremists. In France, until recently, vegans were regarded as “ascetics who belong to cults and live almost exclusively on soy burgers and sprouts” (Véron, 2016, p. 290). Similar attitudes have been revealed in television series positioning vegetarians as killjoys (Grant & MacKenzie-Dale, 2016) and marginalized and potentially amusing characters, although more positive characters, such as Lisa on The Simpsons, have been portrayed, too (Freeman, 2014). Besides this positive cultural image of meat, the adverse effects of the production and consumption of animal-derived foods have been increasingly reported in academic research and in the media. First, animal-derived food has been shown to place a heavy burden on the environment. For example, the carbon footprint of beef and sheep, the land use of raising beef (de Vries & de Boer, 2010; Nijdam, Rood, & Westhoek, 2012) and the global-warming impact of beef are high (de Vries & de Boer, 2010). Moreover, although the water footprint of any animal product is larger than that of crop products, the average water footprint per calorie is especially high for beef (Mekonnen & Hoekstra, 2012). Second, high consumption of red and processed meat has been associated with increased risk of chronic diseases, such as cancer (Kromhout et al., 2016; Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, 2012; World Cancer Research Fund, 2013). Third,
160 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva in recent years several food scandals, such as foot-and-mouth disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and dioxin in milk, eggs, and meat, have shaken consumers’ confidence in the healthiness and reliability of animal-derived products (Villareal Herrera, 2017). Fourth, the meat and dairy industries have been strongly criticized for the suffering caused to production animals (Singer, 1975; Vinnari & Vinnari, 2014).This criticism has intensified in the current mode of human-animal relationships: some animals (pets) are treated with great affection, while others live in highly industrial production systems (Herzog, 2010). Due to these negative effects, plant-based eating has been proposed as one solution, for example in nutrition recommendations in the Nordic countries (Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, 2012). Furthermore, the idea of ecological public health emphasizes that reduction of meat consumption benefits both the environment and public health (Springmann et al., 2016). Vegetable-based meals on average have lower greenhouse gas emissions and lower overall environmental impact compared to animal-derived foods (van Dooren et al., 2014; Virtanen et al., 2011) and smaller water footprints (Mekonnen & Hoekstra, 2012). In addition, legumes, such as beans and lentils, as well as seeds and nuts, have several positive health effects (Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, 2012; World Cancer Research Fund, 2013).
Vegetarianism and Veganism in Western Societies In Europe, there are records of vegetarianism from antiquity onwards. Many of the arguments used in the modern defense of plant-based eating were in some form present already in antiquity, examples being kinship to animals, abstinence from excessive consumption, and even animal rights (Walters & Portmess, 1999). It seems that these arguments, however, were replaced by new ones or reformulated in medieval times. As Julia Twigg (1983) notes, medieval and modern forms of vegetarianism differ from each other. In medieval times, vegetarianism occurred in the contexts of virtuous religion, of the patterning of fast and feast days and of a straightforward denial of the flesh, whereas in modern societies, it is very much a product of individualisation. Twigg (1983) suggests that modern vegetarianism has traditionally had four major foci: health, animal welfare, ecology, and spirituality—the first two being mentioned most often. Studies from the 1990s and 2000s reveal that moral aspects were most frequently stated as motivations for plant-based diets, whereas health was the second most frequently stated motivation and the environment and religious reasons were the least often provided motivations (Ruby, 2012). A more recent study among German vegans showed that the greatest reason for becoming vegan were reports on factory farming, the second being climate protection and the third health concerns (Kerschke-Risch, 2015).
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 161 Ideas reflecting modern vegetarianism first emerged in the West in the late eighteenth century (Iacobbo & Iacobbo, 2004; Twigg, 1983). The first vegetarian societies were founded in the United Kingdom in 1847 and in the United States in 1850. The beginning of veganism has often been associated with the founding of the first vegan society in 1944, when a group of Vegetarian Society members in the United Kingdom coined a new word—“vegan”—and formed a separate organization, the Vegan Society. The cornerstone of the argument of the new society concerned the cruelty caused by all kinds of farming using animals and the belief that vegetarianism was not enough to alleviate this suffering (Leneman, 1999). Later vegan societies were founded in other countries, for example in the United States in 1960 (American Vegan Society), in Sweden in 1976 (Veganföreningen i Sverige), and in Finland in 1993 (Vegan Society of Finland). Besides vegetarian and vegan societies, campaigns raising consumer awareness of the conditions in the meat, poultry, dairy, and fur industries and increasing consumer competence in vegetarian eating have been promoted by animal rights and animal welfare organizations (Micheletti & Stolle, 2010). In Finland for example, in the 1990s, the vegan movement was a part of the “fourth wave” of environmental protest, characterized by ecocentrism and postmaterialistic values, and concretized in attacks on fur farms and the liberation of animals there (Konttinen, 1999). Vegans exclude more foods from their diet than vegetarians, as the target is to avoid all animal products. Veganism, however, is not necessarily merely a dietary solution: besides food choices, vegans can be concerned with animal-derived products in all arenas of consumption, from medicine and cosmetics to clothing and building materials (Greenebaum, 2012; Meindertsma, 2008), and veganism can promote a philosophical worldview emphasising a more egalitarian relationship between human and nonhuman animals (Francione, 2010). There are multiple subgroups of vegans, as some eat vegan food for environmental reasons (environmental veganism), some for ethical reasons (ethical veganism), and some for health reasons (health-based veganism). In practice, in modern societies, it is impossible to totally avoid all animal-derived products in all areas of life, and for many vegan identity is fluid and flexible (Stephens Griffin, 2017). In addition, there are various groups of “specialized vegetarians” and “occasional vegetarians” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2010), such as lacto-vegetarians, lacto-ovo- vegetarians, and pesco-lacto-ovo-vegetarians. Recently, with the increased interest in plant-based eating, various flexible and compromise solutions for reducing meat consumption have been presented (Twine, 2014), such as flexitarianism and its commercialized variation “Eat Vegan Before 6 p.m.” (Bittman, 2013) and “Meatless/Meat Free Monday” (Morris, 2018; Singer, 2017). The most recent addition to the solutions promoted is reducetarianism, which aims to be an inclusive category ranging from vegans to those reducing meat consumption by 20 percent, for example (Kateman, 2017). This diversification of plant-based eating is interesting in its own right, as it resonates with the overall individualism and high value placed on free consumer choices in Western cultures and provides commercial opportunities for the food industry and various lifestyle and nutrition coaches.
162 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva The numbers of vegans and vegetarians have been investigated in several countries, but comparing them is difficult due to the large variety of plant-based diets described above and inconsistent adherence to them. It might sometimes be difficult even for the practitioners to determine if they qualify as vegans or vegetarians. Another challenge arises from the differences between self-reporting and classification with Food Frequency Questionnaires (Vinnari et al., 2008). Finally, survey data are not always representative of populations. Nevertheless, previous studies have suggested that the proportion of followers of plant-based diets has remained rather low in Western societies (Table 8.1). The current low prevalences of vegan and vegetarian eating are consistent with the low level of protein intake from vegetables and legumes and consumption of plant-protein products. In 2012 among Finnish men between the ages of twenty-five and sixty-four, only 2 percent of the protein intake was from vegetables and 3 percent from legumes and nuts,
Table 8.1 Self-reported Vegan or Vegetarian Diet in Surveys Source
Year Country
Richardson, Shepherd, & Elliman, 1994
Not reported The UK
Not reported
2.4% vegetarians 0.3% vegans
The Vegan Society, 2016
2016 The UK
Aged 15 or over
2.2% vegetarians 1.05% vegans
ARS, 2014
2014 Sweden
Not reported
6% vegetarians 4% vegans
ARS, 2017
2017 Sweden
18- to 79-year-olds
6% vegetarians 3% vegans
Vinnari et al., 2008
1997 Finland
27- to 74-year-olds
Women: 4.45% vegetarians Men: 3.79% vegetarians
Vinnari et al., 2008
2002 Finland
27- to 74-year-olds
Women: 4.26% vegetarians Men: 2.11% vegetarians
Jallinoja, Niva, & Latvala, 2016
2013 Finland
15- to 64-year-olds
6.8% vegetarians or vegans
Parviainen et al., 2017
1999 Finland
16- to 18-year-olds
Girls: 10.7% vegetarians Boys: 1.4% vegetarians
Parviainen et al., 2017
2013 Finland
16- to 18-year-olds
Girls: 5.7% vegetarians Boys: 0.6% vegetarians
Helldán & Helakorpi, 2015
2014 Finland
15- to 64-year-olds
Women: 4.7% vegetarians Men: 3% vegetarians
HRC, 2014
Not reported The US
Aged 17 and over
1.5% current vegetarians 0.5% current vegans 9.1% former vegetarians 1.1% former vegans
Age groups
Percentage of vegans and vegetarians
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 163 and among women the figures were 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively (Helldán et al., 2013). In 2013, 6 percent of Finns ate beans; 4 percent ate soya chunks, textured soya protein, or soya sausages; and 3 percent ate tofu at least once a week (Jallinoja, Niva, & Latvala, 2016). Results from Sweden (ARS, 2017) suggest that among the young vegetarian diets are more common than among older respondents. In Finland, the proportion of vegetarians was highest among adolescent girls already in 1999 (Parviainen et al., 2017)—right after the wave of animal rights activism of the late 1990s (Konttinen, 1999). In 2014, 10.8 percent of women aged fifteen to twenty-four reported that they are vegetarians (Helldán & Helakorpi, 2015). Moreover, in Finland the analysis of food frequency questionnaires shows that women, those with a high level of education, and those living in single households follow vegetarian diets more than other respondents (Vinnari et al., 2008). Similar results have been reported from the United States (Sabaté, Ratzin-Turner, & Brown, 2001). Although thus far the proportion of vegetarians and vegans in Western populations has remained low, there are indications suggesting growing interest in vegan eating. Worldwide sales of nondairy milk alternatives more than doubled between 2009 and 2015 (Whipp, 2016). In the United States, the sales of plant-based foods grew by 8.1 percent between August 2016 and August 2017, whereas the sales of all foods declined 0.2 percent (Simon, 2017). In Finland, major grocery retailer Kesko reported that sales of plant-based milk increased by 47 percent during one year, while sales of hummus and falafel products increased by 305 percent (Kesko, 2017). In Sweden, the proportion of nonvegetarians with increased interest in vegetarian food has increased from 26 percent in 2009 (ARS, 2015) to 47 percent in 2017 (ARS, 2017).
The Components of the Vegan Mobilization It has been estimated that a significant change from negative to positive images of veganism has happened during the past decade and in some countries during the past two to five years, as veganism has gone from an unknown vegetarian submovement to a publicly celebrated way of life (Cole & Morgan, 2011; Joy & Tuider, 2016). It is noteworthy that during this period it has been especially veganism and plant-based eating, not vegetarianism, that have been at the focus of media publicity and consumer interest. For instance, between 2010 and 2011, reporting on veganism in the Daily Mail changed, focusing more with celebrity vegans in a positive way (Lundahl, 2017). In the United Kingdom, according to the Vegan Society, a significant change occurred in 2013: there was an increase in the number of people signing the online pledge to go vegan for a week or a month, a rise in footfall at VegfestUK (a festival dedicated to presenting vegan food, products, and lifestyle) from previous years, and the national and international press
164 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva was covering veganism more often and more positively than in the past (de Boo, 2014). Moreover, Forbes.com in the United States named high-end vegan dining the top food trend of 2013. A similar “veggie trend” has been reported in France, where vegan products form an expanding market and the number of vegan cookbooks and blogs has significantly increased (Véron, 2016). This section presents in more detail the building blocks of this change and analyses how veganism and plant-based eating are shaped as an assemblage of various actors and their interactions. The cases presented below show that, in the current mobilization of veganism, it is not only a question of raising consciousness about the negative effects of meat consumption. Additionally, changing the images of both animal-derived and vegan foods, increasing competences in vegan cooking and shopping, and building and strengthening communities and connectivity have a focal role in the mobilization of veganism. The role of social media is central. It is important to explore this nexus of various platforms and actors, since the possibilities of consumers to become “agents of sustainable change” depend on the environment where consumer choices are made (Bakker & Dagevos, 2012). In particular, the cases below illustrate how various actors have used discursive strategies to strengthen their arguments and bring their cause to the public sphere, but also that vegan options easily available to consumers to “buycott” are gaining increasing popularity. First, consciousness-raising campaigns by animal rights activists in several European countries as well as the United States, Australia, and Mexico have targeted the meat and dairy industries, aiming to transform their “happy meat” image. Activists have filmed at animal production facilities, showing poor living conditions and maltreatment of animals, and distributed these videos on the internet (Véron, 2016; Vinnari & Laine, 2017). Antibranding campaigns by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) against Kentucky Fried Chicken and Burger King (“Kentucky Fried Cruelty” and “Murder King”) (Seijts & Sider, 2006) have had similar aims. A similar example from Finland using “scare” and “shame” tactics is an outdoor poster campaign by the Finnish animal protection organization Animalia in 2005 illustrating the cruelty to farm animals caused by overefficient methods in livestock farming (Kuoppamäki, 2008). Another example is The Meatrix (2003), a short computer animation inspired by the movie The Matrix, criticizing industrial agricultural practices. By 2008, over twenty million people had watched the online video (Wolfe, 2009). These campaigns, using well-known brands as message boards, resemble culture jamming (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Besides these NGOs and activists, a central group of actors in contemporary consciousness- raising are commercial production and entertainment companies. Documentaries such as Cowspiracy (2014, updated version, executively produced by Leonardo DiCaprio on Netflix 2015), Food, Inc. (2008), and Forks over Knives (2011) have frequently been mentioned as turning points in life when “going vegan.” These documentaries comment on environmental, health, and animal welfare issues related to the meat and dairy industries in an entertaining fashion by using individual testimonies, science-based evidence, and emotional rhetoric. They may be categorized as spectacular environmentalism, as they are “designed through visual means, to get our
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 165 attention and pique our environmental imaginaries in ways that work to get us to feel, to connect and to ‘do’ ” (Goodman et al., 2016, p. 681). Central here is the utilization of social media in marketing and distribution via Netflix, a streaming platform providing video-on-demand online, and YouTube. Both are popular, especially among the young, and enable easy access to almost the same products globally and hence enable the formation of global food communities around the new images of factory farming and the vegan lifestyle. Furthermore, Netflix documentaries are not merely located on its online platform but are utilized in building awareness and communities independent of Netflix, such as on social media platforms and at showings of the documentaries at local animal rights events. Second, social media, vegan food bloggers, and vloggers have been central mobilizers in cultivating a new image of veganism and plant-based eating as part of a desirable lifestyle, building new competences in plant-based cooking and extending the consumer communities interested in vegan food. The popularity and mainstreaming of these actors is exemplified by Saveur magazine, which awarded a vegan food blog the Best Food Blog Award in 2013 (Priestley, Lingo, & Royal, 2016). The following year, as well, several of Saveur’s finalists for best cooking blogs specialized in meat-free recipes (Johnston & Baumann, 2015). In Finland in the spring of 2017, the vegan food blog Chocochili was second on the “Top 10 food blogs list” (Cision, 2017). On YouTube, several vegan vloggers are relatively popular, such as Cheap Lazy Vegan, with 431,000 subscribers, and Hot For Food, with 406,000 subscribers (April 2018). In Finland, one of the most popular vloggers, with 358,000 subscribers, is mmiisas cooking vegetarian food (April 2018). Véron (2016) suggests that in France vegan food bloggers have had an important role in building the new vegan community that thus far had been scattered. Vegan food bloggers have updated the image of a vegan lifestyle; contributed to building a sense of belonging and shared identity; and provided support, practical tips, and information. These blogs have been transgressions against the traditional paradigm of meat-based cooking, and many recipes have revisited traditional French recipes based on meat and dairy products. Many blogs also spread vegan recipes and ideology to readers not committed to a vegan lifestyle, and some vegan bloggers have explicitly aimed to reach society beyond the vegan readers (Véron, 2016). This widening sphere of vegan eating is easier with the new image and discourse of flexible plant-based eating. For example, the writers of the American vegan food blog Thug Kitchen associated veganism with self-oriented interests relating to health, wellbeing, lifestyle, and personal choice, as well as relaxed and flexible cooking, instead of discussing politically charged issues of veganism such as animal cruelty and environmentalism (Priestley, Lingo, & Royal, 2016). The writers even distanced themselves from the word “vegan” and instead referred to “plant-based recipes” (Priestley, Lingo, & Royal, 2016). Third, vegan pledges, organized by vegan and animal rights organizations (e.g., PETA, the Vegan Society in the United Kingdom, and the Vegan Society of Finland) have encouraged consumers to try vegan eating for a certain period of time; provided
166 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva peer support and platforms for community building; increased competence in vegan cooking, shopping and lifestyle; and reshaped the public image of veganism. Some cities, such as Ghent in Belgium, San Francisco, and Baltimore, have declared certain days of the week meat-free (Sage, 2014). In Norway the army introduced a “Meat Free Monday” programme in garrison canteens (Saul, 2013). Celebrities such as Al Gore, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Lopez, and Lewis Hamilton, who have taken a pledge or otherwise gone vegan, have gained visibility in the media (Doyle, 2016; Lundahl, 2017) and some, such as Beyoncé, have themselves reported their vegan experiences on social media. In Finland, the January Vegan Pledge, organized annually since 2014, has listed celebrity participants on its web page An interesting example of such a pledge in Finland is the Meatless October (Lihaton lokakuu) that was first organized in 2013 by two journalists and media personalities, Riku Rantala and Tuomas Milonoff. What makes it a poignant example of the rise of veganism is that even though one organizer was a vegetarian, the other was not. This represented a break from the marginalized circles of vegans, presenting the meatless pledge as “cool” and suitable not only for stereotypical, puritan vegetarians but also for larger numbers of consumers than would otherwise have been possible at that time. All in all, Meatless October has been a carefully planned project featuring social media connectivity on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; a cookbook; events; and Meatless October recipes from the food industry. Here too, the discursive strategies of the pledges and related media publicity promote plant-based eating and its lifestyle as relaxed, trendy, and suitable for everyone. Fourth, both consumer interest in and the “buycott” potential of plant-based eating are dependent on supply and attractive marketing of new plant-based products and vegan meals at restaurants and fast-food chains (Jallinoja, Niva, & Latvala, 2016; Niva, Vainio, & Jallinoja, 2017). Central to product development are the substitutes for meat, dairy, and egg products, such as plant-based Beyond Meat burgers and Just Mayo mayonnaise. Not only analogue products as such but also their marketing as “cool” and suitable for a youthful, ethical lifestyle and identity are important here (Banaji & Buckingham, 2009), suggesting that building a new image of vegan products and their consumers is a central discursive strategy here. Many brands, like Swedish Oatly, which produces dairy substitutes (Fuentes & Fuentes, 2017), and Oumph!, which produces meat substitutes, use trendy images and slogans. Oumph! has distanced itself from the word “vegan” and instead refers to “epic veggie eating” (Lidell, 2017). Likewise, Oatly products are advertised as “totally cool for both vegans and non-vegans” and the marketing draws from several discourses: animal rights, global warming, local produce, and healthiness (Fuentes & Fuentes, 2017). As with the pledges and bloggers, the aim is to widen the group of potential consumers of vegan products outside the strict vegan communities. Moreover, Oatly has a Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a YouTube channel that “offer an opportunity not only to market to, but also to interact with, the consumers” (Fuentes & Fuentes, 2017, p. 10). Hence, social media plays a significant role: both food
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 167 industry and consumer groups promote new products and help consumers to find vegan food. It seems that consumers of these products are their eaters and advocates at the same time and also participate in social media communities promoting the new image of vegan eating. For example, in Facebook groups like “Pulled Oats Radar” and “Vegan Helsinki,” consumers help each other to find new products and restaurants as well as report their eating experiences. Finally, vegan fairs and festivals, organised in many cases by vegan activists, have been mushrooming in many countries. For example, www.vegan.com/festivals lists 81 events in the United States and 57 elsewhere. Examples in Europe are VegFestUK, held since 2002 in Bristol and since 2013 in London; Veganes Sommerfest in Berlin since 2008; Vegomässan in Sweden since 2008; VegFest in Tampere, Finland, since 2007; and Vegemessut in Helsinki, Finland, since 2017. During the 2010s, they epitomize many characteristics of the current rise of veganism by bringing together the components presented above. At festivals, likeminded people gather and are taught new cooking skills. Discursive strategies are used to reconfigure the image of veganism into a versatile, flexible lifestyle and pleasurable cooking and eating instead of mainly a question of animal rights. For example, at the Vegemessut in Helsinki in 2017, the speakers, who were not all vegans, included representatives of animal rights organizations, a vegan food blogger preparing seitan, a nutrition scientist, celebrity chefs cooking vegan meals, a well- known musician participating in the January vegan pledge, a vegan athlete, and representatives of vegan food companies. Together these activities and actors have changed the image of veganism and factory farming; increased consumers’ opportunities to buy, cook, and eat affordable and tasty vegan food; and helped to build communities and identities. What has been characteristic of the recent rise of veganism and plant-based eating is its presentation as an inclusive movement, allowing various levels of involvement and philosophical engagement. However, despite the contemporary movement and mobilization around veganism, animal-derived foods still have by far a larger market share compared to plant-derived ones, suggesting that “going vegan” has not thus far become a mass phenomenon.
Plant-Based Eating, Veganism, Discursive Strategies, and Lifestyle Politics How can veganism and plant-based eating be conceptualised as political consumerism? This section begins with the perspective of the four forms of political consumerism identified previously—boycotting, buycotting, lifestyle, and discursive strategies (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013)—and moves on to analyse what is particular in veganism and plant- based eating as political consumerism.
168 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva Some scholars in political consumption studies have identified features of all four forms of political consumerism in veganism and plant-based eating. For instance, Micheletti and Stolle (2012, p. 106) note that vegetarians buy vegetarian or vegan products (buycott) and reject meat products (boycott), engage in discourses on vegetarianism/veganism, and try to change their lifestyles. In a similar vein, Carvalho de Rezende (2014) studied vegetarianism as a form of political consumerism and noted that it is a “boycott practice of which consumption is just one moment” (Carvalho de Rezende, 2014, p. 395) but also a “lifestyle political practice” (Carvalho de Rezende, 2014, p. 396), since it requires multiple changes in daily life, adopting new habits, breaking norms related to proper eating, and confronting existing social structures. However, as the examples in the previous section suggest, the notions of boycotting and buycotting are too narrow as such to adequately describe the contemporary rise of veganism and plant-based eating. In fact, Guthman (2008) goes so far as to suggest that boycotting and buycotting represent the forms of collective action of yesteryear and that the actors involved in contemporary food activism use more contemporary methods. Indeed, more than boycotting or buycotting, the modes of alternative consumption more broadly, and even anticonsumption, have for a long time been tied to the vegan lifestyle (e.g., Konttinen, 1999). Guthman (2008) further suggests that contemporary food activism intersects with neoliberal rationalities such as consumer choice, localism, entrepreneurialism, and self-improvement—consumer choice being the most central organizing theme. Others have stressed that the discursive turn in political consumerism indicates “how political activism is emerging in the current age of globalization, Internet communication, a more open and fragmented media environment, individualization and enhanced consumer choice” (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, p. 202). The following sections analyse in more detail this mode of alternative consumption that is tied both to the celebration of consumer choice and individual hedonism and to communities enhanced by social media. Consequently, although veganism and plant-based eating can be conceptualized as boycotting and buycotting, this chapter contends that it is political consumerism in the forms of discursive strategies and lifestyle, as well as their interplay, that most poignantly characterizes the current rise of veganism. Discussion of the building blocks of the vegan mobilization in the previous sections offers several examples of discursive strategies, from consciousness-raising campaigns of animal rights activists to vegan pledges recruiting consumers and celebrities to try vegan eating. These discursive strategies may be roughly categorized into two groups. The first group would include those aiming to transform the image of the meat, poultry, fishing, and dairy industries and their products by revealing the cruelties of, and environmental problems caused by, these industries. These activities would thus count as a discursive strategy of political consumerism but also as emancipatory politics (Giddens, 1991)—where the emancipatory aim is extended to farm animals and fish. This type of argument is in line with the utilitarian perspective, which claims that evaluations of well-being should be extended not only to humans but to sentient nonhuman animals (Singer, 1975).
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 169 Others, such as food bloggers and consumers posting pictures of their vegan meals on Instagram, concentrate on the aesthetics of vegan food. They use another kind of discursive strategy, namely reimagining veganism and plant-based eating as a “cool,” trendy, desirable, and even normalized and mainstream lifestyle and vegan food as delicious. However, the demarcation between these two types of discursive strategies is blurry, as they are often used simultaneously. Even the animal rights movement has started to apply methods close to the new discursive strategies of political consumerism, instead of merely employing the previous strategies of infiltrating farms and releasing video material filmed there (Lundbom, 2016). And increasingly they use messages about the importance of veganism for one’s health and fitness (Micheletti & Stolle, 2010). The analysis of discursive strategies has already suggested a connection with lifestyle and lifestyle political consumerism. Many vegans themselves highlight that veganism is a lifestyle—not a diet—as it concerns all areas of life (Greenebaum, 2012). In previous studies, too, vegetarianism and veganism have been termed “alternative lifestyles” and lifestyle movements actively promoting a lifestyle as a means for social change (Haenfler, Johnson, & Jones, 2012). In the new discursive strategies presented in this chapter, the focus is on a lifestyle and self-image that simultaneously promote hedonism, self-care, and consciousness of the adverse effects of the meat and dairy industries. A closer look at the concept of lifestyle in contemporary societies suggests that lifestyle is “a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces . . . because they give material to a particular narrative of self-identity” (Giddens, 1991, p. 81) and, hence, lifestyle-related decisions are about how to act but also about whom to be (Giddens, 1991). In analyses relating to political consumerism, lifestyle politics has been defined as using one’s private life to take responsibility for the allocation of common values and resources (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013) and as the ways in which people are made to reflect on their lives and their life narratives because of wider political and social processes (Spaargaren & Oosterveer, 2010). For Giddens (1991, p. 214), lifestyle politics refers to “political issues which flow from processes of self-actualisation in post-traditional contexts,” where globalising processes and self-realisation are mutually interdependent. What seems to have happened, in addition to the emergence of veganism as an all- encompassing, strict lifestyle concentrating on anticonsumerism and criticism of factory farming, is that another lifestyle with more blurry boundaries is being promoted and built. In the latter constellation, lifestyle is increasingly and more openly about self- identity and related habitus and aesthetics. Here, it is vital to note the importance of the internet and especially social media— not only in the increased mobilization around veganism but in everyday social practices and the shaping of cultural content (van Dijk, 2012; van Dijk & Poell, 2013). All the cases presented in the previous section indicate the significance of social media in the rise of veganism and animal rights activism during the 2000s and 2010s. This observation is all the more central given that surveys have shown that veganism and vegetarianism are more common among the young (ARS, 2017). In many cases related to social media and conventional media, celebrities and media personalities
170 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva play a role in the change of veganism from a marginalized lifestyle into “eco-chic” consumption (Lundahl, 2017). Stolle & Micheletti (2013), too, note the importance of the internet in encouraging the growth of discursive political consumerism. They further note that “the Internet is the infrastructure or architecture for individualized responsibility-taking” and that it enables choice editing, choice architecture, and new kinds of group formation (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, p. 38). For example, with the rise of online communities and networks, local festivals and national Facebook groups are inspired by similar activities in other cities and countries. These are the cross-national food communities of late-modern societies enabled by social media (Bildtgård, 2008). On social media and in the food blogosphere, consumers compete for attention and followers, and potentially introduce and adopt new practices and images of eating. Various institutions, actors, and activists are confronted with the logic of social media and its platforms—programmability, popularity, connectivity, and datafication (van Dijk & Poell, 2013). Hence, vegan vloggers and bloggers, too, have to adopt these techno-commercial processes of social media and the food blogosphere in particular (Poell & van Dijk, 2015). To summarize, veganism and plant-based eating are clearly spheres of lifestyle political consumerism: they incorporate a way of eating that is informed by concerns for broad political issues on a global scale and integrate these concerns within the practices of everyday life. All in all, veganism as political consumerism consists of, on the one hand, emancipatory and lifestyle-related discursive strategies and, on the other hand, lifestyle politics.
Political or Nonpolitical Consumerism? The analysis of the components of vegan mobilization in previous sections has suggested that not all eating and promotion of vegan products is unambiguously political consumerism. Moreover, recently, as vegan eating has become fashionable in many Western cities, the aesthetic components of lifestyle politics probably increase in importance while the political component somewhat loses its edge. Here we may recognize “light-veganism” as a means of distinction by the middle class (see Guthman, 2003; Lundahl, 2017). In these various flexitarian solutions, environmental concerns play a larger role than animal rights issues. Furthermore, among foodies flexitarianism overshadows strict vegetarianism, as maximizing food pleasures and consumer choice are more important than environmental or animal rights issues (Johnston & Baumann, 2015). Moreover, in foodie discourse, humanely raised animal products serve as “a resolution between the demands of ethical responsibility and gourmet desire” (Johnston & Baumann, 2015, p. 139).
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 171 Plant-based eating may also be connected to healthism, especially among the middle class, where eating organic salad mix has been “in some sense performative of an elite sensibility” (Guthman, 2003, p. 53). Celebrities, such as Beyoncé, taking a vegan pledge may be mainly motivated by a “spiritual or physical cleanse” and health aspects and consider veganism as a short-term fix for restoring the body to its admired state (Lundahl, 2017, p. 218). Micheletti & Stolle (2012), too, note that although solidarity values and concern for others are important to vegetarians, values relating to health and quality of food are even more important. They further suggest that due to these self-regarding health values, not all forms of vegetarianism can be considered lifestyle politics (Micheletti & Stolle, 2012). There is an ongoing debate over whether veganism should be political and never be detached from animal rights (Greenebaum, 2012) and whether the “veggie trend” overruns the discussion of animal rights (Véron, 2016). Vegan food bloggers have been criticized for aestheticizing vegan eating (Véron, 2016), and many ethical vegans criticize those who follow a vegan diet for health reasons or don’t even consider those following a vegan diet for health reasons to be true vegans (Greenebaum, 2012; see also Arppe, Mäkelä, & Väänänen, 2011). Moreover, some have raised the concern that vegan substitutes for animal-derived foods might be merely another example of the co-option of alternative movements for commercial purposes (Fuentes & Fuentes, 2017). The Meat Free Monday campaign has been shown to lack materials about the suffering of animals in industrial agriculture and to instead strengthen the neoliberal food ethics of individual taste, freedom, and increased options (Singer, 2017). In the United Kingdom, newspaper coverage of Meat Free Monday only occasionally commented on the adverse consequences for animals of meat production (Morris, 2018). In Sweden, between 2006 and 2013, reporting on environmental problems of meat production more often suggested reformist solutions, such as reduction of consumption, instead of more radical solutions such as vegetarianism or veganism (Benulic, 2016). However, others argue that tolerating those “going vegan” for health or aesthetic reasons helps to build bridges between the justifications of veganism and the mainstream cultural ethos of meat consumption (Greenebaum, 2012). Bakker and Dagevos (2012), too, warn about juxtaposing responsible and irresponsible consumers. Hence, one could also argue for a less stringent bordering of veganism or plant-based eating as either other- regarding political consumerism or self-regarding food choices. This perspective gains support from previous research on consumer society and political consumerism. According to Gabriel and Lang (2006), in modern consumer societies, several diverse representations of consumers prevail concurrently. For example, consumers can be seen as choosers, communicators, and explorers for new products, experiences and fulfillment. They are identity-seekers, who build identity and boost self-esteem with goods, and hedonists who gain pleasure from the consumption of stylish, “cool” products. Finally, consumers may also be seen as rebels who consume with more style, consume less or differently, and consumer activists explicitly seeking to alter the meanings of consumption, progress and quality of life (Gabriel & Lang, 2006). The current rise
172 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva of veganism and plant-based eating coheres with all these representations. Moreover, in contemporary political consumerism or political activism, different strands—animal welfare/rights, health, food, ethics, fair trade—are interlinked, and these linkages are recognized by companies (Gabriel & Lang, 2006). When consumers choose foods, many prefer brands that have a triple message: “a good product in its own right, has extra special connotations and by consuming it you can feel good” (Gabriel & Lang, 2006, p. 166). Indeed, cultured and “clean” meat are marketed as “clean eating,” where clean refers not only to healthiness but also to moral cleanliness. Likewise, “eco-chic” refers to products that are both ecofriendly and trendy (Lundahl, 2017). Many vegan products also interest consumers in buycotting or preferring “free-from” products, such as “hormone-free,” “non-GMO,” “gluten-free,” and “antibiotics-free,” which are currently marketed as generally healthy and desirable (Sexton, 2016). Likewise, Oatly is marketing its vegan products as alternatives in numerous ways—sustainable, healthy, small-scale, Swedish—and hence “drawing on multiple points of difference vis-à-vis the conventional dairy industry” (Fuentes & Fuentes, 2017, p. 16). Consumers of Oatly products also refer to these varying alternatives (Fuentes & Fuentes, 2017). Others have noted that many consumers get pleasure from consuming differently and from committing to more socially just and environmentally benign modes of consumption (Gabriel & Lang, 2006; Soper, 2008). Consumers may be driven by altruistic and self-interested concerns at the same time (Bakker & Dagevos, 2012). Soper (2008) calls for acknowledging “alternative hedonism” as a self-interested form of altruism and as a “moral form of self-pleasuring” in which the focus is on a postconsumerist vision of the “good life,” pleasure, and self-realization (Bakker & Dagevos, 2012, p. 571). Moreover, human needs are never just nutritional needs or driven by some other rationally justified cause; they always hold an aesthetic or symbolic component (Soper, 2008). In a similar vein, Sassatelli (2015) criticises the current scholarly discussion on political consumption for forging a master narrative that one-sidedly focuses on the responsibilities of consumers as market actors and forgets that ethical consumption choices also contain aesthetic, quality, and pleasure-seeking ideas. Sassatelli stresses that “intrinsic pleasures” are fundamental in consumption but that such pleasures are not necessarily only individual or against collective virtue. Moreover, we may look at the practices of veganism and plant-based eating in terms of what Stolle & Micheletti (2013, p. 37) regard as contemporary political consumers’ opportunity “to craft their own ethical compass and choose very much their own fashion of participating in politics without following an organizational model or script.” Giddens, too, has noted that people may follow modes of actions that are at variance with each other. Giddens terms these segments “lifestyle sectors,” “time-space slices” within which the sets of practices adopted are “reasonably consistent and ordered” (Giddens, 1991, p. 83). Following Giddens, one may think about veganism and plant-based eating as variously segmental: it would seem that veganism, at least when inspired by ethical concerns, probably represents quite a consistent and pervasive lifestyle that permeates the “time-space slices” of everyday life. But in some cases lifestyles
Veganism and Plant-Based Eating 173 of plant-based eating may be quite flexible, allowing for exceptions for social reasons or because of “cravings,” for instance. It is precisely these justifications, discourses, and interpretations of veganism that have given impetus to the vegan lifestyle that until recently was marginalized with a relatively rigid boundary between plant-based foods and forbidden animal-derived foods (for the boundary, see Arppe, Mäkelä, & Väänänen, 2011). But, because of this mixture, veganism does not simply appear as political consumerism par excellence— concentrating on affecting the markets—but also as a movement of self-realization, identity building, healthism, and the aestheticized food of foodies.
Conclusions and Future Directions The contemporary focus in food discourses on the hedonistic aspects of plant-based foods has begun to transform the image of veganism and plant-based eating from dull, restrictive, and marginal into fun, flexible, and pleasurable. Analysis of veganism and plant-based eating as political consumerism has shown an assemblage of interacting actors and activities that together are forming the increased mobilization and interest in plant-based eating and changing the image of veganism. As we have shown, in this process the internet and especially social media are major platforms. Social media has enabled activists to reach groups of people who otherwise would not have been easily reached (Poell & van Dijk, 2015). However, social media and its algorithms are designed to produce “instant moments of togetherness” but not long-term efficacy; hence, the future challenge for political consumerism is how to raise political awareness and build durable networks (Poell & van Dijk, 2015). Consequently, future research in political consumerism must explore the formation of short-term and long-term vegan connectivity on social media and in real life as well as their potential for making eating more sustainable in the long run. The logic of social media itself and the way it changes political consumerism need to be closely analysed, such as with longitudinal data following the evolution of social media debates and conventional media. As regards survey methods, there is a need for more fine-tuned survey questions to identify the many forms and levels of engagement of veganism and plant- based eating, the length of time people have followed these diets, and their reasons for abandoning them. Furthermore, theoretically oriented analyses should explore the ways in which new discursive strategies build lifestyle and taste-based communities in late modern societies. Studies should analyse the interplay of rational justifications of, and affective responses to, an awareness of factory farming and the prospects of climate change (see Goodman et al., 2016). Moreover, how does the therapeutic turn in identity politics and “it’s all about me” politics (Furedi, 2017) conflict with the other-oriented goals of political consumerism and veganism in particular? These analyses might provide a more in-depth understanding of the development of veganism as a form of consumption that is often both political and
174 Piia Jallinoja, Markus Vinnari, and Mari Niva nonpolitical, a tool for neoliberal self-realization and community building, and an altruistic other-regarding activity (see Soper, 2008). Moreover, research inspired by practice theory (Shove, Pantzar, & Watson, 2012) is needed on the multiple ways that consumers and various groups of gatekeepers and stakeholders maintain and transform images and practices of meat and vegan consumption as either normal or deviant. Finally, future studies of the kind suggested above must analyse this area in the coming years, as the contemporary fad-like characteristic of vegan eating will probably fade. Even now, veganism and plant-based eating are criticized by various stakeholders, such as the meat, poultry, and milk industries, celebrity chefs, and other actors with power in media. Will the assemblage and communities that are now supporting the rise of veganism dissolve, making it harder for political consumers to promote their cause, or will the current high tide manage to make permanent changes in the overall food scene?
Note 1. The study has been funded by the Academy of Finland, grant no. 296883.
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Chapter 9
St udy ing Media w i t h i n P olitical C on sume ri sm Past and Present Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst
The phenomenon of political consumerism is usually conceptualised as individualized collective action that pursues political goals by means of purchase decisions or discursive action related to purchase decisions (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 750). This conceptualisation is further differentiated through the action forms of boycotting, buycotting, lifestyle, and discursive practices (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 750). In contrast to highly institutionalised forms of political participation such as voting, political consumers are theorised as loosely interconnected individuals. This empirical tendency of political consumerism to be a scattered rather than a tightly organised phenomenon stresses the necessity for all its forms to overcome problems of disconnection. Take, for example, the problematic interrelations among working conditions in sweatshops located in distant countries; the conduct of transnational corporations involved in the production, retailing, and marketing of goods (e.g., Nike); and consumers at a local clothes shop who buy the products emerging from this commodity chain (see Chapter 12). A critical consumer activist will point to the material and social interrelations among workers, producers, retailers, and consumers, which in Young’s view (2006) comes with a huge burden of responsibility for wealthier shoppers. However, although all these actors are factually connected through market forces, the main problem the activist will face is disconnection. Actors who are connected through the market aren’t similarly connected through political communication. Correspondingly, Micheletti and Stolle point out the main task of “expanding the arenas and spheres where global political responsibility is practiced to include the market” (2008, p. 158). Consumers who want to solve the problem of poor working conditions will try to overcome this challenge of political disconnection by establishing a network of political meanings. Empirically, this requires the usage of media, since consumers cannot bridge all existing distances in time and space by means of face-to-face interaction. Consumer
182 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst activists might publish consumer guides and press releases, set up blogs, or upload critical video clips on YouTube. Here it should be emphasized that media are important ingredients of political consumerism. All those material entities that connect and mobilise different actors in order to enable and support political consumerism are discussed as media of political consumerism in the following analysis. These media should be further differentiated with respect to their basic formats, such as text, image, sound, and numbers. Also, political consumerism can be related to old media institutions, such as the press, television, or radio stations, as well as to online media like social networking sites, websites, blogs, or email. This chapter discusses the state of the art regarding the use of such media within political consumerism in order to overcome the disconnection problem. Besides discussing existing research, the chapter will point to existing research gaps and provide suggestions for further research. Given the state of the art, two challenges will be stressed. The first is that most existing research does not systematically apply existing methodologies to study. The discussion will therefore place great emphasis on the methodological distinction between the media studies approach and the communication studies approach in order to stress that a more systematic application of research designs originating from both approaches could enrich future political consumer scholarship. The second challenge concerns the current fundamental change in the existing media landscape today. The rise of diverse internet applications has a fundamental effect on the realm of political consumerism (Baringhorst, Kneip, & Niesyto, 2009). This change still awaits in- depth consideration in political consumer studies. The discussion in the next section highlights the most important differences between communication studies and media studies approaches. The chapter then reconstructs examples for both approaches within political consumerism research in the age of mass media, such as in newspapers. The following sections argue that the transition from the age of mass media to the internet era poses various challenges to students of political consumerism. In response, newer works on political consumerism and the internet have discovered online media such as Google search results as units of analysis. Eventually, scholars now investigate the rising role of political consumers as actively content-providing and -distributing agents.
Basic Concepts for Studying Media Within Political Consumerism From a communication studies perspective, the main challenge is to study how political consumer activists make use of media, understood as channels of communication. According to a standard definition of communication (Lasswell, 1948, p. 117), the main research question is, “Who says what in which channel with what effect?” From this
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 183 perspective, media serve as channels through which a communicator transmits her/his message to an audience in order to yield some effect. In the example of sweatshops, the question is whether access to existing channels of communication can be established, for instance, through coverage in a newspaper article. This communication of political consumerism’s message is conceptualised as symbolic interaction: the interaction between at least two actors, which is enabled by meaning that is attached in a stable and generally accepted way to the transmitted signs. A newspaper article can, for example, transmit activists’ positions on sweatshops so that a broad audience learns about the problem. Here, the newspaper is the channel and the article is a message that includes the activists’ claim. Focusing on communication tends to result in a certain media blindness, since the channel itself is not theorised as influencing the content of the message. Media studies, on the other hand, emphasize the decisive role that different media have for what the message means. McLuhan’s (1964) well-known phrase “the medium is the message” signifies a change of perspective. Now the channel seems to dictate the content behind the backs of the actors. This latter approach has also been criticised for being media- deterministic (e.g., Shaw & Benkler, 2012, p. 460). Within communication studies, the question of what a medium is frequently boils down to media institutions. At the same time, the media studies perspective broadens the perspective to potentially all material entities. Belliger and Krieger (2017, p. 22) define a medium as “an artefact or a product of technical construction that comes between sender and receiver and ‘mediates’ communication,” whereby artefacts should be understood as material entities resulting from the repeatedly reproduced practices of a culture (Reckwitz, 2002). Practices are based on skills and know-how rather than “know that,” which has led Couldry to suggest that media are what is being used in media practices (2012, p. 33). Figure 9.1 illustrates why the media studies perspective is important for political consumer study. It depicts the picture that won a 2010 Greenpeace UK competition aiming
Figure 9.1 Winning campaign icon by Laurent Concours. Source: Greenpeace UK, used with permission.
184 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst at stirring up critical consumer awareness about British Petroleum’s (BP) responsibility for the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Competitors were to critically connect two given facts: British Petroleum’s ownership of the Deep Water Horizon platform; and its logo change to a multifaceted green-and-yellow sunflower that comes with the caption “Beyond Petroleum,” stressing the company’s dedication to environmental-friendly business. Within a media studies approach, the BP logo itself is a medium since it is produced by a technically skilled person who manufactured it digitally at a computer with the help of graphic design software and thus through a specific media practice or cultural technique. What scholars need to study is not only the symbolic content but also the used signs, together with the material on which the signs are inscribed. It is not only the symbolic level but also the level of signs with their various connotations and their various relations to denoted materials that eventually result in the socially realised meaning of the logo. Thus, the media studies perspective enlarges and differentiates the commonsense understanding of a symbolic message by focusing on the analysis of signs and their varying meanings (see e.g., Barthes, 1977; Eco, 1967/1997). With the help of semiotics, we can ideographically reconstruct how and why this logo functions so well and why it won the competition. The picture is a “bricolage” (Levi-Strauss, 1966), a remix of signs that lets their meanings change through their new constellation. Both the sunflower and the cormorant in the figure are part of this bricolage expressing a critique of BP and reconnecting the oil spill to BP’s new green image. These icons, although being abstract, act nonetheless like units that have agency in a theatre play (e.g., on “actants,” see Latour, 1994, p. 33). It should be noted that the communication studies and media studies approaches do not contradict each other. Rather they shed analytical light on two different sides of the same coin. Why these two approaches are relevant for political consumer study is the topic of the next sections.
Studying Mass-Mediated Communication in the Old Media Situation Publishing on problematic political aspects of consumption and production traditionally relied on mass media understood as media institutions able to reach out to mass audiences on a regular basis and guided by relatively few editors and journalists. They performed as “gatekeepers” (White, 1964), deciding which incidents and opinions should be transmitted as news to mass audiences. Mass media, thus, can be studied with the help of communication studies’ methodologies as channels through which political consumerism’s problems of disconnection can be overcome. Holzer (2007) conducted, for example, a media content analysis in order to reconstruct how newspapers in Great Britain and Germany covered a regional conflict in Nigeria between the oil company
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 185 Shell and the Ogoni people in the mid-1990s. For both countries, he selected a full sampling of articles within leading newspapers from across the political spectrum. An important result of his analysis was the identification of a “boomerang effect” (Holzer, 2007, p. 297; Keck and Sikkink, 1998). The original intrastate conflict between Shell and the Ogoni people was about the consequences of the company’s oil drilling activities, and the conflict then appeared on the international agenda. Negative coverage in countries such as Britain and Germany put Shell under pressure from its outraged consumers; the Ogoni could thus strengthen their position through international solidarity. According to Holzer, the original strong position of Shell within Nigeria turned into a boomerang once the message of the conflict was channelled by newspapers to audiences in the North. Holzer conducted a content analysis following the Grounded Theory approach (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, i.e., developing categories of analysis inductively throughout the research process). Holzer identified three major issues resulting in overall negative media coverage for Shell: environmental effects and living conditions related to oil drilling, unfair distribution of oil revenues, and Shell’s influence in Nigerian politics. This methodology is one of several possible ways to study political consumer messages transmitted through mass media channels. Holzer’s study demonstrates the importance of two methodological decisions: (1) the choice of an inductive procedure to identify the main pattern of critique in media coverage rather than a preformulated deductive model for the range of semantic content to be found; and (2) focusing rather on the precise meaning of critique than its quantitative distribution across time and varying actors. Typically, the strength of inductive and qualitative methodologies lies in their discursive accuracy, while direct application of existing theories (theoretical connections) and quantitative inferences are less possible (Mayring, 2000). Inductive and qualitative content analysis is recommended if the case under study appears to be novel and difficult to model in advance. Another example for such explorative inductive research is Jensen’s study (2008) on the “Mohammed cartoons controversy.” The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s publication of them caused a storm of indignation in the Muslim world, which even led to a series of boycott campaigns against Danish firms (see Chapter 26). Jensen elaborates inductively two main discursive positions within the controversy by applying Fairclough’s (1992) methodology of discourse analysis: those who defended the cartoons invoked the basic right of free speech, and those who criticised the cartoons argued that they offended religious feelings. Political consumerism has also been studied through quantitative and more deductive content analysis. One study (Rucht, Yang, & Zimmermann, 2008), involving media coverage in six German newspapers on the topic of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), relied on various prior methodologies of media content analysis (Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002; Koopmans & Statham, 1999). It modelled communication within articles as consisting of mentioned actors taking certain actions (protests, press statements) on different topics and, thereby, expressed divergent evaluations and descriptions of GMOs. The German media coverage was identified as rather
186 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst against than in favour of GMOs: 42 percent of the articles were against, 28 percent for, and 34 percent of the articles were ambivalent or neutral (Rucht et al., 2008, p. 133). The findings show that critical anti-GMO activism by political consumers gained ground in public opinion although political, economic, and scientific experts were rather in favour of it. Frame analysis, also part of this study, helps in understanding how this occurred. The frame analysis methodology was originally developed within social movement studies (Gamson, 1988; Snow & Benford, 1988) for analysing positions of activists that often cannot be categorized as outright political demands but rather as general expressions of grievances and critical discourses. It has also been applied to political consumer activists’ discursive positions before they entered larger media coverage (Laamanen, Wahlen, & Campana, 2015). Frame analysis assumes that human interaction relies on communicated messages consisting not only of words said but also of a wide range of contextual and situational meanings preceding and framing an encounter (see also Goffman, 1974). In this sense, the study of Rucht et al. (2008) inductively gathered positive as well as negative frames—independent from the negative or positive evaluation of a statement otherwise given—and then deductively coded the identified frame categories in the sampled newspaper articles. The resulting picture provides a possible explanation for the German public’s scepticism of GMOs. A little less than one half of the frames (48 percent) were positive, referring to abstract ideas of technological progress, economic growth, and fighting poverty (mostly in the south) whereas a slight majority of frames (53 percent; Rucht et al., 2008, , p. 131) draw a negative picture and provide images of direct risks to humans and the environment, exploitation, and, to a lesser degree, acts against nature. In sum, the GMO discourse in German newspapers spoke of direct personal harms with regards to negative frames, while the positive frames were rather distant and abstract so that consumers did not feel any pressing need to support a technology promising little direct positive benefit in the short run. In contrast, more deductive approaches allow for cross-case comparisons. In this regard, Motta (2015) has studied media coverage on GMOs in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico between 2009 and 2010. Her coding of the framings of GMOs in 230 articles from eight newspapers across these countries also identified similar categories. The main positive frames were related to economic growth, while critique referred mostly to consequences for health and the environment and, to a lesser degree, ethical issues. To answer what explains the rather more critical coverage in Argentina and Mexico as opposed to that in Brazil, she applied a complex model of “discursive opportunity structures,” consisting of political agendas, cultural factors and the structure of media institutions. Discursive opportunity structures describe the structural possibilities for discursive political consumerism to flourish along these factors. She concluded that the variance of media coverage mainly had to do with defensive discursive battles in newspapers against the further introduction of GMOs in Argentina and Mexico, while the rather positive coverage in Brazil had to do with the fact that no major political decision was on the agenda. Motta concluded that on the cultural level the discourses in these three countries were shaped by the same transnational political discourse.
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 187 These examples show that deductive quantitative analysis is recommendable if the issue under study can be modelled in advance, or after a short inductive precoding phase for identifying categories of frames, and if a large-scale analysis such as a cross- country comparison is one of the research goals. However, existing studies run the risk of focusing on salient examples of negative discursive political consumerism that successfully access mass media. This methodological bias reveals the research gap on the positive propagation of political consumerism, for example, in the sense of green lifestyles through mass media channels (see Freund, 2015, as an exception) as well as on undemocratic forms of political consumerism. This approach also risks underestimating the difficulties for political consumerism when it enters the media agenda in general. A neglected major factor is the role of news values (Galtung & Ruge, 1965) or characteristics that represent direct selling points of a news story. In the empirical examples mentioned in the preceding discussion, there are three news values of importance for political consumerism (Galtung & Ruge, 1965, pp. 68–69). First, “negative news” attracts attention since it urges media recipients to take sides on a disputed issue, such as through boycotting genetically modified food. Second, “personification” can frequently be found, such as reports on the murder of Ogoni leader Ken Saro-Wiwa. Third, unexpectedness “within the meaningful and the consonant” is what political consumer activists communicate if they argue that genetically modified food is a risk technology put on consumers’ plates directly. However, an in-depth elaboration of news values, media, and political consumerism is missing in the literature so far.
Semiotic Activism Challenging Mass Media Channels The news value approach stresses that mass media institutions perform as gatekeepers and have great influence regarding the question of whose message is heard in public. In the age of mass media, a strong critique of the power asymmetries shaping news agendas has inspired several scholars (Herman & Chomsky, 1988) and practitioners to formulate alternative pathways for a more democratic form of communication that emphasises everyday life and consumption. Umberto Eco (1964/1997, p. 135), for example, called for “Semiological Guerrilla Warfare” that emphasised the remaining spaces of freedom for media recipients who have the power to resist dominant meanings of the mass media, and he pointed at the tactical opportunities emerging from the interplay between alternative self-organised media and mass media. Drawing on one of our examples for overcoming disconnection, the point of Eco’s idea is not so much to contradict BP’s claim of being environmentally friendly through symbolically structured communication (e.g., by drafting a critical press release for newspaper publication) but to redefine the existing logic of its iconic brand on the semiotic level and, thus, to publish it on an alternative media channel. Semiological Guerrilla
188 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst Warfare means changing violently (in a semiotic sense) the connection between meanings and their signs. Criticism of the power asymmetries within mass media furthermore was amended and connected to system-critical accounts of mass consumer society. Particularly in the 1960s, strong connections were drawn among capitalist production, mass consumption, marketing, and mass media. The French Situationist International named this complex of media and markets the “Society of the Spectacle” (Debord, 1994), criticising the rising marketing culture, its effects of alienation, and commodity fetishism. Similar to Eco, their key proponent, Guy Debord, proposed semiotic media practices, particularly détournement (inverting symbolic meanings of signs). In contrast to framing approaches studying the appeal to generally accepted schemas of interpretation, détournement subverts taken-for-granted constellations of meanings and signs. The confrontation of BP’s environmental image with an oil-spilled cormorant is, for instance, détournement. However, a main obstacle for semiotic research on political consumerism has always been the stark emphasis on political activism rather than scholarship within the tradition of the French Situationists. Against this backdrop, it comes as no surprise that forms of semiotic activism later in the twentieth century showed a strong focus on activism against marketing, advertisement, and multinational corporations (Jordan, 2002; Klein, 1999; Soar, 2002). Adbusters magazine organised, collected, and published radical artwork and performances and made semiotic activism world- famous as culture jamming—the recoding of sign structures of a society dominated by corporations—as well as adbusting—the détournement of commercials in the sense of “uncommercials” (Lasn, 2006, p. 29). The group’s cofounderKalle Lasn reports that culture jamming is about the production of a “media virus” (Lasn, 2006, pp. 29–36). In the 1980s Lasn produced sarcastic advertising spots against the environmental damage of the logging industry in British Columbia and tried to buy timeslots for his “uncommercials” to be broadcast on television (Lasn, 2006, p. 29). Since most TV stations declined to sell him advertisement timeslots, the performance consisted instead of instigating a controversy between culture jammers and TV stations. Lasn mainly used the resulting exchange of postal statements between him and the TV stations for the purpose of negative campaigning via alternative media. The spot as a “media virus” (Lasn, 2006, p. 29) functioned as an actant, an actor-like media object that few if any TV stations wanted to incorporate. The meaning of the term “media virus” can be categorised with the functionality of media as having influence on social relations beyond their symbolic message. In sum, works on culture jamming revealed various alternative pathways to overcome problems of disconnection on the semiotic level, but these works also tend to focus exclusively on successful negative campaigning. Maier (2006) in contrast also traced back how signs of social movements had been appropriated and reverted in meaning for the purpose of commercial advertisement. Furthermore, semiotic actions need not always rely on symbolic violence but can also positively demonstrate the feasibility of alternative consumption and lifestyles (e.g., Barendregt & Jaffe, 2014). In this regard, future
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 189 research might also employ the theoretical traditions of cultural studies (Fiske, Hodge, & Turner, 1987; Hall & Jefferson, 2006), which analyse the semiotic web of material entities, media, and everyday practices that lead to the dominance of undemocratic patters of consumption and lifestyles. Additionally, analytical methods for studying semiotic actions within political consumerism are needed. A notable exception is Lekakis’s visual analysis on critical artwork (2017) scandalising the corporate sponsoring of the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) meeting in Paris. Under study were the double standards maintained by corporate sponsors of the conference, namely, presenting themselves as being committed to fighting climate change while not changing their business practices according to activists’ views. The studied artefacts were mostly semiotically changed brand logos and advertisements. Lekakis applied the inductive method of “Textual Analysis” by McKee (2003), which draws on semiotics and understands texts not as definite verbal messages consisting of words but as a network of materials, words, and pictures whose meaning has to be worked out through interpretation. The result of Lekakis’s interpretation of several artworks is thus the identification of “five rhetorical devices.” Modified brand images criticise “corporate greed,” “inadequate politicians,” “consumer saturation,” “earth in mourning” (i.e., harm done to the environment), and “commitment to the environment” (Lekakis, 2017, pp. 320–324). Furthermore, deductively guided analysis of semiotic activism within political consumerism is hardly existent, but the “handbook of communication guerilla” (Aag, Blissett, & Brünzels, 2012, p. 75) published by an activist collective in Germany, provides at least a systematic list of the principles that have led to countless creative artworks in the past. First, the principle of “alienation” means the disruptive recombination of hegemonic and critical elements, such as the BP brand logo and the oil-coated cormorant. Second, “overidentification” or “overaffirmation” has the effect of unmasking the allegedly absurd character of consumer society. (A good example is the 2004 documentary film Super Size Me, in which Morgan Spurlock ate solely at McDonald’s for one month. This exaggerated fast food consumption allowed him to boldly scandalise the detrimental health effects through his own bodily performance.) Third, the practice of “camouflage” hides the crucial point of a consumption-critical performance more subtly. It takes place when, for example, one of the artworks studied by Lekakis initially appears as a normal advertisement and does not reveal its critical message until the viewer becomes aware of the slight changes made to the original. Fourth, “inventions” and “fakes” dissolve the tension between the real and the imagined through fictional stories that are nonetheless staged in the real world. One example is the declaration of the end of the Vietnam War through a street party in New York in 1967. This categorisation of the principles behind the various media practices applied by activists point out the potential in more systematic research on semiotics and political consumerism. Further research is also necessary because digital media applications have enabled various new forms of semiological guerrilla tactics, and it is generally assumed that the idea of a society dominated by the mass media is vanishing (Chaffee & Metzger, 2001).
190 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst
The Challenge of the Internet for Studying Media and Political Consumerism It is now widely acknowledged that some sort of media revolution is occurring since the internet is rewriting the rules of how people connect through media. The precise meaning of this change is widely contested. However, many authors (Belliger & Krieger, 2017; Couldry, 2012; Chaffee & Metzger, 2001) agree that the era of mass-mediated communication is coming to an end. This form of communication stood for mass communication channels steered by a few media producers (the press, television, radio, and film), which usually focused on a single basic media format (e.g., words within newspapers). None of these media disappeared, but the stability of their inner structure and the clear- cut separation between different sorts of mass media such as press, radio, and television, on the one hand, and essentially small, peripheral, and participatory alternative media, on the other hand, seem to be dissolving. First, today’s development that most mass media and also most alternative media are going online has led to a rising variety of media that combine basic formats such as text, audio, numbers, and (moving) pictures on the internet. Examples include online television news with articles or newspaper sites that host political documentaries. This development has led to the idea that different media tend to converge (Jenkins, 2006) or at least hybridise (Chadwick, 2013). The once-stable bundles of a media institution (TV station) and its basic media format (television) are now replaced by a growing variety of media with mixed formats (online articles of a TV station). Within the phenomenon of political consumerism, this development has resulted in a rising role of pictures and videos in addition to the traditional range of media such as leaflets and brochures. Micheletti and Stolle (2007, p. 168), for example, stress the mobilising role of “workers’ testimonials and video clips on key movement actors’ Web pages” for the antisweatshop movement. Visual online media also represent new targets for political consumer campaigns. Corporations also discovered social media sites like Facebook as an additional channel to communicate with their customers, and activists started to spread their critical messages and self-produced pictures on these corporate sites in order to attack online brand communities (e.g., Yang, 2018). Second, several authors argue that sinking costs in media production have led to several more qualitative shifts (Bimber, Stohl, & Flanagin, 2005), such as the new ease with which smaller media content producers can reach out to wider audiences. Couldry describes this development as resulting in a state of “supersaturation” (2012, pp. 5–6f). Content is now everywhere, and a “decentralization of [media] production” (Gillespie, Boczkowski, & Foot, 2014, p. 5) has taken place so that, today, a wider circle of media producers can address larger publics on the internet. Papacharissi (2010, pp. 71, 73) has characterised the resulting structure of multiple and overlapping media channels as
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 191 looking like “supersurfaces” that are both “fragmented” and “reconnected” and are to be imagined as leaves on a tree where each leaf is unique among many equally important channels. For the study of political consumerism, this development in particular illustrates the challenge of what media to focus on within research when it can no longer be taken for granted that articles in quality newspapers represent a nation’s public sphere. Third, these changes are accompanied by the rising importance of the individual media consumer as producer or multiplier of media content. Bruns’s (2008) concept of “produsage” (a portmanteau of producing and usage) suggests that individual media consumers also generate content, even if this content merely consists of acts of sharing or leaving traces of their media usages (Jenkins, Ford, & Green, 2013). The figure of the “produser” hereby is derived from the sociology of consumption, which identifies “prosumers” as people who develop product innovations while being producers and consumers (Toffler, 1971). Produsers coproduce media as communication channels. What was once simply identified as newspaper circulation evolves through forwarding emails and links; connecting to others via social media; or by liking, sharing, and retweeting content through a mouse click. These three aspects were selected here from the many developments related to the question of how the internet will change the role of media in society because they all might affect political consumerism. If internet use is more visual, decentralised, and relying on the participation of citizens, it can be concluded that it should particularly encourage political consumerism because it can easily be used to visualise value chains and consumption habits and to mobilise through activists at the grassroots level. Survey-based research has found slight positive effects of internet use on political consumerism (de Zúñiga, Copeland, & Bimber, 2014; Kelm & Dohle, 2017). The argument is that this result has to do with citizens’ active involvement as content providers or produsers (Gotlieb & Cheema, 2017). They teach and learn intensively about the possibilities to act as political consumers online. Furthermore, Ward and Vreese (2011) suggest that especially younger citizens get into contact more directly with sites of corporations and their critics on the internet. The extent to which internet use today is dedicated to issues of political consumerism was investigated in an online survey that we conducted among the online population in Germany in 2012. Table 9.1 shows that half of the respondents had read about social-ecological consequences of certain products online. More than one-third had seen documentaries and videos and roughly a quarter had informed other persons about issues of social-ecological consumerism via the internet. These findings tentatively show that internet use is widespread for the purpose of political consumerism, at least among the 79 percent of inhabitants in Germany who have access to it (van Eimeren & Frees, 2014). In relation to the three mentioned changes the internet stands for, these figures also indicate methodological challenges for newer research on media and political consumerism. With regard to the rising role of media formats beyond written text
363 26.9
Row%
37.6
Row% N
507
50.1
Row% N
677
N
71.6
967
60.3
814
48.0
648
No
1.5
20
2.1
29
1.9
25
N.A.
100.0
1,350
100.0
1,350
100.0
1,350
Total
The survey was conducted in cooperation with Carolin Zorell (University of Mannheim) within the online panel respondi. A random sample was provided by respondi and we drew a quota-sample according to German census data on gender, age, and education. The quota sampling procedure and the questionnaire provision were provided and controlled by the researchers exclusively.
a
Have you informed another person over the internet about the topic of social or ecological consumption yet?
Have you watched a video, documentary, or movie about the social or ecological consequences of certain products yet?
Have you read an article, report, or comment on the internet about the social or ecological consequences of certain products yet?a
Yes
Table 9.1 Online Practices for Political Consumerism Among People in Germany With Internet Access
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 193 and the rising variety of digital publics, there is a growing uncertainty about which media to focus on. Today, around 37.6 percent of Germans with internet access receive their information about political consumerism from online videos, but textual sources remain important. While Holzer (2007) could legitimately claim for the year 1995 that only the written part of articles in newspapers represented communication to national audiences, such sampling in the age of online media is problematic. Furthermore, the fact that more than a quarter of respondents stated that they had informed others about political consumerism via the internet underscores the importance of recognizing the growing role of citizens as active multipliers of online information related to political consumerism. How research on online-mediated political consumerism deals with these three developments is addressed in the following section.
Studying Mixes of Basic Media Online Regarding the question of how to deal with the increasing role of mixed basic formats (particularly text and [moving] pictures), the challenge is to develop methodologies that recombine media studies and communication studies approaches in correspondence to the fast emergence and change of media channels and semiotic practices on the internet. Yang (2014) studied two campaign videos from 2005 that were the central mobilising media for a Greenpeace campaign against palm oil in general and Nestlé in particular. The aim of the political consumer campaign was to raise awareness of Nestlé’s alleged high reliance on palm oil from plantations where rainforests had been cleared. Greenpeace thus accused Nestlé of being responsible for rainforest degradation and wanted to let a wide range of consumers know about the problem. It consciously chose to start the campaign with two video clips published on YouTube that can be described as “uncommercials,” media viruses, or actants. During the course of the campaign, it used other online media, including social media such as Facebook and Twitter. In later stages, traditional mass media were addressed. Finally, a street protest took place in front of Nestlé’s German headquarters where activists positioned a Twitter Wall in front of the building to allow online activists to present their critique offline. The campaign put Nestlé under so much pressure that it agreed to enter into a dialogue with Greenpeace about changing the ingredients in their products. Combining a communication studies and media studies perspective, Yang (2014) conducted a detailed analysis of the two video clips to identify the activists’ messages.1 To reconstruct the messages of the two clips, Yang differentiated elements of framing that could be read from the accompanying text displayed at the end of each clip and reconstructed the acts of culture jamming used throughout the audiovisual course of action within the clips. The first clip received over 214,000 views and focused on adbusting in the form of “overaffirmation” (Aag et al., 2012, p. 75).2 Resembling Nestlé’s original commercial with the slogan “take a break,” it aims to revert its meaning by detouring the
194 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst famous slogan known to consumer audiences from decades of advertisements for Kit Kat. It depicts a hungry office worker biting into a Kit Kat chocolate bar and ignorant of the fact that the bar is actually an orangutan finger and that blood from the bitten-off finger pours down the office worker’s shirt. Reversing the wording of the original commercial slogan, the clip ends with the message, “Give them [the orangutans] a break” and informs its viewers that the palm oil used for these chocolate bars stems from plantations located in areas where the orangutans’ habitats had allegedly been cleared. Thus, it operates with a shock effect (bleeding finger), and a textual explanation is given about why the office worker is eating an orangutan finger. The plight of the orangutan serves as a pars pro toto for the many detrimental consequences of palm oil production. The decision to depict an orangutan, one of nature’s creatures resembling humans, frames a rather complex critique (rainforest degradation, climate change, biodiversity, palm oil) in terms of the human touch. Thus, Greenpeace visually formatted its initially complex critique to meet the news value conditions of negativity, personification, and unexpectedness. The second video clip attracted 290,000 views.3 The actants in this stop-motion video clip were chocolate bars that clear rainforest and kill orangutans, with a special emphasis on the killing of orangutan babies, which again frames the situation as marked by brutality against innocent actors. Like in the first clip, culture jamming was included. Semiotic acts of fakery and alienation borrowed from the toolbox of semiotic activism facilitated the depiction of trademarked chocolate bars acting out their lust for destruction to the music of Wagner’s “Walküre.” An important result of this analysis is that the harsh distinction semiotic activists make between a mass media–supporting, mass consumer society, on the one hand, and a few brave art activists declaring semiotic war on capitalism, on the other hand, does not necessarily apply to all newer forms of digital discursive political consumerism, at least not for a commercial media platform (YouTube) that serves as a channel for the combination of environmentalism with corporate-critical adbusting. Greenpeace’s campaign should be understood as an attempt to keep in touch with younger generations of citizens accustomed to watching commercials on the internet and only to a lesser degree as a general critique of commodity fetishism. Thus the use of video clips includes both continuity and change. While framing injustices (Gamson, 1992) remains important, the videos differ from written messages regarding their employment of media effects such as suspense, shock, and appeal to emotions of solidarity. Yang’s analysis serves as an example of how research can address the challenge of internet media used by political consumers who communicate their message not only on the textual but also on the visual level. It also points at further challenges, such as the inclusion of pictures’ motion and accompanying sound and the application of current advances in news value analysis of online content (see Harcup & O’Neill, 2017). Additionally, the fact that Greenpeace puts both clips at the heart of its campaigns meant that the video clips are representative for the campaign. In other cases, sampling in the age of a growing number of media channels is more problematic, as discussed in the next section.
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 195
Studying Political Consumerism in Times of Decentralized Media Production Holt’s analysis (2012, p. 246ff) of the U.S. controversy about tap water versus bottled water use is a good example of how researchers in the age of “supersaturation” might deal with the growing variety of both offline and online media. He reconstructs the historical process leading U.S. consumers to believe that they need to drink bottled water. Coverage in the press dominates his reconstruction of the 1980s and 1990s, and he concludes that extensive coverage about the dangers of tap water inscribed a deep cultural angst into the collective memory triggered by the publishing activities of relatively few lobbyists and experts. On the contrary, in 2010 the YouTube video “The Story of Bottled Water” by Annie Leonard accused the bottled water industry of promoting the scare of tap water consumption. This video, which received over two million views, thus is an example of the growing availability of critical viewpoints through additional media channels on the internet. Sampling relevant media sources thus should nowadays include online media, which frequently provide for discursive political consumerism. Another method of case selection is to focus on the key communication channel that regulates which content media consumers access on the internet, namely Google, the single most frequently used search engine globally. Studying only the results of issue-specific Google searches is a methodology now widely applied to textual sources (Rogers, Sánchez-Querubín, & Kil, 2015; Rucht et al., 2008 ). Clancy and Clancy (2016) extended this methodology to the Google Images search engine. In their study on GMO depictions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Poland, and Spain, they focused on the first ten search results derived over Google within these countries. These first search results are important because they are the only ones seen by larger audiences and identified by Google as relatively densely networked across the internet. The resulting sample of more than 1,000 pictures derived for the five countries includes images not only from pure online media and social media, such as civil society websites, but also from various mass media present on the internet. With the help of this sample, Clancy and Clancy coded a reduced sample of those images as a GMO-critical drawing, following Barthes’s methodology of visual semiotics (1977), and emphasising that images consist of “multiple layers of meaning that must be unpacked” (Clancy & Clancy, 2016, p. 282). This coding procedure, which was similar to Lekakis’s study (2017), resulted in a set of visual messages inductively compiled. Like Motta’s content analysis (2015), Clancy and Clancy found a strong persistence of patterns of critique across nations, but in contrast to the textual analyses on GMO discourses presented so far, they stressed the independence of the resulting “visual discourses” (Clancy & Clancy, 2016, p. 280) from the world of language. All images were sorted into three categories: visualised critiques of the process, the product, and the implication of the technology. While language
196 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst
Figure 9.2 The biohazard icon as part of GMO-critical memes. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Biohazard_symbol_(black_and_yellow).png.
frames identified by Motta as well as Rucht et al. (2008) pointed more at possible social- ecological risks and their implications, Clancy and Clancy additionally found much more explicit criticism of GMOs unnaturalness and disgusting appearance, for example in depictions of “Frankenfoods” and use of the horror motif. The study revealed that, beyond the linguistic discourse within newspaper articles more oriented towards balanced arguments and scientific facts, the elements of visual discourse collected via Google Images were more extreme, explicit, and emotional. The authors conclude that the persistent presence of GMO-critical emblems on the internet serves a unifying purpose, with some providing at least a common denominator uniting social movements across linguistic or cultural barriers since they tend to reappear across countries’ borders independent of national political agendas. Thus, the study reconstructed images as actants in the service of transnational activists’ networks. They contain action programmes and have a “memetic nature” (Clancy & Clancy, 2016, p.281). Figure 9.2 shows the biohazard icon that officially cautions people against toxins or infectious materials. According to Clancy and Clancy (2016, p. 286), activists attach this icon to GMO depictions creatively and thus produce memes that urge people to fear GMOs. The concept of memes grasps the agency of semiotic entities that are able to spread and reproduce in the social world. Obviously, some of these images go “viral” because they travel across cultural and national barriers in order to spread their message to political consumers who will never meet in person.
Produsage and Political Consumerism While the era of mass media provided a sort of ontological certainty due to how messages flowed through their established channels, the internet allows its users to coproduce (or produse) communication channels instantly. Castells (2007, p. 248) has
Studying Media Within Political Consumerism 197 characterised the accompanying communication style as “mass self-communication”, since it relies on self-generated content, self-directed distribution, and reception of information. Notably, it is often forgotten that one of the earliest examples of the effective establishment of a communication channel through mass self-communication and produsage stems from the realm of political consumerism, namely the Nike email exchange. In early 2001, Jonah Peretti noticed Nike’s offer to provide their customers with a personalised pair of shoes from their online shop; customers could request a personal inscription on the shoes. Being critical of the company for the alleged poor working conditions in Nike’s chain of production, Peretti decided to order a pair of shoes with the inscription “sweatshop.” Nike responded via email that they would not fulfil the order, which motivated Peretti to insist on his wish in response. Finally, as Nike continued to not comply with his wish, Peretti forwarded the evolving mail communication to all his friends and acquaintances. The case spread and reached an estimated number of eleven to twelve million people within a few months (Peretti & Micheletti, 2004, p. 132).4 Peretti later declared to have been inspired by culture jamming practices. Seen from a semiotic perspective, what Peretti did was to manipulate the relationship between signs and meanings and the resulting story spread like a “virus” (Peretti & Micheletti, 2004, p. 129) or a “meme.”5 However, the story of the idea of Peretti’s sweatshop-branded shoes did not spread automatically across the globe but was forwarded via email from “Inbox to Inbox” (Peretti & Micheletti, 2004, p. 132). Many recipients acted as produsers; they not only consumed the message but also forwarded it. Since email communication is private, gathering this data is impossible, but Stolle and Micheletti (2013, p. 170) later applied a quantitative content analysis to the 3,655 mails from persons who gave Peretti feedback via email. From this quantitative content analysis, we know that many of those who gave Peretti feedback stated that they had actively forwarded the conversation. These acts of produsage occurred in various media formats such as email, posts on websites, and printouts, but word was also spread through face-to-face conversations. Incidents such as the Nike email exchange are now well known from the larger literature on the internet and collective action. They have been identified as cyber cascades (Sunstein, 2001) and smart mobs (Rheingold, 2002). With the emergence of large, centrally steered social media platforms, critical voices are increasingly successful in questioning the theory of mass self-communication (Dolata & Schrape, 2016; Lewis, Gray, & Meierhenrich, 2014). They argue that in many cases, such as the Save Darfur campaign, patterns of communication indeed rather point to the important role of campaign organisations or commercial media platforms. Copeland, Hasell, and Bimber (2016) is a newer study on produsage. It concerns the 2012 public outcry in social media surrounding statements by the Chick-fil-A CEO who denounced same-sex marriage. A boycott campaign against as well as a buycott campaign in favour of the fast food cahin emerged. This study investigated whether both campaigns should be seen as forms of collective action mobilised by political organisations or by networks of individuals. A sample of 800,000 tweets on Twitter was gathered and analysed with the Crimson Hexagon ForSight Tool,
198 Mundo Yang and Sigrid Baringhorst which as commercial software is part of the evolving field of big data analysis (see also Ampofo, Collister, O’Loughlin, & Chadwick, 2015). First, the scholars inductively identified frames of boycotting and buycotting as well as organisational and personal frames within the tweets. Second, they fed this initial coding scheme into the ForSight Tool, which automatically coded all sampled tweets. Third, with the help of this tool, Granger causality modelling was applied to analyse influences between individual and organisational actors on both sides. The scholars concluded that both campaigns show a similar pattern on Twitter. What started as actions of individual networks of citizens was later taken up by organisations in favour of or against same- sex marriage, which caused larger public resonance. However, on the level of communicated frames, the influence of the organisations was limited. While enabling both campaigns to grow, they did not replace the initial individualised framings of both campaigns. In sum, the study showed that political consumer campaigns increasingly use social media such as Twitter to establish communication channels through produsage without relying solely on mass media coverage.
Conclusion The various ways in which different researchers have addressed the changing modes of mass communication on the internet in relation to political consumerism can be summarised in three ways. First, the study of political consumers’ media use is now more diversified and includes also images and particularly videos. This has also been accompanied by the application of more general semiotic approaches. Second, the multiplication of communication channels has inspired scholars to develop adjusted ways of case selection. While the selection of the media under study used to be oriented towards country-specific leading media (e.g., the New York Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Argentine La Nación), scholars now tend to deduce from the field and the studied topic which medium to focus on as the major communication channel. Third, the cases discussed in this chapter illustrate the need to follow political consumers ethnographically offline as well as online in order to identify which communication channels are relevant and thus to be studied, since they increasingly codecide the sites of public controversy with regards to political consumerism. The rising role of visual media as well as the creative inclusion of consumer participation has shown how valuable traditional semiotic approaches are for gaining a deeper understanding of the significance of cryptic campaign clips in political consumerism. In this research, less normative and more analytical studies have been conducted in the last few years; some of them directly combine interpretative work with quantitative analysis. However, there are important research gaps to be filled by semiotic analysis because studies so far tend to focus on successful negative discursive campaigning by progressive activists and neglect the rising skilfulness with which attacked corporations might strike back on the semiotic level (e.g., by applying guerrilla marketing
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themselves). Furthermore, political consumerism as practice in everyday life could also be studied as a proactive form of semiotic practice. In this regard, Barendregt and Jaffe (2014) describe the cultivation of a global culture of “eco chic” with their own aesthetics and meaningful sign structures, thus pointing at the unintended consequences of associated semiotic practices. At times these practices perform as tools of class distinction used by the well-off so that these individuals can set themselves apart from the poor. Semiotic analysis could also help to reveal undemocratic forms of political consumerism, such as the growing tendency of white supremacists to semiotically hijack the trend towards the consumption of regional products (see Chapter 29). Generally, this chapter has discussed literature on discursive political consumerism as if communication and media practices could be seen as a sphere apart from the material practices of wearing, eating, and using products and services politically. The reason for this is the lack of research asking more specifically for effects yielded through frames, semiotic detournement, or produsage. Besides survey-based research that only very roughly shows slight positive correlations between internet use and political consumerism, there is a lack of research on the causal mechanisms that motivate or frustrate citizens willing to adopt political consumption in everyday life.
Acknowledgements This article is based on funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for the Collaborative Research Centre 1187 “media of cooperation” subproject B03.
Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToGK3-2tZz8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzF3UGOlVDc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToGK3-2tZz8. https://www.thenation.com/article/my-nike-media-adventure/. https://depts.washington.edu/ccce/polcommcampaigns/peretti.html.
References Aag (autonome a.f.r.i.k.a. Gruppe), Blissett, Luther, & Brünzels, Sonja. (2012). Handbuch Kommunikationsguerilla. Jetzt helfe ich mir selbst. 5th ed. Hamburg: Verlag Libertäre Assoziation. Ampofo, Lawrence, Collister, Simon, O’Loughlin, Ben, & Chadwick, Andrew. (2015). Text mining and social media: When quantitative meets qualitative and software meets people. In Peter Halfpenny & Rob Procter (Eds.), Innovations in Digital Research Methods (pp. 161–192). London: Sage. Barendregt, Bart, & Jaffe, Rivke. (Eds.). (2014). Green consumption: The global rise of eco-chic. London: Bloomsbury.
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Chapter 10
Re j e cting and E mbrac i ng B rands in P ol i t i c a l C onsum e ri sm Magnus Boström
A columnist for the New York Times recently argued that online campaigns “against brands have become one of the most powerful forces in business, giving customers a huge megaphone with which to shape corporate ethics and practices, and imperiling some of the most towering figures of media and industry.”1 Regardless if he is correct or not in his assessment of the strong power of brand-focused online activism, without a doubt brands play imperative roles as targets and arenas for political consumerism, particularly in present times. Much of political consumerism activities navigate towards large and highly visible brands. This fact is something the owners of these brands know they need to be very well aware of because what is at stake is their reputation. What is a brand? It consists of the name and logo of an actor/object and the associated/recognized meanings. It is the core symbolic asset of an actor. Such an actor is usually an organization and its trademarked products or services. Brands are particularly and increasingly important for multinational corporations (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013). Big brand manufacturers and retailers such as Walmart, Ikea, H&M, HP, Nike, Shell, Coca-Cola, Disney, McDonald’s, Apple, Facebook, and Google have gained tremendous power in terms of material resources (financial capital, physical infrastructure) and providing jobs, as well as in information power, technology, culture, and governance. They are also large and powerful in terms of brand visibility and recognition. According to one of the key branding experts, Douglas Holt, “branding is a core activity of capitalism, so must be included in any serious attempt to understand contemporary society and politics” (2006, p. 299). Big business invests enormous amounts of resources on branding, working with a palette of techniques and with frequent appeals to the ethical, responsible, and environmentally conscious consumer. Brands also function as a cultural resource for consumers for development of their identity, status, and search for pleasure and happiness. Moreover, brands are a key
206 Magnus Boström focus in monetary, discursive, and lifestyle types of political consumerism. While large companies invest enormously in marketing resources to cultivate their brand, trying to establish “hegemonic brandscapes” (Thompson & Arsel, 2004), a peculiarity with brands is that such a kind of symbolic asset is difficult to control. Brands are also targets for negative publicity and antibrand movements, which can destroy the reputation of a brand. There is hence a space for debate and contestation for political consumerism. The strong association between brands and political consumerism warrants scholarly attention.2 This is not least important because economic, symbolic, and discursive power concentrates around brands and branding activities, surrounding both the consumption and the production sides of brands. The study of brands and political consumerism requires more understanding of both frontstage and backstage dynamics of brands and branding. Frontstage refers to the visual, official, and public aspects of an actor or activity (e.g., logos, reports, public boycott campaigns, culture jamming), whereas backstage refers to the nonpublic processes of preparations, negotiations, and decision-making behind (and needed for) such frontstage performances.3 Through a literature review on brands and political consumerism, this chapter demonstrates and discusses how brands relate to the various forms of political consumerism (boycott, buycott, discursive, and lifestyle political consumerism). This body of literature is interdisciplinary, including marketing, business administration, media and communication studies, sociology, political science, human geography, ethnology, social anthropology, environmental sciences, and several others, and a broad range of concepts and approaches are developed and used to explore the phenomenon. This chapter cannot do justice to all this heterogeneity nor does it aim to map all different streams. Rather it is an effort to understand how brands provide arenas and targets for political contestation and how political consumerism tends to navigate towards high-profile brands. For this purpose, useful theoretical perspectives are introduced in the next section, which is followed by four sections, focusing respectively on boycott/brand rejection, buycott, discursive, and lifestyle political consumerism, in which the relation between brands and political consumerism is explored in more detail. The concluding section presents a summary, also in a table, and discusses topics for future research and methodological challenges.
Theoretical Perspectives for the Study of Brands and Political Consumerism This section introduces useful theoretical perspectives for studying the relation between political consumerism and brands. It will present a brand as a symbolic resource, which opens a path for seeing a brand as both opportunity and (reputation) risk in relation
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 207 to political consumerism. It is furthermore argued that scholarship needs to look at both front-and backstage processes of brands and branding among producers (brand owners), social movements, and consumers (e.g., brand communities). As discussed, a brand is the name and logo of an actor/object and their associated/recognized meanings. Nike has its “Just do it”; Volvo is safety, Nokia is connecting people, Walmart is saving money. (Dauvergne & Lister, 2012, pp. 36–45). An actor could be a company, but it could also be a civil society organization (such as WWF and the Panda logo) or even an individual celebrity like musicians Bono and Madonna or football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic. An object could be a product, service, or activity. A brand becomes an intangible economic asset for a company particularly “when people come to count on the brand to contribute to social life, when it is embedded in society and culture” (Holt, 2006, p. 300). The asset increases in value to the extent the brands are entwined in institutions, everyday practices, discourses, values, and norms (Holt, 2002, 2006). A brand can be conceptualized as a kind of symbolic resource (see Boström & Tamm Hallström, 2010). Symbolic resources (or symbolic capital) can be employed to accumulate other resources such as human, financial, and social capital. An advantage with a symbolic resource is that it is not necessarily consumed when used; it may even increase. Visibility of a logo tends to increase its value. A problematic feature with symbolic resources, however, is that their value can quickly be changed, damaged, and lost. Therefore, symbolic resources are tied with some particular risks. While transnational corporations may develop incredible economic, cultural, and symbolic power related to their brands, they tend to be short of such symbolic power in relation to environmental and social responsibility. For example, the sociologist Ulrich Beck (2005) argues that global business power is caught in a “legitimation trap.” The risk of reputation damage and waning consumer trust, for example in relation to sweatshop accusations, provides considerable potential for politicization. Indeed, such accusations may not just threaten a company, such as Nike and H&M, if it becomes associated with it. The whole industry sector, for instance the footwear and textile sector, will enter the “watchdog radar.” Sociologists and brand experts Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson explain: When branding is successful in building corporate value, it also makes a corporation visible on watchdog radar . . . as brand values grow and spread, corporations become more vulnerable to public attack. Brand reputation, brand recognition and brand visibility are double-edged signs. There is no story that television likes better than that of the celebrity gone wrong, or a brand identity gone awry. (Goldman & Papson, 2006, p. 341)
Adding to risks like these is lack of control. Brand owners are reliant on the performance of other actors, such as suppliers, over whom they can have significant power but not total control. Economic globalization and outsourced production—much of it done for ensuring mass-production of cheap consumer goods—creates a whole range of social and environmental risks and unforeseen consequences. As the contingency,
208 Magnus Boström complexity, and length of the supply chain increases, it also become much harder to manage, nurture, and control responsible production (Boström, 2015; Boström et al., 2015; Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; Locke, 2013). Scholars of political consumerism should not however only focus on the risk of reputation damage. Conceptualizing brands as symbolic resources implies looking at brands as simultaneously creating opportunities and risks for the brand owner. The brand owner can cultivate sensitivity to environmental and ethical issues and hence gain from existing consumer power. In studies of political consumerism, it is important to recognize that brands concern social relations and have social meanings. For instance, brands concern the relation between business and consumers (Gupta & Kumar, 2013), and brands benefit from the creation of brand loyalty, which could include ecobrand loyalty or ethical brand loyalty. Brand loyalty involves commitment, involvement, identification, status, and trust. Thus brand loyalty is precisely what big brands want to achieve and that they may try to organize in various ways through clubs, membership, and so on. Brands with associated logos, pictures, colours, slogans, tunes, styles, and storylines are what companies want to present of themselves. They are, in a sense, the visible part of the company and the product; that is, the “frontstage” of the company. Negative media reporting and movement attacks of various kinds also appear frontstage in the public sphere. However, scholars of political consumerism also need to focus on what is happening backstage, which includes nonpublic activities such as preparations, negotiations, decisions, and impression management about what is to be presented frontstage (Boström & Klintman, 2008). Journalists and movements are trying to reach backstage activities in efforts to disclose what is behind that which is disclosed, thus attempting to make the brand more transparent. Social movements can engage in “monitoring power,” which is the mobilization and organization of various resources (cognitive, social, economic) and strategies to critically scrutinize, for example, businesses’ green and ethical advertisements, claims, and promises (Boström & Tamm Hallström, 2010). What are companies doing backstage? The scholarly search for what is happening backstage entails focusing on the brand not just as a noun but as a verb; that is, branding. Branding is the activity of cultivating brands. One perspective on branding, derived from critical theory,4 is developed by marketing scholars Craig J. Thompson and Zeynep Arsel (2004) with the concept “hegemonic brandscape” (exemplified later in this chapter by Starbucks). This concept denotes a cultural system of servicescapes that are linked together and structured by discursive, symbolic, and competitive relationships to a dominant (marketdriving) experiential brand. The hegemonic brandscape not only structures an experience economy market . . . but also shapes consumer lifestyles and identities by functioning as a cultural model that consumers act, think, and feel through. (Thompson & Arsel, 2004, p. 632)
However, this is just one side of the coin. They and other scholars maintain and demonstrate there is room for contestation of such dominant brandscapes, and the historical
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 209 development of branding and antibranding activism have provided more room for reflexivity, that is, increased public ability for critical scrutinizing of brands. While big business invests large amounts of resources on branding, trying to establishing hegemonic brandscapes (Thompson & Arsel, 2004; see also Goldman & Papson, 2006), the other side of the coin is that post-or reflexive modernization, through processes of individualization, globalization, and increased public challenging of traditional authorities, provides an opening to new forms of politics (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1990; Holt, 2002).5 Even if consumer power and reflexivity should not be exaggerated (see Boström et al., 2017a; Boström & Klintman, 2017), there is a potential for it, which invites the scholarship on political consumerism to look at the backstage of consumer action in relation to brands (if frontstage activities are seen as the buy-and boycott of brands). The discussion here suggests that the concept of brand communities, invented by marketing scholars Albert M. Muniz & Thomas C. O’Guinn (2001), is relevant because it focuses more on consumers getting together around a brand. Like other communities, a brand community is “marked by a shared consciousness, rituals and traditions, and a sense of moral responsibility” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 412). Brand communities are largely imagined communities among consumers and users, but they can also involve concrete social ties. Brand communities involve commitment, difference, distinction (see Bourdieu, 1984), even opposition (Pepsi vs. Coke, Barcelona vs. Real Madrid, Macintosh vs. PC, etc.). Muniz & O’Guinn (2001) see a brand community as a modern type of community, a form of social association in a consumption context not necessarily tied to a particular geographic context, which is facilitated by the internet. While they do not relate this concept to new forms of consumer politics and power, this chapter argues that this is exactly scholars of political consumerism could do. In sum, there is a space for debate and contestation when we look analytically and empirically at the intersection of political consumerism and brands. Scholars ought to investigate both front-and backstage processes of brands, branding, and related activities among producers (brand owners), social movements, and consumers. The following four sections will look closer into how such contestations are expressed.
Rejecting and Boycotting Brands Boycotting has been a core focus in political consumerism research. The discussion here focuses on the boycotting of brands, although boycott campaigns may also target countries and regimes (like the anti-apartheid and BDS movement) or categories of products or services (drugs, tobacco, sex industries, meat products, fur, social media, cars, large cars, etc.), which only indirectly may affect brands. Examples of well- known international boycotting campaigns that directly target brands include Nestlé for selling baby formula in the third world, Nike for sweatshop conditions in outsourced manufacturing, Shell for planning to dump its Brent Spar oil platform in the Atlantic Ocean as well as its problematic involvement in Nigeria, Coca-Cola for its
210 Magnus Boström misuse of water resources in India, Monsanto as the “Frankenstein seed” ’ company, and Starbucks for unfair trading practices in the coffee market (on boycotts, see, e.g., Holzer, 2010; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013; and in this volume: Chapter 14, 18, and 33). In research it has been noted that many of these consumer activist campaigns have produced changes in corporate practice and policy (Bennett, 2012; Holt, 2002; Holzer, 2010). They are therefore intimately linked to buycott initiatives (see next section). Boycott campaigns tend to be directed towards large and particularly visible brands. Consumers, journalists, activists, and social movements primarily orient to businesses that are considered market leaders. These are targeted as those most responsible for certain wrongdoings, destroying the planet, or damaging millions of lives. They are also perceived as the crucial change-makers, those that can most effectively shape supply (along supply chains) and demand. The boycotting of brands is facilitated by recent developments in information technology: there is high speed in contemporary campaigns, achieved through communication technology and social media. Anyone can take initiatives and through social networking achieve rather far-reaching impact (Bennett, 2012; Hobsbawm, 2009). The concept of boycotting tends to focus on overt public campaigns. However, it is also important to pay attention to a potentially much larger phenomenon of a related nature, discussed in the literature as “brand avoidance” or “brand rejection.” In this context (political consumerism), the word “rejection” appears to me more apt, but the discussion here refers to avoidance when this word is used in the literature. Lee et al. (2009) touch on the fine line between the overt boycott of brands and “brand avoidance.” Boycotting, argues Lee et al. (2009, p. 170), “builds from an implicit commitment, by the boycotter, to reenter the relationship once certain conditions are met, such as a change of policy by the offending party.” However, “in brand avoidance there is no guarantee that the consumption relationship will resume in the future” (Lee et al., 2009, p. 170). The difference is subtle, however, because earlier research has shown that temporary boycott campaigns are difficult to call off (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008), as people remember the wrongdoings of companies. Thus, temporary brand boycotting may become permanent brand rejection (and an element in lifestyle political consumerism, discussed later). Lee et al. (2009) see “brand avoidance” as a particular type of “anticonsumption.” They conducted a qualitative interview study addressing the “average consumer” living in New Zealand, and thus they recruited ordinary consumers and not people among, for example, consumer activists, downsizers, and voluntary simplifiers, which is perhaps more common in studies of anticonsumption. Still, they were able to find a variety of anticonsumption sentiments in this group of average consumers. Brand avoidance, they claim, is an active kind of nonconsumption. Not included in this category are goods and services not bought just because they are too expensive, unavailable, or inaccessible. Lee et al. (2009) distinguish between three types of brand avoidance: experiential
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 211 (brands failed to meet expectations), identity (brands are symbolically incompatible with the consumer’s identity), and moral brand avoidance. It is the third category that most clearly exemplifies political consumerism, because it involves “when participants believe that certain brand management policies have a negative impact on society” (Lee et al., 2009, p. 172). Their interviews revealed, for example, issues such as antisweatshop motivations, distrusting altruistic motives of companies (e.g., McDonald’s speaking for the health of children), and resistance towards multinational brands (particularly American brands) that destroy local economy and business. Rejecting some brands is thus seen as a way to redress power imbalances. Their study is interesting because it indicates the use of brand rejection, also for political reasons, in everyday consumption among “average consumers” even if this rejection is not linked to an ongoing boycott campaign. Also other studies have found that market dominance may be the trigger for creative, reflexive, and capable consumers to seek alternatives. They seek ways to escape the cage of a strong brand. Thompson and Arsel (2004) studied anti-Starbucks discourse; Ginnis and Gentry (2009) studied how consumers can resist “top dog” brands in favour of “underdog” brands, and Cromie and Ewing (2009) studied the rejection of brand hegemony among the open source software (OSS) community and participants’ view of the software’s dominant brand Microsoft. Sandıkcı and Ekici (2009) presented another interesting study with partly similar themes. They studied competition between Coca- Cola and Cola Turka in Turkey and three distinct sets of political ideologies that can lead to brand rejection by consumers. These are predatory globalization, chauvinistic nationalism, and religious fundamentalism. Cola Turka was developed by a company known for its ties to Islamic politics. The brand became a symbol for anti-American (also antiglobalization) sentiments during the invasion of Iraq and increased its market shares in Turkey rather significantly. Turkish citizens drinking Coca-Cola were seen as traitors: “almost as a criminal act, a form of treachery that does nothing but harm to the local culture” (Sandıkcı & Ekici, 2009, p. 213). In contrast, other consumers drank Coca-Cola and deliberately rejected Coca Turka for political reasons, claiming that this brand symbolized “chauvinistic nationalism” and “religious fundamentalism.” Interestingly, those who rejected Coca-Cola did not reject other American brands, such as Levi’s, Starbucks, and Disney. An important lesson is that the Coca-Cola brand became a target when an alternative appeared and there was politicization of the issue: “what triggers rejection of the Coca Cola brand among some consumers is not a particular objectionable action undertaken by the Coca Cola Company but rather the entry of Cola Turka with a positioning that highlights nationalist sentiments” (Sandıkcı & Ekici, 2009, p. 216). This example thus illustrates the importance of orchestration and politicized targets as well as highlighting the importance of something to positively choose or buycott (see next section). In sum, political consumerist research has paid a lot of attention to the boycotting of brands, including overt public campaigns. The analysis in this section also suggests that the wider topic of brand rejection in everyday consumption ought to be part of scholarly attention.
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Brands and Buycotts It is already apparent from the previous analysis that boycotts and buycotts are intimately linked. Rejection or boycott of one brand is often accompanied by the promotion/ choice of another brand. On the consumer side, the buycotting of brands fits the era of “personalization” and “Do It Yourself ” in politics (Bennett, 2012). On the producer side, supplying for ethically/politically conscious consumers has become a core part of branding strategies. Aligning buycott arrangements with branding can be a way for companies to set agendas and exercise governance power in political consumerism. Early on, there were plenty of failed and hypocritical green advertisements (Peattie & Crane, 2005) but also a few companies that pioneered in creating more serious green brands. A few companies deliberately targeted segments of reflective and politically conscious consumers, with the Body Shop as a key example: The Body Shop advertisements have counted on three factors dissonant with the meanings that normally characterize cosmetic ads. . . . Body Shop has relied on irony, the moralization of consumption through a concern for animal rights and a critique of mass consumption, de-fetishization through reference to fair trade, natural ingredients and a mise-en-scène of the productive process. In a well-known campaign, the Body Shop invited all women to consider that only a few of them might ever resemble the standard supermodel of contemporary advertising. However, each woman could allow herself the pleasure of a cream, even if she was a little tubby, and regardless of the fact that no cream could or would remove the signs of ageing from her face. (Sassatelli, 2007, p. 130–131)
Whereas the Body Shop used a holistic approach, a selective strategy has been more common. A selective strategy is to supplement existing ranges with green brands. Many retailers tend to sell brands both for conventional and political consumers. However, during the last decade more or less every big brand needed to present itself as responsible and sustainable and not just link issues of ethics and sustainability to fragments of what they were doing. Corporate responsibility and environmentalism has moved from a reactive to a proactive strategy (Dauvergne & Lister, 2012, 2013). Boycotting and public blame-making has, arguably, been important in driving this trend. Companies set up codes of conduct for responsible business, write longer and longer sustainability reports, make their supply chains more transparent, and engage in “stakeholder dialogues.” They collaborate with business partners, governments, universities, business associations, various experts, and social and environmental NGOs to set up a variety of extralegal arrangements, including various kinds of eco-and ethical certification and labelling arrangements. Some of these are more business-governed, whereas others rely more on more multistakeholder governance arrangements. The variety of governance forms result in sometimes heated competition and contestation. The chapters in the
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 213 industry section of this volume present many examples of this. The development of this new rule-making industry has been well covered in literature (for references and further analyses see Chapters 11 and 12). Yet another approach, more in the philanthropic tradition, is what Ponte & Richey (2014) label “brand aid.” Brand aid is part of “cause-related marketing” through a constellation of corporate brands, celebrities, and international NGOs, and the activity has grown significantly thanks to the internet and social media. All these three (companies, celebrities, NGOs) are, according to Ponte and Richey, branded entities, which are combined in a campaign for the purpose of solving environmental, social, developmental, or animal welfare problems. This is a kind of privatization of helping, which potentially has significant outcomes in terms of fund-raising and agenda-setting, because it can principally enable a donation in every purchase (if used in credit cards, for example). Compared with the boycotting of brands, which is an apparent driver from the consumerist/social movement side, there is a more complex set of internal and external drivers behind the development of buycotting arrangements in relation to brands. Profits can be made and market shares can grow from the sale of “ethical” products, but there are more incitements. A key one is legitimacy. More or less all large companies, at least in the northwestern context, need to ensure that their brand has a strong reputation as responsible, ethical, and sustainable. In the search for legitimacy, speaking in terms of corporate social responsibility (CSR), triple bottom lines, and sustainability has become almost a “social license” to operate, at least for the big brand companies and in some parts of the world. Everyone has to have something serious to say and report about ethics and sustainability beyond what is required by legislation. Such activities may even be done to prevent the threat of stricter legislation. Furthermore, a strong brand reputation can be a way to recruit engaged staff as well as ensuring the inflow of other resources. A strong and credible name can facilitate the establishment of business relationships along and surrounding supply chains. Paradoxically, this search for legitimacy simultaneously involves lots of mimicry among business actors while each one of them strives to achieve differentiation through branding (Goldman & Papson, 2006; Gupta & Kumar, 2013). Branding is primarily about presenting oneself as unique, not as similar to everybody else. In a competitive market, any company wants to be seen as a bit more caring than all the others. Buycotting fits this symbolic game. Symbolic competition, however, fuels the drive towards an inflation of green and ethical claims. Hence, a very cluttered symbolic landscape of nature clichés appears (Peattie & Crane, 2005). It becomes hard to tell what is different and what is similar: “differentiation and imitation become oscillating sides of the same coin” (Goldman & Papson, 2006, p. 344). This game creates certain challenges for the political consumer who wants to engage in buycotting and to sort out the serious options from less serious ones (see, e.g., Boström & Klintman, 2008). For businesses, the development of brand reputation and legitimacy through these kinds of ethical and sustainability initiatives becomes itself a risky activity. Responsibility claims can easily be targeted as hypocrisy and greenwashing, particularly in the face of politically conscious consumers. “Their need to keep promises to consumers and their
214 Magnus Boström consumer-dependence puts them into a highly vulnerable situation, one which anti- sweatshop activists gladly exploit to show the hidden politics of brand name apparel” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 759). There may be considerable disparities, accordingly, among the perspectives of consumers, NGOs, and corporations on what is considered ethical/unethical in corporate practices (Brunk, 2010). While businesses face these risks, their continuous engagement in the development of buycott arrangements also empowers them. Large businesses take part in multistakeholder certification bodies, shape agendas, and learn the right discourses. They set up their own “business initiatives” and create their own standards, which compete with multistakeholder standards. These businesses also invest in a large cadre of personnel working on their brand, image, and credibility: “there is massive disproportion between the resources invested by producers to control the market, and those invested by consumers as a group” (Sassatelli, 2007, p. 81). Just because a large brand is attacked it must not kill the brand. Big companies have developed skills and reflexivity along with a readiness to respond to any question addressed by various audiences. In the scholarship, there are also a number of critical studies on the power-seeking and legitimizing aspirations of business in relation to green advertisements, codes of conduct, CSR, labelling, and sustainability (some examples are Boström & Klintman, 2008; Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; Fransen, 2012; Locke, 2013; Peattie & Crane, 2005; Ponte & Richey, 2014). In sum, the buycotting of and through brands is today a firm part of the repertoire of political consumerism, and there is an entire rule-making industry backstage in setting up arrangements for buycotts. However, it is not easy for the buycotter to navigate in this cluttered symbolic landscape and to figure out serious options. In general, critical literature suggests that ethical and green branding are often done more to seek legitimacy for one’s business and increase profit than to actually open up space for politically conscious consumption. Businesses exercise considerable power in the framing and governance of buycott arrangements. The existence of critical voices indicates the important role for debate and deliberation on this kind of political action, which also happens because there is room for discursive political consumerism in relation to brands, which is discussed in the following analysis.
Brands and Discursive Political Consumerism Discursive political consumerism is “the expression of opinions about corporate policy and practice in communicative efforts directed at business, the public at large, family and friends, and various political institutions” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, pp. 752–753). And “it targets other vulnerable points within corporations, namely their image, brand names, reputation, and logos” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 753; see also Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 6).
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 215 Discursive political consumerism thus involves citizens, journalists, movements, and activists that engage in monitoring and debating corporate practices. With the development of buycotting arrangements, as described in the previous section, there is a parallel growth of frames, claims, promises, and vocabularies that debaters can exploit in their scrutiny of corporate conduct. There is hence a discourse developed around that practice. Indeed, as soon as companies commit to principles of human rights, social justice, and a healthy environment—goals that social movements strive for—movements immediately obtain a crucial weapon: “the ability to assess performance against promises and to expose the distance between rhetoric and practice” (Boström & Tamm Hallström, 2010, p. 47). Journalists, NGOs, movements, and activists hence exercise monitoring power and can expose the gap between brand message and reality, unmasking the supposed charade or greenwashing that is going on. Discursive political consumerism can accordingly be seen as an effort to expose the backstage of (eco-and ethical) branding. Holt gives an optimistic view of this type of consumer power: Consumers have responded by increasingly attending to contradictions between the brand’s espoused ideals and the real world activities of the corporations who profit from them. The internet has become a powerful vehicle for the viral dissemination of the backstage activities of corporations. A diverse coalition of self-appointed watchdogs monitors how companies act toward their employees, the environment, consumers, and governments. Such monitoring will grow as a greater percentage of the population becomes socialized in this new form of aggregated consumer power. (Holt, 2002, p. 86)
Nongovernmental organizations can mobilize considerable monitoring power (Boström & Tamm Hallström, 2010), but we should not underestimate the role of ordinary citizens. Various scholars point at an increasing mistrust or reflexivity regarding green advertisements and brands among the public (Holt, 2002; Peattie & Crane, 2005; Sassatelli, 2007, p. 131; Zinkhan & Carlson, 1995). These scholars highlight that those citizens who are most likely to express green and ethical concerns through their consumption may also be the ones that are most sceptical towards overly simplified green advertisements and nature clichés and also most educated to detect greenwashing behind the claims. Criticism may even escalate to an “anti-McDonald’s discourse,” “anti-Shell discourse,” or “anti-Starbucks discourse.” Thompson and Arsel (2004) studied the third example. The Starbucks company’s aggressive expansion strategy, which has outcompeted a huge number of local coffee shops in many cities, triggered many protest campaigns. This discourse is also linked to an antiglobalization frame. Social movements target companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks for representing a homogenizing and flattening cultural force. For instance, Starbucks is “condemned for propagating a soul- numbing aesthetic homogeneity and sanitized versions of the creative arts” (Thompson & Arsel, 2004, p. 634).
216 Magnus Boström A prominent (anti)brand-oriented type of discursive political consumerism is culture jamming. Culture jamming can be seen as a “brand boomerang.” It targets and subverts the meaning of corporate logos and slogans. Culture jammers confront the authority of corporate representation and questions the ways companies shape culture, consciousness, and imagination (Carducci, 2006; Lekakis, 2017; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 6). Culture jammers tend to pick highly visible and fashionable brands with high cultural resonance. “Culture jamming preys on brand vulnerabilities in its colourful, creative, funny, playful, and poignant semantic displays of politicized logos easily flashed across computer screens without considerable costs” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 761). There are several culture jammer movements today (see Lekakis, 2017) but the most well-known is probably Adbusters, a magazine and movement founded in the 1980s with an anticonsumerism, earth-friendly profile. It is a self-proclaimed “journal of the mental environment,” and the magazine pages are filled with articles, artwork, and “subvertising” (see Carducci, 2006). Scholars present culture jamming as a battle between “good” and “bad” culture, between the artificial and the authentic (Carducci, 2006; Lekakis, 2017). By exposing the backstage of a brand, culture jammers try to foster consumer reflexivity and resistance. If magazines and digital platforms appear as a core space for culture jammers such as Adbusters, movements also operate in the physical urban public space. Lekakis (2017) made a study of “Brandalism,” which is a recent culture-jamming movement that mobilizes activists and international artists. Its core activity is to install works of art in advertising panels in bus stops. This is done to challenge the dominance of advertisement in public space. Lekakis sees Brandalism as a creative “ethical spectacle,” which aims for direct democracy, diversity, and difference and fights against greenwashing and commodity fetishism. The largest operation took place in Paris, during the COP21, on Black Friday, where 600 advertising panels in bus stops were replaced with original artworks. Culture jamming exemplifies the most visible and spectacular form of discursive political consumerism. It is important to recognize, however, that discursive political consumerism is much more than these public antibranding campaigns and deliberations. It is also important to focus attention on everyday deliberation on the role of brands in public and private settings. There is a lot of debate and discussion on corporate policy and practice that takes place in social media platforms, at public seminars, at shopping malls, or in many other everyday places where people connect and jointly are exposed to brands (TV-rooms, cafes, kitchen tables, etc.). Conventional and online news consumption can stimulate “political talk” that in turn can stimulate political consumerism (Shah et al., 2007). There is a role for research to design innovative studies that try to capture these more mundane settings of conversations, for instance through focus group research (see e.g., Benulic, 2016, who studied political consumerism and conversations about meat), as well as focusing on “brand communities.” Muniz & O’Guinn (2001) have an optimistic view of brand communities in terms of agency and social relations, and with relevance to discursive political consumerism, in that they can function as an arena for (digital) discussion, consumer agency, and sharing of information. In digital platforms,
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 217 negative sentiments towards particular brands may escalate to levels that may be quite worrisome for the branding office: There are sites for brand fans and brand terrorists in equal measure. Try Googling a random brand name followed by the word “sucks” (for example, Sony, Dell, Ikea, Ford, Disney and, ironically, Google). There is now a Wikipedia for whistleblowers. On Wikileaks.org anyone can post comments and leak documents untraceably and anonymously about governments and corporations all over the world. (Hobsbawm, 2009, p. 220)
Finally, discursive political consumerism may take place inside the corporation. Goldman & Papson (2006, p. 341) argue that, as more corporations recognize the tendency that their brand reputation is put at risk because of all the watchdog actors, “they have moved to integrate a discourse of ethics into brand construction.” The study of discursive political consumerism can hence contribute to the opening of the black box of companies, and such a critical view focuses more on the debates and deliberations taking place inside corporations (see Börjeson & Boström, 2018; Holzer, 2010). What dilemmas and trade-offs are debated internally? Are internal corporate discourses defensive or proactive? A strong brand in terms of sustainability may be important for sustainability capacity building, spilling over to the corporate culture to create “an ethos of open communication” (Gupta & Kumar, 2013, p. 315). Indeed, it is important to recognize that many environmental spokespersons and other leaders and personnel within companies may, at the same time, be affiliated with social movements and have backgrounds as social or environmental activists (Boström et al., 2017b; Prakash, 2000). They can engage in internal policy and politics and may debate and fight for moving the green and ethical issues higher up on the company agenda. In sum, connected to brands, there are several examples of overt and covert discourses in play among companies, social movements, and consumer communities. The concept of discursive political consumerism highlights frontstage activities such as culture jamming, efforts to expose what is happening on the other side of the curtain, and deliberations that take place backstage.
Brands as Targets and Tools for Lifestyle Political Consumerism Lifestyle political consumerism tends to include the other three action forms (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, pp. 41–42, 163–165). It is associated with more holistic commitment about how one is designing and living one’s life. Examples include voluntary simplifiers, downshifters, vegetarianism and veganism, urban gardeners, and slow food movements (Cohen et al., 2005; Schor, 1998). Examples need not be that radical. It could be that other types of lifestyle projects, like people with outdoor lifestyles,
218 Magnus Boström may use their lifestyle project as a platform from which politically oriented identities and consumption patterns emerge. Certain lifestyle projects may tend to involve an entire set of buycott/boycott brand-rejection routines and provide discourses that give reasons and values for these actions. In lifestyle politics, however, it may rather be a type or set of products or services that are in focus rather than particular brands. A climate-conscious consumer may use a bike instead of a car in commuting to their job or travel by train instead of aircraft for a vacation. A downshifter may place less emphasis on the importance of designer names and heavily advertised brands (Black & Cherrier, 2010; Nelson et al., 2007). Nevertheless, brands can be important. For example, a vegan may buy the brand Outly (see Chapter 8), and there are also a few slow-fashion brands (see Chapter 14). Brands can function as both positive and negative references in lifestyle political consumerism: “consumers use brand choices to mark both their inclusion and exclusion from various lifestyles” (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001, p. 420). Brand rejection, as discussed in the boycott section, may be a crucial part of the development of lifestyle political consumerism. Holt (2002) discusses the reflexive and creative resistance to brands by empirical demonstrations from qualitative interview data. People who are critical towards the marketing industry, and engaged in reflexive and creative resistance to brands, are not, however, emancipating themselves from the world of brands. The brand sceptics rather use a pragmatic approach, Holt notices. Some brands are part of the creation of an identity that is critical towards other brands. Reflexive resistance, however, requires some distance towards brands and an ability to detect codes and motives behind brands and corporate messages. From this perspective, brands can be seen as cultural resources that are used to develop politically conscious lifestyles. Seen in this way, aspirations and identities are created through a reflexive and pragmatic way of relating to brands. In the anti-Starbucks study mentioned earlier, Thompson and Arsel (2004) found, in their qualitative interviews with coffee shop visitors and field observation at coffee shops, that the anti-Starbucks discourse gave rise to two types of local coffee shop consumption: café flaneurs and oppositional localists. The café flaneurs are intellectually aware of the anti-Starbucks discourse, but they primarily only expressed an aesthetic critique towards Starbucks. These people are not emotionally and rigorously opposing Starbucks and occasionally go there. Their interviews show that the anti-Starbucks discourse, combined with some peer social pressure (they prefer not to be seen with a Starbucks cup in their hand in public), motivate the café flaneurs to engage occasionally, but not systematically, in boycotting and buycotting of the local alternative. The “oppositional localists,” however, are more emotionally invested and fiercely fighting Starbucks, and they consistently buycott their local alternative. Their preferred coffee shop is constructed as a site of communal solidarity. It is seen as a deep political commitment to go to their local coffee shop “where like-minded individuals can collectively challenge prevailing corporate power structures, enact a progressive vision of a just and sustainable economy, and defy the alienating forces of commercialization” (Thompson & Arsel, 2004, p. 637). This kind of brand rejection is a bit more than a
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 219 combination of boycott (Starbucks) and buycott (the local coffee shop) but serves as part of a penetrating antibrand discourse and an element of a larger lifestyle orientation, in which a person more systematically tries to envision, identify with, and basically live an “alternative” view. There may be clear antibrand positioning in the development of an alternative consumer lifestyle. Local brands or underground brands can function as symbolic contrasts to the global brands: “consumers who wish to take a stand on globalization debates via consumption choices may gravitate toward David-like brands that can be interpreted as fighting a heroic battle against the corporate Goliaths of global capitalism” (Thompson & Arsel, 2004, pp. 639; see also McGinnis & Gentry, 2009). Nevertheless, we should bear in mind that achieving thorough and consistent lifestyles may be something quite difficult. Several of the studies referred to in this chapter in various ways report on a rather eclectic or inconsistent approach to, for instance, anticonsumption and the rejection of brands (Bennett, 2012; Boström & Klintman, 2017; Guthman, 2009; Holt, 2002; Lee et al., 2009; Sassatelli 2007; and see Chapter 40). The cluttered brandscape, discussed earlier, does not make this endeavour easier (Goldman & Papson, 2006). In sum, brands have a bit of an ambiguous relation to lifestyle political consumerism. Brands and branding as phenomena are often something these political consumers may want to disassociate from because brands and branding are seen as connected with capitalism, market hegemony, homogenizing culture, and big business. Yet strong brands can be difficult to reject if there are no alternatives, and even this type of political consumer tends to rely on a few other brands (alternative, local, underground) to positively choose and embrace.
Conclusion and Discussion Brands constitute key symbolic resources for business. For large businesses, significant market opportunities, legitimacy, and power can be gained by cultivating this kind of symbolic resource. But at the same time they face significant reputation risks. Efforts to link their brand to buycott arrangements with an aura of ethics, care, responsibility, and sustainability can lead to claims of greenwashing and other accusations. A strong and highly visible brand can therefore be a double-edged sword. The strong role of brands in political consumerism also means that they constitute core arenas and tools for political consumers on the demand side and for social movements engaging in political consumerism. The embracing or rejection of brands is a considerable part of how political consumerism takes shape today, and it plays important roles for consumers and their identities, discourses, and everyday practices. In Table 10.1, some key examples, challenges for the political consumer (as an individual, in communities, in social movements), and responses from the company side are summarized, as well as some thoughts regarding future research.
Lifestyle
Discursive
Buycott
Boycott campaigns of big and visible brands
Brand rejection and boycott
Rejecting brands not always feasible (rely on alternatives, etc.)
Challenges for the political consumer Developing proactive communication strategies
Responses from business in face of PC action
Reaching the “average consumer”
Mundane forms of brand rejection
Topics for future research
Alternative, local, and underground brands
Antibrand movements
Brands as positive and negative reference in development of PC lifestyles
Digital and everyday deliberations
Culture jamming
Watchdog monitoring and debate
Anticorporate discourses
Brand aid
Focus groups to study everyday deliberations
Internal debates in companies, and struggles between defensive and proactive forces
Digital platforms among brand communities
Developing internal communication Development of monitoring and and corporate reflexivity discursive power among watchdogs
Promoting eco-or ethical brands The role of eco-and ethical brand as positive references for lifestyle communities choices among politically conscious Antibrand as a form of lifestyle consumers How to reject brands in The ambiguous relation with situations of brand hegemony? brands How to find credible brands to consistently and permanently commit to (brand loyalty)?
Reflexive handling of the ambiguous relationship with brands
Getting access and being empowered by relevant consumer communities
How to develop monitoring power and get behind the brand backstage
Promoting eco-or ethical brand loyalty among consumer segments
Labels and other standards Navigate and sort out serious Participating in developing tools for Development of buycott strategies aligned with brands and options in the cluttered PC (labels, codes of conduct, etc.), in small and medium-sized branding brandscape developing governance power companies
Everyday brand rejection
Key examples
Forms of political consumerism in relation to brands
Table 10.1 Examples of Political Consumerism in Relation to Brands: Challenges, Responses, and Topics for Future Research
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 221 The rest of this concluding discussion focuses on a few topics and methodological challenges for future research in this broadly interdisciplinary endeavour. On the producer side, attention ought to be paid to what is happening backstage behind the big brands. There is a need for critical analyses that are exposing trade-offs, dilemmas, and the battle between defensive and proactive discourses within the big brand companies. That is warranted because they are so powerful in transforming our society and planet to an extent never seen earlier in human history (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013). Even more, businesses also exercise considerable governance power in the framing and design of buycott arrangements as they are part of agenda-and standard-setting. There are, for sure, considerable methodological challenges involved in studying them. If reputation damage is one of the largest risks facing big brands, they may show little willingness to give access to researchers to critically investigate their brands, branding, and other crucial activities backstage. If researchers manage to get access, what are they allowed to see and what are the conditions for conducting the research without loss of critical perspective? What are the analytical tools to be able to look under the surface of the green and ethically correct corporate language? What if the sample is biased towards only frontrunners? These are crucial questions, but it is beyond the scope of this chapter to dig into all methodological challenges.6 However, attention also ought to be paid to other brands, those unknown to the public and not under the watchdog radar. Research tends to bias towards the drama of the giants (see Boström, 2015; Boström et al., 2015 for a discussion). It is warranted with attention to the broad variety of producers and retailers. Organizations differ a lot in terms of size, type, and form. Small and middle-sized companies/brands are also deserving of attention. Even if they are not the primary target for boycotts and culture jamming, facing reputation risk to the same extent, they can be crucial as a positive reference for the development of buycott strategies and lifestyle political consumerism. The “local” and “underdog” companies (Ginnis & Gentry, 2009) can have various kinds of positive connotations in political consumerist framings, and they appear in both democratic and undemocratic variants of political consumerism. Thus, the theorizing and literature on brands and political consumerism should take into account the varying size, type, and forms of organizations, and also be context-sensitive, taking into account the extremely varying conditions among organizations. On the consumer side, more attention ought to be paid to how people (individually, in communities, in social movements) relate politically and ethically to brands. The chapter has shown that this can take place explicitly (e.g., brand rejection and antibrand lifestyles, movements, and discourses) or in more mundane everyday settings. It would be interesting to study more in-depth the activities taking place in digital platforms, blogs, and social media, including how ethical or green brand communities may take form and if such communities (or other forms of governance) can help and empower consumers to navigate the cluttered brandscape. How groups and movements can develop reflexivity, monitoring power, and ways to get backstage of branding activities is another set of questions that needs more scholarly attention. Furthermore, topics such as how brands, or the avoidance of them, are part of everyday political and ethical
222 Magnus Boström considerations, conversations, and life projects are so far only researched to a limited extent. Equally important is to ask whether the dominance of brands in everyday life creates hindrance and makes people ignorant and politically disempowered to engage in societal issues. Qualitative studies referred to in this chapter indicate that it would be interesting to focus more on not just the overtly politically committed consumer but the “average consumer” as well. Some of the literature referred to in this chapter indicates there is much going on beyond the most outspoken and visible examples. Advancing qualitative interview studies, focus group research, or studies of social media appear promising for detecting such mundane political consumerism, and quantitative survey studies could try to operationalize more how often, when, where, and by whom a broader rejection and embracing of brands is done in relation to moral and political sentiments. Longitudinal studies, qualitative and quantitative, could address questions related to the challenges and pathways to initiate (break practices), develop, and sustain brand-related political consumerism. For instance, is a politically oriented antibrand lifestyle possible to achieve these days in a consistent way and in the long run?
Notes 1. Farhad Manjoo, New York Times, June 21, 2017; accessed July 2, 2017, https://www.nytimes .com/ 2 017/ 0 6/ 2 1/ technology/ how- b attling- brands- online- has- g ained- u rgency- and -impact.html. 2. For sure, brands are not all that matters in political consumerism. People use positive and negative political consumption in relation to entire categories of goods and services, not just branded goods and services. 3. These dramaturgical metaphors have an origin in the sociology of Goffman (1959). 4. While the importance of branding has increased (Goldman & Papson, 2006), it is for sure not a new invention. It grew in parallel to the growth of mass production, mass consumption, and the development of consumer society. Critical theory (Gramsci, the Frankfurt School) early on targeted the cultural industry of corporate capitalism with the view that large companies in a rather deterministic way can produce consumer desires and conformity of style (Holt, 2002). 5. In his historical analysis of the development of branding and antibranding, Holt (2002) shows that the classic branding paradigm has not remained intact but developed in a dialectic fashion. The movements of the 1960s rebelled against mainstream consumer ideology and developed a variety of counterthemes, which affected branding, and later the postmodern cultural turn fostered more cynical and/or reflexive consumers. Those engaged in branding had to adapt to this changing cultural landscape and develop “postmodern branding techniques” with less overt persuasion (modern branding) and more irony, self- distance, accommodation of (urban) subcultures, brand persona, and product placement. 6. I can briefly offer a few thoughts, gained from my own research experience. First of all, it is important to recognize there is no magic formula to get backstage and reveal the “true” nature of the focused case. There is just hard work and craftsmanship, and findings will give rise to new questions. A promising approach is the comparative case-study approach (which this author has practiced a lot, including studies of companies). It is crucial that
Rejecting and Embracing Brands 223 the researcher invests considerable research time spent on each case. Time is needed to develop mutual trust, gain proximity to the case, learn the organizational culture, be invited to backstage processes, and gather rich and varied sources of data. Access means that not everything can be reported, so there will be some inevitable trade-offs and the researcher will need to constantly reflect on an acceptable balance. Triangulation of data (interviews, all kinds of available text documents, field observations, and secondary literature) is crucial for a number of reasons. For the interviews, the interviewer must make careful preparation because of the particular challenges related to “elite interviews.” The researcher should interview several persons at different sections and levels of the organization, as well as previous employees or collaborators. The latter are likely to provide some important alternative views.
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Chapter 11
Gl obaliz at i on, G overnanc e G a p s , an d the Em erg e nc e of New Institu ti ons for P olitical C on sume ri sm Lars H. Gulbrandsen
Recent decades have witnessed the rise of a variety of new institutions seeking to ensure that environmental and social values inform market transactions. This chapter focuses on nonstate regulation and governance initiatives—instances where nonstate actors set rules to govern their own behaviour and/or the behaviour of others (Auld & Gulbrandsen, 2013, p. 394)—in the shape of sustainability certification programmes. These programmes arguably represent the most dynamic and advanced nonstate efforts to govern the practices of global production, distribution, and consumption. They are particularly interesting from a political consumerism perspective because they are market-based and seem to rely on consumer-based boycotts, buycotts, and other consumer-driven initiatives promoting producer participation. Signs of this rise pervade consumer markets. A frozen fish may have a blue-and-white “Marine Stewardship Council” label on its packaging; a book may be printed on paper from timber certified by the Forest Stewardship Council; and a bag of roasted coffee may be stamped with labels notifying the buyer that the roaster had purchased carbon offsets, that the coffee farmers retained shade trees to protect bird habitats, or that the coffee co-operative was paid a better price for its harvest. Many markets have much more information today on the invisible features of products, including ethical and environmental dimensions of how goods and services are produced and traded. A multitude of nonstate certification programmes now exist across different sectors of the global economy. Existing research highlights the critical importance of globalization processes in the rise of these new institutions. Multilateral trade agreements, on the
228 Lars H. Gulbrandsen one hand, limit what governments can do to address process-related concerns (e.g., fair wages for workers and environmental impacts), such as how goods and services have been produced in other jurisdictions. In this respect, absent interstate cooperation, governments cannot address numerous global challenges, fostering what many actors view as critical governance gaps. On the other hand, liberalized trade multiplies market interdependencies, grows global supply chains, and facilitates the rise of large multinational corporations. As such, globalized supply chains and multinational corporations have become focal institutions and agents for new institutional arrangements in the shape of sustainability certification programmes. These programmes seek to fill the governance gaps that partly stem from economic globalization and stipulations of the global trade regime. The chapter is structured as follows. First, the role of globalization processes and governance gaps as precursors to the rise of sustainability certification programmes is examined. The following discussion demonstrates that economic globalization processes left governments unable to deal effectively with various global challenges, resulting in governance gaps, but also that changes in the market and political failures associated with economic globalization provided new opportunities for nonstate actors to come to grips with global challenges. Second, the chapter examines the emergence and evolution of new institutions in the form of sustainability certification programmes, paying particular attention to various scholarly debates on these institutions. The discussion focuses on the role of consumer demand, boycotts, and buycotts for the emergence of certification programmes and shows that, while they were important, many more factors determined the growth in demand and supply of such programmes and their subsequent evolution. Third, based on the findings of the previous sections, the chapter offers some conclusions and implications for further research.
Globalization and Governance Gaps Create a Demand for New Institutions Globalization processes and existing or emergent governance gaps have accelerated demands for sustainability certification schemes in different sectors. Here, the focus is on four interrelated trends and developments that help explain the emergence of new institutions for nonstate governance: (1) trade liberalization and neoliberal ideology; (2) existing or emergent governance gaps; (3) the rise of global supply chains; and (4) the growth of social movements and transnational advocacy networks.
Trade Liberalization and Neoliberal Ideology The demand for sustainability certification has been greatly facilitated by trade liberalization and, more broadly, by the spread of neoliberal ideology. These developments
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 229 have enabled companies and investors to move from one jurisdiction to another to escape stringent public regulations. National governments are constrained by political commitments to neoliberal globalization and the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which restricts the possibilities of governments to address labour rights and environmental protection through trade measures. The WTO’s dispute panel rulings have reduced governments’ enthusiasm for the use of trade restrictions for environmental purposes (Vogel, 1995, p. 146), as seen, for example, in the reluctance of the European Union to impose restrictions on tropical timber imports (Gulbrandsen, 2014). On the other hand, voluntary initiatives by private actors are not in principle constrained by international trade law. This explains in part the emergence of nonstate, voluntary certification schemes in forestry and other sectors such as fisheries, agriculture, and mining. For the WTO disciplines to apply, the activities of private actors must be attributable to states. Rules regarding state responsibility in this regard are set out in the WTO agreements on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS). The emergence of sustainability certification can be seen as part of a broader neoliberal shift towards voluntary and market-based instruments in global environmental governance. Bartley (2003), for instance, argues that neoliberal ideas and institutions served as preconditions for the emergence of certification systems in the forest and labour sectors. Indeed, voluntary and market-based certification may best represent what has been dubbed the convergence of environmental and liberal economic norms towards “liberal environmentalism,” which predicates environmental protection in return for support of a liberal economic order (Bernstein, 2001). Neoliberal ideas have also been credited with encouraging what is often referred to as “individualization of responsibility.” In the context of political consumerism, this means that individual consumers are being asked to take responsibility for environmental or social problems through their purchasing decisions (see Micheletti, 2003; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Although some scholars use the language of individualization of responsibility to dismiss political consumerism as misguided (e.g., Maniates, 2001; Maniates & Meyer, 2010), one should not conclude that political consumerism is futile just because certain problems in theory would be better served by statecentric or collective solutions (Bartley et al., 2015). Conceptual and analytical discussions aside, trade liberalization and neoliberal ideology seem to have accelerated the growing demand for sustainability certification schemes in at least two ways. First, while trade liberalization is said to have had a chilling effect on the use of trade restrictions for environmental and social purposes, voluntary and nondiscriminatory ecolabelling is considered consistent with international trade law. Trade liberalization can therefore be said to have encouraged nonstate actors to pursue voluntary sustainability certification initiatives. Second, neoliberal ideas have normatively and discursively supported market-based instruments and individualized responsibility-taking. Hence, neoliberal ideology helped pave the way for the emergence and expansion of markets for sustainability certification.
230 Lars H. Gulbrandsen
Governance Gaps Trade liberalization, capital movements, and other macro-developments associated with economic globalization left governments unable to address multiple global challenges, resulting in what many scholars regard as governance gaps (e.g., Cutler et al., 1999; Ruggie, 2004; Vogel, 2008, 2010). A governance gap can be understood as the distance between steps taken to address a certain collective problem, such as resource depletion or environmental degradation, and a collectively optimal governance solution. In the absence of interstate cooperation, governments have had few opportunities to address governance gaps emerging from economic globalization processes. For example, while tropical deforestation used to be attributed primarily to subsistence farming and local consumption, global trade in timber, paper, soy, palm oil, beef, and other commodities is now recognized as an increasingly important factor (European Commission, 2013; Union of Concerned Scientists, 2011). The value of exported global forest products tripled from 1980 to 2015, according to data gathered by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).1 Similarly, fish and fishery products now represent one of the most-traded segments in the world food sector, where almost 80 percent of seafood products are estimated to be exposed to international trade competition “in an increasingly globalized environment” (FAO, 2016, p. 6). Just like deforestation and forest degradation, overfishing is a grave global problem but, in the absence of interstate cooperation, governments are unable to address a wide range of environmental and social problems in other jurisdictions given the current state of multilateral trade rules and other constraints. A common expectation in the literature is that institutions pursuing nonstate governance solutions are more likely to be formed in policy domains that are weakly regulated by national governments than in domains that are strongly regulated. The assumption is that nonstate actors will seek to fill governance gaps unfilled by national governments, supplement weak public rules and regulations with more stringent rules, and compensate the lack of public regulations by creating private regulations (e.g., Vogel 2008). This assumption is partly supported by the evidence. Research shows that market and political failures associated with economic globalization increase demand for nonstate forms of governance (e.g., Abbott, 2012; Abbott & Snidal, 2009; Auld & Gulbrandsen, 2013; Ruggie, 2004). It would be mistaken to conclude, however, that standards and voluntary programmes promulgated by nonstate actors emerged only to fill “regulatory voids” or in “areas of limited statehood.” The intergovernmental forest policy processes starting in the late 1980s and continuing through the 1990s can serve as an illustrative example. Despite increasing concern for global forest degradation and deforestation in the tropics and elsewhere, states have failed to agree upon a legally binding global agreement for the protection and sustainable use of forests (Humphreys, 2006). Efforts to develop a government-sanctioned global system for the certification and labelling of tropical timber have also failed, largely in the face of opposition by industry and their governmental allies in tropical countries. The lack of a binding forest convention or a government-sanctioned global system for tropical timber certification
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 231 gave nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), good reason to seek an alternative solution (Gulbrandsen, 2004). The emergence of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) is widely regarded as an NGO effort to provide an adequate response to the political failures to deal effectively with the problems of global forest degradation and deforestation. Nevertheless, intergovernmental discussions on forest management criteria and indicators did encourage standard-setting in the private sector (Auld et al., 2008; Gulbrandsen, 2004; Humphreys, 2006) and governments have engaged with forest certification programmes in numerous ways (e.g., Boström, 2003; Gale & Haward, 2011; Gulbrandsen, 2014; Lister, 2011). Intergovernmental forest policy processes were therefore important for certification in what they did and did not achieve. To summarize, the emergence of governance gaps associated with economic globalization increased demand for nonstate governance. Research also shows, however, that nonstate regulatory programmes are influenced not only by public policy failures but also by public policy outcomes. It is critical to recognize, therefore, that nonstate-and state-driven rule-making processes are closely intertwined and that the absence or presence of one process affects the dynamics of the other.
The Rise of Global Supply Chains One of the most profound developments that has enabled the turn to nonstate sustainability certification is the rise of global supply chains. Facilitated by economic globalization, this development was characterized by a shift from vertically integrated corporations—which controlled the entire production process, from raw material through manufacturing to distribution—to global supply chains, in which retailers and well-known brands such as Nike and Walmart signed up independent manufacturers at the site of production (Bartley et al., 2015, p. 11; Gereffi, 1994, 1999). Powerful retailers and brand-name companies at the distribution end of the supply chain tend to dictate product characteristics, volumes, and prices, and they shift the cost of making the necessary changes to accommodate the new demand-side requirements onto the producers. This “supply chain revolution” had two important consequences for the responsibilities of transnational corporations (Bartley et al., 2015, p. 11). On the one hand, the rise of global supply chains tied retailers and brands in the United States and Europe to the sites of production and exploitation via contracting and subcontracting networks. On the other hand, it blurred the lines of responsibility because retailers and brands did not own the factories of production and thus could resist attempts to make them legally accountable for the possible exploitation of local workers and environmental damage. Most important here is to recognize how the rise of global supply chains, also referred to as global commodity chains, value chains, and production networks (for a wider discussion of these concepts, see Bush et al., 2015 and Chapter 12), were targeted by social movements and transnational activist networks (see next section). Although companies have resisted attempts to legalize their responsibility for exploitation committed by contractors and subcontractors at sites of production, they have in many cases responded
232 Lars H. Gulbrandsen to NGO activism by committing to monitor and improve conditions in their supply chains (Bartley et al., 2015: 11; Bush et al., 2015; Dauvergne & Lister, 2013). In this context, fair trade and sustainability certification offered retailers and big companies concerned about their reputations a possible way out. Certification provided a way to protect brand names against accusations of exploitation and irresponsible practices on the part of contracted manufacturers (for more on the role of brands, see Chapter 10) by shifting the cost of monitoring and improvement onto their suppliers.
The Growth of Social Movements and Transnational Advocacy Networks It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of social movements, NGO activism, and transnational advocacy networks for the rise of political consumerism in general and the emergence of global standards for sustainability certification in particular. Nongovernmental organizations and other social movement organizations educate the public about the social and environmental consequences of production practices by praising or condemning industry operations, mobilizing consumers, and advising “progressive” companies about how they can tap into potential consumer demand. The most profound difference between the earlier period of NGO targeting of big corporations and the past few decades is arguably the explosion of transnational activism and NGO networks (Tarrow, 2005). While activism in the past was mostly limited to the domestic arena, activists today are increasingly joined up across national boundaries, bringing together stakeholders in a number of countries to put pressure on companies and their supply chains (e.g., Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Risse-Kappen, 1995; Tarrow, 2005; Wapner, 1996). Social movement activists and NGOs have traditionally targeted governments in an attempt to induce them to make companies accountable and enact appropriate laws and regulations. In the era of globalization, transnational activist networks are using increasingly sophisticated methods to hold companies accountable for the environmental and social impact of their operations (Bendell, 2000; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). They seek to mobilize consumer sentiment through calls for boycotts and buycotts and for investors and shareholders to promote socially responsible investment funds and companies. These networks make effective use of social media and orchestrate coordinated media campaigns across the globe to pressure companies to reform (Haufler, 2001; Spar, 1998; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). And they organize corporate naming-and-shaming campaigns to attract the attention of citizens and increase their power in levelling demands for change (see Chapters 4 and 5, for more on social movements and networks). How, then, do the four interrelated developments and trends examined here come together? The discussion has shown that globalization processes have stimulated the rise of sustainability certification programmes. Trade liberalization, capital movements, and other macro-economic developments have limited government action on global
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 233 challenges, resulting in public policy failures and perceived governance gaps. However, the rise of global supply chains and growth of social movements and transnational advocacy networks provide new opportunities for harnessing market forces and for filling existing and emergent governance gaps. This peculiar combination of economic globalization processes, neoliberal ideas, and NGO activism has facilitated demand for nonstate regulatory efforts within and across sectors. The objectives and actions of these forces may seem to clash on occasion, but together they are setting the stage for sustainability certification.
Scholarly Debates on Sustainability Certification The previous section examined the broad contextual and macro-level factors that acted as precursors to the rise of nonstate governance institutions in the shape of sustainability certification programmes. Here the focus is on scholarly debates on the emergence and evolution of these institutions. Sustainability certification programmes have been launched in recent decades to address problems and issue areas including fisheries depletion, forest degradation, food production, mining, construction, workers’ rights, and human rights (see chapters on the industry sectors in Part III in this Handbook). Such programmes represent a particularly rigorous form of nonstate regulation, comparable to “hard law” in their prescription of mandatory and often costly behavioural changes, as well as the formal penalization of noncompliance (Auld et al., 2008; Cashore, 2002). More specifically, certification programmes require participants to comply with performance-based social and environmental standards for production, accept third-party verification and sanctioning of noncompliance, and follow formal tracking requirements for products originating from certified operations. In return, companies are allowed to embellish their end-use products with ecolabels or certification logos to provide a sustainability guarantee to the market (Gulbrandsen, 2010). Table 11.1 shows some of the most influential nonstate sustainability certification programmes. How, then, can we understand the rise of sustainability certification programmes? The conventional view, often reflected in research based on applied economic theory and willingness to pay studies, is that consumer demand drives market supply of sustainability certification and ecolabelling (e.g., Brécard et al., 2009; Teisl et al., 2002). Once consumers are mobilized by social movement campaigns or educated about the sustainability issues associated with certain products, it has been assumed that they would pressure retailers and brands to sell products based on sustainable production processes. These retailers and brands should respond to consumer signals by adopting responsible procurement policies and issuing certification incentives or requirements to the producer level further down the supply chains. To the extent that greater market
Table 11.1 Examples of Nonstate Sustainability Certification Programmes Origin
Initiators
Policy Goal
Forest Stewardship Council
1993
WWF and a broad coalition of other NGOs and companies
Environmentally and socially responsible forestry practices
Rainforest Alliance Certification
1993 (1)
Rainforest Alliance (an NGO)
Sustainable farming through certification of a range of tropical commodities
Sustainable Forestry Initiative
1994 (2)
American Forest and Paper Association
Sustainable forest management
Marine Stewardship Council
1997
WWF and Unilever
Environmentally responsible fishing practices
Social Accountability International
1997
Council on Economic Priorities (an NGO)
Protect workers’ rights and improve working conditions
Fair Trade Labelling Organizations International
1997 (3)
Broad coalition of NGOs and consumer groups
Guarantee developing country producers a fair price, improve working conditions
Marine Aquarium Council
1998 (4)
Environmental NGOs, aquarium industry, public aquariums, and hobbyist groups
Conserve marine ecosystems through promotion of responsible aquarium trade
Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification
1999
European forest owner associations
Sustainable forest management
Fair Labour Association
2001 (5)
Industry, Clinton administration, consumer and labour rights organizations
End sweatshop conditions in factories
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil Certification System
2007 (6)
WWF and Unilever
Promote growth and use of sustainable palm oil
Aquaculture Stewardship Council
2010
WWF with participants of the Aquaculture Dialogues
Responsible fish farming
(1) 1993 was the year the Rainforest Alliance certified the first two tropical farms under its agricultural certification program. (2) Initially an industry code of conduct with mandatory self-reporting for members of the American Forest and Paper Association, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative provided for voluntary third-party verification in 1998. (3) Fair Trade Labelling Organizations International united 15 separate initiatives. (4) The Marine Aquarium Council ceased to exist in 2008. (5) 2001 was the year the Fair Labour Association established an independent auditing system. (6) A certification system for sustainable palm oil was launched at the fifth roundtable meeting in 2007. Source: Adapted from Gulbrandsen (2010).
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 235 access or price premiums are expected to flow from this process, other producers would be more inclined to adopt certification standards, resulting in the further spread and uptake of the programmes. Ecolabels are therefore assumed to rely mainly on the moral persuasion of consumers and strategic market moves by producers and retailers (e.g., Jordan et al., 2003, p. 11). The evidence suggests, however, that this conventional model of consumer-driven demand for sustainability certification is far too simplistic. Indeed, the model has already given way to much more nuanced perspectives on the demand and supply of sustainability certification programmes (see next section).
Boycotts, Buycotts, and the Supply of New Institutions One strand of research focuses on the central role of NGOs, social movement organizations, and transnational advocacy networks in creating demand for and supply of sustainability certification. As markets and production networks have surpassed national jurisdictions and systems of governance, NGOs and transnational advocacy coalitions have increasingly targeted producers directly and put pressure on companies along their value chains, in effect facilitating demand for certification (Mayer & Gereffi, 2010). Research has found that many producers decided to participate in certification programmes only when faced with intensive social movement campaigns. The focal targets of such campaigns were retailers and well-known brands near the distribution end of global supply chains (Bartley, 2003, 2007; Cashore et al., 2004; Gulbrandsen, 2006). In targeting producers and buyers that are strategically positioned along global supply chains, NGOs have sought to reconstruct business motives and markets in favour of sustainability certification using a combination of sticks (such as boycott campaigns) and carrots (like buycott campaigns). Campaigns have focused on problems ranging from working conditions and wages to child labour, human rights, and unsustainable natural resource management and have often been directed at highly visible, global companies like Nike, Ikea, Nestlé, Walmart, Unilever, and Shell (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Nongovernmental organizations have enrolled consumers in such campaigns to coerce companies into dialogue on standard-setting (Boström & Klintman, 2008; Gulbrandsen, 2006). But they have also enticed companies with the benefits of cooperation, such as opportunities to improve their public reputation and strengthen their brands and to gain access to markets and increase sales (Cashore et al., 2004; Gulbrandsen, 2006, 2010). Retailers and professional purchasers have responded to NGO activism by committing to address matters of concern in their supply chains. A common business response has been to put pressure on producers to adopt sustainability certification schemes that could improve social and environmental conditions at the site of production. The structure of global supply chains facilitated the rapid spread and expansion of many certification initiatives. In the forest sector, for example, a relatively small group of giant retailers purchased a significant proportion of the forest products traded internationally (Klooster, 2005, p. 408). The demand for certified wood from large retailers and brands
236 Lars H. Gulbrandsen effectively convinced or pressured many producers to certify. Rather than representing a costly tool, certification gave retailers and brands a useful means of exerting “control at a distance” over their suppliers (Ponte & Gibbon, 2005, p. 22). While boycott and buycott campaigns have been critical in creating demand for sustainability certification, NGO efforts to facilitate the supply of certification programmes have been equally important. Nongovernmental organizations and social movement organizations have supplied certification programmes to an increasing number of areas, including forestry, fisheries, aquaculture, sustainable tourism, palm oil production, and soy production (Auld, 2014; Boström & Klintman, 2008; Conroy, 2007, Gulbrandsen, 2010). These institutional entrepreneurs have created or supported a range of certification initiatives and worked to spread the certification idea across industries and sectors. The WWF, in particular, has played a central role in the launch of a range of certification initiatives. The WWF was central in the creation of the FSC, and has since helped to form sustainability certification schemes for fisheries, the marine aquarium trade, palm oil, soy oil, and fish farming (see Table 11.1). In short, this strand of research shows that NGO-orchestrated campaigns and their entrepreneurial efforts have been critical in creating demand for and supply of sustainability certification.
Individual and Collective Business Interests Another research strand takes businesses—and sometimes business associations— as the unit of analysis and examines how individual or collective business interests may facilitate the establishment of voluntary standards and programmes (Auld & Gulbrandsen, 2013, p. 395). From this perspective, the emergence of certification schemes and other voluntary programmes is driven by the desire of businesses to protect their reputation, provide credible information to the market, and/or gain competitive advantages. Research has identified a number of individual and collective business motives for participating in and promoting certification schemes. Beginning with individual motives, companies may adopt or support certification in order to build an individual, firm-specific reputation or sustainability brand. To gain a competitive advantage through differentiation, a company seeks uniqueness and superior performance along a certain dimension valued by existing or potential buyers (Delmas et al., 2004; Porter, 1985). By distinguishing themselves from rivals, companies can create a public reputation as greener or more responsible than the competition, possibly resulting in a price premium on labelled products or greater sales and market shares. A related motive is to reap first-mover operational advantages through early adoption of private regulation (Auld et al., 2008; Green, 2014). First movers who are able to shape rules and standards can tailor the provisions to match their technical and operational requirements, leaving late movers with higher switching costs (Mattli & Büthe, 2003). Early engagement with certification programmes can give first movers a significant advantage over late movers, who are likely to face technical and financial hurdles preventing them from upgrading operations and meeting market requirements.
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 237 Turning to collective business motives, industry associations can create or support industrywide certification programmes to improve the industry’s reputation. Because environmental and social reputations can reflect on the industry as a whole—not merely individual firms—all companies could potentially benefit from working together and endorsing collective solutions (Gunningham & Rees, 1997). The Responsible Care programme of the chemical industry, for example, was an effort to improve the industry’s reputation following the 1984 Bhopal disaster in India, considered the world’s worst industrial accident (Prakash, 2000). Alternatively, a group of frontrunner companies could adopt certification to protect and improve their reputation as environmentally and socially responsible business leaders. Some scholars argue that voluntary programmes produce nonrival but potentially excludable benefits to their members, such as improved environmental reputation (Prakash & Potoski, 2006). According to this approach, certification programmes can be conceptualized as clubs that induce members to voluntarily improve environmental performance and exclude free riding (see also Potoski & Prakash, 2009).Yet another collective business interest is the motive to support certification programmes that would add consistency and harmonize rules in issue areas governed by a multitude of regulatory initiatives and standards (Auld, 2014; Fransen, 2015). The establishment of an authoritative certification organization that would harmonize standards may reduce transaction costs and complexity for global businesses. Broad uptake of harmonized standards would level the playing field between highly visible and NGO-targeted firms who have been pressured to commit to sustainability standards and those who have not.
Critical Business Scholarship A related but distinct strand of business research adopts a critical perspective to understand how corporations exert political power in global environmental politics (Auld & Gulbrandsen, 2013, p. 396). Critical business scholarship has demonstrated that businesses exert power both inside intergovernmental negotiations and outside the traditional arena of multilateral treaty negotiations (Dauvergne, 2008; Falkner, 2003, 2008; Fuchs, 2007; Levy & Newell, 2005). Rather than noting the transformative potential of nonstate regulation in the social and environmental field, advocates of this perspective tend to see sustainability certification initiatives as reinforcing neoliberal globalization (e.g., Guthman, 2007; Klooster, 2010). Related work has demonstrated how big multinational corporations seeking to profit from sustainability branding efforts have embraced the sustainability agenda in general and certification schemes in particular (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013). Demand for “industry-friendly” standards has been an important business motive behind their support of certification programmes. For example, forest industry and landowner associations in many countries responded quickly to the emergence of the FSC by creating industry-friendly, national-level certification programmes with more flexible and discretionary standards (Auld et al., 2008; Cashore et al., 2004; Gulbrandsen, 2004;). The FSC’s governance structure and relatively prescriptive standards motivated forest
238 Lars H. Gulbrandsen industries and landowners in many countries to establish schemes that gave forest owners greater influence over rule-making processes and provide standards that, at least initially, paid less attention to environmental and social criteria for sustainable forestry and more to economic criteria (Gulbrandsen, 2004). Another example is the apparel industry’s labour rights scheme—Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production (WRAP)—that emerged in response to the NGO-sponsored Fair Labor Association (Abbott & Snidal, 2009, p. 76). These examples illustrate how demand for private regulatory choice can work counter to the drive for consistency and harmonization (Auld & Gulbrandsen, 2013, p. 400). They also demonstrate that companies and industry associations can respond to NGO-supported certification schemes with relatively demanding standards by creating industry-friendly schemes with less prescriptive and more flexible standards. While some see the rise of certification and ecolabelling programmes as evidence of political consumerism’s transformative potential (e.g., Stolle & Micheletti, 2013), others fear the erosion of the certification movement’s transformative agenda by companies merely seeking to greenwash their own brands (e.g., Maniates & Meyer, 2010). A major challenge facing social movement and NGO certification initiatives is the mainstreaming of certification markets caused by the pursuit of large-volume markets and business partnerships with large traders, distributors, and retailers. According to Raynolds and Murray (2007), the mainstreaming of fair trade is engaging supermarket chains such as Tesco, which had little visible commitment to social justice principles, and corporations like Nestlé and Chiquita, which were infamous for their exploitative practices in developing countries. Fair trade, they fear, may end up as little more than a “clean washing” tool for such companies (Raynolds & Murray, 2007, p. 226). The parallel to sustainability certification is its endorsement by giant companies like Unilever, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Home Depot, IKEA, and Walmart (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; Gulbrandsen, 2010). Fears of the erosion of the certification movement’s transformative agenda by companies seeking to “fairwash” or “greenwash” their brand names seem justified in this context (Conroy, 2007; Maniates & Meyer, 2010). On balance, most scholars seem to agree that fair trade and sustainability certification cannot simply be reduced to fairwashing and greenwashing campaigns orchestrated by big business interests. Certification programmes vary widely across several attributes, including origins and objectives, standard stringency and scope, and support of NGOs and industry associations. Any examination of greenwashing claims needs to carefully consider these programme characteristics and the “on-the-ground” impact of the programme (Bernstein & Cashore, 2007). With regard to addressing global environmental and social challenges effectively, however, critical business scholarship maintains that sustainability certification provides an inadequate counterbalance to greater economic incentives for resource exploitation and environmental degradation. Scholarship based on this perspective is also aware of the danger that sustainability certification programmes can be captured and mainstreamed by big business interests, ultimately rendering them unable to radically transform business practices and resolve the problems the programmes were established to do.
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 239
Institutional Arrangements and Governance Interactions This strand of research takes institutions for nonstate governance as the unit of analysis, focusing on the rules, procedures, and organizational structures created by nonstate actors to govern behaviour. In the context of sustainability certification, scholars have examined certification programmes as governing institutions that assemble various stakeholders, regulate their interactions, and provide opportunities for learning and mutual adaptation of behaviour. One vein of this research has an explanatory agenda, examining how and why nonstate actors create particular institutional arrangements and with what consequences for transparency, accountability, credibility, and legitimacy (e.g., Auld & Gulbrandsen, 2010; Boström & Garsten, 2008; Cashore, 2002; ; Fransen & Kolk, 2007; Gulbrandsen & Auld, 2016). Another vein takes a normative and prescriptive approach, examining to what extent and how institutions for nonstate governance measure up to principles of democratic rulemaking, accountability, transparency, and stakeholder participation (e.g., Abbott & Snidal 2009; Dingwerth, 2007; Dingwerth & Pattberg, 2006; Meidinger, 2006; Miller & Bush, 2014; van der Ven, 2015). As the number and diversity of nonstate certification programmes have expanded, scholars have begun to examine programme interaction. Some scholars are looking at how individual programmes are influenced by interactions with other programmes. For example, work on forest certification has identified the strategic use of public comparisons between certification programmes to exert upward pressure on programmes with lenient standards and requirements (Overdevest, 2010). This research has informed subsequent work on how forest certification and other nonstate governance programmes can be understood as forms of experimental governance that advance collective learning in the private regulatory field (Overdevest & Zeitlin, 2014). Other work has used the concept of an organizational field to understand the emerging constellations of transnational private regulators (Bartley & Smith, 2007; Dingwerth & Pattberg, 2009). Researchers have also begun to examine the evolution and effects of meta-governance efforts—arrangements to create order and coordination across a number of standards. One example is work on the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling (ISEAL) Alliance (e.g., Loconto & Fouilleux, 2014), which defines best practices for nonstate social and environmental certification programmes. Network- analytical approaches, focusing on nonstate regulator constellations, have revealed the proliferation of other efforts at meta-governance alongside ISEAL (Fransen, 2015). A related area of research focuses on public–private governance interaction in the sustainability certification field. Unlike some who claim that private authority could serve as a substitute for public authority in “areas of limited statehood,” particularly in developing countries (e.g., Börzel & Risse, 2010), work on certification demonstrates that global standards are layered onto an existing matrix of institutions that can reconfigure the standards in myriad ways (e.g., Bartley, 2011). Research shows that states can influence nonstate certification programmes at all stages of the regulatory process from agenda-setting to negotiation of standards and on to implementation,
240 Lars H. Gulbrandsen monitoring, and enforcement (Abbott & Snidal, 2009; Boström, 2003; Gale & Haward, 2011; Gulbrandsen, 2014; Lister, 2011; Tollefson et al., 2008). The evidence suggests that private regulation represents not a power shift away from governments and towards nonstate institutions, but rather a movement towards more complex systems of governance involving both private and public actors (Abbott & Snidal, 2009; Falkner, 2003; Ruggie, 2004). To summarize, various scholarly debates have informed our understanding of the emergence and evolution of sustainability certification programmes. These debates shed light on different aspects of institutional emergence and change. While different analytical lenses sometimes lead to contradictory or conflicting conclusions, each of them contributes to a fuller and richer understanding of the conditions that influence the emergence and evolution of these programmes.
Conclusions This chapter has examined the role of globalization and governance gaps as precursors to the rise of new institutions in the shape of sustainability certification programmes. Although globalization is often spoken of in terms of its adverse effects on the environment and society, it has also offered unprecedented and previously inaccessible opportunities. On the one hand, trade liberalization, capital movements, and other developments associated with economic globalization left governments unable to address an array of global challenges, resulting in perceived governance gaps. On the other hand, globalized supply chains and the growth of transnational advocacy networks have provided new opportunities for harnessing market forces to fill the existing or emergent governance gaps. At the macro-level, the chapter has therefore highlighted how globalization processes created dynamics and tensions, which in combination created the conditions for sustainability certification to emerge. Moving from structural, macro-level explanations to scholarly debates on sustainability certification, the conventional model of consumer-driven demand for sustainability certification programmes has given way to much more nuanced perspectives on the demand and supply of such programmes. One strand of research shows that many of the central business motives for participating in certification programmes are shaped by NGO activism and campaigns. Retailers and well-known brands near the distribution end of global supply chains were targeted by NGOs and transnational activist networks. These retailers and brands resisted attempts to make them legally liable for social and environmental conditions at the site of production, but they responded to NGO activism by committing to address conditions in their supply chains. Specifically, they began to put pressure on their suppliers to adopt sustainability certification schemes and improve practices at the site of production. In this sense, the emergence of certification programmes proved a win-win situation for many retailers and brands; they avoided NGO targeting, while shifting the cost of quality control and
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 241 monitoring onto their suppliers. However, companies still risk criticism for greenwashing and the like, especially if they opt for other certification schemes than those advocated by the NGOs. Another strand of research takes businesses—and sometimes business associations— as the unit of analysis in an examination of how individual and collective business interests can facilitate the establishment of voluntary standards and programmes. Researchers have identified several reasons why businesses would want to adopt sustainability certification, including protecting their reputation, providing credible information to the market, or gaining competitive advantages. A related but distinct area of research adopts a critical perspective to examine how demand for private regulatory choice became an important business motive for creating or supporting certification programmes with an industry-friendly approach to sustainability certification. Research applying this perspective has shown, among other things, what businesses do to protect their interests both inside and outside certification programmes. The studies reviewed in this chapter highlight the importance of various forms of political consumerism for the rise of sustainability certification programmes. They also reveal a rich array of other factors of critical importance to the emergence and evolution of sustainability certification programmes. Key factors include characteristics of the programme founders; the central role played by institutional entrepreneurs such as the WWF; strategic coalition building among nonstate actors supporting emergent certification programmes; individual and collective business interests in managing risk and reputational issues; business demand for consistency and harmonization; and, counter to this drive, demand for private regulatory choice and the influence of intergovernmental processes and national governments in facilitating, or impeding, nonstate governance efforts at all stages of the regulatory process. Such factors need to be considered in future research in order to understand the demand and supply of sustainability certification programmes and their full potential to govern the practices of global production, distribution, and consumption. Returning to the macro-level, the expansion of global capitalism and the growth of social movement efforts to control global capitalism facilitated, as noted above, the emergence of sustainability certification programmes. But this peculiar combination of contradictory forces also created tensions that help us understand the persistent power struggles between NGOs and business interests both inside and outside nonstate certification programmes, as well as related challenges facing such programmes. One such challenge is to maintain sustainability certification’s unique message as part of a movement based on an alternative vision of trade and economic development as it is mainstreamed into global supply chains controlled by powerful retailers demanding high quality, large quantities, and uniform product characteristics. Another challenge is to maintain balanced stakeholder representation insofar as certification programmes are seeking greater industry support, producer uptake, and market penetration. There is clearly a risk that NGOs can become marginalized when they join forces with powerful industries and giant retailers, whose demands may dilute the environmental and social objectives of certification programmes.
242 Lars H. Gulbrandsen Future research should examine whether and how institutions promoting political consumerism can maintain their unique message and ensure balanced stakeholder representation while being mainstreamed into global commodity markets. Scholars approaching the subject will also need to pay greater attention to the tensions and challenges springing from efforts to maintain a vision of uniqueness and steps to mainstream functions within these institutions. Most certification standards are applied to existing models of production and geared towards improving management practices and operations. How far sustainability certification programmes will be able to go in promoting alternative models of production, such as community-based forestry operations, worker co-operatives, and small-scale operations, is a key question. Will the various forms of political consumerism be able to prevent the marginalization of NGOs and social groups during the mainstreaming of certification programmes into global commodity markets? In what ways do consumer preferences and consumerism influence the management of these tensions as certification programmes are institutionalized, professionalized, and bureaucratized? How will the support of various stakeholders be affected by (i) the certification programme’s evolving policies and targets, (ii) who gets to influence the programme’s decisions, and (iii) the accountability mechanisms the programme adopts to signal its determination to pursue its policies? More comparative research will help us better understand these critical issues. Single-case studies remain a useful design for researchers wanting to test theories and causal mechanisms through process tracing, developing theoretical concepts and propositions, or exploring the workings of individual programmes. Valuable as this research is, future scholarship should also seek to apply the insights gained from single-case studies to inform and enrich systematic comparative research on sustainability certification programmes. Researchers have begun to compare different programmes in the same sector (such as NGO-backed and industry-supported certification programmes) and different programmes across sectors (such as forestry, fisheries, and agriculture). Research designs may also involve comparison of similar companies that choose to adopt or not adopt certification standards, comparison of industries that are and are not subject to various forms of political consumerism, and comparison of standard adoption and implementation in different places. Future studies should be cumulative and could combine qualitative and quantitative methods, including sophisticated survey designs and large N-studies of companies, standards, and/or institutions, to enhance our understanding of the potential and limitations of various institutions promoting political consumerism.
Acknowledgements I am grateful to Simon Bush and the editors for constructive comments on earlier drafts, Graeme Auld for helpful discussions in the early stages of this work, and Chris Saunders for excellent language editing.
Globalization, Governance Gaps, Emergence of New Institutions 243
Note 1. FAOSTAT Forestry Database http://www.fao.org/forestry/statistics/80938/en/.
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Chapter 12
C oncep tua l i z i ng P olitical C on sume ri sm as Part of th e G l oba l Value Cha i n Gavin Fridell
The process of conceptualizing political consumerism and its impact on global value chains (GVC) brings with it many challenges. As highlighted in the introduction of this handbook, political consumerism as a concept and a key form of social and political engagement has expanded considerably since the 1980s. The globalization of supply chains, along with neoliberal reforms promoting market liberalization; government austerity; the privatization of public assets; and deregulation in labour, social welfare, and environmental spheres, have given impetus to market-oriented movements seeking to promote political and ethical goals through boycotts, buycotts, “discursive political consumerism,” and lifestyle choices (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Key challenges emerge in that the very social, economic, and political dynamics that have paralleled and inspired the growth of political consumerism also raise barriers to its effectiveness. The globalization of supply chains has increased the “distancing” between sites of production and consumption, which raises the question as to whether political consumerism offers tools to better understand and hopefully bridge this widening gap. The changing nature of the state has led to a declining ability or willingness to regulate markets. Can political consumerism compensate for this decline or promote new visions of political regulation? The expansion of global market imperatives has raised demands on quality and speed while often placing downward pressure on prices and income throughout the supply chain. Thus, another question that arises is whether political consumerism can translate social and environmental concerns into meaningful impacts and improvements along
250 Gavin Fridell these same chains (Boström, 2015; De Neve, 2009; McClearn, 2013; Selwyn, 2016; Wells, 2009) (see Chapter 38). This chapter explores these challenges by examining research on how we can conceptualize and gauge the impact of political consumerism on global value chains. Emphasis is placed on corporate codes of conduct and third-party certification projects (such as fair trade, organic verification, and the Rainforest Alliance), which represent attempts by corporations and consumer and other social movements to adopt “extended responsibility” for conditions along global value chains (Boström, 2015) (see Chapter 11). A great deal of research on political consumerism is dominated by questions around these certification schemes, viewed as a form of “buycotting” that, under the right conditions, can have wider impacts on “discursive political consumerism”—how we use “communication and deliberation . . . to change how people view consumption and how corporations assess their social responsibility” (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, p. 171). Much research focuses on the motivations for citizens, social movements, and corporations to participate in political consumerism for a range of moral, political, strategic, and profit-driven objectives (Garriga & Melé, 2004; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013) (see Chapters 36, 37 and 4). Research efforts also focus on how private governance initiatives develop, attain legitimacy, establish conventions and standards, receive stakeholder input, and change over time (Auld, 2014; Pattberg, 2005; Ponte & Sturgeon, 2014)— encapsulated by Hallström and Boström’s (2010) ideas of exploring “input” and “throughput” legitimacy. This chapter focuses instead on an equally significant body of work that has sought to conceptualize the “output legitimacy” of political consumerism and to examine the fundamental question of whether there are indications that the purchase of labelled goods actually contributes to problem solving. In short, how effective are political consumerist projects in improving the social and environmental impacts of global value chains? The first part of this chapter explores attempts to theorize global “chains” and how their key concepts, terms, and assumptions have been applied to analyse political consumerism. Particular emphasis is placed on the GVC and similar approaches and how the metaphor of a value chain has been utilized to assess third-party and corporate codes of conduct and their impacts on conditions of production. The second part examines critiques of the GVC approach by those who have suggested it downplays local social relations, overemphasizes private governance by transnational corporations, employs an overly deterministic framework, and neglects commodities that do not easily fit into a GVC typology. The chapter then explores new directions for conceptualizing the relationship between production and consumption, including proposals to modify the GVC approach or to develop entirely different frameworks, as advanced by proponents of the system of provision (SOP) and global poverty chain (GPC) approaches. The chapter concludes with reflections on the need for further research that explores and expands on these emerging, critical insights.
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 251
Theorizing Globalized Production: From Supply Chains to Value Chains Given the wide and diverse array of research on globalized production and consumption, it can be difficult to sort out what concepts to begin with and why. Why use the idea of a global value chain in the first place? As Simon R. Bush et al. (2014) observe, research on global value chains has been just one tradition among others focused on supply chains, commodity chains, or production networks. These scholars explore nonstate forms of private governance and their impacts on sustainable production and consumption by building off of four broad approaches that have grown in popularity since the 1990s. First, the supply chain management (SCM) approach, emerging out of business administration, economics, and information technology, has focused on how to best manage firms across supply chains. Within this approach, considerations around sustainability and stakeholders’ needs have been folded into the management activities of firms, centred on microeconomic issues around competition, strategy, operational effectiveness, the business environment, supply sources, transportation and logistics, and the role of government in promoting efficient local clusters within the global economy (Bush et al., 2014, p. 2; Porter, 2000). In contrast, the other three approaches compared by Bush et al. emerged out of political economy traditions and have been more macro-scale, situating production and consumption within the social and historical dynamics of global capitalism. The second approach, the global commodity chain (GCC) approach, which emerged out of World Systems Theory, has explored the commodity chain within the context of a highly unequal global division of labour that results in wealth and power flowing unevenly into the hands of ‘lead firms’ that coordinate chains in their interest. The third approach, the GVC approach, developed out of a shift in conceptualization from the GCC approach that some consider to be fairly modest (Bair, 2009b; Bush et al., 2014; Ponte & Sturgeon, 2014)—in fact, it is often difficult to distinguish research on the GCC and GVC approaches. The GVC approach depicts chain coordination as stemming from socially embedded governance structures, which are still dominated by lead firms but involve other actors as well, such as government or social movements. The turn from “commodity” to “value” is often not clearly defined, but it has entailed a greater focus on transaction cost economics, industrial organization, and the complexity and codification of information (Bair, 2009b; Bush et al., 2014; Sturgeon, 2009). Perhaps most significantly, it has involved, as Bush et al. (2014, p. 3) observe, greater focus on “the concept of value added, which fits with an overall focus on economic development, where human, natural and material capital is transformed into economic rents and accumulated through an interconnected capitalist system.” The GVC approach also places more emphasis on economic development and the prospects of subordinate actors using various forms of upgrading and forward integration to improve their position in the chain.
252 Gavin Fridell Finally, Bush et al. point to a fourth approach, the global production network (GPN) approach, which focuses on “the socially and territorially embedded nature of production and consumption” (Bush et al., 2014, p. 3) and places more emphasis on a wide variety of nonfirm actors and distinct regulatory, cultural, and institutional environments. With its emphasis on the spatial distribution of production across “networks,” the GPN approach seeks to move beyond the linear movement of goods implied by the notion of a chain, although in practice much GPN research has focused on the chain in a production network in a manner similar to the other approaches (Bush et al., 2014; Coe et al., 2008). Consequently, it is possible to speak broadly of “one distinct GCC/GVC/ GPN ‘family’ ” (Bush et al., 2014, p. 3) that is increasingly converging (see also Ponte & Sturgeon, 2014, p. 219). Drawing from Bush et al., this chapter will employ the notion of a broad GCC/ GVC/GPN family. Precise focus, however, will be given to global value chains, given that much GPN literature has not focused on political consumerism (Bush et al., 2014, p. 3) and that the research on GCCs and GVCs can often be indistinguishable; it is, in some senses, a matter of terminology. In this discussion the preferred concept is “value,” building on arguments that it better fits an array of products (beyond primary commodities like coffee or tea); incorporates nonmaterial values embedded in commodities around quality standards, symbolic attributes, and civic and domestic norms; and points to the ways in which surplus value is extracted from human labour along the chain (Bair, 2009a; Daviron & Ponte, 2005; Ponte & Sturgeon, 2014; Sturgeon, 2009). The GCC and GVC approaches both begin with the concept of a chain as “a network of labour and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity” (Hopkins & Wallerstein, 1994). Methodologically, the chain itself is a metaphor, intended as a “heuristic tool” with no precise boundaries or exclusive objects of study (Bair, 2009a, p. 15; Sturgeon et al., 2008, p. 302). Whereas neoclassical trade theory depicts economic agents as independent from one another, connected by isolated economic transactions in a free market, the GVC approach emphasizes the ways in which firms are in fact linked in a chain informally coordinated by lead firms. Lead firms “govern” informal institutional frameworks based on their economies of scale and power and control over such things as market access, marketing budgets, and the normative work required to engage with nonfirm actors to determine quality conventions (Bair, 2009b; Daviron & Ponte, 2005; Fold & Pritchard, 2005; Gereffi & Korzeniewicz, 1994; Gibbon & Ponte, 2005; Ponte, 2009; Ponte & Sturgeon, 2014; Raynolds, 2002; Talbot, 2004). A characteristic example of lead firms are “the small number of hugely powerful lead firms that drive the automotive industry” (Sturgeon et al., 2008, p. 297). Since the mid-1980s, the auto industry has transitioned from being nationally rooted in major production centres to being an integrated global industry, with distinct regional patterns centred on Asia, Europe, and North America. At the top of the value chain are a dozen or so major transnational corporations (headed by Toyota, Volkswagen, Ford, Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai) that use their immense purchasing power to control and influence hundreds of suppliers (themselves increasingly globalized firms) driving such things as technical design, operating and labour costs, timing, and factory locations
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 253 (Sturgeon et al., 2008). Founding thinkers of the GVC approach, Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz (1994), originally focused on two forms of lead-firm-dominated chain governance: “producer-driven” chains, where powerful manufacturing companies (such as those in the automotive industry) lead the chain; and “buyer-driven” chains, where the chain is driven by giant retail firms linked with countless small subcontractors (such as Walmart, Target, Christian Dior, or Nike in the apparel industry). Since then, the approach has led to an “evolving classificatory scheme” (Fine, 2013a, p. 230) around new types of governance structures (Bair, 2009b; Gereffi et al., 2005; Raynolds & Wilkinson, 2007). The GVC framework has become a compelling methodological framework for documenting, describing, analysing, and assessing the impact of political consumerist campaigns on corporate chain governance. While originally emphasizing the economic decisions of transnational lead firms, over the years the GVC approach has placed growing attention on a range of institutions, from social movements, labour unions, and industry associations to cultural norms, state policies, legal standards, and industry codes (Boström, 2015; Tallontire et al., 2005). The GVC researchers exploring political consumerism have been central to driving these changes. To explore the impact of political consumerism, greater attention needed to be paid to sites of production (discussed in the following section) and to the impact of “noneconomic” actors on chain governance (Raynolds et al., 2007). Consequently, GVC researchers began incorporating social movement theories in their research design to examine how movements concerned with issues of health, social justice, the environment, and ethics could pressure corporations and initiate “innovative forms of economic coordination” (Raynolds et al., 2007; Raynolds & Wilkinson, 2007, p. 36). GVC researchers also began to draw on convention theory to analyse the standards, symbols, patterns, values, and attributes used to assess quality and how they are embedded in socially constructed norms and institutions— involving not solely matters of taste or appearance but also civic and domestic norms connected to trust, place, justice, and social and environmental welfare (Bush et al., 2014; Daviron & Ponte, 2005; Ponte, 2009; Raynolds & Wilkinson, 2007, p. 37) The expanded GVC framework, and similar approaches, have been employed in numerous studies on the impact of a range of codes and conventions and their auditing, monitoring, and benchmarking procedures. Examples are third-party certification; trade association codes such as the Global Good Agricultural Practice; multistakeholder arrangements (such as the Forest Stewardship Council, the Ethical Trading Initiative, and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil); independent CSR programs; government codes (around such things as safety, health, and the environment); quality conventions promoted by media, industry, and celebrities; and (to a much lesser extent) Southern producer and exporter codes and projects (C. Bacon, 2005; Boström, 2015; Bush et al., 2014; Cramer et al., 2014, p. 16; De Neve, 2009; Elder & Dauvergne, 2015; Hoebink et al., 2014; LeBaron & Lister, 2015; Nelson & Martin, 2013; Oya et al., 2017; Raynolds et al., 2007; Richey & Ponte, 2011; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, pp. 236–243; Tallontire et al., 2005). Frequently, the method employed has been the case study approach, involving a single case or several cases in comparison. The focus of the case studies is usually a specific
254 Gavin Fridell value chain or agents and projects within a chain. The case study approach allows for the investigation of a distinct case “as a whole” embedded in its particular social, political, and historical context. When used comparatively, case studies provide a frame of reference to make statements about generalities and peculiarities of complex structures and processes and to develop explanatory and theoretical arguments (Nissen, 1998; Steinmetz, 2004). Comparative case studies have frequently been employed in the GVC literature, which has compared different chains to develop and expand typologies and conceptual tools (Bair, 2009b; Talbot, 2004, 2009). This has been mirrored in the GVC literature on the politics of consumption. For example, Raynolds (2007) and Raynolds and Long (2007) have used a GVC approach to explore differences, similarities, and tensions between conventional and fairtrade banana chains, or between the Alternative Trade Organization and certification/labelling segments of the fairtrade network. The dominant method of investigation has frequently involved qualitative research based on a mixture of interviews and focus groups, document analysis (often a systematic reading of codes of conduct, industry publications, consumer magazines, institutional reports, or media coverage), participant observation, data mapping, and archival research. While few works explicitly state the precise nature of their comparative method, most employ what can be termed a “constant comparative method” (Thomas, 2016). This involves rounds of data reading and analysis, comparing elements, coding them, and developing core concepts and themes. These themes are then mapped and measured up against the theoretical framework to determine what assumptions have been questioned or confirmed and what new insights have emerged.
The Global Impact of Political Consumerism A common critique of the GVC approach (discussed further in the next section) is that it overemphasizes the activities of large private firms in driving the chain while downplaying the local class, gender, and race relations under which work and exploitation take place (Boström, 2015; Selwyn, 2015; Taylor, 2011; Wells, 2009). The GVC research on political consumerism has sought to address this critique by extending analysis from how power is distributed along the value chain toward placing more attention on “the production end of the chain” (Tallontire et al., 2005, p. 563). Among the most impactful of this work has been the research of Stephanie Barrientos, Catherine Dolan, and Anne Tallontire, who have investigated the gendered economy of value chains and ethical trade (Barrientos et al., 2003; Tallontire et al., 2005). To explore this, they conducted in-depth research into codes of conduct applied to African horticulture, paying specific attention to the gendered division of labour and the reproductive economy (including unpaid domestic work and childcare required for the economy to function) and how men and women experience different employment conditions as a result (Barrientos et al., 2003; Tallontire et al., 2005) (see also Chapter 26). They conducted a systematic gendered mapping of codes of conduct developed by Northern buyers, Northern trade associations, African producer and exporter groups,
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 255 and a range of independent initiatives and stakeholder forums (such as the Ethical Trading Initiative, the International Code of Conduct for Cut Flowers, and fair trade). They divided the initiatives into independent social codes, company codes, and sectoral codes and mapped their general content (are there standards for such things as auditing, environmental standards, collective bargaining, forced and child labour, discrimination, living wages?) and gender issues (are there standards for such things as maternity leave, child care, equal pay, sexual harassment?). This provided a framework to assess the gendered limitations of the codes themselves and to compare the codes to their actual “on the ground” impact on the basis of interviews and focus groups with 261 workers from 17 farms and packinghouses in Kenya, South Africa, and Zambia. On the basis of their research, Barrientos et al. argued that the potential benefits of codes of conduct were offset by intense downward pressure on prices, strict production standards, and “just-in-time” delivery schedules imposed by the same firms elaborating the codes. These pressures encouraged the use of informal, seasonal, and casual employment; and jobs that are disproportionally held by women, whose paid work opportunities are limited by their responsibilities for reproductive work. As a result, women “face intensified gender risks, such as lack of reproductive rights, maternity leave and childcare, and do not have adequate job security or employment protection to cope with those risks” (Barrientos et al., 2003, p. 1523). Recent research, also based on extensive fieldwork in the form of interviews, focus groups, and document analysis, has confirmed many of the conclusions of Barrientos et al. around the limited benefits of codes of conduct for women, informal workers, and poor workers in general. One report, examining fair trade and UTZ Certified coffee in seven regions of Ethiopia, Uganda, and Kenya from 2008 to 2013, concluded that the overall impact was limited. Drawing on a value chain approach, the report argues, “Structural change of bargaining relations throughout the coffee chain hardly occurred” (Hoebink et al., 2014, p. 12). Another report, examining five cases of sustainably certified cocoa and tea farms in Ecuador, Ghana, and India, found some positive impacts but no indication that sustainability standards were “able to lift smallholder households out of poverty” (Nelson & Martin, 2013, p. 77). In particular, positive impacts on gender inequality were “very limited” and hired labourers were “not reached by sustainability standards” (Nelson & Martin, 2013, pp. 85–86). An even more somber conclusion was drawn from a report focused specifically on rural wage labourers on large non-certified and small fairtrade-certified coffee, flower, and tea plantations in Ethiopia and Uganda. The researchers determined that “the data suggest that those employed in areas where there are Fairtrade producer organisations are significantly worse paid, and treated, than those employed for wages in the production of the same commodities in areas without any Fairtrade certified institutions” (Cramer et al., 2014, p. 16). Adding to this, a recent systematic assessment by Oya et al. (2017) of 179 studies looking at a range of third-and second-party (industry-led) certification schemes determined that the overall impacts were mixed with “a dominance of weak or statistically non-significant effects” (Oya et al., 2017, p. 183): prices and access to schooling increased, but the impact on total household income was low or unclear,
256 Gavin Fridell and wages on certified farms were lower than on noncertified farms. These and similar research outcomes have fuelled criticism of codes of conduct for having only modest requirements, frequent failures to comply, little genuine input from workers, and little impact of supply chain pressures on wages and working conditions (Lievens, 2016; Vogt, 2016).
Beyond Global Value Chains While credited for developing rigorous and detailed description and analysis of specific chains, the GVC approach has also come under criticism from within (Boström, 2015; Bush et al., 2014; Talbot, 2009) and outside the tradition. Among the most frequent critiques from outside the approach has come from Marxian thinkers who argue that the GVC approach places too much emphasis on the relationship between economic agents (in particular large transnational firms) and the flow of value from South to North along global chains. This critique contains many elements and goes back to longstanding debates around World Systems Theory, which lies at the root of much of the GVC approach, as well as disagreements over the historical nature of capitalism (Bair, 2009a; Brenner, 1977; Wallerstein, 1974; Wood, 2002). Marxian critics argue that the GVC approach places too much emphasis on exchange relations along the global chain and not enough emphasis on the social relations of production in specific local and national contexts (Bernstein & Campling, 2006a, 2006b; Fine, 2013a; Selwyn, 2015; Starosta, 2010; Taylor, 2011; Wells, 2009). It is at the point of production, they argue, not exchange, where capitalist social relations set in motion the “imperatives” associated with the global market—competition, profit maximization, accumulation, and increasing labour productivity (Wood, 2002). Because of capitalism’s specific social relations and the centrality of private property, propertyless wage labourers must struggle to sell their labour power in competitive job markets, while those who own property (including small farmers and large firms) must remain profitable in competitive markets in order to survive or thrive and also maintain property ownership. It is these competitive pressures that have historically underpinned the rapid pace of modern economic growth (Brenner, 1985; McNally, 2006; Wood, 2002). Drawing on this understanding of capitalism, critics have asserted that the GVC approach, while “descriptively accurate,” often fails to understand the historical and social dynamics that drive value chains (Fine, 2013a; Starosta, 2010, p. 440). Why do lead firms act the way that they do? Why is power distributed so unevenly within the global division of labour? Lead firms exercise their power to appropriate surplus value along the chain, but what is the source of their power? Political philosopher Guido Starosta (2010, p. 441) argues that the GVC approach provides effective analysis of the “particular dimensions,” but fails to connect it to the “general dynamics of the ‘system as a whole.’ ” As a result, “the formation and dynamics of commodity chains simply presupposes what needs to be explained” (Starosta, 2010, p. 440).
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 257 From this general critique, as well as from concerns emerging from within the GVC tradition, several specific criticisms can be discerned. First, critics argue that the GVC approach minimizes the significance of local class, gender, and race relations under which work and exploitation take place. Surplus value does not just flow along the value chain but is extracted from labourers at specific places within the chain (Coe et al., 2008; Selwyn, 2015; Starosta, 2010; Taylor, 2011; Wells, 2009). This has ramifications not only for how we understand the global system but also for how we locate agency within value chains. In terms of the politics of consumption, a great deal of research has demonstrated major limitations for codes of conduct and ethical trade initiatives, which often have modest or no substantive impact on the lives of the poorest workers, unequal gender relations, or the conditions faced by migrant and temporary workers (Cramer et al., 2014, p. 16; Hoebink et al., 2014; Nelson & Martin, 2013; Oya et al., 2017; Tallontire et al., 2005). Specific local or national histories, contexts, and politics can often matter more than Northern-based initiatives (C. M. Bacon, 2015; Oya et al., 2017; Taylor, 2011; Wells, 2009). Assessing the gains made by several transnational antisweatshop campaigns, for example, Don Wells concludes that Northern efforts “were auxiliary to what were predominantly local struggles by workers and their allies” (emphasis in original, Wells, 2009, p. 572). Second, connected to the above, has been the neglect within much of the GVC literature on the significance of the state, itself grounded in specific local historical and social conditions. While GVC thinkers often acknowledge the state is important, their framework depicts it as one “institutional” player among others within the value chain. The state, however, is central to the reproduction of the social relations that underpin the capitalist economy and, by extension, global value chains (Coe et al., 2008; Fine, 2013a; Ngai & Chan, 2012; Selwyn, 2014). States regulate and manage relations around production, reproduction, and consumption; create and enforce contracts and laws governing market transactions; and provide or regulate social and economic infrastructure required for the economy to function (schools, hospitals, roads, shipping ports, and telecommunications) (Chang, 2008; Fridell, 2013, 2014). As in the case with the previous critique, this has ramifications for how we understand agency within value chains. States, even those that are relatively poor and marginalized, can play key roles in determining the outcomes of a country’s uneven location in the global division of labour. For example, both Guatemala and Costa Rica are Central American countries with long histories of colonialism, resulting in legacies of economic dependency on a limited range of export crops—traditionally, coffee and bananas. In the post–World War II era, Guatemala’s particular historical pattern of authoritarian governance, extreme inequality, and racism against the indigenous population led to state- orchestrated violence and genocide and the perpetuation of social injustice, poverty, and inequality. In Costa Rica, in contrast, a socially reformist, state-led development strategy, rooted in taxing and modernizing the coffee sector, resulted in significant gains in social welfare, democracy, and stability—today, the average Costa Rican’s life expectancy at birth is 79 years, the same as the United States (Fridell, 2014, pp. 37–43; Paige, 1997; Winson, 1989).1 In both cases, the country’s particular form of “coffee statecraft”
258 Gavin Fridell played a significant role in social outcomes—beyond what one might see from political consumerist campaigns at the global level (Fridell, 2014). Third, from a methodological standpoint, the GVC approach has been criticized for adopting rigid typologies that do not capture the complexity of the relationship between production and consumption. Determining there were limitations to the original focus on producer-driven versus buyer-driven chains, GVC researchers have elaborated and modified an expanding list of classification schemes and typologies (Bair, 2009a; Fine, 2013a; Ponte & Sturgeon, 2014). John Talbot (2009, p. 98), however, has argued that the new typologies do not address the core limitation that “none of these governance structures characterize the entire chain”—different firms may drive the chain along different nodes, and this can change significantly depending on time and place. Critics have argued that the focus on modifying and elaborating new typologies to adjust for social realities not previously considered reflects a weakness of the GVC approach. Conceptually, the approach can be considered overly deterministic and rigid, lacking the flexibility to explore the precise nature of specific commodities and the structures and agents outside of what defines the “chain” (Bernstein & Campling, 2006a, 2006b; Fine, 2013a; Starosta, 2010). This rigidity can also be seen in the GVC approach’s relationship to other social theories. Economist Ben Fine (2013a, p. 232) argues that much GVC work draws on a wide range of ideas and concepts from social theory, but often in “accidental” ways without systematic engagement, which results in a “failure to examine what defines and determines the chains themselves with this generally take as self-evident by virtue of case studies” (Fine, 2013a, pp. 231–232). In the case of the global jeans industry, for example, while a value chain might accurately capture how jeans flow from sites of production to consumption, Andrew Brooks (2015) argues that the broader dynamics underpinning the chain are often taken as given. Why do consumers expect cheap and disposal clothes, when for the vast majority of human history people owned only a few articles of clothing and used them for a long time? Why are clothes produced by relatively unskilled wage workers in factories when skilled, self-employed artisanal production dominated much of human history? Why is cotton assumed to be a cheap input—grown under often exploitative labour conditions—in the first place? These issues require situating chains within broader social and historical contexts rooted in colonialism, capitalism, and “centuries of uneven development” (Brooks, 2015, p. 35). A similar argument can be made in the case of the global coffee industry, where a focus on the chain itself can obscure the social and historical dynamics that are at the root of the chain. Why do consumers consider coffee to be a cheap everyday commodity in the first place? Why do millions of small coffee farmers exist, dependent on producing for the global market, as opposed to subsistence and local needs (Fridell, 2007, 2014; Topik, 2009)? Reflecting on the complex and unpredictable history of coffee as a global commodity, Topik suggests that a flexible use of a commodity chain can serve as a useful convention, as long as one recognizes that “although the word chain implies something deterministic, rigid, unidirectional, and functionalist, in fact the flows from
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 259 producers to consumers have been flexible, dynamic, and varied” (emphasis in original, Topik, 2009, pp. 37–38). Critics additionally argue that the GVC’s methodological focus on typologies has often led to research on particular kinds of commodities and industries and the neglect of others. Commodities such as coffee, tea, fresh fruit, and textiles have been particularly well suited to the study of GVCs; they are highly globalized with value chains that confirm ideal types. They are also “exotic” and ripe for deconstruction, as opposed to more “mundane” commodities that are often central to social life (Bernstein & Campling, 2006a, 2006b; Fine, 2013a). Frequently overlooked commodities include generic or private-label supermarket goods; producer and intermediate goods not destined for final consumption (raw materials, steel, energy); commodities that do not fit easily into ideal-type chains (such as housing and transportation systems); commodities produced by the state (health, education, welfare provision); or commodities produced for local, regional, South-South, or North-North circulation (Bernstein & Campling, 2006a, 2006b; Elder & Dauvergne, 2015; Fine, 2013a). The GVC’s emphasis, moreover, on vertical relations along global chains has led to a tendency to neglect key horizontal factors, including political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental factors at different places of the chain. This includes the impact of other actors on chains when they are not typically classified as lead firms, such as powerful financial companies, smaller firms without substantive buyer power, or public institutions and public enterprises (Boström, 2015; Bush et al., 2014; Fine, 2013b, p. 232; Fridell, 2015).
Rethinking Production and Consumption The above critiques have led to various responses assessing both the use of the GVC approach in studying political consumerism and the impact of political consumerism on global value chains. In terms of the approach itself, some researchers have drawn upon key concepts from the GVC framework, such as lead firms or governance, while rejecting GVC’s more rigid framing (Fridell, 2013; LeBaron & Lister, 2015), and they have paid more attention to “the actually existing dynamics of a world economy characterized by unevenness, planes of economic inequality, and racialized, politicized, and gendered structures of domination” (Havice & Campling, 2013, p. 2612). Others have adopted alternative approaches to studying political consumerism, focusing on single or multiple sites of production and consumption through rigorous ethnographic work (Lyon & Moberg, 2010; West, 2012), historical analysis (Anderson, 2015; Trentmann, 2008), or discursive and ideological critique (D. Goodman et al., 2014; M. K. Goodman, 2010; Kapoor, 2013). In terms of the impact that consumer politics has, or can have, on distant sites of production, many researchers have become quite critical, pointing to the ways in which
260 Gavin Fridell codes of conduct and social responsibility initiatives can allow transnational companies to download risk onto weaker suppliers, while selectively promoting claims that “verify” their activities positively and ignoring or concealing a range of negative impacts (Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; De Neve, 2009; LeBaron & Lister, 2015; McClearn, 2013; Selwyn, 2015). In my own work, I have argued that state-led projects regulating prices and managing markets, despite complexities and contradictions, have often had social impacts that were broader than market-driven projects like fair trade. The latter, however, have received more positive attention because they adhere to powerful Western social fantasies around individualism, voluntarism, and the exaggerated power of consumers (Fridell, 2013, 2014). Along similar lines, Michael Goodman (2010, p. 113) has argued that fair trade, over time, has had to shift its marketing strategy from revealing the lives of poor farmers and workers to more romantic images, in particular around celebrity, that “reflect more of our own selves back to our selves than it does on shining daylight on the global spaces of poverty, inequality and injustice however limited on coffee bags and websites.” Paige West (2012), drawing on ethnographic work in Papua New Guinea, points to the ways in which the imagery around sustainable coffee reveals more about the desires and fantasies of liberal consumers to guide the poor toward modernity than it does about the actual lives of coffee communities. Others have argued that both the GVC approach and consumer politics in practice can be adjusted to have a more positive impact on social and environmental sustainability. Boström (2015), for example, points to the limits of global chain approaches, in particular for overemphasizing powerful transnational firms to the neglect of a diverse array of buyers within the chain (including smaller firms and public institutions), and is critical of many shortcomings in conventional CSR, including the tendency toward “simple ritualistic monitoring,” which can hide the lack of genuine impact behind an “often quasi-scientific image of rationality and rigor in auditing” (Boström, 2015, pp. 239, 242). As an alternative, he proposes greater emphasis on trust than monitoring within global commodity chains; large buyers can devote more time to learning from suppliers and building “reflexive trust,” while an array of smaller buyers, who lack resources and power for extensive monitoring and impact, can work to build “basic trust” with suppliers and expand their knowledge and learning from there (Boström, 2015, p. 252). In another example, Bush et al. (2014, p. 4) argue that the strengths of the various approaches can be built upon and their shortcomings addressed by shifting the study of private governance and sustainability toward “three ideal types of governing sustainability in, of and through chains.” Governing sustainability “in chains” involves exploring private-firm activities within the supply chain (drawing on the SCM approach); governing sustainability “of chains” involves the coordination and power relations between economic actors within the chain (drawing on the GCC and GVC approaches); and governing sustainability “through chains” adds more focus on horizontal connections outside the immediate chain and on the interaction between firms and nonfirms within “a wider set of networked actors and activities” (drawing on the GPN approach) (Bush et al., 2014, p. 6). Such a lens, they argue, would open the door to further research on issues of impact, transparency and disclosure, and the changing activities of
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 261 nongovernmental organizations within chains, as well as a greater focus on such things as service industries and South-South flows that have not fit comfortably with traditional chain approaches. The pathways offered by Bush et al. and Boström seek to take into account issues neglected by the GVC approach to political consumerism, while still remaining within the wider “GCC/GVC/GPN ‘family’ ” (Bush et al., 2014, p. 3). The social relations of production at the local level and state activity (beyond public procurement) remain secondary, and Bush et al. have continued with the GVC tradition of developing new ideal typologies to replace older ones. Others have taken a different tack, attempting to develop new frameworks for analysing the relationship between production and consumption designed as alternatives to the GVC approach, including the SOP approach and the newly proposed GPC research agenda.
Systems of Provision The SOP approach to consumption, pioneered by economist Ben Fine and others (Bayliss et al., 2013; Fine, 2013a; Fine et al., 1996), is an interdisciplinary framework that situates the politics of consumption within historically specific material and cultural conditions rooted in production and consumption, individual and collective behaviours, and the “tensions inherent within and between socioeconomic forces and how these reproduce social structures” (Fine et al., 1996, p. 7). As summarized by Bayliss, Fine, and Robertson: The systems of provision approach analyses consumption as an active process, with actors seeking certain lifestyles, and constructing their identity by selective consumption and practices. The “systems of provision” is defined as the chain that unites particular systems of production with particular systems of consumption, focusing on the dynamics of the different actors (producers, distributors, retailers as well as consumers). (Bayliss et al., 2013, p. 11)
The SOP approach has been built as an alternative to existing consumer theories grounded in economics, psychology, and sociological methods. Proponents of the SOP approach critique neoclassical economic theory for overemphasizing individual, rational, and economic factors—especially price and income—while neglecting how individual consumption patterns are rooted in wider collective norms linked to production and an array of socioeconomic factors. At the same time, SOP researchers critique postmodern works for depicting “the consumer as subjectively flexible, inventive and more or less unbound by the material properties of the consumer and consumed itself ” (Fine, 2013a, p. 219). The SOP approach also places particular emphasis on the diversity of every commodity, critiquing the GVC approach (as well as other sociological approaches) for overemphasizing ideal-types of systems without specific
262 Gavin Fridell attention paid to distinct national and production systems (Bayliss et al., 2013; Fine, 2013a; Fine et al., 1996). As an alternative, the SOP approach offers a predominantly inductive approach, based on the belief that the “material culture” behind each SOP is highly specific and complex. The concept of material culture is premised on the view that the “material properties of a good or service fundamentally affect consumption patterns (for example water has different material attributes from housing) and goods and services are imbued (often subtly) with cultural significance” (Bayliss et al., 2013, p. 1). Each SOP’s cultural system can be viewed as incorporating “the 10 Cs,” the relevance of which “will vary depending on the type of good, the sop and the reason for which it is being investigated” (Bayliss et al., 2013, p. 6–7); they assert that commodities are constructed, construed, conforming, commodified, contextual, contradictory, chaotic, closed, contested, and collective. The relative significance and impact of the Cs can be investigated by exploring the structures, processes, and agents/agencies of each SOP and the differential and unequal power relations between them (Bayliss et al., 2013, p. 8; Fine, 2013a; Fine et al., 1996). The SOP’s inductive, historical, and comparative approach offers fresh insights into many topics, including the politics of consumption, based on the observation that consumers are not passive recipients of the culture attached to commodities (or anything else for that matter) but are what might be termed reflexive. But to coin a phrase, they are not reflexive in circumstances chosen by themselves. The most immediate, if not exclusive, external determinant of that reflexivity is the SOP itself. (Fine, 2013a, p. 226)
The SOP approach not only points to the ways in which individual consumption patterns involve more than rational self-interest or misguided false needs but also shows how they are rooted in collective norms, which can be contradictory and chaotic, depending on the context. The SOP approach’s researchers have built up case studies that reveal insights that can be tested comparatively against other instances, including the centrality of the state as a major provider and regulator of goods, the importance of economic imperatives from outside a given SOP, the necessity of investigating commodities that do not easily conform to classical global value chains (such as those for dairy, housing, and finance), and the significance of moral and political values in shaping all consumption patterns (not just those targeted by explicit political consumerist movements) (Bayliss et al., 2013; Brooks, 2015; Fine, 2013a; Fine et al., 1996). The SOP approach does not generally “follow the chain” (Fine, 2013b, p. 230) but rather looks at the general conditions (structures, processes, agents) of a given SOP and its differential and unequal impacts at different sites, often based on historical analysis and mixed methods. One recent work that demonstrates the SOP approach is Andrew Brooks’s (2015) book, Clothing Poverty, on the global jeans industry. Rather than follow a chain, Brooks focuses his research on a process: the uneven development of capitalism and its impact
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 263 on jeans production and consumption. His work is historically grounded, examining the industry today in connection to the development of industrial capitalism, colonial expansion and the formation of a global clothing system of provision, the inhumanity and exploitation of slavery and cotton production, the factory system and mass textile production, and the changing nature of clothing from a valued possession to today’s readily discarded “fast fashions” (see also Hiller Connell, Oxford Handbook). Methodologically, Brooks’s research is based on qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and participation observation in Kenya, Mozambique, the United Kingdom, and Zambia, along with a comprehensive review of relevant secondary literature, published research, policy reports, government documents, media coverage, advocacy and trade publications, and international organization reports (Brooks, 2015). Based on his investigation, Brooks draws conclusions that distinguish his SOP research from the GVC approach. For example, while deeply concerned with issues of consumption, Brooks (2015, p. 251) argues that “clothing systems of provision are shaped by producers, who in turn stimulate consumer demand.” Intensified production and worker exploitation in the cotton and textile industries led to lower prices and the growth of “fast-fashion systems” to meet needs of capital for ever-expanding markets. Of equal concern, Brooks places significant emphasis on exploring Southern countries not solely as sites of production but also regarding consumption as part of an unequal “global division of consumption” (Brooks, 2015, p. 237). Brooks conducts research on the impact on African markets of cheap clothing from China (a growing form of South- South trade) and used secondhand clothing from the North; these trends meet the immediate needs of poor consumers but have negative longer-term impacts on domestic industry. Finally, whereas much GVC literature assumes, explicitly or implicitly, that injustices along a chain can be resolved within the chain itself (through improved codes of conduct, better monitoring and evaluation, and more input from stakeholders), Brooks is more hesitant. He offers several ideas for consideration, while denying that any single or simple solution to uneven development exists. He admits, “It is frustrating [to] come to terms with the reality that there are no easy answers to reconciling the relationships between the production of clothing and the persistence of poverty” (Brooks, 2015, p. 236).
Global Poverty Chains Another challenge to the GVC framework is the GPC approach, which has recently been developed by political economist Benjamin Selwyn. Emerging out of his research on “labour-centred development,” Selwyn has called for a need to rethink and relabel GVCs as GPCs (Selwyn, 2014, 2016). Drawing from the work of neo-Gramscian thinker Robert Cox (1986), Selwyn makes a distinction between “problem-solving” theory and “critical” theory. Selwyn locates the GVC approach as a form of problem-solving theory, making a valuable contribution to knowledge while at the same time naturalizing the existing order and delegitimizing alternatives. While the GVC approach
264 Gavin Fridell challenges the assumptions of free traders, revealing the ways in which markets are coordinated and governed, it also takes as given the existence of transnational companies and suggests that “development” necessarily involves supplier linking and upgrading, along with worker integration into global value chains as wage labourers (Selwyn, 2016). Policymakers and researchers are increasingly voicing this perspective, viewing a GVC less as a barrier than as “a potential and actual site of social and environmental reform” (Bush et al., 2014, p. 9). In a recent study published by the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), for example, the authors argue that policymakers must promote inclusive policies that allow women in developing countries to take advantage of the opportunities offered by integration into GVCs around such things as call centres, fresh fruit and vegetables, and apparel. At the same, they acknowledge the pervasiveness of “low wages and precarious working conditions and labour arrangements” and that “[m]ost of the jobs created in GVCs do not challenge or dismantle gendered job segregation and related stereotypes but are based on and use these gendered structures” (Bamber & Staritz, 2016, pp. 4, 11). In contrast, Selwyn (2016, p. 5) proposes a critical examination of value chains that recognizes “how global value chains contribute to the (re)production of world poverty and inequality.” Selwyn builds his argument by pointing out that a main reason for the creation of globally integrated manufacturing chains was to deal with declining profits in core economies in the 1970s. By dispersing production globally, lead firms have been able to download risk onto suppliers, extract value from actors along the chain, “and preside, at a distance, over heightened labour-exploitation” (Selwyn, 2016, p. 13). Selwyn criticizes much GVC work for suggesting that poverty emerges from local barriers and conditions, or from workers being excluded from productive integration into value chains, as opposed to investigating the ways in which the chain itself creates and reproduces poverty. Drawing on some preliminary case-study work, he advances a new agenda aimed at several areas for further research: to explore the impact of locating relatively high- productivity industries in low-wage regions (do wages and working conditions improve as a result of increased productivity?); to examine the ways in which GPCs simultaneously produce great wealth and great inequality; to explore the impact of lead-firm influence over employment in supplier firms (not merely in addressing, but in intensifying, exploitation); to investigate possible “mechanisms, practical and theoretical, that would lead to a more equitable distribution of value throughout the chain”; and to explore attempts “by labouring classes and their organisations to utilise GVC/GPC analysis to better their bargaining power vis-à-vis supplier and lead firms” (Selwyn, 2016, pp. 36– 37). The GPC approach represents a foundational critique of the GVC approach by shifting the emphasis away from lead firms and private governance and toward the lives and struggles of labouring classes—urban and industrial workers, middle-class white- collar workers, informal workers, rural workers, and poor peasants (Selwyn, 2014).2 (For a comparison of the GVC, SOP, and GPC approaches, see Table 12.1.)
Table 12.1 Comparing Approaches to Political Consumerism and Globalization Global Value Chain (GVC) Approach
Systems of Provision (SOP) Approach
Global Poverty Chain (GPC) Approach
Theoretical or Analytical Framework
Global value chain (GVC): “a network of labour and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity” (Hopkins & Wallerstein, 1994).
Systems of provision (SOP): “the chain that unites particular systems of production with particular systems of consumption, focusing on the dynamics of the different actors (producers, distributors, retailers as well as consumers)” (Bayliss et al., 2013, p. 11) .
Global poverty chain (GPC): Rooted in the distinction between “problem-solving” and “critical theory” (Selwyn, 2016; Cox, 1986). A critical focus on “how global value chains contribute to the (re)production of world poverty and inequality” (Selwyn, 2016, p. 5).
Main Actors, Agents, and Processes
Lead firms: coordinate or drive chains in their interest. Governance: distinct informal institutional frameworks that emerge out of lead- firm coordination. Institutions: impact the chain, include transnational lead firms as well as social movements, labour unions, industry associations, industry codes, cultural norms, state policies, and legal standards.
Structures and processes: historical and socially specific institutional forms, how they interact or may be in tension. Agents/agencies and relations: participants in production through to consumption, their differentiated roles, and the exercises of power among and between them. Material culture: shaped by the “10 Cs.” Commodities are constructed, construed, conforming, commodified, contextual, contradictory, chaotic, closed, contested, and collective (Bayliss et al., 2013; Fine, 2013a).
Labouring classes and their organizations: urban and industrial workers, middle-class white-collar workers, informal workers, rural workers, and poor peasants. Lead firms and chain governance: management of the “global wealth-poverty hierarchy” (Selwyn, 2016, p. 12).
Research Method
Follow the chain typologies: draw on existing or develop new ones based on degree of coordination, vertical integration, and distinct governance and institutional characteristics.
Focus on the general conditions of a given SOP and its differential impact on distinct sites of production and consumption. Emphasis on historical and social specificity.
Examine the chain with focus on local conditions of production and the role of lead firms and suppliers in reproducing these conditions. Emphasis on labouring classes, how they negotiate bargaining positions, or how they could improve conditions. (Continued)
Table 12.1 Continued Global Value Chain (GVC) Approach
Systems of Provision (SOP) Approach
Global Poverty Chain (GPC) Approach
Research Open to qualitative Design and or quantitative Data Collection methods. Political consumerist research usually mixed qualitative methods focused on case studies and/or impact assessments. Collection involves code/ standards mapping, content analysis, interviews, focus groups, archival work, and secondary data collection.
Open to qualitative or quantitative methods. Common use of mixed qualitative methods focused on case studies. Emphasis on historical and inductive work driven by specific questions. Collection involves content analysis and mapping, interviews, focus groups, archival work, secondary data collection, and synthesis of existing analysis.
Research agenda still in its infancy. Open to qualitative or quantitative methods, with emphasis on mixed qualitative methods and case studies in historical and social context.
Understanding of Political Consumerism
Focus on how consumer and other movements impact the behaviour of lead firms. Implied linear relationship from consumption to production.
All consumption is political. Focus on how material properties and production shape the SOP, which in turn impacts on consumption. Emphasis on contradictory, chaotic, and uneven processes and multiple sites of both production and consumption.
Shift away from lead firms and private governance (consumerism) and toward lives and struggles of labouring classes (production). Focus on “labour-centred development” (Selwyn, 2014).
Select Authors
Boström, 2015; Bush Brooks, 2015; Bayliss et al., et al., 2014; Bair, 2013; Fine, 2013a; Fine, 2009b; Sturgeon et al., 2013b; Fine et al., 1996. 2008; Tallontire et al., 2005; Daviron and Ponte, 2005; Talbot, 2004; Raynolds, 2002; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994. Critiques: Taylor, 2011; Starosta, 2010; Bernstein and Campling, 2006a, 2006b.
Selwyn, 2016. See also Selwyn, 2014, 2015.
Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 267
Conclusion: Which Way Forward for Political Consumerism? Can political consumerism bridge the widening gap between producers and consumers and translate political, ethical, and environmental concerns into meaningful improvements along global chains? Given the diversity and ever-growing array of political consumerist projects, there is no simple or universal answer. The GVC approach, however, has provided the methodological framework for a rich body of literature that gives us some indications about what one might expect. Overall, political consumerist projects would appear to have modest or mixed impacts on such things as income, social provision, sustainability, and working conditions at the production end of the chain; standards are often inadequately or superficially followed, promoting a corporate culture around “ritualistic” and “quasi-scientific” monitoring and evaluation (Boström, 2015, pp. 239, 242); and lead firms, using their power over chain governance, have employed social responsibility programs to selectively promote positive activities while downloading risk and responsibility onto weaker suppliers (Barrientos et al., 2003; Cramer et al., 2014, p. 16; Dauvergne & Lister, 2013; De Neve, 2009; Hoebink et al., 2014; LeBaron & Lister, 2015; McClearn, 2013; Nelson & Martin, 2013; Oya et al., 2017; Selwyn, 2015; Tallontire et al., 2005). Further research is needed to continue to test these outcomes on new or underexplored projects. Debate continues, however, over how well the GVC approach can account for these outcomes. Does the GVC framework leave us trapped in the confines of the metaphorical value chain? Analysing the ways in which lead firms do and do not respond effectively to consumer pressure can impose unnecessary limits on both what we analyse and what we demand. Critics argue that while this emphasis can be used to expose the limits of global value chain initiatives, it can also serve to perpetuate and legitimize them by downplaying or ignoring the significance of other factors, such as local social relations and the state, which can have more significant impacts on labour and environmental conditions (Fine, 2013a; Fridell, 2014; Selwyn, 2016; Taylor, 2011; Wells, 2009). Is it possible to comprehend a kind of political consumerism that goes beyond these limits by drawing on alternative approaches like the SOP and the GPC? The SOP approach offers a wider view of what political consumerism is—all consumption is political, rooted in collective norms and the general conditions (structures, processes, agents) of a given SOP and its differential and unequal impacts. Its more inductive, flexible methodology does not offer as direct a toolkit for determining how to strategically “act” through consumerism by promoting this or that intervention along the chain. It does, however, open the door to a broader range of variables to explore and conclusions to reach—for example, Brooks’s (2015) sober conclusion that there simply is no straightforward solution to addressing poverty in the global clothing industry. The GPC approach, for its part, seeks to shift the discussion away from political consumerism—and the perspective of private firms—and toward developing research
268 Gavin Fridell on labouring classes and their impact on global poverty chains. Despite differences, both the SOP and GPC approaches call for a methodological and theoretical turn away from the emphasis on consumerism and private firms and toward greater acknowledgement of the importance of sites of production and the activities of labouring groups (in distinct historical and social settings). Can deemphasizing consumerism itself explain the limits of political consumerist campaigns in a new and novel way? Up until this point, the weight of research efforts has fallen heavily on the GVC approach. New research, drawing on the insights raised by SOP, GPC, and other critics, is needed to explore this question, advance fresh research, and offer new possibilities for analysing and addressing the relationships among consumption, production, and global injustice.
Notes 1. World Bank Open Data for 2014, data.worldbank.org, accessed January 17, 2017. 2. Boström also seeks to shift emphasis away from transnational lead firms and toward other buyers, such as smaller firms and public institutions. Selwyn, in contrast, seeks to shift analytic focus toward the labouring classes broadly defined.
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Political Consumerism as Part of the Global Value Chain 271 Pattberg, Phillip. (2005). What role for private rule-making in global environmental governance? Analysing the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). International Environmental Agreements, 5, 175–189. Ponte, Stefano. (2009). Governing through quality: Conventions and supply relations in the value chain for South African wine. Sociologia Ruralis, 49(3), 236–257. Ponte, Stefano, & Sturgeon, Timothy. (2014). Explaining governance in global value chains: A modular theory-building effort. Review of International Political Economy, 21(1), 195–223. Porter, Michael E. (2000). Location, competition, and economic development: Local clusters in a global economy. Economic Development Quarterly, 14(1), 15–34. Raynolds, Laura T. (2002). Consumer/producer links in fair trade coffee networks. Sociologia Ruralis, 42(4), 404–424. Raynolds, Laura T. (2007). Fair trade bananas: Broadening the movement and market in the United States. In Laura Raynolds, Douglas Murray, & John Wilkinson (Eds.), Fair trade: The challenges of transforming globalization (pp. 63–82). London: Routledge. Raynolds, Laura T., & Long, Michael A. (2007). Fair/alternative trade: Historical and empirical dimensions. In Laura T. Raynolds, Douglas Murray, & John Wilkinson (Eds.), Fair trade: The challenges of transforming globalization (pp. 15–32). London: Routledge. Raynolds, Laura T., Murray, Douglas, & Wilkinson, John. (2007). Fair trade: The challenges of transforming globalization. London: Routledge. Raynolds, Laura T., & Wilkinson, John. (2007). Fair trade in the agriculture and food sector: Analytical dimensions. In Laura T. Raynolds, Douglas Murray, & John Wilkinson (Eds.), Fair trade: The challenges of transforming globalization (pp. 33–47). London: Routledge. Richey, Lisa Ann, & Ponte, Stefano. (2011). Brand aid: Shopping well to save the world. Minnesota and London: University of Minnesota Press. Selwyn, Benjamin. (2014). The global development crisis. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Selwyn, Benjamin. (2015). Commodity chains, creative destruction and global inequality: A class analysis. Journal of Economic Geography, 15(2), 253–274. Selwyn, Benjamin. (2016). Global value chains or global poverty chains? A new research agenda: Working paper no. 10. Retrieved from Brighton, United Kingdom: The Centre for Global Political Economy Working Paper Series. Starosta, Guido. (2010). Global commodity chains and the Marxian law of value. Antipode, 42(2), 433–465. Steinmetz, George. (2004). Odious comparisons: Incommensurability, the case study, and “small N’s” in Sociology. Sociological Theory, 22(3), 371–400. Stolle, Dietlind, & Micheletti, Michele. (2013). Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sturgeon, Timothy. (2009). From commodity chains to value chains: Interdisciplinary theory building in an age of globalization. In Jennifer Bair (Ed.), Frontiers of commodity chain research (pp. 110–135). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Sturgeon, Timothy, Van Biesebroeck, Johannes, & Gereffi, Gary. (2008). Value chains, networks and clusters: Reframing the global automotive industry. Journal of Economic Geography, 8, 297–321. Talbot, John M. (2004). Grounds for agreement: The political economy of the coffee commodity chain. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Talbot, John M. (2009). The comparative advantages of tropical commodity chain analysis. In Jennifer Bair (Ed.), Frontiers of commodity chain research (pp. 93–109). Stanford: Stanford University Press
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Pa rt I I I
I N DU ST RY SE C TOR S A N D P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM
Chapter 13
P olitica l Fo od C onsum erism bet we e n Mundane Rou t i ne s and Organiz at i ona l Alliance-B u i l di ng Bente Halkier
Food has a long history of becoming involved in political consumerism. One of the early registered examples of political consumerism, which is nearly always mentioned, is the Boston Tea Party. Nonnative Americans in colonial New England in 1776 protested over a British tea law and colonialism by publicly destroying large quantities of tea (Jacobsen, 2017). In the 1970s, in the wake of the critique of mass consumerism and mass production for causing social and environmental problems, the boycott of the multinational firm Nestlé’s breastfeeding milk became an iconic and long-running political consumerism campaign (Sasson, 2016). When the actual term “the political consumer” was coined in the mid-1990s, food also played its part here, because one of the two boycotts that spurred the coining was a boycott of French wines as a protest against France conducting nuclear tests in the Pacific (Halkier & Holm, 2008). Food is a vital component of the everyday lives of ordinary citizens. Not only is it necessary for survival and sustenance, but shopping for food, providing for meals, cooking, and eating food consist to a large degree of mundane, tacit routines that also overlap with a number of other important everyday routines such as socializing, parenting, working, and transporting. Consuming food is a particular kind of consumption in the sense that consumer goods enter people’s bodies—unlike mobile phones and bicycles. Thus, food forms a significant part of all kinds of cultural frames and social identifications in society. The phrase “You are what you eat” is not coincidental. Hence, food consumption in everyday life can be related to a number of moral worries such as eating proper meals, cooking in healthier ways, and providing for less unsustainable
276 Bente Halkier food. However, the politicization of food in a consumerist manner has also historically been driven by different social actors and certainly not only by consumers themselves. Food producers are important actors. In an example from the World War II, American breweries ran national advertisement campaigns where beer became constructed as a token of national identity and beer drinking as a patriotic act, supporting the battle against fascism, which enabled the breweries to obtain a status as a wartime industry and to reframe brewer’s yeast as nutritious (Jacobson, 2009). State or public-sector agencies are another kind of social actor that historically has politicized food as a responsibility for the individual consumer. In Europe, in the wake of mad cow disease in the 1990s, food safety became one of the top food policy issues. National as well as European Union (EU) regulations of the food sector were reorganized in response to the debates about who was responsible for the safety of food (Halkier & Holm, 2006). A central element of the public strategies to restore the confidence in the safety of foodstuff was to invoke the responsibility of individual consumers and their consumption choices in the actual regulation of food safety. It was done differently in different countries; for example, in Denmark, consumer choice was directly involved via a labelling scheme known as the Smiley System (Nielsen, 2006), whereas in the United Kingdom, consumer choice was also included in relation to policy formation via formal consultation and informal activism (Draper & Green, 2002). Social movements and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are a third type of social actor that has been driving the politicization of food in a consumerist way. In an article about the American roots of the political consumerism movement, Vogel (2004) highlights the boycott of food retailers and producers as one of the strategies of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s and also as one of the tools in the international boycott of products from South Africa as a protest against the apartheid system in the 1970s and 1980s (see Chapter 3). When comparing the American development with the European one, Vogel highlights food products as a successful example of mobilizing consumers behind “positive political consumerism” (Vogel, 2004, p. 97) due to the existence of public and semipublic labelling schemes. This chapter consists of four parts. First, a brief introduction to the food sector is given, and secondly a comparative example of political consumerism in a food context is offered. The third section provides an overview of social science research on the social actors and parts of the food sector that have been associated the most with political consumerism. Finally, the fourth section describes and discusses which issue-types in political food consumerism have been prevalent in the research and how issue-types seem to be connected with different forms of political consumerism.
Brief Introduction to the Food Sector In an overview of the types of social actors and scales of social arrangements in the food supply chain, the food sector is a fairly compound sector. The food supply chain
Political Food Consumerism 277 alone consists of supply of primary production (e.g., farmers and fishermen) and the suppliers of input to primary production (e.g., producers of fertilizers and pesticides); supply of food processing (e.g., dairies and ready-meal industries); food distribution (e.g., import/export firms and marketing firms); and food retailing and catering (e.g., supermarkets and canteens) (Lang & Heasman, 2004, p. 14). The food supply chain represents actors and arrangements that include multinational and global firms, such as McDonald’s; national and regional ones, such as the Scandinavian dairy producer Arla and the Netto supermarket chain; and local and small-scale food producers and providers, such as organic meal-box schemes. At the end of the chain are the ordinary food consumers themselves. But along the chain, two additional types of social actors are involved in the food sector. First, there are the public food policy bodies (e.g., the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom), which are attempting to regulate the conditions of food production and consumption by drawing upon legislation, economic incentives, and expert advice on food issues such as nutrition, hygiene, and climate consequences (Clarke, 2008, p. 1876; Lang & Heasman, 2004, pp. 122–123). Second, there are consumer organizations such as the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) and the movement of alternative food networks (Whatmore, Stassart, & Renting, 2003), which are attempting to influence and shape the conditions of food production and consumption by way of, for example, lobbying food policy formulations, cooperating with alternative food producers and retailers, and mobilizing groups of food consumers for different campaigns and consumption activities (Hinrichs & Allen, 2008). A type of social actor that operates across public food policy bodies and consumer organizations are the standard setting organizations, making standards for e.g.food safety and for organic and fairtrade foods (Boström & Klintman, 2008). Just looking at Scandinavia, standard setting for organic foods are different. In Denmark, the standard setting and labelling of organic food is state-controlled, whereas in Sweden it is a private umbrella organization that is in charge of standard setting and labelling. Thus, political consumerism in the food sector involves much more than the “generic” individual consumer (Jacobsen & Dulsrud, 2007), namely a number of different social actors and a range of different social arrangements.
Political Consumerism in the Food Context The discussion in this section exemplifies the potential involvement of different social actors and arrangements in political food consumerism by way of drawing upon some of the results from a comparative European research project on trust in food (Kjærnes, Harvey, & Warde, 2007). The trust in food project analysed and compared the social
278 Bente Halkier and institutional conditions for consumerism in food policies in six countries and at the European level with regards to five food issues: food safety, food quality, price, ethics, and nutrition. Empirically, the study was based on a quantitative survey with consumers, qualitative document analysis, and individual interviews with representatives of different actors in the food sector. The politicized framing of the ordinary food consumer by other social actors in the food sector, and the consumers’ understanding of themselves, varied quite a lot. The responses included Norwegian consumers portrayed as passively trusting the food production and regulation systems and not being active consumers; Italian consumers as quality conscious, active consumers; Portuguese consumers as unprotected by public bodies and partly active consumers; and Danish consumers as complex consumers who are active on ethics issues but more passive on safety and nutrition issues (Halkier, Holm, Domingues, Magaudda, Nielsen, & Terragni, 2007, pp. 385–396). In Norway, the institutional arrangements in the food sector combined a national food market featuring extensive restrictions on food import with a welfare state– centred Scandinavian model for public consumer protection and clear divisions of responsibility. Denmark too was institutionally arranged along such a Scandinavian consumer protection model but combined with an open food market economy and an increasing tendency for involving and forming alliances with private food actors (supply-side and consumer NGOs) in the policymaking, e.g., the introduction of a national label for organic food that was established through an alliance of the Food Agency, the Co-op supermarket chain, and the Consumer Council. In Italy, institutional arrangements consisted of a complex market situation with a dominating national market where supply-side actors focused on negotiating quality and there was an unclear division of labour regarding responsibility for consumption issues. Portugal likewise showed unclear patterns of responsibility for consumer protection, due to among other things severe controversies over establishing a national food agency (Halkier et al., 2007, pp. 296–298). The point of this extended example is to draw attention to the significance of the interaction between institutional arrangements and how agency plays out among different types of actors in the politicization of food. The relation between institutional conditions and political agency in food consumption has been highlighted by other researchers who criticize the extensive use of the “generic” individual consumer choice model in research about political food consumption, arguing for example that critical food consumerism may take other forms and that the normality of everyday practices dominates over the new food ethics (e.g., Kjærnes, 2012). That politicized food choices and moral reflections tend to “drown” in mundane normality and get entangled in other kinds of practices has been shown particularly in research about food consumption, inspired by practice theories (see Chapter 7 on social practices; also see Evans, 2012; Halkier, 2010; Halkier, 2017; Plessz, Dubuisson-Quellier, Gojard, & Barrey, 2016). There are two important points about consumption, everyday life, and political consumerism that come out of this type of research. First, consumers more often than not bump into politicized food as a part of their embodied, tacit
Political Food Consumerism 279 shopping, cooking, and eating practices, rather than as a result of deliberate reflection and choice. One may, for example, during lunch at work hear about a colleague’s local organic meal box scheme, which she uses for dinners in her family; or one may coincidentally read a posting from a Facebook friend, encouraging a boycott of Norwegian farmed salmon. Second, consumers partake in multiple overlapping mundane practices with different and sometimes contradictory social conventions for conduct, so food consumption is rarely only about food or about one particular food issue. For example, cooking and serving food in families is nearly always also about reproducing family relations, parenting, and showing love. A very common way of showing love through food is by serving what the children like to eat—and this is not necessarily the same kind of food as something made out of local organic vegetables.
Social Actors’ Involvement in Political Food Consumerism The representation of the kinds of research in an overview such as this one depends of course upon the literature search. The following attempt at providing an overview of the research on political food consumerism and its social actors was established on the basis of a search combination of the category food and the categories of political consumerism, political consumers, political consumption, corporate social responsibility (CSR), social movements and public regulation. This search was supplemented with a search in specific relevant journals, such as Appetite; Food, Culture & Society; Food Policy; Journal of Consumer Culture; Journal of Consumer Policy; and International Journal of Consumer Studies. The purpose of this overview of research on political food consumerism is to describe and discuss which food actors and thus parts of the food sector have been associated the most with political consumerism. The inevitable winner is, not surprisingly, the individual consumers themselves. All the publications included in this overview (and in the previous sections of this chapter) mention ordinary consumers in their consumer capacity. There is only one exception, and this is an article about a comparison of corporate social responsibility in Europe and the United States from an institutional stakeholder perspective (Doh & Guay, 2006). However, what is far more interesting is that relatively few publications only address the individual consumers as actors involved in political food consumerism. This perhaps suggests that a large portion of the social scientific research on political consumerism in the food sector has acknowledged the complexity of the relations between actors and arrangements in terms of political agency. The publications that only address individual consumers tend to fall into two kinds of research purposes. First, there is the classic purpose of producing a social segmentation or profiling of types of consumers in relation to food political issues, where the category
280 Bente Halkier of political consumerism is typically taken for granted as being about individual consumer choice. Thus, studies of this kind describe consumer values behind organic food consumption in e.g. the Czech Republic (Zagata, 2014) and Norway (Honkanen, Verplanken, & Olsen, 2006); sociodemographic factors behind sustainable food consumption in countries such as Spain (Carrero, Redondo, & Fabra, 2016), Germany (Mohr & Schlich, 2016), and the United Kingdom (Kemp, Insch, Holdsworth, & Knight, 2010); and consumer values behind fairtrade food consumption in countries such as Portugal (Coelho, 2015) and France (Pedregal & Ozcaglar-Toulouse, 2011). The other kind of studies that only address individual consumers are interested in the social configurations of political food consumption. Political food consumption becomes related to high levels of cultural capital and particular kinds of habitus and practices in a Canadian study (Baumann, Engman, & Johnston, 2015) and in an American study (Carfagna, Dubois, Fitzmaurice, Ouimette, Schor, Willis, & Laidley, 2014). In several studies with Israeli food consumers, the focus is on the sociocultural and political meaning of carrying out political food consumption, such as organic food consumption (Grosglik, 2016) and voluntary simplifiers (Zamwel, Sasson-Levy, & Ben-Porat, 2014), and discussing the criteria for when food consumption (and nonconsumption) patterns can count as political consumption. The same interest in challenging and discussing the category of individual political consumption choice is at the heart of a Danish study of food consumption and food safety (Halkier & Holm, 2008), which suggests distinguishing between food consumers who perform political consumption, those who perform politicized consumption, and those who vocalize the discourse of political consumerism. In other words, the agency of ordinary consumers is much more compound than dividing citizens into political food consumers and nonpolitical food consumers (Halkier, 2015). Practising food political consumerism is more often than not blended into the routinised carrying out of food practices and other overlapping, sometimes conflicting, everyday activities. For example, organic milk may be used in a family, but not organic pork, because the kids think it tastes too much of pork. Here, the parenting practice of feeding children what they like overrules the buycott activity of using organic foodstuff. The next most prevalent studies in research on food political consumerism focus on three kinds of social actors, namely retailers, organized activism, and public regulatory bodies. A characteristic of the largest part of the research that associates retail actors with political food consumerism is that the retail actors are placed in relation to some form of alliance building or maintaining processes in the food sector (Boström & Klintman, 2006; 2009; Evans, Campbell, & Murcott, 2013 Hartmann, 2011; Lewis & Huber, 2015; Oosterveer, 2006; Reed, 2009; Starr, 2010). In some cases, very specific and narrow alliances seem to build between particular parts of the retail sector and particular parts of alternative food suppliers. For example, Reed (2009) argues that the United Kingdom’s governance of organic food and farming has seen a convergence between parts of organic producers and large supermarket chains in relation to national labelling and standards development. In a parallel manner, Evans, Welch, & Swaffield, 2017 conclude that
Political Food Consumerism 281 major retailers recently entered into collaboration with other private and public actors on reducing food waste after earlier public campaigns directed towards the households had helped advance the issue (Evans, Welch, & Swaffield, 2017). In other cases, research shows how alliances can be built across the private-public divide around specific policy instruments, as in an overview study of the use of corporate social responsibility measures in the food sector (Hartmann, 2011), arguing that research needs to address the whole of the food chain, including small-and middle-sized enterprises, large retailers, and government. This type of argumentation can be found also in research that is not about CSR but that focuses on food governance arrangements, such as the analysis of global governance of sustainable consumption of shrimps by Oosterveer (2006). Other studies focus on covering a multiplicity of food actors’ alliances and conflicts in order to understand political food consumerism, such as an analysis of local food in the United States as a possible social movement (Starr, 2010), which addresses the coming together of farmers, agronomic experts, retailers, chefs, food writers, and consumers in driving the provisioning and consumption of local foodstuff. The focus on retail actors as the most important actors in political food consumerism also covers research that argues how the retail part of the food sector tends to work in a somewhat problematic manner regarding various political food consumerism issues. This covers the classic analysis of market failure in relation to political food consumption, such as that found in a study on the political economy of farm animal welfare (Harvey & Hubbard, 2013). There is a critique of how large suppliers and retailers adopt aspects of alternative food-provisioning schemes, such as organics, carbon footprints, fair trade, animal welfare, etc. for the sake of added commercial gain (Kjærnes, 2012, p. 152). Finally, there are critical analyses of what is seen as socially exclusive strategies of particular retailers, whether in mainstream retailing, such as the story of “horsemeat- gate” in the United Kingdom (Abbots & Coles, 2013), or in alternative food networks in Australia (Lockie, 2009). When looking at research that associates political food consumerism with different kinds of organized activism, one part of the literature is similar to and overlapping with the research connecting political consumerism with retailing, namely where the significance of alliance building and maintenance is highlighted (Boström & Klintman, 2006; Doh & Guay, 2006; Lockie, 2009; Reed, 2009; Starr, 2010). Lockie (2009) presents an analysis of alliance building around the issue of local food where ordinary consumers are invoked surprisingly similarly by alternative local food producers and mainstream and alternative retail outlets—namely as individual commercial actors. A comparative analysis of organic food standardization between Sweden and the United States (Boström & Klintman, 2006) shows, however, much more controversy in the U.S. case, with a state-centred approach that fails to build alliances with organic food NGOs, than in Sweden where the labelling organization itself is an NGO, consisting of social movement organizations, associations for conventional and organic farmers, and the food industry. Alternative food provisioning as organized activism is the other main perspective in the research. Here, the focus is more to go in-depth with a particular food movement or
282 Bente Halkier type of food activism (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2015; Gimenez & Shattuck, 2011; Hinrichs & Allen, 2008; Sassatelli & Davolio, 2010; Scott, Si, Schumilas, & Chen, 2014; Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007). Here we find the classic case of the Italian slow food movement and how it is being politicized (Sassatelli & Davolio, 2010) and the now almost classic case of community-supported agriculture (CSA) in the United States, which manages to make consumers experience, for example, their restricted choice in the scheme as moral virtue (Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007). But there are also examples of analyses comparing one type of organized activism with others, such as in the comparison of “buy local food” campaigns in the United States with other political consumerism campaigns such as “buy black” (Hinrichs & Allen, 2008), or in the analysis of how French consumers, including food issues, are not just invoked as targets of political consumerism campaigns but also as potential recruits to the consumerism movements (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2015). Turning to public regulation, the last of the social actors most associated with food political consumerism in the research, there is quite a consensus in the literature. Research studies focus on how responsibilities and strategies of public food regulatory bodies tend to cross over the traditional public-private divide or are expected to do so (Boström & Klintman, 2009; Doh & Guay, 2006; Hartmann, 2011; Harvey & Hubbard, 2013; Hjelmar, 2011; Lockie, 2009; Oosterveer, 2006; Scott, Si, Schumilas, & Chen, 2014). In one study that compares how corporate social responsibility (CSR) is defined and implemented in the United States and Europe, one of the cases analysed is about food (trade in genetically modified organisms). The conclusion is that different institutional structures and political traditions make for different ways of managing politicized (food) consumerism between the two regions, but similar managing within the regions across public actors and NGOs (Doh & Guay, 2006). A study about China’s organic agriculture (Scott, Si, Schumilas, & Chen, 2014) shows, however, that the state-driven public regulation of the ecological market has not gained trust among Chinese consumers, resulting in an expansion of alternative food provisioning strategies for local and organic food, such as CSAs, farmers’ markets, and home delivery schemes. Actors in society that are the least dealt with in the research literature on food political consumerism are primary food producers, the food industry, and food experts. When looking at the research on primary food producers and their links to politicized food consumption, there is a clear overlap with the alliance theme of the research on food retailers and public food regulation. Farmers and farmers’ organizations are depicted as acting in pursuit of allying themselves with other significant alternative food actors, NGOs, and public regulatory bodies in their attempts to provide, for example, more sustainable and local food products for conscious consumers (Gimenez & Shattuck, 2011; Oosterveer, 2006; Reed, 2009; Starr, 2010). Indeed, civil society networks and grassroots organizations, which support alternative food production and consumption in European countries and the United States, are depicted as a contrast to the situation in China (Scott, Si, Schumilas, & Chen, 2014). Here, it is argued that the relative absence
Political Food Consumerism 283 of bottom-up organized civil society activities around local and ecological food production has led to a certain degree of “capturing” of alternative primary food production by business entrepreneurs. The same tendency of highlighting the embeddedness of food producers in networks and alliance building is also present in the research mentioning the food industry as related to political consumerism. However, regarding the food industry, there seems to be a difference between research that frames the food industry as (potentially) constructive actors in the processes of handling the consumerist politicization of food, e.g., as corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Doh & Guay, 2006; Hartmann, 2011; Maloni & Brown, 2006), and research that discusses the role of the food industry more critically in relation to industry strategies towards food issues and consumers (Abbots & Coles, 2013 Kjærnes, 2012). The few studies that link various food experts to politicized food consumerism dovetail with research on retailers, organized activism, producers, and the industry. The studies including food experts argue the importance of networking and alliances around politicized food issues, here looking also at the practices and strategies of food experts such as chefs, food writers, and scientists. But the publications differ in regards to their evaluations of the social implications of food experts being involved in political consumerism. Some studies understand the processes of establishing political food consumerism alliances and the contribution of food experts to this as enhancing social inclusion of consumers, whether it concerns science partaking in organic food alliances (Blue, 2010) or celebrity chefs and food writers partaking in a broader movement for local food (Starr, 2010). Other studies tend to see the inclusion of food experts, such as celebrity chefs, in alliances around ethical and sustainable food products as creating social exclusion of certain consumer groups (Lewis & Huber, 2015). Summing up, there are two main tendencies in what is considered important in the research with regards to social actors in the food sector and their involvement in political consumerism. The first tendency is not surprisingly the significance ascribed to the ordinary individual consumer, which is characterized by a debate about the degree to which consumer agency on its own makes sense in the food sector, or whether the playing out of consumer agency can only be seen in interaction with other social actor types and depending upon food institutional arrangements. Following this, the second tendency is the importance ascribed in the research to alliances between different social actors across the traditional public-private dividing line. Processes of building, negotiating, and maintaining alliances among different kinds of consumers, retailers, NGOs, producers, and specific public regulatory bodies seem to saturate many of the empirical case studies related to food political consumerism. The immediate implication of this might be that only focusing on one type of social actor in relation to political consumerism in the food sector seems to be a dead end. Rather, it is necessary to include these alliance interactions, network building, and institutional arrangements and conditions.
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Connections between Food Issues and Forms of Political Consumerism The introduction to this book carves out four major forms of political consumerism: boycotting, buycotting, lifestyle, and discursive strategies (see Chapter 1). This section discusses how these four forms of political consumerism tend to be linked with the apparent dominant issues of politicizing food that are covered in the literature on political food consumerism. The food issues that tend to dominate analysis of political consumerism in the social scientific research are alternative food provisioning (Carfagna et al., 2014; Dubuisson- Quellier & Lamine, 2008; Hinrichs & Allen, 2008; Kennedy, Parkins & Johnston, 2016; Lockie, 2009; Sassatelli & Davolio, 2010; Starr, 2010; Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007); organic food (Carrero, Redondo, & Fabra, 2016; Grosglik, 2016; Hjelmar, 2011; Honkanen, Verplanken, & Olsen, 2006; Zagata, 2014); and fairtrade food (Carrero, Redondo, & Fabra, 2016; Clarke, 2008; Coelho, 2015; Pedregal & Ozcaglar-Toulouse, 2011). Production and consumption of alternative food provisioning, organic food, and fairtrade food overlap to a certain extent, but in many contexts, organic food has a bigger and more mainstream distributed market than fairtrade and especially alternative food provisioning. However, what these three food issues have in common is that they seem to be particularly inviting to buycotts and lifestyle forms of political consumerism as far as the research links food issues and types of political consumerism. Such a pattern makes a lot of sense. The buycott strategy relies on supportive shopping. Both organic food consumption and fairtrade consumption are positive types of consumption activities insofar as that they constitute supportive buying of a particular type of food, replacing (some) nonorganic and non-fairtrade products. Buycotting as a political consumerism strategy rests on labelling, social legitimacy of labels, and a sufficient degree of availability of the labelled foodstuff in mainstream retail outlets. For example, the buycott strategy for organic foodstuff in Denmark involved few consumers until an alliance between the consumer council, the co-op supermarket, and the food agency forged the state-controlled Danish organic label (the red ø) and coop launched a discount campaign on officially labelled organic foodstuff (Klint, 1996). Alternative food provisioning consumption also involves buycotting, although the research highlights that consumers here support not only particular products but also alternative food production and distribution processes such as urban gardening and community- supported agriculture (e.g., Thompson & Coskuner-Balli, 2007). The lifestyle strategy relies in principle on more comprehensive changes of everyday practices, the consumption involved, and the arrangements supporting such changes (Keller, Halkier, & Wilska, 2016). Thus, as a strategy of political consumerism, the lifestyle strategy might be seen to fit the issue of alternative food provisioning better than the issues of organic food and fairtrade food that are part of the arguments in research about localized alternative food provisioning. However, just like the term “political
Political Food Consumerism 285 consumerism” itself is interpreted differently, so is the concept of lifestyle: When is a sufficient amount of consumption patterns or everyday practices sufficiently changed into, for example, organic foodstuff in order for it to count as a lifestyle change or ethical consumerism as part of peoples’ general lifestyle? (Coelho, 2015; Grosglik, 2016). Especially in the literature on the issue of alternative food provisioning, an ambivalence between the buycott form of political consumerism and the lifestyle form of political consumerism can be detected. In an overview article about the development of responsibility and agency in alternative food networks in a number of countries, Lockie (2009) argues that, although alternative food network actors tend to see political consumerism as a kind of food citizenship where consumers participate actively and socially together with other food citizens and alternative producers and providers, the actual marketing, distribution, pricing, and official food standards tend to encourage more narrow and individualized consumerist type of practices. Similarly, a qualitative study of Canadian “eat local” activists (Kennedy, Parkins, & Johnston, 2016) argues that there is an ambivalence between food activists’ sophisticated democratic understandings of and reflections over societal food problems that makes it necessary for them to ”eat local” and the same food activists’ limited democratic repertoire of imagining their own activities as being other and more than “shopping for change.” Likewise, a French study of consumer involvement in local food networks (Dubuisson-Quellier & Lamine, 2008) shows that two kinds of political consumerist involvement exist side by side. The first type of consumer involvement is called “delegation”; it is based on the market relation and seems to be parallel to the buycott strategy. The second is called “empowerment,” and it is based on consumers and producers collaborating on collective choices; thus it could be said to be somewhat parallel to the lifestyle strategy. One food issue is as much represented in the research literature as alternative food provisioning, organic foodstuff, and fairtrade foodstuff, but it is linked slightly differently to various forms of political consumerism. This is the broad issue of sustainability (Dixon & Isaacs, 2013; Kemp, Insch, Holdsworth, & Knight, 2010; Mohr & Schlich, 2016; Shaw & Moraes, 2009; Zamwel, Sasson-Levy, & Ben-Porat, 2014). Under the umbrella of sustainability, we can find subissues such as climate, food miles, less or no consumption of meat and other energy-dense types of food, and voluntary simplicity. There are of course overlaps between the sustainability issue and the organic food issue and local food issue in terms of the environmental dimension and, thus, the buycott form—the supportive buying. But otherwise, the sustainability issue is clearly linked to a combination of boycott and lifestyle as forms of political consumerism. The subissues of climate, food miles, less meat eating and even voluntary simplicity all fit with the boycott strategy. These subissues have in common that consumers are encouraged not to buy and use particular kinds of food, such as those which travel too far, those which are too energy-dense, meat as a separate category, and they are also advised to consume less and waste less food. For example, Mohr & Schlich (2016), in their quantitative study of German sustainable consumerism, operationalized an important part of this as eating less meat. Likewise, a study of British environmentally friendly food consumerism (Kemp, Insch, Holdsworth, & Knight, 2010) focused on the boycott of
286 Bente Halkier overseas food products but concluded that this did not seem particularly important to the sample of British consumers. The lifestyle strategy is primarily linked with the research on the subissue of voluntary simplicity, because the principles for consumer practices in voluntary simplicity clearly add up to more comprehensive changes. These principles are the “five Rs” in consumption: recycle, repair, reuse, reduce, and refuse. An Israeli qualitative study of voluntary simplicity concludes that voluntary simplifiers can be seen as political consumers. But the study also shows the amount and degree of changes in everyday life required if living after the five Rs (Zamwel, Sasson-Levy, & Ben-Porat, 2014, p. 206). The degree of comprehensiveness of lifestyle changes also comes forward in a British study of voluntary simplifiers who live in rural areas and struggle with their relations to the local rural market economy (Shaw & Moraes, 2009). The less dominant food issues in the research literature on political consumerism are animal welfare (Evans & Miele, 2017; Harvey & Hubbard, 2013), food safety (Halkier & Holm, 2008), and health (Dixon & Isaacs, 2013). The issue of animal welfare is clearly linked to forms of both boycott and buycott when this is possible insofar as consumption strategies consist in avoiding food products that are not considered sufficiently animally friendly, combined with supportive buying of meat, eggs, and fish products where the production methods are considered (and labelled as) taking animal welfare into account. There is of course also the variety of animal welfare consumerism, which consists in a total boycott—namely becoming a vegetarian or vegan—which brings the form of political consumerism closer to the lifestyle strategy (see Chapter 8, on vegetarianism/veganism). The health issue seems related to the lifestyle form of political consumerism, again because in principle acting along this issue as a consumer demands more comprehensive changes of everyday practices. This is precisely why an Australian qualitative study (Dixon & Isaacs, 2013) criticizes the moralizing of the individual in the public reliance upon a strategy for more healthy (and sustainable) food consumption via individual consumption practices. The social and economic conditions of households for managing such comprehensive changes are unequally distributed. The health issue, however, is also indirectly related to the buycott strategy via organic food consumption, because the most popular reason often given in surveys for buying organic food is healthier food for oneself and one’s family (Hjelmar, 2011, p. 337). The food safety issue is the only issue where some research has highlighted the discursive form of political consumerism, although together with forms of buycott. In a quantitative Danish study (Halkier & Holm, 2008), it is argued that Danish food consumers can be placed in three different categories: consumers who carry out political consumption, parallel to intent buycotting of “safer food”; consumers who carry out politicized consumption, buying roughly the same foodstuff as the first group but not doing it as an intentional strategy; and consumers who vocalize the discourse of political consumerism in relation to food safety but do not act upon it. This does not mean that there is not a whole lot of discursive political consumerism going on in relation to food. This is especially so if we take into account media development (Bennett &
Political Food Consumerism 287 Iyengar, 2008) with a multiplicity of media discourses in and across different genres, through different media platforms, leading to an ever more media-saturated everyday life (Couldry, 2004). For instance, politicised discourses on food have come to form part of both traditional flow television shows (Hollows, 2016) as well as social media displays (Rousseau, 2012). This is where food writers, food experts, and chefs are part of forming the political consumerism strategy, but this has not been studied so much under the heading of political consumerism. Finally, there are some food political consumerism issues that did not crop up in the search for this chapter, covering the current research. The issue of food waste is in itself apparently not explicitly linked with food political consumerism, although the issue is clearly a dimension of climate and sustainability problems linked to consumption. Furthermore, food waste fits with the lifestyle form of political consumption insofar as if consumers attempt to consume with less food waste, this becomes part of not just acquisition but to a large degree also planning, storing, cooking, and eating (e.g., eating leftovers) (Evans, 2012). The reason for the food waste issue missing in a direct coupling with food political consumerism may simply be that it is a relatively recently politicized food issue. Adding on this, food sector arrangements and procedures for food waste reduction involving ordinary consumers are only beginning to become institutionalized through for example waste sorting and composting, meal-box schemes (Hertz & Halkier, 2017), supermarkets that sell surplus food, and fridge-sharing (Wahlen, 2016). Another type of food political consumerism issue that was not explicitly expressed in the current research is the boycott of food products for political reasons not to do with the food itself. Earlier examples of this would be the boycott of South African fruit in the 1980s as a protest against the apartheid system, and the boycott of French wine in the 1990s as a protest against French nuclear tests conducted in the Pacific. There are indeed current examples of this type of boycott, for example the boycott of food products grown in settler areas of Israel as a protest against Israel’s policy towards Palestinians. The 2016 election of Donald Trump as president of the United States has also spurred a boycott of firms who supported his candidacy economically, including food companies. But these kinds of boycotts demand quite some organization around them, since they are often international, and thus they don’t necessarily show up in searches about political consumerism and would perhaps be more prevalent in research focusing on NGOs, social movements, and international campaigns. Summing up, the most prevalent and most discussed forms of food political consumerism in the research are buycotts and lifestyle strategies. One way of understanding this is that the potential for acting for ordinary consumers themselves range from more mainstream marketized possibilities with supportive buying to various kinds and degrees of changing patterns in consumers’ everyday lives. In a way, this is parallel to social movement activity. There are different levels of engagement (Halkier, 2015), so there are also more ways of participating and potential for a variety of consumers. However, this doesn’t mean that such strategies are carried out by a variety of consumers. Seen from a practice theoretical perspective, everyday life is a particular kind of social organization, based on a multiplicity of overlapping routinised and conventions-based activities, and
288 Bente Halkier a change in food consumption activities relies on how socially and practically “do-able” (Halkier, 2010, p. 36) such changes are. This is related to the character of food consumption as being highly embodied, because food is taken into the body. On the one hand, this embodiment is part of the routinised tacit repeating of what is shopped, cooked, and eaten and so it is not particularly noticed. On the other hand, if food is noticed in everyday life, the highly embodied character may lead to a higher level of worry about what to consume.
Conclusion For the food sector, the overview of research related to political consumerism has shown three main points. First, across all other differences, researchers agree without question on the importance of ordinary consumers in carrying out food political consumerism. Questions and disagreements arrive as part of describing, interpreting, and explaining how ordinary consumers can and should play out their alleged agency in relation to a complicated, global, multilevel organized industry such as food. Second, across food issue areas, settings, and cases, a large strand of the research highlights that it is alliances between different social actors in the food sector across the public-private divide that are decisive for how food political consumerism fares as an activity for change. Thus, individual ordinary consumer strategies are part of this, but they are dependent upon alliance building, maintaining, and negotiating among other organized food actors and intersecting institutional arrangements. Third, the political consumerism forms of buycott and lifestyle are the ones that seem to be prevalently reported across different food issues represented in the research. But there are also critical voices, maintaining that research on everyday life—the potential hotbed of supportive buying and comprehensive lifestyle changes—shows numerous challenges to the “do-ability” of these two forms of political food consumerism, such as the routinised and socially conventionalized character of mundane life. Pondering upon future perspectives in investigating political food consumerism, this conclusion mentions two possibilities. When thinking about how complex the food sector is and how much existing research underlines the need to look at the embedding of political consumerism in alliances among different actor types, it seems obvious that more research is needed on the different levels of more or less institutionalized arrangements and interactions. This may call for more use of theoretical approaches such as network governance (Oosterveer, 2006), regime-thinking, multilevel perspective analysis (Hargreaves, Longhurst, & Seyfang, 2013), and global supply and value chain analyses (see Chapter 12). It might also call for more research on slightly overlooked food actors, such as food experts, food writers, and chefs, who play a part in influencing the institutionalized arrangements of the food sector in various ways.
Political Food Consumerism 289 Pointing in a slightly different direction, the very material character of food, combined with a focus on the importance of alliances among different kinds of actors in the existing literature, could suggest more application of Actor-Network Theory in the field of food political consumerism studies. One of the main assumptions here is to “follow the actors,” covering both human and nonhuman actors, so a different way of aiming to cover alliance building, negotiation, and processes of normalization and institutionalization might be to “follow the foodstuff.”
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Chapter 14
U tilizing P ol i t i c a l C onsum eri sm to Challenge t h e 2 1st Centu ry Fast Fash i on Industry Kim Y. Hiller Connell
Globally, the fashion industry is estimated to be valued at $1.6 trillion USD (Lenzing Group, 2012), making it one of the largest industries. It is a complicated network of subindustries with an intricate supply chain that includes fibre, yarn, and textile production; product development; apparel manufacturing; and retailing. And although throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Western Europe and the United States dominated the textile and apparel manufacturing industries, today, through globalization, less than 3 percent of the garments sold in the United States are actually manufactured there (American Apparel and Footwear Association, n.d.). Garment manufacturing is almost exclusively located in countries of the developing world, with China continuing to dominate, India remaining a significant player, and other countries such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka gaining more of the market share every year. In the early 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the fashion industry moved to an offshore production model, and export-processing manufacturing evolved to be the dominant manufacturing strategy utilized by brands and firms. This resulted in fashion brands and labels in the United States and the European Union (EU) shutting down their company-owned manufacturing facilities and utilizing a complex system of contractors and subcontractors in developing countries to manufacture apparel and footwear for import back into the industrialized countries. Although this move led to greater product choices and lower prices for Western consumers, it has also directly resulted in significant social, economic, and environmental challenges—particularly in
294 Kim Y. Hiller Connell the countries manufacturing the garments—where firms were able to seek out low-cost/ nonunionized labour and operate without any appreciable labour, safety, or environmental standards and government-enforced regulations. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss political consumerism within the context of clothing consumption. The chapter also exposes fundamental flaws within the 21st century fashion industry in terms of its emphasis on high consumption of low-price and low-quality garments that is undermining evolution into a sustainable industry. This chapter starts with an overview of fast fashion, the current model for fashion production and consumption. Following this, the chapter connects fast fashion practices to sustainability challenges facing the fashion industry—particularly labour and human rights issues and environmental concerns. The chapter also provides a short historical overview of political consumerism in the fashion industry, followed by a discussion of political consumerism actions currently occurring in the industry.
The Current Model of Fashion Production and Consumption: Fast Fashion Consumers of fashion are buying more clothes than ever before. In the United States alone, it is estimated that twenty billion items of clothing are purchased annually (Cline, 2012), equating to consumption of 67.9 garments and 7.8 shoes per year for every individual in the United States (American Apparel and Footwear Association, n.d.). However, what we are paying per garment is decreasing. As pointed out by Johnson (2015), in the 1930s most women in the United States owned an average of nine outfits. In 2015 that number had increased to thirty outfits per woman. Furthermore, the percentage of a household’s disposable income that is spent on clothing has plummeted over the last several decades. According to Dr. Mark Perry, a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan, Americans are spending a smaller percentage of their disposable household income on clothing than ever before. In 1950, Americans spent 9 percent of their income on clothing. That percentage dropped to 6 percent by 1970, 4.78 percent by 1988, and 3 percent in 2009 (Perry, 2010). In 2015, the average American household in the United States spent around $1,850 on apparel—equating to only 2.65 percent of disposable income (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). The driver of the drastic decrease in the price of clothes over the last few decades and the trend of decreasing percentages of household incomes being spent on clothing is fast fashion. Fast fashion is low-cost, low-quality, on-trend apparel and it dominates the modern fashion industry. Retailers such as H&M, Zara, Topshop, Forever 21, and Old Navy are giants within the fast fashion industry, with hundreds of other fashion firms following.
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 295 In the past, the fashion industry was structured around four primary seasons each year. A fashion brand’s design team would work on developing new products with lead times of twelve to eighteen months ahead of when the merchandise would be seen on store racks by consumers, and manufacturing of the garments would characteristically start four to six months out. Markups between wholesale and retail prices were high (typically around 50 percent), and it was typical for between 17 percent and 20 percent of an apparel retailer’s stock to not sell (Ferdows, Lewis, & Machuca, 2004). Within the fast fashion model of production, the concept of “seasons” is practically obsolete, with new merchandise continuously flowing into stores and fast fashion retailers speaking in terms of having fifty-two micro seasons per year. A goal of most firms operating within the fast fashion model is to have products move from development to hanging on a rack in the store within six to twelve weeks—with fast fashion giant Zara claiming to go from design to rack in only two weeks (Ferdows, Lewis, & Machuca, 2004). Other characteristics of fast fashion retailing include the use of low-quality materials and manufacturing processes, leading to rock-bottom prices. Unlike a traditional retailer, the markups between wholesale and retail prices are minimal—with the companies relying on high sales volume for profit and banking on selling almost all their stock. And it is working. Not only do most fast fashion retailers have less than 10 percent of their stock go unsold—they also only occasionally even mark down clothes (Ferdows, Lewis, & Machuca, 2004). It is a business model that results in incredibly high sales volume and huge profits. In fact, fast fashion retailers report profit margins almost double the average of traditional retailers (Cline, 2012).
Sustainability Challenges Within the Fashion Industry Fast fashion is also, unfortunately, the driver behind much of the human rights and environmental challenges present within the fashion industry.
Labour and Human Rights Abuses in the Fashion Industry It is no secret that significant labour abuses permeate the garment manufacturing industry—particularly in developing countries. In the modern era, there has been public awareness of human rights violations present in garment factories for several decades. And although not universal across all facilities, the garment manufacturing industry in developing countries continues to struggle with workers being paid wages too low to even meet basic needs and inhuman working conditions. The reality is that many garment labourers are working twelve-plus hours per day and are being forced to work overtime without extra compensation or sufficient
296 Kim Y. Hiller Connell breaks. Their wages are sometimes withheld for weeks at a time and they are subjected to abuse and harassment. Child labour (any work that interferes with their ability to attend school) also continues to exist. The International Labor Office (2013) estimates that, despite being illegal in almost all countries and seeing some decline over the last couple of decades, 170 million children (11 percent of the world’s children) are engaged in child labour—many of whom are working in the fashion industry. Additionally, in recent years, tragic events such as multiple factory fires in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh (Bajaj, 2012; ur-Rehman, Walsh, & Masood, 2012) and the horrific collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013 (Manik & Yardley, 2013) highlight the unsafe working conditions confronting—and killing—garment workers. Although inhumane working conditions and low wages were a reality even before fast fashion dominated the global fashion industry, the social and labour issues present within garment factories are commonly intensified through fast fashion—a system that values speed and low cost over safety and living wages. Within the business model of fast fashion, Western brands place intense time and cost demands upon garment manufacturers in the developing world. And in working to meet these demands (because they know if they do not, the brands will find another facility that will), factory management commonly ignores even basic human rights and safety standards. It is difficult to envision a fashion industry without rampant labour and human rights abuses while the fast fashion model dominates.
Environmental Consequences of the Fashion Industry While public consciousness about the environmental impacts of textile and apparel manufacturing generally arose after awareness about labour issues in the 21st century, discussion of the social and environmental costs of the fashion industry go hand in hand. And although there are extensive environmental issues associated with textile and apparel manufacturing, the industry’s high consumption of both energy and water and significant contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions (and, therefore, climate change) and water pollution are certainly of primary concern. Consider this—the textiles and clothing industry is a modern, high-tech, and extremely mechanized industry. Factories manufacturing fibres, yarns, textiles, and clothing are dominated by industrial equipment and machines. These machines carry intense energy loads and electricity demands, and the primary source of energy within the textiles and clothing industry remains coal. Annually, the textiles and clothing industry produces approximately 60 billion kilograms of fabric, consumes 1 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity, and requires 132 million tons of coal (Siegle, 2011). If every kilowatt hour of electricity produced by burning coal generates approximately two pounds of carbon dioxide (U.S. Energy Administration Information, n.d.), it is simple to extrapolate out the significant carbon footprint of the textiles and clothing industry. In fact, the industry is one of the biggest industrial greenhouse gas emitters on the planet—accounting for 10 percent of all global
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 297 carbon emissions (Zaffalon, 2010)—so we cannot ignore or underestimate the role this industry plays in climate change. The textiles and clothing industry also consumes and pollutes almost incomprehensible amounts of water—which is a necessary input at practically every manufacturing stage—from fibre to garment production. Within the industry, water is obviously necessary to grow natural fibres such as cotton. However, massive volumes of water are also required to scour, bleach, dye, and finish textiles and garments. According to Siegle (2011), 7 trillion litres of water are consumed annually to meet global textile demands and the average textile manufacturing facility uses 1.6 million litres of water per day (Kahn & Malik, 2014)—which is alarming considering that the World Wildlife Fund (2017) estimates that at current rates of consumption, by the year 2025, up to two-thirds of the world’s population will face water scarcity. Also concerning is the effect the industry is having on water quality. Hazardous and often toxic chemicals are utilized throughout textile and garment manufacturing. For example, scouring and bleaching of yarns and textiles commonly utilizes sodium hydroxide and sodium hypochlorite—which result in highly polluted water effluent. Dyeing of textiles also uses a wide variety of dangerous chemicals, including dioxins; heavy metals such as copper, chromium, and cobalt; and formaldehyde. Many of the chemicals utilized do not easily biodegrade and, therefore, are very difficult to eliminate in a water treatment facility—resulting in effluents that remain toxic, even after treatment, and an industry that generates 17 to 20 percent of all industrial wastewater in the world (Hiller Connell, 2015). Like the labour and human right issues present within the industry, fast fashion is undeniably intensifying the environmental issues associated with the production of textiles and clothing because of the sheer volume of textiles and garments manufactured within the fast fashion model. As demand for fast fashion items increases, so does the demand for energy, water, and other materials and the generation of greenhouse gases and water pollution.
A Short History of Political Consumerism in the Fashion Industry Garment manufacturing, by nature, is labour-intensive. Since the Industrial Revolution, the manufacturing of clothing has been plagued by poor working conditions and a wide range of human rights violations. However, the end of the twentieth century experienced a resurgence in public awareness and an outcry about the realities of working in a garment manufacturing factory. During the 1990s, when most fashion brands from the United States were closing their domestic manufacturing facilities and moving production offshore to countries like Vietnam, China, and Indonesia, multiple well-publicized news stories emerged critical of labour conditions in these factories, thus bringing human rights violations
298 Kim Y. Hiller Connell occurring in the fashion industry to the consciousness of the public. In 1992, through a piece in Harper’s magazine, consumers learned about an Indonesian factory making Nike products and paying workers less than fourteen cents an hour (Ballinger, 1992). And in 1995, news spread about seventy people from Thailand who were found locked inside a garment factory in El Monte, California. The building was fortified with razor wire and spiked fences and the labourers had been forced to work for several years as repayment for arranging to bring them to the United States (Wallace, 1995). Then in 1996, the story broke that Kathie Lee Gifford’s (cohost of a popular U.S. morning talk show) clothing line selling at Walmart was being made by children in Honduras who were being forced to work up to twenty hours a day (Strom, 1996). Simultaneously more stories were emerging about labour conditions within factories making Nike products, and Nike quickly became the “poster child” for criticisms about labour within the fashion industry. As allegations about the factories making clothing for companies like Nike and others such as Liz Claiborne (McCool, 1998), Gap, and Tommy Hilfiger (Branigin, 1999) continued to emerge, awareness about the prevalence of labour abuses occurring in garment manufacturing increased. Slowly global consciousness surrounding the issue increased and a transnational, grassroots network of activists advocating for improved human rights in garment factories emerged—spurring a flurry of political consumerism activity and the formation of numerous antisweatshop campaigns and organizations (e.g., Corporate Watch: Nike, Boycott Nike, Justice! Do It Nike, Global Exchange, United Students Against Sweatshops, and the Clean Clothes Campaign). Nike remained the primary target of these activities, likely because it was a leader in the fashion industry in terms of moving to offshore outsourcing and because it held the largest share of the overall athletic wear market (Sage, 1999)—publishing profits in 1998 of $9.6 billion (CNN Money, 1998). By the late 1990s, a global advocacy network had emerged. This network was focused on improving conditions for garment workers in the fashion industry by demanding living wages, an end to forced overtime and child labour, safe working environments, the right to form unions, and opening factories for third-party monitoring and audits (Sage, 1999). Through public speaking tours and widespread disruptions such as demonstrations, hunger strikes, sit-ins, letter writing campaigns, leafleting, and boycotts— all highlighting poor labour conditions and corporate greed—activists successfully evoked public sympathy for garment workers and hostility towards corporations, and fashion brands began to pay attention. By the end of the twentieth century, the antisweatshop movement had successfully contributed towards initiating change within the fashion industry. Some political leaders were invested in the issue and were establishing policy initiatives, many colleges and universities had adopted antisweatshop policies for their licensed apparel, and some fashion brands were acknowledging their responsibilities within the system. During this time then CEO of Nike, Phil Knight, admitted that the company’s reputation and profits suffered because of the protests, boycotts, and other activism and commented, “The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages,
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 299 forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse. I truly believe the American consumer doesn’t want to buy products made under abusive conditions” (Nisen, 2013, para. 18). In the years since, although still facing serious labour challenges, Nike has, in many ways, become a leader of social responsibility initiatives within the industry—such as the establishment of the Fair Labor Association and the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, being the first fashion brand to make publically available a complete list of its contracted factories, and publishing annual reports outlining factory conditions and pay (Nisen, 2013)—activities that many believe offer evidence that the activism of the late twentieth century was successful.
Contemporary Political Consumerism in the Fashion Industry Overall, fashion-focused political consumerism throughout the late twentieth century gained some successes. Most major global fashion brands adopted codes of conduct with statements protecting the basic human rights of garment workers, and many codes of conduct also included environmental, health, and safety protections. A system of factory monitoring and audits was developed with a majority of fashion brands participating. Additionally, in transparency efforts, annual social responsibility reports are published and made publically available by many firms. However, as detailed above, serious human rights, health and safety, and environmental challenges continue to confront the fashion industry—leading to the continued presence of political consumerism. In the 21st century, the goal of political consumerism in the fashion industry remains the same as in previous decades—to mobilize consumers to engage in actions that will lead fashion companies to be more environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable. And within the global system of fashion consumption, political consumerism can be seen in all major forms: boycotting, buycotting, lifestyle, and discursive strategies. Additionally, unlike in the 1990s and 2000s when political consumerism activities were concentrated on labour and human rights issues, in the present day, environmental issues in the fashion industry are also a focus.
Boycotting Boycotting remains a dominant form of political consumerism within the fashion industry. And there have been some victories as a result. In 2009, through pressure tactics that included boycotts and convincing administrators at over ninety different universities to suspend licensing agreements, the antisweatshop organization, United Students Against Sweatshops, effectively campaigned for a U.S.-based sportswear company, Russell Athletic (owned by Fruit of the Loom), to rehire 1,200 garment workers in
300 Kim Y. Hiller Connell Honduras who had lost their jobs when their factory was shuttered shortly after a successful bid to unionize (Greenhouse, 2009). There are also many other active boycotts focused on fashion brands and companies. For example, the Ethical Consumer publishes a wide-ranging list of active boycotts, which includes actions against the activewear brand of Adidas (for using kangaroo leather for football boots), fast fashion retailer H&M (for opening two stores in Israel), the British department store Harrods (for continuing to sell fur products), and luxury brand Hermès (for using alligator and crocodile leather in belts and handbags). And Nike remains the almost constant target of boycott campaigns—with activists most recently launching the Nike: Just Cut It campaign in response to the company announcing it would no longer require the factories manufacturing Nike products to be monitored by third-party auditors such as the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). The campaign, again led by United Students Against Sweatshops, is leveraging university licensing agreements to demand that Nike agree to factory monitoring by the WRC—or have university contracts cancelled (Gearhart, 2017). Additionally, the Grab your Wallet boycott (www.grabyourwallet.org) that emerged late in 2016, and was popularized on social media through the hashtag #grabyourwallet, is a poignant example of political consumerism and boycotting in the fashion industry and the current influence of social media in mobilizing. As opposed to being in reaction to labour or environmental concerns associated with garment manufacturing, the Grab Your Wallet campaign was established in the United States in protest of then presidential candidate Donald Trump and his treatment of women. Since that time, it evolved into a more general expression of protest against Trump, his administrative policies, and the conflict-of-interest issues surrounding his businesses and presidency (Halzack, 2017). The Grab Your Wallet campaign asked consumers to boycott a range of companies either owned by or selling Trump family products and services. Numerous fashion companies were on the list, including Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Dillard’s, and Zappos. The campaign also prompted consumers to call the companies’ corporate offices and inform them that until the company no longer did business with the Trump family, they would not shop at their stores. The campaign also called for boycotts of fashion designers who “dressed” the Trumps, such as Ralph Lauren and Dolce & Gabbana, and also Under Armour for comments made by the company’s CEO, Kevin Plank, that President Trump was an asset to the United States. Initially included on the Grab Your Wallet boycott list, Nordstrom announced in early February 2017 that it was phasing out merchandise carrying Ivanka Trump’s label (Feitelberg, 2017)—a decision widely covered by news media and that Nordstrom officially stated was motivated by poor brand performance (Feitelberg, 2017). Other fashion companies that dropped Trump family products included Neiman Marcus and Sears, which also cited declining sales (Lieber, 2017; Peterson & Taylor, 2017), and Shoe.com, which stated they were pulling the line in response to the consumer boycott (Peterson & Taylor, 2017). Despite most companies not publically attributing the changes in their merchandise assortment to boycotts or politics, the Grab Your Wallet campaign “exemplifies the new and potent possibilities that social media presents for ordinary
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 301 consumers and voters to catapult an idea for activism from their living rooms to like- minded people across the country” (Halzack, 2017, para. 10). Although boycotts have dominated political consumerism in the fashion industry for the last three decades, some believe that these campaigns have fundamentally failed. Despite the boycotting efforts, clothes are still being made in factories that are unsafe, where humans are overworked and underpaid, and where the surrounding air and water is being polluted. Part of the issue is that boycotts typically focus on pressuring major global brands to “be better”—while ignoring the labour and environmental policies of hundreds of smaller, lesser-known brands. Furthermore, even when a boycott effort successfully contributes to brands developing and adopting socially responsible business practices, such as codes of conduct and factory auditing systems, over a decade of research repeatedly demonstrates these programs result in limited improvements in labour standards at garment factories. When there is limited ability or motivation on the part of local governments in places where factories are located to enforce labour laws, when the infrastructure does not exist to implement interventions necessary to improve factory conditions and labour practices, and when sourcing decisions are still primarily being driven by traditional business metrics, codes of conduct and factory audits will do very little to improve labour and environmental standards throughout the garment manufacturing industry (Distelhorst, Hainmueller, & Locke, 2017; Locke et al., 2007). Additionally, in assessing the success of boycotts in terms of bringing positive change to the fashion industry, we cannot overlook the reality that most consumers simply are not interested in boycotts. Although consumers commonly state their concern about human rights and environmental degradation within the fashion industry, those attitudes are frequently not reflected in their purchase behaviours (Brosdhal & Carpenter, 2010; Hiller Connell & Kozar, 2012; Kim & Damhorst, 1998; Kozar & Hiller Connell, 2013). Consumption of fast fashion continues to grow. As a Western society, we are buying more clothes than ever before, demanding rock-bottom prices, and expecting new styles in the stores on a weekly basis. The implications of these demands are directly felt by the workers labouring to manufacture the garments and the local natural resources being utilized. Therefore, while fast fashion continues to dominate this industry, the assertion that boycotts are doing little to generate sustainable change in the fashion industry will likely remain true.
Buycotting Juxtaposing campaigns urging consumers to not buy particular brands or purchase from certain retailers, buycotts encourage consumers to “buy better” and support “good” companies and products. Within the realm of fashion, buycotts generally focus on encouraging consumers to purchase products that meet certain criteria—usually related to environmentally preferable fibres and manufacturing processes or human rights issues. For many years, limited availability and accessibility to environmentally and socially responsible clothing was a considerable barrier (Hiller Connell, 2010; Hustvedt & Bernard,
302 Kim Y. Hiller Connell 2008, 2010). However, supply has increased, and for deliberate consumers who want to purchase fashion products that are environmentally and socially responsible there are increasingly more options available in the marketplace. Consumers can buy garments that have been made with environmentally preferable fibres, such as organic cotton from companies like Patagonia and prAna, and various other sustainable fibres such as TENCEL® and hemp from companies such as Blue Canoe and Hempest. Similarly, consumers who are concerned about labour conditions in garment factories are called to purchase apparel from companies with transparent supply chains such as Fair Indigo, Indigenous, and People Tree. Or they can support Nudie Jeans, and other similar businesses, who, in addition to utilizing organic fibres and fair labour practices, have also integrated additional innovative sustainability strategies throughout their business such as offering free clothing repair services, reselling jeans through an established take-back program, and recycling worn-out denim into other products (Egels-Zandén & Hansson, 2016). Research suggests that consumer engagement in fashion- focused boycotts and buycotts remains low, particularly when assessed against political consumer actions for other product categories (Austgulen, 2016). This is the result of several factors, including (but not inclusive of) gaps in consumer knowledge and higher prices and less availability of sustainable clothing. The effectiveness of both boycotts and buycotts in creating sustainable change within the fashion industry is limited by a prevailing lack of consumer knowledge about labour and environmental abuses resulting from the production of textiles and clothing (Goworek et al., 2012; Hill & Lee, 2012; Hiller Connell, 2010; Hiller Connell & Kozar, 2012; Kim & Damhorst, 1998; Kozar & Hiller Connell, 2010, 2013; Laitala, Austgulen, & Klepp, 2014; Reiter, 2015). Consumers cannot buy intelligently and deliberately purchase sustainable clothing if they lack the relevant knowledge and do not understand how purchasing fast fashion contributes to human rights abuses, water pollution, climate change, etc. Indeed, as determined by Austgulen (2016), knowledge about sustainable clothing (and where to purchase it) increases the likelihood of individuals engaging in political consumption behaviours related to textiles and clothing. In the current era, the Internet and social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are being relied on more and more to educate consumers about companies that are striving to be environmentally and socially sustainable, to aid in consumer decision-making, and to encourage consumers to buy better (Reiter, 2015). For example, at Buycott.com individuals establish campaigns intending to increase awareness about a wide range of causes—from animal welfare and economic justice to the environment and human trafficking. The goal is to increase cognizance about an issue by sharing the campaign through social media and utilizing social networks and peer pressure to encourage others to sign onto the campaign and commit to supporting companies that are considered ethical and sustainable. However, even normative pressure is sometimes ineffective in changing clothing consumption behaviours (Hiller Connell & Kozar, 2012). Company websites can be tools for consumer education and communicating supply chain transparency. Exemplars such as Patagonia and Nudie utilize their company
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 303 websites to provide consumers with a range of information about their supply chains, including factory locations and audit results. However, evidence suggests that this information is underutilized by consumers, but that when the information is accessed by consumers it does increase their willingness to purchase products from those companies (Egels-Zandén & Hansson, 2016). Thus consumer activists may need to focus on encouraging more widespread use of these types of tools. To increase consumer knowledge, labelling schemes are another mechanism available to educate consumers about products and encourage them to purchase garments and other fashion items that are perceived to be sustainable. Labelling schemes can range from self-declarative claims to criteria-based, third-party labels that are awarded to companies on the basis of meeting a set of standards. In the fashion industry there are labelling schemes certifying that the materials and processes are environmentally sustainable (such as Oeko-Tex, USDA Certified Organic, Green America) and other programs focused on certifying that garments were manufactured under socially responsible (Made-By) or fairtrade (Fair Trade Certified) conditions (see also Chapter 37). Unfortunately, labelling schemes in the fashion industry are notoriously complicated—primarily because a plethora of sustainability-related labels exist—and lagging compared to other industries (Austgulen, 2016). Some sources estimate close to 100 different labels are being used to communicate sustainability-related information in the fashion industry (Ethical Fashion Forum, n.d.). However, knowledge about sustainability labels does increase the likelihood of consumers engaging in buycott and boycott actions (Austgulen, 2016). Therefore, if individuals can be educated about ecolabels, the labels should factor into consumer decision-making and contribute to increased purchasing of sustainable clothing. Purchase price also limits demand for environmentally and socially responsible clothing and the effectiveness of boycotts and buycotts as forms of political consumerism. Compared to mainstream fashion (and particularly fast fashion), environmentally and socially preferable clothing sells at higher price points. When companies factor in the expenses of paying garment workers fair, living wages and protecting natural resources and ecosystems while manufacturing fibres and textiles, the price of clothing increases. And because consumers have grown accustomed to not paying the true cost for their garments, the higher pricing of sustainable clothing leaves many consumers with the perception that sustainable fashion is not affordable and hence with a low willingness to buy (Hiller Connell, 2010; Hustvedt & Bernard, 2008, 2010). As such, finances have been found to be a positive predictor of purchasing sustainable clothing (Austgulen, 2016).
Lifestyle Despite the likely good intentions underlying campaigns focused on buying socially and environmentally responsible fashion, an Achilles heel is inherent to these campaigns. They remain focused on consumption and acquiring “more” when, for reasons
304 Kim Y. Hiller Connell of environmental, social, and economic sustainability, there is a need to shift the focus to drastically reducing consumption. Even if global brands manage to implement sustainable solutions to labour and human rights issues within the industry, considering the staggering amounts of nonrenewable energy and raw materials inputted into fibre, textile, and clothing manufacturing, and the pollution and greenhouse gas externalities that are outputted from the system, without drastically decreasing the volume of clothing being produced, sold, and consumed the fashion industry will never be sustainable. The bottom line is that consumers in North America, in Europe, and increasingly in industrializing countries like China, with growing middle classes, are acquiring—and eventually discarding—too many clothes. Indeed, the overwhelming availability of cheap, poor-quality clothing has led to consumers perceiving fashion to be disposable. Annually, people in the United States are throwing away (rather than recycling) approximately 85 percent of their clothes. That equates to thirteen million tons of textiles per year and 9 percent of all waste in the country (Council for Textile Recycling, 2017). Therefore, authentic, transformative, and sustainable change within the fashion industry depends on fundamental modifications to the overall system of fashion, including how we acquire clothing and cultural norms related to fashion acquisition, ownership, and disposal. Both the slow fashion movement and fashion-related product service systems are consumer lifestyle strategies gaining traction in response to fast fashion. Drawing inspiration from the slow food movement, slow fashion is focused on developing a sustainable fashion industry through intentionality in decision making related to design, sourcing, production, distribution, and consumption. Slow fashion products are high- quality garments that have been manufactured in small, limited batches using regional production and environmentally preferable fibres as much as possible (Clark, 2008). Slow fashion brands are companies like Alabama Chanin, which creates well-designed, heirloom garments that are locally sewn and held to the highest standards of quality. Or the New York brand De Smet, which promotes the slow accumulation of a lasting, perennial wardrobe by emphasizing timeless design and quality handcrafting. Sitting within the larger context of circular economies, a product-service system consists of the combination of products (in this case clothing and other fashion items) with services that jointly meet the needs of consumers (Tukker, 2004). Product-service systems can offer a sustainable approach to consumption because its alternative business model focuses on dematerialization, shared ownership, and meeting the needs of consumers by replacing personal ownership of material goods with shared ownership and collaborative consumption (Tukker & Tischner, 2006). Clothing product service systems within this model include schemes such as clothing rental/library programs and clothing swaps. For example, LENA, a fashion library in Amsterdam, functions similar to a traditional library—customers can browse the company’s clothing, borrow necessary items for a determined length of time, and then return them for utilization by other consumers. Following a similar model, although through ecommerce, Rent the Runway in the United States provides individuals the ability to rent designer garments for onetime special occasions, such as weddings and other black-tie events, that can, at
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 305 the end of event, be returned to the company and rented out in perpetuity to additional consumers. Compared to clothing libraries, collaborative consumption strategies such as swaps are a more consumer-driven product-service system scheme—but they also have the potential to contribute towards more sustainable fashion lifestyles. At a clothing swap, participants gather together with wardrobe items they no longer want and, as the name indicates, swap items with others. Clothing swaps are typically organized by “swappers” utilizing online platforms such as Meetup; and although the motivations behind clothing swaps vary significantly, many are driven by sustainability values and the desire to engage in fashion and update wardrobes without purchasing new clothes and sending discarded clothes to landfills (Albinsson & Perera, 2009, 2012; Armstrong, et al., 2015). Clothing swaps provide individuals with opportunities to update wardrobes, experiment with new styles, and satisfy a range of psychological needs frequently met through engagement in the fashion system—but do so through a mechanism that is outside the traditional and unsustainable production-consumption model of the fashion industry. Repairing, refashioning, and recycling previously owned clothing are additional lifestyle strategies gaining traction and challenging when and how consumers dispose of clothing. Through programs such as Patagonia’s Worn Wear initiative, consumers extend the life of garments by learning how to make repairs, trading in apparel that may no longer be needed for credit, and purchasing secondhand garments. The program also encourages consumers to reframe garments into stories that we wear to help us remember a moment in time and the adventures we experienced while wearing the clothes—and to embrace the dirt, stains, and other signs of a garment well used (Patagonia, n.d.). Other companies and programs focus on refashioning and upcycling garments. For example, Kallio is a kidswear brand that uses existing materials from used garments such as men’s flannel shirts to create girls’ dresses and skirts; and the company Sword & Plough repurposes discarded military textiles into sustainable bags and other accessories. However, while consumer demand is slowly increasing and more firms are manufacturing upcycled clothing, the market for this type of fashion remains small (Park, 2015) and the labour-intensive nature and logistical and technical challenges of refashioned garments limits future growth within the current supply chain (Dissanayake & Sinha, 2015). Finally, garment recycling is also becoming a more prominent strategy. Patagonia’s Common Threads program was a pioneer in clothing recycling and other companies, including fast fashion giant H&M, have followed—allowing consumers to drop off any unwanted garments (of any brand) to their stores for rewear, reuse, or recycling. When fashion retailers have “bring back” programs, consumers can actively participate in the reduction of textile waste and the diversion of clothing to incinerators and landfills—as well as the conservation of water and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (Chavan, 2014). At present, political consumerism lifestyle strategies related to fashion consumption such as slow fashion, fashion libraries, clothing swaps, and refashioning remain small- scale phenomena and face numerous barriers before reaching a mainstream market. Slow fashion garments are inherently expensive. And although the intention of slow
306 Kim Y. Hiller Connell fashion is to pay higher prices for a few items that will remain in a wardrobe for years and years, this is a difficult sell within the current consumer zeitgeist of high-quantity, low-quality, and low-price garments. Clothing libraries, although increasingly common throughout parts of Europe, have yet to emerge much in North America outside of a few ecommerce businesses. Finally, many North American consumers primarily desire new garments and are hesitant to wear secondhand garments (Hiller Connell, 2010), limiting the growth potential of strategies such as clothing libraries, clothing swaps, and refashioned garments.
Discursive Strategies As asserted by Micheletti and Stolle (2008), within the fashion industry, discursive strategies (communicative and noneconomic actions intended to generate consumer understanding about an issue) as a form of political consumerism can be effective. And while North American activists and campaigns have tended to focus on boycotts and buycotts, European campaigns tend to focus more on discursive strategies. The Clean Clothes Campaign, for example, does not develop their own boycotts and instead focuses on consumer education about labour and environmental issues in the fashion industry and encouraging consumers to influence the practices of their companies (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008). Culture jamming, the act of reconfiguring a company’s branding (including logos, slogans, and product images) is a good example of discursive political consumerism strategies utilized within the context of the fashion industry and consumption. Nike is commonly the focus of adbusting and other forms of culture jamming—with the company’s iconic Swoosh logo and “Just Do It” tagline being reenvisioned in numerous parodies in order to draw attention to labour and environmental issues within the company’s supply chain. Cultural jamming also aims to expose and challenge what is argued to be a blind acceptance of consumerism and overconsumption within Western cultures in an attempt to engage people in thinking about the social and environmental implications of their consumer behaviours.
Challenges Facing 21stCentury Political Consumerism in the Fashion Industry There is no denying that political consumerism has successfully brought about some positive changes in the fashion industry. However, the reality is that the structure of the global fashion industry has evolved to a point where it has become fundamentally flawed. So, while political consumer activism over the last couple of decades has
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 307 made some progressive contributions within the industry, the emergence of fast fashion and high consumption levels has resulted in new challenges to solve. The industry remains human-labour intensive and reliant on technologies that have only minimally changed over the last century—resulting in garment manufacturing tasks that, compared to other manufacturing jobs, can be completed by unskilled, low-paid workers who are replaceable and, therefore, controllable. Additionally, the industry is saturated with manufacturing factories, and the intense competition for orders from Western brands results in suppliers accepting large orders and short deadlines—for rock-bottom prices—the effects of which are most acutely experienced by garment workers (Laudal, 2010). It also makes the industry highly susceptible to bribery, extortion, and other forms of corruption that limit the probability of creating sustainable change. To illustrate, in 2012 a fire at a factory, Tazreen Fashions, in Dhaka, Bangladesh resulted in the death of 112 garment workers. It was quickly publicized that 60 percent of the garments being sewn in that factory were for Walmart stores. Walmart responded that, as a company, they had previously banned all suppliers from sourcing through Tazreen because of former violations of Walmart’s code of conduct but that, unknown to Walmart, some of their orders had been subcontracted to Tazreen (Greenhouse, 2012). Contracting of garment manufacturing in the fashion industry is highly complex. It is standard practice within the industry for Western apparel brands to no longer manage for themselves the work of contracting production with offshore factories. Instead, the brands outsource this work to manufacturing middlemen, otherwise known as “megasuppliers”—who are essentially massive conglomerates that divide production of large orders between hundreds of different factories (which are sometimes nothing more than a small workshop or even home-based). For example, the world’s largest apparel megasupplier is a Chinese company called Li & Fung. The company has revenues of over $19.2 billion USD and contracts production for U.S. and European apparel brands with over 15,000 factories in forty different countries (Li & Fung, 2014). The supply chain resulting from this system is a tangled web of contractors, subcontractors, sub-subcontractors, etc. and Western brands frequently never even know the factories manufacturing their garments, let alone the conditions of those factories. It also means there is little guarantee that any given factory will produce clothing for the same Western brand consistently enough for the factory owners to be motivated to comply with codes of conduct and put forth efforts to improve conditions for their workers. So in the case of Walmart and the Tazreen factory fire, Walmart needed a large run of shorts to be produced and so they hired a megasupplier, Success Apparel, as their contractor. Success Apparel then contracted the work to another company, Simco—which, without informing Success Apparel, subcontracted some of the order to the parent company of Tazreen, Tuba Group. Finally, Tuba Group subcontracted part of their order to Tazreen—which is how the products for Walmart ended up being manufactured in a factory that they had already banned from use by their suppliers. Two other megasuppliers, contracted to produce other garments for Walmart, also followed similar outsourcing patterns and had sub-subcontracted garments to Tazreen (Hobbes, 2015). And this story is not unique to Walmart or Tazreen. This is the reality of how, in an industry driven by
308 Kim Y. Hiller Connell fast fashion, apparel brands function, meet consumer demands, and maintain profits. It is also why it frequently feels like the individuals engaged in political consumerism are fighting a losing battle. An additional challenge confronting political consumerism and the struggle to improve labour and environmental conditions within the fashion industry is the growth of consumer spending power in developing countries. Apparel manufacturers in developing countries are not just producing clothing for the United States and Europe. In fact, export of clothing from Bangladesh, for example, to other developing countries has increased by 50 percent per year over the last decade (Hobbes, 2015). And this expansion of developing countries selling clothes to other developing countries is quickly undoing progress activists have made over the last few decades in improving both labour and environmental conditions in manufacturing countries—where there are not enough labour inspectors to enforce the laws that are in place and where environmental and labour protections are not yet commonly demanded by consumers.
Conclusion This chapter detailed political consumerism activities in the fashion industry. Framed within the context of fast fashion, the current dominant model for clothing production and consumption, the chapter outlined sustainability challenges—both social and environmental—confronting the fashion industry. After an overview of recent historical political consumerism strategies challenging production and consumption patterns within the fashion industry, the chapter focused on contemporary boycott, buycott, lifestyle, and discursive political consumerism actions occurring in response to the industry’s human rights and environmental issues. The primary assertion of this chapter is that the industry’s fast fashion paradigm and consumers’ increasingly high consumption demands for fashion products are completely unsustainable. Political consumerism activities may continue to focus on creating better working conditions for garment labourers and decreasing the environmental consequences of fashion production. However, unless the industry breaks free from fast fashion and consumers recognize the need to reembrace slower modes of consumption, sustainability with the fashion industry will never be achieved. A fashion industry that values human rights, enhances quality of life, and protects our natural resources and ecosystems is only possible with drastic change and the emergence of a completely different business model. It is time to move away from fast fashion and a linear supply chain and aim towards a circular economy that is centred around collaborative consumption. Scholars and industry professionals must work together to understand how we can influence both the industry and consumers and speed the transition to a circular model of production and consumption. We also must shift more of our focus towards the increase consumption of fashion products in developing countries. Most of the current scholarship examining these issues are
21st Century Fast Fashion Industry 309 focused on consumer behaviour and education in developed countries. However, with the rapid industrialization of many developing countries, growing middle classes, and the accompanying increased consumption of fashion in these countries, it is critical that research is expanded to consumers and political consumption in these countries as well (see, e.g., Chapters 27 and 28). Overall, we must better understand the barriers facing a transition to sustainability and how to mobilize the industry and its key players to overcome these obstacles and realize the fashion industry’s full potential to achieve sustainability.
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Chapter 15
Toy C onsum p t i on as P ol itical Chal l e ng e s for Making Dream s C ome T ru e Mikael Klintman
Bruce Lund, an innovator and maker of toys in the United States, has made what he calls “The Toymaker’s Pledge.” It reads like this: I will make no bad toys. I will endeavour to create products with great value to the consumer and user. I will use my efforts to developing toys and children’s products that excite, delight, inspire, and entertain. So help me Santa. (Lund, 2011, p. 1)
Lund’s idea is that every toy designer, toy inventor, ad agency, and toy company should make this pledge, just like physicians take the Hippocratic Oath, “To do no harm” (Lund, 2011). This is all well, of course. Still, when analysing political consumerist perspectives on toys, it soon becomes apparent how the ambition stated above only addresses a fraction of the many concerns that various members and spheres of society have with toys. This chapter aims to give the reader an overview of the range of political consumerist concerns and practices to which toys have given rise. Two questions will lie in the background. The first one regards why toys have turned out to be more easily framed in political and ethical terms than many other types of products. The explanation must take into account the main characteristics of toys: that the end users are children; and that those who purchase toys are usually parents, close relatives, and other caretakers with all that this means concerning responsibility and emotional attachment. At the same time, the ease with which toys can be framed in political and ethical terms is no guarantee that such concerns will be translated into political consumerist action that takes the wide range of social, environmental, and health-oriented issues into account and that has a substantial effect on the market. This characteristic of toys is also necessary
314 Mikael Klintman for answering the other question: What political, ethical, and environmental factors are easier or harder to react to through different forms of political consumerism? The chapter is structured as follows. After a categorization of four strands of literature on political consumerism in the toy sector, a brief history is provided of consumer reactions to ethical and political dimensions of toys. This leads the chapter to present an overview of supply and demand side factors that facilitate or constrain such engagement. The major players and important forms of political consumerism in the toy sector are the subjects of the following two sections. Before the chapter’s concluding section, it examines challenges and opportunities for political consumer engagement in redirecting the toy sector towards sustainable development.
Previous Literature The toy industry is subject to a broad array of political consumerist reactions. A spontaneous reflection when examining political consumerism of toys is that this category of products appears to raise worries—and relief when certain risks have been eased—to such a strong extent that the food sector might be the only comparable one (see Chapter 13). A primary reason that toys seem to trigger strong political consumerist sentiments is that toys have a particular consumer and user group: children (Stenborg, 2013). However, this does not mean that many factors of concern necessarily converge and support each other. It is difficult for consumer groups or environmental groups to cover all elements of one political consumerist campaign, protest, or media hype. Therefore, such activities usually have one or two problematic aspects of toys in focus at a time, instead of addressing every factor that actors who initiate campaigns find problematic (Crane & Kazmi, 2010). This is true also when scholarly texts address political consumerist concerns with toys. Four streams of academic literature are central. Firstly, there is the research examining marketing of toys. Some of this research emphasises the pressure that toy marketing puts on parents and other adults. Another part scrutinises marketing directed directly at children (Hogan, 2007; Schor, 2005). Such studies sometimes cover political consumerist reactions concerning whether children should be directly addressed by toy marketing. Countries vary as to whether it is legally permitted to address children directly through marketing. There are several shades of grey here, enabling companies to address children in indirect or subtle ways. An example is toys “given” to children in certain fast food chains (Jacobson MF, 2010). Such marketing strategies have entailed political consumerist protests in several parts of the world. Secondly, previous research has examined political consumerist reactions to the themes and the values promoted to children via toys and games. For example, Goossen (2013) has investigated the promotion of war toys and the like. The concern that some toy producers implicitly indoctrinate norms of violence and war in children, mainly boys, is among the issues that have triggered the highest number of consumer protests throughout history (see the next section). Salter (2014) has studied violence in toys from
Toy Consumption as Political challenges 315 a gender perspective, connecting such toys to a wider political consumerist concern with gender stereotypes. A notable characteristic of consumer activism regarding the indoctrination of violence and stereotypical values through toys is that such activism generates counterprotests. Cause and effect between violent games and a child’s ditto behaviour are notoriously hard to prove. This uncertainty is typically emphasised by those who claim that the burden of proof should lie on those criticising the games and toys. One of the loudest sets of protests, initiated by Jack Thompson, who called himself an outraged father and activist lawyer (Thompson, 2005), was met with comparable levels of outrage. It contended that adverse effects of violent games and toys on children’s behaviour have yet to be proven unanimously by science (Kushner, 2006). Still, at least one large meta-analysis strongly supports the claims of consumer activists who believe there is such a causal relationship (Anderson et al., 2010). Controversies also abound concerning the effect of gender-stereotypical toys in general on gender values and behaviour. Consumer campaigns, such as “Let Toys Be Toys,” “Pink Stinks,” and “Play Unlimited” are highly visible in media (Fine & Rush, 2016). At the same time, studies on the gendered toy marketing debate show how politicians sometimes express more traditional gender values to benefit politically. An example is when the prime minister of Australia commented on the “No Gender December” campaign about toys by saying, “Let boys be boys and girls be girls” (Dearden, 2014). Third, there is the literature on how chemical or other health hazards related to toys have triggered political consumer activism of various kinds. Campaigns confronting particular companies have been a focus of research regarding soft plastics and hazardous paint/colouring of toys (Becker, Edwards, & Massey, 2010). The case of the world’s largest producer of toys is the most well-known one since it sheds light on the sheer volumes of goods that can be subject to consumer protests. In 2006 and 2007, Mattel had to recall almost fourteen million toys (Fisher-Price, Barbie, Batman, American Girl jewellery, etc.). The reason was, among other things, their high lead content as well as small, loosely attached magnets that could cause suffocation (U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission [http://www.cpsc.gov], in Gilbert & Wisner, 2010). Toys are a textbook example of products that are part of our “flat world” (Friedman, 2006). They are manufactured and sold in complicated steps by various subtractors and are shipped as well as sold globally with limited potential for consumers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and retailers to overlook the process. Still, the cases that are scrutinised by NGOs, consumer groups, and others often entail massive efforts of manufacturers to regain consumer trust. Mattel spent at least 50,000 hours of labour investigating their recalls of toys. In 2007, the company had spent around $40 million on these activities (Farrell, 2007). As Emelie Stenborg shows in her dissertation on media attention to chemical risks in toys, paint, and textiles, toys are a product group where the eyes of consumers and NGOs are particularly strongly focused on chemical risks to end users (Stenborg, 2013). Perhaps the fact that toys are used by children, whose brain development is highly sensitive to hazardous chemicals, overshadows other aspects that would otherwise be subject to a greater extent of political consumerism in the toy sector. Critical consumer attention to the health risks to workers due to hazardous chemicals
316 Mikael Klintman where the toys are produced has been less intensive than that concerning the risks to end users. Examples of research on consumer reaction to labour conditions in the industry include Pun & Yu (2008). Risks that concern working conditions in this industry have typically been analysed alongside working hours and salary (Williams, 2006). The fourth category of political consumerism research investigates consumer reactions to environmental problems caused by toy production and disposal (Glynn, 2012; McEvoy, 2011). Compared with chemical health risks, which demand scientific assessments, consumer concerns with (other) environmental aspects of toys are shown in the literature to be more common-sense oriented. Consumer campaigns about the environmental impact of toys focus on the great travel distances of toys, usually from Asian countries such as China to the rest of the world, has also aggravated consumers into mobilising. Moreover, consumer campaigns have addressed the “short life” of many toys made from low-quality plastics as well as the vast amounts of packaging waste and battery dependency (Benady, 2012). Along with consumer protests about the intuitive, negative environmental impact of the factors mentioned above, research has seen consumer concerns about a reverse issue: The counterintuitive and confusing character of various sorts of plastics. Studies indicate that multiple prefixes of plastics—biodegradable, recycled, recyclable, bioplastics, ecocyclic—particularly in the packaging of toys cause much consumer frustration of a classic political-consumerist kind: they have a formal correctness yet lack clarity on consumer information (ReCoup, 2017).
A Short History Having previously been accessible to the upper classes only, toys became mass produced by the turn of the twentieth century. This was a time when wages were rising, and industrial techniques had made it less expensive to produce toys (Brewer, 1980). Through the millennia archaeologists have discovered toys, and it has been clear that a fair share has not been “innocent” in the sense of merely recreational or educational as separate from the values of their societies at large. Many, if not most, toys have been—and are—political in the sense that they reflect the norms of the day, of what are considered productive tasks and interests suitable for women and men respectively. Unsurprisingly, the history of political consumerist activities related to toys follows to a large extent the history of public concerns in society as a whole. For instance, in the years after World War I, antiviolence activists and peace organisations protested against war toys in Europe and the United States. In light of women’s traditional role as caretakers of children, it is not farfetched to assume that these activists were usually women, mobilised in peace organisations such as Women Strike for Peace, Voices of Women, and, in a religious context, such groups as Christian Peacemaker Teams (Goossen, 2013). The aim was to put pressure on manufacturers, retailers, and parents to avoid producing, selling, and purchasing war toys. During the following decades and up until now, women’s groups have been active in protesting against allegedly unethical “messages” to children from
Toy Consumption as Political challenges 317 toys. Such protests led to a temporary reduction of gender-separated toys 1970s. Still, there has always seemed to be temptations for toy producers to increase gender-stereotypical toys and messages. For instance, there was the Teen Talk Barbie, who kept repeating the phrase, “Math class is hard!” In 1992, the American Association of University Women led consumer protests of this product due to the risk of reproducing low self- esteem among girls in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) (American Psychological Association, 2005). Consumer protesters have waged several battles in the gender area. Although some scholars show signs that toys, at least those sold by Disney, are more gendered today than half a decade ago (Auster & Mansbach, 2012; see also Chapter 33), others highlight a dramatic change taking place as a result of consumer pressure. On their websites, the major players “Toys R Us, Disney Store, Playmobil, Lego and many others have since 2014 either removed the gender filter on toys or do not organise their sub-brands by gender anymore” (Let toys be toys, 2016). In addition to the gender aspect, some critical social thinkers raised concerns in the 1950–1970s about what they perceived as the social downsides of mass consumption and its “ideology.” Campaigns were initiated with toys and children in focus. The idea behind these reactions was that children were the most vulnerable to the cultural expressions of mass consumption (Cohen, 2008). In order to avoid or reduce what was perceived as the culturally unhealthy phenomena that the social analyst Herbert Marcuse had tied directly to mass consumption—“euphoric unhappiness” and “moronization of society” (Marcuse, 1964)—children were the group most at risk as well as the group through which things could change for the better. Although mass consumption of toys had taken place for decades, it was not until the 1970s that toys became subject to extensive economic and cultural globalisation. Larger shares of the world’s toy products started to be produced in Japan and Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by South Korea and other Southeast Asian countries, most notably China, in the ensuing decades (Cross & Smits, 2005). This globalisation of toy production, along with increasing consumer awareness about the politically challenging side effect of toy production, have created much material for the mobilisation of civil society protests and consumer reactions for health-related, environmental (Becker et al., 2010), and, in several other respects, political and ethical reasons. As in all other sectors, however, there are factors that strengthen, and others that hinder, political consumerist activities in the toy sector.
Supply and Demand Side Factors Facilitating or Constraining Political Consumerism A few factors on the supply and demand side are especially noteworthy for promoting or limiting political consumerist activities in this sector. These factors are not necessarily
318 Mikael Klintman unique to toys. Still, the following section will point to features where the toy sector varies in degrees from other sectors. A main, facilitating supply factor is the large dependence that toy companies have on their reputation. Reputation is key to all areas, but toys—along with other products intended for children—seem to raise consumer concerns to an unusually high extent (Stenborg, 2013). This is tied to the fact that scandals related to children’s products (such as the Mattel case) fit very well within the media logic of attracting attention (Crane & Kazmi, 2010). If the conspicuous and emotion- triggering dimension of toy supply were the only one operating, political consumerism in the toy sector would have been an immensely powerful force for controlling and minimising risks in this area, a force only counterweighted by limits in consumers’ willingness to pay extra for less harmful products. However, there are complications. A supply factor constraining political consumerism of toys is the long supply chains. The supply of toys involves a long chain of contractors—and subcontractors of subcontractors. The uses of materials, disposal of hazardous chemicals, and working conditions along the entire chain are tough to keep track of, even for toy companies with high, ethical ambitions. Several links in the extended supply chain are often not very transparent in a globalised economy, something that also entails an obstacle to regulation that comprises the whole chain (Glynn, 2012). For consumers and NGOs it is even more challenging (Teagarden & Hinrichs, 2009). Thus, political consumerism of toys is often confined to many campaigns based on nonsystematically selected examinations of the supply chain of a particular product, leading to battles on that particular issue: campaigns focusing on a certain set of chemicals, a particular type of questionable marketing strategy, or the like. On the other hand, there are signs that the apparent randomness and unpredictable character of political consumerism campaigns confronting toy companies may still be effective. Studies of toy companies indicate that this has triggered those not yet scrutinised to try to prevent the risk of negative publicity by getting better insights and “cleaning up” unsustainable practices higher up in the supply chain (Crane & Kazmi, 2010). The financial incentives for subcontractors along the supply chain to use cheaper and riskier substances and processes ought to make ecolabelling and certification schemes popular among toy manufacturers and retail chains. Yet, such comprehensive ecoschemes seem to be less common in the toy sector than in several other areas. There are a few schemes, such as the UL Standard for Sustainability for Toys.1 Moreover, on textile toys, it is possible to find various organic cotton labels. In many toy stores, fairtrade labelling is easier to find than ecolabels. Small and medium toy manufacturers often use fair trade as a marketing advantage. Still, it is probably fair to say that the number of comprehensive, ethical, and environmental labelling schemes for toys is limited. There are a few possible reasons for this. One is that several of the things toy consumers worry about have been institutionalised into formal regulation, often in response to consumer protests and campaigns. For instance, the chemical compounds PVC and phthalates are banned from the toy sector in several countries. This means that it is illegal to promote these already regulated environmental improvements on voluntary ecolabels
Toy Consumption as Political challenges 319 (Klintman, 2015). Another possible reason is that low environmental impact along the entire production chain is tough to verify. Instead, one often finds a couple of accurate, verifiable environmental statements on many toys. Still another reason could be that if a producer has a few toys promoted with an ecolabel, this may cause worries about the environmental and health-oriented features of nonlabelled products from the same manufacturer or retailer. In general, toy manufacturers strive towards broad consumer trust in the entire brand, in all of the manufacturer’s products, and not just in a share of them (Boström & Klintman, 2011). From the perspective of ecolabelling actors, all of the above might be seen as an obstacle to political consumerism in the form of buycotting. At the same time, the sometimes short distance from consumer protests to hard regulation might also be considered an opportunity for political consumerism in the toy sector. One demand factor that facilitates political consumerism of toys stems from the classical institutional economist Thorstein Veblen’s notion of “conspicuous consumption.” For Veblen, this term refers to the human inclination to prefer goods and services that impress, and even trigger envy, among others. Veblen, who wrote his works around the turn of the twentieth century, exemplified this mainly with costly and apparently wasteful consumption, such as products that the family could barely afford or extensive time spent on learning skills with no prospects at being useful or financially profitable (e.g., to learn Latin or Ancient Greek). A century later, in our times, consumer scholars have suggested that some political consumerist preferences can be explained in the same terms used by Veblen (Griskevicius, Tybur, & Van den Bergh, 2010). A demand factor facilitating political consumption of toys is the drive towards conspicuous consumption, which sometimes converges with interest in handmade, nonplastic, solid, wooden, and fairtrade toys (Brown, 2013). To make political consumerist choices in the toy sector often requires extensive knowledge acquisition and typically also the resources to pay premiums for toy brands promoted as superior in various political respects. The concept of what is “political” should here be understood in a broad sense, including ethical, educational, and strengthening children as citizens beyond entertainment. From this broad perspective, conspicuous consumption of toys may include “politically” motivated decisions of adults based on the function of toys. Consumers’ inclinations serve to show not just others, but also themselves, that they make intelligent choices for their children. For instance, the Danish toy maker, Lego, has long enjoyed high status among consumers for the stimulation of children’s unique abilities, concentration, creativity, and ability to cooperate with other children (see Director, 2016). But what happens when such political factors—highly positive ones—are countered by one or more politically questionable factors? This is what happened to Lego. Its reputation as a politically correct toy producer was challenged when the environmental NGO Greenpeace highlighted that Lego was about to renew its marketing collaboration with the big oil company Shell. The Shell logo and name used to be placed on all “relevant” Lego products, such as toy petrol stations, and Lego was ready to renew its contract with Shell. Greenpeace initiated highly media-savvy campaigns outside the toy maker’s headquarters. They built Arctic environments where a Lego ice bear was drowning as
320 Mikael Klintman the tide of oil was rising. After three months in 2014, the campaign led Lego to abandon its plans to renew its marketing contract with Shell, and Greenpeace announced that the result was “awesome” (Duckett, 2014). The result illustrates what seems to be a common trait in political consumerist activities in the toy sector. One issue is “resolved”— from a political consumerist perspective—whereas several other apparently problematic factors remain. This does not have to be a Pyrrhic victory. It is possible to interpret it as one small victory that may make a later success easier. Still, concerning Lego, it is premature to conclude that the latter is the case. After all, the core material of Lego’s bricks and other toys is conventional plastic, in the sense that it is—at least so far—made from oil. This means that several sustainability challenges persist, although the political issue of what should be signalled to children on their toys has been resolved by removing the image of a harmonious presence of a big oil company from the landscape that children are encouraged to build (Marketing, 2014). By this relatively small, benevolent response to NGOs’ and consumers’ pressure, Lego has restored its high reputation. After this gesture, few consumers can be expected to be “politically embarrassed.” Most of them will probably continue to purchase Lego products, despite the material of which the bricks are made (Duckett, 2014). Finally, there is a demand factor that both facilitates and constrains political consumerism of toys: the fact that children are particularly susceptive to marketing, which makes them vulnerable. Children are arguably at the centre of pressure from mass consumerist society, as marketing strategies make use of the insecurities, identity challenges, and dreams of young people (see Chapter 40). On the one hand, this makes toy companies succeed in having children attracted to certain products, which in turn make the kids convince adults that they should buy them (Horovitz, 2006; Schor, 2005). On the other hand, this is what makes many parents, consumer organisations, and so forth react particularly strongly to seemingly unethical methods for marketing toys to children. Moreover, there is something special with products that are purchased as gifts. Whereas consumers can sometimes live with compromises inherent in products they purchase for themselves, the gifts they buy—toys are typically gifts—raise consumers’ expectations that the products should be free from any bad associations and implications. Toys, like other gifts, are often given as an exposure of the thoughtfulness—including political thoughtfulness—of the giver (see Konow, 2010). In the abovementioned historical overview of political consumerism of toys, several examples of this are highlighted.
Key Actors Involved Key players that consumers are dependent on for putting political consumerist pressure in the toy sectors can be summarised as follows. First, there are children, their parents, and other adults directly concerned with risks associated with toys. To be sure, it can be
Toy Consumption as Political challenges 321 debated whether parental concerns and actions to reduce risks only to their children belong to the category of political consumerism. It could be argued that such concerns are more aptly analysed regarding traditional self-interests of Homo economicus. On the other hand, the distinction is often not clear-cut between the self-interest of an individual household and citizen-oriented interests for the common good (Klintman, 2012). The first trigger of political consumerism may stem from parents and other closely related adults directly perceiving risks that they associate with specific toys that children near them use. An example of this is when parents or kindergarten teachers have noticed risk to children’s health with certain toys and then acted by contacting the toy company, the media, or political authorities about their concerns. Still, most of the political consumerist themes of toys are difficult or impossible for consumers to assess directly. For instance, chemical risks—to children, workers, or the environment—demand expert examination, translation, and communication in order to generate consumer awareness and ditto political mobilisation (Boström & Klintman, 2011). As to communication with consumers, the key role of the media is the most obvious one, for instance concerning chemical risks of toys (Stenborg, 2013). It is very common that the media have received input from NGOs about environmental or ethical problems stemming from the toy industry. For instance, there is the case discussed above where environmental NGO Greenpeace made Lego not renew their marketing contract with Shell. Also, peace groups and women’s groups have throughout the modern history of toys been particularly influential nongovernmental organisations raising consumer awareness and activism (Goossen, 2013). More recently, NGOs have expanded the palette of political consumerist toy issues to include the risk that companies collect big data from children’s play. For example, the U.S. Consumers Union, the Swedish Consumers’ Association, and consumer NGOs in several other countries have sent formal complaints about the interactive toys “My Friend Cayla” and the robot “i- Que” to the governmental agencies in their respective countries (e.g., U.S. Federal Trade Commission [FTC], 2016). The reason is that the toys may register via the internet what the children and nearby adults say in the room where the toy is placed. The toy producer may sell this data to other companies or use it in their marketing. A category of actors that might not be immediately associated with being on the same side as political consumers are retailers (Klintman, 2017). Still, in the Mattel toy scandal discussed above, it was in fact actors in the retail sector that first identified a substantialAnd it was retailers who discovered that some Mattel toys on the European market had high lead content (Story, 2007). In addition to strong reactions of anger from consumers all over the world, the identification of elevated levels of lead in Mattel products led Mattel to investigate the paint of their toys, ultimately recalling nearly a million toys that had been produced since 2003 (Choi & Lin, 2009; Gilbert & Wisner, 2010). Academia is a sector that is sometimes forgotten in its role as a catalyst for political consumerism. Most obviously, examinations by the natural sciences are often indispensable for assessing chemical and ecological risks associated with certain kinds of toy production and products. Although the natural sciences often hold an image as value-neutral, scientific findings indicate that enhanced risks of certain toys to health
322 Mikael Klintman or the environment—when translated and communicated effectively—constitute potentially powerful triggers of political consumerism (Becker et al., 2010). Moreover, the social sciences have occasionally provided findings—for instance of labour conditions in toy factories—that may be used as a basis for consumer protests and boycotts (Holzer, 2010). Although the overview of the major players surrounding political consumerism may give the impression of a number of proactive groups and sectors and a predominantly reactive toy industry, there is ample evidence of toy companies engaged in many active endeavours to reduce the reasons for consumer criticism. As discussed in several chapters of this Handbook, there are various environmental or ethical certificates and standards at hand through which many toy companies scrutinise their production chains. In addition, toy makers construct schemes to increase their goodwill in the eyes of consumers. Donations by toy companies to children’s hospitals or children in regions of war are particularly common ways of stimulating buycotting of the products of these enterprises. Finally, it is important to mention a societal sphere whose role is downplayed in parts of the political consumerist literature: governmental agencies. Several political consumerist concerns related to toys are connected to environmental and health-oriented risks that can no longer be voluntarily managed by the toy industry and retailers. As with several risks in other sectors, consumer activism serves to highlight these risks to policymakers. This, in turn, may help political consumerist concerns become institutionalised into formal regulation (Glynn, 2012; McEvoy, 2011). And although far from all risks associated with the entire supply chain of toys can be subject to formal regulation, the very “risk” of future regulation, and not only the risk of boycotts, may constitute a motivating factor for toy companies to swiftly manage the issues addressed in political consumerism campaigns.
What Forms of Political Consumerism Are Dominant? As discussed earlier in this chapter, political consumerism takes several different forms in the toy sector. Here, it is important to expand on a topic of the dynamics of political consumerism and regulation. In the toy sector, tension seems to prevail between political consumerist framings and regulatory framings of how to manage risks. Chemical risks associated with plastics in toys may serve as an example. When consumer groups lobbied against toymakers for their use of hazardous chemicals (phthalates), this led to rather rapid bans on six of these compounds from several toys in the European Union (ENDS Report, 2004). As regards certain consumer products, such as clothes for adults, nonorganically produced wine, and energy sources, consumer boycotts might be perceived by governments as an appropriate and sufficient solution. If governments only ensure that consumer information is correct, clear, and not misleading, there should be a space for consumers to be free to make responsible decisions since governments
Toy Consumption as Political challenges 323 cannot regulate everything. This view underlies, for example, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s efforts to make public policies for environmental product information converge internationally (Klintman, 2015). Toys, which by definition are associated with children, are in several countries framed as more of a regulatory issue. There are frequently strict product regulations intended to protect children. The logic behind this particular status ascribed to children is that, accordingly, it should not be up to the consumer whether a child should be harmed or not. At the same time, countries differ in how strictly they regulate toys, chemicals, and other factors related to toy production. This can be both an obstacle and a facilitating factor for concerted, international political consumerist action in a globalised economy. An obstacle is when the political consumerist concerns about toys are fragmented due to nation- specific regulatory conditions. For countries lagging behind in toy regulation, it is possible for consumer groups to point to foreign role models to make their case. A sign of this character of how society handles risks related to toys is the high frequency—and efficiency—of discursive, political consumerism in the toy sector. Whereas monetary political consumerism— boycotting and buycotting— is where much of consumer activism takes place in several product areas geared towards adult use (Micheletti, Stolle, & Follesdal, 2003), risks from toys often appear to move directly from discursive political consumerism (protests on the internet, media scopes, etc.) to deliberations about regulation. For instance, in the Mattel case with chemically dangerous toys, discursive political consumerism, rather than boycotting, was the dominant political consumerist tool. Many consumers reacted discursively once they had bought toys and feared that their children would become sick. This immediately entailed regulatory bodies to move the issue from a political consumerist one into scientific investigations, in turn leading to regulatory framings of the issue.
Sustainability Aspects of Toys When examining political consumerist activities, it is often in sustainability issues that some of the most recent developments can be found. What does the research show regarding the potential for toys to enable change towards sustainable development? Looking at the sheer volume of toys today, it easy to see some factors that speak strongly against a transition into sustainable development in the toy sector. The variety of prices is one such factor. Many toys are, from a working-or middle-class perspective of the West, fairly inexpensive. The dominant norm in mass consumption society is that children should get several new toys for their birthdays, for several other holidays, and in between. Whereas the changing focus from goods to services has come quite far in other sectors, the new, physical toy—quickly replaced with another—is still the dominant norm (see also Chapter 40). At the same time, there are a few factors and tendencies that seem to point in the direction towards such a development. In an extensive survey conducted in 2012–2013,
324 Mikael Klintman asking Swedish parents about their toy purchases, Micheletti & Stolle found that almost half of the respondents claimed that “environmental consequences of toy production” would be a factor that made them choose one toy over another (Micheletti & Stolle, 2017). Because of the well-known value-action gap, this result cannot be translated into the share of consumers who make use of this environmental factor in actual purchasing situations. Still, adding the full range of studies about toy consumption examined for this chapter, it is highly likely that sustainable development is a significant factor for a large share of consumers. And if we use the term “sustainability” in its original, broad sense—that includes social and economic sustainability—toys certainly seem to be a type of product that raises such concerns. Toys promoted as ethical, organic, and fair trade are a common sight on markets run by nonprofit organisations or companies that profile themselves as an alternative. This can be seen as a reaction to the mass consumption of toys in the leading toy chains that some consumer groups conceive of as irresponsible. Another political consumerist tendency where toys belong to the main types of products is secondhand markets. This trend has been facilitated extensively by the many internet companies where consumers can buy and sell products to each other directly. To be sure, there is an apparent economic rationality tied to buying toys secondhand, which involves borrowing and sharing toys. Still, at least concerning other product areas, consumers state that sustainability concerns are a motivating factor for them (Gullstrand Edbring, Lehner, & Mont, 2016). Do increased secondhand practices reduce environmental harm? The intuitive answer might be a yes. However, there are worries among consumer groups that specifically refer to toys that are bought and sold secondhand. The reason is that old plastic toys on the secondhand market have turned out to still contain hazardous chemicals that have been banned from newer products. This has led, for instance, to a major environmental NGO in Sweden recommending that consumers purchase secondhand products except in the toy sector (Swedish Society for Nature Conservation [SSNC], 2017). There is also a more scientifically challenging question here. What if consumer awareness of a widely available secondhand market for toys makes them inclined to purchase more, rather than less, products, since they know that they can easily sell the toys later and thus reduce some environmental harm along with reducing some of their guilty conscience? From a perspective of environmental consequences, it remains to be examined to what extent this entails reduced overall amounts of environmentally harmful substances. To answer this question, extensive longitudinal studies of both consumer behaviour and life-cycle analysis (LCA) of toys would need to be conducted. This may provide surprising results. Many surprising results are already available about environmental consequences of toys. Only to mention one here, LCA studies indicate that the batteries in toys are at least as damaging as the toy itself, for instance as regards electric teddy bears (Muñoz, Gazulla, Bala, Puig, & Fullana, 2009). An additional aspect that would need to be investigated about toy consumption and sustainability concerns consumer perceptions of recycling. Recycling schemes that become more detailed and sophisticated raise the question of how recycling—in tandem with its environmental benefits—might reduce
Toy Consumption as Political challenges 325 political consumerist concerns about massive consumption of plastic toys as environmentally problematic. Do recycling schemes give consumers the illusion (to the extent that it is an illusion) that all is well if they only recycle? Finally, on the topic of sustainability, a theme that frequently emerges in the news and research about toys is China. Political consumerist criticism of “made in China” is often delivered using arguments of sustainability and health (Teagarden & Hinrichs, 2009). Without getting into comparing sustainability challenges in China with those of other countries, it is relevant to pose the following question for future research: To what extent is the sustainability criticism of China’s toy production rooted in worries about the social and economic sustainability of the home region, as China currently produces a vast majority of the world’s toys? A hypothesis to be scrutinised would be whether a sense of an economic and social threat from China may spill over to a general scepticism using other political consumerist arguments.
Conclusions Perhaps more than in some other sectors, an overview of the toy sector from a political consumerist perspective shows the following: Toys are anything but innocent. They are rarely just recreational or educational in separation from the values of the cultures where children use them. To the contrary, if people in the future would seek to understand the dominant and competing values of our time, the toy sector and the political consumerist efforts to revise it would be an excellent place to look. One value type is found when examining the material dimension of toy production and toys. It includes, for instance, consumer concerns about materials, chemical content, amount and materials in packaging, battery-dependence, (short) duration, and obstacles to recycling of the toys. We find an additional value type that is based less on material properties and more on social and cultural ones. These include political consumerist activities with a focus on the messages the toys send, often implicitly, to children. Norms about violence, gender stereotypes, mass consumerism, and fossil-based society are only a few of these. More lately, the wider public debate about privacy and integrity has been raised in the toy sector. Some toys have been shown to conduct ICT- recordings available to the manufacturer of conversations between parents and adults, do not exhaust the factors of consumer concerns about toys. Still, as wide-ranging as these issues are, a critical remark could be made on the basis of The Toymaker’s Pledge, presented in the introduction to this chapter. This pledge calls for producers to give “great value to the [individual] consumer and user.” Looking at the proportion of various political consumerist activities in the toy sector, much of it seems to be confined to this traditional realm of consumer interests. In addition to price and “quality,” the interest in the health and safety of one’s child lies within this realm. Health aspects of chemicals and risks of suffocation are the most obvious ones. Still, when individual consumers unite with their personal concerns,
326 Mikael Klintman the problems—and solutions—become public, and may move far beyond the interests of the individuals who are protesting. Bans of certain chemicals and hazardous toys are examples of this. It would be unfair, however, to claim that all political consumerist activities in the toy sector are based on individual interests. Among the political consumerist activities that have been most prominent in moving beyond the well-being of the individual child (typically one’s child) are the consumer-led (most often women-led) campaigns against toys promoting violence and gender stereotypes. Here is an underlying vision that goes beyond sparing one’s child from norms of violence and gender stereotypes. The ambition is far higher: a future that is better for all, with less violence and with freedom from gender imperatives. The chapter has indicated a few obstacles to increased effects of political consumerist activities in the toy sector. One is the combination of low cost, low durability, and cultural insistence on physical products as being more attractive than nonmaterial products as gifts to children. Another is the long product chains in a global market, which makes transparency limited and financial incentives high for subcontractors that compromise the issues concerning political consumerism. Nonetheless, there are reasons for believing that political consumerism can be strengthened in this sector. What was stated as a limitation in the toy sector, the individual concern for one’s child or children close to home, is of course also an immense driver for consumers to engage in the toy sector. Moreover, the extraordinary power of reputation in the toy sector is shown to make many consumers motivated to mobilise and for producers that risk being scrutinised to comply in order to maintain or strengthen a high reputation. To further enhance political consumerist activities, it would help if NGOs, consumer groups, and retailers would clarify the often logical link between individual interests in the well-being of end-users of toys to other political, ethical, and environmental benefits. That the worker producing the toy should not be exposed to excessive risks should be more clearly framed as united with the demand for toys safe to the end-user. The policy realm could also strengthen political consumerism in this sector by being more alert as NGOs and consumer groups identify problems and risks in the toy sector, and—where needed—by introducing semihard and hard regulation (e.g., requirements for mandatory information, fees, taxes, moratoria, and bans). If the relationship between political consumerist activities and regulation becomes closer and more visible, more consumers in the toy sector are likely to mobilise, with higher hopes that their dreams come true.
Acknowledgements The work on this chapter has received support from MISTRA: Sustainable Consumption— From Niche to Mainstream (coordinated by Åsa Svenfelt & Karin Bradley, 2017–2021) and FORMAS: Governing Climate Change (project leader Johannes Stripple, 2013–2017). I am grateful for the support from these Swedish research foundations.
Toy Consumption as Political challenges 327
Note 1. See https://standardscatalog.ul.com/standards/en/standard_172_2). The Blue Angel (https:// www.blauer-engel.de/en/products/home-living/spielzeug) as well as the Nordic Swan, the official Ecolabel in the Nordic countries (http://www.nordic-ecolabel.org/about/).
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Chapter 16
T he Shifting P ol i t i c s of Sustai na bl e Seafo od C onsume ri sm Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim
“Seafood,” unlike other meat protein sectors, refers to a vast array of individual species within finfish, shellfish, and crustaceans. Seafood is also globally diverse, with different species grown in different environmental conditions in both marine and freshwater environments. The seafood sector is also divided between capture fisheries, the harvest of fish and other marine and aquatic organisms from the wild, and aquaculture, the farming of fish and other aquatic species. Seafood is also the most-traded food commodity globally (Smith et al., 2010), with the majority of seafood consumed by developed country markets, like the United States and European Union, originating in developing countries (Asche et al., 2015). This diversity of production, coupled with complex and opaque international trade networks, has raised concern by civil society groups in major import markets over the capacity of (developing country) governments to sustainably produce the seafood they demand. After nearly three decades (see Sutton & Wimpee, 2008), these civil society concerns have evolved into what is today referred to as the “sustainable seafood movement.” The expansion of the sustainable seafood movement has been largely driven through partnerships between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and (predominantly) United States–based family philanthropic foundations who have sought to address perceived failures of governments to mitigate management and conservation efforts on two fronts (Safina, 1995). First, there is concern over the status of global fish stocks in capture fisheries, of which 24 percent are overexploited. Many are subject to claims of widespread illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing (FAO, 2016); fraudulent trade practices (Miller et al., 2012); and, more recently, unfree labour (Marschke & Vandergeest, 2016). Second, the environmental impacts associated with aquaculture have been linked to ecosystem destruction, water pollution, and biodiversity impacts (e.g., Lee et al., 2014) and what some consider the unsustainable and perverse use of
332 Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim forage fish like anchovies as fish feed (Tacon and Metian, 2009). As these and other issues related to the marine environment have become increasingly visible in the mainstream and social media (Silver & Hawkins, 2017), there has been a consolidation of the “sustainable seafood movement” as a means of ocean conservation through attempts to influence consumption practices. The highly global nature of trade creates an opportunity for political consumerism to affect ocean conservation in nations that might not otherwise be influenced to improve environmental practices. The European and U.S. markets are not only where these tools have predominantly developed but also amongst the most seafood import–dependent markets in the world, largely from developing-country sources (Asche et al., 2015). The European Union and United States import 65 percent and 91 percent of the value of their domestically consumed seafood respectively, with approximately half of these imports from developing countries (Pramod et al., 2014; EUMOFA, 2016). Political consumerism that alters demand for products with and without important attributes can create an economic incentive to change production practices and improve ocean conservation, particularly for producers (including those in developing countries) who are reliant on markets in which political consumerism is powerful. The proliferation of initiatives and tools under the sustainable seafood movement represents the need to create systems of trust and verification between consumers and producers across global space (Boström & Klintman, 2008; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013; Yoo et al., 2015). Initially relying upon boycotts, the movement has expanded to include ecolabels, recommendation lists, and improvement projects making broad spectrums of claims including sustainable, responsible, fair, local, and organic (see also Jacquet et al., 2010; Parkes et al., 2010; Roheim, 2009). These tools all hold in common the goal of communicating “sustainability” as a credence product attribute—that is, one that is not discernible through experience but rather through verification by a trusted third party (Darby & Karni, 1973). Ultimately, however, it is not the number of these initiatives that this chapter addresses, but the role of political consumerism in driving the proliferation of claims and initiatives that today make up the sustainable seafood movement. This chapter argues that the proliferation of the initiatives and tools under the sustainable seafood movement needs to be understood in the context of changing civil society concerns around seafood sustainability, which has manifested itself in the proliferation of modes of consumer engagement. As a consequence, the role of political consumerism has to be understood in the wider context of multiple sustainability claims, the availability of sustainable seafood, and retailer commitments to supply only sustainable seafood. In order to understand the future of the sustainable seafood movement, notions of demand-driven change have to then be supplemented with the wider politics of NGO- industry partnerships that engage consumers in a variety of ways. The following section provides a brief outline of political consumerism and its relevance for understanding the sustainable seafood movement. To understand these politics, this chapter traces the “seascape” of consumer-facing sustainability initiatives— ranging from early boycotts to the emergence of NGO-led recommendation lists, third- party certification, and traceability tools that directly inform consumers. By outlining
Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism 333 these various approaches, the discussion draws out four key themes that underpin the proliferation of these initiatives. Finally, the discussion focuses on the continuing role of political consumerism in the seafood industry on shaping both demand and supply under conditions of globalisation.
Political Consumerism and Seafood Political consumerism is broadly defined as “consumer choice of producers and products based on political or ethical considerations, or both” (Stolle et al., 2005, p. 246). Seen as such, consumers not only respond to product specifications and qualities that affect them as individuals (such as food safety or taste) but also engage with wider civic qualities, values, and norms (Wessells, 2002). The act of consumption is then seen as a form of “everyday” political engagement that can shape the actions of producers by shifting market demand away from products that do not match the norms of a consumer (boycotting) or increasing demand for products that do (buycotting) (Copeland, 2014; Neilson, 2010). As Illes (2004) argues in the case of seafood, the market therefore offers a means of expressing a civic duty to engage with issues that are not taken up in traditional forms of politics. There are different assumptions about what drives civic engagement through political consumerism. As Neilson (2010) outlines, political consumerism has on the one hand been associated with trust in political institutions, with the assumption that political bodies will be motivated to act in response to the recognition of consumer action. But on the other hand, distrust in the ability or willingness of political institutions to act on the values, interests, and norms is also seen as pushing consumers to act independently through the market. Despite the different rationales of consumer action, evidence shows that consumer-and therefore market-based action ultimately depends on the nation-state for instigating change to some degree (e.g., Foley, 2013). It is also increasingly apparent that consumers, like the firms they buy from, do not act in isolation from other forms of civic action organised by NGOs, who orchestrate consumer action as part of wider campaigns targeting state and private-sector change. The sustainable seafood movement manifests itself through a network of NGOs, including the World Wildlife Fund, Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, Fishwise, and Greenpeace, as well as philanthropic family foundations in the United States such as Packard, Moore, Oak, Moore, and Walton. Those in industry dependent upon sustainable sources of seafood for a sustainable business (e.g., Unilever) were early partners with NGOs to explore avenues to use market-based forces to incentivize greater global sustainability of fish resources. As a “new” social movement, the perspective of these NGOs and philanthropic foundations was not to capture nor to usurp state power, but rather to “strive for a more indirect influence on the political centre from the fringes” (Holzer, 2006, p. 409). The role that these organisations play has been in creating a coherent platform for individualised collective action by consumers, with the goal of
334 Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim ensuring that the patterns of political engagement are both communicable and greater than the sum of individual purchases (Holzer, 2006; Micheletti, 2003). Nongovernmental organizations are thought to enrol consumers in the following five ways: 1. They engage consumers as agents of market change by giving meaning to specific product attributes, thereby enabling consumers to affect demand by boycotting or buycotting products on the basis of these attributes and sending a demand signal (in the form of price and product specifications) up a value chain to producers (Wessells et al., 2001). 2. They can “borrow” the purchasing power of consumers by threatening action against a certain product or company (Holzer, 2006). In this case NGOs often target actors in the value chain who are most sensitive to brand risk (e.g., Dauvergne & Lister, 2012). 3. They can lend the credibility of their own “brand” to private certification and labelling schemes and scrutinize products according to the presumed preferences of consumers (Holzer, 2006). In some cases these organisations do this during the establishment of a certifications scheme (Ponte, 2014); in other cases they may do this after the fact by sitting on a board or technical working group, or even by co- labelling products with their own logo (Bush & Oosterveer, 2015). 4. They may attempt to take a wider advocacy role by shaping public opinion around a corporate policy or practice and/or a particular consumer culture (Micheletti & Boström, 2014). 5. They can take one extra step in advocacy by engaging with the lifestyle politics of consumers, not only by constructing meaning around a particular consumer practice but also by linking the private life sphere to reflect their political views on alternative consumption practices (Micheletti & Boström, 2014). The rest of this chapter provides a review of the tools, initiatives, and approaches that have been applied under the wider umbrella of the sustainable seafood movement. In doing so, the chapter explores the ways in which the goals and outcomes of political consumerism have changed over time and reflects on the ways social movement organisations enrol consumers.
Seafood Boycotts Early sustainable seafood initiatives led by NGOs focused strongly on the consumer boycotts of high-profile fish species in the United States. The earliest example was a consumer backlash against tuna seining in which dolphins were entangled in tuna nets, leading to maiming, drowning, and death. Following widespread broadcast of a grisly video showing the plight of dolphins in tuna nets taken by an activist posing as a worker
Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism 335 on board a tuna vessel in South America, schoolchildren throughout the United States boycotted tuna in their school lunches (Wallström and Roheim, 1994). Heavy pressure from the media and public was placed upon the three major tuna companies, Chicken of the Sea, Starkist, and Bumble Bee, leading each to announce they would no longer purchase tuna caught using means that were harmful to dolphins and eventually to use the dolphin-safe label. Other prominent examples of boycotts in the 1990s included the “Give Swordfish a Break” and “Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass” (otherwise known as Patagonian toothfish) campaigns with funding from the Packard and Pew foundations. Each boycott consisted of public media campaigns targeting consumers through sophisticated communications strategies and enlisting the consumer to pressure chefs, restaurants, retailers, and even cruise ships to cease buying swordfish and Chilean sea bass (see Jacquet & Pauly, 2007; Roheim & Sutinen, 2006). While there has been little formal assessment of their effects, anecdotally the boycotts were successful in different ways. The Chilean sea bass campaign successfully led to retailers and restaurants pulling product from their shelves or menus. This helped focus attention on the need for greater efforts to reduce IUU fishing and trade in illegally caught fish (Roheim & Sutinen, 2006), and eventually through a variety of means global fisheries for toothfish have improved. In contrast, the swordfish campaign did not lead to reduced imports to the United States, but it did lead the U.S. government to close several areas for fishing on swordfish, instituting stronger quota restrictions, improving monitoring of imports of swordfish for undersized fish, and creating improved management measures to reduce capture of undersize fish (Boots, 2008; Roheim & Sutinen, 2006). Boycotts of aquaculture products have focused largely on shrimp, one of the most important as well as controversial seafood products on the global market (Islam, 2014). In 2009 the Mangrove Action Project launched the “Question Your Shrimp” campaign, leading to the collection of a thousand pledges from people agreeing not to eat imported shrimp and thirty-three restaurants and two retailers in Seattle who agreed not to sell imported shrimp (MAP, 2017). The basis of the campaign was to reduce sales in the United States, which is the largest importer of shrimp, by reducing demand to stop the deforestation of coastal mangroves. The campaign worked to directly influence consumers, but also enrolled retail outlets by enrolling them discursively into the problem of mangrove deforestation in addition to the threat of further consumer action. Again, the direct success of this campaign is unclear given no assessment has been carried out. But, as discussed in the following section, the campaign influenced the further development of alternative consumer initiatives. Perhaps the most successful seafood boycott was the Greenpeace “Recipe for Disaster” campaign in the United Kingdom in 2004. Adopting a different tactic to the single-product campaigns outlined above, this mediagenic campaign placed direct pressure on highly competitive retailers to stop sourcing International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red-list species, species with high levels of by-catch and vulnerable skates and rays (Greenpeace, 2005). The boycott involved, amongst other direct actions, Greenpeace signage and dumping by-catch from beam-trawlers on the
336 Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim steps of retailers as part of what they labelled “the rancid roadshow.” Within a very short period of time United Kingdom’s top-ten retailers agreed to make changes to their seafood sourcing policies. Soon after, similar campaigns were coordinated by Greenpeace and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the rest of the European Union and in the United States. But unlike the other boycott campaigns, the outcome was a series of retail commitments to only source seafood certified by the Marine Stewardship Council and Aquaculture Stewardship Council, or recommended by seafood lists such as Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch. The role of boycotts therefore appears to have been usurped by varying forms of buycotts.
Recommendation Lists As NGO' and consumer awareness of seafood sustainability grew beyond the early boycott campaigns, attention moved to consumer engagement through recommendation lists. Seen as a more “proactive” form of engagement, these recommendation lists started with the 1998 Audubon list of ranked seafood, intended to provide consumers with information to seek out “good choices” and avoid “bad choices” in their seafood purchasing decisions (Safina, 1998). With funding from major private foundations in various parts of the world, these lists have proliferated. Today the most well-known guide is perhaps that of the Monterey Bay Aquarium under the Seafood Watch program. Aquariums, like Monterey, have expanded their educational focus beyond their initial focus on life in oceans to the wider perspective of ocean health. The health of fisheries as the source of seafood for many of these aquariums was then seen as a natural extension (Kemmerly & Macfarlane, 2008). One of the formats that this extended seafood education programme took was through pocket guides or wallet cards, aimed at reaching and educating consumers. Of the 200 or so guides produced internationally, many were initially independently researched, resulting in conflicting recommendations and consumer confusion (Roheim, 2009). However, over time there has been greater coordination among the aquariums and NGOs producing these guides, with many relying on Seafood Watch for their rankings. Seafood guides provide a rating based on a criteria-based methodology that evaluates environmental and biological criteria of species, fisheries, or aquaculture practices. The rankings are summarized in a traffic-light system of red (items to avoid), yellow (good alternatives), and green (best choices), which can be used to guide consumers to purchase fish products that are well managed or farmed. However, these recommendation lists have come under criticism for not providing empirical assessments of fish stocks and aquaculture systems, not providing clear evidence that they have led to positive impacts on the sustainability of these systems (Jacquet & Pauly, 2007; Kemmerly, 2008), and not resulting in actual changes in consumer demand (Villas- Boas et al. 2016). Others have also questioned whether the impacts of these recommendation lists are related more to the opportunities they afford the NGOs and aquariums
Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism 337 running these schemes to gain access and authority in formal policy discussions (De Vos & Bush, 2011).
Certification and Ecolabels Seafood ecocertification programs are perhaps the most complex, costly, and controversial form of market-based assessment and verification of fisheries and aquaculture performance. While there is variation between programs, they generally involve (often multiple) auditors empirically assessing the performance of producers, regulatory bodies, and value chain actors against an independent standard. If they pass these assessments, certified producers are permitted to place ecolabels on affiliated products, serving as a signal to consumers that the product was produced from a well-managed source (Ward & Phillips, 2008). In return, consumers purchasing labelled seafood create a direct incentive, such as a price premium, for sustainable fishing (Guðmundsson & Wessells, 2000). Two central components of the certification systems underlie their credibility and authority. First, the use of independent third-party assessment determines whether a fishery can be certified and eligible to bear an ecolabel; and second, chain of custody certification provides assurance that the ecolabelled product has maintained its “identity” throughout the value chain. The number of these certifications has increased dramatically since 2000 to include more than fifty different programs globally with different standards and focus on sustainable, responsible, organic, and “fair.” The variety of claims made by these certification schemes, as well as their level of independent assessment, has also led to very different levels of perceived credibility and authority in the market (Auld, 2014; Bailey et al., 2016a; Miller & Bush, 2015). Arguably the most advanced standard for capture fisheries, the Marine Stewardship Council, established in 1997, has the longest and broadest presence in the market relative to other ecolabels, having certified 12 percent of global capture fisheries production (Parkes et al., 2010; Stemle et al., 2016). But the Marine Stewardship Council, like other certification programs, has come under three interrelated critiques that appear to undermine the market-based assumptions on which it is based. First, it is increasingly unclear if the ecolabel is driving consumers’ demand for seafood products in major developed-country markets like the United States and other markets (Bronnemann & Asche, in press). Second, while a price signal from Marine Stewardship Council–labelled products has been distinguished in several Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) markets (e.g., Bronnmann & Asche, 2016; Sogn-Grundvag et al., 2014), there is mixed evidence whether the premium is being passed through the value chain to producers, who often bear the burden of the costs of certification, thus perhaps failing to incentivize them to also bear the costs of change in their production practices (e.g., Blomquist et al., 2015; Stemle et al., 2016). Third, only 7 percent of Marine Stewardship Council–certified fisheries are from developing countries, leaving those regions of the world in need of the
338 Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim largest improvements, as well as some of the highest market demand for seafood, out of the scope of the programme (Bush et al., 2013; Gulbrandsen, 2009; Ponte, 2012). Aquaculture certification has also increased dramatically over the last two decades. The major private third-party certification schemes are the Best Aquaculture Practices of the Global Aquaculture Alliance and the Aquaculture Stewardship Council. But a wide range of other private labels have also emerged including the business-to-business GlobalGAP scheme and organic labels like Naturland. But unlike in the fisheries sector, a range of national Good Aquaculture Practice and Better Management Practice standards have been developed by national governments in regions such as Southeast Asia. Aquaculture certification has received similar critiques as those levelled at the certification of capture fisheries. For example, Bush et al. (2013) argue that the further expansion of third-party aquaculture certification may be limited by market demand, which they estimate to be limited to the equivalent of 14 percent of global production and the weak capability of the majority of developing-country producers to comply with standards. Issues of weak producer capability and limited supply of sustainable seafood pose major and highly interconnected limitations to the overall effectiveness of certification as a sustainability tool. Developing-country producers, who make up 54 percent of the global seafood market, face difficulties in complying with standards and therefore accessing markets that have pledged to only sell certified products. On the other hand, retailers in the United States and European Union remain dependent on these producers to become certified in order to meet their commitments made in the wake of the seafood boycotts by Greenpeace and WWF to source only sustainable seafood.
Improvement Projects and Benchmarks Certification standards face two central and continuing dilemmas. First, they struggle to balance a level of stringency that is deemed credible by consumers but that contributes to the exclusion of developing-country producers. Second, and relatedly, while maintaining a high level of stringency, they also need to enrol enough producers into their programmes to remain viable, which in turn leads to further questions over their credibility. This has led to the emergence of two additional initiatives in the sustainable seafood movement’s toolbox—improvement projects and standard benchmarks. Supply-side fisheries and aquaculture improvement projects are designed to improve management, thus leading to a larger supply of certified seafood and increasing the flow of sustainable product to markets (Deighan & Jenkins, 2015). Retailers and branded importers have made investments to either directly support suppliers to make improvements or outsource this support to NGOs and consultancies who provide pay- for-service guidance to fishery and aquaculture improvement projects. As a carrot for improvement, these improvement projects enable products to receive preferential treatment in the market before formally assessed recognition of their sustainability performance. The benefit to producers is assured market access in markets with preferences for
Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism 339 sustainable seafood (and potentially a price premium over alternative markets), while the benefit to retailers is an ability to assure supply for their “sustainable” seafood commitments. However, as outlined by Sampson et al. (2015), there is also a risk that retailers may fail to make continued market access conditional on timely, real improvements in production practices. In response to this proliferation and differentiation of certification and improvement schemes, a range of standard benchmarking arrangements have emerged. The aim of these arrangements is to provide an assessment framework for standard credibility. However, the degree to which these systems have been formalised differs, as does their methodology and the range of private-sector, state, and NGO actors behind them (Samerwong et al., 2017). In the seafood industry the most prominent of these metagovernance arrangements are the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) and the International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance (ISEAL). The GSSI has been developed by retailers with public funding to create an assessment framework based on the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations Codes of Conduct for both fisheries and aquaculture standards (GSSI, 2016). The ISEAL in contrast has established a membership-based system of compliance to its own standard codes for credibility, impact and standard setting, assurance, and labelling (ISEAL, 2015). Various other benchmarking systems have also been put in place by NGOs for certification systems as well as for fishery and aquaculture improvement projects. These benchmarking arrangements have had a positive influence on the perceived proliferation of seafood standards by creating a means by which claims in the market can be assessed by retailers, who in turn filter the claims that are presented to their consumers. However, the proliferation of metagovernance arrangements also risks reproducing the same challenge at another level to the proliferation of certification and improvement projects they seek to mitigate (Fransen, 2015; Samerwong et al., 2017). For consumers the outcome may be indeed a convergence in the type and range of claims presented to them, thus leaving the retailer’s brand alone to reflect the commitment to claims.
Traceability and Transparency Traceability emerged in the seafood industry, as in other food sectors, to communicate and therefore reduce risks associated with food safety (Coff et al., 2008). However, since the mid-2000s further demands have been placed on traceability in response to the revelation of widespread fraud in the seafood industry on two fronts. First, there has been widespread mislabelling of species at the point of sale, usually in terms of lower-value species (e.g., escolar or pangasius) being substituted by higher-value species (e.g., yellowfin tuna or sole) (Jacquet & Pauly, 2008). Second, traceability addresses the mislabelling of country of origin as increasingly required by law in importing markets
340 Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim (Mariani et al., 2015; Presidential Task Force, 2015). It can be a tool to combat seafood mislabelling and fraud, which can be costly to the public and private firms alike. While traceability is not directly a sustainability tool, it has been used in recent years to support sustainability claims by increasing the amount and quality of information that is accessible along global seafood value chains (Bailey et al., 2016b). The sustainable seafood movement has focused considerable attention on the possibility of traceability both to enable improved purchasing decisions by seafood importers and to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Seen as a means of increased value chain transparency, traceability has become a means of validating product origin and species for exporting and importing countries with information flowing from value chain actors to governments or regulators (Mol, 2013). Traceability has also been introduced in the seafood sector with the aim of providing a means of voluntary disclosure of “good practice” by industry actors to communicate a wider range of information directly to consumers (Bailey et al., 2016b; Bailey & Egels Zandén, 2016). These so-called consumer-facing traceability systems aim to connect consumers with information on the source and key characteristics of the seafood they consume. In these systems, consumers are encouraged to use barcodes and scan codes to link the fish product directly to catcher vessels, fishermen, location, and date of capture. As outlined by Miller (2014), some consumer-facing traceability systems have also been developed by large tuna companies such as John West and Pacifical based on proprietary databases. While all of these systems are consumer-facing, “the detail of and access to information differs, and as such, so does the degree of transparency they offer to consumers” (Bailey et al., 2016b, p. 28). While traceability has been seen as a means of contributing to the sustainability of seafood, how it does so exactly remains unclear. By enabling consumers to know where their seafood comes from, traceability can in principle reduce fraud and, by extension, IUU-related activity. But simply “knowing” does not necessarily lead to sustainable outcomes. Instead it may be the wider transparency of value chains and fishing practices that will in the long term deliver the information on fishery or fish-farm behaviour that can feed back into management decisions that made a more direct contribution to seafood sustainability.
Seafood Celebrity The final form of political consumerism being enacted in the sustainable seafood movement is through the influential role of celebrities. Celebrities in general, be they chefs or actors or sports stars, are increasingly recognized as playing an increasingly important role in shaping ethical relationships and coproducing food politics (Johnston & Goodman, 2015). As argued by Silver & Hawkins (2017, p. 224), “the popularity of chefs in the sustainable seafood movement may be grounded in the fact that they are well-positioned to colonize domestic spaces and everyday routines.” But while their
Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism 341 influence is often seen as influencing consumer lifestyles, they have increasingly broadened their influence in the seafood industry to engage institutional change. Perhaps the most overt use of celebrity as a vehicle for attention to issues surrounding seafood sustainability was the 2009 launch of Fishlove. Fishlove was set up as a not- for-profit organization in the United Kingdom by restaurant-owner Nicholas Röhl and actress Greta Scacchi to raise awareness of the unsustainable fishing practices that are destroying the earth’s marine ecosystem. The most celebrity-centric activity of Fishlove was the launch of several photo campaigns in which diverse British celebrities pose nude with dead sea creatures. The campaigns have multiple goals. They raise funds from poster sales to support different sustainable fisheries campaigns and campaign groups, including the Blue Marine Foundation, the Deep Sea Coalition, and the PEW Foundation Ocean 2012 programme. Fishlove also draws attention and web traffic to “alternative” consumer practices like shopping at the “most responsible” supermarkets, looking for the labels of the Marine and Aquaculture Stewardship councils, selecting fish caught with low environmental impacts like pole and line, choosing organic farmed seafood, and avoiding sharks and deep-sea fish. Television chefs, especially in the United States and United Kingdom, have found themselves well placed to address a wide range of controversial issues related to fisheries production. As outlined by Toonen & Miller (2017), there are numerous examples. Chefs played a role in the early boycotts of Chilean sea bass by publicly taking it off of their restaurant menus. The “Chefs-for-Seals” movement, launched by the Humane Society of the United States, promoted boycott of Canadian seafood with the goal of ending the annual seal hunt. More recently, chefs have moved beyond support for NGOs to organize their own, often televised, campaigns. The English chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall launched his “Fish Fight” campaign in 2010 to end discarding low-value and/or by-catch fish in European fisheries. Enrolling a broad selection of European celebrities to the cause, including other chefs, actors, and sports figures, he collected 870,000 signatures from 195 countries calling for a change to the European Union’s Common Fisheries Policy. The decision of the European Union to ban discarding in 2013 is in part attributed to the political pressure that Fish Fight was able to mobilise.
What Role for Consumers in the Sustainable Seafood Movement? Seafood has emerged as a key testing ground for understanding the role of different value chain actors in driving sustainability. The conventional view, developed in the late 1990s, is that sustainable seafood is driven by the choices and practices of consumers in major importing markets such as the United States and the European Union. Consumers in these markets, it has been assumed, have been educated on the problems associated with fisheries and aquaculture and by virtue of their new knowledge would
342 Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim become “seafood citizens” (Illes, 2004). Once enrolled, these consumers place demand on their seafood purveyors to supply sustainable seafood, while retailers ensure that an economic incentive for improvements would pass down to producers at the fishery or fish-farm level. But as the review in this chapter demonstrates, this demand-driven theory may be too simplistic and, as such, appears to have already given way to multiple different expressions of political consumerism. At the start of the movement, consumer boycotts were based on the assumption that the market was large enough to create changes in supply. But it became apparent that the consumption practices of consumers were of less importance than initially thought given the relatively small market share of the “ethical consumer markets” in European Union and United States markets. Instead, the cases of swordfish and Patagonian toothfish show how boycotts were more influential in creating regulatory change by calling attention to the problem and leveraging the threat of consumer action to create political response. In this way, the “demand-shapes-supply” model was less important at the start of the movement than creating wider spaces of political action between civil society and the state (Bush, 2010; Jacobsen & Dulsrud, 2007). Overall, however, boycotts have become a less prominent part of the sustainable seafood movement because of inability to precisely distinguish between poor and better performers and their confrontational rather than engaged mode of operation. They have also been diminished because of their absolute claims of unsustainability, rather than stimulating more precise interventions that stimulate sustainability improvements by producers. In response to the limitations of boycotts, the demand-shaping-supply model was reinvigorated through the development of buycott tools, including recommendation lists, ecolabelled certification, and consumer-facing traceability systems. But reflecting the wider impact of boycotts, these buycott tools have also moved beyond the demand-shaping-supply model. For instance, NGOs such as WWF use their apparent “moral authority” as the founding partner of consumer tools to position themselves as key stakeholders in wider policy discussions (de Vos & Bush, 2011). In other cases, the NGOs (foundations and other legal forms) that manage buycott tools (often on behalf of so-called stakeholder councils) also engage in various forms of advocacy to shape state regulation, stimulate producer improvement, and shape retail and importer buying practices (e.g., Barendse et al., 2017; Bush, 2010; de Vos & Bush, 2011). Increasingly we also observe NGOs, such as Monterey Bay Aquarium, also developing so-called sustainability partnerships (Bitzer & Glasbergen, 2015) with seafood buyers to provide technical support to navigate the multiple standards, improvement projects, and traceability systems that are available to meet apparent consumer demand. In doing so these NGOs appear to use the immanence of consumers to shape sustainable seafood sourcing policy rather than their direct purchasing power Moving well beyond the demand-shaping-supply model is the emergence of discursive practices aimed at shaping the sustainable seafood movement, as exemplified in the emergence of celebrity chefs. At first glance it appears the primary role of these chefs is to enrol consumers into sustainable consumption practices by marrying the complexities of seafood sustainability to sustainable cuisine. There are certainly some clear examples
Shifting Politics of Sustainable Seafood Consumerism 343 of sustainable seafood as cuisine reaching the same level of lifestyle politics seen in other food sectors, such as sustainable coffee or vegetarianism. Fishlove, for example, has engaged in cultural politics to change consumer lifestyles by enrolling consumers in broad narratives of seafood sustainability. But it is questionable whether such initiatives are able to expand cultural politics of identity into changing consumer practices. As argued by Rojek (2014), such celebrity engagement may in fact do little more than reproduce what he calls “celanthropy,” or the transformation of causes into causes célèbres via the public involvement of celebrities. Alternatively, the Fish Fight example appears to move beyond celanthropy to address more structural policy and political changes to fishing sustainability. The lingering question, however, is how accountable these chefs and their movements are and what level of representation they can claim in regional settings like the European Union. There is evidence in all of the tools and approaches under the wider umbrella of the sustainable seafood movement of a more complex engagement with consumers than causal market-driven approaches of demand-shaping-supply. Political consumerism is therefore not only a market phenomenon but also a reflection of the work of Jacobsen & Dulsrud (2007), a collection of interactive and iterative processes of social action in markets, governance structures, and everyday life. As reflected in this chapter, the tools and approaches that fall under the sustainable seafood movement have all started with the assumption that consumer-citizens can be educated to act reflexively to change routinized (unreflexive) modes of seafood consumption (Oosterveer & Spaargaren, 2011). But in response to the incredible complexity of the seafood industry, taking in a dizzying array of seafood species, sources, and production processes, these tool and approaches have shifted their focus to enrol consumers in wider networks of political action. This may indicate that single purchasing recommendations do not provide consumers with enough knowledge to take up an informed position on sustainable seafood that would shape wider lifestyle decisions. Consumers are instead enrolled in wider advocacy networks, either directly or immanently, to address not only influence demand at the point of sale but also to advocate for changes in the entire system of provision that delivers seafood to market.
Conclusion Seafood has emerged as a key testing ground for understanding the role of different value chain actors in driving sustainability. The conventional view, developed in the late 1990s, is that sustainable seafood is driven by the choices and practices of consumers in major importing, and mostly OECD, markets such as the United States and the European Union. However, educating and engaging consumers on the complex issues facing sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture has proven to be problematic, with limited success in shifting demand away from unsustainable seafood at the global scale. But this does not mean that the sustainable seafood movement has been
344 Simon R. Bush and Cathy A. Roheim unsuccessful. Instead what we observe is the emergence of multiple modes of political consumerism emerging under the umbrella of the sustainable seafood movement that pushes improvement in the sector far beyond what is achievable through market demand alone. The implication of this observation is that initial intent or theory of change invoked by NGOs designing boycott campaigns and boycott tools, as well as the broader lifestyle politics invoked by celebrity chefs, has evolved over time. The sustainable seafood movement was originally focused on enrolling consumer demand to shape the practices of suppliers. But the various tools and approaches developed by NGOs, aquariums, and chefs have instead broadened their focus over time to engage consumers as political agents embedded within wider advocacy networks. As such the tools have given greater legitimacy to these organisations and individuals to engage in political action beyond the supermarket checkout. The two sites of action most commonly seen are aquariums and chefs that shape the sustainable seafood movement, the development of state policy, and the purchasing policies of importers and retail-level buyers. The sustainable seafood movement will no doubt remain focused on fostering political consumerism in the near future. But to understand the full impact of the movement, greater attention should be given to the various forms that political consumerism takes. For this to happen, the NGOs driving the movement need to move beyond the initial assumption that demand-shapes-supply and instead focus on consumerism as a wider set of social relations that shape the provision of seafood and the regulation of ocean sustainability. As a final reflection, it is inevitable that the future of the movement will be linked in large part to the largest seafood consumer markets in Asia. Recommendation lists and ecocertification for seafood have emerged in this region, but their strategies for engaging consumers is yet to be systematically researched. Just how political consumerism in this region will develop for seafood will depend on a clear understanding of Asian modes of seafood consumerism, rather than adopting the same blueprint from Europe and the United States. But reflecting on the observations in this chapter (and the work of Fabinyi, 2012), an understanding what political space there is for Asian consumers to mobilise with and through civil society movements, as well as engage with governments throughout the region, is also needed.
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Chapter 17
P olitical C on sume ri sm f or Su stainab l e Tou ri sm A Review Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar
Over the last decades, substantial and growing societal and academic interest has emerged for the development of environmentally sustainable tourism. The United Nations designated 2017 as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development during which tourism’s role was to be promoted in areas such as inclusive and sustainable economic growth, resource efficiency, environmental protection, and climate change. Tourism generates around 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) globally; it also accounts for more than one in ten jobs, more than 5 percent of all exports, and 30 percent of service exports, which makes tourism one of the largest industries in the world (Amelung et al., 2016). However, despite the high economic and political gains, the negative social and environmental effects of tourism have been clearly exposed by academics (Gössling, 2002; Ruhanen et al., 2015). For example, Gössling and Peeters (2015) provide a gloomy assessment of the global utilisation of natural resources by tourism, including tourism-related consumption of fossil fuel (and associated CO2 emissions), fresh water, land, and food. Moreover, it was concluded that resource use associated with tourism may double for water and triple for land use in the period 2010 to 2050. It comes as no surprise that concerns of the problematic relation between tourism and sustainable development are widely shared. According to Hall (2013, p. 1091), “sustainable development, and the response to climate change in particular, has emerged as a central problem for tourism.” Key causes for this problem are the global growth in tourist numbers, the increasing distances travelled, and the increasing use of energy- intensive forms of transport, such as aviation and automobility (Gössling & Peeters, 2015; Hall, 2013). However, as argued in this chapter, the slow progress made in the production and consumption of sustainable tourism have not kept pace with other sectors
350 Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar of the economy and are related to a number of wicked social and psychological barriers on the consumption side of sustainable tourism. Tourism is a complex social phenomenon, or better: a range of social phenomena, in which different (groups of) actors have a stake in and influence the practices of tourism. Such actors can be tourism businesses, industry organisations, governmental agencies, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), and consumers. Some progress is reported in the literature on the production side of sustainable tourism, for example regarding corporate social responsibility, industry partnerships (Haase et al., 2009; Van Bets et al., 2017), or institutional arrangements for conservation tourism (Buckley, 2010; Lamers et al., 2014). Consumers in particular have a crucial role to play in change processes towards a more sustainable development of tourism. However, progress on the consumption side remains problematic. As in other fields of production and consumption, the tourism market has seen the development of a plethora of ecolabelling initiatives, for example related to accommodations (e.g., Green Key), beaches (e.g., Blue Flag), destinations (e.g., Quality Coast), holiday packages (e.g., Book Different), and aviation (e.g., Flybe’s ecolabelling scheme) (Buckley, 2002; Gössling & Buckley, 2016; Klintman, 2012), but the effects of such systems for generating sustainable outcomes remain limited. The tourism literature widely agrees that consumers’ positive attitudes towards sustainable tourism are not reflected in their behaviour or willingness to pay for sustainable tourism services (e.g., Hall et al., 2013; Pulido-Fernandez & Lopez-Sanchez, 2016; Zschiegner & Yan, 2006). Tourism scholars have long identified and discussed the lack of political consumerism for sustainable tourism (e.g., Budeanu, 2007; Hjalager, 2000). For example, Hjalager (1999) related this to the lack of reliable information on sustainable tourism products, the intermittent character or lack of routine in tourism purchases, and the ambiguous consumption styles or lack of clear imitable standards, which means that it is not difficult for a tourist “to slip away with a quite contradictory behaviour” (Hjalager, 1999, p. 5). Political consumerism is defined as “consumer choice of producers and products with the aim to changing objectional institutional and market practices” (Micheletti et al., 2004, p. xiv). The concept foregrounds an enlightened, ethical, and active type of consumer, or consumer group, that makes purchasing decisions based on political or ethical considerations and uses its purchasing power to change those markets and businesses. Political consumerism in tourism has been sparsely discussed in the tourism literature (Verbeek & Mommaas, 2008), and in a way the same applies to sustainable tourist behaviour (Budeanu, 2007) or the role of tourist consumers in ethical or sustainable tourism. This chapter reviews the constraints and opportunities for the development of political consumerism in sustainable tourism, including the noncommittal character of tourism activities and the complex and transnational organisation of tourism products. This chapter asks if and why political consumerism fails to take off for sustainable tourism by reviewing the burgeoning literature on the role of tourist consumers in sustainable development. Why is it so difficult to steer, nudge, or influence tourist consumption towards sustainable tourism products? The following sections define relevant concepts, explore the history and constraints, and discuss some stronger pockets as well
Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism 351 as a key weak pocket of political consumerism in tourism. The discussion then focuses on several theoretical perspectives on the so-called home and away gap and reaches a conclusion.
Political Consumerism and Tourism The concept of political consumerism highlights how consumers try to exercise political influence regarding the product and the production process through their consumption behaviour (Micheletti, 2003). Political power in this case is exercised by means of the private sector rather than the public sector (Holzer & Sørensen, 2003). First, consumers can express their political preferences by means of boycotts and “buycotts,” that is, consumers holding back on spending money on particular purchases or, conversely, “buying goods with higher environmental, ethical and social standards than conventional goods in order to effect societal changes” (Holzer & Sørensen, 2003, p. 86). Second, through discursive political consumerism, consumers and other groups can also “use communicative actions to take advantage of the market vulnerabilities that have risen in late capitalist market niches to create consumer awareness and change global corporate enterprises” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 751). This chapter will focus mostly on the first type. Political consumerism in tourism of the first kind refers to tourists that actively choose or refuse particular tourism services in order to generate social, environmental, or ethical change. Budeanu (2007) illustrates that there are numerous moments in the tourist experience lifecycle (i.e., pre-trip, trip, and post-trip) when decisions are made with environmental and social implications, such as in choosing a tourism product or destination, modes of accommodation and transport, modes of entertainment and services, and tourist roles. The tourism literature provides numerous examples of cases in which tourists deliberately choose or refuse tourism services or campaigns that influence such decisions. Boycotts in tourism are common and often related to religious differences, political conflicts, civil wars, or authoritarian regimes (Brin, 2006; Moufakkir & Kelly, 2010), for example the decade-long campaign to boycott tourism to Myanmar in the early 2000s (Henderson, 2003; Responsible Tourism, 2015). But also in the sustainable tourism realm tourists choose holiday packages with a lower contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., Gössling, et al., 2002; Hunter & Shaw, 2007; Patterson et al., 2007; Peeters & Schouten, 2006), environmentally friendly modes of transport at tourism destinations (e.g., bicycle, bus, and train) (Verbeek et al., 2011), destinations or accommodations that could be labelled as conservation tourism (Buckley, 2010; Lamers et al., 2014), volunteer tourism (i.e., voluntourism) projects (Sin, 2009), or use of ethical travel guides (Pattullo & Minelli, 2009). Political consumerism in tourism of the second kind refers to tourists or tourism organisations that use different types of media to express their concerns with unsustainable or unethical forms or to promote more desirable forms of tourism. An early
352 Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar example of discursive political consumerism is the longstanding work of the British NGO Tourism Concern. Tourism Concern was established to provide a voice for disempowered groups in the Global South, overwhelmed by the capitalist forces of tourism, through awareness-raising campaigns and education (Barnett, 2008). Nowadays, the emergence of internet, social media, and travel review systems in particular have provided ample possibilities for tourists and tourism organisations to express their opinion or raise concerns regarding tourism products or services (Dippelreiter et al., 2008; Gretzel & Yoo, 2008; Liburd, 2012; Munar, 2012). However, the application of online review systems for sustainable tourism is still limited (with exception of Gonzalez, 2015). Political consumerism in tourism can be driven based on both public and private virtues (Micheletti, 2003; Ormond, 2014; Verbeek & Mommaas, 2008). Public virtues would apply to tourists who want to consciously consume tourism services that would care for the needs and interests of “ ‘distant others’ as global citizens without necessarily benefitting . . . themselves directly” (Ormond, 2014, p. 2). Meeting ethical and ecological standards are prime examples of such lofty needs and interests, such as biodiversity conservation, a clean environment, fair incomes for staff, and quality education and healthcare for the host communities. Private virtues refer to tourists consuming sustainable and ethically sound tourism services for individual reasons and for one’s family or immediate community because they represent high quality and comfort or a more authentic experience of nature, culture, and everyday life. By purchasing particular services for ethical or political reasons, and not others, or publishing alternative information regarding tourism products and services, tourist consumers or tourism organisations hold power over providers of tourism services, whereby tourism businesses take into account the preferences and interests of green, ethical, and political tourists when formulating their business strategies and developing their services. Tourism service providers do this not only because these tourists are part of their market but also because protests and boycotts impact negatively on their corporate image. Shaping sustainable tourism services can thereby be seen as a process of co-creation in which (groups of) consumers, intermediaries (e.g., tour operators and agents), and providers (e.g., transport companies, accommodations, attractions) take part collectively.
Strong and Weak Pockets of Political Consumerism in Sustainable Tourism A lot of the work on pro-environmental tourist behaviour consists either of review papers (e.g., Antimova et al., 2012; Budeanu, 2007; Dolnicar et al., 2008; Hall, 2013; Hall et al., 2016), empirical work that focuses on niche tourism products (e.g., conservation tourism, voluntourism), or particular services within the tourism value chain (e.g., air travel, hospitality). This section discusses a selection of these examples with regard to the extent to which public virtues are served. Strong pockets of political consumerism
Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism 353 are cases in which consumer choices uphold public virtues, such as environmental conservation or social solidarity, whilst in weak pockets collective interests would be eroded due to private virtues of tourist consumers. The following presentation of some strong pockets of political consumerism in sustainable tourism and a key weak pocket represents a selective reading of the literature.
Some Strong Pockets As addressed earlier, political consumerism in sustainable tourism can take different empirical forms and shapes. This section briefly discusses four such forms: slow travel, conservation tourism, volunteer tourism, and whale watching. Firstly, tourism transportation to and from the destination is the main contributor of tourism to climate change (Gössling & Peeters, 2015; UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008). Slow travel is a reaction to fast, high-carbon travel, where travel is more than a means to get from A to B—a profound spatial experience—and a way of expressing the values of slow tourism (Germann Molz, 2009). A useful study in this regard attempted to identify and conceptualise groups of slow travellers within the tourism market (Dickinson, Lumsdon, & Robbins, 2011). This qualitative study distinguished a group of “hard” slow travellers. These people are intentional low-carbon tourists. They act on their public virtues and, for instance, refuse to use a car or an airplane due to environmental concerns. Thus, in terms of political consumerism, these consumers boycott certain modes of transport to make a statement that corresponds with their beliefs and values in life. Using a quantitative approach, Juvan et al., (2016) distinguished a segment of travellers that they named “struggling seekers,” or those having difficulties finding environmentally friendly vacation offers. This segment of tourists would not book their dream vacation if it was environmentally unfriendly. However, it appeared that whilst this segment acknowledged an awareness of the impacts of their travels, they did not experience much control over possibilities to reduce the negative environmental impacts of their travels. According to the study, this segment of low-carbon tourists would benefit most by accessing relevant information so as to increase their sense of control. Travel agents play an important role here as two-thirds of the struggling seekers use travel agents as an information source. Furthermore, this segment does not use social media much but relies more on traditional media. Thus, a key factor in stimulating this segment of intentional low-carbon tourists to travel accordingly is to provide information. A second form of political consumerism is tourism projects that aim to have an effect on the conservation of nature and the development of local communities. Buckley (2010 p. 2) labelled these new solutions “conservation tourism,” which is intended to make “an ecologically significant net positive contribution to the effective conservation of biological diversity.” These ecotourism arrangements have led to a variety of projects in both marine and terrestrial settings in which actors take on different roles in generating and sharing the value of nature conservation. For example, in eastern and southern Africa, problems of rural development and biodiversity loss are now
354 Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar tackled by generating value for nature through tourism, in the form of community- based tourism enterprises, private game, conservancies, and conservation enterprises (Lamers et al., 2014; Van Wijk et al., 2015. In these arrangements, wildlife conservation is promoted and managed as an alternative form of land or ocean use, replacing or complementing resource use practices (e.g., agriculture, fishing, mining), without changing customary rights or ownership (Atmodjo et al., 2017; Lamers et al., 2014; see Chapter 34). Through tourism activities and by increasing the involvement of the private sector, economic value is generated and distributed to sustain local livelihoods, to finance conservation actions, and to generate entrepreneurship. Conservation tourism products and arrangements are developed to serve a conscious and affluent tourist consumer who deliberately chooses to visit sites where such public virtues are upheld. Typically, tourist services would be combined with philanthropy, whereby longer- term support from tourists would be generated in the form of networks or funding. Paradoxically, in conservation tourism, as in ecotourism, many consumers will need to trade off local environmental benefits against the impacts caused by their long-haul flight (see next section). Thirdly, voluntourism is another, and related, growing form of tourism in which travellers do voluntary work to assist development or environmental organisations to aid communities or environmental causes in the places they are visiting (Bargeman et al., 2016). McGehee and Santos (2005) analysed how voluntourism contributes to possible changes in networks, increasing self-efficacy and raising levels of consciousness among participants. Participation in volunteer tourism positively contributes to post-trip social movement activities and support for activism (McGehee & Santos, 2005). Tourist consumers deliberately choose to take part in social movements and act as change agents through their participation in a particular holiday practice (Verbeek & Mommaas, 2008). A current example of such a movement would be the clean-up dives, such as the Dive Against Debris® programme, organised through diving schools and operators to remove plastics and other forms of marine debris from coral reefs1. Fourthly, worldwide whale watching has grown into a popular form of ecotourism (or conservation tourism) with millions of tourists enjoying the experience of viewing and photographing whales in their natural habitat. Whale watching developed during the 1980s during a time when countries were debating the imposition of the whaling moratorium, the International Whaling Commission, after the overexploitation that led to the collapse of many of the world’s whale stocks. Now as whale stocks have recovered, the proponents of whale watching are concerned with future possible relaxation of the whaling moratorium or the continuation of commercial whaling by some countries. It is claimed that concerns about whaling are not just aimed at the risk of declining whale stocks but also at the risk of losing market share in the rapidly developing whale- watching industry (Herrera & Hoagland, 2006), particularly in small countries like in Iceland where most whale watchers are international tourists (Parsons & Rawles, 2003). The same mechanism can be identified with other animal rights or welfare cases in which practices of hunting or harvesting wildlife (e.g., seals, wolves) are opposed by conservation organisations or nature-based tourists (Fennell, 2012).
Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism 355
A Key Weak Pocket The travel to and from the destinations mentioned above by energy-intensive aircrafts or automobiles is often not considered in these papers. Tourists in general, and also if engaged in conservation or volunteer tourism projects, typically display carbon- intensive behaviour whilst holding generally positive attitudes towards behaving in an environmentally friendly manner. This is problematic as travel to and from the destination is the main component of tourism’s contribution to climate change (see Gössling & Peeters, 2015; UNWTO-UNEP-WMO, 2008). We, and with us many others (e.g., Barr et al., 2011; Cohen et al., 2013), argue that air travel forms a key blind spot and weak pocket of political consumerism for sustainable tourism. Consumers in general and tourists in particular make individual decisions that are not beneficial for our collective environmental interests. Price and time availability are widely identified as key factors in holiday decision-making (Budeanu, 2007; Sirakaya & Woodside, 2005), whilst the environment is ranked lowest in terms of choices to make when booking a holiday trip (Eijgelaar et al., 2016). Tourist consumers often intend to make pro-environmental decisions with regards to their holiday behaviour, but they mostly fail to do so eventually (Juvan & Dolnicar, 2014). In a study comparing the consideration of climate change by air travellers home and away, Cohen et al. (2013) found that there was very little evidence for consistency between these two contexts. “More common was the tendency to subject tourism settings to less stringent, or even to consider them as exempt from, climate concern” (Cohen et al., 2013, p. 994). This gap between intention and behaviour is widely acknowledged within the tourism literature (e.g., Antimova et al., 2012; Gössling et al., 2012) and beyond (e.g., Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). An early review of literature on the topic was conducted by Dolnicar, Crouch, & Long (2008) who reviewed twenty-nine papers in total. These authors acknowledged the fact that there was little consensus at the time of who exactly these low-carbon tourists (“environment-friendly tourists” in their words) were. Their analysis uncovered that most work up to that point in time focused on ecotourism and thus direct effects of tourism on nature at the destination only, including factors such as protection of nature, learning about nature, and understanding nature. Along similar lines, a more recent study on sustainable behaviours of backpackers revealed that sustainability is of low concern to backpackers (Iaquinto, 2015). However, backpackers do practice environmental sustainability via reduced consumption and waste, albeit mostly unintentionally.
Explaining Inconsistencies in Sustainable Tourist Behaviour The examples presented above reflect the inconsistencies with regard to sustainable tourist behaviour. For two decades tourism scholars have wondered about the barriers
356 Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar that cause the gaps and inconsistencies in tourism consumption and ways to overcome these barriers. This section discusses these inconsistencies by presenting arguments and solutions from different social theory perspectives used in the literature.
Complexity and Fragmentation First, as a global industry, tourism is notoriously fragmented and diverse, consisting of a variety of primary (e.g., accommodations, transportation, attractions) and intermediary (e.g., tour operators, online booking platforms) segments (Amelung et al., 2016). Members of the tourism industry originate from the public, private, and not-for- profit realms, with substantial variations within each. Private enterprises, for example, can range from multinational corporations to family-owned and -operated companies. The continuing emergence of the sharing economy (think of Airbnb and Uber) has multiplied the number of stakeholders active on the supply side. As an activity, tourism patterns and impacts emerge from the visits of billions of international and domestic tourists to countless destinations. Hjalager (1999) reviewed the potential role of a range of organisational forms in tourism that could promote political consumerism, such as consumer associations, conservation, environment, or social justice–focused NGOs, and self-regulatory business organisations, but laments the actual steps undertaken to provide reliable information, incentives, or standards. In addition, Klintman (2012) has analysed the challenges of developing global standards and criteria for sustainable tourism certification schemes. He argues that the specific context and bias of many local and regional tourism certification schemes and the reliance on countless small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) makes it challenging to build trust among tourism actors in both the Global North and South (Klintman, 2012).
Intention and Behaviour Secondly, as seen in other sectors, there is a notorious gap recognised in tourism literature between intention and actual behaviours of tourists and of tour operators (Antimova et al. 2012; Budeanu, 2007; Cohen et al., 2013; Hjalager, 1999). For example, in relation to the weak pocket presented above, a dissonance is reported between the growing awareness among tourist consumers of their contribution to climate change and actual changes, particularly in the consumption of long-haul flights, that would mitigate the emission of greenhouse gasses (Cohen et al., 2011; Gossling et al., 2010; Miller et al., 2010). In other words, when it comes to political consumerism for environmentally sustainable products, the tourism sector is considered to be faced with considerable social and psychological barriers and therefore lags compared with other domains of consumption. Psychological work tends to address issues related to discrepancies between intention and behaviour (e.g., Juvan & Dolnicar, 2014). Such studies often attempt to explain
Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism 357 why tourists who hold pro-environmental or sustainable attitudes and who are aware of environmental effects do not act in accordance with these values. Psychological explanations for this gap between intention and behaviour are the theories of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) and construal-level theory of psychological distance (Trope & Liberman, 2010). Construal-level theory hypothesises that experiences are represented at different levels of mental abstraction. More distant choices are referred to as high-level construal, whereas more proximate choices are referred to as low-level construal. Psychological distance can be delineated into four different types: social, spatial, temporal, and hypothetical. This suggests that pro-environmental tourists could still be making unsustainable choices as they would consider climate change to be a psychologically distant phenomenon. Tourists, as consumers in general, could well be wondering whether effects of climate change may occur anytime soon (temporal and hypothetical distance), that effects may not occur where they live or go on holiday (spatial distance), and may thus not be affecting them but others whom they do not know personally (social distance). Making such an unsustainable choice whilst having holiday pro-environmental attitudes, however, may result in cognitive dissonance. This dissonance then triggers feelings of guilt among tourists (e.g., Cohen et al., 2011) and in order to resolve this dissonance, tourists would adjust their behaviours accordingly, or so the theory goes. In practice, most tourists do not change their behaviour, possibly because the feelings of guilt are not strong enough (see Van Dam & De Jonge, 2015). Providing clear and reliable information for tourist consumers is widely seen as a key way to raise awareness, change attitudes, and stimulate tourist consumers towards sustainable options (e.g., Budeanu, 2007; Hjalager, 1999). Various types of informational mechanisms are suggested, predominantly ecolabels, but also corporate social responsibility reporting (Budeanu, 2007). The effectiveness of ecolabels in tourism are increasingly considered to be limited to specific niche markets (Karlsson & Dolnicar, 2016), where particularly conscious consumer groups can be targeted. For example, recent work on carbon labelling to stimulate tourist consumers to choose climate-friendly transportation options suggests that the communication strategies used in existing labels are not optimal. Namely, information on the contribution of trips to climate change is not made visible during the spatiotemporal setting of booking (Eijgelaar et al., 2016), unsustainable choices are not labelled negatively (Van Dam & De Jonge, 2015), and communication in general does not appeal to private virtues (Hardeman et al., 2017). These insights could be used to make carbon labelling in tourism more effective, but they currently seem to present a step too far for tour operators because of their prioritising of sales and their strategic position in the value chain.
Home and Away Thirdly, as mentioned before, the tourism and travel sector is known for lagging behind with regards to pro-environmental behaviour and ethical choices of tourists. This position of the tourism and travel sector has been coined and discussed by several authors
358 Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar as the home and away gap (Aday & Phelan, 2013; Barr et al., 2011; Cohen et al., 2013). The home and away gap identifies the inconsistencies between environmentally conscious practices of consumers in their everyday lives and whilst travelling. Early sociological explanations for the inconsistencies between home and away regard tourism as an escape from ordinary modern life. Tourism was seen as a functionalistic process in which people engage in extraordinary experiences (Cohen et al., 2013) to restore and “recreate” themselves so they are then able to return and take on their roles in society. Tourism is “essentially a temporary reversal of everyday activities—it is a no-work, no-care . . . situation” (Cohen, 1979, p. 181). Inspired by Turner’s (1982) notion of liminality, tourism is seen as a temporary separation from everyday activities, social norms, and regulations, while taking advantage of the relative anonymity and freedom from one’s community. This early sociological theory of tourism aligns well with the observed differences between home and away regarding sustainable tourism consumption behaviour (Barr et al., 2011), as it allows for a temporary “carnivalesque” deviation while away, in order to return to more sustainable behaviour at home. More recent sociological thinking tends to see tourist behaviour as performed in distinct contexts and as integrated in everyday practices and mobilities (e.g., Edensor, 2001; Franklin & Crang, 2001; Urry, 2007). Carbon-intensive tourism is seen not as a temporary deviation, represented by the single annual summer holiday, but as part of everyday life in which dwelling, commuting, business travel, tourism, and leisure activities are mixed on a more regular basis. These behaviours are viewed as performed and contextually dependent, and it is questioned whether behaviours would have to be consistent across different contexts (Bell, 2008; Cohen et al., 2013). The use of a performativity perspective is a longstanding and relevant tradition in sociological tourism studies (e.g., Edensor, 2001; MacCannell, 1976), based on the work of Erving Goffman. By looking at the contexts in which tourism is performed and directed, one recognises that individuals perform various roles and that identities are fragmented dependent on these contexts. Instead of seeing one’s identity as a consistent whole, individuals may have several identities. From a performativity perspective, dissonance between intention and behaviour, or home and away, are “easily reconcilable because consistency is not presumed from the start” (Cohen et al., 2013, p. 985). Barr et al. (2011, p. 1243) state that the spatiotemporal contexts of tourism do not appear to be “appropriate sites in which to be environmentally conscious.” In other words, pro-environmental behaviour in one setting, for example dwelling and consuming at home, does only sparsely “ ‘spill over’ into similar levels of commitment in other sites of consumption” (Barr et al., 2011, p. 1242), such as while touring and travelling (e.g., De Young, 2000). Further research would be needed to explore the validity of this claim. For example, would it not make sense to assume that practices that are performed regularly, both home and away, such as eating out or showering, share many resemblances? Moreover, it could be argued that the different contexts of home and away could also be used as opportunities to expose consumers to innovative and sustainable technologies that they may adopt in their everyday lives or households, for example water-and energy-saving appliances in hotel rooms or low-emission vehicles in car hire. The
Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism 359 tourism setting could provide opportunities for tourists to try out, experiment, or learn about behaviours or technologies that could be used in political consumerist activities in the domestic setting. However, the effectiveness of these spillover strategies have not been studied or applied much in tourism.
Contexts and Practices Building on the performativity tradition, practice theories are increasingly recognised as a relevant sociological perspective in studies of sustainable tourism production and consumption (Aday & Phelan, 2013; Barr et al., 2011; Hall, 2013; Lamers et al., 2017; Verbeek & Mommaas, 2008; see Chapter 7). Social practices can be defined as: “a routinised type of behaviour which consist of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge” (Reckwitz, 2002, p. 249). Proponents of practice theories argue that social practices provide a more fitting unit of analysis to capture the interplay between agency (e.g., lifestyles) and structure (e.g., infrastructures and systems of provision) with its own distinct characteristics. Shove, Pantzar, and Watson (2012) provide a simple conceptual framework for identifying and characterising social practices, as constituted by combining three main elements: “materials” (e.g., bodies, things, technologies, and tangible physical entities), “competences” (e.g., skills, know-how, techniques), and “meanings” (e.g., symbolic meanings, ideas, and aspirations). Similar to the performativity perspective, practice theories allow for inconsistency due to the contextualised setting of behaviours in tourism, but it also draws attention to the socio-material constitution of this setting and the identities expressed or the meanings derived. For example, from a social practices perspective, installing solar panels (see Chapter 20) and undertaking a long-haul flight to be a volunteer can both contribute to a particular, consistent lifestyle. In contrast to the psychological theories mentioned earlier, tourist behaviours are not always seen as individual and intentional but more as collective (i.e., involving other humans as well as nonhuman entities) and routinized. Moreover, due to the focus on bodily behaviours (e.g., doing) in addition to the cognitivist arguments (e.g., awareness, attitude), informational sources, such as ecolabels, are seen as one of many elements playing a role in tourism consumption contexts and practices. It has been argued that contextualised analyses of the socio-material setting, the lifestyles associated with and routinized character of tourist consumption practices, and the relation with wider social practices are needed to potentially change tourism consumption (see also Lamers et al., 2017; Verbeek & Mommaas, 2008) or stimulate political consumerism for sustainable tourism. Practice theories are particularly useful for undertaking explorative research on tourism contexts as an opportunity for experimenting with sustainable technologies (mentioned in the previous section) or research into understanding the role of carbon labelling as one of many elements in tourism
360 Machiel Lamers, Jeroen Nawijn, and Eke Eijgelaar purchasing practices. According to Verbeek and Mommaas (2008), to have an effect on their travelling behaviour, boycotts of environmentally damaging transport options, or buycotts of sustainable tourism innovations, need to be embedded in travellers’ lifestyles and routines. Bargeman and Van der Poel 2006) also emphasise the role of routines in people’s holiday practices and concluded that people show routine behaviour in both their transport mode, length of stay, accommodation type, and travelling companion. The way people look for holiday possibilities and arrange their holidays also shows repetitive patterns of behaviour. For example, tourists who routinely choose to arrange their holiday through a tour operator are able to relate to carbon labels or climate compensation schemes offered to them by tour operators as part of holiday package deals. Finally, the debate on the consistencies in consumption behaviour while at home or away calls for systematic comparison between, and assessment of, tourism consumption practices and wider social practices.
Conclusion Over the last decades a substantial and growing societal and academic interest has emerged for the development of sustainable tourism. Scholars have highlighted the contribution of tourism to global environmental change and local detrimental social and environmental effects, as well as to ways in which tourism contributes to nature conservation. Nevertheless the role of political consumers in driving sustainable tourism has remained unconvincing and inconsistent. This chapter aimed to review the status of political consumerism for sustainable tourism, particularly to understand if and why tourism is lagging behind with regard to sustainable consumption. The discussion presented some stronger pockets and a key weak pocket of political consumerism for sustainable tourism to show that the strong pockets of political consumerism, such as slow travel, conservation tourism, and voluntourism, are dominated by forms of buycott, that is, deliberate choices for particular products or services that uphold public virtues, like environmental or social sustainability. Cases of boycotts for reasons of environmental sustainability are more difficult to find, with exception to animal rights or welfare cases in which practices of hunting or harvesting wildlife (e.g., whaling, sealing) are opposed by conservation organisations or nature-based tourists. Of course, generally speaking, calls for tourism boycotts are common, but they are often applied to other political reasons than sustainability such as religion, conflict, or authoritarian regimes. The key weak pocket of energy-intensive forms of transportation, like air travel, indicates that generally the commitment of tourist consumers for sustainable tourism products and services does not yet include the mobility component. The chapter argues that this leads to a key inconsistency in political consumerism for sustainable tourism, such as the tendency of tourists to relate to public virtues (like environmental and social sustainability) at the destination but to ignore the global impact of their transportation.
Political Consumerism for Sustainable Tourism 361 This inconsistency is discussed in the light of different theoretical perspectives used in the literature, including complexity and fragmentation, the attitude-behaviour gap, the home-away gap, and the contextualised approach of social practice theories. It is argued that the performativity perspective and practice theories provide a promising way to analyse tourist consumption by taking into account spatial-temporal contexts, the socio-material setting, lifestyles, and the routinized character of tourist consumption. Further research would be needed to explore the extent to which tourism is lagging in the field of sustainable consumption and political consumerism. To what extent is tourism really lagging behind when compared to other domains of consumption? To what extent is there evidence for the presumed gap between home and away? In this regard the chapter calls for a systematic comparison between, and assessment of, tourism consumption practices and wider social practices. Also, what is the potential support for boycotts and buycotts among slow travel, conservation tourism, and voluntourism- related consumer organisations? Especially slow travellers would be expected to favour boycotts, as their type of travel does not idealise the destination but rather focuses on the process of travel itself. The chapter further calls for research on the potential to use tourism and hospitality settings as a spillover strategy or as an opportunity to expose consumers to innovative and sustainable technologies that they may adopt in their everyday lives or households. Finally, a practice-based perspective on the role of carbon, or other forms of ecolabelling, as one of many elements in tourism purchasing practices could provide much insight in the effectiveness of such informational governance instruments for sustainable tourism.
Note 1. For more information regarding such projects see: https://www.projectaware.org /diveagainstdebris.
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Chapter 18
P olitical C on sume ri sm in the Oil and Mi ni ng E xt ractive Indu st ri e s Possibilities for Sustainability and Social Justice Mark C. J. Stoddart, Max Chewinski, B. Quinn Burt, and Megan Stewart
Political consumerism is an increasingly important way of doing environmental politics outside the sphere of formal electoral and party politics and represents a shift in the capacity of nonstate actors to influence the environmental impacts of companies (Holzer, 2010; Spaargaren & Mol, 2008). While political consumerism often appears to be oriented around the acts of lone shoppers, it can also be a profoundly relational form of environmentalism that builds on familial and friendship networks to share new ideas and practices around sustainability (O’Shaughnessy & Kennedy, 2010). This chapter provides a general overview of how political consumerism is leveraged to target natural resource extraction industries, particularly oil and mining. As commodities, oil and mineral industries work through diffuse global networks and it is often difficult to connect the practices of resource extraction, or the transnational corporate interests that dominate these industries, to the end products that consumers encounter in their daily lives. The oil and mining industries are at the heart of consumer culture, providing energy and resources that enable suburban sprawl, long- distance shipping of consumer goods, automobile use, and tourism and leisure travel (Urry, 2013). Consumerism is highly connected to individual social practices, but since oil and minerals are ingrained in most aspects of consumer life, their impacts may be difficult to address. Social movements have used boycotts, product certification schemes, divestment campaigns, and discursive strategies to translate these commodity sectors into targets for political consumerism. However, there has not been a great deal
368 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. of academic research specifically on political consumerism in these sectors. As such, we glean insights from the broader research literatures on social movement mobilization around oil and mining, which is further developed through engaging with material from activist campaigns. The gap between academic research in this sector and a history of consumer-based social movement campaigns makes this area rich with potential for further research. This chapter begins with a brief history of political consumerism across oil and mining sectors. We then discuss key actors and their strategies. Lastly, we provide an overview of the challenges and limitations for political consumerism in these sectors.
A Short History of Political Consumerism Related to Oil and Mining Political consumerism related to resource extraction has often used boycotts, buycotts, and discursive tactics to identify companies or areas of production that are socially or environmentally problematic. Greenpeace is an international and highly professionalized social movement organization that has repeatedly played a role in mobilizing political consumerism around the oil industry. An early example of mobilizing consumers through boycotts and media-provoked reputational damage was the 1995 Greenpeace campaign against Shell’s plans to scuttle the Brent Spar oil rig in the North Sea without taking sufficient steps to ensure the rig was decommissioned in ways that minimized its environmental impact (Barry, 2015; Holzer, 2010; Macnaghten & Urry, 1998). Another early example involved international attempts to boycott Shell around claims of environmental degradation and health risks from its operations in the Niger Delta. The company was also singled out for its perceived complicity in human rights violations by the Nigerian government against protesters in the Niger Delta, including the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine (Oriola, 2013). In comparison with the Brent Spar campaign, oil conflict in the Niger Delta emerged from localized, grassroots organizations such as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) (Oriola, 2013). Especially during earlier stages of conflict in the Niger Delta, local conflict was amplified by international support networks that promoted boycotts of Shell and protests at Shell gas stations to create reputational damage for the brand among consumers. Here, we see how political consumerism was integrated into what Keck and Sikkink (1998) refer to as a “boomerang” social movement strategy, where transnational social movement activity helps put pressure on a government that may not be responsive to local protest. However, as the localized conflict with oil companies has taken on an increasingly violent tone in recent years, international social movement support has waned and the focus on political consumerism seems to have declined as well. The situation in the Niger Delta has taken on an appearance of civil war, with internal divisions
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 369 within local communities, as much as a protest movement. Thus, while many community members support a movement against Shell, violent actions have made the movement more difficult to promote on the global stage (Oriola, 2013). Recent forms of political consumerism in the oil industry have focused on concerns with climate change, indigenous land rights, and the environmental health risks and impacts of oil extraction and new pipeline projects. The Alberta oil sands have been the subject of discursive strategies identifying this region as a particularly egregious site of oil extraction (Adkin, 2016; Black, D’Arcy, Weiss, & Russell, 2014; Shrivastava & Stefanick, 2015). While individual oil corporations, such as Enbridge or Kinder Morgan, have been singled out in protests against oil pipelines leading out of Alberta, much of the activism around the oil sands has made the Alberta and Canadian governments the identifiable face of the environmental and social harms of “dirty” oil sands extraction (Haluza-DeLay & Carter, 2016; Stoddart, Smith, & Tindall, 2016). A broader critique of the oil industry and its role in driving climate change is articulated in the fossil fuel divestment movement. At university campuses around the world, students have attempted to collectively leverage their influence to encourage university investment funds to divest from fossil fuel corporations (Apfel, 2015; Rowe, Dempsey, & Gibbs, 2016). In an era where the neoliberal turn in university education increasingly defines students as “consumers” and education as a product, it is appropriate to view the collective attempts of students as a creative and relatively new form of political consumerism that leverages the institutional investment power of universities. There is little research examining political consumerism as it relates to minerals and precious stones (MPS). The interdisciplinary literature that examines MPS frames the issue as one of conscientious or sustainable consumption, ethical and/or conflict- free minerals, or fairtrade gold. Most of this line of research covers two overlapping areas: (1) the case of blood diamonds emerging from sub-Saharan Africa (Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC]) and the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS); and (2) the issue of conflict minerals and the fairtrade campaigns and third-party assurance programs established to make the consumption of jewellery and electronics devices sustainable. Some of the research on blood diamonds has investigated the successes and failures of campaigns such as Fatal Transactions and the resulting KPCS (Hughes, 2006; Le Billon, 2006; Smillie, 2013), often drawing on empirical cases to highlight such concerns (Munier, 2015; Spiegel, 2015). Other work has either examined the need to redefine and expand the definition of conflict minerals in the KPCS (Bruffaerts, 2015) or argued for a renewed certification scheme that centres on civil society actors (Winetroub, 2013). Similarly, researchers have found that labelling as a form of consumer action cannot succeed without turning discourses of environmental justice into practice by strengthening weak governance zones, legalizing artisanal mining, and guaranteeing producers a minimum price for their product (Childs, 2008, 2014; Hilson, 2008). Research examining the role of civil society in the minerals sector has also focused on the 2004 No Dirty Gold (NDG) campaign. The NDG campaign was launched to put pressure on gold mining companies—through retail jewellers—to source
370 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. minerals in an ethical and sustainable manner. This research has either been descriptive, detailing the formation and life of the campaign (Conroy, 2007), or critical analysis that argues that the NDG campaign failed to rectify economic inequality or address issues of overconsumption (Bloomfield, 2014). In highlighting the negative consequences of gold extraction for luxury consumer goods, the NDG campaign sparked interest over the sourcing of minerals among nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and academics, culminating in the digital turn for research on political consumerism and mining. Contemporary research examines 3TG (tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold), found in most electronic devices, as the new conflict minerals. This research focuses on describing and evaluating the impacts of consumer campaigns such as the makeITfair campaign, which was launched in 2007 to link the consumption of computers and smart phones in the Global North to distant socioenvironmental problems in the mining sector (Bartley, Koos, Samel, Setrini, & Summers, 2015; Young, Fonseca, & Dias, 2010). Some research moves beyond campaign analysis to examine the motives for corporate actors in the electronics industry to collaborate in industry coalitions such as the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) and Global e-Sustainability Initiative (Airike, Rotter, & Mark-Herbert, 2016). However, more research is needed to tend to these overlooked questions: How do individuals and social movements address the issue of overconsumption when advocating for more ethical products? What challenges does a strict focus on choice bring to socioenvironmental sustainability? The chapter continues to draw on several of the examples introduced here in the following sections.
Movement Actors and Strategies: Cases of Political Consumerism in the Oil and Mining Sectors Greenpeace and the “Save the Arctic Campaign” Greenpeace comes up repeatedly as an important actor that uses political consumerism in opposition to oil development. The organization led opposition to Shell Oil in the conflict over the proposed dumping of the Brent Spar in the North Sea (Barry, 2015; Holzer, 2010; Macnaghten & Urry, 1998). Greenpeace is also a leader in organizing resistance to Arctic oil exploration. By using theatrical and confrontational tactics that align with news genre conventions, Greenpeace has been successful at having their claims amplified by the mass media (Corrigall-Brown, 2016; Dauvergne & Neville, 2011; Doyle, 2003). As their more recent campaign around Arctic oil demonstrates, they have also made strategic use of what Earl and Kimport (2011) call the “affordances” or capabilities of social media to reach potential supporters.
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 371 In 2013, Greenpeace received global media coverage after their protest at a Russian Gazprom oil platform stationed in the Pechora Sea (van Rouveroy, 2014). This platform’s oil spill cleanup strategy had expired, leading to concern over its activities (Caddell, 2014). Greenpeace supporters set off to occupy the platform as a form of protest, but armed members of the Russian Coast Guard intervened and took the protesters (labelled the “Arctic 30”) into custody to be charged with piracy (van Rouveroy, 2014). A worldwide campaign for their release prompted the Dutch government to take the case to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. Russia boycotted this tribunal, but after months of uncertainty, the Arctic 30 were released. Greenpeace provided a clear stance on Arctic oil exploration with their #SaveTheArctic Twitter campaign, with the tagline “leave it in the ground!” Their use of social media has built a forum for discussing the impacts of oil exploration in the Arctic, singling out multinational oil giant Shell, Russia’s Gazprom, and Norway`s Statoil (recently rebranded as Equinor) as opponents. Like many NGOs who have used political consumerism, Greenpeace attempts to taint the image of targeted companies and gain support from the public through what Friedman would call “media-oriented boycotts,” where the boycott is popularized by the media (Friedman, 2004, p. 46). Greenpeace was able to end a business partnership between Lego and Shell (for a more detailed discussion see Chapter 15). In a YouTube video titled “Lego: Everything Is NOT Awesome,” Greenpeace shows an animated Lego block version of the Arctic polluted with Shell trucks, signs, drills, and oil executives (Greenpeace, 2014). As oil floods the scene, animals and people are engulfed in a river of darkness, until the only remaining visible piece is a Shell flag with the caption “Shell is polluting our kids’ imaginations.” The video evokes an emotional response, pleading with the viewer to ask Lego to end its relationship with Shell, lest their children become tainted by unethical oil. In this case, Greenpeace leveraged the power of one company (Lego) to affect another (Shell). As Klintman (Chapter 15) notes, Greenpeace secured a symbolic victory by severing the relationship between Lego and Shell, but it did not problematize the oil-based materials that Lego itself is constructed from. Discursive tactics, where social movements engage in public or media claims-making to change public opinion about the reputation and practices of corporate actors, were also used to disrupt the Arctic interests of oil companies. In June 2015, over a dozen activists in kayaks prevented a Shell rig from leaving Seattle in an attempt to raise awareness of the dangers of exploration in the Arctic and to do brand damage to Shell among the public (Keim & Macalister, 2015). The U.S. Coast Guard intervened, removing the protesters to allow for the departure of the rig. While the protest only temporarily halted the vessel, this action brought further media attention to the issue of Arctic oil and made Shell visible as a corporate villain that wanted to extend oil frontiers into vulnerable Arctic ecosystems. Human-powered vessels met a towering structure of oil exploration and were able to physically stop its movement. A similar event happened the next month in Portland, where Greenpeace activists not only used kayaks but also had several people suspend themselves from a bridge to block the pathway of a Shell icebreaker (Brait, 2015).
372 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. Other discursive tactics have been used to do brand damage around the issue of Arctic oil development. The Save the Arctic campaign worked as a series of episodes of “mediatized environmental conflict,” which circulated through mass media coverage to bystander publics to tarnish the public personas of oil companies (Hutchins & Lester, 2015). At the same time, the Save the Arctic campaign has creatively used the “affordances” of social media, such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, to directly communicate with sympathetic audiences (Earl & Kimport, 2011). This campaign continues a history of oil company boycotts around brands that have been identified as particularly egregious corporate villains. This role has often been played by Shell, which was the focus of boycotts in the campaign against the sinking of the Brent Spar oil rig in the North Sea in the United Kingdom, as well as in the campaign over oil extraction in the Niger Delta. As Holzer (2010) notes in his account of these conflicts, Shell has repeatedly been targeted precisely because of their attempts to construct a more environmentally and socially responsible self-image, which has made them more vulnerable to scrutiny by social movements. In the aftermath of the Brent Spar and Niger Delta campaigns, Shell arguably “transformed itself from a corporate pariah to a ‘leader in global corporate citizenship’ ” (Holzer, 2010, p. 100). However, Shell has once again been a focus of political consumerism in the campaign against Arctic oil extraction, illustrating that despite improvements to its reputation, it remains vulnerable to social movement mobilization.
Fossil Fuel Divestment Divestment is a social movement tactic that calls for capital invested in contentious industries to be pulled out, and it is sometimes accompanied by calls for capital to be placed in alternative, more socially just endeavours. The basic idea behind divestment is that it is morally wrong to profit from industries or businesses whose practices are socially or environmentally harmful. The first of many university-based fossil fuel divestment campaigns was at Swarthmore College in 2010 (Sarang, 2016). Since then, divestment campaigns have impacted the investment policies not only of universities but also of cities, churches, and national governments. This spread of the movement has led to the incorporation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) like Fossil Free, who work to encourage people across institutions and sectors to commit to divestment and advocate for it, with active campaigns in at least seven countries. University-based divestment campaigns draw on the collective power of students in order to pressure university administrations to withdraw investment money from the fossil fuel sector. While not generally framed in terms of consumerism, divestment campaigns draw at least part of their efficacy from the conceptualization of students as citizen-consumers that has become prevalent in recent years, as universities move further down the path of neoliberalism and the corporatization of education. In a sense, divestment campaigns work by pooling the power of students as citizen-consumers and using it as leverage with universities as institutional investors, claiming that they do not
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 373 wish to support educational institutions that support unsustainable industries. While there is debate about how effective divestment movements have been at withdrawing capital from the fossil fuel sector, researchers argue that divestment can play a significant symbolic role in damaging the public reputation of the fossil fuel sector and making its connections to climate change visible (Rowe, Dempsey, & Gibbs, 2016). Divestment campaigns are different from many other tactics used around oil in that they do not target particular corporate actors (i.e., Shell) or regions (i.e., the Alberta oil sands) but rather articulate a broader critique of the fossil fuel sector. Due to the complex nature of global markets and finance, tracing investment money and measuring the real impacts of selling off stocks in fossil fuels is difficult. As reported in an article from The Guardian, the total value of investment funds that have committed to fossil fuel divestment has reached $5.2 trillion guaranteed to be fossil fuel–free or to pull out in the near future (Carrington, 2016a). These numbers suggest a shift in thinking about fossil fuel divestment as a sound investment decision rather than just as a moral imperative. Framing divestment as a move that makes a portfolio more stable or provides long-term growth may resonate with investors in a way that framing divestment around environmental harms may not. Furthermore, as Berger (Chapter 6) argues, personal investment is a challenging site for mobilizing political consumerism. This is due to generally low levels of financial literacy among the public and also because investment decisions do not allow the same opportunities for public displays of individual morality in the same way that purchases of fairtrade, organic, or otherwise ethically branded consumer goods provide. As such, political consumerism related to investment (and divestment) may be more effective in leveraging the power of institutional investors, such as universities or churches, which are often seen as having a duty to make ethical investment choices (see Chapter 6). Two interrelated factors represent challenges and opportunities for the fossil fuel divestment movement. First, climate change and environmental degradation are slow disasters that are not necessarily immediate or visible for much of the public. This contrasts with other industries that have been targeted by divestment campaigns, such as tobacco. Documenting negative health effects of smoking provided graphic and shocking images to circulate through the media in order to influence consumer decisions. Since emissions from the fossil fuel industry produce climate change gradually, and the destruction of that industry plays out in the environment on a broad scale rather than on individual bodies, the ways in which activists can engage with the issue are limited. Making small changes in individual lifestyles may feel insignificant in relation to the scale of emissions produced by the large industrial emitters in the fossil fuel sector. Second, if individual consumer choices cannot undermine the market value of fossil fuels, asking investers to change their policies may bet closer to the root of heart of the core issues of the fossil fuel sector. However, there are still challenges associated with targeting investment in fossil fuels, especially for institutions whose investment practices are not public information. In the case of universities, it can be unclear which university officials to write letters to or which administrative meetings to disrupt, as the individuals who make investment decisions may not be specified. At the
374 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. same time that targets may not be completely clear, fossil fuel divestment is unique in that there are many potential targets, including churches, schools, hospitals, city governments, and so on (Apfel, 2015). This means that when one institution says no to divestment, there are others that can be targeted and other ways to build momentum on the movement as a whole.
NGOs and the Emergence of Blood Diamonds As with the oil industry, the mining industry has been a target for consumer activism in protest of the most egregious social and environmental impacts of resource extraction. In the early 1990s to the 2000s, violent conflict prevailed in several sub-Saharan African source countries for diamonds (Angola, Sierra Leone, and later the DRC). Rebel groups in each country engaged in civil warfare and targeted civilians through brutal acts of violence in their quest for diamonds to finance conflict. It was not until 1998–1999 that two NGOs—Global Witness and Partnership Africa Canada (PAC)—made blood diamonds into an international issue that would capture the attention of consumers, states, diamond companies, and jewellery retailers (Bieri, 2010; Smillie, 2013). Global Witness was the first NGO to discuss the issue of blood diamonds as well as the first to champion market mechanisms for conflict-free diamonds. Their 1998 report chastised De Beers for purchasing conflict diamonds from Angola (Smillie, 2013). De Beers responded within days stating that the company would no longer source conflict diamonds from the region (Franks, 2015). A year later, Global Witness, in partnership with other European NGOs, launched Fatal Transactions, a campaign that relied on consumer awareness and the threat of a boycott (Le Billon, 2006). At the same time, Partnership Africa Canada (PAC) released a report on conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone, which further contributed to agenda setting on this issue. Between 1998 and the early 2000s, NGOs used discursive tactics and culture jamming (reconfiguring existing advertising slogans and images to subvert their meaning as a form of political critique) to raise consumer awareness and to provoke media coverage of the issue. Fatal Transactions staged protests at jewellery shops to reframe how diamonds are conceived in the public imaginary. For example, activists engaged in culture jamming, changing De Beers’ well-known slogan of “diamonds are forever” and “diamonds are a woman’s best friend” to “amputation is forever” and “diamonds are a guerrilla’s best friend” (Le Billon, 2006, p. 784). Fatal Transactions campaigners also engaged in “subversive branding, turning the carefully curated image of diamonds as symbols of luxury and purity in on itself ” by sending jewellery retailers mock rings with labels detailing the atrocities of the diamond trade in Angola (Franks, 2015, p. 88). Other NGOs, like Amnesty International France, released gruesome advertisements that read “Quel prix pour ces diamants?” (What price for these diamonds?) against the backdrop of a two-faced woman: on the left, a white woman brandishing an elegant diamond necklace; on the right, a black woman with lacerations on her neck and shoulders. Awareness campaigns predicated on discursive political consumerism quickly caught
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 375 the attention of mainstream media. In 2000, CNN streamed Cry Freetown, a powerful documentary that shared the stories and images of amputees who lost their limbs as a result of violent rebel raids in Sierra Leone (Bieri, 2010). Cry Freetown produced what some refer to as the “CNN effect” (Bieri, 2010), receiving widespread media attention from newspapers to talk shows. These initiatives dovetailed with the establishment of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), which represents the second dominant form of political consumerism in this sector: the buycott or labelling scheme (Franks, 2015). Global Witness and PAC were responsible for agenda setting and also played a leading role in the solution-building and implementation stages of the KPCS (Bieri, 2010). Adopted in January 2003, the KPCS was a tripartite structure that included NGOs, states, and corporate members of the diamond industry. Despite being a voluntary initiative, the main goal of the KPCS was to make it illegal to trade diamonds “without a government-issued certificate proving the diamond has not been mined in an area afflicted by conflict” (Hughes, 2006, p. 117). By signing onto this voluntary agreement, member states agreed to enact legislation in their home country that would meet KPCS standards and also agreed that no “rough diamonds would be exported without a government-authorized KP certificate” (Smillie, 2013, p. 1013). The KPCS was a promising initiative, but its limitations quickly became evident. First, the KPCS involved an inadequate monitoring system based on peer review to ensure that member states enforced regulations (Smillie, 2013). Although some reviews are thorough, others are “perfunctory” with reviewer reports being delayed up to a year (Smillie, 2013, p. 1014). Second, the “consensus” decision-making model (based on unanimity) made most attempts at reform since 2003 difficult, with attempts to sanction noncompliance blocked (Bruffaerts, 2015; Smillie, 2013). The KPCS might be more successful if it used the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) as a model for governance since the latter adopts a democratic General Assembly model to pass motions and make decisions. As the highest decision-making body of the FSC, the Assembly is based on a tripartite chamber structure (social, environmental, and economic) that successfully maintains “the balance of voting power between different interests” and facilitates action on responsible forest management and the future direction of the FSC (Marx & Cuypers, 2010, p. 411). Although the KPCS has weaknesses in regards to regulation, it has been reported that the number of blood diamonds in circulation for consumption has dropped from 15 percent in 1990 to under 1 percent in 2010 (Bieri, 2010). Nonetheless, in the face of unwillingness to seriously regulate conflict diamonds, both Global Witness and PAC have withdrawn from the KPCS.
No Dirty Gold and the Promise of Certification The gold industry has also faced opposition from civil society. Earthworks and Oxfam America are the main agenda-setting NGOs demanding an end to conflict gold through consumer awareness campaigns. The two NGOs launched the No Dirty Gold campaign
376 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. in 2004, which was guided by ten Golden Rules established in 2005. The ten Golden Rules capture what it means for gold companies or jewellery retailers to buy/sell “clean” gold, some of which include: respecting human rights commitments during extraction; acquiring gold after securing the free, prior, and informed consent of affected communities; avoiding polluting the environment with toxic chemicals; and allowing “independent verification audits” during extraction (Bloomfield, 2014, p. 266). The Golden Rules move beyond the single criterion outlined in the KPCS to include a whole set of interrelated concerns. The first action of the NDG campaign involved activists walking along the jewellery district on Fifth Avenue in New York, where they distributed thousands of flyers that read: “Don’t tarnish your love with dirty gold. . . . The production of one gold ring generates 20 tons of waste. Tell the gold industry you want an alternative to dirty gold!” (Conroy, 2007, pp. 172, 175). The protest was covered by news outlets such as CNN and Forbes. Although sharing similar tactics as the anti–blood diamonds movement, the approach towards industry and retailers differed for this market campaign. Prior to the launch of the NDG campaign, Earthworks and Tiffany & Company held meetings with representatives from corporate consumers of gold, mining advocacy NGOs, retail jewellers, and representatives from the finance and insurance industry to discuss strategies for applying pressure on mining companies to adopt more environmentally and socially sustainable practices (Conroy, 2007). The meetings resulted in the establishment of a vision statement titled “Responsible Sourcing, Investing and Insuring in the Minerals Sector” (Conroy, 2007, p. 172). This approach differs from the Kimberley market campaign as it featured a partnership between NGOs and jewellery retailers. Discursive strategies were also used in this campaign. The Fall 2005 copy of National Jeweler, for example, included a sponsored full-page ad with wedding rings and the caption “Love. Romance. Commitment. Destruction. We need to clean up the gold mining industry before it tarnishes the jewelry business” (Conroy, 2007, p. 179). The advertisement also called on jewellers to commit to the “creation of a third-party verification system” (Conroy, 2007, p. 179). As with the case of Lego and Shell in the oil industry, this tactic leverages the power of one group of corporate actors over another. To date, no regulatory or labelling scheme akin to the KPCS has emerged. Nonetheless, the NDG campaign prompted the development of the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (or IRMA, a multistakeholder initiative including NGOs, industry actors, and retailers), which is developing and implementing a third-party assurance system that will provide mine certification as early as 2017 (IRMA certification, n.d.).
Digital Political Consumerism: Conflict Minerals and the Electronics Industry Political consumerism has evolved from concerns with particular minerals (diamonds or gold) to market campaigns focusing on tantalum, tin, tungsten, and gold (3TG) as
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 377 the conflict minerals of the digital era because they are vital components of most electronics (Bartley, Koos, Samel, Setrini, & Summers, 2015). As with blood diamonds, 3TG minerals are often mined using forced labour in conflict areas in sub-Saharan Africa before being smuggled “to Asian smelters for refinement, generating significant revenues for local armed militias” (Bartley, Koos, Samel, Setrini, & Summers, 2015, p. 189). The issue of conflict minerals existed in the early 2000s, but was not formalized as a social movement campaign until the Enough Project launched the Conflict Minerals Initiative with the release of a report detailing the movement of conflict minerals from extraction in the Congo to consumer phones (Reinecke & Ansari, 2016). Around the same time, the Enough Project launched the Conflict-Free Campus Initiative (CFCI), a student movement across 175 campuses in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (Schmitt, 2015), which encouraged university officials, as consumers of electronics, “to pressure electronics companies to invest responsibly in Congo’s minerals sector” (About the Campaign, n.d.). Alongside socially responsible investment as a discursive strategy, activists targeted brand-name companies, framing the issue as one of blood minerals (Young, 2015). Amidst growing media coverage of conflict minerals and pressure from multiple NGOs, electronics companies responded by commissioning a report on metal sourcing in 2007 and establishing the Conflict-Free Sourcing Initiative (CFSI) in 2008 (Young, 2015). The CFSI was established by the Global e- Sustainability Initiative and the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition and has been in force since 2012 (Young, 2015). Unlike the KPCS and the NDG initiatives, the CFSI is exclusive to industry associations, with 130 member companies participating, and is not itself a certification scheme (Young, 2015). The CFSI is structured such that member companies can access details of smelter companies to ensure that the minerals being purchased are not supporting conflicts. By doing so, the CFSI is a tool for members to satisfy the disclosure requirements of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires that American companies report whether or not their products contain conflict minerals from the DRC or surrounding areas (Blake, 2014). Given the history of transparency as an indicator of good governance in the minerals sector, the Dodd-Frank Act has been positively received by civil society actors championing the ethical sourcing of 3TG minerals. Although the act is only a third-party assurance, research conducted by the Enough Project found that there has been “increased security for civilians in some mining areas, [and] a significant reduction in armed group control in 3T mining areas” as well as the implementation of a system to assess and certify conflict-free minerals (Dranginis, 2016). Since the introduction of Section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, companies such as Apple Inc. have been making significant progress is assuring consumers that they are taking the issue of conflict minerals seriously (Apple Inc., 2015). Interestingly, Apple has explicitly stated that it does not consider itself “conflict-free” since there is more work to be done to enhance due diligence in the gold supply chain in particular as well as improve issue resolution (Apple Inc., 2015), a move applauded by the Enough Project (Oboth, 2016). A similar form of regulation has recently been approved in the European Union (EU), but the
378 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. EU regulations go further by regulating 3TG minerals from around the world, not only from sub-Saharan African countries (Blenkinsop, 2016).
Factors That Facilitate and Constrain Political Consumerism in the Oil and Mineral Sectors The Challenges of Globalized Economies and Power Asymmetries The first challenges of engaging the fossil fuel and mining sectors through political consumerism is that these are highly globalized economies, where connections between the sites of production and sites of consumption are often opaque to individual consumers. When fuelling up a car, there is no way of knowing whether the oil we are buying is from Nigeria or the Alberta oil sands, as these intermingle in global supply chains. Also, as John Urry`s (2013) concept of the carbon complex highlights, oil economies are incredibly diffuse and pervasive throughout consumer culture. While we might become more aware of our encounter with the carbon complex when filling our cars, oil is a more subliminal presence in a host of other consumer products, such as plastics, where processes of oil extraction and the corporate actors involved may be completely unclear at the point of consumption. Similarly, while buying a gold watch or diamond ring may remind us of our connections to mineral extraction, items like cell phones and laptops may have hidden components mined in conflict areas. These technologies seem necessary to life in the twenty-first century, but their connections to energy intensive and environmentally damaging extractive processes are easily forgotten. The second key challenge is that many corporate actors in these sectors are among the largest transnational corporations in the world. By contrast, governance works through the regional or national political jurisdictions that these companies operate within. The size and geographical reach of many transnational corporations means they can be treated as “quasi-public institutions,” which makes them potential targets for political consumerism (Holzer, 2010). At the same time, the transnational reach and mobility of resource extraction companies can contribute to a power asymmetry between these corporations and many governments, making it difficult to leverage political consumerism to create more stringent policies for resource extraction. Political consumerism strategies like boycotts, certification processes, and discursive tactics (such as doing brand damage to particular companies or regions) may be successful at targeting the episodic and most visible examples of the social and environmental harms of resource extraction. However, while political consumerism may effectively challenge the most egregious corporate practices, it is less oriented towards creating the types of policy change
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 379 that may be necessary to ensure social justice and environmental sustainability across the oil and mining sectors.
Social Movement Responses: The Catastrophe Lens and Identifying Villains These challenges have been responded to in several ways by social movements. The first response is to adopt a “catastrophe lens” on oil and mineral development, which focuses on the most dramatic environmental and social impacts that can be rendered visually and more easily communicated through the media. This includes using the imagery of oil disasters, such as the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, to visualize the impacts of oil on nature and wildlife (e.g., Hoffbauer & Ramos, 2014). It also includes the discursive tactics used to represent the Alberta oil sands as a site of particularly “dirty oil” or the Arctic as a pristine, fragile environment in need of protection from oil exploration. The mineral sector also relies on the catastrophe lens in emphasizing blood diamonds and blood minerals, both of which challenge the social and symbolic importance attributed to diamonds for romantic partnerships and for connecting individuals through technological devices. Minerals are vulnerable to a politics of ethical consumption because of the ability of NGOs to craft horrific but effective advertisements that visually link the purchase of, for example, diamonds to corporeal harms in the Congo—a process that is amplified and picked up by mainstream media and Hollywood films such as the 2006 film Blood Diamonds. A second—and related—response is to personify resource extraction by identifying and targeting distinct villains, such as Shell (a position they have repeatedly been allocated) or the Canadian or Alberta governments in relation to oil. The all-encompassing nature of minerals also facilitates the targeting and shaming of particular mining giants (e.g., De Beers), jewellery retailers (e.g., Tiffany & Co.) and electronic companies (e.g., Apple Inc.), which have all responded to criticism because of the risk market campaigns pose for their reputation and brand. The catastrophe lens and the personalization of villains (corporations or governments) can mobilize political consumerism around oil and address the diffuse nature of the carbon complex. However, the pervasiveness of the carbon complex limits possibilities for political consumerism. In much of the world, urban infrastructure creates path dependencies that encourage automobile use and suburban sprawl, or the use of technological devices such as mobile phones and laptops, while discouraging public transit, active transportation, and urban densification (Urry, 2013). Relatively cheap oil underlies the proliferation of big-box stores offering affordable plastic consumer goods that make pro-environmental alternatives feel unrealistically expensive for many consumers. Similarly, relatively cheap oil enables the system of long-distance shipping and fertilizer-intensive agriculture that characterizes the industrialized food system and works against adopting more environmentally sustainable alternatives.
380 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. While it may be relatively easy for consumers to participate in boycotts against companies like Shell, engaging in political consumerism that addresses the broader environmental and social costs of the carbon complex demands a high level of commitment to transforming individual consumer behaviours. This form of political consumerism requires resources (time, knowledge, and money) as well as a willingness to adopt a lifestyle that is in friction with the path dependencies of consumer capitalist society (Schoolman, 2016).
Social Movement Responses: Divestment Divestment is a third response used by social movements. Traditional forms of political consumerism such as boycotts are limited for an industry that is deeply embedded within all aspects of our lives (Urry, 2013). It is not possible to rid society of fossil fuel dependence without restructuring social and political life and the infrastructure that facilitates it. Divestment differs from most forms of political consumerism in that it breaks the connections to capital that oil companies need to conduct their business. If we are to believe, as Carter suggests, that “capitalism could only grow and flourish with fossil energy and steep environmental costs” (Carter, 2014, p. 25), then political consumerism against fossil fuels might be viewed as anticapitalist. This may suggest a dilemma for environmental activists, who speak the language of investors to suggest that fossil fuels are no longer stable assets to have in their portfolios. A major victory for the global divestment movement occurred when a quarter of Britain’s universities pulled their funds from fossil fuels (Carrington, 2016b). While it may seem contradictory to use the workings of fossil fuel economics to attack the sector, the momentum of the divestment movement suggests that investors may be willing to change their strategy for investing in environmentally harmful ventures despite being embedded in the carbon complex. Fossil fuel divestment may be the first form of political consumerism against the fossil fuel industry that has been able to go beyond brand damage to particular companies to make changes in the ability of the carbon complex to operate as usual. The ability of divestment movements to use the logic of investment markets for their own political purpose is atypical for political consumerism. Rather than appealing to moral sentiments about using dollars for good rather than harm, activists have been successful in tapping into the profit-driven motives of investors. In the logic of the market, a decision to divest from fossil fuels is only a good decision if a future free from fossil fuel dependency becomes a reality. Divestment movements are asking institutions to make decisions based on a future economy that has not yet materialized, with the assumption that regulations like carbon taxes or an expanded market for fossil-free technologies will help bring this new economy into being. Framing the choice to divest from fossil fuels as a financially savvy move is crucial, but it necessitates convincing investors that keeping stocks in fossil fuels is risky. Divestment movements have an indirect relationship between consumers and the industry being targeted. Rather than making an individual choice to buy or not buy a
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 381 product, the first students who called for fossil fuel divestment were asking their universities to stop using their tuition money toward investments in morally objectionable businesses. If we are to define political consumerism as a set of tactics that leverage consumer choices and market dynamics to advance social movement goals and promote social change, divestment fits this description. However, it clearly does not follow the typical tactics of advocating for boycotting, buycotting, or lifestyle changes. Certainly, it uses discursive tactics to change the public discourse around the responsibility of institutions to protect environments, but the divestment movement has found the greatest uptake by speaking the language of investors rather than asking them to be environmentally responsible. As such, some critics argue that divestment “reduces the opportunity to engage with companies, and therefore to encourage them to become better actors” (Apfel, 2015, p. 917).
Social Movement Responses: Labelling Labelling schemes are a fourth response for political consumerism in the extractive sectors, which have been—to some extent—successful at addressing the harms of the mineral sector. The primary indirect effect of political action in this sector has been an increased consumer awareness of conflict minerals, while direct effects include the reduction of violence near particular mining sites (Enough Project, n.d.) and a reduced global supply of blood diamonds (Bieri, 2010). However, the reliance on labelling and certification schemes is faced with numerous additional constraints. First, there continue to be issues and uncertainties regarding the tracing of conflict minerals—from extraction, to sorting, cutting, and polishing, and through the related financing, tax evasion, and corruption that taint trade in countries such as the DRC (Partnership Africa Canada, 2014). Second, some want to see the definition of conflict minerals expanded to include other “dirty” minerals such as cobalt (Barnato, 2016; Mont, 2016) and to consider states as active participants in perpetuating extractive violence (Spiegel, 2015). This leads directly to a third constraint: conflict-free mineral sourcing evades systemic environmental justice issues, such as global inequalities in terms of power, exposure to hazardous wastes, issues of land rights, or access to water supplies (Bloomfield, 2014). Campaigns in the gold industry, for example, have reinforced global inequalities by putting “the onus on foreign consumers to decide the fate of local projects” (Bloomfield, 2014, p. 275). In this case, Western consumers with more resources have a greater voice by deciding the fate, development priorities, and regulatory structure of nations in the Global South. At the same time, the relative ease within which sub-Saharan Africa is painted as a space of violence creates the false assumption that extraction in the Global North is sustainable. For instance, relative to the African continent, Canada is framed as a pristine landscape that is a site of ethical extraction and consumption. By framing Canada as an ethical source region, African nations are othered (Schlosser, 2013), and cases alleging that De Beers dumped toxic sewage into indigenous communities such as those in Attawapiskat, Ontario are rendered invisible (Michelin, 2011).
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The Issue of Overconsumption Finally, the use of market campaigns for addressing unsustainable practices in extractive sectors depends on nonstate initiatives that do not challenge the systemic causes of environmental degradation. Market campaigns in the mineral sector ignore issues of overconsumption at a time when the consumption of minerals such as gold produce more risks than rewards. Gold mining poses significant socioenvironmental concerns related to deforestation; intensive water use; waste management and acid mine drainage; the dumping of toxic tailings that include cyanide, mercury, and arsenic into rivers; and the mass displacement of rural populations. Many of the aforementioned socioenvironmental concerns are driven by the demand for new gold, with 50 to 80 percent of newly mined gold used for jewellery and the remaining supply used in electronics and dentistry (Bloomfield, 2017; Norgate & Haque, 2012; Sarin, 2006). In order to address overconsumption, attention might need to shift from concerns over ethical and sustainable extraction to a possible moratorium on gold mining given its adverse socioenvironmental effects, especially since 85 percent of existing gold can be recycled (Norgate & Haque, 2012). Many of the strategies used in political consumerism around the oil and mineral sectors are limited in their ability to address issues of societal reliance on the widespread use of these resources throughout consumer culture. An alternative response to consumer culture is found in intentionally low-carbon lifestyles, wherein participants minimize their ecological footprints by making pro-environmental choices around housing, transportation, and diet. Low-carbon lifestyles are often adopted as an individual- level response to climate change and other issues and as a way of enacting and modelling individual environmental responsibility (Schoolman, 2016; Stoddart, Tindall, & Greenfield, 2012; Wolf, Brown, & Conway, 2009). While such low-carbon lifestyles have value as a form of “relational activism” that demonstrates environmental responsibility to participants’ social networks, there may also be significant challenges to scaling up these practices (O’Shaughnessy & Kennedy, 2010). Due to the global reach and mobility of transnational oil and mining companies, it would take a significant scaling up of individual or household-level consumer practices to pose a threat to the power and profitability of these sectors.
Conclusion The main challenge to political consumerism in natural resource sectors like oil and mining is not only that these substances are embedded throughout capitalist consumerism but also that they are everywhere, taken for granted, and often pass unnoticed. The chronic impacts of what Urry (2013) terms the “carbon complex” of oil, including the social and environmental costs of urban sprawl, automobility, climate change, or pollution from plastics, are diffuse and difficult to mobilize around. While
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 383 driving a Tesla might be an example of individual consumer choice that attempts to address these issues, it is a choice that relies on personal affluence and does not address broader social-ecological path dependencies of the carbon complex. Social movements mobilize political consumerism in the oil sector by focusing on symbolically dramatic points of oil extraction, where the harms of oil extraction can be personalized through an identifiable villain, which is a role that has repeatedly been played by Shell. However, where local anti-oil protest has turned to violent tactics like kidnapping or acts of sabotage and equipment destruction, such as in the Niger Delta, it has been difficult to maintain the engagement of transnational social movements and political consumerism. Like oil, minerals and the precious gemstones fashioned from them are ubiquitous. They appear as material symbols of love and romance in the form of diamonds or gold jewellery and as crucial components of the electronic devices that enable contemporary modes of connection and entertainment. Although socially and materially significant, minerals and precious stones are frequently associated with environmental degradation and human rights abuses, and they constitute a source of funding for rebel groups in nations such as Sierra Leone and the DRC. Nongovernmental organizations’ advocacy in the minerals sector relies predominantly on buycotts and discursive strategies that push for labelling schemes, such as the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme for diamonds or conflict-free mineral assurances for the 3TG minerals—tungsten, tin, titanium, and gold—found in electronics. The boycotts and discursive tactics used by movements to promote political consumerism often rely on a disaster or catastrophe lens or on attributions of responsibility oriented towards luxury consumers. A disaster or catastrophe lens may be effective for targeting some of the most egregious environmental risks and harms but has limitations in its potential to change how we live with the more diffuse political ecologies of oil and mining that shape our everyday practices and behaviours. In the past decade, activists have adopted divestment as a new form of political consumerism in these sectors. In 2009, the Norwegian Government Pension Plan divested from the world’s largest gold producer, Barrick Gold, due to concerns over environmental degradation. In 2014, a coalition of Canadian NGOs and grassroots groups established the Money Thread Campaign, which invites individuals to request that their public institutions, private investments, and pension funds (provincial and federal) divest from Canadian mining companies Goldcorp and Tahoe resources. Likewise, fossil fuel divestment movements have emerged and found success in university campus communities. However, while fossil fuel divestment has had its successes, it is limited by unequal power relations within universities among students, faculty, administrators, and governing boards. Divestment campaigns are a novel form of political consumerism that attempts to leverage the power of institutional investors, which is gaining traction within social movements. Future research on political consumerism could track the ongoing development of divestment and its effectiveness and limitations as a strategy for addressing the social and environmental harms of the fossil fuel and mineral sectors, especially in comparison to other strategies like discursive tactics, boycotts, and product certification schemes.
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Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 385 Carrington, Damian. (2016a, November 22). Fossil fuel divestment soars in UK universities. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/nov/22 /fossil-fuel-divestment-soars-in-uk-universities. Carrington, Damian. (2016b, December 12). Fossil fuel divestment funds double to $5tn in a year. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec /12/fossil-fuel-divestment-funds-double-5tn-in-a-year. Carter, Angela. (2014). Petro-capitalism and the tar sands. In Toban Black, Stephen D’Arcy, Tony Weis, & Joshua Khan Russell (Eds.), A line in the tar sands: Struggles for environmental justice (pp. 23–35). Toronto, ON: Between the Lines. Childs, John. (2008). Reforming small-scale mining in sub-Saharan Africa: Political and ideological challenges to a fair trade gold initiative. Resources Policy, 33(4), 203–209. Childs, John. (2014). From “criminals of the Earth” to “stewards of the environment”: The social and environmental justice of fair trade gold. Geoforum, 57, 129–137. Conroy, Michael E. (2007). Branded! How the “certification revolution” is transforming global corporations. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society. Corrigall-Brown, Catherine. (2016). What gets covered? An examination of media coverage of the environmental movement in Canada. Canadian Review of Sociology, 63(1), 72–93. Dauvergne, Peter, & Neville, Kate J. (2011). Mindbombs of right and wrong: Cycles of contention in the activist campaign to stop Canada’s seal hunt. Environmental Politics, 20(2), 192–209. Dranginis, Holly. (2016). Point of origin: Status report on the impact of Dodd-Frank 1502 in Congo. Retrieved from http://www.enoughproject.org/reports/point-origin-status -report-impact-dodd-frank-1502-congo. Doyle, Aaron. (2003). Arresting images: Crime and policing in front of the television camera. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Earl, Jennifer, & Kimport, Katrina. (2011). Digitally enabled social change: Activism in the internet age. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Enough project. (n.d). Progress and challenges on conflict minerals: Facts on Dodd-Frank 1502. Retrieved from http://enoughproject.org/special-topics/progress-and-challenges-conflict -minerals-facts-dodd-frank-1502. Franks, Daniel M. (2015). Mountain movers: Mining, sustainability and the agents of change. New York, NY: Routledge. Friedman, Monroe. (2004). Using consumer boycotts to stimulate corporate policy changes: Marketplace, media, and moral considerations. In Michelle Micheletti, Andreas Føllesdal, & Deitlind Stolle (Eds.), Politics, products and markets: Exploring political consumerism past and present (pp. 45–62). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Greenpeace. (2014). LEGO: Everything is NOT awesome. Retrieved from https://www .youtube.com/watch?v=qhbliUq0_r4. Haluza-DeLay, Randolph, & Carter, Angela V. (2016). Social movements scaling up: Strategies and opportunities in opposing the oil sands status quo. In Laurie E. Adkin (Ed.), First world petro-politics: Political ecology and governance of Alberta (pp. 456–498). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Hilson, Gavin. (2008). “Fair trade gold”: Antecedents, prospects and challenges. Geoforum, 39(1), 386–400. Hoffbauer, Andreas, & Ramos, Howard. (2014). Social and political convergence on environmental events: The roles of simplicity and visuality in the BP oil spill. Canadian Review of Sociology, 51(3), 216–238.
386 Mark C. J. Stoddart et al. Holzer, Boris. (2010). Moralizing the corporation: Transnational activism and corporate accountability. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Hughes, Tim. (2006). Conflict diamonds and the Kimberley process: Mission accomplished or mission impossible? South African Journal of International Affairs, 13(2), 115–130. Hutchins, Brett, & Lester, Libby. (2015). Theorizing the enactment of mediatized environmental conflict. The International Communication Gazette, 77(4), 337–358. IRMA Certification. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.responsiblemining.net/certification/. Keck, Margaret E., & Sikkink, Kathryn. (1998). Activists beyond borders: Advocacy networks in international politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Keim, Brandon, & Macalister, Terry. (2015, June 15). Shell’s Arctic oil rig departs Seattle as “kayaktivists” warn of disaster. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian .com/us-news/2015/jun/15/seattle-kayak-activists-detained-blocking-shell-arctic-oil-rig. Le Billon, Philippe. (2006). Fatal transaction: Conflict diamonds and the (anti)terrorist consumer. Antipode, 38(4), 778–801. Macnaghten, Phil, & Urry, John. (1998). Contested natures. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Marx, Axel, & Cuypers, Dieter. (2010). Forest certification as a global environmental governance tool: What is the macro-effectiveness of the Forest Stewardship Council? Regulation & Governance, 4, 408–434. Michelin, Ossie. (2011). De Beers decision to dump sewage into Attawapiskat played role in current housing crisis. Retrieved from http://aptn.ca/news/2011/12/13/de-beers-decision -to-dump-sewage-into-attawapiskat-played-role-in-current-housing-crisis/. Mont, Joe. (2016). Is cobalt the next conflict mineral? Retrieved from https://www .complianceweek.com/ blogs/ t he- f iling- c abinet/ i s- c obalt- t he- n ext- c onflict- m ineral #.WFL3ZqIrJE5. Munier, Nathan. (2015). Diamonds, dependence and De Beers: Monopoly capitalism and compliance with the Kimberley process in Namibia. Review of African Political Economy, 43(150), 1–14. Norgate, Terry, & Haque, Nawshad. (2012). Using life cycle assessment to evaluate some environmental impacts of gold production. Journal of Cleaner Production, 29–30, 53–63. Oboth, Carly. (2016). Why it’s a good thing that Apple isn’t declaring its products conflict-free. Retrieved from https://www.globalwitness.org/en/blog/why-its-good-thing-apple-isnt -declaring-its-products-conflict-free/. Oriola, Temitope B. (2013). Criminal resistance? The politics of kidnapping oil workers. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. O’Shaughnessy, Sara, & Kennedy, Emily Huddart. (2010). Relational activism: Reimagining women’s environmental work as cultural change. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 35(4), 551– 572. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/canajsocicahican.35.4.551. Partnership Africa Canada. 2014. All that glitters is not gold: Dubai, Congo and the illicit trade of conflict minerals. Retrieved from http://www.pacweb.org/images/PUBLICATIONS /All%20That%20Glitters.pdf. Reinecke, Juliane, & Ansari, Shaz. (2016). Taming wicked problems: The role of framing in the construction of corporate social responsibility. Journal of Management Studies, 53(3), 299–329. Rowe, James, Dempsey, Jessica, & Gibbs, Peter. (2016). The power of fossil fuel divestment (and its secret). In William K. Carroll & Kanchan Sarker (Eds.), A world to win: Contemporary social movements and counter-hegemony (pp. 233–2 49). Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books.
Oil and Mining Extractive Industries 387 Sarang, Surbhi. (2016). Combating climate change through a duty to divest. Columbia Journal of Law and Social Problems, 49(2), 295–341. Retrieved from http://heinonline.org/HOL /LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/collsp49&div=13&id=&page=. Sarin, Radhika. (2006). No dirty gold: Consumer education and action for mining reform. Journal of Cleaner Production, 14(3–4), 305–306. Schlosser, Kolson. (2013). Regimes of ethical value? Landscape, race and representation in the Canadian diamond industry. Antipode, 45(1), 161–179. Schmitt, Amand. (2015). 500+ conflict- free campus initiative student leaders sign letter to U.S. envoy Perriello. Retrieved from http://www.enoughproject.org/blogs /500-conflict-free-campus-initiative-student-leaders-sign-letter-us-envoy-perriello. Schoolman, Ethan D. (2016). Completing the circuit: Routine, reflection, and ethical consumption. Sociological Forum, 31(3), 619–641. Shrivastava, Meenal, & Stefanick, Lorna. (Eds.). (2015). Alberta oil and the decline of democracy in Canada. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press. Smillie, Ian. (2013). Blood diamonds and non-state actors. Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, 46(4), 1003– 1023. Retrieved from http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein .journals/vantl46&div=28&id=&page=. Spaargaren, Gert, & Mol, Arthur P. J. (2008). Greening global consumption: Redefining politics and authority. Global Environmental Change, 18(3), 350–359. Spiegel, Samuel J. (2015). Contested diamond certification: Reconfiguring global and national interests in Zimbabwe’s Marange fields. Geoforum, 59, 258–267. Stoddart, Mark C. J., Smith, Jillian, & Tindall, David B. (2016). Blame Canada: Environmental movements, national media and Canada’s reputation as a climate villain. In William K. Carroll & Kanchan Sarker (Eds.), A world to win: Contemporary social movements and counter-hegemony (pp. 250–266). Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books. Stoddart, Mark C. J., Tindall, David B., & Greenfield, Kelly L. (2012). Governments have the power? Interpretations of climate change responsibility and solutions among Canadian environmentalists. Organization & Environment, 25(1), 39–58. Urry, John. (2013). Societies beyond oil: Oil dregs and social futures. London: Zed Books. van Rouveroy, Maarten. (Director). (2014). Black ice. Netherlands: Greenpeace International. Winetroub, Andrew H. (2013). A diamond scheme is forever lost: The Kimberley process’s deteriorating tripartite structure and its consequences for the scheme’s survival. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 20(2), 1425–1444. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu /article/538466. Wolf, Johanna, Brown, Katrina, & Conway, Declan. (2009). Ecological citizenship and climate change: Perceptions and practice. Environmental Politics, 18(4), 503–521. Young, Steven B. (2015). Responsible sourcing of metals: Certification approaches for conflict minerals and conflict-free metals. International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment. doi: 10.1007/s11367-015-0932-5 Young, Steven B., Fonseca, Alberto, & Dias, Goretty. (2010). Principles for responsible metals supply to electronics. Social Responsibility Journal, 6(1), 126–142.
Chapter 19
Household A ppl ia nc e s and Elect roni c s Discussing the Relative Absence of Political Consumerism Toke Haunstrup Christensen, Kirsten Gram-H anssen, and Mette Hove Jacobsen
Political consumerism is market- oriented engagement emerging from political concerns associated with production and consumption (Micheletti, 2011). Within the field of household appliances and electronics, there are several aspects especially related to environmental and social sustainability in the production, use, and disposal of the goods that could call for action. The working conditions of those manufacturing the products, and the unhealthy conditions in the global south related to product disposal, together with environmental issues of production, use, and disposal, represent ample questions for environmental justice (Chen, 2016). As with other types of products, there are in principle different ways consumers can be politically active. Political consumerism can include choosing some products rather than others, including buying labelled products (Boström & Klintman, 2008; Gram-Hanssen, 2011). It can include minimizing the purchase of products by prolonging their lifetime and thus opting for a “slower consumption” (Cooper, 2008). And it can include entering sharing schemes or completely abandoning the use of the products as part of a lifestyle choice (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). It has been stated elsewhere that consumer electronics seems to be an area where political consumerism has been less successful compared to other areas such as food and wood products (Micheletti, 2017), and this chapter will explore in more depth the reasons behind this. The chapter proposes that the relative absence of political consumerism related to consumer electronics and appliances relates to the quite dramatic transformations of everyday life in households, which has been seen in most of the
390 Toke Haunstrup Christensen et al. world in the last century related to new technologies in homes. Household technologies can be divided into information and communication technologies (ICTs) and technologies related to different tasks of household work, such as cleaning or preparing food (hereafter referred to as “household appliances”). The historical development of these two groups of technologies, and the role they play in everyday practices, share both similarities and differences that are relevant for understanding the relative absence of political consumerism within these fields of consumption. Before going further into this discussion, the chapter starts by presenting and discussing some of the different forms of political consumerism, which can be seen in relation to household appliances and ICT. Some of these forms rely on public policy schemes such as product labelling or waste handling infrastructures, and therefore the chapter also discusses how public policy has engaged with aspects of political consumerism. Public policy related to ICTs and household appliances has a quite strong focus on energy efficiency of products, and specific interest is thus devoted to discussing and problematizing energy efficiency in relation to political consumerism. Following this critique of the energy efficiency approach, the chapter argues that it is necessary to understand the drivers behind consumption, including how new norms are established and how these norms work in establishing what is normal, acceptable, and desirable. Including such understandings can help explain why there is relatively little political consumer activity within this field of consumption, which has massive environmental consequences as well as ethical implications related to a north-south aspect of social sustainability.
Political Consumers and Appropriation of ICT and Household Appliances As seen in many of the other chapters within this volume, political consumerism may take several approaches. The most relevant approaches to deal with the sustainability issues of household appliances and ICTs include: consumption of labelled products and other types of buycott, different types of sharing (sharing economy), different types of repair and reuse, and, finally, different types of downsizing and anticonsumption as a part of lifestyle political consumerism. The following section takes a closer look at what has been written about, or seen within, these different approaches of political consumerism related to household appliances and ICTs. When it comes to buying household appliances, the easiest and most prevalent option related to political consumerism seems to be to choose A-labelled products (the European Union energy labelling scheme ranks products on a scale with A being the most efficient products and G the least efficient). Previous studies on more general environmental consumer aspects have found that consumers with pro-environmental
Household Appliances and Electronics 391 attitudes are overrepresented among those more educated with higher incomes (see, e.g., Barr, Gilg, & Ford, 2005). However, a recent extensive survey study from Germany focusing especially on who knows about and purchases A-labelled appliances found no correlation with socioeconomic characteristics (Mills & Schleich, 2010). Rather, people who have moved residence recently are more likely to know about the labelling scheme, implying that they most likely have bought appliances recently compared to others. Political consumerism was not part of what this study investigated, though the results point to reasons for buying A-labelled products beyond political or environmental concerns. A slightly older study focusing on the willingness to pay for labelled products found a quite strong willingness to pay extra for A-labelled products compared to C-labelled products. Consumers would even pay more than what they could expect to save during the lifetime of the product (Sammer & Wüstenhagen, 2006), which indicates some kind of political consumerism approach, though this was not interpreted as such in this study. A study evaluating the extent to which consumers understand the energy labels raises an important question that labels may make consumers focus on efficiency rather than on actual energy consumption, and that this may prompt them to buy more efficient, but bigger, products, even though these products might have higher actual energy consumption than the smaller and less efficient ones (Waechter et al., 2016). Another possible critique of the European Union (EU) energy labelling scheme might be the inflation, which is seen in label categories featuring new categories, such as A+ and A++, instead of making the scale stricter as technologies and efficiency develop (Boström & Klintman, 2008). Because of this, most products are now labelled A (A, A+, A++, etc.) in some product categories, such as refrigerators and freezers. However, an agreement on a draft revision of the directive between the European Parliament and the Council for Ministers from March 2017 promises to return to the original A to G label scale within six years (EURACTIV, 2017). These studies indicate that the energy labelling of household appliances has had some success in promoting energy efficiency. However, this might be interpreted less as a result of the development of a distinct political consumerism and more as a reflection of a general normalisation of buying A-labelled appliances as the rational and (partly economically) logical choice. With regard to appliances, the labelling of products is still primarily limited to energy issues, whereas other environmental issues such as scarce minerals depletion, local pollution related to resource extraction, or working environmental problems related to manufacturing are typically not in focus. In general, it should be noticed that there is surprisingly little research on consumers’ purchasing patterns and the underlying reasons behind these in relation to energy labelling and energy efficiency of household appliances. Energy labels on appliances thus have a narrow focus on the energy efficiency of the products whereas, for example, production aspects are kept out of the labelling. In particular, ICTs are known to have major issues related to production. Within other consumption areas, such as food, there is for some products much focus on production aspects and well-established labels, such as Fairtrade International and UTZ
392 Toke Haunstrup Christensen et al. certification, to guide consumers (see other contributions of this volume, e.g., Chapter 13 on food, Chapter 28 on buycotting of environmentally friendly products and services in Thailand, Chapter 21 on the sale of organic food and fairtrade-labelled products in Northwestern Europe). When it comes to ICTs, only a few labels exist, and they are applied to a limited set of products, such as the EU energy label on television sets and the Energy Star label on PCs. In addition, the Swedish-based company TCO Development (similar to the private sustainability-standard organizations discussed in Chapter 37) has developed a voluntary label called “TCO Certified,”1 which originally focused on energy consumption and user health issues but gradually included other sets of criteria, and since 2009 also includes requirements on working conditions related to manufacturing of the products (Hobby et al., 2012). The label thus includes both environmental and social sustainability issues and is applied to a wide range of product categories (e.g., displays, smartphones, notebooks, and PCs). However, it has primarily targeted professionals, such as ICT purchasers in companies, and is not well known to consumers more broadly. It therefore appears to have had a limited impact on political consumerism so far. When it comes to “sustainable” alternatives on the ICT and appliances market, and thus the possibility of buycotting, the only product that is actively promoted according to sustainability and social justice aspects more broadly, and has got some diffusion, is— to the best of our knowledge—the Fairphone.2 According to the Dutch company behind this smartphone, the Fairphone is based on conflict-free minerals and fairtrade gold and is designed as a modular phone, which makes it easier to repair (see also Chapter 37). To our knowledge, no studies on consumers buying Fairphones exist (yet), but according to the website of Fairphone, the sale of their second model (launched in 2015) has reached 130,000 units, and they have had some difficulties in scaling up their production to meet demand. However, compared with the worldwide smartphone sales of 1.4 billion phones in 2015 (Gartner, 2017), only one out of 11,000 phones sold worldwide was a Fairphone. A number of other “ecofriendly” phones have previously been released by major manufacturers, often being partly based on recycled materials. Examples are the Samsung Galaxy Exhilarate (released in 2012), Samsung Replenish (released in 2011, including eschewing PVC, phthalates, and brominated flame retardants), Samsung Evergreen (released in 2010), and Micromax X259 (solar-powered mobile phone, released in 2012) (Treehugger, 2017). However, it appears that none of these phones have ever attained substantial sales or wider mention in the popular media. For instance, while the Fairphone at the beginning of 2017 has been mentioned in twenty-nine Danish newspaper articles, none of the other phones have been mentioned in Danish newspapers. In comparison, the Apple iPhone 6 has been mentioned in 3,959 newspaper articles (InfoMedia, 2017). In sum, this leaves the impression of ecofriendly and/or sustainable smartphones being an extremely limited niche market. In addition to this, similar products have not yet, to the best of our knowledge, been marketed within other ICT product groups (e.g., DVD players, computers, or game consoles) or within household appliances.
Household Appliances and Electronics 393 Within recent years, the sharing economy (or collaborative consumption) has received much attention as a possible way of dematerializing consumption (Schor & Fizmaurice, 2015). However, within household appliances we have not seen the breakthrough yet, though as formulated by a former Danish minister of environment, the sharing economy could be a possible green future within these areas (Auken, 2014). Among the exceptions of sharing appliances, one finds the Danish initiative Naboskab, which directly translated means both “neighbour cupboard” and “neighbour making.”3 Naboskab is basically a cupboard located in a neighbourhood where people can place items intended for sharing, such as garden tools, kitchen appliances, and other tools. Looking back in time, the sharing economy was actually part of the first developments within the appliances. Communal freezing houses were normal in Denmark at least up till the 1950s (Gram-Hanssen, 2008a), and communal laundries are still widespread in some countries, for example in Swedish housing associations (Müller, Mont, & Gram-Hanssen, 2013) and, to a limited extent, in Danish social housing in multistory buildings. These two cases of communal freezing and washing facilities thus represent relevant inspiration for how in the future to develop political consumerism by the use of a sharing economy approach, for instance within the area of household appliances. However, it may be more difficult to imagine the sharing of ICTs since the development has rather been towards still more individualised purchase and use. Yet another approach, which is actually expanding and may be seen as an international political consumer movement, is people involved in Do-It-Yourself (DIY) activities related to repairing ICT devices (Raihanian Mashhadi et al., 2016; Schott & Weaver, 2014), e.g. exemplified by the iFixit website.4 This website offers manuals on how to repair a broad variety of devices from big household appliances to the newest ICTs. The site mentions job creation, waste reduction, and avoiding manufacturing and mining for toxic materials as some of the sustainability arguments for repairing rather than replacing. The site contains more than 24,000 manuals on more than 7,000 products. According to the website, 23,000 people have taken the pledge that they will repair more and help others with online guides to repair. In Denmark, fifty persons have filled in the pledge, and judging by their names they are all males. iFixit can be seen as an online-based political consumer organisation working for more repair and thus preventing many of the unsustainable aspects of consumption of electronics and appliances. In addition to this online-based initiative, there are also a few so-called repair cafes in Denmark, many of these being organized in the Reparations-Netværket (“the Repair Network”).5 The cafes exist in larger Danish cities and a few smaller cities, and they are typically open networks of local volunteers who meet regularly to repair their own and others’ appliances, ICTs, and similar types of products. However, as with the ecofriendly and sustainable smartphones, the DIY community within repairing appliances and ICTs seems to attract a limited group of people, but through their activities and DIY activism they might strengthen the call for manufacturers to develop appliances and ICTs with a longer lifetime and that are easier to repair. The last type of political consumerism that might also relate to appliances and ICTs is different versions of voluntary simplicity, downshifting, and off-grid living, which
394 Toke Haunstrup Christensen et al. together with some of the examples of sharing and repairing could be seen as forms of what has been called lifestyle political consumerism (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Downshifting involves reduced paid work, and thus less income, combined with a “downsizing” of the family budgets. Downshifting may be seen as less radical compared to striving for self-sufficiency, and, compared with voluntary simplicity, there does not have to be an environmental aim related to downshifting (Larsson, 2011). It has been argued that these kinds of movements can point at ways of living, which produce both a higher quality of life and reduce environmental impacts (Jackson, 2008). In relation to appliances, ICTs, and other electricity-consuming products, it may be particularly relevant to include people who live off-grid (i.e., without connection to the collective energy infrastructure), even though Vannini and Taggart warn us against seeing off-grid living as voluntary simplicity (Vannini & Taggart, 2013). For many of those people they interviewed in Canada living off-grid, this was neither voluntarily nor simple; rather it was demanding to live this way and many of the interviewees would have liked to have an electricity connection, only this was not possible where they lived. Rather than seeing these people as having consciously chosen to live off-grid, they could be understood as people who had removed themselves from the urban lifestyle by some kind of “pull of remove.” The interviewees to some extent express views and ideas that may resemble what has been called voluntary simplicity, but it would be wrong to interpret this as conscious political activism according to Vannini and Taggart. Black & Cherrier (2010) conducted another qualitative study on different forms of rejection, and reuse and they mention a range of different fields of consumption, also including the use of appliances and ICTs. In their study, one interviewee explains that she would rather read on the screen instead of printing on paper, and another that she would always fully load the washing machine before starting it, though completely abandoning these appliances was not mentioned (Black & Cherrier, 2010). A Danish study focusing on energy consumption and appliance use among middle-to lower-middle-class households living in social housing demonstrates a statistical correlation between having lower energy consumption and not having a tumble dryer (Gram-Hanssen, 2003, 2004). About half of the interviewees in the qualitative part of the same study did not have a tumble dryer; all of them explicitly mentioned the absence of this specific technology as a conscious choice and not because they could not afford it. Rather, they gave explanations such as tumble dryers being a waste of energy or not necessary and/or that tumble drying wears the clothes. It was interesting that even in families who gave environmental or energy- related explanations, the rejection of tumble dryers was not perceived as a political or ethical act—and these explanations always came together with other arguments. Also some of the households who expressed environmental concerns actually had a tumble dryer and then provided arguments why they had this in spite of their environmental concerns (Gram-Hanssen, 2003, 2004). These cases thus indicate that the tumble dryer might be one of the few examples where there are signs of political consumerism related to rejection of specific appliances among more mainstream consumers. Especially in relation to the use of ICTs, it is difficult to find examples of people who abandon or downsize, even among those groups who are doing so in other consumption
Household Appliances and Electronics 395 areas. For instance, a Danish study of a group of self-builders in a new village called Friland, who are explicitly downsizing by building their own homes from recycled materials, showed that, while these people might consider themselves as low-tech concerning their home building, they see themselves as high-tech when it comes to ICTs and do not consider downsizing in this respect: High-tech because we show how the residents of Friland use e.g. information technology to adjust to new and better ways of doing things in relation to work, family and the local community. (quote from the website of Friland, cited in Jensen & Gram-Hanssen, 2008, p. 153)
In general, it should be noted that there is a remarkable absence of studies on political consumerism in relation to household appliances or ICTs.6 The relatively few studies on political consumerism should however be seen in relation to the quite limited amount of political consumerism. One key reason behind the limited political consumerism of especially ICTs seems to be the lack of awareness among most consumers of the environmental and ethical downsides of the purchase and use of ICTs. Thus, a focus group study in five European countries (including Denmark) demonstrated that young people aged sixteen to twenty years in general find it difficult to elaborate on the connection between their personal use of ICTs and environmental problems (Christensen et al., 2014). The study focused on the relations among ICTs, energy consumption, and climate change, and some of the focus group participants found it even absurd to link their own use of ICTs with environmental issues such as climate change. A few participants had previously heard news stories about environmental problems related to e-waste, extraction of metals, and the energy consumption of data centres, but they were the exceptions. In this listing and discussion of what types of political consumerism can be seen in relation to household appliances and ICTs, some consumer acts relate to different types of public policy, whereas others rather call for more public policy to help consumers to make better choices. In a few cases, like iFixit or off-grid living, political consumerism can even be perceived as a reaction against consumer society more generally. The following will take a closer look at what public policy has included to support consumers in their political consumerism in relation to household appliances and ICTs.
Public Policies: Supporting Political Consumerism on Sustainability Issues? As noted in the introduction, there are many unsustainable aspects related to production, use, and disposal of household appliances and ICT products. When it comes to
396 Toke Haunstrup Christensen et al. production and disposal, especially ICTs are known to have a negative impact with regard to labour exploitation, a bad working environment, and escalation of the environmental crisis and social injustice in developing countries, especially in relation to globalized flows of electronic waste disposal (Chen, 2016). There have also been different public policy initiatives, though these have primarily focused either on waste problems or on energy efficiency of ICTs and appliances, whereas labour exploitation and injustice have been left out. In the EU, the Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (the WEEE directive) was introduced in 2003 (and revised in 2012) with the aim of promoting better recycling and reuse of electronic waste. In addition, the EU Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (the RoHS directive) was adopted in 2003 with the aim of restricting the use of hazardous substances like heavy metals and flame retardants in electrical and electronic equipment (European Commission, 2017). Today, these two directives form the primary regulation at the EU level with regard to reducing toxicological and material resource waste problems in relation to ICTs. While the RoHS directive mainly regulates the material composition of ICTs, and therefore does not affect consumers’ buying choices directly, the WEEE directive has had a more direct influence. Recycling and reuse presuppose consumers returning their used ICTs to recycling centres, retailers, or manufacturers. In Denmark, as in other countries, public campaigns have been running on the correct return of electric appliances, batteries, etc. and this illustrates how public policy on waste issues relies on the active cooperation of consumers in their everyday choices of waste sorting. In addition to the toxicological and material resource waste issues, the manufacturing and distribution of ICTs also involve considerable energy consumption (embodied energy). For some types of ICTs, the energy consumption related to manufacturing is even higher than the energy consumption related to the use phase; this is the case for small, portable devices like smartphones, laptops, and tablets (Christensen et al., 2014; Malmodin et al., 2010). However, embodied energy consumption has not been addressed by any EU regulation yet. When it comes to the use of the products, the main focus in research and policymaking has been on direct energy consumption. The EU Ecodesign Directive from 2005 is a framework directive that sets minimum requirements for the energy efficiency of various groups of energy-using products, including appliances and some ICTs. In 2008, regulation of standby and off-mode power consumption was introduced, and in 2013 requirements for networked standby were added. In addition, the directive sets limits to the active-mode power consumption of some home and office equipment, including computers and set-top boxes. The Ecodesign Directive also includes voluntary agreements with the industry on, for example, game consoles. The directive is complemented by the EU Energy Label Directive (originally introduced in 1992), which requires the earlier discussed energy labelling of a wide range of household appliances such as white goods and light bulbs (although not ICTs, except for televisions). Finally, the EU collaborates with the U.S. government in maintaining the Energy Star Programme, which is a voluntary energy labelling scheme of office equipment such as
Household Appliances and Electronics 397 computers, monitors and printers. Products labelled with the Energy Star must meet certain energy efficiency standards. Especially the efforts within developing energy labels are relevant in understanding how public policy within this area to some extent has sought to rely on the powers of political consumerism; in this case the assumption that the market drives a demand for energy-efficient products through providing information on energy efficiency via energy labels. However, the way the authorities have marketed the labels towards the consumers have focused more on the economic (saving money by consuming less energy) than the environmental benefits. Also, we have only to a limited extent seen environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other social movements promoting A-labelled products as part of political consumerism. A final type of energy consumption related to ICTs is the derived energy consumption from the use of internet services (e.g., visiting websites, streaming videos, or using a cloud service for file backup). This includes the energy consumption for internet data traffic (the transmission infrastructure) as well as for storing and processing data at data centres. For data-intensive activities like video streaming, internet-related energy consumption is typically larger than the direct electricity consumption of the devices (Christensen et al., 2014; Coroama et al., 2013; Malmodin, Bergmark, & Lundén, 2013). No EU regulation has so far addressed internet-related energy consumption, but the issue occasionally gets media coverage and has since 2009 been the subject of a number of critical reports by Greenpeace (Greenpeace, 2017). In addition to the EU regulation, only a few political initiatives targeting household appliances and ICTs have been taken on a national level in Denmark. National initiatives have mainly been information campaigns (e.g., television ads) focusing primarily on correct disposal of electronic waste or avoiding standby consumption by encouraging consumers to switch off devices when not in use (Christensen et al., 2007). In conclusion, this discussion shows that public policies so far have mainly addressed issues related to use and disposal phases and only focused on energy efficiency and direct energy consumption and, to some extent, toxicological implications of ICTs and household appliances (leaving out embodied and derived energy consumption as well as broader social implications like social injustice). The next section discusses the success of historical energy efficiency policy.
Evaluating the Public Energy Efficiency Policy Energy efficiency has been the primary focus in previous public policies that targeted consumers within household appliances and ICTs. But how successful have these policies been in realizing energy savings through promoting political consumerism? One
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way of evaluating the effect of the policies is to look at the energy statistics. Figure 19.1 shows a relative decoupling of household electricity consumption in Denmark from growth in private consumption, though the total electricity consumption for appliances and lighting still has grown by almost 20 percent since 1990. This development should be compared to the development in the population in the same period, which shows an increase of 10 percent (Statistics Denmark, 2017a). Thus, despite policies aimed at increasing energy efficiency of household appliances and ICTs, total electricity consumption has not decreased. Figures 19.2 through 19.5 indicate what is behind the increasing electricity consumption for appliances and ICTs. On one hand, Figure 19.2 shows that policies to promote
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energy efficiency have actually worked for a majority of appliances, as electricity consumption per appliance in most cases has gone down. As to why increased efficiency does not result in lower final electricity consumption in households, the explanation can be found in Figure 19.3, showing an increase in the number of almost all types of appliances over the same period. A similar increase in the number of devices is also found for ICTs, as can be seen in Figure 19.5. In other words, even though the energy efficiency of single devices has in most cases been improved, this has been more than outweighed by a concurrent increase in the total number of devices and the entering of new devices. Figure 19.4 shows how the distribution of the total final electricity consumption by end-uses in Danish households has changed over the years. In the early days of electricity consumption after World War II, almost all electricity was used for lighting. Later, heating and cooling appliances entered homes, but since the 1980s ICTs have consumed a still larger share of total consumption. Figure 19.4 shows that, in 2006, the single largest end-use for electricity consumption in households was ICTs, and since then it has only grown bigger. In conclusion, these figures show that focusing solely on energy efficiency of products, as seen in particular from EU policies, has succeeded in developing more efficient appliances but not in reducing the total electricity consumption from households’ use of appliances and ICTs. The main explanations for the missing achievements relate to the continued development of new devices and, associated with this, the integration of these devices in existing and new user practices (see also (Røpke, Christensen, & Jensen, 2010)). The continued growth in the number of appliances and ICTs in households raises the important question of how to understand the dynamics of consumption, including the varieties of political consumerism, and thus the drivers behind consuming still more and new types of products (see also Chapter 40 on the tensions between mass consumption and political consumerism).
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Consumer Studies of ICTs and Appliances in Homes: U nderstanding Drivers of Consumption Understanding the drivers behind the development of technologies into homes and everyday life is an important part of understanding the challenges that different forms of political consumerism are facing (particularly forms such as rejecting and downsizing), and understanding these drivers implies a long-term perspective. Historically, studies have focused on specific aspects. A classic example is Elizabeth Shove’s (2003) study on comfort, cleanliness, and convenience, which focuses on how new norms and standards of what is clean, comfortable, or convenient co-evolve with the introduction of new technologies and infrastructures and in this way drive a consumption-intensive and unsustainable development (Shove, 2003). In Shove’s study, as well as in other studies, the focus is also on how technological development was highly promoted by commercial interests and supported by public authorities (see also Gram-Hanssen, 2008a; 2008b) and less about easing the burden of housework for women (Cowan, 1983). A quantitative study based on survey data from 2014 furthermore shows social dynamics in the general possession of electrical appliances in Danish households (Jacobsen, 2016). The study shows that the consumption pattern of younger and more educated people tends to be characterised by state-of-the-art goods, whereas older people tend to possess
Household Appliances and Electronics 401 fewer and less state-of-the-art appliances in general. In this sense, younger people seem to pursue the new and relatively advanced technologies and are often characterised by having multiple ICTs and appliances, whereas older people presumably do not have the need, interest, or competencies to keep up. There may thus be different social drivers behind household appliances and ICTs, though the two types of technologies might also share similarities with regard to how they entered our homes, including aspects of both resistance among consumers to new products as well as public policies to support their development (Gram-Hanssen, 2008b). In understanding the relative absence of political consumerism related to both household appliances and ICTs, it is relevant to understand commercial and peer- pressure dynamics behind the development and spread of these technologies as well as the role of public policy. The following paragraphs takes a closer look at how ICTs were introduced into Danish homes. As Denmark is among the front runners within digital communication, Denmark seems to be a good case for understanding the fast development in computers and internet access in developed countries. For instance, Denmark had the third-highest penetration of internet access in households among the EU’s twenty-eight member states (EU-28) in 2016, sharing the position as number three with Sweden (94 percent of Danish households have access to the internet, while the EU-28 average is 85 percent). Also, together with Luxembourg, Denmark is the country with the highest scores related to the population’s use of the internet; 97 percent have used the internet within the last three months (the EU-28 average is 82 percent) and 94 percent use the internet at least once a week (only Luxembourg is higher; the EU-28 average is 79 percent) (Eurostat, 2017). The first PCs were introduced to the market in the 1980s and thirty-five years later the vast majority of households had access to the internet and computers, and for most people it is not possible to imagine life without these devices. Two studies from the early 2000s interviewed families about why, or why not, they had bought a computer and obtained an internet connection (Gram-Hanssen, 2003, 2005). In these studies, it was generally highlighted that the computers were initially bought for study or work but often used for other things subsequently, such as gaming in families with teenage boys. Also, there were expressions of fear of falling behind the development of technology. Furthermore, there were several families who said they acquired their second or third computer because they got a good deal through their workplace rather than because they thought they needed an extra computer. In general the studies show how expectations from institutions like school and work, together with the pressure from social relations like friends and family, promoted the spread of computers and internet access in the early 2000s. Often it was not the result of a specific need at the time of purchase but rather a feeling that one did not want to stand outside of progress and technological development. The drivers referred to here are mainly social, but public policies and regulations have also played a key role in promoting the uptake of ICTs and appliances. In 1994, the Danish government formed a working group to analyse the future “information society.” Two years later they gave a report stressing that the market should be the driving force
402 Toke Haunstrup Christensen et al. of technological development and that the public sector should demonstrate how information technology could be used to strengthen democracy and the capabilities of individuals, while at the same time this development should strengthen the international competitiveness of Danish companies. Although far from all the visions of the report have been realized, information technology became an important part of government policies in the following years. For instance, the introduction of computers into Danish homes was in the 1990s strongly promoted by tax exemptions for companies giving their employees computers, by public libraries going online, by introducing ICTs in public schools and, more recently, by decisions to use digital-based communication in all correspondence between authorities and citizens, thus making it increasingly difficult to be a citizen without internet access. In 2014 Denmark was the leading EU country in digitalizing communication between authorities and citizens, with 91 percent of the population now communicating with authorities through the internet (Danmarks statistik, 2014). But even if Denmark is leading internationally, it is expected that the same trends are taking place all over Europe. Together with strong market forces, public policy was thus promoting households to adopt new technologies, both when it came to household appliances back in the middle of the last century (Gram-Hanssen, 2008b) and when it came to ICTs in more recent times. Although the 1990s followed the United Nations (UN) Brundtland Commission report and sustainable development was high on the Danish political agenda, it is remarkable that thoughts about sustainable development and environmental impact were nearly absent from the agenda in relation to the spreading of ICTs. And if the environmental impact was brought up, the arguments would often be positive, seeing ICTs as a way of dematerializing consumption through new and less resource-intensive practices such as teleworking and telemeetings (saving transport). Thus, ICT-enabled services were related to ideas about “the information society as a ‘weightless economy,’ in which ‘bytes replace kilograms’ ” (Heiskanen et al., 2001, p. 9). Above, we have focused primarily on the diffusion of PCs and internet access. However, in parallel with this, Denmark also witnessed a quick diffusion of, first, the mobile phone taking off in the mid-1990s and, later, other electronic devices like DVD players and game consoles from the 2000s (Statistics Denmark, 2017b). By 2016, 96 percent of Danish families had access to a mobile phone, 83 percent of families had access to a smartphone, and 96 percent of families had access to both a PC and a mobile phone (Statistics Denmark, 2016, 2017b) (see Figure 19.5). The purchase of mobile phones was in the early years often related to concerns of safety and security but also to social status and aggressive commercial advertising. Additionally, a practical reason for the diffusion of mobile phones related to their use for real-time coordination of activities and meetings through what has been termed “micro-coordination,” such as when appointments are rescheduled on a continuous basis via phone calls or text messages (Ling, 2004; Røpke, 2003). The spreading of new technologies thus also goes together with the introduction of new practices, and in general social science analysis has shown how demand for energy is a matter of how goods and services are used to serve specific
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practical purposes (Christensen & Røpke et al., 2010; Jacobsen, 2017). In our understanding of political consumerism, we should thus be interested not only in the drivers behind purchasing new household appliances and ICTs but also in the varied ways of using these technologies (see also Chapter 7 on social practices). Jacobsen (2017) picks washing machine use as a case to shed light on the social differences in energy-consuming activities. Laundering constitutes a fundamental activity in most everyday lives (Pink, 2005), and use of washing machines has at the same time a significant environmental impact. Jacobsen (2017) finds three distinct subgroups, each of which consists of households with a certain pattern of use of washing machines. The study shows that these typologies of washing machine use are socially structured, such as. higher-educated households washing their clothes at lower temperatures, though the study does not directly explore to what extent environmental considerations are part of these differences in practices or if, for example, having more delicate clothing is part of the reason for washing at lower temperatures. Political consumerism of appliances might thus relate to how a washing machine is used, such as washing at high or low temperatures, though “politically correct” ways of washing might also relate to concerns that are not at all related to political, including environmental, considerations. Examples in this paragraph illustrate the existence of different societal drivers behind the way households consume appliances, both with regards to buying them as well as using them, and these drivers must be understood when seeking to understand the relative absence of political consumerism within this area. We have shown how the introduction of new technologies into homes co-evolves with new conceptions of the ‘normal’; in other words, the appropriate and right way to live an everyday life. Choosing to live without a computer or a refrigerator, for political consumerist reasons, hardly seems a possibility today, and choosing computers or refrigerators that carry fewer social and environmental burdens (besides from energy efficiency) is also hardly possible.
404 Toke Haunstrup Christensen et al. On the other hand, there are examples of more environmentally preferable behaviours, such as buying A-labelled products or washing at lower temperatures, though the literature cannot say if these behaviours are driven by political consumerism or if they are examples of how consumer practices develop and new norms are established. One way to interpret the relation between political consumerism and normalisation within practices could be to see political consumerism as one of the factors influencing how new practices co-evolve with new technologies and changing norms, though so far, to our knowledge, no studies have pursued this approach. In general analysis of the purchase of household appliances and ICTs has to be seen in close relation to the practices that these technologies are part of. Abandoning certain technologies also means abandoning certain practices, which in our contemporary society is easier to do with a tumble dryer and its associated practices than with a computer.
Conclusion and Discussion This chapter has looked at a type of consumer products that have massive environmental and ethical implications and yet these products have been embraced by political consumer activities in limited ways, which also affects limitations on the research on political consumerism. If political consumerism is seen in its broadest notion, as using the market for political aims, then EU-regulated energy labels on ICTs and appliances provide opportunities for some types of political consumerism. It is, however, a top-down and mostly governmental approach only focusing on a very limited aspect of the potential problems related to the products, thus not including waste problems or social issues related to international labour divisions. As the chapter argues, most of the consumers buying these products, even if they do buy the A-labelled products, may not see it as political consumerism as much as a rational economic choice, or just the normal thing to do, which is also how the practices have been marketed by the authorities. As surprisingly little research deals with the question of why consumers buy A-labelled products, the extent to which this can be viewed as political consumerism cannot be known for sure. For household appliances the energy label seems to have been quite successful in promoting more efficient appliances, though questions related to the size of the product or the use of it are not dealt with. Also, it is noticeable that the ICTs have been regulated to an even more limited extent through these policies. When it comes to other forms of political consumerism related to household appliances and ICTs, the most interesting is the limited amount of activities seen from producers, organisations, and consumers. Among the most pronounced initiatives are repair cafes and the iFixit organisation with its pledge for repairing rather than replacing and throwing away. There is some potential in this approach for demanding products that are possible to repair, though there are also some limitations regarding those who have the skills to take part in the repair activities (and apparently also a
Household Appliances and Electronics 405 strong gendering). More research into how this type of organisation can influence the market is warranted. Different appliances and ICTs are used in relation to different types of practices in everyday life and thus also carry different meanings to consumers. As shown in this chapter, there are strong social pressures on acquiring many of these products, especially the ICTs. The drivers described in the chapter thus highlight how public policy and social peer pressure make it very difficult to live a normal life and at the same time refuse to buy ICTs, for instance for political consumerist reasons, whereas other types of household appliances such as the tumble dryer have weaker social drivers behind their spread and thus also are more easily associated with the political consumerism practice of boycotting. This may help explain why some consumers choose not to have a tumble dryer, whereas consumers refusing ICTs, especially computers and mobile phones, are rare even among those who in other respects see themselves as downsizers or lifestyle political consumers. But again, the lack of studies to further substantiate this claim is evident. To further pursue this line of thought it is recommended that research includes understandings of how purchase of products should be seen in relation to engaging in specific practices related to a product. Thus, refusing and rejecting certain products will also include rejection of certain practices or development of new versions of the same practice. Compared to other fields of consumption, what is maybe most remarkable in this field is the absence of buycott arrangements for ethical and sustainable products on the market. The Fairphone is an exception, though it is also a little-known product. More research into understanding the production, regulation, and market for these products might help understand why producers are not more active in producing alternative products. As especially PCs and mobile phones are extremely difficult to live without, it is difficult to imagine a consumer boycott, though, as the Fairphone shows, a market for buycotting may exist if the products are available. Increased political consumerism in this area would require more discussion and public attention on the problems related to the production, use, and disposal of these products. From time to time, there has been media coverage of negative stories about household appliances and ICTs; these include stories about increasing energy consumption related to ICTs, hazardous substances in ICT products, problems related to the extraction of conflict minerals (see Chapter 18), bad working conditions at ICT factories, and problems with e-waste handling in the global south. However, despite that it is possible to identify smaller groups of people dedicated to political consumerism related to ecofriendly/sustainable smartphones and do-it-yourself repairing, the public concern with these issues has not yet materialized into a wider political consumerism. The lack of broader social movements and politicization of this type of consumption may be explained due to how political activism at the moment either seems to require high technical knowledge or withdrawal from participating in a multitude of essential practices constituting a normal life in contemporary society. To support political consumerism within this important area thus may include pursuing less demanding approaches of practicing political consumerism regarding household appliances and ICTs.
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Acknowledgements This chapter was written as part of the project UserTEC (User practices, technologies and residential energy consumption) funded by Innovation Fund Denmark. We would like to thank the editors of this book for very productive comments and suggestions related to previous version of this chapter.
Notes 1. See http://tcocertified.com/tco-certified/. 2. See https://www.fairphone.com/en/our-goals/. 3. See http://naboskab.dk/. 4. See http://ifixit.org/ and https://www.ifixit.com/. 5. See https://reparationsnet.wordpress.com/. 6. A Scopus search on “political consumption” AND appliances, as well as on “political consumption” AND ICT, and the same two with “political consumer,” did not give any result. Search performed in the beginning of 2017.
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Chapter 20
Energy Dev i c e s a nd P olitical C on sume ri sm in Rec onfi g u re d Energy Syst e ms Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet
A focus on home-based energy devices may seem rather peculiar in a discussion about political consumerism. Unlike other products that political consumers choose (or refuse) to purchase, neither the environmental footprint of the device itself nor the social or environmental sustainability of its production process make it an object of political consumerism. Rather, it is what the device enables consumers to do with energy that is of importance here. As products that generate, monitor, manage, and store electricity, home-based energy devices include appliances such as solar panels, home batteries, smart meters, energy displays, and energy management systems. It is through using home-based energy devices that consumers can try to modify, improve, or change institutional and/or market practices in energy provision that they consider ethically, environmentally, or politically objectionable. Energy itself can also be considered a product, and from consumers’ point of view it is a very complicated and invisible one. Being a single product of public utility provision in the largest part of the twentieth century, electricity has now turned into differentiated and commodified forms, which are monitored, generated, and stored in new energy devices like smart meters and displays, solar panels, and home batteries. All these developments indicate that new spaces for and forms of political consumerism in the context of the electricity system are emerging. Yet, to understand the character and scope of “consumer action” in the field of electricity and its devices, it is necessary to work from a broad understanding of political consumerism as “taking responsibility.” As Luigi Pellizzoni (Pellizzoni, 2012, p. 130) has argued, “[p]olitical consumers act according to what they perceive as generalized or
412 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet collective obligations of responsibility.” In the context of this chapter, it means that the discussion should include a wide range of “actions,” such as consumers taking the impact of their energy practices on the electricity system into consideration and trying to promote changes towards decarbonisation and decentralisation of the electricity system. This chapter deals with whether and how the reconfiguration of energy systems and devices have affected the possibilities of political consumerism in the field of domestic energy demand and supply. To do so, the chapter examines three devices that are identified as key in contemporary reconfigurations of electricity networks as well as in new forms of consumer engagement: smart metering devices, solar panels, and home batteries. Smart meters serve as facilitators in contemporary smart and microgrid developments, with vast implications for consumer engagement, while solar panels can be explored for possibilities to offer various ways of individual or collective engagement with renewable energy generation. Home batteries offer possibilities of consumer comanagement of flexibility in renewable energy generation and consumption. These three devices all produce new or altered action possibilities for consumers, and in doing so bring along a changing role of consumers from passive “energy users” (Devine-Wright, 2007) to “co-producers of value” (Marvin, Graham, & Guy, 1999). At the same time, while new action spaces for consumers may unfold, the question of how this relates to a potential reconfiguration of the electricity system (e.g., more sustainable or more democratic) is difficult to answer in a straightforward way. This chapter argues that, in the context of the transformation of contemporary electricity systems, consumer actions are mediated by technologies. This opens up questions for studies on political consumerism around the politics of the devices, platforms, and algorithms that coshape consumer engagement in smart electricity systems. The chapter first analyses how ongoing transformations in electricity systems, such as deregulation, liberalisation, and privatisation, have altered the opportunities for citizens to influence energy provision and consumption. Thereafter, the chapter analyses the particular ways in which smart metering devices, solar panels, and home batteries engage consumers in electricity production and consumption. This not only changes the ways in which consumers relate to energy (with energy getting multiple meanings) but also brings along redistributions in tasks and responsibilities in electricity systems. Finally, the chapter brings together insights about political consumerism derived from the discussion of three energy devices and their combinations. Rather than comparing the magnitude or impacts of consumer engagement in energy systems, the discussion assesses the changes in modes of political consumerism in energy systems as compared to twentieth-century public utility systems. The conclusion draws out implications for the study of political consumerism in reconfigured electricity systems.
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 413
The Shifting Landscape of Electricity Production and Consumption Dynamics in Provision Infrastructures for the provision of energy services to consumers have been built to last, and this is also true for electricity grids in the developed world. From power stations to high-voltage transmission grids, and from distribution lines to consumer sockets, the material infrastructures for electricity provision and consumption have become highly standardized ever since they were initiated more than a century ago. Yet, infrastructure of electricity service provision has proven to be highly volatile, especially during the past decades in most OECD countries. Rather than in the material backbone of electricity grids, the dynamics are in service provision, regulation, ownership, generation, and consumption practices. After electricity systems had been expanded from local commercial grids into national public utility systems all over the Western world (Van Vliet, Chappells, & Shove, 2005), ownership structure, management, and market regulations have been subject to major transformations. Since the 1980s, electricity systems have been split into various forms of privatized supply and distribution over a mix of public transmission and public or privately owned distribution grids, while markets for electricity supply and distribution have been deregulated, liberalised, and thereby opened up to third parties. In short, there has been a transformation of a universal centralized public utility system into a system with differentiated energy sources, providers, and technologies of provision and consumption devices (Van Vliet, 2003). This paradigm shift from universal towards marketized modes of electricity provision means that market principles have been introduced in situations where state- owned companies had a natural monopoly, with captive consumers having no choice but to use and pay for the utility services provided. The logic of infrastructure management, in which fixed units of power were delivered at a standardized cost as part of a wider universal service obligation, is being replaced by a new logic in which “infrastructure resources are becoming commoditized, gradually differentiated in terms of cost, availability and quality over space and time” (Guy, Marvin, & Moss, 2001, p. 31). The opening of electricity markets has led to the emergence of multiple providers who try to compete with differentiated services. The picture of a single regional or national grid is revised into splintered, partly fragmented grids fed by more localized resources and providers: combined heat power stations in residential sites, solar panels in the built environment, and wind turbines in rural communities that produce electricity on a localized scale. The electricity network is changing from a central power grid, headed by
414 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet large-scale power stations, towards a system of distributed generation in which electric power sources are connected directly to the distribution network or on the customer site of the meter (Ackermann, Andersson, & Söder, 2001; Wolsink, 2012). The electricity distribution grids still serve as a backbone for central electricity supply as well as a recipient of locally generated electricity being fed into the grid. Generation from various local sources brings electricity closer to consumers in physical, tangible terms, but metaphorically it brings electricity production closer to the home. The ongoing differentiation in renewable sources of generation (solar, biomass, wind, geothermal) changed the outlook of the electricity system: a system of spatially dispersed sources of generation, connected through distribution and transmission grids transporting electricity back and forth. With the inclusion of information and communication technology (ICT) for regulating and managing demand and supply over distributed generation grids, the concept of “smart grids” became fashionable both in Europe (EC, 2006) as well as in the United States. A smart grid can be defined as “a socio-technical network characterised by the active management of both information and energy flows, in order to control practices of distributed generation, storage, consumption and flexible demand” (Wolsink, 2012, p. 824). Smart grids have been developed, tested, studied, and evaluated in various pilot settings (Foulds, Robison, & Macrorie, 2017; Kok et al., 2009; Naus, Spaargaren, van Vliet, & van der Horst, 2014; Naus, van Vliet, & Hendriksen, 2015) but as yet hardly implemented to a full extent. Smart meters are crucial devices to fulfil the envisioned functions of the smart grid: balancing supply and demand by accommodating flows of electricity and data between generation and consumption.
Changing Electricity Products and Consumer Engagement Rather than further discussing the transformations in electricity systems from a perspective of supply and provision, the discussion here continues with the implications of these transformations for electricity consumers and their possibilities to engage with electricity as a product. Adopting or expressing a political point of view concerning electricity provision as a consumer has never been easy. In times of public utility provision, consumer power was exercised in formal local, provincial, or national parliamentary elections. The strategic decisions to be taken on markets and tariffs, or investments in renewables, were in the hands of the political systems in place, as the utilities were owned and governed by provinces and municipalities. Consumers were represented in regional energy electricity utilities through advisory boards and municipal councils (Vlijm, 2002). Apart from formal representation, consumer power was exercised in the antinuclear power movement, which was of major influence in the political decisions to close down nuclear power plants (such as Kalkar in Germany and Dodewaard in the Netherlands)
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 415 (Arentsen, 2006) or even to phase out nuclear power over time (the Atom Ausstieg in Germany). When electricity generation, supply, and distribution came as a unified public service, electricity itself was an invisible support of domestic energy consumption. The common notion of “gas and light services” on standard rental contracts for accommodation exemplifies the invisibility of electricity as it emphasises the service electricity enables (light) rather than the (invisible) product itself (electricity). While electricity still enters households in unchanged modes defined by standards set in hertz (60 or 50) and voltage (110-220-230), the labels have changed considerably. Since the 1990s and the opening of former public utility markets for energy, electricity has become associated and marketed with various colours and labels. Environmental issues were among the first to be used to differentiate among infrastructure providers in the 1990s (Van Vliet, 2002). “Green” electricity was the first differentiated service in European electricity markets as were green providers that differentiated from the conventional ones. So differentiation was launched by the market entrance of green electricity, thereby implicitly creating an antagonist label of “grey” electricity. From its onset, the concept of green electricity has been contested in public, political, and scholarly domains, notably because of the “abstract and invisible nature of green electricity” (Boström & Klintman, 2008, p. 59). What flows into the network cannot be physically distinguished as green energy (or grey) nor can it be detected as such when it arrives at consumers’ electricity sockets. Green electricity consumers are expected to trust their provider on buying electricity from renewable sources in the same amounts as what consumers have paid for. Trust is enabled by a European system based on the issuing of Guarantees of Origin (GO) to certify the source origin, to determine the place and date of green electricity production, and to enable (inter)national trade in green electricity (CertiQ, 2016). Yet, the system is contested by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) who point to the big share of GOs from foreign hydropower plants that will not make national energy production any greener (van der Wilt, De Jong & Schmid, 2017). They distinguish deep green electricity (from wind and solar sources) from other GO-certified green electricity produced from biomass or existing large hydropower stations and advise consumers to switch to one of their selected, trustworthy green electricity providers. During the past two decades, green electricity has thus undergone many redefinitions and has been split into different shades of green. Some twenty years after the liberalisation of energy utility markets, providers are now offering electricity generated exclusively from wind, solar, hydro, or nuclear sources; from national or international origin; or a mix of these based on consumers’ wishes and budgets. The variety on offer in today’s electricity consumer markets signals the further commodification of electricity. A product that used to be an invisible and publicly delivered flow to all has now been differentiated, coloured, and made an object of marketing and consumer choice, though the degree of the latter has been contested (Shove, 2010). But electricity consumption has definitely become (a little) less inconspicuous, as electricity providers have differentiated their services and products according to various lifestyle segments of consumers (van Vliet, 2012) (i.e., the green,
416 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet the thrifty, the hedonic, or the cosmopolitan), and consumers have started to respond to these in selecting their energy providers or becoming one themselves. The possibility for consumers to choose between providers, their services, and even the sources they produce electricity from also signals the end of their role as a “captive consumer” and the emergence of a new identity: that of a “customer.” But the opening of electricity markets has led to more than that. With the increased possibilities created by new legislation and subsidy programs for solar or wind electricity production, domestic consumers could become providers of electricity to the common electricity grid. With this birth of the “co-providing consumer” in utility markets, the strict boundaries between the domains of consumption and provision of utility services have become blurred. Citizen-consumers may now base their choices in electricity service consumption on economic, societal, or environmental considerations and can, through their contracts or by producing electricity themselves, become supporters of nuclear energy or hydro power, beneficiaries of a local windmill association, or protesters against prospective nonsustainable developments in electricity provision (van Vliet, 2012). This section has set the scene by exploring the last decades of dynamics in systems of energy provision, consumption, and consumer roles with a focus on possibilities of consumer engagement in (green) energy production and demand. The discussion now turns to the mediating roles energy devices have played and continue to play in the interplay between energy provision and consumption and how consumers can be engaged in energy systems.
The Politics of Energy Devices In this chapter, energy devices are understood as products that generate, monitor, manage, and store electricity, and that can be owned, rented, or used by individual consumers as well as groups of consumers. The proliferation of household energy devices (solar panels, household batteries, heat pumps, home energy management systems, smart meters, etc.) has led to increasing freedom for consumers to choose among a wide variety of energy products and services. In addition, these household energy devices open up action possibilities for consumers to influence electricity demand and supply and contribute to the decarbonisation of the electricity system. Energy devices are conceptualised as technologies that mediate between consumers and the sociotechnical electricity system. The concept of affordances is used to analyse how devices, as part of particular sociomaterial configurations, may bring along certain effects, such as changes in practices, social relations, or meanings. Affordances refer to the different action possibilities that are made available—or unavailable—to specific actors in particular settings (Bloomfield, Latham, & Vurdubakis, 2010), p. 420). In other words, the concept of affordances helps us to analyse how the devices open up “a field of potential practices that would not otherwise be possible” (Petrakaki, Waring, & Barber,
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 417 2014, p. 705). For example, a smart meter allows the near real-time monitoring of energy consumption and thereby a more instantaneous, detailed, and personalised way of managing household energy use. Affordances, however, are not an inherent, functional property of the device (Bloomfield et al., 2010). They need to be understood as relational: they arise from interactions between the diverse elements in sociomaterial configurations and the wider sociomaterial infrastructure in which these configurations are embedded. For example, the affordance to manage household energy use depends on providers analysing raw data and sharing it with consumers, the visualisation of these analyses via energy displays, regulations about personal data processing, and the flexibility of domestic energy practices of consumers. This section focuses on the affordances of three energy devices: smart metering devices, solar panels, and home batteries. The discussion seeks to address two main questions: How do these energy devices (as part of socio-material configurations) afford 1) new ways of engaging with energy for consumers, and 2) new ways of collectivising consumer choices and practices? Thus this section analyses how energy devices make energy visible in particular ways, and how they afford new—individual and collectivised-energy practices for consumers in which energy gets specific meanings. In addition to discussing how this allows consumers to influence the decarbonisation of the electricity system, this section also discusses a number of device-specific issues connected to consumers’ choices and responsibilities. In existing social science literature, engagement of users in smart grids is often critically analysed as being steered by a provider-driven smart grid logic, while engagement in generation is positively analysed as “power to the people.” The section argues that this is not only too simple; the two developments also become more interwoven as new ways of collectivising consumer choices through integration of smart metering devices, solar panels, and storage come up.
Smart Metering Devices Over the past decade, smart meters have been installed in millions of households worldwide. Conventional meters simply record energy consumption, and consumers are asked yearly or half-yearly to send their meter readings to the provider. As opposed to these “dumb meters,” smart meters measure energy consumption and production at specified intervals (as detailed as fifteen minutes) and enable two-way communication between consumers and providers (Darby, 2010). This includes communication with utilities or designated market organisations as well as communication with devices in the households such as appliances and energy displays. The two-way communication allows providers to automatically read their customers’ meters and develop more detailed bills. In addition, the smart meter enables providers to remotely provide energy feedback to customers, connect and disconnect customers remotely, or remotely change tariffs (Darby, 2010). For distribution network operators, having real-time information
418 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet about consumption and generation would allow them to manage the electricity grid in a more efficient way, facilitate the integration of renewables in the grid, and help reduce the costs of infrastructure operation and expansion. An important assumption behind the smart meter is that providing more detailed information about energy consumption to consumers would increase their energy awareness and enable them to use energy more efficiently. Despite these perceived economic and environmental benefits, the rollout of smart meters has met with resistance from societal actors. Journalists and privacy advocacy groups have voiced their concerns about privacy and security issues related to the monitoring of consumer behaviour by governments and businesses (McKenna, Richardson, & Thomson, 2012). In the United States in particular, some opponents also worry about potential health risks of wireless smart meters (Hess, 2014). The implementation process of smart meters in The Netherlands often serves as an illustration of how consumer concerns had initially been overlooked (see Hoenkamp, Huitema, & de Moor-van Vugt, 2011). In 2009, the Dutch Senate rejected two smart metering bills that would make installation of smart meters in households mandatory and would have enabled fifteen- minute-interval readings. As a result, the bill was adapted so that it gave consumers the right to refuse a smart meter as well as establishing a new default bimonthly reading of the meter (Cuijpers & Koops, 2013). At first sight, political consumerism around smart meters seems to entail just the boycotting of these devices, but a closer look at the ways in which smart meters enable consumers to engage with energy shows more diverse ways of taking responsibility for low-carbon energy systems. In enabling two-way communication between consumers and providers, smart metering opens up the potential for a range of new functions, products, and services to be developed as part of the introduction of smart grids. There has been a proliferation of new consumer products that allow consumers to monitor and manage their household energy consumption and production. The key issue for political consumerism is that through engaging (passively or actively) with such smart metering technologies and services, consumers can not only save energy to reduce their energy bills but also express responsibility for the grid and for the reduction of CO2 emissions.
Engaging With Energy: Monitoring and Managing Energy Use With conventional meters the energy use of households remains largely invisible to consumers, as energy bills only provide limited information, usually the total energy consumption of a household over the period of one year. Smart meters as such do not provide insight into a household’s energy use but only information that can subsequently be used by third parties to analyse and provide feedback on energy consumption to consumers. This feedback can be provided via dedicated energy displays or monitors as well as via apps, emails, or websites. Smart meters coupled with energy displays enable consumers to monitor their energy use at a more frequent basis. The information that is shown generally consists of near
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 419 real-time energy consumption (and generation) data and may be displayed in kilowatt- hours (kWh), costs, or carbon emissions. Displays may also include a functionality to analyse a household’s current usage in relation to its historical usage or to compare their energy use with that of other households. Increasingly, energy monitors are able to communicate with other household devices and show the energy use of individual appliances. Everyday devices such as water boilers, dishwashers, light bulbs, and televisions then become visible as energy consuming devices. Consumers can monitor the energy use of devices and may decide to use these devices less, replace them, or use them at different times. With regards to the latter option, solar panel owners have been reported to shift the use of specific devices to times when their solar panels are generating electricity (Naus, Van Vliet, & Hendriksen, 2015). However, sociological studies that have analysed whether and how monitoring and feedback leads to household energy savings (Buchanan, Russo, & Anderson, 2014; Darby, 2010; Foulds et al., 2017;Hargreaves, Nye, & Burgess, 2010; Hargreaves, Nye, & Burgess, 2013) generally conclude that savings do not follow automatically and are often smaller than expected. Next to affording monitoring practices by householders, energy devices may also enable household energy management through the programming and controlling of the household’s lighting, heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems as well as various household appliances. Such devices or systems are often referred to as home energy management systems and include displays with control functions that can communicate with devices such as smart light bulbs, smart sockets, and washing machines. Household energy management practices may even be delegated to technologies, so that appliances are automatically switched off or on.
Integrating Consumers’ Management Practices in Smart Grids Whereas consumers are becoming familiar with smart meters and home energy management devices, the integration of households into smart grids so far has mainly taken place in demonstration projects. Nevertheless, when smart metering technologies integrate consumers in smart grids, consumers can take up an additional set of responsibilities. In so-called demand side management programmes, consumers receive incentives or price signals from the utility, which encourages them to reduce their consumption at peak hours or shift it to nonpeak hours. Instead of being mere “passive” receivers of energy, consumers then become active comanagers of the grid (Nyborg & Røpke, 2011). Their flexibility in shifting consumption not only becomes valuable to grid managers but might also result in cost reductions for the household. A number of studies on smart grid pilots have emphasised however that flexibility is not equally distributed among households: families with children have been shown to be less flexible to shift their household practices (Nicholls & Strengers, 2015) while households that possess heat pumps and electric vehicles have a much larger potential to do so (Nyborg & Røpke, 2011). Acting as a comanager of the grid (and receiving benefits from that) is thus not purely a matter of consumer choice but also of household characteristics (Throndsen & Ryghaug, 2015).
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Issues: Privacy, Automation, and Control Smart metering devices and technologies afford opportunities for consumers and providers to measure, monitor, visualise, and control energy consumption and production. While for some consumers engagement with smart meters might be a matter of saving money through reducing or shifting energy use at home, other consumers may see their domestic energy use as a public issue. The smart meter allows them to express responsibility for the energy system (Throndsen & Ryghaug, 2015) as an “energy citizen” (Goulden, Bedwell, Rennick-Egglestone, Rodden, & Spence, 2014). The smart meter enables them to take responsibility for energy use reduction and for the balancing of demand and supply. This allows them to contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions and to maintain the quality and affordability of the electricity grid as a public infrastructure. At the same time, there are still many uncertainties as to how these more political engagements of consumers with electricity and its infrastructure may develop. Important issues that come up in relation to the new roles of consumers as comanagers of the grid are related to privacy, automation, and control. Smart meters enable the building up of detailed consumer profiles and thereby change how consumers become knowable, visible, and governable to utilities. Many smart devices and services make use of energy profiles of consumers for providing feedback or for automatically switching appliances on or off. Considerations of autonomy and privacy issues play a role in the engagement of consumers in monitoring and managing energy and may also impede or obstruct such practices (Naus et al., 2015). Do consumers want to be actively engaged in energy management (energy becoming visible, foregrounded in everyday practices) or should energy management practices be automated? (Nyborg & Røpke, 2011). And who is steering this? For example, can a utility remotely switch household devices on or off to reduce peak demand? In addition, while some consumers may want to express responsibility for the energy systems and engage with smart meters as “energy citizens,” others may have concerns that responsibilities of governments and companies are reallocated to the individual consumer (Throndsen & Ryghaug, 2015). Rather than smart meters simply affording consumers to take responsibility, smart meters can be understood as devices redistributing problems of the energy system management in particular ways (Marres, 2011).
Solar Panels The energy crisis in the 1970s and the growth of both the environmental movement and the antinuclear movement were important in bringing about the public view of renewable energy as an alternative to coal and nuclear energy (Jacobsson & Lauber, 2006; Smith, Kern, Raven, & Verhees, 2014). It took three decades, however, for solar panels to become a mainstream consumer product. When solar panels started to be used in the
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 421 1980s, this was often in off-grid applications by green pioneers (Smith et al., 2014) and in remote regions in developing countries where there was no connection to the main grid. Grid-connected solar panels as a commodity for individual consumers took off in the 2000s, aided by government incentives such as subsidy programs and feed-in tariffs.
Engaging With Energy: Producing Your Own Solar panels afford consumers opportunities to produce their own electricity or to become prosumers. Purchasing solar panels can be seen as a way of taking responsibility for the decarbonisation of the electricity system. Consumers have been motivated by a desire to foster the energy transition “from below,” contributing to government targets for CO2 reduction or seeking to accelerate developments when they consider the government to be moving too slowly. Solar panels can also be viewed by consumers as helping them to become more independent from the conventional energy system that is dominated by fossil fuels (Naus et al., 2015). Just like smart metering devices, solar panels make energy visible in a particular way. While the former makes energy visible in the private space of the household and for providers, solar panels are visible in public space, in cases of individual installations on rooftops, or as larger solar farms in the landscape. Several studies have shown that for some consumers, this public visibility of solar panels may also be a way to show their green-mindedness as an act of “conspicuous production” (Hards, 2013). At the same time, mega solar farms have been the target of protests by local citizens who may have a range of concerns, including the aesthetics of solar farms and their potential damage to ecosystems (Schreurs & Ohlhorst, 2015). In addition to getting a meaning as an object of green distinction, solar panels have also come to be regarded by consumers as devices that deliver new flows of finance (Bulkeley, Powells, & Bell, 2016). The electricity that is generated by solar panels is used by consumers for consumption in the household, but any surplus energy will be exported to the grid. Government instruments such as feed-in tariffs provide consumers with a financial reward for their exported energy, leading to a commodification of energy coproduction and an accompanying role of consumers as financially motivated actors.
Collectivising Consumers’ Energy Generation Practices Solar panels are rather indifferent as to how and by whom they are owned and operated. Because of their modular character, they can form a small rooftop installation of four panels as well as large-scale solar parks of 150,000. They can be owned and operated by individual consumers, but they also allow a variety of other models with different relationships between consumers and other actors as well as different types of consumer involvement. These include energy co-operatives or local governments owning and operating solar installations; energy suppliers owning and operating a solar project with consumers as shareholders; consumers leasing solar panels from a third party; consumers crowdfunding a solar installation (Vasileiadou, Huijben, & Raven, 2016); or collective buying initiatives where groups of consumers join forces to negotiate a discount
422 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet with the supplier of solar power systems (Huijben & Verbong, 2013). Solar panels thus do not necessarily demand active involvement of consumers as coproducers with their own installation, but they are very flexible energy devices when it comes to ownership, operation, and consumer involvement. They allow consumers to take up a role as coproducers of renewable energy but in many different ways: as individuals or collectives; as co-owners, leasers, or shareholders; and in active or more passive roles.
Issues: Prosumption as Commodification or as Taking Responsibility? Solar panels afford individual and collective consumers to fulfil some of the roles of traditional energy producers. As so-called prosumers, they generate their own green electricity and thereby contribute to the decarbonisation of energy supply. Solar panels thus bring along a blurring of the boundaries between energy consumption and production. At the same time, several studies have stressed that prosumption may lead to increased electricity use rather than to reduction, because consumers perceive such energy as “free” (Baborska-Narozny, Stevenson, & Ziyad, 2016). Another point of critique is that subsidies such as feed-in tariffs—which could be interpreted as a form of political consumerism facilitated by government—are funded by higher tariffs for all grid consumers, although used by high-income households only (Nelson, Simshauser, & Kelley, 2011). As solar panels are becoming more affordable and accessible to consumers, the growing number of photovoltaic (PV) installations also starts to pose new challenges for the electricity network. Solar energy has its own “natural” rhythms, depending on weather conditions and geography, and these do not necessarily align well with energy consumption practices. Solar panels only generate energy during daytime, whereas a peak in consumption takes place in the evening. This poses challenges to the balancing of supply and demand of electricity. Consumers with solar panels can currently produce energy without taking into account the effect on the net. In developing and expanding smart grids, the question becomes apparent whether and how prosumers should be stimulated to consume their own energy rather than export it to the grid. This would entail a shift in their role from what Bulkeley et al. (2016) term “fit and forget” to active management of domestic production and consumption. In such a logic of optimising self-consumption of solar energy, storage facilities come to the fore as valuable new energy devices for consumers.
Home Batteries New technological options for electricity storage at the domestic level are quickly diffusing to mainstream household consumers. Storage devices include home batteries, neighbourhood batteries, electric vehicles (EV), and electricity-driven heat pumps or boilers. While heat pumps, boilers, and EV store energy for later use by the device itself, lithium-ion batteries (and some EVs) can deliver electricity back to the household and the electricity grid. The costs of lithium-ion battery systems in particular are decreasing rapidly, leading to the emergence of a household-level battery market (Agnew &
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 423 Dargusch, 2017). Home energy storage is developing most quickly in Germany. Government subsidies for home battery systems have been in place in the country since 2013, and by 2016 34,000 home battery systems have been installed (Kairies et al., 2016). Home batteries could appeal to political consumers who want to lead a green lifestyle or become (more) autonomous from utilities, but social scientific studies on why consumers buy and how they use their home batteries are just about to start.
Engaging With Energy: Storing Your Own Just like smart metering technology and solar panels, home battery systems make energy visible in the household and afford new types of engagements with energy for consumers. Depending on their capacity, batteries come in different sizes and shapes. They are literally visible in the household, often as bulky devices that take up space in the kitchen or in the attic, but increasingly also as aesthetic objects designed to be mounted on the wall in the living room. An energy display may visualise how much energy is stored at different times or whether a battery is charging or discharging. Home batteries are often connected to solar panels, thereby allowing prosumers to store surplus self- generated energy and use it at a later time when they need it. In doing so, consumers increase their self-consumption and become more independent from the grid.
Issues: Autonomy or Integration Because the uptake of energy storage by consumers is a very recent phenomenon, it is unclear how this will affect the energy system. Prosumers with home batteries could desire to be (more) independent from the grid and optimise their self-sufficiency or even go off-grid and manage their energy demand and supply autonomously. There would be potential social costs to this if the costs of maintenance of the public grid would fall on those who do not own PV and storage systems (Khalilpour & Vassallo, 2015). Prosumers with batteries could also remain or even become more integrated in the grid. When storage systems become part of a smart grid, this opens up possibilities beyond the use of stored energy for self-consumption. Consumers can allow the utility to use (part of) their battery for grid balance, for which the consumer then receives a financial reward. The Dutch energy provider Eneco, for example, remotely charges and discharges the batteries of customers who subscribed to their CrowdNett to help solve grid balancing problems. Consumers hereby take up a role as comanager of the grid when—similar to other smart grid programmes such as Demand Response—they contribute to grid needs.
Prosumer Platforms: New Ways of Aggregating Consumer Practices and Choices The changes in the system of electricity provision and consumption combined with the growth in smart metering technologies, solar panels, and home batteries can turn
424 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet consumers from passive energy users into coproducers and comanagers of energy. Rapid developments in ICT can, as a next step, enable the connecting of prosumers in decentralised configurations, through what are termed here “prosumer platforms.” In addition to a considerable number of trials and experiments (see Rathnayaka, Potdar, Dillon, & Kuruppu, 2014), the first commercial applications of prosumer platforms are now emerging. Although it is not yet clear to what extent people would be interested in joining prosumer platforms, these could have important implications for the organisation of energy demand and supply. This section shortly discusses three emerging platforms: microgrids, virtual energy communities, and peer-to-peer markets.
Microgrids In microgrids, distributed generation units (e.g., solar panels), storage devices, and controllable “loads” (i.e., smart consumption units) are integrated to operate as a single, autonomous grid either islanded from the main grid or connected to it (Asmus, 2010). A community microgrid can be defined as a “micro grid with the key objectives of achieving economic, social and environmental benefits in community electricity supply and distribution” (Gui, Diesendorf, & MacGill, 2017). In a community microgrid, prosumers would coproduce and supply for fellow members with the goal of becoming (more) autonomous from the central grid (Wolsink, 2012). The possibility for islanding means that microgrids could enable local energy communities to operate completely independently from the main grid. Local energy communities then become responsible not only for their own production but also for supply and distribution.
Virtual Energy Communities Prosumer groups can also be managed in ways that integrate them in the public grid, for example through a Virtual Power Plant (VPP). Just like a microgrid, a VPP consists of an aggregation of distributed generation, controllable loads, and storage devices. The VPPs rely upon software systems that remotely and automatically control and manage energy flows within the cluster as well as in exchange with the grid. The VPP thereby makes this cluster visible and controllable as a single entity, and this allows the VPP operator to provide balancing services to network operators and sell surplus energy on the electricity market (El Bakari & Kling, 2010). In contrast to microgrids, VPPs are always connected to the grid. Another relevant difference is that VPPs also allow the aggregating of geographically dispersed devices. This makes it possible to create virtual energy communities consisting of prosumers in different geographical regions, of which the first are now emerging. The German SonnenCommunity, for example, is a platform connecting battery owners all over Germany to supply energy to each other. The VPPs not only afford prosumers to share energy with (distant) others but can also enable prosumers to trade energy at the market and contribute to grid balancing. For all of these practices, however, prosumers rely on an intermediary organization to act on their behalf.
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Peer-to-Peer Markets In peer-to-peer markets, prosumers can sell and buy electricity from each other. An example of an already existing platform is the Dutch Powerpeers where prosumers can decide from whom they want to receive their green energy and supply their surplus self- generated energy to the platform.
Issues: The Organisation of Decentralised Smart Electricity Systems These newly emerging prosumer platforms may facilitate political consumerism by broadening options for consumers on how and with whom to engage in green energy consumption and production. At the same time, questions and uncertainties around the organisation of ownership, control, and operation are likely to come up. For example, who owns and controls a community microgrid and its assets (Wolsink, 2012)? In what ways will communities themselves be involved in this? Which organisations or companies do consumers trust in providing, managing, and operating a VPP or peer-to- peer trading platform? There are also social and ethical questions around the allocation of energy and financial gains. For example, how to organise the sharing of energy when prosumers have different amounts of energy available for sharing due to individual differences in generation capacity, consumption practices, and storage behaviour? Moreover, when surplus energy is traded at the energy market, how should profits be allocated among participants? So far, these questions have mainly been treated as technical questions by software engineers developing systems and algorithms for energy exchange (Rathnayaka et al., 2014; Torrent-Fontbona, López, Busquets, & Pitt, 2016). However, the way in which prosumer platforms are designed shapes which transactions can take place, how, and between which entities. Designers and developers of these platforms may have implicit assumptions about the involvement and contribution of different actors in decentralised electricity systems (Wolsink, 2012). Rather than simply facilitating the exchange of energy in a neutral way, platforms reflect a specific vision on how to organise the future electricity system (see Dijck, Poell, & Waal (2016) for a discussion on the politics of platforms). An important question therefore is whether (organised) consumers will also be allowed to negotiate the design and development of these new technologies in an early phase.
Conclusion: Shifting Spaces and Forms of Political Consumerism With the opening of electricity markets, captive consumers have become customers able to choose between providers, electricity products such as grey or green electricity, and services. The reconfiguration of the contemporary electricity system also goes along with a growing presence and diversity of energy devices that allow consumers to engage with energy in new and altered ways. With the increasing use of smart meters, solar
426 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet panels, and home batteries, consumers may change from passive energy users into prosumers and comanagers who produce different types of value. This value can take the form of green energy generation, flexibility potential, or energy efficiency. Consumers thus not only generate their own electricity but also begin to interact in new ways with grids and market actors. In this context, relationships between consumers and providers are changing, and new actors such as energy service companies, aggregators, and energy co-operatives enter the stage.
The Affordances of Energy Devices Energy devices affect the possibilities for political consumerism in the field of domestic energy demand and supply through affording new practices for consumers. While the invisible and intangible nature of electricity is a given, smart metering devices, solar panels, and home batteries contribute to visibility of energy in consumers’ everyday lives. In-home displays visualise energy consumption and production in real time, while solar panels and home batteries have clear physical presence in and on top of houses. The three energy devices allow consumers to engage in a range of activities including monitoring, managing, coproducing, storing, exchanging, and trading electricity, some of which are practiced individually while others are engaged collectively. In the past, electricity mainly represented a cost for consumers, and it was delivered to consumers as a unified standard service. In the new engagements with energy that energy devices afford, energy obtains multiple possible meanings for consumers. First, it may become a commodity, produced and supplied to the grid or traded at electricity markets. It may also become a resource that needs to be managed efficiently as part of household consumption or to increase self-sufficiency. And it may become viewed as a common pool resource to be managed collectively to the benefit of a community or in a wider sense for the public good. Energy devices thus produce new action possibilities for consumers that enable them to contribute to decarbonisation of the electricity system. These action possibilities often bring along a redistribution of tasks and responsibilities among consumers and other actors in the electricity system as well as between humans and technologies. While the shifting relations between consumers and providers have been the subject of much research, far less attention is paid to the constitutive role of nonhuman elements in new electricity configurations. Consumers taking responsibility for the comanagement of the grid may delegate parts of this responsibility to home automation technologies. Also, the algorithms in virtual power plants may decide on when to charge a battery with self-produced energy and when to charge with energy from the grid. In microgrids, transactions to share energy result from programmed choices about what constitutes a “fair” distribution. When consumers try to promote changes towards decarbonisation and decentralisation, or take into account the impact of their energy practices on the electricity infrastructure, their actions are thus coshaped by material devices and digital technologies. Energy has become more visible, but there
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 427 are also new invisibilities brought about by opaque technologies (Introna, 2005) such as algorithms and platforms.
New Questions for Political Consumers For consumers who want to express a political viewpoint through their choices for specific energy devices, these altered action possibilities also raise a number of questions, of which a few will be discussed here. First, these action possibilities will bring along particular challenges for political consumers around the meaning of “taking responsibility” for a low-carbon electricity system. How do the energy choices of a political consumer relate to their “object of concern,” which may include “the public good,” “the common good,” and “the environment” (Pellizzoni, 2012)? For example, do you purchase solar panels and batteries to cater for your own energy needs or to start trading your surplus as part of a VPP? What are the environmental costs or benefits of these two options and the impact on the reliability and affordability of the public network? Second, with the emergence of smart grid infrastructures, it is not only energy that flows though the network but also information. As this information is often privacy-sensitive, an important question becomes with whom, under what conditions, and for which purposes consumers want to share it (Naus et al., 2015). Third, and related, energy devices and digital infrastructures are often offered as “fit-and-forget” products. Yet, especially when smart metering technologies, solar panels, and storage become integrated and aggregated in prosumer platforms, consumers are faced with alternative forms of organising electricity production, consumption, and distribution at new levels (neighbourhood, local, or virtual community). This enables political consumerism, but at the same time consumers’ action spaces are coshaped by the providers of these platforms and the particular way in which a platform is designed. To what extent will political consumers become reflexive about these mediations and call for “technology disclosure” or seek to contribute to the design of these new technologies and social arrangements?
New Questions for Studies of Political Consumerism With the exception of a few studies on electricity labelling (e.g.. Boström & Klintman, 2008; Rohracher, 2009), the field of political consumerism has not paid much attention to energy. On the other hand, there is a burgeoning literature on the role of consumers in smart energy systems in the social sciences more generally. Future studies in political consumerism could take up specific issues around the mediated character of consumer engagement in reconfigured electricity systems. We suggest that a focus on energy products and producers should be complemented by analysing services. The transformation of the energy system creates room for strategic intermediation activities by nonprofit organisations (Rohracher, 2009) as well as businesses. Nongovernmental organizations, for example, have set up certification schemes
428 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet and standards that collectivise consumer choices for particular products (e.g., labelling of green electricity and household appliances). In addition, intermediaries forge new connections between prosumers and other actors in electricity systems in order to advance the uptake of sustainable energy. Thus there is a collectivising of consumer choices and practices through the crowdfunding of renewable energy projects, energy trading platforms, smart microgrids, and virtual power plants. The future will tell whether these (mediated) collective engagements should be conceived as examples of energy systems’ attempts to capture and streamline acts of political consumerism or if these forms of collective political consumerism indeed have challenged and transformed the existing energy system. In addition, understanding the power of consumers to transform contemporary energy systems requires acknowledging the mediating role of devices, platforms, and digital infrastructures. In this context, the issue of electricity disclosure presents itself again in the emerging low-carbon smart electricity system, albeit in a different form. It does not concern the transparency of the energy mix, or the different labels for green energy, but relates to the various ways in which smart devices and technologies may mediate between (political) consumers and the electricity system. Apart from devices having made energy visible and tangible to consumers, which new energy invisibilities do smart technologies, algorithms, and platforms produce? Given the fast-growing reconfiguration of our energy grids and changing consumer roles, these are important questions to address in studies of political consumerism. Moreover, consumers using digital technologies to challenge existing systems of production and consumption is a phenomenon that goes beyond the energy sector. Digital platforms and infrastructures, for example, also play a growing role in food activism (Schneider, Eli, Dolan, & Ulijaszek, 2018). Our approach that recognises the role of technologies and their affordances in coshaping practices of political consumerism can also be applied to other cases. With the proliferation of apps, digital devices, and platforms, there will be an urgent need for more attention to the new possibilities these technologies create for political consumerism as well as issues around privacy, control, and the politics of platforms.
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430 Sanneke Kloppenburg and Bas van Vliet Hoenkamp, Robin, Huitema, George. B., & de Moor-van Vugt, Adrienne J. C. (2011). The neglected consumer: The case of the smart meter rollout in the Netherlands. Renewable Energy Law and Policy Review, 2(4), 269–282. Huijben, Josephina C. C. M., & Verbong, Geert P. J. (2013). Breakthrough without subsidies? PV business model experiments in the Netherlands. Energy Policy, 56, 362–370. Introna, Lucas. (2005). Disclosive ethics and information technology: Disclosing facial recognition systems. Ethics and Information Technology, 7(2), 75–86. Jacobsson, Staffan, & Lauber, Volkmar. (2006). The politics and policy of energy system transformation—explaining the German diffusion of renewable energy technology. Energy Policy, 34(3), 256–276. Kairies, Kai- Philipp, Haberschusz, David, van Ouwerkerk, Jonas, Strebel, Jan, Wessels, Oliver, Magnor, Dirk, Badeda, Julia & Sauer, Dirk Uwe Sauer (2016). Wissenschaftliches Mess-und Evaluierungsprogramm Stromspeicher, Jahresbericht 2016. Aachen: Institut für Stromrichtertechnik und Elektrische Antriebe der RWTH Aachen. Khalilpour, Rajab, & Vassallo, Anthony. (2015). Leaving the grid: An ambition or a real choice? Energy Policy, 82, 207–221. Kok, Koen, Karnouskos, Stamatis, Nestle, David, Dimeas, Aris, Weidlich, Anke, Warmer, Cor, . . . Lioliou, Vali. (2009). Smart houses for a smart grid. Paper presented at the 20th International Conference on Electricity Distribution, Prague. Marres, Noortje. (2011). The costs of public involvement: Everyday devices of carbon accounting and the materialization of participation. Economy and Society, 40(4), 510–533. Marvin, Simon, Graham, Stephen, & Guy, Simon. (1999). Cities, regions and privatised utilities. Progress in Planning, 51(2), 91–165. McKenna, Eoghan, Richardson, Ian, & Thomson, Murray. (2012). Smart meter data: Balancing consumer privacy concerns with legitimate applications. Energy Policy, 41, 807–814. Naus, Joeri, Spaargaren, Gert, van Vliet, Bas J. M., & van der Horst, Hilje M. (2014). Smart grids, information flows and emerging domestic energy practices. Energy Policy, 68, 436–446. Naus, Joeri, van Vliet, Bas. J. M., & Hendriksen, Astrid. (2015). Households as change agents in a Dutch smart energy transition: On power, privacy and participation. Energy Research & Social Science, 9, 125–136. Nelson, Tim, Simshauser, Paul, & Kelley, Simon. (2011). Australian residential solar feed-in tariffs: Industry stimulus or regressive form of taxation? Economic Analysis and Policy, 41(2), 113–129. Nicholls, Larissa, & Strengers, Yolande. (2015). Peak demand and the “family peak” period in Australia: Understanding practice (in) flexibility in households with children. Energy Research & Social Science, 9, 116–124. Nyborg, Sophie, & Røpke, Inge. (2011). Energy impacts of the smart home—conflicting visions. In Energy efficiency first: The foundation of a low-carbon society (pp. 1849–1860). Stockholm: European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy. Pellizzoni, Luigi. (2012). In search of community: Political consumerism, governmentality and immunization. European Journal of Social Theory, 15(2), 221–241. Petrakaki, Dimitra, Waring, Justin, & Barber, Nicholas. (2014). Technological affordances of risk and blame: The case of the electronic prescription service in England. Sociology of Health & Illness, 36(5), 703–7 18. Rathnayaka, A. J. Dinusha, Potdar, Vidyasagar M., Dillon, Tharam S., & Kuruppu, Samitha. (2014). Formation of virtual community groups to manage prosumers in smart grids. International Journal of Grid and Utility Computing, 6(1), 47–56.
Energy Devices and Political Consumerism 431 Rohracher, Harald. (2009). Intermediaries and the governance of choice: The case of green electricity labelling. Environment and Planning A, 41(8), 2014–2028. Schneider, Tanja, Eli, Karin, Dolan, Catherine & Ulijaszek, Stanley. (2018). Digital food activism. London: Routledge. Schreurs, Miranda, & Ohlhorst, Dörte. (2015). NIMBY and YIMBY. In Carol Hager & Mary Alice Haddad (Eds.), NIMBY is beautiful: Cases of local activism and environmental innovation around the world (pp. 60–86). New York: Berghahn. Shove, Elizabeth. (2010). Beyond the ABC: Climate change policy and theories of social change. Environment and Planning A, 42(6), 1273–1285. Smith, Adrian, Kern, Florian, Raven, Rob, & Verhees, Bram. (2014). Spaces for sustainable innovation: Solar photovoltaic electricity in the UK. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 81, 115–130. Throndsen, William, & Ryghaug, Marianne. (2015). Material participation and the smart grid: Exploring different modes of articulation. Energy Research & Social Science, 9, 157–165. Torrent-Fontbona, Ferran, López, Beatriz, Busquets, Dídac, & Pitt, Jeremy. (2016). Self- organising energy demand allocation through canons of distributive justice in a microgrid. Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, 52, 108–118. Van der Wilt, Peter; Peter de Jong and Markus Schmid (2017). Onderzoek duurzaamheid Nederlandse stroomleveranciers. Consumentenbond, Natuur & Milieu, Greenpeace and WISE (https://wisenederland.nl/sites/default/files/images/Rapport-2017-stroomleveranciers.pdf). Van Dijck, José., Poell, Thomas, & De Waal, Martijn. (2016). De platformsamenleving: Strijd om publieke waarden in een online wereld. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Van Vliet, Bas J. M. (2002). Greening the grid: The ecological modernisation of network-bound systems. (PhD dissertation), Wageningen: Wageningen University. Van Vliet, Bas J. M. (2003). Differentiation and ecological modernization in water and electricity provision and consumption. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 16(1), 29–49. Van Vliet, Bas J. M., Chappells, Heather, & Shove, Elizabeth. (2005). Infrastructures of consumption: environmental innovation in the utility industries. London: Earthscan. Van Vliet, Bas J. M. (2012). Sustainable innovation in network-bound systems: Implications for the consumption of water, waste water and electricity services. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 14(3), 263–278. Vasileiadou, Eleftheria., Huijben, Josephina C. C. M.., & Raven, Rob. (2016). Three is a crowd? Exploring the potential of crowdfunding for renewable energy in the Netherlands. Journal of Cleaner Production, 128, 142–155. Vlijm, Willem. (2002). De interactie tussen de overheid en de elektriciteitssector in Nederland. De ontwikkeling van het nutsbedrijf PGEM naar de energieonderneming Nuon (1916– 2001). PhD dissertation, Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. Wolsink, Maarten (2012). The research agenda on social acceptance of distributed generation in smart grids: Renewable as common pool resources. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 16(1), 822–835.
Pa rt I V
T H E G E O G R A P H IC SP R E A D A N D P R AC T IC E OF P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM
Chapter 21
P olitical C onsume ri sm in Northwestern E u rope Leading by Example? Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger
Northwestern Europe (NWE) has long been identified as one of the main regions for the development of political consumerism (Stolle, Micheletti, & Crépault, 2013).1 This is not surprising considering that NWE is one of the most affluent regions in the world. On average, its citizens are characterized by high degrees of postmaterial values and high levels of education (Inglehart, 2008), which are all seen as part of the typical profile of political consumerists (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 3). This chapter takes a closer look at the patterns underlying this more general observation. Firstly, the chapter looks at sales of “ethical products,” describing how NWE compares to other regions in Europe and around the world as well as key differences within the region. Secondly, there is a comparison of the commonality of political consumerism in NWE to other regions and an assessment of the main differences within the region. While both approaches offer a sense of the spread of political consumerism, they tell little about the exact forms of behaviour underlying these general patterns. The second half of the chapter, therefore, shifts attention to more detailed descriptions of the forms political consumerism takes. In examining the demand side, there is a description of how various collectives have incorporated political consumerism into their repertoires of action. In examining the supply side, the chapter outlines the widely differing types of products, certifications, and standards advanced by civil society, governments, and companies. This overview demonstrates that political consumerism is not only very common in NWE but also takes a wide range of forms that have varying implications for the sociopolitical meaning of political consumerism. Methodological and analytical problems stem from the information gap that exists between “thin” knowledge of the spread of political consumerism and the limited knowledge of the commonality of diverse patterns of political consumerism within the region, thus limiting an assessment of the widespread nature of political consumerism in NWE. Does it imply a generally deep and meaningful
436 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger commitment to address societal problems through the marketplace and the arena of everyday life, or does it hint at the spread of an increasingly superficial and tokenistic engagement through the commodification of political action? The discussion offers several methodological recommendations that will allow future research to address these important questions empirically.
The Market Share of Ethical Products in NWE Sales figures for fairtrade and organic products can give a first estimate of levels of political consumerism and allow for systematic comparisons across countries. The data for sales of fairtrade coffee and organic food in European and North American countries gathered by Micheletti and Stolle (2013, p. 99) clearly identify Northwestern Europe as the region where ethically labelled products are the most widespread. Per capita spending and market share for fairtrade coffee (2000–2006) and organic food (2002– 2005/2001) is often significantly higher in NWE countries than in other European countries as well as in North America. For organic food, the highest figures in terms of per capita spending and market share can be found in Switzerland ($122.22; 3.7 percent), Denmark ($66.67; 3.5 percent), Germany ($49.45; 2.1 percent) and Austria ($51.71; 2.7 percent). Fairtrade coffee is especially popular in the Netherlands (market share 2.88 percent), Switzerland (2.94 percent), and the United Kingdom (2.27 percent). More recent data from the Organic Yearbook published by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FIBL & IFOAM, 2016) confirm these findings. Among European countries, those with the highest per capita consumption of organic food in 2014 continue to be from NWE. While the average number for NWE countries is USD$127 per capita, it is only around USD$10 for other European Union (EU) countries. Denmark (7.6 percent), Switzerland (7.1 percent), Austria (6.5 percent), Sweden (6 percent), and Germany (4.4 percent) are the countries with the highest market shares in 2014. The most recent data from the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO, 2011) also show NWE countries to be strongholds of fairtrade consumption, although we only have data for per capita spending. For 2010, highest per capita spending could be found in Switzerland (€28.25), the United Kingdom (€21.67), Finland (€17.38), and Sweden (€11.61); the average of all NWE countries listed in Table 21.1 is 11.93 Euros. As a point of comparison, fairtrade sales per capita in other European countries average a mere 0.38 Euros in 2010. While supply-side data identify NWE countries as comparatively high spenders with regard to other regions, they also reveal important cross-country differences within this region. A comparison of fairtrade and organic goods shows that they are not equally popular everywhere, thus revealing specific country profiles. The United Kingdom, Finland (for the most recent data), and the Netherlands (concerning the consumption of coffee) have high levels of fairtrade consumption but score comparatively low
10.47*
38.54
36.00
49.45
29.97
8.16
57.22
122.22
36.22
48.26
n.a.
France
Germany
Netherlands
Norway
Sweden
Switzerland
UK
Average NWE
Average other Europe
n.a.
0.9
3.7
1.7
0.2
1.2
2.1
0.7
1.0
3.5
††† Source: Fairtrade Foundation (FLO, 2011).
†† Source: Organic Yearbook (FIBL & IFOAM, 2016).
† Source: Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, p. 99.
** The Czech Republic, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain.
* All non-NWE EU countries.
127
66.60
Finland
48
294
193
72
76
129
97
55
215
52
169 (2011)
Denmark
1.0
34.81
Belgium
2.7
51.71
Austria
n.a.
7.7
6.0
1.5
3.0
4.4
2.5
1.7
7.6
1.8
6.5 (2011)
2014†† market share (%)
n.a.
2.27
2.94
0.56
0.72
2.88
0.56
0.86
0.23
1.34
0.99
0.85
2000–2006† fairtrade coffee market share (%)
2014†† sales per capita (USD)
2002–2005† per capita consumption (USD)
2001† market share (%)
Fair trade
Organic food
Table 21.1 Sales data for Political Consumption in Northwestern Europe (NWE)
0.38**
11.93
21.67
28.25
11.61
9.01
7.18
4.16
4.83
17.38
11.17
5.56
10.39
2010††† all fairtrade products sales per capita (€)
438 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger on organic food. Germany, Austria, Denmark, and Sweden have contrasting profiles, although the latter three are catching up with regard to fair trade, leaving Germany as the only country with a very clear organic profile. These differences between “green” and “red” political consumption seem to reflect differences in the national historical importance of particular social movements and of specific historical, cultural, and socioeconomic contexts. For instance, the relative prevalence of fair trade in the United Kingdom could be interpreted as a reaction to its colonial history. Supply-side data furthermore indicate that Switzerland consistently scores high on both, while Belgium, and in some respects also France and Norway, lag behind the other countries. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, sales figures show that while Northwestern Europe’s level of consumption of labelled products is comparatively high, it remains at quite a modest level in overall terms, even in sectors such as organic food where ethical products are arguably the most widespread—even according to the most recent figures. The market share of organic food does not approach 10 percent in any of these countries. Ethically labelled products reach higher levels of market penetration only for certain specific goods, such as organic eggs or fairtrade bananas.
The Spread of Political Consumerism in NWE While sales data provide an estimate of the absolute and relative market share of ethical products, and thus of their economic impact, the data do not reveal much about the political behaviour driving these sales and thus about political consumerism as a form of political participation. Firstly, sales data also include purchases by institutional consumers, such as universities that buy fairtrade coffee. Furthermore, sales data do not show whether any of the products were bought for political, environmental, or ethical reasons. For instance, some mainstream supermarkets in the Netherlands now exclusively sell bananas with at least some form of certification, and the political commitment of the people buying those bananas therefore becomes questionable. Conversely, not all products that are bought for ethical or political reasons are covered by certifications, such as local and seasonal produce bought for environmental reasons. Finally, sales data reveal little about the number of people involved: Do most people buy a few certified products, or do a few buy them frequently? Population surveys are particularly useful in filling this gap, as they can provide a sense of how many people in the general population buy certain products specifically for ethical or political reasons. However, while many surveys include questions about boycotts, only a few gauge whether respondents have engaged in buycotts. There are only two international comparative surveys that asked respondents in NWE separately about boycotts and buycotts: the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002/2003, which has been used most
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 439 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 NWE OE UK NL
BE
IE
LU
Boycott and buycott
16.7 3.7 18.4 7.7
8.7 15.8 19 16.7 25.2 21.4 15.2 27.6 18.6 9.8
11
Buycott only
18.2 6.5 14.1 18.4 16.5 9.4 18.1 13.1 19.3 20.5 20.5 28.9 24.8 15.1 18.7
Boycott only
5.3
2.7
7.6
2.9
4.1
FR
8.1
GE AT CH
6.1
5.4
6
FI
5.4
NO SW DK
4.8
5.5
4.2
4.1
4.5
Figure 21.1 Participation in boycotts and/or buycotts (%), ESS. Notes: Data from European Social Survey (ESS), 2002/2003. NWE (Northwestern Europe) includes all individually reported countries. OE (Other European countries) includes the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. UK = United Kingdom, NL = the Netherlands, BE = Belgium, FR = France, GE = Germany, AT = Austria, CH = Switzerland, FI = Finland, NO = Norway, SW = Sweden, DK = Denmark, IE = Ireland, LU = Luxembourg. Sample weights applied.
frequently in studies of buycotts; and the Eurobarometer 62.2 from 2004. The data presented in Figure 21.1 show that, according to the ESS, boycotting and buycotting are both very common forms of political participation in NWE, with 34.9 percent of the population indicating they had bought products for political, ethical, or environmental reasons during the past twelve months, and 22 percent of the population indicating that they had boycotted a product. In the other European countries in the sample (see Note Figure 21.1 for a listing), this was only 10.2 and 6.4 percent, respectively. As shown in Figure 21.2, the numbers are significantly lower according to the Eurobarometer, which is remarkable given a largely similar period and methods. This point will be discussed further later in the chapter, yet for now at least the conclusion is that the Eurobarometer shows similar general tendencies to the ESS, with both boycotts and buycotts being much more common in NWE than in the rest of Europe, indicating a largely similar variation within the region. To some extent, sales data and surveys generate a similar image, with Switzerland being one of the leading countries according to both of them. There are some apparent discrepancies as well, however. While Sweden is the clear leader according to the survey data, it scores high only on organic sales when this survey was conducted and not on fair trade. Conversely, the Netherlands is a clear leader when it comes to fairtrade sales, but it scores rather low in the survey data. And what about Norway? According to the ESS, it is among the leading countries, yet the sales data show it is a laggard in both organic and fairtrade sales. These discrepancies raise some interesting questions about particular patterns of political consumerism in NWE. There may be some unlabeled
440 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 NWE OE
UK
NL
BE
FR
GE
AT
FI
SW
DK
IE
LU
Boycott and buycott
5.8
0.9
6.4
3.5
2.8
7.5
4
2.1
8.5
14.1 12.9
1.8
5.8
Buycott only
6.2
2.3
6.2
7.8
6
5.7
5
4.5
7
12.6 12.6
6.7
7.1
Boycott only
7.3
1.8
7.7
4.5
3.6
8.5
7.3
4.7
6.9
10.3
3.4
4.5
7.9
Figure 21.2 Participation in buycotts and/or boycotts (%), Eurobarometer. Notes: Data from Eurobarometer 62.2, 2004. NWE (Northwestern Europe) includes all individually reported countries. OE (Other European countries) includes Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. UK = United Kingdom, NL = the Netherlands, BE = Belgium, FR = France, GE = Germany, AT = Austria, CH = Switzerland, FI = Finland, NO = Norway, SW = Sweden, DK = Denmark, IE = Ireland, LU = Luxembourg. Sample weights applied.
yet “ethical” products, like local or seasonal produce, missing from the sales data that can influence the sales picture in countries such as Sweden. Yet this factor is unlikely to explain strong differences since organic and fair trade should cover the bulk of ethical products. So, why these differences then? Do Norwegians and Swedes buy labelled products more often with a political motivation than the Dutch? Or do many Norwegians and Swedes buy ethical products sometimes, whereas few Dutch people buy ethical products often? These questions point to interesting differences within the region that could guide future research. Some other important questions remain as well. Because only ESS data are available on buycotts from 2002/2003, and because the Eurobarometer data from 2004 seem incomparable with the ESS data, we cannot track how the growth in sales figures is reflected in political behaviour. For instance, we do not know whether more people have come to buy ethical products or whether people buy ethical products more frequently—possibly in response to the growing number of ethical products available. The data that give us the best estimate of any shifts in buycotts over time are the International Social Survey Programme modules on Citizenship (2004, 2014), which include a single question asking respondents whether they boycotted or buycotted any products in the last year. Moreover, these data, presented in Figure 21.3, are unique for including non-European countries as well, thus allowing for a comparison of political consumerism in NWE not only with other European countries but also with non-European countries. The data confirm that political consumerism is relatively common in NWE. In 2004, 27.3 percent of people in NWE had boycotted
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 441 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0
2002
2004
NWE-ISSP
2006 NWE-ESS
2008 OE-ISSP
2010
2012 OE-ESS
2014 OnE-ISSP
Figure 21.3 Participation in boycott (ESS) and boycott/buycott (ISSP) (%). Note: Data from European Social Survey (ESS) (2002–2014) and International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) (2004 and 2014). NWE (Northwestern Europe) includes Austria (except ESS 2010 and 2012), Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. OE (Other European countries) includes the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia (except ESS 2002), Slovenia, and Spain. OnE (Other non-European countries) includes: Australia, Chile, Taiwan, Israel, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa, South Korea, the United States, and Venezuela.
or buycotted products, compared to 13.2 percent in other European countries and 12.9 percent in the rest of the world. (There are again some important differences with the ESS data from Figure 21.1, which will be mentioned in the methodological discussion.) In 2014, figures had gone up in all regions, but while sales grew stronger in other European countries, the number of political consumerists grew more in NWE, where now 32.9 percent participated (+5.6 percent) compared to 16.6 percent (+3.4 percent) and 13.3 percent (+.4 percent) in the other two regions, respectively. These data thus suggest that the rise in sales of ethical products is due (in part) to an increase in the number of buycotters, though the increasing number of product categories that receive some form of labelling will contribute to this as well (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, pp. 112–114). Participation in boycotts can be tracked more precisely over time. Seven waves of the ESS, conducted between 2002 and 2014 and summarized in Figure 21.3, show that participation in boycotts is relatively stable, though some slight increase is recently noticeable in NWE and in the rest of Europe. This pattern cannot be interpreted as saying something about political consumerism more broadly, for as seen in Figure 21.1, most boycotters engage in buycotts but buycotters boycott only half of the time. This is unsurprising since, as Copeland (2014) points out, the strategic logic underlying buycotts is fundamentally different from that underlying boycotts. While the former is “reward oriented” or aimed at immediate change (e.g., reduced carbon footprint), the latter is typically “punishment oriented” and aimed more at indirect change through influencing corporate policy (de Moor, 2017b). Differences are expectedly even more profound with other forms of political consumerism, like lifestyle politics, which commonly involve a far greater commitment to change than selecting one product over another. Unfortunately, no comparative survey data cover the wide variety of lifestyle politics.
442 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger
Differences Within NWE We already discussed that some of the differences within NWE suggested by the sales data do not reflect the survey data. But there are other, rather profound internal differences shown in Figure 21.1 that raise further questions that need to be addressed. In Switzerland and Sweden, more than half the population indicated engagement in boycotts and/or buycotts, compared to less than 30 percent in the Netherlands and Belgium. These differences seem to be more profound in boycotting than in buycotting. From 2002 to 2014, the Netherlands and Belgium have consistently lagged behind most other countries in the region with around 10 percent against averages commonly between 20 and 25 percent (data not presented here). In contrast, in France, also a laggard in overall political consumerism, the difference is mainly a result of lower levels of buycotting. There seems to be no straightforward explanation for these differences. Regarding individual-level explanations, the Netherlands and Belgium score towards the lower end of the region in terms of postmaterial values, but they are here accompanied by Norway and Germany, who both score significantly higher on political consumerism (Inglehart, 2008). Moreover, the Netherlands is certainly among the most affluent and highly educated countries in the region (in terms of gross domestic product [GDP] per capita it is notably before Sweden). This should expectedly rank the country among the leaders. At the macro-level, political opportunity structures (POSs) are typically looked at (Kriesi et al., 1995). However, political consumerism has been associated with closed and weak POSs because it allows citizens to engage in politics without having to deal with the state (Christensen, 2011; de Moor, 2016a), and as Micheletti (2003, p. 23) notes, it is therefore surprising that Sweden, with its comparatively strong and progressive government, has such a strong tradition of political consumerism. Conversely, Koos (2012) claims that political consumerism should be more common in the favourable context of a POS characterized by “societal authority” than in the context of “statism,” yet examples of both models (e.g., Sweden and Germany, respectively) score very high on political consumerism. One could alternatively conclude that it is a matter of tradition or repertoire (Tilly, 2010). For example, France has a more contentious political culture than the Netherlands which may explain why the former scores higher on boycotts while the latter leans more towards buycotts. However, that explanation not only seems somewhat tautological but also does not explain why boycotts are much more prevalent in Switzerland than in France. Finally, these variations can be attributed to the (perceived) availability of ethical products (Austgulen, 2016; Koos, 2012), yet assuming causality is problematic here since the demand side also has important consequences for the supply of ethical goods, as will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter. Hence, it is clear that more research is required to make sense of some of these rather profound differences—particularly since some have noted that cross-national variations are different for specific products, like clothing (Austgulen, 2016). Thus, survey data clearly complement sales data, yet buycotts and boycotts are only two of many expressions of political consumerism, and while buycotts appear to be
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 443 more common, the available data mainly relate to boycotts. Moreover, there are some alarming inconsistencies between the different surveys. Consequently, knowledge of the spread of political consumerism beyond boycotts is rather limited. Fortunately, a wealth of case studies of political consumerism in NWE provide a rich picture of the many forms political consumerism can take, underlining the need for more inclusive quantitative data on the spread of political consumerism.
The Many Forms of Political Consumerism in NWE As Lekakis and Forno also show in this volume’s chapter on SE, surveys typically measure only a few of the many forms of political consumerism used throughout Europe. Case studies provide a much more detailed picture. Notably, they shift the focus from the relatively unobservable politicized consumer behaviour of individual shoppers, which is typically measured in surveys, to the consumption-based action forms used within groups like activist collectives and social movement organizations. It would be unrealistic to try to provide a complete overview of case studies conducted in NWE. Instead, this chapter aims to highlight some of the main tendencies regarding the forms and targets of political consumerism in the region, with a particular focus on the spectrum of motivations commonly found to underlie political consumerism. Some case studies show a strategy intended to avoid interaction with governments. Others show consumption-based strategies occurring in synthesis with government-or company- oriented strategies, and often there is a fairly high degree of institutionalization. The following discussion presents illustrative case studies across this spectrum. Political consumerism has often been identified as an element of the practice-based strategies used among anarchist collectives and in radical free spaces as part of an autonomous approach to social change (Portwood-Stacer, 2012). In some cases, specific forms of consumption are promoted to advance social change or to express political views, but sometimes it is rather the rejection of consumption per se. In their study of “social movement scenes” in Germany, Leach and Haunss (2009) stress the importance of free spaces to practice anticonsumerism as an everyday critique of mainstream society. Similarly, de Moor (2016b) describes how squats in France and the Netherlands are used to run “give-away shops” where donated or recuperated items and food are offered for free in order to reduce waste and to criticize consumption—an action found elsewhere in European squats as well (Martínez, 2013). Political consumerism has also been embraced as a strategy that avoids reliance on governments in other spaces. Chatterton describes how, in the United Kingdom, a “widespread disillusionment with elite and nation-state politics is leading to renewed interest in radical transition grassroots experiments” (2016, 4), which include lifestyle politics, such as forms of communal living to promote a sustainable
444 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger postcapitalist society. In the European climate movement, disappointment over the failed Copenhagen climate summit of 2009 has boosted interest in the promotion of alternative, more sustainable lifestyles. For instance, in the climate movement’s mobilization for the Paris climate summit in 2015, the French group Alternatiba organized “villages of alternatives” throughout France and its neighbouring countries to promote lifestyle change, including sustainable consumption and forms of “prosumption” in which consumers produce their own food or energy (Ritzer & Jurgenson, 2010). This form of action was embraced by the wider movement as one of the main strategies to reduce the movement’s dependency on outcomes of the United Nations climate process and to complement its struggle against “false,” corporate solutions (de Moor, Morena, & Comby, 2017; de Moor, 2017a). These cases represent a broader tendency in so-called sustainable community movement organizations that represent a turn towards localized, consumption-based strategies out of disappointment with transnational activism (Forno & Graziano, 2014). For instance, Pleyers (2017) describes how Belgian alter- globalization activists often engage in local food activism to address issues of their concern in a more concrete and prefigurative way. Groups with a less outspoken political agenda have also been known to embrace political consumerism as a way to deal with political challenges without having to focus on political institutions. It allows them to focus instead on the “more attractive,” hands- on promotion of alternatives, because, according to the United Kingdom’s “Incredible Edible” network, “[people] want positive actions they can engage in, and in their bones, they know it is time to take personal responsibility.”2 The widespread Transition Towns movement is perhaps best known for this “apolitical” approach, with its focus on the development of concrete alternatives to increase the resilience of communities in a time of climate change and depleted resources (Hopkins, 2008; Kenis, 2016). They resemble the abovementioned “villages of alternatives” by promoting alternative modes of consumption and lifestyle change, yet they have a distinctly less outspoken political message. While originating in the United Kingdom, Transition Towns can now be found in all other countries in NWE (e.g., Bossy, 2014; Kenis, 2016),3 just like community supported agriculture, a concept for the localized and independent production of food (Lamine, 2005; Volz et al., 2016), and the originally Italian Slow Food movement, which promotes “ ‘good, clean and fair’ food, the defense of biodiversity, taste education, and the linkage between producers and consumers” (Bossy, 2014, p. 185). Beyond food, “ethical investment” has become well established in NWE (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, p. 159), and community energy initiatives are growing all across the region to provide local and sustainable energy, most notably in Germany (Yildiz et al., 2015), but elsewhere as well, like in the United Kingdom (Seyfang, Park, & Smith, 2013). Many of these groups do not provide an overt, radical critique of political systems; they commonly take pride in providing concrete solutions instead of pointing out what is wrong in society. While avoiding the political system may be an important driver for some forms of political consumerism, in other cases consumption-based strategies are used in close interaction with government-oriented strategies, which can sometimes lead to the institutionalization of alternative consumption practices (de Moor, 2017b). Studies from
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 445 the United Kingdom show that institutionalization and cooperation with governments and companies is a commonly used strategy to ensure the diffusion of grassroots initiatives (Seyfang & Haxeltine, 2012). A Belgian case study shows how lifestyle activists seek to reach beyond self-selected audiences by motivating governments to implement similar practices on a larger scale or by pressuring them to turn alternative consumption principles into laws, such as in the case of a ban on pesticides (de Moor, Marien, & Hooghe, 2017). Dubuisson-Quellier’s work on political consumerism in France also shows the importance of such strategies. The promotion of alternative consumption is here often intended to mobilize pressure on politicians as well (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2015; Dubuisson-Quellier, Lamine, & Le Velly, 2011). Similarly, the promotion of alternative modes of consumption has been used to pressure companies to adopt more ethical standards, as illustrated by Balsiger’s (2010, 2014) study of a campaign surrounding an “ethical shopping map” in Switzerland. Activists developed tools such as the ethical shopping map or company rankings with the goal of orienting consumption towards fashion brands with stronger ethical records and thus putting pressure on companies to yield to movement demands. Boycott campaigns also aim to exert pressure on companies or governments, and many more or less famous campaigns triggered widespread participation in NWE, including the campaign against apartheid in South Africa (Thörn, 2006; see also Chapter 3) and against poor conditions in Nike’s sweatshops (Sage, 1999). To sum up, this selective overview of case studies on collective forms of political consumerism in NWE demonstrates its diversity in various important regards. It shows that boycotts, buycotts, discursive political consumerism, and lifestyle politics all play important roles; that various realms of consumption are politicized, including food, energy, finance, and fashion; and that very different types of collectives engage in these forms of political consumerism. Correspondingly, there are important variations with regard to political consumption’s relation to business and the state. Collectives focused on political consumerism with a strong orientation towards government and corporate policy sometimes become highly institutionalized. According to Stolle and Micheletti, “A ‘triangle of change’ is emerging in political consumerism that involves people, government, and business” (2013, p. 261). The next section will discuss how this triangle looks in NWE.
The Infrastructure for Political Consumerism in NWE From the supply-side perspective, the most characteristic features of political consumerism in NWE are its comparatively high level of institutionalization, its broad spread and generally high availability, and the great diversity of often-competing standards and certifications that exist on most markets. Over the past twenty to thirty
446 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger years, the number of market devices such as labels or certification schemes referring to aspects of the “politics behind products” have grown significantly (Dubuisson-Quellier, Lamine, & Le Velly, 2011; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). They constitute an infrastructure for political consumerism, which facilitates in particular individual buycotts. Three types of actors are behind the rise of political consumerist institutions and the related supply of products: social movement organizations, corporations, and states. Social movements are at the origin of some of the most visible labelling and certification schemes, in particular fair trade and organic. Fair trade first emerged in the Netherlands but quickly spread to other European countries like the United Kingdom, Switzerland, or France (Raynolds, Murray, & Wilkinson, 2007). In its early phase of the 1970s and 1980s, fair trade was confined to specialized stores belonging to the fairtrade movement. Later on, certification schemes were developed, which allowed for a distribution of fairtrade products in conventional supermarkets. The Max Havelaar label from the Netherlands was one of the first such labels, and it spread to other Western European countries—and beyond—in the 1990s. While initially supermarkets and conventional producers were hesitant in adopting fairtrade labels, they have come to embrace it increasingly, leading to an ever-growing availability of fairtrade products on conventional markets. The development of the organic sector was similar. Organic production also originated as a social movement, and here the German-speaking countries were among the forerunners. Again, organic produce was first sold directly from farms and in specialized stores before reaching the shelves of conventional supermarkets with the establishment of organic certification and labels, sometimes backed by governments. In some cases, like in Germany, the organic movement built up its own network of exclusively organic supermarkets, while in other cases, like in Switzerland, conventional supermarket chains came to play a very important role in promoting organic agriculture. But organic and fair trade are not the only ethical products that exist on markets in Northwestern Europe. In various sectors, social movements have developed ethical standards and certifications covering many other issues—for instance, in the electronics and apparel industry around the question of working conditions in subcontracted factories or in the furniture industry with certified wood (Boström & Klintman, 2011). The rise of certifications and other forms of private regulation that became visible on markets in the form of labels is often a result of social movement campaigns denouncing corporate practices and revealing harmful environmental and social consequences of production processes for specific goods as well as developing certification schemes in order to make production more ethical and sustainable. Companies have also come to play an increasingly important role in the infrastructure of political consumerism, contributing significantly to its broad availability and great diversity in Western Europe. This is the result of several interrelated processes: companies are often the targets of boycott campaigns or discursive political consumerism and develop more ethical products under pressure from such campaigns. The targeting of corporations by social movement campaigns (King & Pearce, 2010; Walker, 2012) has thus sometimes had consequences on consumer markets (Balsiger, 2014, 2016b;
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 447 Dubuisson-Quellier, 2013b; Schor et al., 2016). Corporations are also reacting to a more diffuse demand for ethical products, attested to by market research and put forward by social movement campaigns through strategies of market mediation (Dubuisson- Quellier, 2013a). Together, this leads to the rise of moral market categories—categories of product distinction referring to the “moral provenance” of goods—in more and more industry sectors, as morality also becomes a strategy of product differentiation and valuation (Balsiger, 2016a). One can distinguish among three modalities through which companies contribute to the market architecture of political consumerism. Often one finds collaborations between firms and NGOs, for instance through participation in programs such as the WWF Climate Savers initiative or the Forest Stewardship Council or in government- sponsored programs and certifications such as ecolabels. In other instances, companies develop their own labels and product lines, taking up environmental or social issues. Finally, some companies position themselves as green or social enterprises, catering specifically to the segment of political consumers. For a given sector, one generally finds all three modalities giving form to a political consumerist infrastructure. For instance, on the fashion market, there are forms of collaboration between firms and NGOs— fairtrade labels like FLO-certified cotton, organic labels, or multistakeholder initiatives jointly engaging firms and NGOs in the monitoring of working conditions in factories, such as the Dutch Fair Wear Foundation or the British Ethical Fashion Initiative. There are also labels, product lines, and certification schemes that are exclusively corporate- driven, such as the Business Compliance Initiative for factory monitoring or product labels like the Swiss Natura Line sold at the retailer Coop in Switzerland. And finally, there are a number of small brands that take the form of social enterprises, positioning themselves as producers of ethical fashion (Balsiger, 2014, 2016a). Governments are also crucial actors in the development of political consumerist infrastructures in NWE. Some of the major labels and certification schemes, such as the EU organic logo or its ecolabel, are government-backed and thus regulated by states or supranational entities (Boström & Klintman, 2011; Dubuisson-Quellier, 2013a; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Even more so, states often attempt to achieve their goals by guiding consumer actions from a distance and through interventions on the supply side of markets. They do so through public campaigns, guidelines for product declarations, and the development and promotion of labels and certification schemes (Dubuisson- Quellier, 2016). This kind of politics “through the market” is particularly frequent in the realm of sustainable development: the promotion of recycling, the development of ecolabels on the energy efficiency of kitchen appliances, or techniques of nudging are examples (Sunstein, 2015; see also Chapter 6). Here, consumption becomes an object of governmental intervention: consumers are targeted and encouraged to adapt their practices by integrating goals directed at the common good. This subtle form of state intervention in conformity with neoliberal ideology works through market mechanisms of consumer choice and competition rather than constraining forms of regulation for market actors. Consumers are given incentives to consume more sustainably and companies are encouraged to engage in “ethical competition.” For instance, labels
448 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger consisting of ecoscores indicating the energy efficiency of fridges clearly distinguish between more and less sustainable products and producers, giving consumers orientation with regard to values of sustainability (Bergeron, Castel, & Dubuisson-Quellier, 2014). In many NWE countries—in particular the United Kingdom, Scandinavian countries, or France—this type of governmental intervention has become very common. The result of these supply-side processes involving different actors is a high level of institutionalization of political consumerism as well as great diversity. “Moral” market categories for political consumerism not only exist for most consumer goods but also cover a wide range of issues. For the same issue and product family, the political consumerist infrastructure is now often institutionalized in a diverse range of competing standards and certifications. This is perhaps the most defining feature of political consumerism from the supply-side perspective in NWE countries. For instance, a study on sustainability standards for coffee has observed the rise of a market for standards, with different standards competing with one another (Reinecke, Manning, & von Hagen, 2012). They differ in their origin (social movement, state, or corporate) and with regard to the specifics of certification and the exact aspects covered, but they all promise more sustainable forms of coffee production. Not only are coffee makers and coffee brands competing with one another; one also finds a competition among the different sustainability standards trying to attract coffee producers. Similarly, on the market for “ethical fashion,” one finds a diversity of initiatives—labels, certification schemes, multistakeholder programs, product lines, etc.—attesting to the ethical quality of clothes (Balsiger, 2014, 2018). Such competition can imply a race to the bottom, but it can also provide possibilities for “trading up” and thus improving the ethical quality of goods (Reinecke, Manning, & von Hagen, 2012). In some cases, state-backed labels have managed to limit diversity by setting a widely accepted standard. This seems to be the case in the organic market with the EU-backed organic certification. But even here, further differentiation is possible and takes place, for instance by adding additional criteria that go beyond what is required by the standard. Overall, this means that the moral categories themselves have become increasingly differentiated along multiple dimensions. In this context, some social movement organizations, which earlier were mostly in the business of denouncing conventional production methods and developing alternatives, have more and more come to assume the role of watchdogs evaluating the various initiatives and often questioning the actual impact of such labels (and of their multiplication) in developing countries or on the environment. For individual consumers, this development means more choice and more possibilities to express their political views, but possibly also an excess of information. Many of the actors driving the supply-side infrastructure for political consumerism are transnational in scope. This is particularly the case for social movements and corporations. As a consequence, part of the political consumerist infrastructure is also transnational and can be found across many countries. The biggest consumer brands such as H&M or IKEA are present all over the world and carry their political consumerist initiatives transnationally. Similarly, the initiatives of the biggest NGOs, such as the WWF, can be found in many different countries. Yet in spite of these elements
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 449 of a transnational political consumerist infrastructure, national historical and sociocultural contexts still strongly shape the infrastructure for political consumerism. The social movement sector and movement activity differ from one country to another. Some markets, such as retailing, are much less transnationalized than others. And government use of political consumerist instruments also varies. Unfortunately, there are no studies that try to characterize the landscape of political consumerist initiatives and infrastructures more broadly and in systematic ways, such as through cross-country and/or cross-industry comparisons—beyond the comparative data from sales of organic and fairtrade products presented in the previous section. Which movement issues are reflected in which markets, and what cross-country differences can be found? Such studies could be welcome complements to cross-country comparisons of individual- level participation.
Methodological Challenges for the Study of Political Consumerism in NWE Our review of political consumerism in NWE reveals several methodological problems. They are related in particular to the great diversity one finds on both the demand side and the supply side of political consumerism, which has not been addressed adequately in quantitative studies. Most existing quantitative studies treat political consumerists as a homogeneous group and aim first and foremost at establishing what distinguishes political consumers from the rest of the population. In the context of NWE it is currently more urgent to focus on the heterogeneity of political consumerists and the differences that exist within this group. It makes little sense to group together someone who buys an organic broccoli every once in a while with a vegan who submits her whole lifestyle to ecological principles, such as growing her own vegetables in a community garden, not using a car, or not travelling by plane, and motivating others to do so as well. These are qualitatively different forms of participation, even if the second person’s actions were strictly confined to buycotting and boycotting. Equally, given the diversification of standards, it also becomes questionable whether we should necessarily always put in the same group people who, for instance, buy fairtrade-certified products from general supermarkets with people who boycott supermarkets and buy only in specialized stores. This distinction is important, for instance, for discussions about the potential trade-off between mainstreaming and ideological conviction. Moreover, many recent studies highlight that political consumerism is not a strictly individual engagement, as people also engage in politicizing consumption in groups (Balsiger, 2014; de Moor, Marien, & Hooghe, 2017; Dubuisson-Quellier, Lamine, & Le Velly, 2011). Individual and collective political consumerism clearly constitute very different approaches to social change. Another largely unaddressed question on the diversity of political consumers is the distribution of political consumers with regard to issues—distinctions among “green,”
450 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger “red,” or “localist” political consumers, for instance. It remains unclear whether these issues overlap or whether they are associated with distinctive groups of consumers, and if so, on what dimensions they differ, and whether or not these patterns are the same in different countries. Finally, in all this, the many forms of political consumerism outside buycotts and boycotts remain overlooked. In short, there is an information gap between ‘thick,’ qualitative research that indicates the diversity of political consumerism, yet tells us little about its spread, and ‘thin,’ quantitative research that only tells us about the spread of boycotts and, occasionally, buycotts. This makes it difficult to assess whether political consumerism implies a generally deep and meaningful commitment to address societal problems through the marketplace and the arena of everyday life, or whether it hints at the spread of an increasingly superficial and tokenistic engagement through the commodification of political action. The urgency of addressing this issue is further underlined by the high degrees of supply-side persuasion for political consumption shown in this chapter, as it raises questions about the political motivations of consumers of ethical goods. For instance, consumerism as an instrument of public policies questions a clear-cut interpretation of buycotts and boycotts as forms of political participation: Aren’t sustainable consumers just following government prescriptions, similar to people who eat five vegetables and fruits a day to stay healthy? Likewise, the political meaning of political consumption is challenged by the diversification of political consumerist initiatives from the corporate side, which include initiatives that are purely marketing strategies and have little if any effect with regard to the social or environmental consequences of production. Finally, the location of political consumerism mostly within members of the middle class suggests that, to some extent, so-called political motivations seem to actually be driven by mechanisms of social distinction, and perhaps less by a desire to create social change (Carfagna et al., 2014; Schor et al., 2016). An important first step towards increasing sensitivity to diversity in survey research is to add questions about motivation, frequency, consistency, and context. This has been advocated for a while now (e.g., Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005), but has unfortunately not been followed through—possibly due to the high costs of population surveys. This is problematic because buycotts, and in particular boycotts, do not provide appropriate proxies to cover this diverse repertoire (Copeland, 2014). Surveys should also include questions about wider categories of lifestyle politics and discursive political consumerism, including changes in personal transportation, the reduction of household waste, and purposefully consuming less, or “prosumption”; and about individual, collective, and “mobilizing” forms of political consumerism (de Moor, 2017b). Some attempts have recently been made to develop more inclusive quantitative measures, like for instance in German studies by Baringhorst (2015), who included questions about numerous forms of political consumerism, and Theocharis & van Deth (2018), who propose an open-ended question to tap into emerging forms of “creative” political participation. More (comparative) research along these lines is clearly needed.
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 451 In this context, it is also necessary to come back in more detail to the inconsistencies among various surveys. As we have seen, compared to the ESS data, both the Eurobarometer and the ISSP report much lower levels of political consumerism. This is curious because they rely on very similar methodologies and have been conducted around the same time. There are various differences that offer a potential explanation, such as that the ISSP measures boycotts and buycotts with one single item. In this chapter, there is not enough space to go into all of them. The most likely explanations for the differences seem to rely on the wording of different questions. Only the ESS opens with the statement, “There are different ways of trying to improve things in [country] or help prevent things from going wrong,” before introducing a list of possible actions similar to the other surveys. This addition might be desirable as it can help respondents recall everyday types of behaviour as political. However, the positive phrasing of this statement might also increase the influence of “social desirability,” which seems to be of particular relevance here. That is, the ubiquity of political consumerism, particularly in NWE, has given rise to a new norm of how one is “supposed to consume.” Government prescriptions inciting more sustainable consumption choices are likely to favour the emergence of such a norm. In surveys with questions based on autodeclarations, this social desirability bias could lead to an overrepresentation of political consumerism, a phenomenon that studies in marketing, economy, and social psychology have long pointed at as the “value-action gap” (Devinney, Auger, & Eckhardt, 2010). Hence, while it is difficult to know exactly what the reason for these discrepancies is, it indicates that there is a need for careful consideration of exact interview methods and operationalizations, possibly through survey experiments, and at least a higher degree of standardization as even fairly small variations, particularly those pertaining to social desirability, appear to produce significant biases. This is essential, because despite the described shortcomings, population surveys remain our most important tool to gauge the spread of various forms of political consumerism. However, other methods should also be considered. For instance, a more accurate picture of political consumerism can be gained through experimental survey methods, either by simulating more realistic situations (giving information on product characteristics along several dimensions for instance) or through field experiments (e.g., Hainmueller, Hiscox, & Sequieira, 2015). Furthermore, case studies and qualitative methods like in-depth interviewing will continue to provide further insights into what political consumerism actually looks like, the context of political consumerism, the difficulties consumers face, and the internal contradictions that are likely characterizing them. This chapter has shown that, until more data becomes available, it remains useful to triangulate people’s reported behaviour in surveys with sales data. This approach still needs refinement, but it seems that such comparisons can generate additional insights into the types of political consumerism that prevail. And the approach can be expanded by taking additional data, such as on the spread of community-supported agriculture, into account.
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Conclusion: The Potential of Political Consumerism in NWE Given the current availability of data, it remains hard to determine the potential for social change of political consumerism in NWE. On the one hand, it is known that many people boycott or buycott products, but we have limited information about how consistently they do this or why. It is also known that this behaviour is reflected in a growing market share of ethical products and the expansion of standards and certifications, and thus, that this behaviour seems to have real economic consequences. On the other hand, we also know that the forms of political consumerism in NWE are many, reflecting a wide range of issues, organizational types, political convictions, and degrees of institutionalization. Case studies show clearly that there are many cases in which political consumerism can take on more serious forms than the occasional choice of fairtrade bananas over unlabeled ones. The problem is that it is not known how common more or less “serious” forms of political consumerism are. Survey data are limited, and sales data do not reveal intentions, nor do they cover important forms of political consumerism beyond mainstream labels or those that are off the market. Case studies tell us little about spread. Therefore, it is also not known whether the high levels of political consumerism reported throughout NWE represent the expansion of “serious” political commitment or a trend towards more superficial engagement. By extension, its potential for social change remains obscure. These questions also occupy normative debates about the role of political consumerism among scholars as well as activists. Some advocate political consumerism as a valuable and effective strategy. Particularly in an age in which states seem incapable of addressing some key issues like climate change, do it yourself (DIY) types of activism seem an empowering alternative (Beck, 1997; Giddens, 1991). Others regard political consumerism as superficial, tokenistic, ineffective, and, above all, as a distraction from structural problems and real action. And moreover, it may take pressure off those responsible to act, since “the ideal of a good environmental citizen and the moral obligation to make personal lifestyle changes attached to this ideal fit too well with neoliberal intentions to outsource public services to the private sphere” (MacGregor, 2006; Vihersalo, 2017, p. 3). Within diverse social movements, these seemingly opposing views can lead to symbiotic strategies that merge the advancement of direct change with more indirect, pressure-oriented strategies (e.g., de Moor, Morena, & Comby, 2017; Dubuisson-Quellier, 2015). Nonetheless, they also inspire real debates, and expectedly, they will continue to guide internal struggles and strategic decision-making in social movements as well as normative academic debates. Contrary to the current situation, we argue that these debates should be informed by strong empirical data that allow us to discriminate between related but qualitatively distinct forms of political consumerism and to determine their spread. Only this will allow us to effectively determine the meaning and potential of political consumerism in, and beyond, NWE.
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Notes 1. This chapter was written in part with support of the ESRC-funded CUSP fellowship. 2. This quote is taken from the official transcript of a TED-talk by Pam Warhust, one of the founders of Incredible Edible, which can be found at this web page: https://www.ted.com /talks/pam_warhurst_how_we_can_eat_our_landscapes/transcript. 3. See the website of Transition Towns for an overview of locations: https://transitionnetwork .org.
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454 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger Christensen, Henrik Serup. (2011). Political participation beyond the vote: How the institutional context shapes patterns of political participation in 18 Western European democracies. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press. Copeland, Lauren. (2014). Conceptualizing political consumerism: How citizenship norms differentiate boycotting from buycotting. Political Studies, 62(1), 172–186. de Moor, Joost. (2017a). The “efficacy dilemma” of climate-activism: The case of COP21. Environmental Politics. Online first. de Moor, Joost. (2016a). External efficacy and political participation revisited: The role of perceived output structures for state-and non-state-oriented action forms. Parliamentary Affairs, 69(3), 642–662. de Moor, Joost. (2016b). Practicing openness: Investigating the role of everyday decision making in the production of squatted space. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 40(2), 410–424. de Moor, Joost. (2017b). Lifestyle politics and the concept of political participation. Acta Politica, 52(2), 179–197. de Moor, Joost, Marien, Sofie, & Hooghe, Marc. (2017). Why are some lifestyle activists avoiding state-oriented politics while others are not? A case study of lifestyle politics in the Belgian environmental movement. Mobilization, 22(2), 245–264. de Moor, Joost, Morena, Edouard, & Comby, Jean-Baptiste. (2017). The ins and outs of climate movement activism at COP21. In Stefan C. Aykut, Jean Foyer, & Edouard Morena (Eds.), Globalizing the climate: COP21 and the climatization of global debates. London: Routledge. Devinney, Thomas M., Auger, Pat, & Eckhardt, Giana M. (2010). The myth of the ethical consumer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dubuisson- Quellier, Sophie. (2013a). A market mediation strategy: How social movements seek to change firms’ practices by promoting new principles of product valuation. Organization Studies, 34(5–6), 683–703. Dubuisson-Quellier, Sophie. (2013b). Ethical consumption. Winnipeg: Fernwood. Dubuisson-Quellier, Sophie. (2015). From targets to recruits: The status of consumers within the Political Consumption Movement. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 39(5), 404–412. Dubuisson- Quellier, Sophie. (Ed.). (2016). Gouverner Les Conduites. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Dubuisson-Quellier, Sophie, Lamine, Claire, & Le Velly, Ronan. (2011). Citizenship and consumption: Mobilisation in alternative food systems in France. Sociologia Ruralis, 51(3), 304–323. FIBL & IFOAM. (2016). The world of organic agriculture. Statistics and Emerging Trends 2016. http://www.organic-world.net/yearbook/yearbook-2016.html. FLO. (2011). Fair Trade by the Numbers. Key Data for 2009-11, http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/en /what-is-fairtrade/facts-and-figures. Forno, Francesca, & Graziano, Paolo R. (2014). Sustainable community movement organisations. Journal of Consumer Culture, 14(2), 139–157. Giddens, Anthony. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press. Hainmueller, Jens, Hiscox, Michael, & Sequieira, Sandra. (2015). Consumer demand for the Fair Trade label: Evidence from a multistore field experiment. Review of Economics and Statistics, 97(2), 242–256. Hopkins, Rob. (2008). The transition handbook: From oil dependency to local resilience. Devon: Green Books.
Political Consumerism in Northwestern Europe 455 Inglehart, Ronald F. (2008). Changing values among Western publics from 1970 to 2006. West European Politics, 31(1–2), 130–146. Kenis, Anneleen. (2016). Ecological citizenship and democracy: Communitarian versus agonistic perspectives. Environmental Politics, 25(6), 949–970. King, Brayden G., & Pearce, Nicholas A. (2010). The contentiousness of markets: Politics, social movements, and institutional change in markets. Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 249–267. Koos, Sebastian. (2012). What drives political consumption in Europe? A multi-level analysis on individual characteristics. Opportunity structures and globalization. Acta Sociologica, 55(1), 37–57. Kriesi, Hanspeter, Koopmans, Ruud, Duyvendak, Jan Willem, & Giugni, Marco. (1995). New social movements in Western Europe: A comparative analysis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lamine, Claire. (2005). Settling shared uncertainties: Local partnerships between producers and consumers. Sociologia Ruralis, 45(4), 324–345. Leach, Darcy K., & Haunss, Sebastian. (2009). Scenes and social movements. In Hank Johnston (Ed.), Culture, social movements, and protest (pp. 255–276). Aldershot: Ashgate. MacGregor, Sherilyn. (2006). No sustainability without justice: A feminist critique of environmental citizenship. In Andrew Dobson & Derek R. Bell (Eds.), Environmental citizenship (pp. 101–126). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Martínez, Miguel A. (2013). The squatters’ movement in Europe: A durable struggle for social autonomy in urban politics. Antipode, 45(4), 866–887. Micheletti, Michele. (2003). Political virtue and shopping: Individuals, consumerism, and collective action. New York, NY: Palgrave. Pleyers, Geoffrey. (2017). The Local Food Movement in Belgium: From prefigurative activism to social innovations. Interface, 9(1), 123–139. Portwood-Stacer, Laura. (2012). Anti-consumption as tactical resistance: Anarchists, subculture, and activist strategy. Journal of Consumer Culture, 12(1), 87–105. Raynolds, Laura T., Murray, Douglas L., & Wilkinson, John. (2007). Fair trade: The challenges of transforming globalization. London: Routledge. Reinecke, Juliane, Manning, Stephan, & von Hagen, Oliver. (2012). The emergence of a standards market: Multiplicity of sustainability standards in the global coffee industry. Organization Studies, 33(5–6), 791–814. Ritzer, George, & Jurgenson, Nathan. (2010). Production, consumption, prosumption: The nature of capitalism in the age of the digital “prosumer.” Journal of Consumer Culture, 10(1), 13–36. Sage, George H. (1999). Justice Do It! The Nike Transnational Advocacy Network: Organization, collective actions, and outcomes. Sociology of Sport Journal, 16, 206–235. Schor, Juliet B., Fitzmaurice, Connor, Carfagna, Lindsey B., Atwood-Charles, Will, & Poteat, Emilie Dubois. (2016). Paradoxes of openness and distinction in the sharing economy. Poetics, 54(1), 66–81. Seyfang, Gill, & Haxeltine, Alex. (2012). Growing grassroots innovations: Exploring the role of community-based initiatives in governing sustainable energy transitions. Environment and Planning C, 30, 381–400. Seyfang, Gill, Park, Jung Jin, & Smith, Adrian. (2013). A thousand flowers blooming? An examination of community energy in the UK. Energy Policy, 61, 977–989. Stolle, Dietlind, Hooghe, Marc, & Micheletti, Michele. (2005). Politics in the supermarket: Political consumerism as a form of political participation. International Political Science Review, 26(3), 245–269.
456 Joost de Moor and Philip Balsiger Stolle, Dietlind, & Micheletti, Michele. (2013). Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stolle, Dietlind, Micheletti, Michele, & Crépault, Jean- François. (2013). Mapping political consumerism in Western democracies. In Dietlind Stolle, Michele Micheletti (Eds.), Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action (pp. 95–134). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sunstein, Cass R. (2015). Behavioral economics, consumption and environmental protection. In Lucia A. Reisch & John Thorgesen (Eds.), Handbook of research on sustainable consumption (pp. 313–327). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Theocharis, Yannis, & van Deth, Jan W. (2018). The continuous expansion of citizen participation: A new taxonomy. European Political Science Review, 10(1), 139–163. Thörn, Håkan. (2006). Anti-apartheid and the emergence of a global civil society. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tilly, Charles. (2010). Regimes and repertoires. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Vihersalo, Mirja. (2017). Climate citizenship in the European Union: Environmental citizenship as an analytical concept. Environmental Politics, 26(2), 343–360. Volz, Peter, Weckenbrock, Philipp, Cressot, Nicolas, & Parot, Jocelyn. (2016). Overview of community supported agriculture in Europe. https://urgenci.net/wp-content /uploads/2 016/0 5/O verview-of-C ommunity-Supported-Agriculture-i n-Europe.pdf, accessed August 2, 2017. Walker, Edward T. (2012). Social movements, organizations, and fields: A decade of theoretical integration. Contemporary Sociology, 41(5), 576–587. Yildiz, Özgür, Rommel, Jens, Debor, Sarah, Holstenkamp, Lars, Mey, Franziska, Müller, Jakob R., Radtke, Jörg, & Rognli, Judith. (2015). Renewable energy cooperatives as gatekeepers or facilitators? Recent developments in Germany and a multidisciplinary research agenda. Energy Research and Social Science, 6, 59–73.
Chapter 22
P olitical C onsume ri sm in Sou thern E u rope Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno
In scholarly debates on political consumerism, it is often underlined that market-based political actions are less diffuse in Southern Europe (SE) than in Northwestern Europe (NWE). The explanatory factors range from differences in population income distribution to authoritarian pasts and religious legacies (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015). To illuminate this debate, we focus on the case of four countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece) in SE to investigate the range of wider ethical and political uses of the market. These include not only classic forms of political consumerism (e.g., negative political consumerism or boycotts and positive political consumerism or buycotts) but also communitarian forms of solidarity economy. The aim of this chapter is to provide a more detailed comparative historical context of the evolution of the phenomenon in SE. The chapter reflects on the characteristics of the actors promoting political consumerism as well as referring to political, economic, and cultural opportunity structures concerning the degree of state openness; social class structures; commodity accessibility; and the values and interests of citizens involved in market-based actions. Research on SE highlights how social movement organizations involved in market-based practices show a rather different focus when compared with its NWE counterparts, being more rooted in local communities and concerned with generating collective rather than individualistic practices of consumer responsibility (Forno, 2015; Graziano & Forno, 2012). This chapter takes off with a discussion of available survey data on political consumerism and sketches key differences among diverse countries. Following this, it outlines the evolution of the phenomenon before and after the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Then it contextualizes market-based action in each single SE country, exploring more classic forms of political consumerism—such as fair trade—as well as more recent ones. The conclusion provides a reflection on the limits of traditional methods utilized to study market-based actions when it comes to measuring communitarian forms, discussing what the observed developments imply for the study of political consumerism.
458 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno
Survey Data on Political Consumerism in Southern Europe Exploring survey reports to locate active engagement in boycotting and buycotting, Southern European countries appear at the bottom of the list. According to the European Social Survey, at the turn of the twenty-first century, there was a sharp increase both in boycotting and especially purposive buying (buycotting) in most NWE countries. Yet, in SE, the recorded rate of such activities remained well below the European average (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015; see Chapter 21). Within the twenty-one countries included in the first wave of the European Social Survey (2002/2003), Spain was seventh to last, while Italy and Greece were found respectively at fourth and fifth to last and Portugal came last (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015, p. 97). Moreover, boycotting appeared to be more common than buycotting in two cases (Greece and Italy). These cases are unique in this regard as they are the only ones within Europe and the United States where the percentage of boycotters exceeds the one pertaining to buycotters (Figure 22.1). Going back and forth in time, the situation does not change, even taking into consideration other survey rounds and results from different agencies and combining the European Social Survey with data from the World Values Survey (the latter being particularly useful to trace trends about boycotts for years preceding the year 2000). The available data confirm a lower rate of political consumerism in SE through the decades, while Greece and Italy appear to be the most boycott-prone (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015, p. 50). Yet, beyond this statistical context, variations of political consumerism in
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Figure 22.1 Spread of political consumerism in Southern Europe. Source: Authors’ own elaboration based on European Social Survey 2002–2003.
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 459 SE have emerged before or since the global financial crisis, making this contribution a necessary examination of the qualitative differences among different European geographies of political consumerism. Capturing differences among diverse countries also must take into account the internal organization of actors promoting political consumerism as well as their ideological principles. While accepting that the quantitative absence of high activity of political consumerism in Southern European countries is undeniable, we also note the qualitative differences of this phenomenon in the region where countries “demonstrate a different adaptation of the cause, although most also historically engaged with fair trade in the 1980s” (Lekakis, 2013, p. 12). For example, this is well represented by the growth and spread of certain organizations such as Slow Food in Italy and Responsible Consumption Co-operatives in Spain alongside the alternative economic practices that have arisen since the financial crisis (Conill et al., 2012). What we argue is that in this geographic context political consumerism tends to exhibit a social and communitarian rather than an economic and individual approach, paying more emphasis on collective action rather than on promoting more individualized forms of political consumerism. In Southern Europe, the act of shopping moves beyond being a form of individual responsibility-taking to become a tool to construct collective, citizenship-driven alternative styles of provisioning (see Forno’s chapter in this volume) based on a more locally-based, collective approach to buycotting which aim to ultimately search for a comprehensive strategy for social change which many sees in the implementation of a “solidarity economy model.” Gaining importance during the economic crisis in Latin America in the 1990s, the solidarity economy idea started to be adopted as a framework in Southern Europe by several social movement organizations from 2008 onwards, boosting largely by the crisis, which especially hit those countries. It is precisely in this period that several authors started to observe how political consumerism, which was increasingly utilized by a variegated range of actors mainly acting at the global level, to be mainly utilized by several grassroots actors at the local level (D’Alisa et al., 2015; Kousis, 2017). This chapter further illuminates political consumerism in Southern Europe by illustrating how it exists alongside these practices in each of the four countries (Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece).
Political Consumerism and Global Political Developments As in all Western countries, in SE political consumerism recorded an increase in the wake of the global justice movement of the late 1990s. With the so-called Battle of Seattle (the demonstration against the World Trade Organization in 1999 that took place in the city of Seattle), the market became a privileged arena for political activism (della Porta, Peterson & Reiter, 2006; Micheletti, 2003). During this period, political consumerism began to
460 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno extend to an increasingly large number of people in countries where there had not been this tradition (see Chapter 4). Moreover, alongside large-scale boycotts and buycotts (at that time especially related to fairtrade and organic/eco products), during these years political consumerism started to enter the repertoire of action of several local grassroots initiatives that although are still rather marginal in these years, would have acquired much more relevance during the years of the financial crisis. Examples of this development include the increase in the number of local organic food schemes (such as alternative food networks), community renewable energy initiatives, ecohousing, and time banks. As it will also be argued below, if the spread of such initiatives has been taking place in all Western countries (Schor, 2014), in Southern Europe such experiences seem to have been significantly forwarded by the financial crisis (D’Alisa et al., 2015; Kousis, 2017). As in Latin America, the crisis, while steadily causing rising hardship among large sections of low-and middle-income groups who fall into the ranks of the “new poor” (Petmesidou & Guillén, 2015), also represented the opening up of windows of opportunity for collective action and protest. With regards to transformations in the economy and the marketplace, a number of studies have underlined a strong connection between the crisis and the spearheading of grassroots, bottom-up participatory initiatives promoting an alternative economy via political consumerism (Alonso et al., 2015; D’Alisa et al., 2015; Kousis, 2017; Lekakis, 2017). Common traits of what have been called “alternative economic practices” (Castells et al., 2012), sustainable community movement organizations (Forno & Graziano, 2014), or initiatives of critical resilience (Kousis & Paschou, 2017) refer to community-based, empowerment-seeking, and common goal- oriented practices that “simultaneously foster and facilitate a new form of political engagement/participation aimed to strengthen open, democratic forms of governance” (Kousis & Paschou, 2017, p. 142). Austerity measures introduced in SE countries negatively have affected household consumption. In Greece, the first austerity measures (May 2010) commenced a series of cuts on employment, wages, and social spending.1 A second round (February 2012) dictated cuts in the wages of both public-and private-sector workers. The ensuing deepening recession is exhibited in annual average unemployment rates. Despite a popular referendum against austerity, a third round of policies followed (August 2015).2 The financial crisis echoed gravely across all SE countries. In Portugal, the three-year Economic Adjustment Programme (May 2011) also stipulated wholesale reforms and cuts in public spending (although less than in Greece), especially in the two traditional welfare policy fields: pensions and health. Combined with austerity policies, the crisis has had various measurable consequences on the living conditions of Portuguese people. The fall in the median wage between 2009 and 2013 was 14 percent, while income inequality and poverty risk levels have increased. In 2010, the Spanish government announced austerity measures that have introduced public-sector and social spending cuts, wage reductions, pension payment freezes, abolition of childbirth allowances, and a rise in value added tax (VAT). In 2012, the Spanish government also approved an austerity package with greater cuts in government spending, including a freeze in public-sector salaries. The annual average unemployment rates have been routinely
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 461 above 20 percent since 2011.3 Similar measures in Italy affected the government’s programmes: revenue increases, spending cuts, rationalization of the state apparatus, and liberalization of protected sectors. A worrying result of austerity measures in SE countries is the rate of unemployment among young people (ages fifteen through twenty-four) in the European Union (EU), which were twice as high as the overall unemployment rates, while half of those young people employed were on temporary contracts (Norman et al., 2015). In 2014, over 50 percent of young people in Greece and Italy had been without work for over a year, while the number was approximately 40 percent for Spain (Norman et al., 2015) and slightly lower for Portugal.4 What has the financial crisis implied for the development of political consumerism? Whereas political consumerism has been commonly interpreted as a form of postmaterialism and a result of increasing wealth, a number of recent empirical studies have highlighted that this form of action needs to be reconsidered in the context of the Great Recession following the financial crisis of 2007–2008 (Guidi & Andretta, 2015). Alternative economic practices fuelled by the crisis tend in fact to exhibit traits such as a strong critique of materialism and standard consumerism; the search for alternatives to mass production; an interest in a worldwide equal distribution of wealth and life opportunity; and a direct relationship between producers and consumers and mutual solidarity (Forno & Graziano, 2014). By combining political consumerism and social movement theories, Forno and Graziano (2014) have observed that in some grassroots experiences the act of shopping is not promoted individually but socialised among groups of people. In other words, within Sustainable Community Movement Organizations (SCMOs), political consumerism is also a means and not an end in itself, thus representing a tool through which grassroots groups build, construct, and reinforce solidarity ties in order to foster collaboration among small-scale actors starting from the local level. Examples of such phenomena include solidarity-based exchanges and networks, new consumer-producer co-operatives, barter groups, urban gardening, time banks, local savings groups, and urban squatting. In such experiences, political consumerism represents a means for recruiting and mobilising individuals and organizations to enact collective action (Dubuisson-Quellier et al., 2011). Furthermore, there is a focus on empowerment through participation in networks. Empowerment here involves resilience, solidarity, social justice, strong community ties, and environmental sustainability. The following section explores political consumerism at the national level in four countries.
Political Consumerism in Spain According to survey results, political consumerism appears more diffused in Spain than in its SE counterparts. Also, fair trade has a relatively longer history in the country, with Spain having the first fairtrade organization and a stronghold over the area alongside Italy. The first fairtrade organization was established in the Basque country (1986)
462 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno through the nongovernmental organization (NGO) Los Traperos de Emaús and in Andalusia with the co-op Sandino.5 Since the 1990s, fair trade has spread across the country with the involvement of organizations such as Equimercado, Intermón Oxfam, Alternativa 3, and IDEAS.6 In 1995, the solidarity trade network (Red de Economía Alternativa y Solidaria) of twenty-eight import and trade associations formed. A year later, the National Coordinating Association for fairtrade organizations was founded. According to Intermón Oxfam, a member of Oxfam International since 1997 and the largest fairtrade importer in the country, sales have been steadily increasing in Spain (Figure 22.2). Intermón Oxfam currently runs over thirty fairtrade shops and has been crucial in the introduction of fair trade in supermarkets in Spain.7 Alternativa 3 is a fairtrade co-operative which that trades in coffee (almost half of its sales) and that introduced the fairtrade mark in Spain.8 The organization IDEAS is a nonprofit co-operative committed to fair trade, a solidarity economy, and sustainable consumption. The operations of organizations, as well as smaller fairtrade initiatives and importers, have resulted in Spain being the strongest among its SE counterparts in terms of public trust in fair trade (Novo Vásquez, 2014).9 Studies by Ramón Llopis-Goig (2007, 2009, 2011) have explored fair trade vis-à-vis political consumerism with a specific focus on globalization and cosmopolitanism. A survey of approximately 2,500 respondents in 2001 illustrated that 35.9 percent of the Spanish population are aware of fair trade as a consumer choice, and it suggested that those that engage in political consumerism are characterised by a stronger “global cognitive orientation” (Llopis- Goig, 2007). Since the early 2000s, the percentage of fairtrade awareness and purchases among citizens in Spain has varied between 36 percent to 50 percent and 26 percent to 38 percent respectively (Llopis-Goig, 2009). Yet, the study of fair trade (Llopis-Goig, 2009) or political consumerism in general (Novo Vasquez, 2014) has not been prominent in the country. 35 30
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Figure 22.2 Growth of fairtrade sales in Spain 2000–2014 (in million euros). Source: El Comercio Justo en España, 2012. Alianzas en movimiento. http://comerciojusto.org/el -consumo-de-comercio-justo-crecio-un-8-en -espana-hasta-alcanzar-los-332-millones-de-euros/
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 463 Moreover, political consumerism in Spain has also been manifesting through Responsible Consumption Co-operatives (RCCs). These urban neighbourhood communities organise collective purchase of products according to ethical criteria; these are typically “1) a preference for small, local producers; 2) the avoidance of intermediaries, to ensure a direct relationship with the producer; and 3) the purchase of organic products made under fair labor conditions” (Papaoikonomou & Alarcón, 2017, p. 43). Emerging in the 1980s, such groups have mushroomed across the country since the 2000s. In her individual and collaborative work, Eleni Papaoikonomou has studied RCCs in Catalonia (Cooperatives de Consum Responsible) where participants are mostly middle-class educated citizens. Such work brings forward an argument for “consumer empowerment not in relation to individual consumption choices, but in relation to the construction of alternative modes of social organization around consumption” (Papaoikonomou & Alarcón, 2017, p. 40) and the construction of RCCs as spaces of resistance where “participants test tactics of resistance against ruling social force relations” (Papaoikonomou & Alarcón, 2017, pp. 13–14). As mentioned before, RCCs are not a form of lifestyle political consumerism but rather a collective approach to buycotting where participants “try to shape a relationship with the producers that, to their understanding, is empowering for both parties because it is based on transparency, solidarity, and negotiation” (Papaoikonomou & Alarcón, 2017, p. 14). Through their participation in RCCs, citizens appear to be aiming towards not only individual and collective empowerment but also broader sociopolitical change, thus relating ideologically to the same aims as those of members in Italian solidarity purchasing groups (SPGs) (see relevant section in this chapter). The RCCs challenge political consumerism because they mobilise communities rather than citizens who reach collective decisions regarding their purchases in a directly democratic way. Yet they also assert political consumerism as its forms of buycotting, boycotting and voluntary simplicity exist within RCCs. Furthermore, in her study of how participants understand and apply sustainability in their lives, Papaoikonomou (2013) identifies a general tendency to boycott corporations such as Coca- Cola, McDonald’s, and Nestlé and to buycott products based on green consumerism and sustainability as well as local commerce and direct trade. Papaoikonomou (2013) refers to forms of voluntary simplicity as “ethically simplifying consumption decisions” and offers examples ranging from in-house solutions (recycle, repair, reuse, and reduce) to external solutions (exchange networks and secondhand purchases). Members of RCCs make sense of consumer co-operatives as life alternatives through the construction of shared spaces, practices, and discourses as well as embodied resistance to the capitalist marketplace. Even fair trade is criticised for being “condescending to Third World countries and offers multinationals like Starbucks the opportunity to ‘greenwash’ ” (Papaoikonomou & Alarcón, 2017, p. 50). Instead, the focus of RCCs is on both sustainability and sociopolitical macrostructures, suggesting an ecological and democratic ethos that challenges neoliberal capitalism and the effects of its crisis. Alternative consumer practices appear to be paving the way for citizens who are in pursuit of a different mode of social and political organization.
464 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno As already mentioned, in the Spanish case the financial crisis has “fuelled concern about sustainable practices” (Alonso et al., 2015) and opened up “the possibility of a convergence between cultural transformation and economic survival” (Conill et al., 2012, p. 211). Another study of Catalonia analysed the networks, organizations, and individuals that engage in alternative economy practices as well as the extent to which these practices became more widespread because of the financial crisis (Conill et al., 2012). The authors found that virtually every respondent of their survey, which featured a representative sample of the population of Barcelona, had engaged in some form of alternative economic practices in various areas of activity, from housing and education to finance, the arts, and communications.10 At the level of production, those activities included agro-ecological farming and urban gardening, co-operatives and solidarity economy networks, exchange networks, time banks, and free stores. At the level of consumption, cases included lifestyle politics such as freeganism,11 as well as forms of co- operative organization concerning food or cultural consumption. At the intersection of production and consumption, there are producer-consumer co-operatives based “on a stable commitment between producers and consumers bound by mutual solidarity” (Conill et al., 2012, p. 216). Geographically, the rapid expansion of consumer co- operatives in Catalonia is noted,12 while there is a strong presence of producer-consumer networks in Andalucia (Conill et al., 2012). Such grassroots practices that aim to reconfigure economic activity and increase social bonds and solidarity have emerged through the Indignados movement as a direct challenge to the debt-driven capitalism and a demonstration of direct democracy in action as the context of everyday life. Alternative economic practices that have emerged out of collective mobilizations as the backdrop of financial capitalism in crisis also exemplify alternative forms of political consumerism that reconfigure economic and consumer practices not based on individual choice but on collective deliberation.
Political Consumerism in Italy Similar to the Spanish case, although with rather low levels of political consumerism as measured with survey reports, Italy is also home to a quite different array of initiatives that range from fairtrade organizations to several more informal grassroots bottom-up participatory initiatives promoting an alternative economy via political consumerism. In Italy, the first fairtrade experience dates back to 1976 with the constitution of the Sir John di Morbegno co-operative (Saroldi, 2001). However, it is only lately that the number of fairtrade shops and organizations has started to grow. The increase of fair trade can be dated to 1988 with the foundation of Ctm altromercato, in the northern region of Trentino Alto Adige, in the province of Bolzano, which soon became one of the largest fairtrade importing organizations worldwide (Krier, 2008). Since the foundation of Ctm, the fairtrade movement has grown considerably by diversifying its activities and initiatives. Today, besides Ctm, the Italian fairtrade sector is composed of several other importing organizations; among the most relevant are Altra Qualità, Commercio
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 465 Alternativo, LiberoMondo, Ravinala, Equomercato (Barbetta, 2006). Most of these organizations are co-operatives, importing both handicraft and food products, involved in wholesaling and sometimes running their own worldshops. Fairtrade sales increased substantially over the 1990s and the early 2000s, and so has the number of specialized fairtrade retailers (worldshops) which grew exponentially, passing from 91 in 1993 to 273 in 1998 to 458 in 2004 (Musso, 2004; Rinaldi, 2000), reaching 575 units in 2007 (Krier, 2008). Though unevenly spread on the Italian territory (with a higher concentration in the northern and the centre regions of the country), worldshops cover all national territory. In 1992, the National Worldshops Association (Botteghe del Mondo) was established with the aim to provide a forum for coordination and political representation, usually made up of small associations or co-operatives. In 1999 a national fairtrade forum was also established, which in 2003 has given itself the form of an association called AGICES—Associazione Generale Italiana del Commercio Equo e Solidale (Italian General Assembly of Fair and Solidarity Trade), more recently renamed as “Equo Garantito.” In 2015, the 82 fairtrade organizations that are members of Equo Garantito were running almost 250 worldshops across Italy. Since the mid-1990s, fairtrade products have been sold at mainstream supermarkets (Ceccarini, 2008). The opening up of some organizations within the fairtrade movement to large-scale retail stores was, however, not without discussion and preoccupation. On the one hand, some organizations considered the entry in the conventional market as a way to enlarge fairtrade sales and to reach a large number of consumers. On the other hand, some organizations feared that large-scale retailers would start to go directly to producers, eliminating the intermediary role of fairtrade organizations and thus further weakening the movement’s bargaining power and political capacity to exert influence on policy-making. According to data provided by the General Italian Assembly of Fair Trade, since the financial crisis the number of shops and volunteers, as well as fairtrade products sold, has decreased (Figure 22.3). This trend is, however, noted within the historically present designated fairtrade shops, all of which were typically small businesses. At the backdrop of this decline, however, numbers of sales of fairtrade products in mainstream shopping spaces, such as supermarkets, have increased. If the crisis has decreased sales of fairtrade goods within these historical non-mainstream spaces, the Italian fairtrade organizations have however worked as incubators for other collective experiences of political consumerism (Ceccarini, 2008; Forno & Graziano, 2016; Leonini & Sassatelli, 2008). Especially since the mid-1990s, Italy has also seen the spread of many other initiatives and groups promoting political consumerism as a way to foster social change. A rather relevant phenomenon, especially because of its geographical diffusion, are SPGs. The SPGs are mutual systems of provisioning, usually set up by groups of people who cooperate to buy food and other commonly used goods directly from producers at prices that are equitable for both parties. Even though the first SPG in Italy appeared during the mid-1990s, they have become increasingly common during the following decade when such initiatives spread to all of the Italian regions. According to the data provided by their national network, the number of self-registered SPGs has risen from 153 in 2004, to 394 in 2008, to 518 in 2009, to 1,024 in 2016 (Forno et al., 2015). Research has
466 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno Sales of fairtrade goods in Italy 2007–2014 80
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Figure 22.3 Sales of fairtrade goods in Italy 2007–2014. Source: Authors’ own elaboration based on AGICES—Equo Garantito 2016.
highlighted that SPGs are not simply a “new type of consumer organization,” but rather an innovative form of political participation in a wider context of high levels of distrust in traditional channels of participation, such as that in political parties (Carrera, 2009; Graziano & Forno, 2012). Although their overall economic impact seems to be limited, they play important societal, relational, and political roles as spaces of apprenticeship for a new type of consumer citizenship (Forno et al., 2015; Grasseni, 2013). In other words, through these groups, people not only satisfy “liberal guilt” needs by shopping ethically. They actually join to try to make a difference to environmental and social justice issues. Another relevant initiative is the Bilanci di giustizia (Balances of Justice), a campaign launched in 1994 by the Beati Costruttori di Pace (Blessed Builders of Peace), a religious group that proposes alternative lifestyles. The campaign, while restricted to only a few hundred families, paid quite an important role in diffusing critical consumption in all forms and variants as a way to achieve social justice. In particular, the balancers (in Italian, bilancisti) discuss together how it is possible to change consumption practices adopting “lighter” lifestyles by reflecting collectively on their monthly budgets. In this sense, balancers could be considered the Italian variant of what has become known internationally as downshifters, who are people who adopt long-term voluntary simplicity in their life by accepting less money through fewer hours worked in order to have time for the important things in life and reducing consumption in order to limit their ecological footprint (De Vita & Vittori, 2015). Italy is also the home of the Slow Food Movement. Founded in 1989, Slow Food is today a global organization aiming on the one hand to contrast the rise of fast life and fast food and on the other to prevent the disappearance of local food traditions supporting small local farmers. Over the years, Slow Food has managed to grow into a global movement
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 467 involving millions of people in over 160 countries. It has now become an important international player working on issues such as the patrimonial dimension of food, access to natural resources, and environmental protection (Sassatelli & Davolio, 2010). The increase of the fairtrade movement observed during the 1990s, as well as the spread of other initiatives aiming to promote alternative ways of consuming, trading, and spending, has often been connected to the rise of the Global Justice Movement (GJM). In this regard, Bosi and Zamponi (2015) talk about a spillover effect (Mayer & Wittier, 1994) between the GJM and the more recent social movement landscape in Italy with the transmission of a broad set of practices, referring in particular to practices of market-based activism. It is during the GJM cycle of protest that the increase of the demand of “fair” products helped to strengthen and consolidate some organizations, which allowed a certain level of stability over time in debates and practices related to political consumerism, and this even at the time when the no/new global mobilization lost intensity and newsworthiness. The financial crisis and the ensuing austerity policies seem once more to have further fuelled the growth of innovative consumerist practices. If fair trade has observed a partial downturn, more communitarian and mutualistic experiences have continued to grow (Guidi & Andretta, 2015). Beyond promoting and practicing solidarity market exchanges, a common trait of such initiatives appears to be their use of market-based action that goes beyond boycotting and buycotting, with a focus on the creation of alternatives, articulating economic concerns with calls for alternative ways of living (Asara, 2017).
Political Consumerism in Portugal According to European surveys, Portugal is at the bottom of the list concerning both boycott and buycott, which might in part also explain the limited number of studies that directly address political consumerism in this country. Compared to Spain and Italy, fair trade in Portugal is a much more recent phenomenon. In 1999, a worldshop (Loja de Comercio Justo) was the first fairtrade organization to open in northern Portugal in the town of Amarante. Soon after, fair trade increased relatively fast. Between 1999 and 2004, twenty-three worldshops opened, some of them strongly building on the Italian experience and in close cooperation with Ctm altromercato (Krier, 2008). In 2005, during the 2nd Festa Nacional de Comercio Justo, a national fairtrade fair, Portugal’s first fairtrade importing organization (Equação, Cooperativa de Comércio Justo) was officially presented to the public. Two years later, the first Portuguese forum on fair trade was held, jointly organized by three Portuguese orga nizations (CIDAC, Cores do Globo, and Reviravolta). The event gathered over 2,000 people who took part in the discussion rounds and events marking this forum. Over the last decade, Portugal has seen more worldshops opening, although some of them closed soon afterwards. At the end of the 2007, there were only ten worldshops still operating (Krier, 2008). Currently, fair trade in Portugal is described as residual
468 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno with only eight worldshops.13 The commercial aspect seems not to play a very important role in the Portuguese fairtrade sector. Over 80 percent of fairtrade sales take place at worldshops operated by Equacao’s member organizations, as well as a few more local fairtrade organizations (Krier, 2008). There are some products for sale in a very limited number of supermarkets, such as the Spanish El Corte Ingles or the German Lidl. At Lidl, these products have been sold since 2013, but the offer is limited to a few kinds of chocolates, teas, and sugar. A survey among 300 worldshop consumers in four Portuguese cities (Amarante, Braga, Porto, and Lisbon) conducted between 2009 and 2012 revealed that Portuguese fairtrade consumers, similar with NWE countries, are predominantly women, single, middle-aged (aged between thirty-one and forty-five years old), highly educated, professionals, and residents of urban areas (Lima Coelho, 2015). The delay and weakness of the Portuguese fairtrade movement, as well as of political consumerism in general, is often connected with the recent authoritarian legacy of the country, which has for a long time limited consumption practices. The deposition of the dictatorship in 1974 brought about significant changes in the structure of the country, ensuring citizens a set of social rights in terms of labour law, healthcare, and access to education. Though amongst the poorest countries in Western Europe, in a few decades Portugal has faced all-round development in all spheres of life. The entrance into the European Community in 1986 and the progressive opening of Portuguese society to the international agenda has also enhanced the development of new patterns of consumption and different lifestyles (Figueiredo et al., 2001; Ribeiro, 2011). When the financial crisis hit Europe, the most affected countries were those with a previously weaker economy (Berend, 2017), such as Portugal. Starting from an already unfavourable situation, the crisis had a dramatic effect on the living conditions and disposable incomes of Portuguese people, a situation that clearly connects with the weakening of a still relatively young and not yet consolidated fairtrade movement. Sales decreased, and fairtrade organizations did not have sufficient resources to maintain their economic activities and employees. The closure of worldshops, however, did not mean that political consumerism did not continue to spread. On the contrary, similar to what happened in all other SE countries, Portugal has observed the rise of new alternative projects such as self-organized cultural centres, urban gardening groups, and solidarity-based exchange networks, which shared with fair trade a strong critique of materialism and standard consumerism. A recent study conducted by Britta Baumgarten (2017) on Rede Convergir, a hub website that lists Portuguese sustainable projects and their events with the aim to promote reflection and awareness on the role of every human being in stimulating a critical, constructive, active, and emancipated society, found a growing number of solidarity-based initiatives in Portugal over the last decade. Although such initiatives seem not all primarily motivated by ideas of political activism, their search for alternative ways of living appears to be inspired by and embodying a critique of the current dominant ways of production and consumption (Forno & Graziano, 2014). As in the other SE countries, also in Portugal the increasing attention on sustainable and environmentally friendly ways of living strongly connects with a new attention for
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 469 food production, distribution, and consumption. Several Portuguese projects, which have arisen over the last years, for example, aim to reduce the distance between producers and consumers trying on the one side to support small farmers in rural areas and on the other to look for alternative ways of coping with rising prices of “good” food. Projects related to food range from small farms to ecovillages. Such and further initiatives all relate to the rise of the solidarity economy in SE. The increasing attention for the “ethics behind food,” and therefore for issues of food production, distribution, and consumption, is also evident in the growing number of vegetarian and vegan restaurants and shops in the Portuguese main cities like Lisbon and Porto. In addition, there it seems also to be a growing convergence between fairtrade organizations and other social movement groups, such as environmental organizations and co-operatives involved in the production of organic “local” products. In fact, in some of the Portuguese worldshops there are, alongside certified fairtrade products, increasing ranges of fresh and locally produced products. Here again it seems that the economic crisis has somehow revived the old motto, “think global, act local.”
Political Consumerism in Greece In the Greek context, there is also limited scholarship regarding political consumerism, perhaps due to the lack of formal organizational structures in the country. For instance, Fair Trade Hellas was constituted in 2004 as an NGO in collaboration with the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office, while it is also a member of the Italian fairtrade co-operative Ctm Altromercato and the Hellenic Platform for Development.14 Fair Trade Hellas ran a fairtrade shop in central Athens between 2006 and 2016 until it transformed into an e-shop. Highlighting the importance of fair trade for sustainable development, Titikidou & Delistavrou (2007, p. 6) suggest that “in comparison to other European countries the Fair Trade market in Greece is still far less developed” and that the priority is to increase awareness of the cause. Yet, with the financial crisis, there is a broader turn to resilience through the organization of consumer practices made evident by the mushrooming of solidarity-based networks. As a backlash to austerity policies, the rise of a solidarity economy in Greece presents a strong case of how grassroots structures were reorganised to address a series of immediate needs and to revive collective forms of political consumerism. Research on grassroots economics, alternative uses of the market, and a moneyless economy enrich forms of political consumerism. First, forms of political consumerism oriented towards solidarity and resilience had already existed before the crisis. The case of the urban area of Athens and especially its neighbourhood of Exarcheia is paradigmatic. The likelihood of citizens in urban areas in Greece to engage in political consumerism has been noted (Ferrer-Fons & Fraile, 2013). Especially in Exarcheia, an anthropological study found that their “informants’
470 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno commitment to taking responsibility, expressing solidarity, and exercising autonomy translated in various forms of consumer-oriented activism” (Chatzidakis, MacLaren, & Bradshaw, 2012, p. 510). Yet, the crisis has been stretching the geographic boundaries of political consumerism within the country. As Vathakou (2015, p. 169) points out, “citizens’ initiatives appeared not only in major cities, such as Athens and Thessaloniki but also in towns, such as Alexandroupolis in the north, and Sparta, in southern Greece.” This has been paradigmatic of the turn towards a solidarity economy and resilience under austerity. Across the country, citizen-driven solidarity initiatives flourished since the financial crisis (Kantzara, 2014; Petropoulou, 2013; Rakopoulos, 2013, 2014; Sotiropoulou, 2012; Vathakou, 2015). Under austerity, Greek charters of international NGOs, as well as the Greek Orthodox Church and various NGOs financed by large not-for-profit foundations, embarked to ameliorate the effects of the crisis. Alongside these, exchange and distribution networks appeared across the country, seeking alternative routes to access goods and services. These include alternative currencies, time banks (voluntary networks where participants offer each other time in exchange for support and services), and direct exchange (sales occurring directly between producers and consumers without the involvement of intermediaries or middlemen). An example of alternative currencies is TEM (an acronym for the Greek “Local Alternative Unit”) in Magnesia in Thessaly; and the exchange and solidarity networks that focus on equality and equity, open process, and transparency as well as participation and solidarity.15 Sotiropoulos and Bourikos contrast thirty-five formal NGOs and informal social solidarity organizations in the greater Athens area, and they find that among the key differences between these initiatives are a general distrust of the state and business enterprises by informal organizations as opposed to a general acceptance and willingness to cooperate with these by formal organizations. This suggests scepticism towards formal organizations by informal ones, who adopt “a more critical and more participatory character, as beneficiaries of informal networks of social solidarity are also participants in the informal networks rather than passive receivers of goods and services” (Sotiropoulos & Bourikos, 2014, p. 49). Despite the contributions of such informal organizations, however, the authors identify risks such as their close, ideologically driven association with a political party and the lack of coordination that could help to program and strategize their activities (Sotiropoulos & Bourikos, 2014). Despite such tensions, the crisis has spearheaded various forms of political consumerism. Stronger indicators, such as the rise of the solidarity economy, challenge the low rankings of political consumerism in survey data. Research focuses explicitly on informal citizen networks as collective responses to the crisis. Irene Sotiropoulou (2012) examines exchange networks and parallel currencies across the country in an extensive questioning of the emerging landscape of such critical resilience. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and a series of national case studies, Sotiropoulou unravels the growing landscape of alternative economic initiatives at the grassroots level in three categories (parallel currencies/time banks,16 exchange/barter networks, and free bazaars/networks). The study offers a wealth of data, suggesting for
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 471 example that participants join such schemes, primarily for ideological reasons related to a renegotiation of their values or interest in different economic structures, and to a lesser extent the satisfaction of personal, family, or friendship needs or environmental concerns. For Sotiropoulou, “people participate in the schemes, because they find them accessible and manageable and more appropriate to their economic and social needs” (Sotiropoulou, 2012, p. 298). Similarly, Petropoulou develops an understanding of alternative networks of collectives “as part of the broader concept of social networks and solidarity economy as part of the broader concept of social economy” (2013, p. 63). The social economy presents possibilities for understanding consumption alongside production and thus fostering community cohesion. Among social economy initiatives, Petropoulou counts organizations of mutual aid, co-operatives, and social clubs but suggests that it is a much broader term that can contain state-or charity-funded actions or organizations. The solidarity economy, for her, “refers more to networks of collectives that operate in terms of participatory democracy and regardless of party subsidies and global economic, governmental or private organizations” (Petropoulou, 2013, p. 66). Among such initiatives, which the author classifies as “creative resistance,” those that are directly relevant to political consumerism are alternative/solidarity trade, self-organised groceries, and co-operatives, as well as time banks, exchange networks, and producer- consumer links. Petropoulou draws from social movement theory to outline the features of these solidarity economy initiatives (2013, pp. 74–75), suggesting however that “the new feature of these movements is that they want to live the present and dream of the future through their daily actions and not by being aligned with some ideology” (Petropoulou, 2013, p. 82). Ethnographic research with an antimiddlemen exchange network in Athens by Rakopoulos (2013, 2014) illustrates the inner workings of the solidarity economy. He analyses the practicalities and ideological underpinnings of a specific neighbourhood collective, suggesting that localised activities are “linked together by the fact of mutual concern and stabilised by state law tilted not in the direction of absolute property rights and private freedoms, but rather towards recognition of the human propensity for solidarity” (Rakopoulos, 2013, p. 106). This situated study of approximately thirty-five activists allows for an informed insight into the composition, organization, and aspirations of a case of solidarity economy. One finds out, for example, that not all network participants have a history of left-wing activism, that activists are organised in “production” (dealing with practical matters such as the planning of food distribution at the public neighbourhood park every second Sunday), and “propaganda” (dealing with dissemination of information to the public) and that they aspire to “both deepening (becoming cooperatives) and spreading their work (collaborating with similar groups at a national level)” (Rakopoulos, 2014, p. 200). Importantly, also, the collective invites the farmers that participate in direct distribution to declare that they are not involved in far-right politics formally or informally (for example, by denying labour to migrants). This clause to participation in the direct trade network clearly signals the inclusive and humanitarian character of economic cultures of resilience. This is against the possibility
472 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno of the crisis reviving economic nationalism and undemocratic political consumerism (Lekakis, 2017; see Chapter 31).
Methodological Considerations Hence, communitarian and often locally organized collective actions that characterize recent formations and transformations of political consumerism in SE are undoubtedly difficult—if not impossible—to capture and measure through survey data. This can explain why there is a lack of reliable and consistent data on political consumerism in SE. Among the methodological challenges arising when studying political consumerism in SE, recent research has increasingly recognized the lack of reliable and consistent data on the phenomenon as well as the limits of survey research in accounting for changes, which are accoutring in collective action and citizens’ political participation. Nonetheless, one may notice positive developments in the field such as an increasing range of academic research conducted through case study, detailed surveys of specific initiatives, content analysis, and ethnographic methods. It is unsurprising that given the low scores in the European Social Survey data for SE countries, there are fewer studies that utilise only quantitative methods in the case of Greece (Abeliotis et al., 2010), Spain (Valor & Carrero, 2014), Italy (Forno & Ceccarini, 2006), and Portugal (Lima Coelho, 2015). Other methods include content analysis of internet-based documents and websites (Baumgarten, 2017); detailed surveys of specific initiatives (Guidi & Andretta, 2015); mapping of initiatives (Fonte, 2013). Several studies employ a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches (Sotiropoulou, 2012). For example, Llopis-Goig (2007) undertakes a nationwide survey and interviews; Conill and his colleagues (2012) utilise a combination of interviews, research-based documentary, and use of documentary for debate among groups alongside a region-wide survey; Lima Coelho (2015) employs interviews as well as offline and online surveys; Forno, Grasseni, and Signori (2013) use ethnographic methods and online surveys. Much of the scholarship examined employs predominantly qualitative methods; Moruzzi and Sirieix (2015) use interviews; Alonso et al. (2015) used focus groups; Lekakis (2017) employs a case study approach; and ethnographic methods are also selected (Chatzidakis, MacLaren, & Bradshaw, 2012; Grasseni, 2013; Rakopoulos, 2013, 2014). Many studies employed a combination of qualitative approaches; for example, Vathakou (2015) undertakes online desk research and discourse analysis as well as interviews with representatives of alternative initiatives and participant observation; Sotiropoulos and Bourikos (2014) undertook field research and interviews; Petropoulou (2013) and Papaoikonomou et al. (2016) employed interviews as well as focus groups and documents, blogs, and website analyses. Such an array
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 473 of predominantly qualitative approaches, often combined with similar or quantitative approaches, can offer a much richer interpretation of the types of activities that take place in SE countries when contrasted with the weak or low levels exhibited by survey results.
Conclusion By describing the main experiences and groups involved in the diffusion of political consumerism in all four countries, this chapter has teased out the differences among SE countries and between SE and NWE. As argued, when looking at survey results to understand the existence of political consumerism in SE countries, it is easy to suggest that political consumerism is not happening or has not been successful in these countries. Yet, a closer examination of the scholarship produced for Spain, Italy, Portugal, and Greece highlights developments that extend our understanding of political consumerism. If indeed survey reports find a higher level of political consumerism in higher-income countries than in less wealthy counterparts, limiting the study of market-based action to survey research might not only underestimate the phenomenon but also misstate the way in which political consumerism is utilized by different groups in different countries to influence political processes. As discussed, when comparing SE and NWE countries, it is possible to argue that political consumerism in these two areas of Europe has developed following two different paths, one more collectivist (SE) and one more individualistic (NWE). As seen, especially from 2008 onwards, political consumerism has helped bridge people together in more locally based projects aiming to build spaces where it is possible to practice and experiment with forms of solidarity economy. Especially in SE, the combination of, on the one hand, high levels of unemployment, and on the other, a long tradition of resistance and self-organization, has led to the creation of thousands of horizontal economic structures, covering a wide spectrum of services, which provides for the livelihood of a growing amount of people. Considering both widely acknowledged forms of political consumerism such as fair trade, as well as solidarity economic practices of critical resilience at the aftermath of the financial crisis, this chapter has presented a case of the social turn of political consumerism showing how the global financial crisis has transformed the landscape of political consumerism in SE. The relationships among citizens, consumption, and politics is transformed with a focus on ameliorating immediate needs, bringing communities closer, and challenging mainstream market practices. As the reconstruction of the single national cases provided in this chapter has shown, although growing, research on the evolution of political consumerism in SE remains rather fragmented and without common interpretation. What has been offered here is a first attempt to provide a general and in-depth overview on the particular characteristics
474 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Francesca Forno of political consumerism in SE, which may offer a point of departure for a more systematic and detailed comparative study in the future.
Acknowledgements The authors would particularly like to thank Sandra Lima Coelho and Eleni Papaoikonomou for sharing their knowledge regarding the development of political consumerism, as well as extend warm gratitude to the editors of the Handbook for their helpful comments.
Notes 1. The measures also included a ban on increases in public-sector salaries and pensions for at least three years, an increase of VAT from 21% to 23%, and the rise of taxes on fuel, alcohol, and tobacco by 10%. 2. This included money-raising measures (such as scrapping tax breaks for farmers), pension reforms (through provision of disincentives for early retirement), bank recapitalization, further privatization, liberalization of consumer markets, and public-sector reforms. 3. 2011: 21.4%, 2012: 24.8%, 2013: 26.1%, 2014: 24.5%, 2015: 22.1%. See http://www.statistics .gr/documents/20181/1515741/GreeceInFigures_2016Q4_EN.pdf/b6478000-34ca-4ac5 -b6e8-a02ed096ba97. 4. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/portugal/youth-unemployment-rate 5. This is now known as Iniciativas de Economía Alternativa y Solidaria. 6. J-M. Krier, Fair trade 2007: New facts and figures from an ongoing success story: A report on fair trade in 33 consumer countries. Available: http://www.fairtrade.org.pl/wp-content /uploads/2016/08/publ_17_fairtrade2007newfactsfigures.pdf. 7. http://www.oxfamintermon.org/es/que-hacemos/comercio-justo/nuestras-tiendas. 8. Krier, Fair trade 2007. 9. http:// w ww.fairtrade.org.uk/ press_ office/ press_ releases_ and_ s tatements/ o ctober /global_survey_shows_uk_leads_the_way_on_fairtrade.aspx [January 22, 2013]. 10. Examples of housing: housing co-operatives, occupied social centres, and masoverias (repairing and maintaining in exchange for low rent). Examples of education: networks of knowledge sharing, free universities, and parental networks of alternative childcare. Examples of finance: ethical banking, alternative financial co-operatives. Examples of arts: circus network, social theatre network. Examples of communications: free radios, publishing houses, magazines, hacklabs, and hackerspaces. 11. Freeganism refers to the recuperation of wasted products, especially food that has been discarded. 12. There were over 100 consumer co-operatives in the region between 2008 and 2011. 13. Personal communication with Sandra Lima Coelho, January 25, 2017. Sandra Lima Coelho is a researcher and teaching assistant at Católica Porto Business School. Her doctoral thesis studied the situation of fair trade in Portugal with regards to both organizations and consumers. 14. https://www.fairtrade.gr/poioi-eimaste/ [December 28, 2016]. 15. https://www.tem-magnisia.gr/ [January 7, 2017].
Political Consumerism in Southern Europe 475 16. Not all of such initiatives start at the time of the crisis. For example, the Time Bank of the European Network of Women in Athens goes back to 2006. Yet, the majority of these activities demonstrate a sharp rise both in numbers and in activity from the outset of the crisis in the late 2000s and onward.
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Chapter 23
P olitical C onsume ri sm in Centra l a nd Eastern Eu rope Léna Pellandini-S imányi and Emese Gulyás
Political consumerism is often explained in Western contexts as stemming from the dissatisfaction with conventional governmental mechanisms for solving political problems (Beck, 2005; Harrison, Newholm, & Shaw, 2005; Holzer & Sørensen, 2003; Micheletti, 2003). This sentiment was understandably less widespread in the former Eastern bloc where democratic voting, rather than being a boring, “traditional” means of doing politics, was seen as a novelty enthusiastically welcomed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Moreover, whereas in Western Europe some of the most important political consumerist movements have and continue to focus on helping “developing” countries (Barnett et al., 2011) from an unequivocal “developed” position, the semiperipheral Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) countries’ position between the “developed” and the “developing” world has historically been ambiguous (Melegh, 2006). This produced uncertainty about the status of these countries as subjects versus objects and as consumers versus producers of political consumerist goods (Dombos, 2008). To what extent is political consumerism present in the CEE region, notwithstanding that some of the key bases of its Western counterpart seem to be missing? This chapter answers this question firstly, empirically, by mapping the differences and similarities of political consumerism within Central and Eastern Europe and between the region and Western Europe. This comparison is less straightforward than it sounds. One criticism levelled against the dominant model of political consumerism, centred on political action exercised through making and withdrawing purchasing choice, has been its implicit Western bias (Ariztia, Agloni, & Pellandini-Simányi, 2017; Barnett et al., 2005). The model takes market distribution for granted; it assumes individual, rational choice as the basis of moral selfhood and of political action and tends to rely on the “consumer” as a category of self-definition and political agency (Pellandini- Simányi, 2014). These features, goes the criticism, are far from universal: they reflect
480 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás particular, historically specific Western economic, cultural, and political traditions that do not even apply to Western countries univocally (Barnett et al., 2005; Sassatelli, 2006; Trentmann, 2006). To mitigate these biases, this chapter’s analysis goes beyond the most common focus on boycotting and buycotting behaviour by looking at a wide range of everyday consumer choices that are motivated by fostering positive change, such as combatting global warming, yet may not be identified as “political” by the people engaging in them. The chapter’s descriptive analysis is based on twenty-two questions, compiled from seven Eurobarometer surveys and the European Social Survey, covering eleven CEE countries. The data from the surveys focus on different behaviours and attitudes of political consumerism, complemented by retail sales data of Fairtrade1 products and qualitative results on political consumerist dynamics in the region. Secondly, theoretically, the chapter outlines a version of political consumerism, prevalent in Eastern Europe, which differs from its Western counterpart in that it is linked less to political action and more to everyday ethics, such as thrift and patriotism. The chapter will refer to this version as the embedded politics of everyday life, considered a variant of lifestyle political consumerism. The discussion in this chapter will suggest that the embedded politics of everyday life may provide avenues for integrating political consumerism with everyday concerns, one of the key obstacles to political consumerism (Adams & Raisborough, 2008). The chapter consists of six parts. The first part discusses the historical legacy of socialism for political consumerism, followed by a methodology section. The third part analyses political consumerism in CEE countries as well as differences between Western and Eastern Europe. The fourth section maps differences within CEE countries, and the fifth part provides insights into the possible causes of these differences. The last section summarizes the chapter’s findings and formulates predictions about the development of political consumerism in the region.
The Legacy of Socialism and Political Consumerism The term “Eastern Europe” refers to a historical-political rather than a geographical category, which has been defined historically in opposition to Western Europe as its less- developed counterpart (Wolff, 1994). In its current form, it incorporates countries that belonged to the Eastern bloc (Smith, 2002). What is the legacy of socialism from the point of view of political consumerism? On the one hand, it is a constraining legacy. As it is widely documented, the socialist regime hindered the development of civil society (Howard, 2003). Montero, Teorell, & Torcal (2007) found that, with the exception of protest activities, postsocialist countries engage less in all forms of political participation, particularly in the consumer mode
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 481 of participation. Similar results are reported by Stolle, Micheletti, and Crépault (2013), which show a strong positive relationship between years of continuous democracy and political consumerism. On the other hand, the socialist legacy is an enabling one, and this aspect is often missed by studies focusing on individual, market-based elements of political consumerism. The socialist regime placed a strong emphasis on the idea that “the everyday”, and within it, consumption is political (Buchli, 1999; Pellandini- Simányi, 2014). Consistent with the Marxist tenet that socialism would serve the emergence of “real needs,” everyday consumption was seen as a terrain in which political ideas of an egalitarian, community-centred society were to be demonstrated, particularly in the 1950s (Ferge, 1979). In Hungary, for example, consumption practices that could be classified as continuous with the presocialist period—from hats to ties and nail varnish—were seen as a manifestation of the “bourgeois” mentality and hence a sign of disloyalty to the system (Valuch, 2004; see also Varman & Sreekumar in this volume). While this stance eased in the 1960s, consumption remained a terrain through which the ethical, if not the material, supremacy of the socialist system over the superficial and wasteful capitalist society was to be demonstrated by its moderate and cultured consumption; this was captured in the concept of kulturnost in the Soviet Union (Dombos & Pellandini- Simányi, 2012; Gronow, 2003). While the idea that everyday consumption is political bore similarities with political consumerism, it also differed from it in crucial respects. First, unlike the civil society initiatives that emerged as alternatives to government-oriented politics in Western countries, these were top-down state policies. They were often experienced as an intrusion of the state into everyday life, rather than a way of taking control of politics through consumption (Hammer, 2008; Hammer & Dessewffy, 1997). Moreover, this form of politicized consumption was connected to traditional forms of political participation, notably, party membership. For party cadres, modest consumption was a means to demonstrate their working-class origin and true socialist ethic, signalling that they deserved their high positions (Pellandini-Simányi, 2009). Second, the focus of this politics of consumption was local society, contrary to some of the Western fairtrade movements that focused on helping war-stricken and developing countries (Barnett et al., 2011). Rather than changing the world through the impact of consumer choice on others, this politics of consumption was to bring change by putting into practice, in everyone’s everyday life, the ideals of a good society. In this sense, it formed what Lakoff and Collier (2004, p. 420) calls a “regime of living”: a connected set of practices and ethical reasoning, enacted through practice. Society was to be changed from within, through the ethical conduct of its members, exercised through consumption. Showing restraint in material consumption was a practical means of realizing a more equal and morally superior society, focused on human relationships and culture as opposed to competitive display and the accumulation of material possessions. Finally, this form of politics of consumption differed from political consumerism in its key mechanism. It was not supposed to achieve political aims through influencing companies by boycotting or buycotting their products. In an economy of scarcity, the
482 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás question was how to get products at all, rather than which available product to choose— as the alternatives simply did not exist (Draculic, 1991). Importantly, most companies were state-owned and, in a centrally planned economy, produced goods according to political principles. Criticizing them for failing to live up to these principles amounted to a criticism of the system. Indeed, this is why consumption served as a key terrain through which a subdued political debate could develop in the absence of a genuine public sphere (Dombos, 2004). In East Germany, the absence of bananas became a “symbol of great political weight— a symbol of the impotence of the East German political economy” (Kopstein, 1997, p. 192). Similarly, in Hungary, wearing blue jeans—seen as a quintessentially “Western” commodity—represented a subtle revolt against the system, becoming “a truly informal grass-roots activity” (Hammer, 2008, p. 54). In the context of the Cold War and competing economic systems, these materialistic desires and practices, paradoxically, constituted a critical political act in favour of capitalism and democracy and against socialism and the authoritarian state. These differences suggest that in CEE a different, embedded form of political consumerism may have historical roots; this form, however, may pass under the radar of the narrow view of political consumerism focusing on boycotting and buycotting.
Methodology Political consumerism is the use of consumer actions, informed by societal concerns, to change market practices that are found to be ethically objectionable. It involves different forms that encompass boycotting, buycotting, discursive strategies, and lifestyle choices (first chapter, this volume), extending to nonconsumption, value-loaded routine shopping, careful usage, and placement after usage (Cooper-Martin & Holbrook, 1993). If we understand the “political” as public participation (Gulyás, 2012), then choosing a more energy-efficient light bulb or following an individual degrowth strategy may be equally political in their motivation as boycotts. Most comparative studies looked at participation in boycotting and buycotting (e.g., Koos, 2012; Stolle, Micheletti, & Crépault, 2013; Yates, 2011), without inquiring into how and what people boycott and buycott, for the simple reason that the standard questions of the European Social Survey only ask if one participated in boycotts and if he/ she deliberately bought certain products for political, ethical, or environmental reasons. Research for this chapter took a different approach and incorporated questions reflecting a broader concept of political consumerism from the Special Eurobarometer surveys conducted between 2010 and 2016. These questions referred to (1) political consumerist actions, including forms of positive consumption and nonconsumption motivated by ethical, environmental, or political aims, beyond boycotting; (2) attitudes towards political consumerism, captured through self-reported willingness-to-pay for goods meeting specific political-ethical criteria; and (3) awareness related to political
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 483 consumerism, manifested in knowledge of certification labels. (See the “Type” columns in Tables 23.1 and 23.2.) The European Social Survey included a total of twenty-two questions (see Table 23.1). For twenty-one of these, data was available for ten Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Romania) with the exception of one question, referring to boycotts, which did not include Latvia and Romania (Table 23.1).2 The disadvantage of using the Eurobarometer dataset is that it provides no or only patchy data on Albania, Kosovo, Croatia, and Ukraine (of the Eastern European countries). Yet even with these countries missing, it is still the dataset with the highest number of CEE and Western European countries measuring both attitudes and behaviours relating to political consumerism. This is a major advantage over the International Social Survey and the World Values Survey, which only have data on two to four CEE countries (depending on the wave). A further shortcoming of the Eurobarometer is that it relies on self-reported attitudes and behaviours, which may not match actual conduct. To compensate, albeit only partially, for this weakness, additional data on actual sales of Fairtrade were incorporated.
Differences Between Eastern and Western Europe While traditional means of doing politics was a much-anticipated opportunity in CEE countries after the fall of socialism, the initial enthusiasm quickly wore off. Today, most CEE countries (with the exception of Romania) are more sceptical than the European Union (EU) average (73 percent) of elections being an effective means of doing politics, with Slovenia being the most pessimistic (55 percent) in the EU (Eurobarometer, 2013). Following the logic of political consumerism as an alternative politics argument, this scepticism could provide avenues for political consumerism in the region. Moreover, in many CEE countries the values typically motivating political consumerism, such as care for the environment and for society, are embraced by a higher proportion of society than in leading Western political consumerist countries (Chart 23.1). More people value the importance of looking after the environment and doing something good for society in Slovenia, Poland, and Romania than in Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands (see also Orru & Lilleoja, 2016). Surprisingly, however, as documented by existing comparative studies, these values and the dissatisfaction with traditional politics do not translate into higher political consumerism in the region. These studies highlight a disparity between countries where political consumption is insignificant and countries where 25 to 60 percent of the population engages in buycotts, boycotts, or both (Stolle, Micheletti, & Crépault, 2013; Yates, 2011). The division line, however, does not correspond clearly to the
484 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás Cyprus Netherlands Germany Sweden Romania Poland Estonia Slovenia 0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
Do something for the good of society
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Looking after the environment
Chart 23.1 Value differences in selected Eastern and Western European countries. (Total % of people indicating agreement—“Very much like me” or “Like me” on a 5-point Likert scale—with the self-description of “It is important to this person to do something for the good of society” and “Looking after the environment is important to this person; to care for nature and save life resources,” respectively.) Source: World Values Survey, 2014.
former Eastern versus Western blocs. The first group includes former socialist countries alongside Spain, Portugal, Greece, and Italy (Lekakis & Forno, in this volume). The second group, in turn, includes only Western countries, with the exception of the Czech Republic (Yates, 2011). The analysis in this chapter provides a more nuanced picture by comparing different forms of political consumerist actions, attitudes, and awareness, which allows for highlighting aspects on which the divide is deeper and others on which it is less pronounced. The analysis in this chapter first calculated population-weighted average participation rates for the two regions (Chart 23.2; for the original questions see Table 23.1).3 Albeit this dataset confirms that all aspects studied here are more prevalent in Western Europe than in CEE, it also shows important differences in the size of the gap between these regions. In terms of widespread actions (that is, actions in which more than one-third of the population participates, see Table 23.1), the most marked differences are in cutting down on disposable items and buying local/seasonal food, with less differences in the proportion of Eastern versus Western Europeans choosing energy-efficient appliances and, occasionally, green travel alternatives. For less widespread actions, the biggest differences can be seen in participating in boycotts, regularly using green travel alternatives, choosing cars based on their low fuel consumption, and switching to renewable energy suppliers. Surprisingly, notwithstanding their lower gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (see section five), willingness-to-pay attitudes are less different for environmentally friendly and locally produced goods, being high in both regions. In contrast, the proportion of Western Europeans who would be willing to pay extra for products from
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 485 80% 60% 40% 20%
East
Environmental label purchase
Occasional green travel
Reduce disposal items
Avoid short-haul flights
Local/seasonal food
Renewable energy equipment
Renewable energy supplier
Energy-efficient appliances
Low-energy home
Insulation
Regular green travel
Low fuel car
Label: Traditional speciality
Label: Geogra. indication
Label: Designation of origin
Label: Fairtrade
Label: Organic farming
W.-to-pay: own country
W.-to-pay: labour rights
W.-to-pay: developing countries
W.-to-pay: green products
0%
West
Chart 23.2 Population-weighted average proportion of engagement of selected aspects of political consumerism in Eastern versus Western Europe.
developing countries is almost twice as high as that of Eastern Europeans, with a similar difference (45 vs. 29 percent) for products by companies respecting labour rights. Comparing the awareness of labels shows the biggest of all differences in the Fairtrade label, which is recognised by 43 percent of Western Europeans but only 7 percent of Eastern Europeans. Awareness of traditional speciality labels and labels of geographical origin are less different, but they are low in both regions. The averages of the two regions, however, may not tell the whole story. As we will explain in the next section, in CEE, the biggest countries (20 million [M]inhabitants in Romania, 38M Poland, and 7M Bulgaria) have the lowest engagement of political consumerism, and the tiniest countries (2M Slovenia and 1.3M Estonia) have the highest, with midsized countries in-between. In contrast, in Western Europe, we find large countries in both the high-engagement (i.e., Germany, United Kingdom) and low- engagement categories (i.e., Italy, Spain). This means that population-weighted averages may paint an excessively negative picture, neglecting the diversity of the region. To incorporate this diversity, the analysis made a further comparison taking countries as the unit of analysis. This comparison looked at what proportion of the countries of the respective regions have lower and higher scores compared to the European average for the given action, attitude, or awareness (Tables 23.1 and 23.2).4 This comparison reveals that in certain CEE countries an equal or even higher proportion of the population engages in specific aspects of political consumerism compared with Western countries. Choosing more environmentally friendly travelling alternatives is on the EU average in
486 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás most CEE countries (with the exception of Poland and Bulgaria) and even above it in three CEE countries (Hungary, , and Estonia). In fact, the proportion of countries falling below the EU28 average on this aspect is higher in Western than in Eastern Europe. In terms of attitudes, in most CEE countries the proportion of population willing to pay more for products produced in their own country and for environmentally friendly goods equals or exceeds the European average (with the exception of the Czech Republic, Lithuania, and Romania for the former and Bulgaria, Estonia, and Hungary for the latter). From the awareness angle, the “Traditional speciality guaranteed” label is more widely known in CEE, with four countries’ awareness markedly exceeding the EU average and most others being equal or slightly above it (with the exception of Romania and Hungary), in contrast to Western Europe where half of the countries show below- average awareness (Table 23.1). Some of these differences, similar to the pattern of boycotting reported by the existing literature, show a divide between NWE, on the one hand, and Southern-Western Europe (SWE) and CEE on the other. This pattern applies, beyond boycotting, to the purchase of environmentally friendly products marked with an environmental label, switching to renewable energy providers and appliances, and to the willingness-to-pay for products by companies that respect labour rights, with most Western countries above the European average and exceptions only from Southern countries. Other differences, particularly those in which CEE is similar to Western Europe, cross-cut the Western versus Southern-Eastern division line. In these cases, countries that show higher than average levels tend to be composed of NWE and more committed Eastern European countries (which will be detailed in the next section), while the group below the average consists of SWE countries and less committed Eastern European countries. This is the case, for instance, for choosing environmentally friendly travel alternatives. Finally, some aspects, for example, differences in the willingness-to-pay for environmental goods, do not follow any detectable geographical pattern.
Differences Within CEE As Chart 23.2 shows, the most popular forms of political consumerism in CEE are reducing the consumption of disposable items for environmental reasons (37 percent), choosing environmentally friendly travel alternatives (32 percent), choosing household appliances based on their energy-efficiency features (28 percent), and buying local/ seasonal food for environmental reasons (26 percent). Looking at attitudes, an impressive 71 percent of Eastern Europeans would be willing to pay extra for environmentally friendly goods, followed by a much lower, but still high, 38 percent for local products. Knowledge of certification labels is generally low in the region: even the most widely known “organic farming” label is recognized only by 16 percent of the population.
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 487 These averages, however, hide important differences within the region. To compare the countries in CEE, we calculated the extent to which they are above or below the EU28 average on the twenty-two aspects studied (Table 23.2; for percentages see Table 23.1). Based on this measure, the analysis identified three groups, using a comparison of the extent and the nature of political consumerism in different countries. The first group consists of Estonia and Slovenia, showing equal or (often markedly) stronger engagement than the EU28 average of more than half of the aspects of political consumerism studied here. The other end of the scale consists of countries where political consumerism is much below the EU average in nearly all aspects: Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Latvia. In between, there is a group of countries, consisting of Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, where political consumerism is present, but in a weaker form than in the forerunner group (with seven to eight aspects on or above the EU28 average). Beyond these quantitative differences, the three groups also differ in the content of the political consumerist aspects, which we captured in labelling them as Mainstreamers, Passively Willings, and Reluctant Comfortables, respectively.
Mainstreamers (Estonia and Slovenia) Slovenia and Estonia stand out not only in regional but also in European comparisons, performing in line or above the European average in nearly all the political consumerist actions (in 12 and 9 out of the 13 actions studied, respectively). Both countries report above the EU28 average proportion of their population cutting down on disposable items and excessive packaging (60 percent in Slovenia and 54 percent in Estonia), regularly taking environmentally friendly travelling alternatives (35 percent, 31 percent), insulating their homes (29 percent, 35 percent), buying local food for environmental reasons (44 percent, 43 percent), and buying low-energy homes and appliances (35 percent, 37 percent). The proportion of people choosing cars for their low fuel consumption (11 percent, 10 percent) and purchasing environmentally labelled products (19 percent, 20 percent) is similar to the EU average but still counts as high in the region. As these proportions suggest, apart from the two latter actions, these are not niche practices but engage a significant proportion of the population (between 30 percent and 60 percent). These actions have two features in common. Firstly, nearly all of them are either cost-free or cost-reducing in the long run (requiring initial investment in the case of insulation). Secondly, they are not related to explicit political action. Indeed, in both countries, consistently with the points above, the proportion of the population boycotting is negligible (4 percent in Slovenia, 7 percent in Estonia). This suggests that the reason why these countries perform above the European average is that political consumerism has been built into everyday concerns, such as thrift. In this sense, the CEE countries fit into the larger pattern of poorer countries, where the main fields of environmental political consumerism are existing cost-saving and caring practices (Ariztia, Agloni, & Pellandini-Simányi, 2017).
488 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás The two countries also have markedly higher knowledge of the organic food label and some of the labels indicating traditional products than regional and even European averages. Looking at attitudes, we find that Slovenians are the most willing to pay extra for environmental goods (80 percent would pay more) in the region, which is above the European average of 75 percent. They are also the most willing in the region to pay extra for goods that support people living in developing countries (e.g., fairtrade goods; 38 percent), which equals their willingness-to-pay for local products (37 percent). With 34 percent, Slovenia, (together with Bulgaria) has the highest willingness- to-pay for companies that respect labour rights. In contrast, Estonians show the highest willingness-to-pay in the region for Estonian products (56 percent), with a much lower willingness-to-pay for products supporting developing countries (31 percent). They also have markedly lower willingness-to-pay for environmentally friendly goods (69 percent). This suggests that political consumer actions may be engaged similarly, yet for different reasons, in the two countries: in Slovenia, for “green” and “red” reasons; while in Estonia, some may be driven by patriotism and by cost-saving aspects (see next section). Interestingly, there seems to be a mismatch between people’s political consumerist values and the availability of goods. Fairtrade’s presence in Slovenia is still insignificant (Jelovac & Rihtaršič, 2014) and, consequently, people report very low awareness of the Fairtrade label. In contrast, Fairtrade is present in Estonia, which is markedly below the EU average in willingness-to-pay for fairtrade goods. Estonia Fairtrade realised 1,756,000 Euros in sales in 2013 (1.3 EUR per capita, which is massively below Western numbers, such as the 31 EUR per capita in the United Kingdom but higher than the 0.6 EUR per capita of the Czech Republic, poster child of fairtrade in the region).
Reluctant Comfortables (Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic) Countries of this group report average (compared to the EU28) engagement in political consumerist actions that require little or no effort in terms of time and money: they occasionally, but not regularly, switch to a more environmentally friendly travel alternative, cut down on disposable items and packaging, and take into consideration energy efficiency features when choosing a new appliance (with the Czech Republic being 20 percent above the EU average and Slovakia slightly below it). In contrast, they exhibit lower than average engagement in actions that require bigger sacrifices: avoiding short-haul flights (with the exception of the Czech Republic); insulating or acquiring low-energy homes; or choosing local food and environmentally labelled goods, which may be more expensive than the alternatives, or cars based on their fuel consumption, let alone installing pricy renewable-electricity equipment.
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 489 Within the group, the Czech Republic stands out with a relatively high participation (13.6 percent) in boycotts and by far the highest sales (64,440 Euros in 2013) of fairtrade products in the region. These numbers are below the European average but still the highest in CEE.5 This is consonant with the data showing that with 37 percent of the population willing to pay more for fairtrade products, the country comes right after Slovenia (38 percent), the frontrunner in the region. The Czech Republic is also the only country in the region where a larger proportion of the population would be willing to pay more for products from developing countries to support them (e.g., fairtrade) than for local goods. Comparing the willingness-to-pay for environmental and local goods among the three countries, the Czechs are more willing to pay for the former, Hungarians for the latter, while Slovakians are favourable to both. However, all countries in this group have low knowledge of certification labels, which may hinder translating these attitudes into actual political consumerist action.
Passively Willings (Lithuania, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Latvia) The five countries of this group show the lowest engagement in most forms of political consumerist behaviours in Europe, falling markedly below the EU28 average in nearly all of the studied variables. Exceptions include occasionally, but not regularly, choosing environmentally friendly travel alternatives, which is in line with the EU28 average in Lithuania and Romania; and insulating one’s home, which is similar to the EU average in Bulgaria and slightly above it in Romania. Latvia is the outlier in this group, with higher-than-EU-average instances of occasional and regular substitution of cars with environmentally friendly alternatives and purchases of food for environmental reasons. The pattern of below-the-average engagement also applies to cost-free practices, such as reducing the consumption of disposable items and packaging, refuting the readily available explanation based on the lower income of these countries. This is coupled with lower-than-average knowledge of organic and local labels and the lowest awareness of the Fairtrade label (5 percent to 6 percent) in Europe. This is also the case in Latvia and Lithuania, where Fairtrade is present, with a small (975,000 and 842,000 Euros, respectively) sales volume. The exception to this pattern are labels of traditional quality in Bulgaria, Latvia, and Lithuania, and the organic label in Latvia, which a higher proportion of people recognize than the EU average. Surprisingly, this low level of activity is not coupled with a similarly low willingness- to-pay for political consumerist aims. The willingness-to-pay for environmentally friendly products is close to the EU average (76.9 percent) in all five countries (Bulgaria being slightly below it), and higher than in Hungary and even in Estonia, which have a much higher rate of actual environmentally conscious practices. The same applies
490 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás to the willingness-to-pay for locally produced goods. Latvia is higher (47 percent); Poland (40 percent) and Bulgaria (43 percent) are similar to the EU average, ranking higher than Slovenia (39 percent) and the Czech Republic (30 percent), which countries nevertheless report higher actual purchases of local goods. An interesting result is that Bulgaria (together with Slovakia) leads in the willingness-to-pay for goods produced by companies respecting labour rights in the region (34 percent). (That said, of the four willingness-to-pay measures, it is still the lowest in all countries, falling even behind willingness-to-pay for fairtrade goods.) This relatively high willingness-to-pay, coupled with low engagement of actual practices, may have three explanations. First, people may answer positively to the willingness-to-pay questions because they think that this is the socially appropriate thing to do. Second, the labelled products that would allow them to act on these attitudes may not be accessible. Finally, some of the existing research (Stoimenova, 2016) indicates that a political consumerist attitude is characteristic only of the wealthy strata of society in these countries. These strata may be willing to act on these attitudes by paying slightly more in the supermarket, but not by changing their lifestyle (captured by the aspects of political consumerism studied here), in contrast to the countries of the other two groups, where environmentally conscious practices are becoming mainstream by attaching themselves to the existing value of thrift.
Ethnocentrism and Environmentalism The above classification was based on the types and levels of engagement of political consumerist actions and attitudes in different CEE countries. Beyond this, a further important difference between the countries emerges from the data: the orientation of political consumerist attitudes, reflected in differences in the aims for which people are willing to pay extra. Here we focus on two of these, which have the highest support in the region: ethnocentric versus environmentally oriented political consumerism, measured by the willingness-to-pay extra for products that are from one’s own country and for environmentally friendly products, respectively. Figure 23.1 shows the percentage of people willing to pay extra for products exhibiting these two aspects in comparison to the CEE average. The first group of Braun Ethnocentrics of the upper-left field consists of countries that are less committed to environmental and more committed to ethnocentric aims than others in the region: Bulgaria and Hungary with lower green attitudes and higher ethnocentrism; and Estonia with slightly less green and markedly higher ethnocentrism than the regional average.6 The upper-right field of Green Ethnocentrics includes countries with above-average willingness-to-pay both for local and for environmentally friendly goods. This group includes Latvia, which ranks higher than the average, particularly on ethnocentrism, and Slovakia, which is slightly above the average on both dimensions. The lower-right corner of Green Cosmopolitans, in turn, shows lower-than-average
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 491 40%
Estonia
35% 30% 25% 20%
Latvia
15%
Ethnocentrism
10% 5%
Hungary Bulgaria Average
0% –5%
Poland
Slovakia Slovenia
–10% –15%
Lithuania
–20% –25% –30%
Czech Republic Romania
–35% –40% –40% –35% –30% –25% –20% –15% –10% –5% 0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% Environmentalism
Figure 23.1 Ethnocentric and environmentalist orientation in political consumerism in CEE.
ethnocentrism and higher-than-average environmental consumerist attitudes. This field includes Slovenia, which has the strongest environmental consumerist attitude in the region, and Romania, with slightly above-the-average green attitudes and the lowest level of ethnocentrism. Finally, the lower-left corner of Braun Cosmopolitans includes countries that are below the regional average on both dimensions. In this group, all countries only slightly deviate from the average in terms of environmentalism, with a markedly lower proportion of Czechs who would be willing to pay extra for Czech products. What Figure 23.1 also makes evident is that the ethnocentrism-cosmopolitanism dimension is the most divisive in the region, while the environmentalism aspect shows less marked variation. That said, willingness-to-pay for environmentally friendly goods is much higher overall (71.7 percent of the population on average compared to the 40.5 percent average willingness-to-pay for local goods). Even the lowest willingness- to-pay proportion for environmentally friendly products (62 percent, in Bulgaria) is higher than the highest willingness-to-pay proportion for local goods (56 percent, in Estonia).
492 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás
Making Sense of the Differences Within CEE The previous section provided a descriptive analysis of the differences of political consumerism within CEE. This section makes some preliminary steps towards explaining these differences. Our aim here is not to statistically isolate explanatory variables, rather to probe how the explanatory factors based on boycotting and buycotting may need to be modified when applied to the region and to the broader understanding of political consumerism used here (for a review see Koos, 2012; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013; Yates, 2011). One of the most straightforward explanations of the differences in political consumerism between countries are economic differences (Koos, 2011a; Koos, 2012; Stolle, Micheletti, & Crépault, 2013). As Koos explains, “an affluent context provides the opportunity to draw on value orientations in consumption decisions” (2012, p. 52). The underlying logic is that political consumerist choices are costly; hence, they may be limited in countries with lower GDP per capita and disposable income. This logic should only apply to those practices that are costlier or require an initial investment, such as insulating one’s home, buying an energy-efficient home, or installing solar panels. However, looking even at these practices shows that the CEE pattern does not follow economic divisions. The richest Czech Republic underperforms in all of these aspects compared with many poorer countries, and there is a mix of high (Slovenia), medium (Estonia, Poland), and low (Romania) GDP countries among those that have the highest engagement in these actions (Chart 23.3). Nor do GDP per capita differences seem to explain the variances in the willingness- to-pay for environmentally friendly and fairtrade goods (the two aspects that are GDP per capita in PPS 2016
100 80 60 40 20 0
Bulgaria Romania
Latvia
Hungary
Poland
Estonia Lithuania Slovakia Slovenia
Czech Republic
Chart 23.3 GDP per capita in Purchasing Power Standards in CEE (2016) (100% = EU28 average). Source: Ecostat, 2016.
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 493 important in the region). A larger proportion of people would pay more for environmentally friendly products in the second-poorest Romania (75 percent) and in the third-poorest Latvia (78 percent) than in the richest Czech Republic. Similarly, people are the most willing to pay for local goods in Estonia (56 percent) and Latvia (47 percent), where GDP per capita is lower than in the richer Czech Republic (30 percent) and Slovenia (39 percent). The economic logic should work in the opposite direction for the low-cost version of political consumerism identified in the region, favouring cost-and energy-saving practices. However, this is not the case. For example, environmentally friendly (as well as cheaper) travel alternatives are chosen the least in poorest Bulgaria and in Poland, while they are embraced the most in one of the richest countries, Slovenia. Similarly, the countries that cut down on packaging and take into account the energy efficiency features of new appliances are the richest Czech Republic and Slovenia, as well as medium-rich Estonia and Hungary, but not the poorest countries in the region. Looking at the three groups identified above, we find that the richest Czech Republic is in the Reluctant Comfortable group, while the frontrunners Slovenia and Estonia are only the second-and fifth-richest in the region. Lithuania, which is richer than Estonia, is in the laggard Passively Willing group, similar to Poland, which is richer than Reluctant Comfortable Hungary. The explanation seems to work best at the lower end of the scale: the poorest countries of Bulgaria, Romania, and Latvia are all in the laggard group. In comparison to Western Europe, this suggests that economic opportunities have a stronger role in Western than in Eastern Europe: whereas in Western Europe the poorer, “Southern” countries perform worse in nearly all aspects examined here, in CEE in some aspects the richer countries, and in other aspects the poorer countries, lead the region. Another aspect of opportunity structures is accessibility. In the context of buycotts, this means access to labelled goods through mainstream retail channels (Koos 2012, 2011b; Stolle, Micheletti, & Crépault, 2013). This may explain the differences in purchasing environmentally labelled goods, which is higher in Slovenia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Latvia. The availability of labelled goods, in turn, is connected to the existence and reach of political consumerist organizations, which not only play a key role in raising awareness but also, as in the case of Fairtrade, provide labelled products for the local markets. Research on Fairtrade in Europe (Sen, Garnizova, & Negencov, 2015) notes the limited availability of fairly traded commodities and local affiliates to the transnational Fairtrade labelling scheme as one of the key barriers to its proliferation in CEE. An important exception is the Czech Republic, where the Czech Fair Trade Association (CFTA), set up in 2004, got licensed by the Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, and became a local umbrella organization in 2009 for local fairtrade companies. Partly as a result of the activity of the local NGOs, Fairtrade products are now sold in mainstream retail outlets, such as Kaufman and Tesco (Brkovic, 2013). Where these organizations take root, however, as the previous section showed, has less to do with purchasing power or cultural attitudes. Rather, it depends crucially on
494 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás connections to Western organizations. Poorer local NGOs rely on Western “parent” organizations both for campaign materials and for some of their core activities (such as the import of fairtrade products). For example, Fairtrade is present in the Baltic countries because the Finnish FLO-label organizations supported campaigns and issued licences. This explains why Fairtrade is present in these countries rather than in the richer and politically more fairtrade-oriented Slovenia (Brkovic, 2013; Sen, Garnizova, & Negencov, 2015). The concept of accessibility, however, takes on a different meaning if it is applied to the broader understanding of political consumerism used here. What matter most are the larger infrastructures of consumption (Shove, 2010): switching to an electricity supplier that uses renewable sources is only possible if such providers exist, electric cars require charging stations, and choosing environmentally friendly alternatives to cars relies on the availability of bicycle routes and public transport. Focusing on these infrastructures of sustainable consumption, one finds, however, that this argumentation does not always stand. For example, Slovenia, where the highest amount (35 percent) of people regularly chooses a more environmentally friendly means of transport, has the worst public transport infrastructure in the region, with almost every fourth Slovenian experiencing serious difficulties accessing public transport (Figure 23.2). In contrast, in the Czech Republic and Hungary, which are countries with much better access to public transport, willingness to change to environmentally friendly travel alternatives is below the EU28 average. This may be because these barriers only
Slovenia Poland Romania Bulgaria Estonia Lithuania Latvia Slovakia Czech Republic Hungary 0
5
10
15 High
20
25
30
Very high
Figure 23.2 Proportion of population with high and very high levels of difficulty in accessing public transport (2012). Source: Ecostat, 2012.
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 495 become relevant once a behaviour becomes truly mainstream. Indeed, another way of interpreting the data is that even in the worst infrastructural case of Slovenia, 75 percent of the people have little difficulty accessing public transport, yet only 35 percent of the population actually switches to public transportation instead of using cars. A second set of explanations link country differences to cultural factors, including political culture. One aspect of political culture explaining levels of political consumerism according to the existing literature is participation in voluntary organizations. Koos (2012), in particular, shows that statist countries (where politics are done primarily through the state) are less active in political consumerism than associational countries, where nongovernmental, civil society associations play a key role. Looking at association membership in the CEE, however, shows a mixed picture. While Slovenians are the most active in the region with 48 percent of Slovenians belonging to an NGO, Estonia, the other political consumer frontrunner of the region, has one of the lowest NGO participation rates (19 percent) (Eurobarometer 2013). The Czech Republic is the second most active, which may explain why Fairtrade is growing the fastest in this country of the region (Sen, Garnizova, & Negencov, 2015). Another way to approach political culture is through the type of welfare state of a given country. Esping-Andersen’s (1998) distinction between liberal, corporatist- statist, and social democratic states has been invoked in the literature, with the latter two being more favourable to political consumerism through their caring, empathic political culture (Stolle, Micheletti, & Crépault, 2013; Yates 2011). Another classification has been developed by Bohle & Greskovits (2012, 2007), specifically for the CEE region. They draw on Polanyi’s (1944) famous argument on the double movement of marketization, on the one hand, and forces seeking to reembed the economy in society and to maintain social cohesion, on the other. They propose a classification of CEE countries based on the compromise they forged between these opposing forces, shaped partly by how they negotiated their position in the global economy, linked, in turn, to the different capacities of their states. They distinguish between (1) the neocorporatist Slovenia that combined macroeconomic stability with social cohesion; (2) the embedded (welfarist) neoliberal Visegrád countries (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia) that maintained social cohesion and opted for milder economic reforms; (3) the state-crafted neoliberal Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) that implemented a “radical” market reform and acquired macroeconomic stability by sacrificing social cohesion; and (4) the directly market-driven neoliberal SEE states (Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia) sacrificing both social cohesion and macroeconomic stability due to their weak states. Using this classification provides illuminating insights. The frontrunner of political consumerism in the region is neocorporatist Slovenia (of the Mainstreamer group) that has both economic stability and social cohesion; while the laggards (the Passively Willing group) are the two neoliberal (state-crafted and market-driven) country groups of SEE and the Baltic states. The Visegrád countries, with high social cohesion but lower economic stability, occupy the middle position (Reluctant Comfortables). This suggests that social democratic orientation, as the existing literature suggests, does make a difference, yet its
496 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás extent is mediated by economic resources. The only outlier is Estonia, which is in the leading political consumerist group, despite the fact of being neoliberal (and not even the richest among the Baltic states). Beyond political culture, local cultural factors facilitate or hinder the adoption of a political consumerist mentality. As cross-cultural research on political consumerism (Maclachlan & Trentmann, 2004; Pellandini-Simányi, 2014) shows, in each place a local, appropriated version of political consumerism takes root, adapted to existing political-cultural traditions. In some places, such as Hungary, a large part of political consumerism—buying fairtrade or participating in boycotts—is associated with the (once) coveted West, often imported by activists who once lived in a Western country (Dombos, 2008). In contrast, in the Czech Republic, fairtrade, similarly to the United Kingdom (Barnett et al., 2011), originally built on local religious sentiment and was launched by the Christian NGO Ecumenical Academy Prague (EAP) and was run by volunteers of Prague’s Protestant parishes (Brkovic, 2013).
Conclusion This chapter mapped political consumerism in CEE as well as the differences between Western and Eastern Europe and within the CEE region. It looked at multiple dimensions of political consumerism involving different forms of action, attitudes, and knowledge. This range is broader than the one customarily used in comparative studies focusing on participation in boycotts and buycotts, particularly of fairtrade goods. Indeed, as the results show, participation in boycotts and the purchase of Fairtradelabelled goods are the two aspects along which Western and Eastern European countries differ the most, hence broadening the focus was necessary to take account of the local forms of political consumerism in CEE. Comparing countries within CEE revealed that forerunners of the region excel in mundane choices that fit well into everyday ethics of thrift (such as insulating one’s home, choosing an energy-efficient washing machine, or taking the bus to work) and patriotism (such as choosing local products). The discussion has referred to this as the embedded politics of everyday life. Using a broader concept of political consumerism revealed important similarities between Eastern and Western Europe, particularly in these everyday, less “activist” forms of actions. Yet even using this broader concept, Western Europe still shows higher engagement in all aspects studied here. This is partly because some of the largest countries in Western Europe have above-average participation in political consumerism, whereas in CEE, the forerunners are the smallest countries in the region. How will political consumerism develop in the future in CEE? There are signs suggesting a growth tendency. First, whereas in Western countries older people are more likely to boycott and buycott, in CEE younger people are equally active (Yates, 2011), which may signal a new, more active generation of political consumers.
Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 497 Second, the low-cost embedded politics of everyday life version of political consumerism is more likely to go mainstream than some of the high-cost Western variants. This is because one of the main obstacles to political consumerism is the conflict it creates with ordinary ethics: for example, buying more expensive, fairly traded goods is often in conflict with ethics of thrift and care (Adams & Raisborough, 2008; Ariztia, Agloni, & Pellandini-Simányi, 2017; Pellandini-Simányi, 2014). In this version, in contrast, political consumerism spreads through existing practical-ethical choices, allowing for the mainstreaming of the movement. Third, Eastern Europeans are even more sceptical of traditional political means than Western Europeans. For the time being, political consumerism in the region is not recognized as an alternative to traditional politics: political consumerism and mainstream political activity goes hand in hand (Gulyás, 2008; Montero et al., 2007). A more mainstream version of political consumerism, however, may provide an alternative form of political participation for the growing proportion of Eastern Europeans disillusioned with traditional politics in the future. Finally, many of the values, such as caring for the environment, that motivate political consumerism are even more prevalent in Eastern than in Western Europe. Given that most practices studied here require little or no additional cost, the economic opportunity structures for acting on these values are also present, which might hold a further potential for political consumerism in the region. Yet as Barnett et al. (2005) argue, in the context of ethical consumerism, “individual dispositions to choose are not the expressions of natural dispositions, but are worked up, governed, and regulated by an array of actors who make possible certain forms of individualized conduct” (Barnett et al., 2005, p. 29). The self-conscious consumer who takes action via individual consumer choice has been brought about by particular political traditions, institutional arrangements, market policies, and consumerist movements (Burgess, 2001; Micheletti, 2003; Trentmann, 2006). In this light, it is the political consumerist discourses and institutions that would produce a political consumerist subjectivity that are the most lacking in CEE. This may explain why even strong citizenship norms have failed to translate into political participation in general and into political consumerism in particular (Bolzendahl & Coffé, 2013). This is already changing with more and more political consumerist organizations being formed and political consumerism discourse becoming more widespread. However, the direction of this nascent political consumerism may be very different from the global concerns motivating most of the Western movements. It is likely to be more local in focus, concentrating on local social and environmental issues and patriotic sentiments.
Acknowledgements Léna Pellandini-Simányi benefitted from the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Marie Heim-Vögtlin Grant while writing the chapter. The authors would like to thank Virgilio Pellandini and the editors of the Handbook for their helpful comments.
Table 23.1 Engagement of Political Consumerist Attitudes (ATT), Awareness (AW) and Behaviours (BHV) in Europe (Percentage of the Population Agreeing to the Given Question)a Data source
Year Type Question
Czech EU28 Slovenia Estonia Republic Hungary Slovakia Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Bulgaria Austria
Special 2014 ATT Eurobarometer 416
You are 75 willing to buy environmentally friendly products even if they cost a little bit more.
80
69
71
64
76
78
71
71
75
62
83
Special 2011 ATT Eurobarometer 375
Would you be 47 prepared to pay more for groceries or other products from developing countries to support people living in these countries (for instance for fairtrade products)?
38
31
37
27
34
28
33
35
19
22
54
Special 2010 ATT Eurobarometer 357
Would you be 41 prepared to pay more for products or services from companies that respect labour rights and apply high social standards?
28
32
19
26
34
23
25
33
24
34
37
Special 2010 ATT Eurobarometer 357
Would you be prepared to pay more for products or services from OUR COUNTRY?
41
39
56
30
45
42
47
35
40
28
43
45
Special 2012 AW Eurobarometer b 389
Organic farming 24
32
34
21
19
28
33
26
12
10
13
36
Special 2012 AW Eurobarometer 389
Fairtrade
36
11
17
12
6
12
6
5
5
5
6
72
Special 2012 AW Eurobarometer 389
Protected designation of origin
14
13
8
14
7
14
7
4
6
5
14
19
Special 2012 AW Eurobarometer 389
Protected geographical indication
14
16
10
13
9
12
14
7
11
6
15
16
Special 2012 AW Eurobarometer 389
Traditional speciality guaranteed
15
13
22
20
11
20
14
21
15
9
15
15
Which of the logos on this card are you aware of?
Have you personally taken any action to fight climate change over the past six months?
United Belgium Cyprus Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Kingdom 80
82
87
88
78
80
72
77
67
86
91
77
62
73
94
82
54
48
66
69
52
63
44
40
38
74
37
80
21
41
76
53
46
42
65
59
57
45
29
36
37
65
34
64
17
26
79
52
39
46
56
71
54
42
35
39
35
51
32
37
17
27
63
48
20
18
39
33
38
33
17
27
24
37
19
21
21
14
33
22
54
7
75
54
29
57
5
78
17
76
28
78
16
3
74
81
8
7
3
5
25
8
16
6
36
16
5
6
17
14
10
7
10
10
6
5
17
9
15
7
32
11
7
6
18
14
9
10
11
20
5
12
19
11
16
8
22
15
10
5
15
25
10
13
(Continued)
Table 23.1 Continued Data source
Year Type Question
Czech EU28 Slovenia Estonia Republic Hungary Slovakia Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Bulgaria Austria
Special 2014 BHV You have bought 11 Eurobarometer a new car and 409 its low fuel consumption was an important factor in your choice.
11
10
9
4
6
7
4
3
6
3
7
Special 2014 BHV You regularly use 28 Eurobarometer environmentally- 409 friendly alternatives to using your private car such as walking, biking, taking public transport or car-sharing
35
31
22
20
22
27
9
12
15
8
33
21
29
35
18
18
18
18
14
12
24
23
12
Special 2014 BHV You have bought 4 Eurobarometer a low-energy 409 home
4
4
1
3
1
1
1
3
2
1
2
Special 2014 BHV When buying a 34 Eurobarometer new household 409 appliance e.g. washing machine, fridge or TV, you choose it mainly because it was more energy efficient than other models
42
37
41
33
28
24
20
26
23
28
42
Special 2014 BHV You have Eurobarometer insulated your 409 home better to reduce your energy consumption Insulate
Special 2014 BHV You have Eurobarometer switched to an 409 energy supplier which offers a greater share of energy from renewable sources than your previous one
7
8
5
5
2
2
1
1
2
2
1
12
Special 2014 BHV You have Eurobarometer installed 409 equipment in your home (for example, solar panels to generate renewable electricity)
5
6
2
3
2
1
2
1
3
2
1
9
United Belgium Cyprus Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Kingdom 15
10
27
13
14
18
5
10
6
31
14
15
2
5
26
15
37
11
46
40
24
43
23
17
20
36
24
48
15
25
61
30
35
14
31
17
28
21
15
27
14
33
14
26
13
9
20
38
5
3
5
3
6
4
2
3
5
10
6
7
2
2
2
4
43
28
57
28
37
44
24
24
27
47
44
45
18
29
33
35
18
2
12
12
3
12
2
12
7
11
4
15
2
3
16
12
14
4
12
6
4
9
2
7
5
10
10
8
1
3
6
6
(Continued)
Table 23.1 Continued Data source
Year Type Question
Special 2014 BHV You buy locally Eurobarometer produced and seasonal food c 409 whenever possible
Czech EU28 Slovenia Estonia Republic Hungary Slovakia Latvia Lithuania Poland Romania Bulgaria Austria 36
44
43
29
25
33
48
27
22
26
26
55
Special 2014 BHV You avoid taking 9 Eurobarometer short-haul 409 flights whenever possible
10
7
10
5
5
3
3
3
2
1
22
Special 2014 BHV You try to cut 51 Eurobarometer down on your 409 consumption of disposal items whenever possible, e.g. plastic bags from the supermarket, excessive packaging
60
54
50
47
51
36
37
36
24
27
55
Eurobarometer 2014 BHV Have you 35 416 done any of the following during the past month for environmental reasons? Chosen a more environmentally friendly way of travelling (by foot, bicycle, public transport)
38
42
39
42
37
49
36
23
36
26
55
Eurobarometer 2011 BHV Have you 20 75.2 done any of the following during the past month for environmental reasons? Bought environmentally friendly products marked with an environmental label
10
20
16
12
15
16
13
11
9
7
31
4
7
14
4
11
2
6
European Social Survey
a
2012 BHV There are 15 different ways of trying to improve things in [country] or help prevent things from going wrong. During the last 12 months, have you done any of the following? Have you boycotted certain products?
All willingness to pay include subquestions of how much more one is willing to pay as well as the total of people who would be willing to pay. Only the total has been included here. b Survey question: “Which of the logos on this card are you aware of?” c Survey question: “Have you personally taken any action to fight climate change over the past six months?”
4
United Belgium Cyprus Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Kingdom 39
21
46
38
49
44
35
28
33
48
44
33
19
29
53
38
8
3
12
21
4
22
3
3
8
15
6
7
3
3
35
8
57
15
58
55
55
68
31
50
45
70
58
61
41
50
61
57
40
21
43
51
38
34
32
27
19
45
33
53
25
40
60
38
253
18
41
22
20
16
25
15
40
30
25
8
9
49
21
11
10
24
35
30
12
12
12
3
18
43
18
35
Table 23.2 Differences in Engagement of Political Consumerist Attitudes (ATT), Awareness (AW) and Behaviours (BHV) Compared to the EU28 Average Type
Question
ATT
Slovenia
Estonia
Czech
Hungary
Slovakia
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Romania
Bulgaria
Austria
Belgium
You are willing to buy 0 environmentally friendly products even if they cost a little bit more.
−1
0
−1
0
0
0
0
0
−1
0
0
ATT
Would you be prepared −1 to pay more for groceries or other products from developing countries to support people living in these countries (for instance for fairtrade products)?
−3
−1
−3
−2
−3
−2
−2
−3
−3
2
2
ATT
Would you be prepared −2 to pay more for products or services from companies that respect labour rights and apply high social standards?
−1
−3
−3
−1
−3
−3
−1
−3
−1
0
1
ATT
Would you be prepared 0 to pay more for products or services from OUR COUNTRY?
3
−2
0
0
1
−1
0
−3
0
0
0
AW
Organic farming
2
3
−1
−2
0
2
0
−3
−3
−3
3
−2
AW
Fairtrade
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
3
3
AW
Protected designation of origin
1
−2
2
−3
2
−3
−3
−3
−3
2
3
−2
AW
Protected geographical 3 indication
−1
1
−2
0
2
−3
0
−3
2
3
−1
AW
Traditional speciality guaranteed
0
3
3
−2
3
0
3
0
−3
0
0
−2
BHV
You have bought a new car and its low fuel consumption was an important factor in your choice
0
0
−1
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
3
BHV
You regularly use 2 environmentally- friendly alternatives to using your private car such as walking, biking, taking public transport or car-sharing
1
−1
−2
−1
0
−3
−3
−3
−3
2
3
BHV
You have insulated your home better to reduce your energy consumption Insulate
3
3
−1
−1
−1
−1
−3
−3
1
0
−3
3
BHV
You have bought a low- 2 energy home
2
−3
0
−3
−3
−3
0
−3
−3
−3
3
United Cyprus Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Israel Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Kingdom 0
1
1
0
0
0
0
−
−1
1
1
0
−1
0
2
0
0
3
3
1
3
0
−1
−
−1
3
−1
3
−3
0
3
1
0
3
3
3
1
−2
0
−
0
3
−1
3
−3
−3
3
3
0
3
3
2
0
−1
0
−
−1
2
−2
−1
−3
−3
3
1
−3
3
2
3
2
−3
0
−
0
3
−2
−1
−1
−3
2
−1
−3
3
3
−1
3
−3
3
−
−3
3
−1
3
−3
−3
3
3
−3
−3
−3
3
−2
3
−3
−
3
3
−3
−3
3
2
0
−3
−1
−3
−3
3
−2
2
−3
−
3
0
−3
−3
3
2
−2
−1
3
−3
−1
3
−2
1
−3
−
3
0
−3
−3
0
3
−3
0
0
3
2
2
3
−3
0
−
−3
3
2
3
−3
−3
3
3
−3
3
3
−1
3
−1
−3
−
−2
3
−1
3
−3
0
3
1
−3
3
−2
3
0
−2
2
−
−3
3
−3
2
−3
−3
0
3
0
3
0
3
2
−3
0
−
3
3
3
3
−3
−3
−3
2 (Continued)
Table 23.2 Continued Type
Question
BHV
Slovenia
Estonia
Czech
Hungary
Slovakia
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Romania
Bulgaria
Austria
Belgium
When buying a new 2 household appliance e.g. washing machine, fridge or TV, you choose it mainly because it was more energy efficient than other models
1
2
0
−1
−2
−3
−2
−3
−1
2
2
BHV
You have switched 1 to an energy supplier which offers a greater share of energy from renewable sources than your previous one
−2
−2
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
3
3
BHV
You have installed 1 equipment in your home (for example, solar panels to generate renewable electricity)
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
3
3
BHV
You buy locally 2 produced and seasonal food whenever possible
1
−1
−3
0
3
−2
−3
−2
−2
3
0
BHV
You avoid taking short- 1 haul flights whenever possible
−1
1
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
−3
3
0
BHV
You try to cut down 2 on your consumption of disposal items whenever possible, e.g. plastic bags from the supermarket, excessive packaging
1
0
0
0
−2
−2
−2
−3
−3
1
1
BHV
Have you done any of the following for environmental reasons in the past month? Chosen a more environmentally friendly way of travelling (by foot, bicycle, public transport) in the past month.
0
1
0
1
0
3
0
−3
0
−3
3
0
BHV
Have you done any 0 of the following during the past month for environmental reasons? Bought environmentally friendly products marked with an environmental label
0
−1
−3
−2
−1
−3
−3
−3
−3
3
1
United Cyprus Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Israel Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Kingdom −1
3
−1
1
3
−2
−2
−
−1
3
3
3
−3
−1
0
0
−3
3
3
−3
3
−3
3
−
0
3
−3
3
−3
−3
3
3
−2
3
1
−2
3
−3
3
−
0
3
3
3
−3
−3
1
1
−3
2
0
3
2
0
−2
−
0
3
2
0
−3
−1
3
0
−3
3
3
−3
3
−3
−3
−
0
3
−2
−1
−3
−3
3
0
−3
2
1
1
3
−3
0
−
0
3
2
2
−1
0
2
1
−3
1
3
0
0
−1
−2
−
−3
1
−1
3
−3
0
3
0
−1
3
0
0
−
−2
2
−
−2
3
3
2
−3
−3
3
0
(Continued)
Table 23.2 Continued Type
Question
Slovenia
Estonia
Czech
Hungary
Slovakia
Latvia
Lithuania
Poland
Romania
Bulgaria
Austria
Belgium
BHV
There are different ways of trying to improve things in [country] or help prevent things from going wrong. During the last 12 months, have you done any of the following? Have you boycotted certain products?
−3
−3
−1
−3
−3
−
−3
−3
−
−3
−
−2
BHV
Total Fairtrade consumption in 2013 (thousand Euro)a
n/a
1756
n/a
6640
n/a
975
842
n/a
n/a
n/a
BHV
Fairtrade consumption n/a in 2013 per capita (Euro)
1.33
n/a
0.61
n/a
0.49
0.28
n/a
n/a
n/a
0: average engagement (Proportion of the population agreeing +/−10% the EU28 average proportion) 1: slightly stronger engagement (Proportion of the population agreeing 10−19,99% above the EU28 average proportion) 2: stronger engagement (Proportion of the population agreeing 20%−29,99% above the EU28 average proportion) 3: markedly stronger engagement (Proportion of the population agreeing 30% or more above the EU28 average proportion) −1: slightly weaker engagement (Proportion of the population agreeing 10−19,99% below the EU28 average proportion) −2: weaker engagement (Proportion of the population agreeing 20%−29,99% below the EU28 average proportion) −3: markedly weaker engagement (Proportion of the population agreeing 30% or more below the EU28 average proportion) Percentage of the population agreeing to the given question compared to the EU28 average percentage. a
Source: Sen et al., 2015.
United Cyprus Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Israel Italy Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden Kingdom −3
3
3
3
3
−
−2
2
−2
−
−
−2
−3
1
3
1
510 Léna Pellandini-Simányi and Emese Gulyás
Notes 1. The chapter uses Fairtrade with a capital “F” when referring to the Fairtrade International label; and fairtrade with a lowercase “f ” when referring to the movement in general. 2. When the same question or a question with identical content was asked in the surveys, researchers only used the more recent one. 3. Calculation based on the Eurobarometer results and Eurostat population statistics for 2016. 4. Researchers defined the European average as the EU28 average +/− 10%. 5. Kosovo has an even higher rate of boycotters (17.4%), but has not been included in this analysis due to the lack of data on all other variables. 6. This chapter uses the terminology Braun Ethnocentrics, referring to people who seek to follow environmental principles in their consumption (greens) as opposed to those who do not (brauns), from Csutora (2012).
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Political Consumerism in Central and Eastern Europe 513 Sen, Julius, Garnizova, Elitsa, & Negencov, Alexander. (2015). Local and regional authorities promoting fair trade. Committee of the Regions. http://cor.europa.eu/en/documentation /studies/Documents/LRAS%20and%20Fair%20Trade_revised_12%20March_Formatted .pdf. Shove, Elisabeth. (2010). Beyond the ABC: Climate change policy and theories of social change. Environment and Planning A, 42(6), 1273–1285. Smith, Adrian. (2002). Imagining geographies of the “new Europe”: Geo-economic power and the new European architecture of integration. Political Geography, 21(5), 647–670. Stoimenova, Borislava. (2016). Environmental actions and attitudes to green consumption in Bulgaria. Proceedings of the Economic Welfare Through Knowledge Sharing Conference, Svishtov, Bulgaria. http://dlib.uni-svishtov.bg/handle/10610/2996?show=full 88–93. Stolle, Dietlind, & Micheletti, Michele. (2013). Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Stolle, Dietlind, Micheletti, Michele, & Crépault, Jean-Francois. (2013). Mapping political consumerism in Western democracies. In Dietlind Stolle & Michele Micheletti, Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action (pp. 94–134). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Trentmann, Frank. (2006). The modern genealogy of the consumer: Meanings, identities and political synapses. In John Brewer & Frank Trentmann (Eds.), Consuming cultures, global perspectives: Historical trajectories, transnational exchanges (pp. 19–70). Oxford and New York, NY: Berg. Valuch, Tibor. (2004). Lódenkor: Az öltözködés és divat Magyarországon az ötvenes években [Loden Age: Dress and fashion in Hungary during the fifties]. In Tibor Valuch (Ed.), Magyar Tásadalomtörténeti Olvasókönyv 1944-től napjainking (pp. 880–887). Budapest: Argumnetum, OSIRIS. Wolff, Larry. (1994). Inventing Eastern Europe: The map of civilization on the mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. World Values Survey. (2012–2014). http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentation WV6.jsp. Yates, Luke S. (2011). Critical consumption. European Societies, 13(2), 191–217.
Chapter 24
B oyc ot ti ng a nd Buyc ot ti ng i n C onsum er Cu lt u re s Political Consumerism in North America Meredith A. Katz
Consumer activism has been the norm, not the exception, in North America (Glickman, 2009). In the United States and Canada, where there is a “perceived right to consume” (Humphrey, 2010, p. x), it is worth examining how Canadian and U.S. consumers have used their purchasing power throughout history to bring about desired social and political changes. This chapter is organized in a chronological fashion, interweaving historical and contemporary examples of political consumerism from both countries. The chapter has two aims: the first is to emphasize the diverse demographics of political consumers through examples, illustrating how this is not exclusively a privileged form of political engagement; and the second is to highlight how political consumer campaigns based upon producer-consumer alliances are preferable to those that are not based on such alliances. Political consumerism, “the use of market choices by individuals, groups, and institutions who want to take responsibility for political, economic, and societal developments” (Micheletti, Follesdal, & Stolle, 2004, p. v), or “voting with your dollar,” has a long tradition in the United States and Canada. However, scholars remain divided on how to define and conceptualize political consumerism. Some argue political consumerism cannot be considered “political” in the conventional sense of the word, because individuals direct their efforts towards the market rather than the government (Micheletti, 2010; Schudson, 2007). Others, however, note that political consumerism participation rates are only second to voting rates in Western democracies, involving the production of public goods, located under the broad domain of politics and therefore considered political (Copeland, 2014a; Van Deth, 2012). Still, others argue the mere idea of “voting with your dollar” has its limits and aligns with a neoliberal ideology that
516 Meredith A. Katz shifts responsibility from the state to individuals to eradicate systemic injustices (Eaton, 2017). With this shift, individuals are viewed first as consumers, not as citizens (Clarke & Newman, 2007; Eaton, 2017; Slocum, 2004). This chapter discusses how cultural and ideological shifts may lead some scholars to claim that political participation is in decline (Putnam, 2001), while others assert that, rather than declining, forms of engagement have shifted (Dalton, 2013; Zukin et al., 2006). It is also important to mention from the outset that there is more research on political consumerism in the United States than in Canada and, consequently, more examples from the United States are offered in this chapter. There are several factors that may have contributed to this disparity, including the scale and history of consumption in each country, the role of government regulation in consumer affairs, and cultural factors associated with consumption. As a point of comparison, in August 2017 food and retail sales in the United States totalled USD$476.5 billion for over 325 million residents (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 2017), while in Canada it was CAD$68.88 billion for 36 million Canadians (Statistics Canada, 2017).1 In 2015, the annual gross adjusted disposable income in the United States was USD$46,600, while in Canada it was CAD$31,100 (OECD, 2017). The larger consumer base and rate of consumer spending may explain why more research has been conducted on consumerism broadly, and political consumerism specifically, in the United States. This chapter provides a comparative history of political consumerism in the United States and Canada. After discussing the emergence and evolvement of political consumerism, the latter part of this chapter focuses on impacts on participation from the rise of postmaterialist values, lifestyle politics, and the internet. Finally, the chapter concludes with suggestions for future research.
The Emergence of Political Consumerism in North America While consumer activism has a longstanding tradition in North America, experts differ on the exact date of its origin. Frequently, the American Revolution (1765–1783) is cited as the first example of consumer activism in North America (Glickman, 2009; Shah et al., 2007). However, other scholars contend the origins of the consumer movement preceded the American Revolution. Most notably, historian Timothy H. Breen (2005) identifies the origins of American consumer society prior to the American Revolution, arguing that shopping (and boycotting) aided in establishing colonialists as citizen-consumers. While no agreement exists on the exact date of origin, the American Revolution, and more specifically the Boston Tea Party of 1773, played a significant role in the history of consumer activism in North America. The Boston Tea Party was important for two primary reasons: first, it introduced the concept of the boycott to the masses; and second,
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 517 it shifted the definition of consumption from “use” to “purchase.” This shift highlights a paradox that consumer activism has dealt with ever since: consumer activists both abhor and rely upon consumer society for their work (Glickman, 2009). Between the 1820s and 1860s, politically divergent consumer advocacy groups also emerged in the United States. While Quaker-led free produce advocates encouraged consumers to boycott slave-made goods and buycott, the “free labour” of nonenslaved workers, on the other end of the spectrum, were nonintercourse advocates or “rebel consumers,” mainly white southerners. The latter group also wanted consumers to boycott and buycott, but for the opposite reason: to maintain slave labour in the South and weaken the power of northern free labour. While ultimately the free produce movement did not become a widespread alternative to southern slave-made goods, it did succeed in laying the foundation for future political consumer campaigns including fair trade, organic, green, and cruelty-free (McDonald, 2017). This development is also a reminder that political consumerism is not an inherently progressive, politically left enterprise (Glickman, 2009; see also Chapters 30, 31 and 32). During the following Progressive Era (1890s–1920s), or what Lizabeth Cohen (2003) terms the “first wave” of consumer politics, similar consumer-based organizations formed in the United States and Canada. In the United States, the National Consumers League (NCL), founded in 1899, and the Consumers’ Association of Canada, later renamed the Canadian Association of Consumers (CAC), founded in 1947, both grappled with what is still an ongoing discussion about the relationship between consumption and citizenship: Does fulfilling the role of consumer impede individuals from fulfilling their roles and responsibilities as citizens (Cohen, 2003; Schudson, 2007)? The female-led NCL and CAC did not believe the roles of citizens and consumers were antithetical. In fact, these organizations strove to make women’s often private acts of consumption public (Wiedenhoft, 2008). A key aspect of the NCL’s strategy, later used by other consumer activist organizations in the United States, including the antisweatshop and fairtrade movements, was mobilizing consumers at the point of consumption in order to mitigate injustices at the point of production. At a time when women were unable to vote in the United States, the NCL organized women to exercise influence in the public sphere through their consumption choices (Wiedenhoft, 2008). The NCL had two main goals: urging female customers to be ethical shoppers and encouraging the state to protect female workers (Glickman, 2009). For example, in 1889, the Working Women’s Society (later the NCL) was concerned with the working conditions of female clerks in New York City department stores, and the organization conducted an inquiry into the matter in 1889. The investigation revealed that employees endured unsanitary and unsafe conditions and long working hours. The advocacy association presented these findings at its next annual meeting. Appalled by these revelations, and inspired by similar actions in England, a group of attendees created a “white list” of employers who treated female workers fairly, in contrast with the “black list” of those who did not. The intention was to encourage buyers to purchase,
518 Meredith A. Katz or buycott, from the former rather than from the latter. In 1891, these women formed the Consumers League, an organization dedicated to informing consumers about working conditions and advocating for higher labour standards. A few years later, in 1899, the Consumers League of New York joined with other consumer-based organizations in the United States and became the National Consumers League (Glickman, 1999; Wiedenhoft, 2008). To initiate its activities, the NCL launched the White Label Campaign, an antisweatshop campaign often considered the precursor to the modern- day antisweatshop movement. Developed under the leadership of Florence Kelly,2 longtime NCL president, the campaign allowed consumers to identify goods produced under fair labour conditions, including fair wages for both company employees and product producers. The NCL granted the white label of approval after inspecting the operations of manufactures and traders. The label stated, “made under clean and healthful conditions; use of label authorized after investigation—National Consumers League” (Sklar, 1998). After labelling products and stores with the white label, the NCL encouraged consumers to buycott and patronize these establishments and purchase particular brands upholding fair labour standards. Some scholars claim that the success of the White Label Campaign hinged on the NCL’s foresight in utilizing market forces to advance fair labour practices rather than reject them (Sklar, 1998). Women were also organizers and leaders of consumer-based collective action in Canada. In 1893, a group of Canadian women’s organizations founded the National Council of Women (NCW). The NCW focused on improving conditions for families and communities, incorporating a consumer rights arm focused on monitoring goods and services, particularly food quality, in Canada (Kerton, 2015). Half a century later, in 1947, the NCW joined over twenty other women’s organizations to establish the Canadian Association of Consumers (CAC), later renamed the Consumers Association of Canada in 1961 (Kerton, 2015). The mission and focus of the CAC evolved over time and grew substantially between 1920 and 1960. Similar to the NCL in the United States, the CAC provided an opportunity for women, often in charge of provisioning for their households, to use this role for specific consumer-based objectives (Belisle, 2014). The organization helped to achieve labelling requirements for textiles in 1949 and, one year later, led a successful food safety campaign for transparent labelling of bacon. In 1967, the CAC led efforts for national legislative action to promote competition among Canadian companies (Kerton, 2015). The CAC was composed of women from differing political perspectives: liberal women who wanted consumptive choices to be viewed politically; and more conservative, religious women whose motivation stemmed from moral grounds (Belisle, 2014). The work of the female-led NCL and CAC established the groundwork for present- day political consumer campaigns by highlighting two main factors: the need for supply chain transparency; and the possibility of mitigating injustices at the point of production through consumption (Kerton, 2015; Micheletti, 2003; Sklar, 1998).
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 519
The Evolvement of Political Consumerism in North America Three decades after the female-led NCL’s White Label Campaign, a boycott by another marginalized group began, this time involving African Americans. The Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work campaigns of the 1930s took place in the industrialized north ern cities of the United States where African Americans fought against discriminatory hiring practices. The strategy was twofold and combined conventional (protest) and unconventional (boycott) forms of political action. African Americans protested in front of white-owned businesses that refused to hire African American employees and also leveraged their buying power through boycotting these businesses. The massive Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work boycott highlights the power and potential of boycotts, direct action, and protest among socially marginalized populations (Cohen, 2003). The World War II period (1939–1945) still remains a critical but understudied era of the twentieth-century consumer movement. During this period, two government offices formed: the United States Office of Price Administration (OPA) in 1941 and the Canadian Wartime Prices and Trade Board (WPTD) in 1939. These offices fused government protection with consumer interest and were specifically charged with protecting inflation during the war. The success of each organization was constrained by differing political structures. Canada’s centralized parliament facilitated more decisive coordinated action than the decentralized U.S. system allowed. The OPA eventually dissolved into other federal organizations in 1947 while the WPTD was abolished in 1951 (Tohill, 2017). The OPA and the WPTD targeted middle-and working-class women as household caretakers, encouraging consumer protection from the ground up, in contrast with the NCL and CAC, which focused on upper-class women to filter information to the masses. Beginning in the 1950s, the multifaceted civil rights movement sought to end racial discrimination and guarantee citizenship rights for all marginalized groups in the United States. One of the most famous boycotts of the time was the racially motivated Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955–1966 (Friedman, 1999). Throughout the 381-day boycott, African Americans boycotted city buses in Montgomery, Alabama due to their segregated seating. On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks famously refused to leave the front of a bus and move to the section designated for African Americans. This refusal by Parks, as protest to the racial segregation of the time, mobilized African Americans, who composed roughly 75 percent of the public bus ridership, to boycott the bus line and find alternative forms of transportation throughout the city (Coleman, Nee, & Rubinowitz, 2005). Boycotters were able to achieve such high rates of participation in part because they advertised their boycott in print media and had celebrity endorsements of the boycott (Glickman, 2009). The Montgomery Bus Boycott, regarded as the first mass civil rights protest in the United States, with similarities to the Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work boycotts of the previous decade, demonstrated the power of African American
520 Meredith A. Katz consumers and less privileged citizens to leverage consumer power for social change (see Chapter 32). In the 1960s, as the civil rights movement intensified, businesses began to recognize the importance of the consumer base of marginalized groups in the United States. During this time, the buying power of African Americans in the United States approached USD$20 billion, almost equivalent to Canada as a whole, forcing businesses to reconsider how they approached this lucrative African American consumer base (Sewell, 2004). At the same time, in 1965, other marginalized populations also mobilized. Filipino and Hispanic agricultural workers joined forces to demand labour improvements from California grape growers. Workers’ demands included payment of the federal minimum wage, enforcement of safety regulations on pesticide use, and employer recognition of the newly created United Farm Workers (UFW). Led by Mexican American activist César Chávez, the UFW gained support from labour advocates, religious leaders, environmentalists, and middle-class consumers. Solidarity with like-minded organizations, including the civil rights–based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Students for a Democratic Society, were instrumental in establishing a nationwide boycott (Bardacke, 2012). Campaign tactics included strikes; pickets; marches; promoting the boycott through the organization’s publication, Food and Justice; and, most significantly, a boycott on California-produced grapes. At the height of the campaign, which lasted five years, fourteen million people in the United States participated in the boycott. By 1970, the UFW had succeeded in signing approximately 150 contracts with grape growers, receiving employer recognition, increasing wages, and providing strict regulations on pesticide use to protect workers (Friedman, 1999; Gordon, 1999).3 The solidarity between consumers and producers should not be overlooked in the success of the UFW boycott. By making consumers aware of the labour conditions of agricultural workers, and then asking these consumers to boycott grapes in favour of better labour conditions, the UFW was able to achieve a substantial victory for better working conditions.
Political Consumerism Today Since the 1970s, rates of political consumerism have risen in North America (Copeland, 2014a). As Stolle and Micheletti (2013) note, consumer choice plays a pivotal role in attempting to address the multifaceted problems of Western democracies, and in some cases these problems are not otherwise addressed by governments or other political establishments. Highlighted in this section are examples of political consumers taking on these challenges in the United States and Canada. They include, but are not limited to, culture jamming, anticonsumerist movements, antisweatshop movements, anti-GMO actions, and food justice campaigns. Adbusters, a not-for-profit Canadian-based media foundation founded in Vancouver in 1992, is an internationally known anticonsumerist organization that encourages
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 521 consumers worldwide to critically examine and reflect upon their consumption. As an organization and an anticonsumerist movement, Adbusters focuses on raising awareness about the deleterious psychological, social, and environmental impacts of consumer cultures. Adbusters embodies what Juliet Schor (1999) terms “new politics of consumption”: politics defined in opposition to the ubiquity of conspicuous consumption in the West. The foundation’s magazine, Adbusters, features stories from writers critical of how advertising, multinational corporations, and conspicuous consumption impact all facets of our lives (Rumbo, 2002). Adbusters’ tactics extend beyond previously discussed boycotts and buycotts in this chapter. Adbusters also employs a discursive form of political consumerism that informs consumers about connections between their purchasing decisions and the impact these choices have on others around the world (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). One of the main and most successful discursive tactics of Adbusters is culture jamming, designed to elicit consumer boycotts of multinational companies by exposing the realities (low worker wages, consumer debt, environmental impacts) of corporate domination (Friedman, 1999). Adbusters’ culture jams are directed at corporate giants such as Nike, McDonald’s, and Philip Morris, among others. For example, one culture jam shows an advertisement featuring Joe Camel of Camel cigarettes (owned by Philip Morris) depicted in a hospital bed as Joe Chemo, a commentary on the likelihood of getting cancer from smoking. Another culture jam is a spoof of one of Adbusters’ favourite targets, Nike. In this advertisement, the face and wages of a Nike factory worker are juxtaposed with a picture and the price of the shoes they made, highlighting the abysmal wages of workers compared with corporate profit (Adbusters, 2017). After highlighting the dire conditions of Nike workers, Adbusters provides an alternative: an opportunity for individuals to buycott. In 2003 Adbusters debuted Blackspot sneakers, which resembled Nike- owned Converse shoes. Currently retailing for USD$135 with the hashtag #unswoosh, these vegan, tire-soled, union-made shoes take aim at the corporate dominance of Nike. On their website, Adbusters acknowledges that, while they have yet to “unswoosh the swoosh,” success may not come overnight, as it also took a long time for craft beer, buy local campaigns, and farmers’ markets to make a dent in the overall market (Adbusters, 2017). Finally, Buy Nothing Day, the signature anticonsumerist campaign of Adbusters, originated in Canada in 1992. This day challenges consumers to halt their spending for one day during the holiday shopping season. In the United States, Buy Nothing Day occurs the day after Thanksgiving, on the notorious Black Friday, the largest shopping day of the year (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Regardless of the day consumers choose, Adbusters encourages individuals to stop shopping for one day during the holiday season to raise consumer awareness about spending habits and not contribute to holiday overconsumption. In addition to the consciousness-raising of Adbusters, rates of political consumerism continued to rise during the 1990s, as boycotts and buycotts increased in both visibility and participation in North America (Andersen & Tobiasen, 2004; Norris, 2002).
522 Meredith A. Katz For political consumers interested in the antisweatshop movement, two highly visible news stories—the sweatshop production of Kathie Lee Gifford’s apparel line and Jonah Peretti’s viral Nike sweatshop email—brought the issue to the public’s attention once again. In 1996, a National Labor Committee investigation discovered that the Honduran factory Global Fashion was a sweatshop. Global Fashion was responsible for producing clothing for Kathie Lee’s apparel line, which was sold at the retail giant Walmart. The factory employed girls as young as thirteen, required seventy-five-hour workweeks, permitted only one to two bathroom breaks in a fifteen-hour workday, and forbade workers to attend school. Global Fashion paid workers an average of USD$0.39 per hour for pants sold at Walmart for USD$19.96. In one day, the factory produced USD$15,968 worth of Kathie Lee apparel, but the combined wages of the factory’s sixty- five workers was USD$203 (National Labor Committee, 1996). Other factories producing Kathie Lee’s apparel in Guatemala paid workers USD$28.57 for forty-four hours of work (USD$0.65 per hour). The Caribbean Apparel factory in El Salvador paid workers USD$0.60 per hour, only one-third of the living wage in El Salvador at the time (Spectar, 2000). The public exposure and outcry from the Kathie Lee scandal reintroduced the term sweatshop into the broader public consciousness. The scandal caused so much uproar in the United States that then President Bill Clinton implemented an antisweatshop task force in 1998, composed of representatives from labour and human rights groups, labour unions, and clothing manufacturers, to implement standards regarding labour practices of U.S.-based companies abroad (Greenhouse, 1998). Shortly thereafter, in 2000, multinational apparel manufacturer Nike was involved in another sweatshop scandal. Nike introduced an option for shoppers to order customized shoes online. In an era of mass production, the multinational company framed this as an opportunity for customers to express their freedom and individuality. Nike, however, used (and continues to use) sweatshops to produce their apparel, and one consumer pointed this out. Activist Jonah Peretti found Nike’s marketing strategy offensive given the company’s history of labour violations. Peretti ordered a pair of Nike shoes to be customized with the label sweatshop. He made a statement regarding the irony of consumers in the Global North paying for customizing by Global South producers. Peretti, like Adbusters, employed culture jamming in an effort to highlight Nike’s atrocities (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Peretti’s culture jamming, premised upon turning corporate power against itself through the co-option or recontextualization of meaning, caught Nike’s attention (Peretti & Micheletti, 2004). After receiving the order, Nike responded via email that they could not fulfil the order. This original email began a public exchange between Peretti and Nike, eventually reaching over eleven million people within a few months (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). From the point of cancellation, Peretti and Nike exchanged six emails, all of which were later published in Harper’s magazine. During the same time as the outcry from the Kathie Lee sweatshop scandal and Peretti’s culture jam, the Canadian-based Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) began
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 523 partnering with labour and women’s rights organizations in Mexico and Central America to combat worker exploitation. Between 1994 and 2004, the MSN served as the Canadian contact for international campaigns advancing women’s and workers’ rights in Mexico and Central America. The scope of MSN campaigns was expansive and included supporting workers’ rights to organize; living wage campaigns; advocating for women’s rights and for workers’ rights to childcare; and corporate and government accountability. The MSN was directly involved with holding the Canadian government and Canadian-based companies accountable for the treatment of workers throughout their supply chains (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2017). The success of the MSN again shows how solidarity networks that serve as partnering producers with consumers, applying direct pressure to the state and companies, are effective strategies to bring about desired change. During this surge of antisweatshop awareness, another solidarity organization formed, this time composed of university students in the United States and Canada. United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), formed in 1997, was a grassroots student- worker organization founded on principles of collective liberation and solidarity. Similar to the MSN, USAS focuses on holding parties responsible—in this case, university administrations—for adhering to factory codes of conduct and upholding workers’ rights. By employing a model of consumer-worker solidarity, USAS has been extremely successful. With over 150 chapters on college campuses throughout the United States and Canada, USAS has affiliated over 190 colleges with the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the only independent factory-monitoring organization of collegiate apparel, and it has achieved victories for workers against corporate giants including Nike and Hanes (Wimberley, Katz, & Mason, 2015). In addition to the apparel industry, the food industry has also yielded to the power of political consumers. In 2004 agrigiant Monsanto lost a battle in Canada against the use of their Roundup Ready (RR) wheat, the first of a roundup crop (Eaton, 2017). The group defeating RR wheat in Canada was composed of a politically diverse coalition of farmworkers, environmental and food justice activists, and consumers. Notably, the coalition that united over opposition to RR wheat disagreed more broadly about GMOs and biotechnology. This coalition also differed from common health–related opposition to GMOs: instead, their campaign focused on agronomic and land stewardship, and six of the nine coalition members were from rural and farm groups. In 2003 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) yielded to the pressure of the coalition and asked Monsanto to provide additional information regarding potential agricultural changes farmers could expect from RR wheat. In 2004, Monsanto, understanding the request from the CFIA meant they were under additional scrutiny and would likely face continuing opposition to their product, withdrew their RR wheat from Canada (Eaton, 2017). Similar to the strategies of the Maquila Solidarity Network, this coalition also targeted the corporation and the Canadian government, specifically the CFIA, simultaneously.4 Notably, in this battle against RR wheat, it was Monsanto proponents of RR wheat who urged farmers to “vote with their wallets.” Their argument, rooted in neoliberalism,
524 Meredith A. Katz was that individual farmers, not the Canadian government, should have the freedom to decide whether or not they would use a product. In Canada, governmental regulation of products occurs on a case-by-case basis, therefore each anti-GMO campaign is a separate victory (previous victories include denial of the bovine growth hormone and other biotech companies withdrawing GMOs from their processes) (Eaton, 2017). The successes of the anti–RR wheat campaign and other food justice campaigns remind us that individuals advocating for food and land justice can also be farmers themselves, not only privileged individuals advocating on behalf of others (Allen & Hinrichs, 2007; Minkoff-Zern, 2017). The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Campaign for Fair Food (the Fair Food Campaign) is the next example in a long line of successful producer-consumer alliances. Similar to the UFW grape boycott of the 1960s, the Fair Food Campaign was worker-led but relied upon consumer support to demand an improvement in their working conditions (Minkoff-Zern, 2017). In the United States, an estimated one-half to three-quarters of farmworkers are undocumented immigrants, mainly from Mexico and Central America. Because of their precarious status, many workers fear speaking out about low wages and poor working conditions (Minkoff-Zern, 2017). An estimated one-fourth of farmworkers live below the federal poverty line and 55 percent are food insecure (Kresge & Eastman, 2010). Farmworkers are one of the few occupations exempt from the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which established a minimum wage, forty-hour workweek, overtime pay, and prohibited child labour. They are also excluded from the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which guarantees private-sector employees the right to organize (Minkoff-Zern, 2017).5 The Fair Food Campaign is a farmworker-led, consumer-backed movement to improve the working conditions of farmworkers. The campaign is focused on corporate buyers of produce including fast food companies, food service providers, and grocery stores. The Fair Food Campaign identifies power brokers, primarily multinational corporations, and pressures them to improve labour standards by applying pressure to the entire food industry from the top down. Consumers supporting the CIW write letters to companies demanding they meet the requests of the CIW, stating they will boycott the retailer if they do not agree to the CIW’s demands. In addition to boycotts and letter- writing campaigns, the CIW has also circulated petitions and organized protests and days of action at multiple agrifood company headquarters. When a company signs onto the Fair Food Campaign, they agree to use their market power to increase farmworker wages (for example, paying one more cent per pound for tomatoes as was the case with the Taco Bell boycott), enforce a human rights–based code of conduct for suppliers, and agree to third-party farm audits (Minkoff-Zern, 2017). Since the onset of the Fair Food Campaign in 2011, over USD$18 million has been paid to farmworkers directly; over 150,000 workers have been educated on workplace rights; and 600 workers have filed complaints of worker abuse (Coalition of Immokalee Workers, 2015). Fair Food contracts have been reached with fast food giants McDonald’s, Burger King, and Taco Bell; food service providers Aramark and Sodexo; and grocery stores Walmart and Trader Joe’s (Minkoff-Zern, 2017).
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 525 The Fair Food Campaign owes its success to two main strategies: producer-consumer solidarity and targeting multinational corporations. Because the Fair Food Campaign is worker-led, with consumer support following, it prioritizes the needs of workers rather than consumers. Second, the Fair Food Campaign’s targeting of fast food giants and grocery stores has implemented change from the top down. By specifically targeting megaconsumers of agricultural products, the Fair Food Campaign’s impact is amplified (Minkoff-Zern, 2017). The aforementioned examples—from the CIW’s Fair Food Campaign, to the culture jamming of Adbusters and Jonah Peretti, to the Canadian farmers’ defeat of Roundup Ready wheat—exemplify the diversity of campaigns and participants of political consumerism in United States and Canada. Additionally, cultural shifts in both countries also led to the rise of political consumerism, as discussed below.
The Impact of Postmaterialism and Lifestyle Politics on Political Consumption Two major shifts occurred post–World War II in North America that enhanced the visibility and influence of political consumerism: a rise in postmaterialist values and an emphasis on lifestyle politics (Haenfler, Johnson, & Jones, 2012; Miller, 2005; Newman & Bartels, 2011). Increasing rates of political consumerism in the United States and Canada are reflections of societal shifts with respect to citizen values, norms, and practices (Copeland, 2014a; Dalton, 2013; Gotlieb & Cheema, 2016). For example, Canadian political consumerism increased from 20 to 27 percent for individuals twenty-five and older (and dropped off again for individuals over sixty-five) between 2003 and 2008 (Statistics Canada, 2014).6 These societal shifts provide opportunities for individuals, citizens, and consumers to express their politics in unconventional ways. Instead of pursuing change via conventional routes of political participation (voting, signing petitions, contacting elected officials), individuals increasingly engage in political consumerism (Andersen & Tobiasen, 2004; Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005). The rise of postmaterialist values following World War II has historical importance. According to Inglehart (1981, 1997), the socioeconomic conditions affecting a generation during childhood have an impact on generational values. Compared to individuals born and raised during World War I and the Great Depression, who endured greater economic uncertainty, those born after World War II enjoyed better material circumstances. Consequently, they are more likely to embrace postmaterialist values because they do not have to devote all of their energies to meeting their basic needs. Some commonalities exist for those who embrace postmaterialist values in the United States and Canada. These individuals are broadly concerned with social justice issues, including fair labour conditions, environmental protection, and racial and gender
526 Meredith A. Katz equality. A recent study of political consumers in the United States found those who embrace postmaterialist values are more likely to participate in political consumerism than those who do not (Copeland, 2014a). Prior studies on postmaterialist values of undergraduate students in Canada, Sweden, and Belgium found support for postmaterialist values significantly increased the likelihood of participating in political consumerism (Stolle et al., 2005). Thus, it is not surprising that the rise of postmaterialist values coincides with participation in lifestyle politics. Postmaterialist values align well with modern-day examples of lifestyle politics, including fair trade, food preferences (veganism/vegetarianism/organic), green consumption, and participation in the slow food and voluntary simplicity movements. In the United States, Fair Trade USA, the national certifier of fairtrade products, reports that, since 1998, fairtrade farmers have earned an additional USD$165 billion as a result of U.S. consumers purchasing fairly traded goods (Fair Trade USA, 2017). In addition, Fairtrade Canada’s annual report indicates a strong consumer base for fairtrade goods. In 2016, Fairtrade Canada indicates farmers were paid an additional CAD$4.6 million as a result of fairtrade pricing, an increase of 11 percent from the previous year (Fairtrade Canada, 2016). This upward trend indicates support for purchasing fairtrade products is growing and also highlights how lifestyle politics and fairtrade work: individual actions, collectively, bring about social change (Webb, 2007). The expansion from conventional forms of political engagement to the inclusion of lifestyle politics signals a change within the framework of consumer cultures. Individuals shop and politically engage differently now. They are interested in the “politics behind the products” and motivated by their ability to “politicize the personal” through political consumerism (Newman & Bartels, 2011; Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005, 2013). In this regard, the commitment of individuals engaged in lifestyle politics extends beyond the other three forms of political consumerism (boycotting, buycotting, discursive) as individuals focus on forming a cohesive identity and align their politics with their purchases regarding personal identity as a site of social change (Haenfler et al., 2012; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Because lifestyle movements are neither formalized social movements nor conventional means of political participation (i.e., voting, signing petitions), scholarly examination has lagged (Haenfler et al., 2012). Due to their amorphous nature, lifestyle movements may also be easily overlooked because participation and categorization are not easily measured. For example, take the case of vegetarians and vegans. An estimated 3 percent of adults in the United States are vegetarian or vegan (The Vegetarian Resource Group, 2016) and 8 percent of Canadians are vegetarian (Vancouver Humane Society, 2015; also see Chapter 8). While these individuals boycott meat purchases, alternatively they may buycott vegetarian or vegan products, discuss animal rights with friends engaging in discursive political consumerism, and strive to align their lifestyle with their politics (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). How do we measure their level of involvement? Should each one of these actions be counted individually or do they constitute various forms of the same lifestyle choice?
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 527 Furthermore, compared to overtly political movements, lifestyle movements also tend to be relatively individualistic and private (i.e., people may not know your shopping choices unless you tell them); ongoing, rather than episodic; and directed toward changing cultural practices rather than the state (Haenfler et al., 2012). In this regard, lifestyle movements are a relatively low-risk form of political action in the sense that they do not compromise the physical safety of participants (Micheletti, 2003). On the other hand, lifestyle movements are challenging because they often require a substantive change of lifestyles (e.g., downshifting). While participants in lifestyle movements believe the sum of individualized actions collectivized can impact the global economy, they engage from a position of minimal risk (Furlong & Cartmel, 2006; Haenfler et al., 2012; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Postmaterialist values embedded within lifestyle movements also tend to attract younger participants (Dalton, 2008; Harris, Wyn & Younes, 2010; Micheletti & Stolle, 2008) and provide a participatory alternative (Shildrick, Blackman, & MacDonald, 2009) to an otherwise low rate of participation in mainstream electoral politics (Côté & Allahar, 2006). In a national study of Canadian political consumers, Nonomura (2017) found individuals ages thirty to thirty-four were the most likely to engage in political consumerism, but individuals between ages twenty to fifty-four all had rates rates of political consumerism between 28 and 33 percent. The impact of gender in lifestyle movements, and political consumerism more broadly, varies. Several studies indicate women have higher rates of political consumerism than men, often explained by women’s historical exclusions from representative political institutions (Acik, 2013; Gil de Zúñiga, Homero, & Valenzuela, 2012; Sandovici & Davis, 2010; Stolle et al., 2005) and women’s roles as household provisioners (Neilson, 2010). Other studies point to the interaction between gender and class to explain participation. In a recent study of Toronto ecomothers, researchers state that buying organic is a form of “caring consumption” and a gendered form of class distinction (Cairns, de Laat, Johnston, & Baumann, 2014). In other words, it is not simply being a woman, but being a middle-or upper-middle-class woman, that explains participation in ecomothering. In another study of Toronto food preferences, researchers found participation in “good eating” was more likely among economically privileged households (Johnston, Szabo, & Rodney, 2011). In these examples, the critique that “good” food or ecoconsumption are elite forms of participation is substantiated (Guthman, 2003). Overall, the post–World War II shifts towards lifestyle politics and postmaterialist values created opportunities for historically excluded populations to participate in political consumerism. In these instances, individuals who were historically excluded from public spaces were able to politically consume through changes in their lifestyles. As discussed below, the demographics of political consumers vary across the United States and Canada and between privileged and historically marginalized groups.
528 Meredith A. Katz
Demographics and Participation in Political Consumerism The scholarship is divided regarding predictors of participation in political consumerism. For example, recent studies indicate specific demographic predictors among political consumers (Copeland, 2014b). In a comparative study based on 2011 YouGov survey data of U.S. political consumers, participation in both boycotting and buycotting was predicted by level of education, political interest, and ideological strength. Individuals with higher levels of education, higher rates of political interest, and higher rates of ideological strength were more likely to politically consume than those who did not. Importantly, however, income did not predict participation in either boycotting or buycotting, refuting the notion that economic privilege is a precursor for participation. However, level of income and ideological strength significantly predicted the likelihood of dualcotting (participation in both boycotting and buycotting), while partisan strength was negatively associated with dualcotting (Copeland, 2014b). Yet, other studies measuring demographic predictors of political consumerism contrast the aforementioned findings regarding demographic predictors of political consumers. While previous studies also indicate higher levels of education significantly increase the likelihood of participation in political consumerism (Andersen & Tobiasen, 2004; Dalton, 2008; Norris, 2002; Verba et al., 1995), income has also significantly predicted participation in boycotting or buycotting (Ferrer & Fraile, 2006; Holt, 1998; Katz, 2011; Leighley & Vedlitz, 1999; Min Baek, 2010; Stolle, Hoothe & Micheletti, 2005). Overall rates of political consumerism are high, with studies of U.S. political consumers indicating 67 percent of individuals report boycotting at least one product or company within the past year, and 78 percent of individuals report buycotting at least one product or company within the past year (Katz, 2011). In Canada, the rates of participation are lower, with 27 percent of Canadians having participated in a boycott (Statistics Canada, 2014). Because distinctions regarding various motivations and subsections of political consumers is a relatively new development in the literature, prior studies have largely discussed political consumers in their entirety, without differentiating demographic and ideological differences between boycotters and buycotters (Copeland, 2014b; Min Baek, 2010). Boycotts are more protest-and punishment-oriented, while buycotts are reward- oriented and therefore may appeal to different individuals with varying motivations for participation (Copeland, 2014b). Some commonalities exist amongst those most likely to participate in boycotting and buycotting. In the United States, political consumers are more likely to belong to racial ethnic majorities and younger generations; to be highly educated and have higher incomes; to be more politically engaged; to engage in unconventional forms of political action; and to identify as female (Copeland, 2014a; Min Baek, 2010; Stolle et al., 2005). In Canada, political consumers are more likely to be between the ages of twenty-five and
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 529 sixty-five; to be highly educated and have higher incomes; to live in metropolitan areas; to have lower rates of confidence in corporations; but they are not more likely to identify as female (Statistics Canada, 2014).7 However, when differentiating among various forms of political consumers, demographic predictors shift. For example, survey data from the 2002 National Civic Engagement Survey (NCES) of U.S. political consumers indicated women were no more likely than men to engage in political consumerism, as previous studies found (Katz, 2011; Min Baek, 2010). Dualcotters and boycotters had a slightly higher proportion of male participants, while no gender difference existed between buycotters and noncotters (Min Baek, 2010). The notion that shopping is a feminized activity, and therefore more prevalent amongst women, is more nuanced than originally thought. As previously stated, men who live in a leading consumer nation are also susceptible to hyperconsumerism, which is an increased pressure to consume goods in capitalist societies for nonfunctional purposes (Ritzer, 2005). However, because we tend to see fashion and shopping as a “women’s arena” (Klepp & Storm-Mathisen, 2005), women may be more likely to politically consume in this realm (Austgulen, 2016). Perhaps what matters is not the act of viewing shopping as inherently feminized, and thus something women are more likely to take part in, but what products are purchased and by whom.
The Rise and Role of the Internet Scholars argue that connectivity is important for long-term sustained involvement in political consumerism, whether considered as a social movement, an assertion of a lifestyle, or an alternative form of collective action (Benford & Snow, 2000). Digital media affect political consumerism in at least three dimensions: access to goods, interaction among consumers, and availability of information regarding corporate practices. The rise and ubiquity of internet shopping has made shopping, an already individualized activity, potentially more isolating. Online purchasing has become more common in the United States than shopping at the mall, in part, because consumers have access to a wider range of goods than they do in brick-and-mortar stores. While Amazon. com is currently the number-one apparel retailer in the United States, one-third of the country’s malls are likely to close in the coming years. Interestingly, Canadian malls are not closing at the same rates, due in part to a difference in per-capita penetration of shopping centres: Canada has 16.5 square feet of mall space per person, compared to 23.6 square feet per person in the United States (Shaw, 2017). These shifts in infrastructure, coupled with the rise and ubiquity of the internet, have changed the landscape of both shopping and political consumerism. The internet also increases the likelihood of interaction among consumers who may be otherwise geographically isolated from others with similar political or social values. Individual consumers can organize and disseminate information regarding specific boycotts or buycotts through social media, using platforms such as email, Facebook,
530 Meredith A. Katz Twitter, and personal blogs (Makarem & Jae, 2016). Additionally, a campaign promoted through one platform can easily spread to other platforms, increasing the likelihood of more individuals learning about a particular action (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2012). For instance, by publicizing his email exchange with Nike online, culture jammer Jonah Peretti was able to reach a broader audience informing them of the atrocities of Nike. The ubiquity of the internet and, more recently, of social media have changed the scope, breadth, and accessibility of political consumerism. For example, CarrotMobs, while not currently active, have mobilized 250 campaigns in over twenty countries around the world and spent over USD$1 million improving conditions at businesses. Departing slightly from a traditional buycott, CarrotMob organizers mobilize consumers to patronize specific businesses in exchange for those businesses taking socially responsible actions demanded by the CarrotMob. CarrotMobs encourage businesses to meet their demands through the promise of patronage—often first issuing a call for participation with the agreement that the CarrotMob will collectively support the selected business. The official CarrotMob website encourages participants to spread news about their particular campaign via social media sites, including Facebook and Twitter; to devise a short YouTube video; and to advertise via email lists (CarrotMob, 2017). While also encouraging promotion via flyers and media press releases, the success of CarrotMobs, similar to other mass boycotts and buycotts, is due in part to how quickly information is disseminated over the internet to likeminded individuals. In addition to CarrotMobs, the internet and social media have also had an impact on how consumers access information about particular companies. Although there are limited empirical studies examining the relationship between internet usage and political consumerism in North America, studies indicate individuals who use social media are more likely to engage in political consumerism than those who do not (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2012). One explanation is that the information shared within the boundaries of specific social networks provides a tool for mobilization and information sharing, facilitating potential engagement in political consumerism. Particularly, the rise of hashtags for a particular campaign has made it easier for individuals to connect and mobilize with other likeminded consumers, even if they are not in geographical proximity (Makarem & Jae, 2016). A recent study U.S.-based consumers reveals that social media use, in particular, may play a mediating role between general digital media use and political consumerism. However, more research is needed to establish the exact aspects of internet use that influence participation in political consumerism (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2012). Recent analyses of the #boycott hashtag in Twitter feeds revealed some commonalities amongst boycott targets. Boycott targets are frequently for-profit companies, and the most common reasons for boycotts include human rights violations, hindering freedom of speech, and infringement upon women’s rights within these companies (Makarem & Jae, 2016). However, it is also important to note boycotts are not exclusively a tactic of the political left, and often when a boycott occurs for one political stance, a boycott ensues on the other end. For example, in June 2012, the Chick-fil-A fast food
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 531 restaurant’s chief operating officer, Dan Cathy, publicly declared his opposition to same- sex marriage. Supporters of same-sex marriage called for a Chick-fil-A boycott while simultaneously a buycott ensued, of which 630,000 supporters showed up to patronize Chick-fil-A for an appreciation day of the company in August 2012 (see Chapters 32 and 33). Undoubtedly, the internet has changed the way we shop and politically organize. Individuals are able to consume 24/7, but they also have instantaneous access to information regarding boycotts and buycotts as well.
Political Consumerism in North America Today: Conclusions and Challenges Political consumerism has a long tradition in North America, and consumer-based campaigns in the United States and Canada have become even more ubiquitous in recent years (Copeland, 2014a; Newman & Bartels, 2011). Research on Canadian political consumers still lags behind research on U.S. political consumers and, accordingly, more examples are offered from the United States in this chapter. The research on Canadian consumers, however, is more localized and specific than research on U.S. political consumers. For example, the last General Social Survey module to collect data on political consumers in Canada was in 2008, and less research by other scholars exists on Canada. Nevertheless, since the 1990s, political consumerism resurged as boycotts and buycotts increased in both visibility and rates of participation (Andersen & Tobiasen, 2004; Copeland, 2014a; Norris, 2002). Recent studies indicate between 22 and 44 percent of the general population has engaged in political consumerism (Copeland, 2014a). As a point of comparison, these rates of political consumerism are higher than levels of participation in more traditional forms of political participation, which include contacting public officials, participating in rallies, and contributing to campaigns (Min Baek, 2010: Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2012; Newman & Bartels, 2011). In other words, even though political consumerism is a relatively new term in the scholarly literature, its ubiquity suggests that more attention should be paid to it. With the rise and spread of the internet and social media, information sharing and gathering of a particular company’s practices, along with information sharing about how to participate in boycotts or buycotts, have increased the potential for an even wider group of individuals to become political consumers. As evidenced by Jonah Peretti’s email exchange with Nike, the internet is an inexpensive and rapid way to educate millions of consumers about boycotts quickly (Glickman, 2009). Moreover, while the ubiquity of political consumer campaigns is vast, those that rely upon solidarity between producers and consumers, including the UFW grape boycott, the CIW Fair Food Campaign, and the antisweatshop movement, are preferable to those that do not. In this regard, consumers are careful not to take the lead
532 Meredith A. Katz in determining what producers or workers need but rather to follow their lead in demands for better working conditions and pay. Additionally, as mentioned above, there is currently more research on U.S. political consumers than Canadian political consumers. This may be due to the scale of consumption between the countries as well as the different levels of government intervention in consumer affairs in both countries. However, despite the recent increase in boycotts and buycotts, research on political consumerism in the United States and Canada remains more limited than in European countries (Nonomura, 2017). In particular, there is a need for more research on the motivations of political consumers (Hoffmann & Müller, 2009; McFarland, 2011). To date, there is a growing body of literature on participation rates of political consumers but less information regarding why they politically consume. Developing a better understanding of consumer motivation for participation could help potentially galvanize participation and support during future boycotts and buycotts. Studying political consumerism in North America also poses methodological challenges. First, political consumerism is difficult to quantify and compare cross- nationally, particularly because there is no standard way of measuring political consumerism (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013).8 Second, political consumers tend to be studied in their entirety rather than as distinctive populations (e.g., boycotters, buycotters, discursive, lifestyle). However, it is known that boycotters and buycotters have different motivations for participation (Copeland, 2014b), and it would not be a stretch to suggest other political consumers do as well. It would be beneficial to study the distinctive forms of political consumerism separately, while acknowledging that overlap between types of political consumerism exists. Finally, it is often a challenge to quantify what people do not do. How do researchers quantify how frequently individuals boycott a particular company or product if they no longer patronize that store or purchase that product? Currently, there is knowledge of the demographic attributes and predictors of participation in political consumerism but not what initially interests and sustains involvement in political consumerism. Further research into the motivations behind political consumers would not only address a gap in the scholarship; it would also be helpful to movements and organizations hoping to mobilize consumer action on behalf of political and social justice movements.
Notes 1. For an approximation, on August 17, 2017, the exchange rate was USD$1 = CAD$1.26. 2. Continuing the family tradition of consumer activism, Florence Kelly was the niece of Sarah Pugh, a leader in the American Free Produce Association (Glickman, 2009). 3. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Campaign for Fair Food discussed later in this chapter is another example of consumer-farmworker collaboration. 4. In discussions surrounding political consumerism, there is an assumption that an individual and organizations will choose either the market or the state to achieve their goals. As this Canadian victory over Monsanto indicates, it is possible to do both simultaneously.
Boycotting and Buycotting in Consumer Cultures 533 5. In 1975 the UFW was successful in amending this law to cover farmworkers under the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act. However, workers in other parts of the United States remain unprotected (Gray, 2014). 6. The last module of the General Social Survey collecting data on ethical consumerism in Canada was in 2008. In this module, the question respondents answered was, “In the past 12 months, have you done any of the following activities: [ . . . ] boycotted a product or chosen a product for ethical reasons?” 7. The General Social Survey of Canada only used boycotting as a measure of political consumerism. Results may have differed if including the additional three forms of political consumerism. 8. For example, as mentioned previously, Canada’s General Social Survey’s measurement of political consumerism only measured boycotting. Comparing responses from that dataset to nationally representative data from the United States, which includes boycotting and buycotting, poses methodological challenges.
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Chapter 25
P olitici z i ng C onsum p t i on i n L atin Ame ri c a Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti
Although political consumerism is nowadays considered as a transnational process, most theories used to explain it are from the northern hemisphere and use this region as their reference point. Nevertheless, scholars often assume that this theoretical framework can apply to all regions so that global political consumerism might be analysed and compared with the help of the same factors and assumptions. A common scholarly approach distinguishes between regions that produce ethically labelled goods, such as fairtrade products (southern countries), and regions that consume them as a form of political participation (northern countries). Thus, the Global South is pictured as the place of “distant others,” which is normally imagined as including suffering people who are helped by the shopping choices of conscious consumers from the Global North (Ariztía et al., 2016). Southern countries, of course, do produce labelled goods, which are exported to the Global North. This production practice also works as a driving force towards the politicization of local consumers. An important problem with this focus is that it assumes that consumers, consumption, and consumer society are an exclusive matter of the so-called developed countries in the Global North and that the Global South only produces consumer goods for them. At times, scholars even considered people living in the south only as producers; therefore, there is a risk of neglecting and overlooking their status and rights as consumers (Barbosa, 2004). This is a serious oversight because it may exclude the possibility that southerners might be conscious consumers. In sum, scholars from the north and the south have often overlooked consumers’ perception and action in developing societies (Echegaray, 2015). However, low-income people are also consumers who have been politically mobilized. Additionally, it is important to remember that the realization that individual consumption in the Global South could match the Global North level of consumption triggered a global sustainable consumption discourse in the
540 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti 1980s. Thus, this increase in southern consumption is an important root for sustainable consumption discourses (Portilho, 2005). Another weakness in general political consumer scholarship is that the countries in the Global South are characterized as “catching up with ‘ethical consumption’ practices in the global North” (Ariztía et al., 2016, p. 2). Here we see again how developments in the Global South are analysed from a northern perspective. For instance, several studies and reports apply what these authors call a “deficit discourse” and analyse how well (or not) people from other geographical contexts measure up to the level of ethical consumption as defined by the northern perspectives. This view leads to misunderstandings and contributes little to illuminating the eventual rise and growth of political consumerism as a political strategy used by individuals and social movements in low- and middle-income countries, such as those at Latin America. This chapter seeks to remedy this misunderstanding. It presents scholarship on how political consumerism has been spreading in some Latin American countries and discusses its characteristics. It reviews previous research on individual political consumerism that is available for some Latin American countries (Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile) and contributes with new findings from a qualitative study of social movements concerning Chile, Peru, and Brazil. The chapter focuses on how political consumerism as a social process has developed in Latin America and how it differs from the northern experience. Important here is the role of social movements and how they have perceived and incorporated (or not) political consumerism as part of their strategy to press for societal changes. The chapter also covers limitations and opportunities for the expansion of political consumerism throughout the region. The emergence of political consumerism in Latin America is the topic of the next section. It is followed by four sections that present and discuss available research findings on political consumerism for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico. The fifth section analyses views and practices of some social movements engaged with political consumerism in the region. The conclusion summarizes some of the regional specificities.
The Emergence of Political Consumerism in Latin America The Backdrop for Politicizing Consumption in Latin America In February 2017, a surveillance software company catering exclusively to governments targeted the Mexican consumerist nongovernmental organization (NGO) El Poder del Consumidor (The Consumers’ Power) with its spyware. This occurred after the group publicly proposed a tax to regulate the soda industry as a measure to help solve the country’s obesity problem. In December 2017, activists from the Colombian
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 541 organization Educar Consumidores (Educate Consumers), also struggling against the soda industry, were threatened for supporting a 20 percent tax on sugary drinks. The threats have been compared with the tactics used by drugs cartels to silence their critics. These two recent examples illustrate that there is a social process of politicization of consumption in Latin America—at least in some of its countries. In this process, daily consumption, social activism, and even sociological analysis are being transformed. This politicization involves individuals, NGOs, governments, politicians, corporations, and the media. The dynamics of the relationships within these institutional settings are shaping the way political consumerism is spreading and developing in different Latin American contexts (Ariztía et al., 2013). Many aspects affect this development, including socioeconomic levels, foreign influences, the national political culture, supply chains, and how Latin Americans deal with moral obligations in their daily lives. While the Latin American region has certain common characteristics regarding political consumerism, it needs to be stressed that the countries are dissimilar in many aspects, including their internal dynamics and degrees of foreign influence. This implies that consumption has been politicized in different ways within these countries. During the period of transition to democracy in the 1980s, protests for civil rights led to the emergence of consumer rights’ movements in many Latin American countries (Belinky, 2010; Brasil, 2013; Portilho, 2009; Rhodes, 2006). In the 1990s, global environmental movements and United Nations (UN) initiatives, especially after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, raised awareness about the environmental impact of unbridled consumption and especially its spread to southern countries as one of the most serious causes of globalized environmental crises (Portilho, 2005). This awareness-raising was a catalyst for a process of greening and politicizing daily lives and ordinary consumption that spread worldwide, including in Latin America, and generated consumers’ mobilizations around themes like recycling, labelled wood, transport, clean energy, carbon emission, sustainable food, GMOs, animal well-being, and slavery. Across Latin America there is an increasing visibility of projects aiming to green and politicise consumption. Some local governments have been quite active in promoting such initiatives, for example those in Brazil (Ariztía et al., 2013). The UN considers Latin America as a pioneer on projects of sustainable consumption and production (SCP), because governments have worked on these issues since 2003 when the regional SCP strategy was developed and the Regional Council of Government Eexperts on SCP was established. Moreover, Latin America has a strong and diverse tradition of highly activist social movements, with both classical and postmodern profiles, which seem to be incorporating consumers’ mobilization into their political strategy. Additionally, numerous certification and labelling schemes have developed in the region. The recent certification scheme “product from familiar farm” in Brazil is one of such example. Countless experiences of environmental education have also been created across the continent, stimulating changes in personal lifestyles towards more green and responsible practices. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives have been developed and
542 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti strengthened (Echegaray, 2015). Latin America has also been strengthened by so- called new socioeconomic movements (Gendron et al., 2009), such as the solidarity economy, cooperative movements, and fair trade, which presuppose and stimulate “conscious or responsible consumer” actions (Colomé, 2013; Wilkinson, 2007). In recent years, public debate has also concerned a South-S outh fairtrade initiatives (Wilkinson & Mascarenhas, 2007). Finally, media often report on sustainable, responsible, ethical, conscious, or political consumption in the region. However, just as in other geographical contexts, the use of political consumerism as a tool for change is not new in Latin America. It has been underway since the end of the nineteenth century when trade unions, housewives, and the poor employed it in their struggle against economic injustices related to the high cost of living. Governments on both the left and the right have also promoted boycotts to control inflationary processes. At the end of the nineteenth century, for instance, the labour movement in Buenos Aires Argentina published lists of companies not complying with labour laws and encouraged its supporters to engage in boycott and buycott actions against them. These efforts helped to consolidate class-conscious and politicized workers as consumers. The labour movement also used this consumer strategy to mobilize wifes, responsible for daily shopping to the labour movement (Ferreras, 2001). Later, at the end of the 1950s, the Revolta das Barcas (Barges Revolt) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil involved a violent customers’ rebellion against the ferry’s low quality and high prices. This popular protest resulted in depredation of the company’s assets and ended in a federal intervention and the nationalization of this public transport (Nunes, 2000). Later in the 1960s and 1970s, Chilean and Brazilian upper-and middle-class housewives staged public rallies (known as the “marches of the empty pots”) on consumer issues. These rallies confronted democratically elected governments and helped to mobilize public support for the ensuing coup d’état in these countries, thus illustrating how political consumerism in Latin American has been used to help end democracy (Echegaray, 2015; Valenzuela, 1987). There are also numerous recent cases of protests related to daily life. They include a set of public protests mobilizing support among several societal groups against perceived economic injustices related to price hikes in food and utilities across Latin America from 1980 to 2005 (Eckstein, 2006) and predominantly middle-class consumer protests against violations of consumers’ rights by telecom companies in charge of privatized assets in Brazil and Argentina in the 1990s (Rhodes, 2006). Two similar cases in Brazil and Argentina show how national governments in Latin America become engaged in political consumerism in their efforts to defend economic stability. When hyperinflation threatened Brazil’s economy in 1986, President José Sarney called citizens and specially housewives to act as his price watchdogs, thus contributing to the politicization of consumer issues in society. In 2005, the Argentinean government called a successful boycott against Shell Oil, which had raised prices and threatened to reduce its products for sale on the market because its capacity to store oil in the region had reached its limit. In one week after its sales went down 60 percent, the company capitulated and began offering its products again (Echegaray, 2015).
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 543
Recent Political Consumer–Oriented Events, Actions, and Developments Other political consumer–oriented protests also took place between 2000 and 2010, including actions against sweatshop conditions in global apparel factories in Guatemala and Mexico (Echegaray, 2015). A tourist boycott of Uruguay was called due to an environmental dispute between Argentina and Uruguay concerning the construction of pulp mills on the Uruguay River. In Brazil, the multinational corporation Parmalat was boycotted for milk contamination, and Zara apparel was targeted in protests and boycotts that accused it of labour and human rights violations (Echegaray, 2012, 2015). A 2010 campaign called “São Paulo Pact” involved a boycott of agricultural and forestry products derived from the cutting down of the Amazon forest (Barbosa et al., 2013). Even banks were targeted, thus mobilizing more conservative-leaning people into political consumerism, as for example in the 2017 Brazilian campaign “Boycott to Santander” against the bank’s sponsoring of an art exhibition considered amoral by conservative movements. Noteworthy is that while these examples and numerous others demonstrate the emergence of political consumerism in Latin America, scholars from the region have generally neglected them. Most historians and social scientists seldom use the category “consumer” to analyse these protests and riots, thereby not acknowledging the consumer as an actor with political agency. Instead, as pointed out by Trentmann (2006), they focused on the role of traditional categories such as citizens, workers, youngsters, taxpayers, and so on. Latin American scholars scarcely analyse consumerism as a social movement. The reason is probably their proclivity to interpret such movements as only attempts to improve capitalism and market relations rather than giving them credit as a transformative force. In fact, most of these protests in the consumption sphere were not intended to change the structure of society but instead to affect the immediate framework conditions of ordinary daily life. The scholarly treatment of consumers and consumption is also based on the idea that citizens are morally superior to consumers. The domination of the Marxist tradition and the production-centric view among Latin American social scientists explain this position (Barbosa & Campbell, 2006). Therefore, consumers have not been analysed as political actors and the marketplace has not been studied as a locus for political actions. Perhaps the undemocratic effects of some of the early consumers’ mobilization, as mentioned in the preceding discussion (Echegaray, 2015), and critics of the idea of “inclusion through consumption,” that is, the inclusion of low-income people in consumer society as a proof of social inclusion (Souza, 2010), also helps explain this analytical failure, which reinforces the negative view towards the consumption sphere and denial of its politicization. While most of the examples discussed here are historically important, they are more like punctual actions rather than conscious and deliberate ways of exercising social pressure through consumption as so often theorized in the northern theoretical framework on political consumerism. More recent efforts to politicize consumption are, however,
544 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti more systematic and consciously political in orientation. From the 1990s, through the influence of environmental thought (Portilho, 2005) and the antiglobalization movement (Sassatelli, 2006), consumer activism became more present as a political force interwoven with the Latin American societal web. This more recent politicization of daily life and of the consumption sphere has encouraged some scholars to study it in a different fashion. So how has political consumerism been studied in Latin America?
Politicization of Consumption in Latin America Previous research finds that political consumerism is related to increasing distrust of traditional political institutions as well as the cultural change toward postmaterialist values in both the northern and southern hemispheres (Echegaray, 2012, 2015; Micheletti, 2003; Stolle et al., 2005). However, postmaterialist values, which help explain northern political consumption, do not explain the rise of political consumerism in the Latin American region. Analysis of the World Values Survey for 2005 to 2006 show that in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, for example, only 14.7 percent of the population hold postmaterialist values (Echegaray, 2015). Furthermore, the idea that environmental and human rights, among other postmaterialist values, grow stronger as societies manage to solve the material problems of their citizens, is an idea that counteracts the history of Latin American social mobilization. Instead, this region fights to improve material conditions but also at the same time includes a myriad of organizations holding postmaterialist values (Barbosa et al., 2013). The struggle for climate justice is a case in point, as it concerns both materialist (equality) and postmaterialist values (environmental issues). In sum, the root of Latin American political consumerism tends to differ when compared to western and northern countries. Scholars have, therefore, analysed other driving forces behind the documented process of the politicization of consumption in Latin America, as discussed in the next sections.
Political Consumerism in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico Latin American scholars have been studying political consumerism from various theoretical and methodological angles. For example, findings from a cross-national survey (conducted yearly) reveal that a significant number of Argentineans, Brazilians, and Mexicans over the past decade have engaged in boycotts and buycotts of brands and products (Echegaray, 2012, 2015). These two forms of political consumer activism have often exceeded other types of unconventional actions, like demonstrations, strikes, or
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 545 riots. Thus, in this analysis, political consumerism can be understood as a stable phenomenon in the region, which tends to complement other modes of political engagement rather than being a substitute for them. There are also several actual opportunities for using political consumer tools in the region. But what motivations do Latin American consumers have for engaging in political consumer actions? Do they see themselves as political agents? Do they consider corporations as responsible agents of wrongdoing and societal change? Are they personally interested in corporate performances? And do they believe that more individualized forms of participation can be effective tools for change? On a general level, the surveys conducted by Echegaray (2012, 2015) show broad public acceptance of political consumerism as a legitimate form of political action in the three studied Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico). They also show that the respondents believe that they can influence corporations at least as much as they can influence governments (Mexico) or even more so (as in Argentina and Brazil). Respondents’ beliefs about the ability of influencing corporations matches (in the Mexico case) or largely exceeds (in the Argentina and Brazil cases) that of influencing government. Argentineans and Brazilians exhibit high levels of self-confidence in their abilities to influence matters in both spheres, with a slight advantage toward the marketplace. Mexicans have the lowest levels of self-confidence in both spheres but perceive their ability to influence political institutions as higher than market-based ones. Survey results also, interestingly, show that, on average, Argentineans and Brazilians believe that they can access corporations more easily than political institutions and that corporations are perceived as more open and transparent than political institutions. Among the three countries, Mexicans have lower inclinations toward politicizing their relationships with market agents, channelling instead their civic energy mostly through voting and in attempts to influence government even though they do not consider the state as responsive to demands put by ordinary citizens. Yet respondents in all three countries indicate that they are more confident in their ability to influence large companies than the government: 41 percent of Brazilians, 39 percent of Argentinians, and 23 percent of Mexicans. Thus, “overall, the marketplace is perceived as more open and transparent than the political system, a condition that paves the way for the practicing of political consumerism” (Echegaray, 2015, p. 190). However, awareness of corporate social responsibility programs varies among the countries: from high in Argentina and Mexico to lower in Brazil. This result is interesting because Brazil has the strongest CSR movement in Latin America; further research is necessary to unpack its significance. Generally, “the more attentive the public is to what firms do (favourably or unfavourably) for society and the environment, the more they feel inclined to politicize their relationships with companies as consumers” (Echegaray, 2015, p. 193). In sum, individuals from these countries tend to think that they have more power when acting within the market sphere as consumers than through conventional politics as citizens. They perceive the market sphere as more transparent and corporations as more accountable when compared to political institutions. These results are similar to earlier ones (e.g., Canclini, 2001), indicating that citizens, particularly the youth,
546 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti seem more effectively represented through the marketplace than through representative democracy and participation in what they perceive as disaccredited political institutions. However, this does not imply an enthusiastic embrace of the market as an arena for politics.
Political Consumerism Among Brazilian Youth Today’s youth are considered the vanguard of green and ethical consumption lifestyles (Autio & Wilska, 2005). They are also the generation that has been most exposed to environmental education campaigns. One study by Barbosa et al. (2013), focusing on the two major cities of Brazil (Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo), surveyed young people’s perceptions of political participation in general and political consumerism in particular. Paralleling the results discussed in the preceding section, this study shows that youth’s trust in formal political institutions is extremely low (under 18 percent), which contrasts drastically with their high level of trust in institutions such as church (26 percent), school (25 percent), and especially the family (70 percent). Importantly, this high level of institutional distrust was not found to be accompanied by an increase in the alternative forms of participation identified with political consumerism. Only 32 percent of those surveyed agreed that citizens can influence society by boycotting products and services; 34 percent agreed with this but stated that they did not consider it an effective form of action. Part of the explanation is that young people view this form of participation as too individualistic. Results on buycotting were a bit different. While 34 percent agreed that citizens can influence outcomes through buycotting, 25 percent agreed with this statement but pointed out restrictions about the effectiveness and quality of this type of participation. Price (45 percent) and difficulties in finding such goods (39 percent) are their main reasons for not buying socially and environmentally responsible products. Doubts about certification, personal taste, and the low quality of green-friendly products complete the range of “other motives” for not engaging in buycotts. These results apply to youth in general; there were few variations on the factors of income, education level, and age. Noteworthy is that other results from the survey indicate how mass collective action is important for youth, thus confirming the tradition of collectivism in Latin American political culture (Portilho, 2005). Therefore, young people are only activated into political consumerism if it is part of external platforms such as social movements. For the Brazilian case, Barbosa et al. (2013) conclude that low levels of political participation in general and of political consumerism in particular are a puzzle. They cannot be explained by a lack of trust in political institutions or even a sense of the inability to take a stand on political issues. However, the scholars do not subscribe to the thesis that today’s generation is politically more alienated when compared to those in the 1960s and 1970s when Brazilian youth mobilized against the military dictatorship. Their findings
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 547 show that today’s youth are interested in political concerns such as poverty and income inequality, among others. However, they have doubts if political consumerism is the most adequate or effective way of tackling such problems because they believe that they require public policies, state regulation, and collective action through organized movements. Thus, Brazilian youth are sceptical about the role of consumer. They have doubts about the potential of consumer-citizens to bring about changes and also about the value of this form of participation. The individualistic way of trying to provoke change is seen as inadequate, and collective initiatives are considered better and more adequate (Barbosa et al., 2013). Another part of the explanation has to do with the strong role of the family in Brazilian society, which provides its members with economic, emotional, and financial assistance and care, thus serving as a buffer in their relations to the broader society. Young Brazilians traditionally remain in their family’s home until an advanced age, and caring for them remains overwhelmingly the responsibility of their parents. Therefore, their involvement as consumers is much more limited, and they do not have to deal with dilemmas and negotiations related to ethical consumption choices (Halkier, 1999). However, a more important factor is the strong role of social movements, which have prioritized representing their interests publicly over mobilizing individuals into campaigns and protest actions. Since they are responsible for affecting many social outcomes, mobilizing individuals into separate actions is somewhat secondary. As mentioned previously, Latin America has a strong collectivist tradition, and any use of the marketplace as an arena for politics must be juxtaposed with social movement goals and actions. Recently social movements have started to incorporate consumers’ action in their repertoires. Yet historical doubts about “inclusion through consumption” make political consumerism a difficult selling point within Latin American civil society.
Political Consumerism: Institutional Settings and People’s Understandings in Everyday Chilean and Brazilian Life Ariztía et al. (2013, 2016) stress the limits of scholarship focusing solely on individual choices in the marketplace. They argue that consumption decisions are embedded in collective meaning-making and must be understood in their institutional settings, that is, the collection of rules and organized practices that frame social processes (see also Oosterveer, Spaargaren, & Kloppenburg in this volume). This institutional setting is socially negotiated and collectively constructed. It shapes different trajectories of consumerism in each local and cultural context. Thus, for Ariztía et al. (2013) and unlike northern theorization of political consumerism, the association between ethical values and consumption in Latin America is more rooted in locally created
548 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti relations and mediated by institutional contexts (see Chapter 22). Particularly it is important to consider the role and the dynamics of three institutional sectors—the state, the corporate world, and organized civil society—and how they play a different role than in the northern experience. All are involved in shaping and fostering the process of politicization of consumption. Even the influence of international discourses and movements for ethical consumerism, particularly fairtrade and responsible corporation movements, are important for understanding political consumerism in Latin America. For example, in the Chilean case, the military dictatorship (1973–1990) banned trade unions and clamped down on civic expressions, which helps explain the limited civil society activity in the country. After the overthrow of the dictatorship, Chile became the world’s first neoliberal experiment with a deregulated and export-oriented economy. Here the state played a minor role in regulating the economy. Chilean exporting companies have responded to international market requirements and standards, including fairtrade certification. Thus, the Chilean ethical consumption movement arose from two institutional paths: market forces focusing on CSR and producing ethically labelled goods and also consumers’ organizations. These two paths also influenced the role of the state, which has been changing and adopting new policies on ethical consumption. For instance, recently it started to promote social and environmental criteria in public procurement policy (see Chapter 39) and has made efforts to promote responsible household energy and water consumption. However, according to Ariztía et al. (2013), it is still not possible to consider the Chilean government a leading actor in the country for the promotion of ethical consumption through its public policies. Instead, market forces (especially companies and consultancies) and citizen-consumer organizations have taken the lead. Brazil is the sixth-largest economy in the world but, as in Chile, high levels of social and regional inequality still persist. With successive centre and left governments (1995– 2016), Brazil has been improving its economic growth, social inclusion, and regulatory system. It has also implemented neoliberal reforms allowing big companies to promote public goods, sometimes replacing state intervention (Echegaray, 2015). State and civil society organizations also play an important role in stimulating consumers’ awareness and practices (Ariztia et al., 2016). The Brazilian government has, for example, taken considerable steps towards incorporating social and environmental criteria into public procurement and has given institutional recognition and support to social movements through the creation of the National Secretary for the Solidarity Economy in 2003. The CSR movement is also strong and active in promoting ethical consumption as well as creating and sponsoring NGOs and campaigns. Yet regardless of dissimilarities related to the different institutional contexts in terms of the dynamics of relationships among civil society, the state, and the market, the role of corporations in stimulating ethical consumption is increasingly important in both Chile and Brazil. It is noteworthy how large companies often attempt to fill gaps created by the neoliberal weakness of the states in Latin America. They do this by promoting public goods (e.g., education, sports, cultural activities, health assistance, etc.) through
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 549 CSR programs (Echegaray, 2015) and by promoting consumer activism (notably buycott actions) and consumer rights. In terms of promoting consumer activism, the Instituto Akatu, a Brazilian NGO created and sponsored by companies, organizes campaigns for pro-conscious consumption. So does also the Colombian Academia de Innovación para la Sostenibilidad (“Academy of Innovation for Sustainability”), a corporate-sponsored organization, by offering consultancy in education for sustainable consumption and production. When it comes to consumer rights, public service privatization stimulated the creation of the Latin American consumerism movement, especially concerning the privatization of state-owned telephone companies in the 1980s and 1990s (Rhodes, 2006). Another example is the Brazilian company Reclame Aqui (“Complain Here”), which provides a website to receive consumers’ complaints about companies and products and further develops its reputation in serving the interests of consumers. Important to consider is that there are risks associated with the involvement of large corporations in Latin America in this area. They include the greenwashing of corporate public reports (Ariztía et al., 2013), exclusion of small producers who cannot get certification to commercialize their products for the ethical markets (Wilkinson, 2007), and reducing the debate on sustainable consumption to a choice between brands, thus avoiding consumers’ political pressure for structural changes. Focus group research conducted by Ariztía et al. (2016) in Brazil and Chile shows that the concept of ethical consumption is not well known in the region and is recognized primarily among consumers with high education and international travel experiences, thus suggesting a cosmopolitan outlook on globalized societal affairs. It also clearly shows that consumption practices are associated with ethical considerations, thus demonstrating an everyday or practical understanding of ethical consumption. According to these scholars, ethical consumption is interpreted mainly at two different scales. The first scale is everyday household consumption that is mostly related to the family’s social reproduction and covers issues such as health, food, well-being, responsible budget management, and care for resources, especially water and electricity. An important finding is that resistance to overconsumption is the key element here, that is, not spending money on nonessential goods (see Boström & Klintman in this volume). This way of viewing consumption prevails in relation to buycotting and boycotting specific ethical labels products and parallels results found in the Global North. Interestingly and also similar to northern results is that the household scale is considered a central space for moral obligations and ethical decisions (Ariztía et al., 2016). This result demonstrates an alignment with scholarship on the overlap between daily consumption and morality (Miller, 2001; see Chapter 33). The second scale is a more abstract global concern about social justice and the impacts of (over)consumption on societies and the planet. Such concern is closely aligned with global NGOs and international governmental discourses. However, in Brazil and Chile, the environmental consequences of consumption were emphasized more than the social consequences (Ariztía et al., 2016; Barbosa et al., 2013). The link between personal consumption and global environmental problems appeared stronger in middle-income groups and clearly connected with a critique of a global consumer
550 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti culture and corporate advertising. In Chile, the environmental concern was present mainly among college and university students, the upper middle class and, activists. In Brazil, such concern rarely came up spontaneously and was mainly raised by activists. Environmental issues in Brazil and Chile are mostly related to the impact of overconsumption and not so much with daily practices such as transport and household use of water and energy. This focus group research also indicates that the social consequences of personal consumption were more related to support of the national or regional economy, thus showing an intense worry with macroeconomic matters and a sense of responsibility for them. In Chile, lower-income focus group participants showed preferences for buying national products as a way to guarantee local jobs (see Chapters 31 and 29). Upper-middle-income respondents and those with some international experiences expressed concerns with labour conditions in other countries, especially in China. However, the Brazilian respondents did not mention them spontaneously as part of their view of sustainable, ethical, responsible, or conscious consumption. While Chilean and Brazilian consumers showed concerns about overseas labour conditions motivated by social considerations for the “distant others,” similar to northern discourses on ethical consumption, there was clearly a most general focus on local jobs and economy in a globalized and liberalized trading scenario. Again, this illustrates how production processes can trigger the politicization of consumption. Furthermore, these concerns are also related to negative views of large and powerful corporations and countries such as China, which was more frequently mentioned by Brazilians than Chileans. Participants from both countries in the focus groups have boycotted and buycotted specific products, especially foreign ones, because they believe these products can affect the national industry and the job market. However, Chileans and Brazilians express doubts if their individual purchasing decisions can really lead to change (Ariztía et al., 2016; Barbosa et al., 2013). There was, nevertheless, a global sense of place in both countries (Ariztía et al., 2016; Massey, 1994). This implies an understanding that local practices can affect societies elsewhere and that very distant processes can affect local lives. The respondents “were aware that their purchases could affect the lives of workers in China or Chile but had also felt the impact of Chinese business practices on their own families’ livelihoods” (Ariztía et al., 2016, p. 13). While the household scale appeared spontaneously among the focus group’s participants, the global scale appeared only when stimulated by the researchers. In sum, overconsumption is considered a problem both at the scale of everyday life, because it may cause overspending and debt, and at the global scale as a moral concern about the environment. In all the countries, there is conscious citizen awareness of the effects of overconsumption on household economic welfare. In everyday life, it is ever-present and an immediate concern. However, there is difference among the countries concerning more general moral concerns about the relationship between consumption and the environment and social justice, thus showing again the importance of political cultural history and context for understanding the complexity of politicized consumption in Latin America.
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 551
Social Movements and Political Consumerism in Latin America In 2012, the Mexican NGO El Poder del Consumidor promoted an alliance for healthy food whose main goal was to ban sugary drinks. This alliance used the four forms of political consumerism. It mobilized a boycott of Coca-Cola (considered the paradigm of sugary drinks), engaged in street protests (discursive action), encouraged people to change lifestyles, and stimulated buycotts by asking people to drink water or natural juices instead of soft drinks. But the group also, and maybe mainly, attempted to get politicians to raise taxes on this product and to create labelling schemes to alert consumers to their high sugar content and its negative impact on health. In 2017 in Panama, the Autoridad Panameña de Seguridad de Alimentos (a national governmental body for food security) prohibited Pura Vida Nutrimax, a modified dairy product produced in Peru by the large corporation Gloria, to be sold in the country as “milk,” and recalled it from the Panamanian market. The scandal quickly spread to other countries, especially to Peru, and the Asociación Peruana de Consumidores y Usuarios (Aspec, an association for consumers and users) launched a campaign called “La leche que no es leche” (“Milk that is not milk”) and fought to ban images of cows on the product. Aspec also used the four forms of political consumerism but put much effort into pressing the government into more stringent regulation of the sector, its advertising, and its packaging. Organizations created for the specific purpose of defending consumers were behind both efforts. However, as shown in the next example, classic social movements have also started to incorporate consumer activism into their repertoire in order to strengthen their influence. The Brazilian Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST, a movement for landless rural workers), officially created in 1984, has been fighting for agrarian reform and distributive justice since the end of the 1970s. At that time its struggles mostly targeted national government, and it had a strong anticapitalism frame. Themes like food and sustainability were not part of its agenda. In 1999, however, after participating in the campaign “Transgenic-Free Brazil,” organized by a myriad of social movements including environmentalists and consumerists, and after the campaign experienced a great defeat, MST started to realize that urban consumers could be a great ally in its struggle (Freitas, 2011; Motta, 2016). The main leader of MST claimed that it was now necessary to enlarge the movement’s focus and created an alliance with “people from the city” in favour of a more sustainable agriculture. For him, it was part of MST’s “new politics” against new enemies (e.g., multinationals producing agro-toxics and genetically modified seeds, agribusiness producing monocultural export-oriented grains instead of food for Brazilians, and increasing land concentration). This new agenda put together consumers and the landless to reinforce the agrarian reform cause. MST launched a new campaign explicitly involving consumers: “Se o campo não planta, a cidade não janta” (“If the countryside doesn’t plant, the city doesn’t eat”). It also began organizing urban
552 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti and thematic fairs to sell “agrarian reform products.” One of its settlements launched a brand of its own with this appeal. The movement, however, rarely mentions the word “consumer,” preferring “city workers,” thus maintaining the framework in the production side and neglecting the consumer one. There are also some examples of NGOs created specifically inside or close to the political consumerism framework. Examples are the Brazilian Instituto Kairós, the Chilean Ciudadanos Responsables (“Responsible Citizens”), the Argentinean Instituto para el Comercio Equitativo y el Consumo Responsable (“Institute for the Equitable Commerce and Responsible Consumption”), and the project Piensa en Clima (“Think about Climate,” emerging in both Spain and Latin America). They illustrate how consumption becomes part of a political process in Latin America stimulated by numerous social movements, but in an ambiguous way. Strengthening the regulatory role of the state still seems to be more important for social movements than individual action in the marketplace as boycotts and buycotts. As shown in these examples, social movement activism uses political consumerism tools to achieve more governmental regulation of the market and to convince governments to invest in public policies, thus acting more in a conventional framework of advocacy than as market-based political activism. Interviews conducted specifically for this chapter with the two most influential Brazilian and Peruvian consumers’ organizations, the Brazilian Institute for Consumers’ Defence (Idec) and Aspec, show that Latin American consumers’ defence organizations consider political consumerism an interesting tactic and employ its four forms. They target market actors to improve their production processes, products, and services, especially regarding better consumer information on their product labels. However, the organizations consider it more effective to lobby political institutions to protect citizens and consumers in a more conventional way. In their assessments, companies do not want to voluntarily change because such change will negatively affect their commercial interests. Moreover, the companies lobby government not to take the consumer organizations’ advice. Therefore, Idec and Aspec focus more on targeting government in order to get public policies in place than on mobilizing consumers into green and ethical shopping, that is, political consumerism. Furthermore, while the interviewed Idec leader sees individual ethical choices as important, she believes that it is more important to create a good institutional setting to shape these choices. She also believes that Idec’s dialogue with companies has to occur mainly in institutional spaces, for instance multistakeholder advisory councils such as the Food Security Council. Boycotts are not Idec’s main tool, and it does not use the term explicitly. It also avoids mentioning the names of companies. Rather Idec is concerned about the reliability of information before publicly targeting a company. For this organization, consumers are political actors but not only as individuals making informed choices at the market. This form of action is considered too limited and can lead to a very individualistic vision of problem solving without effective public interest impacts. Idec avoids blaming consumers and giving them responsibility for problems in the marketplace. It views this political consumer framing as predominant media and corporate narratives and
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 553 not one for civil society. In short, Idec prefers to stimulate collective rather than individual actions. The interviewed Aspec leader considers Peruvian companies as “absolutely resistant to improve their productive process.” Nevertheless, the media and social movements forced the company Gloria to implement changes, and government had no other option than to demand a recall of the product and changes in its industrial process. When asked if people boycotted the “milk that is not milk,” the leader interviewed said: “It was a scandal! Aspec immediately sought further information, made campaigns, and revealed the problem to the media. On a TV program, a journalist asked somebody at a supermarket if she would buy this milk, and she answered: ‘No! How can I buy this if I was told it is not milk?’ So, I believe it was a boycott, because people immediately stopped buying it. But Aspec does not use this word [boycott] because in Peru it is considered an ‘American word,’ not a local one. Peruvians do not manage it very well. But people do act when cases like this gain publicity. The word buycott is still more challenging.” (interview with author in November 2017, in Lima, Peru). Thus, it is important to call attention to how “ideas from the North” (especially from the UN and global NGOs) are received in Latin America. For the interviewed leaders of the regional office of Consumers International (CI), Latin American social movements dislike concepts like political consumerism, albeit they do mobilize consumers to press markets and governments. They consider it as at odds with the more conventional and ideological categories of citizens and workers. While active global NGOs in Latin America use these ideas, most of the more locally embedded ones do not. Rather, their main efforts are changing laws and getting public policy in place—that is, fostering the regulatory power of the state. This finding reveals an interesting paradox. On the one hand, citizens generally do not trust governmental institutions, yet, on the other hand, social movements concentrate their efforts on mobilizing power to foster governmental regulatory power.
Conclusion The state of research in this field in Latin America, along with differences among its twenty countries, does not allow for a general conclusion or a single view on political consumerism in this geographical context. However, previous research reveals some interesting findings on the special aspects of the current process of politicization of consumption in the region. First, political consumerism is not completely new in the region but has been growing significantly as a more stable phenomenon. Its growing strength has led to both public and academic debate about its limits and possibilities. In general, social activism is spreading to daily life, and this includes consumption practices and choices. Thus, even if people and social movements do not use the concept of political consumerism or refer to its forms by name, they are, nevertheless, protesting and pressing market and governmental institutions to adopt their consumer-oriented interests and
554 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti values; most of them concern major issues such as public health and the environment. Some governments also follow the UN’s recommendations and frameworks and actively work to support sustainable consumption in one way or another. In Brazil, emphasis is put on public procurement. In Peru, local media have kept the issue on the public agenda. Second, unlike other geographic regions, such as Western Europe (see Chapter 21) and China (see Chapter 27), corporations in Latin America have stimulated consumer activism and rights. They have functioned as a trigger for political consumerism, mainly by producing organic, green, and fairtrade-labelled goods for the domestic and export consumer market, CSR programs, and conscious consumption campaigns. They seek to mobilize consumers more through buycotts than boycotts, which shows their desire to reward good companies rather than punish bad ones. Thus, it seems possible that the market for ethical products in Latin America will expand because such expansion is more compatible with corporate interests and also more palatable for consumers (Ariztía et al., 2016). Third, previous research shows that Latin Americans are uncertain about their role as responsible agents in the marketplace and about their ability to use their consumer power to instigate changes. While agreeing that they have an important political role here to play, they have doubt about how effective they can be as political agents. They also believe that some problems require public policies and state regulation. Fourth, Latin American political consumers primarily focus on developments within their own countries, including concerns with household budgeting and indebtedness. Their involvement is triggered by institutional actors (governments, social movements, and large companies). Importantly, their involvement has developed in special ways in the different countries in the region. Political history, culture, and context are important factors explaining these differences. Fifth, established Latin American social movements have not embraced political consumerism and its four tools emphatically. The strong regional tradition of social movements seeking to mobilize workers and citizens rather than consumers implies that individualized consumer action has not been given much emphasis. This weakens the politicization of the consumption process. There is not a tradition or clear belief about the effectiveness of the marketplace as an arena for politics. Even Latin American consumer movements think it can be interesting but it is not their priority. They are more focused on targeting politicians and governmental agencies to create, change, and monitor the implementation of laws and public policies. They seek to foster the regulatory power of the state after decades of neoliberal reform. This means that consumers are not easily seen as a political category in Latin America. Even the consumer movements that in principle do not have this difficulty give more priority to acting in a more conventional way. Importantly, their actions demonstrate that they put more faith in political institutions for solving problems associated with production and consumption than the general citizenry. These results illustrate an interesting paradox in Latin American political consumerism between how civil society and individual citizens perceive the drivers and mechanisms for sustainable and political consumption. This also means that it is difficult to expand the concept of politics to other spheres, especially the marketplace.
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 555 Individuals and NGOs from the Global North are much more active in attacking “bad companies” and in using the four forms of political consumerism to press the market for change (see Chapter 21). In Latin America, NGOs and social movements concentrate instead on fighting against capitalist and neoliberal systems. They want a stronger state to regulate the market in terms of production, labels, security, advertisements, and so on. The battlefield is the parliamentary arena (laws, norms, and regulations) and not so much the market. In the northern hemisphere, where the state is generally stronger, the political consumer struggle involves more transnational problems associated with the global supply chain (see also Chapter 16). However, in recent years, Latin American social movements, including those with a more classical profile, have been incorporating political consumerism in their action repertoire as an innovative method of social pressure, thus strengthening their alliance with conscious consumers for countless social causes. In sum, consumer movements are becoming an important but at the same time somewhat hesitant driving force in politicizing daily life and in changing household social practices. They problematize household consumption and mobilize the autonomous and informed decisions of individual consumers. But here we also see how important governmental regulation is for defending consumers’ rights. Thus, both individuals and NGOs are open to political consumerism, but they have many doubts about its effec tiveness and outcomes. Additionally, they criticize it for being too individualistic, rather than collectivist, in orientation. Activists understand the term “boycott” and use it in some cases as a tool for change. But few ordinary consumers engage with this political consumer tool in their daily activities. The word “buycott” is much less understood by both activists and ordinary consumers, albeit this tool for change is sometimes used and stimulated, as the landless rural workers case indicates. Thus, one important general conclusion for the understanding of political consumerism as a global phenomenon and for its future study is that it does not make much sense to use what Ariztía and his colleagues (2016) called the “deficit discourse” when comparing Latin America and the Global North. Ideas circulate and are locally incorporated and adapted to the particular geographic context in a continuous and dynamic social process. It is, therefore, time for social scientists to learn from these insights and integrate them into the general theoretical framing of the phenomenon.
Acknowledgements The authors want to thank Livia Barbosa for commenting on chapter drafts.
References Ariztía, Tomas, Kleine, Dorothea, Brightwell, Maria das Graças S. L., Agloni, Nurjk, Afonso, Rita, & Bartholo, Roberto. (2013). Ethical consumption in Brazil and Chile: Institutional contexts and development trajectories. Journal of Cleaner Production, 63(15), 84–92.
556 Fátima Portilho and Michele Micheletti Ariztía, Tomas, Kleine, Dorothea, Brightwell, Maria das Graças S. L., Agloni, Nurjk, Afonso, Rita, & Bartholo, Roberto. (2016). Beyond the “deficit discourse”: Mapping ethical consumption discourses in Chile and Brazil. Environment and Planning, 15, 1–19. Autio, Minna, & Wilska, Terhi-Anna. (2005). Young people in knowledge society –possibilities to fulfill ecological pursuits. Progress in Industrial Ecology, 2(3–4), 403–426. Barbosa, Livia. (2004). Sociedade de consumo. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar. Barbosa, Livia, & Campbell, Colin. (2006). O estudo do consumo nas ciências sociais contemporâneas. In Livia Barbosa & Colin Campbell (Eds.), Cultura, consumo e identidade (pp. 21–44). Rio de Janeiro: FGV. Barbosa, Livia, Portilho, Fátima, Wilkinson, John, & Dubeux, Veranise. (2013). Trust, participation and political consumerism among Brazilian youth. Journal of Cleaner Production, 63(15), 93–101. Belinky, Aron. (2010). Consumo, cidadania, e a construção da democracia no brasil contemporêneo—Observações e reflexões sobre a história do Idec. Dissertação de Mestrado em Administração Pública e Governo. São Paulo: Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Brasil. (2013). Atlas Ibero-americano de proteção ao consumidor. Brasília: Ministério da Justiça. Canclini, Néstor García. (2001). Consumers and citizens: globalization and multicultural Conflicts. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Colomé, Felipe da Luz. (2013). Participação política via consumo: os vínculos históricos entre os movimentos associativos, cooperativos e de comércio justo e o consumerismo. Otra Economía, 7, 121–132. Echegaray, Fabián. (2012). Votando na prateleira. A politização do consumo na América Latina. Opinião Pública: Campinas, 18(1), 44–67. Echegaray, Fabián. (2015). Voting at the marketplace: Political consumerism in Latin America. Latin American Research Review, 50, 176–199. Eckstein, Susan. (2006). Urban resistance to neoliberal democracy in Latin America. Colombia Internacional, 63, 12–39. Ferreras, Norberto O. (2001). No país da cocanha: aspectos do modo de vida dos trabalhadores de Buenos Aires (1880–1920). Tese de doutorado. Campinas: Unicamp/IFCH/Departamento de História. Freitas, Amaury de Barros. (2011). Aliança entre Movimento Ambientalista e de Consumidores: o caso da “Campanha por um Brasil Livre de Transgênicos.” Dissertação de Mestrado. Rio de Janeiro: CPDA/UFRRJ. Gendron, Corinne, Bisaillon, Véronique, & Otero, Ana Isabel. (2009, April). The institutionalization of Fairtrade: More than a degraded form of social action. Journal of Business Ethics, 86(1), 63–79. Halkier, Bente. (1999). Consequences of the politicization of consumption: the example of environmentally friendly consumption practices. Journal of Environmental Policy Planning, 1, 25–41. Massey, Doreen. (1994). Space, place and gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Micheletti, Michele. (2003). Political value and shopping. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Miller, Daniel (Ed.). (2001). Consumption: critical concepts in the social sciences. Vol. IV. London/New York: Routledge. Motta, Renata. (2016). Social mobilization, global capitalism and struggles over food: A comparative study of social movements. London: Routledge. Nunes, Edson. (2000). A Revolta das barcas: populismo, violência e conflito político. Rio de Janeiro: Garamnod.
Politicizing Consumption in Latin America 557 Portilho, Fátima. (2005). Sustentabilidade ambiental, consumo e cidadania. São Paulo: Cortez. Portilho, Fátima. (2009). Novos atores no mercado: movimentos sociais econômicos e consumidores politizados. Revista Política e Sociedade, 8(15), 199–224. Rhodes, Sybil. (2006). Social movements and free- market capitalism in Latin America: Telecommunications privatization and the rise of consumer protest. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Sassatelli, Roberta. (2006). Virtue, responsibility and consumer choice: Framing critical consumerism. In Frank Trentmann & John Brewer (Eds.), Consuming cultures, global perspectives: Historical trajectories, transnational exchanges (pp. 219– 250). Oxford/ New York: Berg. Souza, Jessé de. (2010). Os batalhadores brasileiros. Nova classe média ou nova classe trabalhadora? Belo Horizonte: UFMG. Stolle, Dietlind, Hooghe, Marc, & Micheletti, Michele. (2005). Politics in the supermarket: Political consumerism as a form of political participation. International Political Science Review, 26(3), 245–269. Trentmann, Frank. (2006). The modern genealogy of the consumer: Meanings, identities and political synapses. In Frank Trentmann & John Brewer (Eds.), Consuming cultures, global perspectives: Historical trajectories, transnational exchanges (pp. 19–69). Oxford/ New York: Berg. Valenzuela, Arturo. (1987). The breakdown of democratic regimes: Chile. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilkinson, John. (2007). Fairtrade: Dynamic and dilemmas of a market oriented global social movement. Journal of Consumer Policy, 30, 219–239. Wilkinson, John, & Mascarenhas, Gilberto. (2007). Southern social movements and Fairtrade. In L. T. Raynolds, D. Murray, & J. Wilkinson (Eds.), The challenges of transforming globalization (pp. 125–137). London: Routledge.
Chapter 26
Tracing P ol i t i c a l C onsum erism i n A fri c a and the M iddl e E ast Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti
When considering the role of consumers and consumption in Africa, many will initially think more about the lack of consumption than about political consumerism. Most of Africa is often depicted as a continent of poverty, violence, and hunger, not as a region where consumers make conscious political choices when shopping. However, this bleak picture is not the full story. Africa is a large continent with much diversity and high dynamics, and in several regions the possibilities for making choices when consuming are increasing; this is particularly the case when we include the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, where in some countries there is considerable wealth and aspirations to buy or boycott Western brands. As choices allow for taking into consideration social, religious, and ethical considerations, it is worth paying attention to political consumerism in this region. Africa is also a continent where food and agro-commodities are produced for the world market, where diamonds and rare earth minerals are found that end up in mobile phones and jewellery, and where there are many travel destinations that attract tourists to marvel at wildlife and seashores. In this respect Africa and MENA are relevant because in some cases their products are included in boycotts (see also Chapter 3, on international boycotts during the apartheid era). Among the significant boycotts were those initiated by the Arab League in the 1940s and, more recently, as political reactions to the Israeli-Palestine conflict (see Chapter 33). There have also been boycotts targeting particular industries and products in this region, for example on so- called blood diamonds (Grant & Taylor, 2004; also see Chapter 18). In other instances, products from Africa are buycotted for ethical reasons, such as preferences for fairtrade and organic food products (Glin et al., 2012) or for religious concerns, such as the case of halal food ( (Zailani et al., 2015).
560 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti After this introduction, the remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. First, it elaborates upon political consumerism concepts, literature, and research in Africa and the MENA region more generally. The discussion relies on information collected through the Afrobarometer, secondary literature, and research on different countries in the region. Then the chapter takes a close look at organic food and fair trade as cases linking political consumerism and Africa. These examples illustrate how Africa is targeted by boycotting and buycotting campaigns of political consumerism organised from other parts of the world. Using illustrations from MENA, the discussion shows how religious beliefs shape consumer preferences and mobilize them into market-based political activism that often has global ramifications. Finally, the conclusion reflects on the reality and relevance of political consumerism in Africa and the Middle East.
Consumption in Africa and the MENA Region Africa is a vast, highly dynamic continent, so it is nearly impossible to sketch a general picture that does justice to its diversity. Africa has fifty-four countries and the Middle East has fifteen. The continent has a large population (1.6 billion in 2015) that is growing rapidly (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015). At the same time the region is going through a phase of rapid economic transition. Economic and social development and the dynamics of consumption are becoming a part of African reality as well. In the MENA region, democratic uprisings (e.g., the Arab spring), past and present wars, and political violence (e.g., in Iraq, Iran, and the occupied territories) characterize society and affect economic development and consumption patterns. Added to these regional crises are water scarcity and low agricultural yields, implying that the Middle East is less and less able to provide food for itself. Nevertheless, some of the countries in the Middle East are very wealthy because they control large oil reserves and therefore can import necessary consumer goods. Qatar, for instance, has the world’s highest per-capita gross domestic product. Today the Middle East has the world’s largest bloc of food importers (Cammack, 2017), a development duly noted by transnational food corporations that seek to open operations in the region. Although there are several countries and regions that face challenging political, economic, social, and humanitarian crises, this is not all there is to Africa. As this chapter does not intend to present a general overview of consumers and consumption in Africa, the focus is on issues that are relevant from a political consumerist perspective. The chapter analyses key social, religious, and economic transformations in the continent and discusses whether and in what ways political consumerism is a reality in Africa and the MENA region. Overall, poverty rates in Africa are going down and human welfare is increasing as shown in the proportion of people living on less than $1.90 a day (the official poverty rate),
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 561 which has dropped considerably from 56 percent in 1990 to 43 percent in 2012 (Sy, 2016). Still, in absolute terms the number of poor people in Africa is increasing and was estimated at around 330 million in 2012, compared with 280 million in 1990 (Sy, 2016). In the Middle East the poverty rate was 17 percent in 2010,1 but there are considerable differences among the countries that are resource-rich (e.g., Algeria, Iraq, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia), on the one hand, and those that are resource-poor (e.g., Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and the Palestinian Authority), which tend to have consumption-oriented economic development (O’Sullivan et al., 2011). There is a surprising surge in the growth of the African middle class (with an annual growth rate of 20 percent), which outcompetes general population growth. In East and Southern Africa, for instance, this socioeconomic category is expected to increase from 27 percent of the total population in 2010 to 75 percent in 2040 (Tschirley et al., 2015). In addition to this economic development, urbanization is rapidly increasing as well with an average growth rate of 4 percent in the largest cities. As a consequence, urban areas will double in population in twenty-five years from 472 million today to over 950 million in 2040 (Lall, Henderson, & Venables, 2017). One of the impacts of urbanization is that larger sections of the African population are becoming dependent on (modern and traditional) retail for their daily needs. Although the picture is highly diverse, this transition is slowly changing patterns of consumption in Africa, especially of food, which is mostly organized through informal channels (Neven & Reardon, 2004), but where supermarkets and other formal retail channels are playing more important roles. Compared with other parts of the world, it seems that in Africa traditional retail channels remain important despite the emergence of supermarkets (Abrahams, 2010; Tschirley, 2007). These trends show that self-provisioning is no longer the dominant mode of accessing basic consumer goods such as food, and it seems inevitable that buying through markets and thereby consumption will become more important in Africa. In a report, McKinsey claims that “Africa’s population, the fastest growing and youngest in the world, is concentrated in urban areas. This new class of consumers has a smaller family, is more educated and has higher earnings, and is digitally savvy.”2 Although starting from a very low base, this trend reflects “a gradual opening up of African economies, a freer flow of information and a parallel rise in expectations, some political.”3 Whether this also means that political consumerism will spread, and what shape and form this will acquire, is not yet clear. At present there are some indications of political consumerism in Africa and where it might lead in the future.
Political Consumerism in Africa and the MENA Region Political consumerism can generally be defined as market-based engagements emerging from political concerns associated with production and consumption. Political
562 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti consumerism entails all decisions by consumers shaped by values, moral principles, and ideals (Hughes & Reimer, 2004). Thus political consumerism is based on attitudes and values of justice, fairness, sustainability, or noneconomic issues such as personal and family well-being. These considerations were mostly developed in the context of Western, more economically advanced, societies. Several scholars argue that whether political consumers act individually or collectively, their market choices reflect an understanding of market transactions as embedded in a complex social and normative context that may be called the “politics behind the products.” Through political consumerism, consumers act to influence producers by supporting or rejecting particular products and brands for their ethical or socioenvironmental credentials, aiming to bring about societal change. In this respect, political consumerism requires the ability to choose; available information on political, social, and ethical concerns; and factual beliefs about various matters behind products. Such facilitating conditions are present in many parts of Africa. Therefore, one may wonder whether consumers in Africa may endorse and reward producers by purchasing their products (“buycotts”) or punish them by engaging in contentious relationships and not buying their products (“boycotts”). One may also wonder if they use discursive political consumerism involving “attempts at opinion formation and communicative actions expressing reflective and critical views held by individuals and/or collectivities on corporate policy, corporate practice and consumer culture” (Micheletti & Boström, 2014, pp. 1509–10). Another consideration is whether consumers apply the fourth form of political consumerism, namely lifestyle political consumerism, which is “a decision to use one’s private life sphere to inform about and attempt to change established production and consumption practices” (Micheletti & Boström, 2014, p. 1510). Echegaray (2016) suggests that political consumerism constitutes consumers’ allocation of incentives in response to agents’ perceived role in facilitating public goods. Political consumers favour companies perceived as promoting collective interests and withdraw support from companies that put public goods and values at risk. Many scholars have worked on political consumerism since it has been revealed as an emerging form of political participation in global modernity. The focus has mostly been on Western societies, although this volume includes a much broader range of geographical contexts. Only a few have worked on developing societies in general, and even fewer on Africa and the MENA region. “The impact and penetration of sustainable consumption and production activities are still very limited in most (African) countries. ... Sustainable consumption and production is a relatively new concept in the region, with only a few examples of integrated activities” (UN Economic Commission for Africa, 2009, 81). However, most of these examples concern sustainable production much more than sustainable consumption. Moreover, they do not focus on the role of religion in political consumerism, which is an important trigger for market-based activism in the MENA region (which includes Israel). Nevertheless, in essence political consumerism can emerge in all market activities that involve exchange relations between producers and consumers. Moreover, the ways in which political consumerism
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 563 develops in different regions and countries may vary considerably as they are the result of the interplay among political, cultural, economic, religious, and social forces (Ben- Porat, Shamir, & Yuval, 2016; Bonsu & Zwick, 2007; Izberk-Bilgin, 2012a, 2012b). “While ethical consumption might offer itself as a global phenomenon, it is always practised in local contexts with their particular struggles, histories and trajectories” (Zukin & Maguire, 2004). Therefore, there should be an openness to the possibility that political consumerism in Africa is acquiring a particular form. The Afrobarometer offers interesting guidance on the specific African context.4 Recent surveys from Kenya, Malawi, and Sierra Leone explicitly include relevant questions that are made use of in the chapter. These surveys show that politics is considered very important in the daily lives of most people. Furthermore, they reveal that ethnic identity remains relevant but that national identity is more important. Figures for Kenya show that support for national identity as the dominant identity has increased from 39 percent in 2005 to 56 percent in 2011. At the same time, trust in political institutions remains very weak—for instance, only 37 percent of Kenyan respondents say they have a lot of trust in parliament and local councils and 67 percent say they have little or no trust in the police. On the other hand, for both Malawi and Kenya, the courts of law and the army are the most trusted institutions. In some MENA countries, trust in political institutions is also low but citizens lack the freedom for political expression, and political consumption rates tend to exceed voter turnout (Benstead & Reif, 2017). A review of the literature on political consumerism in Africa finds little scholarship and research on this subject, with the exception of South Africa, where the familiar forms of political consumerism exist, and some research on the MENA area. Still there are some interesting contributions from other parts of the continent that bring in additional perspectives. Building on Echegaray (2016), who finds that political consumers in the Global South aim at assuring continuation of the provision of public goods, this study shows similar efforts in Africa to address the perceived failure of existing political institutions through political consumerism. “In Africa, the motivations for CSR come from the failures of government to do right for its people” (Phillips, 2006, p. 24). Therefore, consumers expect companies to primarily engage in improving education and health and contribute to poverty alleviation and economic empowerment rather than to environmental sustainability. Aiming for delivering public goods through private companies makes this involvement different from the concerns and strategies that dominate the agenda of political consumerists in most other countries where social and environmental concerns prevail. For example, Amaeshi et al. (2006, p. 26) report that the emphasis of political consumerism in Nigeria is “more on community involvement, less on socially responsible employee relations and almost non-existent in relation to socially responsible products and processes.” Companies taking up social responsibility support, in particular, education, health, and the environment, although the focus varies across countries and regions (Amaeshi et al., 2006; Azlan & Siti‐Nabiha, 2009; Idemudia, 2014). In Kenya, for instance, donations are mainly directed towards
564 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti health and medical provision rather than to education and training, HIV/AIDS, agriculture and food security, or underprivileged children, all of which receive less support. In Zambia, supporting orphan residential care is the most common target, followed by sporting events, cultural ceremonies, education, and health provision, while donations to religious and arts organisations come last (Kivuitu, Yambayamba, & Fox, 2005). These donations may be considered as forms of conventional philanthropy (Campbell, 2012), but they are not considered voluntary but rather obligatory (Forstater et al., 2010) by governments and consumers. Similar processes occur among food companies who increasingly use private standards and codes to promote environmentally and socially responsible practices not only internally but also throughout their supply chains. The overall objectives of such actions is to bridge the gaps between legal and social norms or to overcome weak legal enforcements in developing countries (Dlott, Gunders, & Arnold, 2006; KPMG, 2015). Consumer support is an essential part of this CSR strategy. In addition to this collective form of political consumerism, there are individual forms of political consumerism that focus on health and safety. “Also, since sustainable consumption is a relatively new concept, consumer activism, when it exists, is still focused on prices, quality and consumer safety” (UN Economic Commission for Africa, 2009, p. 82). Research for this chapter did not find cases of boycotting in sub-Saharan Africa, but some illustrations of buycotting are present. Green consumption does exist and is related to environmentally responsible consumption where consumers consider the environmental impact of purchasing, using, and disposing of various products or using various green services (Moisander, 2007). Similar to consumers in the Global North, some consumers in Africa buy labelled food for environmental and health reasons. As the middle classes in Africa are emerging, particularly in countries like South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal, some of them share similar concerns as European and American consumers regarding social and environmental impacts including safety concerns, particularly when buying food, but also for other goods (authors’ own observations; see also McIntyre et al., 2009; McMahon, 2016). We found little empirical research on these forms of political consumerism, except for South Africa (Anvar & Venter, 2014; Hughes, McEwan, & Bek, 2015; McMahon, 2016). On South Africa, Anvar and Venter (2014) report that the interest of young consumers to buy green relates to social influence, environmental awareness, and price. Thus family and friends play an important role in purchasing choices. Tustin and De Jongh (2008) report that “actual spending on ethical products and services is believed to be fairly low” (Tustin & De Jongh, 2008, p. 35). Still, ethical trade is becoming an important component in business strategies because large groups of consumers express their ethical concerns on products and services. McMahon (2016) underlines the importance of ethical practices (or lifestyle political consumerism) among Cape Town students, expressed in practices of care of friends and efforts to avoid waste in food and money (as well as thrift according to McEwan, Hughes, & Bek, 2015). When shopping,
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 565 these students were strongly concerned with animal rights and the environmental effects of meat eating, which is expressed in buying free-range meat and eggs and organic food. They were not familiar with fair trade although products labelled as such are available in South African supermarkets. While exploring green purchasing behaviour in South Africa, some studies reported on the discrepancy between consumers’ expressed favourable attitudes and their actual purchasing practices lagging behind these attitudes. Many consumers showed a positive attitude towards purchasing organic food products (67 percent) but only few of them (4 percent) actually purchased them (Hughner et al., 2007). This gap between attitude and behaviour is not unique for Africa as this has been observed around the world (Padel & Foster, 2005; see also Chapters 38 and 40), but in this case the gap seems very wide. An interesting development is the introduction of a special African ecolabel: Eco Mark Africa (EMA). The EMA label is an initiative taken by African organisations in collaboration with the German development organization (GIZ) to develop a regional African environmental standard to promote sustainability in production and allow producers to take advantage of the growing demand for more sustainable products on the international market. Interestingly, this label is oriented not only to export markets but also to African consumers. Consumer interest from Africa itself is expected to make a contribution to the fostering of sustainable consumption and production patterns. The EMA label is a benchmark for existing standards for agriculture, fisheries, forestry, and tourism. The actual impact is unclear but it would be interesting to explore this further.5 We did not find any clear example of discursive political consumerism in contemporary Africa after the apartheid boycotts in South Africa some decades ago, which are extensively treated in Chapter 3. Lifestyle political consumerism appears rarely in Africa, but there is an interesting dimension that deserves further exploration. This is the “contentious character of consumption.” For many people in Africa, consumption is a contentious issue as it relates closely to “the excessive and conspicuous consumption by political and economic elites and its stark contrast to the continued poverty of the majority” (Death, 2014, p. 1230). Consumerist lifestyles of the elites “in the case of Africa involves the consumption of expensive goods and services that are generally not necessary and often not produced in Africa” (Okeke, 2015, p. 32). Buying products for basic needs, or consuming by necessity, seems not to be considered consumption because “real” consumption involves choice, branding, and proliferation and is therefore elitist in the view of many. As Ellis (2008) observes on Africa, “we are all poor here,” so having the option to choose global-branded goods is an exception and regarded with suspicion. In sum, political consumerism in Africa and MENA differs in some important respects from familiar European and North American practices. Unfamiliar factors such as religion and corruption play important roles, while buycotts and lifestyle political consumerism are less prominent.
566 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti
Africa as Target of Political Consumerism With respect to political consumerism, Africa has mostly been considered the space of production supplying markets in the Global North where actual action is taking place: the buying of labelled products. Political consumerist concerns mainly address working conditions in the Global South (slavery and child labour in the cocoa industry in West Africa and mining in Eastern Congo being some typical illustrations), the position of smallholders in global supply chains, and export regulations (standards as limits to export). Political consumerism with a focus on Africa is also translated into corporate social responsibility, such as Oxfam International’s campaign “Behind the Brands” (Hoffman, 2013). In these northern forms of political consumerism, different strategies are used to strengthen the position of poor farmers and workers in Africa (see also Chapter 18). Two illustrations of this form of African involvement in global political consumerism are further elaborated below: organic food and fair trade.
Organic Food Sector in Africa Organic agriculture has been considered by many as a solution for consumer concerns about the quality and safety of food (Glin, 2014).6 This is mostly noted in developed countries, where consumers worry about the effects of pesticides, fertilizers, livestock effluent, and veterinary drugs on their health and livelihoods. Organic farming is also considered a strategy to protect the environment, in particular ecosystems and biodiversity, by using less damaging substances. Organic agriculture can be a viable sustainable development option for Africa according to Parrott and Elzakker (2003). They report that, in Africa, local NGOs, farmers’ groups, and development agencies are increasingly adopting organic techniques to ensure food security, eradicate poverty, maintain and enhance soil fertility, combat desertification, promote tree-planting and agro-forestry, develop low-and no-input means of combating pests, promote the use of local seed varieties, maintain and enhance biodiversity, support the most vulnerable social groups, and combat global warming. Organic farming in Africa also responds to the increasing demand for organic foods on the global market due to increased consumer concerns about food quality and safety in developed countries (Parrott, Oleson, & Hogh-Jensen, 2006). Thus, organic agriculture in Africa has grown rapidly over the last decades (Glin, 2014), but nevertheless still represents only 0.15 percent of the total area of agricultural land available in Africa (Willer & Lernoud, 2016). Organic farming can be certified or noncertified. Although local markets for certified organic products are growing in countries such as Egypt, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania (Kalibwani et al., 2004), most certified organic food in Africa is
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 567 produced for export. The large majority of this certified organic food is exported to the European Union (EU), which is Africa’s largest market for agricultural produce in general (Glin, 2014). Certified production is mostly implemented by relatively large farmers and groups of smallholders.7 Many of these smallholder groups are supported through development aid programs, such as the Swedish-financed Export Promotion of Organic Products from Africa (EPOPA) and the EU-supported COLEACP-PIP programs. These programs aim at stimulating development of the organic agriculture sector in African countries. Noncertified organic farming is often organic by default because farmers are not able to buy chemical inputs. Their products are mostly sold on the local market and used for self-consumption. In West Africa, the development of certified organic agriculture focuses on export crops and is mainly driven by national and international NGOs who have not really adopted a business orientation. In East and Central Africa, on the other hand, organic agriculture is much more business-oriented since its very beginning because of the involvement of both business actors and civil society organizations. In South Africa, certified organic produce started with mangoes, avocados, herbs, spices, rooibos tea, and vegetables but remained relatively small until 2003. Table 26.1 presents certified organic agriculture land and the number of producers in African countries, according to a 2016 survey by the Swiss Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL). Forty out of the fifty-four countries on the continent are involved in certified organic agriculture with 593,050 producers working on 1,263,105 ha. Figure 26.1 compares the ten countries with the largest numbers of organic food producers in 2014. Table 26.2 provides an overview of the main producing and importing countries for a range of organic food product groups from Africa. There is a surprising range of different items in the organic food exports from Africa. In this respect organic food exports do not differ very much from conventional food exports. In addition, while the number of African countries producing organic food for export is quite large, the number of importing countries is much more limited, whereby Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands dominate.
Organic Certification in Africa Certification of organic food using a trustworthy label is important for Western consumers because it indicates that the item has been produced and processed according to specific organic standards.8 Since Europe is the major destination of African organic food, most of the production in Africa is aligned with the European regulation for organic certification. However, there is a trend towards diversification of organic markets, favouring an increasing interest in the U.S. National Organic Program (NOP) as well as the Japanese market, which is governed by Japan Agriculture Standards (JAS) (Glin, 2014). To enter the EU and other international markets, two options are available: either developing a national system of organic certification that is acknowledged by
568 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti Table 26.1 Certified Organic Agriculture in Africa Country
Area (ha)
Share of total agricultural land
Producers (no.)
Algeria
700
0.002%
57
Angola
2,486
0.004%
Benin
2,344
0.1%
3,159
Burkina Faso
20,110
0.2%
9,032
Burundi
148
0.01%
34
Cameroon
380
0.004%
193
Chad
Wild collection only
Comoros
1,723
1.1%
1,558
Côte d’lvoire
19,548
0.1%
490
Congo, D.R.
89,058
0.4%
1,122
Egypt
85,801
2.3%
790
Ethiopia
160,987
0.5%
135,827
Ghana
15,563
0.1%
1588
Guinea-Bissau
1,843
0.1%
Kenya
4,894
0.02%
12,647
Lesotho
560
0.02%
2
Madagascar
30,265
0.1%
22,851
Malawi
102
0.002%
2
Mali
11,919
0.03%
12,619
Mauritius
6
0.1%
18
Mayotte
5
0.04%
2
Morocco
8,660
0.03%
120
Mozambique
15,421
0.03%
5
Namibia
30,082
0.1%
12
Niger
262
0.001%
Nigeria
5,021
0.01%
101
Réunion (France)
659
1.7%
154
Rwanda
2,248
0.1%
3,952
Sao Tome and Prinicipe
6,706
12.0%
3,738
Senegal
6,929
0.1%
18,393
South Africa
19,501
0.02%
259
Sudan
130,000
0.1%
354
Swaziland
8
0.001%
Tanzania
186,537
0.5%
148,610
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 569 Table 26.1 Continued Country
Area (ha)
Share of total agricultural land
Producers (no.)
Tongo
15,321
0.5%
9,933
Tunisia
139,087
1.4%
2,810
Uganda
240,197
1.7%
190,552
Zambia
7,552
0.03%
10,059
Zimbabwe
474
0.003%
2,003
Total
1,263,105
0.1%
593,050
Source: Reproduced from Willer & Lernoud (2018) with permission.
Uganda
190'552 148'610
Tanzania (2013) Ethiopia (2013)
135'827 22'851
Madagascar Senegal (2013)
18'393 12'647
Kenya (2012)
12'619
Mali
10'059
Zambia (2009) Togo
9'933
Burkina Faso
9'032 0
50'000
100'000 150'000 Producers
200'000
250'000
Figure 26.1 Ten african countries with the largest number of organic farmers. Source: Reproduced from Willer & Lernoud (2018) with permission.
governments in the destination countries; or certifying individual farmers and supply chains by a certifying body that is recognized by the destination market. In recent years, several (groups of) countries in Africa have used the EU regulation on organic food (Regulation 2092/91) as a model for designing their own national legislation. This facilitates their access to the EU export markets but offers African consumers a national standard in their domestic markets as well. Some examples are:
• • • • • •
East African Organic Products Standards Normes des Produits Biologiques de L’Afrique de L’Est Development of a regional organic agriculture standard in East Africa 2005-–2007 Afrisco Standards for Organic Production PGS in East Africa English PGS in East Africa French
570 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti Table 26.2 Organic Food Exports From Africa Product group
Producing countries
Destination markets
Fresh vegetables
Egypt, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia
Switzerland, Germany, Netherlands, Australia
Bananas
Cameroon, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda
Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland
Citrus fruits, grapes
Egypt, Morocco, South Africa
Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland
Tropical fruits (fresh) Avocados, mangoes, pineapples, papayas
Cameroon, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda
France, Germany, Switzerland, Netherlands, Austria, Italia, Spain
Dried fruits
Algeria, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Madagascar, Morocco, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda,
United Kingdom, Netherlands, Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland, Austria
Coffee
Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Uganda,
Germany, Netherlands
Tea
Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda
Germany, France, Netherlands
Cocoa
Cameroon, Ghana, Madagascar, Tanzania, Uganda
Switzerland, Germany Netherlands
Cotton
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Mali, Senegal, Tanzania, Uganda
Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Mexico
Palm oil
Ghana, Madagascar, Tanzania
Tree nut (cashew, shea, and shea butter)
Kenya, Malawi, Morocco, Tanzania
United States, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany
Sesame
Burkina Faso, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Netherlands, Germany, India
Honey
Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia
Germany, United States, France, United Kingdom
Source: Based on Parrott & Kalibwani (2005).
Many smallholder producers in Africa find it challenging to comply with Western standards, so local research and adaptation of relevant regulations is important (Glin, 2014). NGOs may advise and support them to become certified and get access to export markets. According to González and Nigh (2005), marketing of organic agricultural products is carried out in most African countries directly by foreign promoters, trading companies, or support organizations working in product development. The trend of relying on certifying bodies originating from import countries is understandable considering the complexity of organic food regulation in these countries. The EU requires control bodies and control authorities to be recognised by the EU before products can
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 571 be imported into the EU as organic agricultural products. According to a list from November 2017,9 fifty-six different bodies and authorities from around the world were recognised but none were from Africa. This lack of local certification bodies increases the costs of certification for smallholders in Africa. One strategy to deal with this is to organize smallholders under participatory guarantee systems (PGS). In the PGS, a farmers’ group is linked to an exporter who holds the organic certificate, and they organise an Internal Control System themselves whereby farmers are assessed by their peers. The PGS aim at enabling market access for smallholder farmers by supporting their collective strength through shared transport to markets and price negotiations and partnering with existing agricultural structures. In doing so, these smallholders create an affordable alternative to individual organic certification. Still, large commercial farms are favoured by the traceability requirements in organic standards because of their scale and capacity, while other requirements, such as those focusing on the working conditions of hired labourers, are not relevant for smallholders that use family labour. Overall, it remains a challenge for smallholders to get organically certified.
Organic Food Consumption in Africa Studies on organic food consumption in Africa are scarce, but Vermeulen and Bienabe (2007) are an exception in their study on South Africa. They find that, similar to global trends, South African consumers focus on health, convenience, and private supermarket labels in their food buying behaviour. Generally they do this within their limits of affordability but, as incomes increase, South African consumers show “a small but growing interest especially for organic food, but also for free range produce and food purchased at local markets” (Vermeulen & Bienabe, 2007, p. 7). Vermeulen and Bienabe (2007) find that South African consumers have similar interests in organic food as European and North American consumers. Actually in South Africa the proportion of consumers purchasing organic food regularly is higher compared with some of the other markets. Health as the main reason for buying organic food is also comparable but they differ with respect to the reason preventing consumers from buying organic food. For most Western consumers this is the price, but for South African consumers it is availability. There seems to be a great imbalance between supply and demand for organic food in South Africa, at least at the time of this study.
Fair Trade in Africa Fair trade is another example of Africa’s involvement in political consumerism through the production connection as a target of buycott by consumers in Western countries.
572 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti Africa is important for fair trade because “over half of the farmers certified are in Africa (62%) and nearly half of all workers employed by fairtrade certified organizations are in Africa (41%)” (Tallontire, 2015, p. 372). Fair trade started with the introduction of the “Max Havelaar” label in the Netherlands in 1988 (Oosterveer & Sonnenfeld, 2012). This was a certification initiative intended to label products from existing brands with the fairtrade label, offer a guaranteed minimum price to producers, secure social and environmental standards, and have these products available in regular supermarkets in the Global North. If successful this would rapidly expand the possibilities for poor farmers in developing countries to get a larger share of the benefits from selling in developed markets. Fairtrade certification and labelling were introduced as a tool to mainstream the alternative market. The initiative spread rapidly from the Netherlands to other European countries and later also to the U.S. and Japan. Ultimately, fair trade created a substantial expansion of the market opportunities for poor smallholders from developing countries. Sales steadily increased and reached a total of 7.3 billion Euros in 2015.10 The fairtrade movement aims at constructing an international trade system that is based on fair conditions for farmers and workers in the disadvantaged regions of the Third World. They define fair trade as “a commercial partnership that aims at a sustainable development for producers that are either excluded or disadvantaged” (FLO, 2010). Hence, organized producers (NGOs, co-ops) and certain plantations are guaranteed a minimum price for their products, independent of the world market price. In addition, direct and long-term partnerships are built between producers and the importers, thereby providing a reliable basis for financial, technical, and organizational capacity-building. The consumer price for fairtrade products is comparatively higher than the price for conventional products because they are not simply market-conforming but based on the notion of a fair return, covering the real production costs supplemented with a social premium for developmental and environmental purposes. The criteria for fairtrade food products focused initially on social and economic concerns but later environmental considerations were included as well. This was a response to consumers who assumed fairtrade food to also have positive ecological impacts (Blowfield 1999). The criteria for the environmental performance of producers remain rather vague on purpose in order not to exclude small farmers who may find it difficult to implement strict environmental guidelines (Oosterveer & Sonnenfeld, 2012). Fair trade grew extensively in Africa. Africa had been involved in alternative trade since the 1970s through the sale of so-called solidarity coffee from Tanzania (produced by co-operatives) and Angola and Mozambique (recovering from their war of independence against Portuguese colonialism). This alternative trade remained very marginal however, so when in the 1990s the fairtrade label was introduced in Africa this trade opportunity grew considerably. The smallholders involved through their co-operatives produce mainly coffee and tea (East Africa) and cocoa (Ghana and Ivory Coast). At the same time, larger companies are engaged in the fairtrade network through their certified plantations for tea and flowers. Maybe this diversity in the African Fairtrade
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 573 network explains why “Africa has also been the site of the emergence of innovative business models in fair trade whereby producers share in the financial proceeds from value addition in marketing and branding” (Tallontire, 2015, p. 384). In this respect fair trade in Africa differs from Latin America where larger-scale plantation production dominates. In a general review of the impact fair trade has, Le Mare (2008, p. 1938) concludes that “Fairtrade can be seen as making a significant contribution to development by improving the well-being of individuals and families and in fostering sustainable institutions.” The actions of fairtrade practitioners and organisations are complex and variable, with multiple outcomes with rather less certainty than is offered in some marketing portrayals of fair trade. While fair trade has brought positive benefits, it cannot, on its own, solve the complex problems of marginalised areas (Boström et al., 2015) but should be seen as “part of a diversified strategy of development” (Taylor, 2002, p. 18). Thus, research not only needs to consider fairtrade organisations and networks but also how fairtrade actors link in with other development actors and processes. Elder et al. (2012) did a more focused case study on fair trade among Rwandan coffee producers. They found that “neither cooperative organization nor fairtrade certification is associated with perceived trust among community members” (p. 2364). This may be explained by the fact that cooperatives with fairtrade certification “had experienced embezzlement of cooperative funds and nepotism by their leaders” (p. 2365). A positive contribution is that “Fairtrade’s non-discrimination standard may have a positive effect on gender relations in Rwanda” (p. 2365) as it may increase participation of women. When studying fair trade in Kenya, Becchetti and Costantino (2008) find that fairtrade contributes to economic and social well-being of smallholder farmers, creates an additional trade channel, promotes crop diversification, and provides services including technical assistance. “Fairtrade reduces farmers’ risks and seems to generate positive effects on price, living condition satisfaction, and other relevant socio- economic indicators” (p. 839). But they also find that fair trade can do more on the human capital side. As an element in political consumerism, fair trade is well established with a considerable market share in Europe and some other regions in the Global North. Although fairtrade products are available in some countries on the continent, Africa itself is primarily involved as a target of the political goals aimed at by fair trade. This seems to lead to certain positive impacts, but determining Fairtrade’s real impact proves complicated and at present the picture is quite nuanced. In sum, Africa is an important “target” of political consumerism in other parts of the world. Organic agriculture and fair trade illustrate this clearly, and they contribute to improving the lives of smallholders and securing the environment. However, defining the standards and supporting their implementation is mostly in the hands of northern NGOs while African farmers may profit but have relatively little control over these instruments of political consumerism.
574 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti
A Different Kind of Political Consumerism in the MENA Region Unlike most parts of Africa, political consumerism in the MENA region does not primarily concern the production of goods for the Global North. Rather it mainly targets transnational corporations in boycott actions for political reasons and in surrogate boycotts for Israel’s role in the Middle East. The MENA region’s political consumerism also includes more buycotts (for instance, when it comes to soft drinks or alternative colas like Mecca-Cola, ZamZam Cola, and others), discursive actions, and lifestyle choices. Thus, different political consumer dynamics are at play when compared to the rest of Africa. Religious considerations and the Middle East conflict are dominant reasons behind political consumerism in the region (Losman, 1972; Weiss, 2017), which began several decades ago. Transnational corporations, keenly aware of these dynamics, are concerned that a local boycott against them might spread throughout the entire Islamic world (Knudsen, Aggarwal, & Maamoun, 2008). Religious leaders may issue fatwas about how Western corporations threaten Muslim identity and how consuming global brands is committing a sin. Student groups have mobilized support for political consumerism (Izberk-Bilgin, 2012a); for a survey among Algerian students see (Benstead & Reif, 2017). Country-of-origin boycotting is rather frequent in the Middle East. Boycotts have been called against McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, KFC, Pizza Hut, Marlboro, Proctor & Gamble, and Starbucks during the second Palestinian uprising beginning in 2000, thereby also prompting entrepreneurs to offer alternative buycott goods. Many U.S.-based corporations have been targeted to express political sentiments against American imperialism and U.S. foreign policy on the Palestinian issue. Culture jamming slogans and imagery are used through social media to mobilize consumers into boycotts. A good example here is the depiction of a Coca-Cola bottle with a warhead instead of a bottle cap, along with the words “Don’t buy your brother’s blood” and “boycott” (Izberk-Bilgin, 2012a) (for other examples see Knudsen, Aggarwal, & Maamoun, 2008). Some corporations, such as Amazon, have been boycotted for their association with Israel (Knudsen et al., 2008; for other examples see also Chapter 33). There has even been a broad boycott of Dutch products after the release of the film Fitna in 2008 by the controversial Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders and of Google for its association with the film Innocence of Muslims also deemed anti-Islamic (Knudsen, Aggarwal, & Maamoun, 2008; Nikolas 2012). There is evidence that such boycotts have significantly reduced sales (Benstead & Reif, 2017). Probably the most well-known recent political consumerism action is the boycott against Arla Foods (which has the Middle East as its second-largest regional and most important growth market) and other Danish consumer goods as a market-based reaction to how the Danish government decided to handle the controversy surrounding the Mohammad cartoons published in the newspaper Jylland-Post. This controversy,
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 575 well-described in other research (e.g., Knight, Mitchell, & Gao, 2009; Rask Jensen, 2008), is particularly interesting because it illustrates how broad geopolitical, religious, and historical factors can effectively trigger market-based activism that spreads cross-nationally. It shows clearly how political consumer activism is related to religious obligations and solidarity with a religious (in this case Islamic) cause, thus helping to fuse a religious community. Importantly, the case demonstrates how globalization can drag transnational brands into ideological and religious conflicts that are beyond their control (see also Chapter 10). Government after government in the MENA region called for a boycott of all Danish country-of-origin goods. The president of Iran even declared that his country would cancel all economic contracts with countries whose media published the caricatures, and supermarkets across the Middle East removed Danish products from their shelves. During the boycott, Arla executives noted how their annual sales in the Middle East did “not just drop from U.S. $ 430 million but virtually vanish[ed]” (Ettenson et al., 2006, p. 6).11 When the boycott was most intense, having spread from Saudi Arabia to Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Yemen, Lebanon, Morocco, and Egypt, Arla was losing 1.3 million Euros per day (Knight, Mitchell, & Gao, 2009, p. 9). Interestingly, sympathy “buy Danish” buycotts occurred in the United States and Germany to support the loss of sales experienced by Danish companies. Also, Danish consumers showed their solidarity with Danish brands when polled in a Danish popularity-barometer in 2006. Arla attempted to handle the controversy in a variety of ways—from press releases about being an important employer in the region, to stressing the need for dialogue, and later by distancing itself from the publication of the cartoons.
Conclusion and Discussion This chapter has analysed political consumerism in Africa and the MENA region. When reviewing political consumerism in Africa using the conventional definition, it was found that only a few and quite marginal cases. There was some support for buycotting, mainly in South Africa and also in some larger cities in the rest of Africa with its growing young middle class. However, taking a broader view on political consumerism reveals an interesting and relevant involvement of Africa and African consumers. This involvement relates to using political consumerism against corruption and for promoting public services, while Africa is also part of global political consumerist movements through its involvement in global food production networks. In the MENA region, political consumerism is much more explicit, particularly through boycotting and buycotting for religious issues and using these actions as a means for supporting the Palestinian cause. This concluding section addresses the question of the future of political consumerism in Africa and the Middle East. Obviously, there is nothing more difficult than to predict the future and thus the conclusion does not claim to be able to do more than provide some broad suggestions.
576 Peter Oosterveer, Laurent Glin, and Michele Micheletti However, doing so offers the opportunity to take a closer look at some of these interesting developments in Africa. First, there is an absence of most conventional forms of political consumerism in Africa. Many suggestions come up that relate to political, cultural, historical, and economic characteristics of the continent. The dominating poverty has for a long time prevented the introduction of political consumerism because there were simply not enough consumers able to make a choice and thereby create a political impact. The basic realities and concerns related to securing daily survival took precedence for most people. This problem was complemented by the limited political space that is available in many countries for critical voices in media and politics, the relatively late establishment of independent political and social institutions after the end of colonialism, and the relatively low level of education. Hence, a sufficient base for political consumerism was absent. But as increasing education and rising income levels seem supportive for becoming involved in political consumerism (Echegaray, 2016), things may change. Political consumerism in Africa and the MENA region may be expected to become more important with the growing middle classes, urbanisation, and increasing levels of education, while religious and nationalist sentiments may influence the direction of future political consumerism in the region as well. The shapes and forms of such a future African political consumerism may however differ from conventional understandings, because, considering the absence of effective state institutions, there may be more focus on securing public services, such as education and health, through private means. Pressure on private companies to provide financial means and practical support for local schools, hospitals, and clinics may be expected to remain and even become more important. In addition, we may also expect that concerns related to health and safety gain significance for young, well-educated urban consumers and promote more conventional forms of political consumerism. Another interesting question is how Africa in the future will deal with the different aspects of economic development and the possibilities of a broader scope for consumer choice. On the one hand being able to buy more and better products and services seems attractive for many (mainly young?) consumers in Africa. On the other hand, being able to buy expensive consumer goods may continue to be seen as a negative phenomenon, as an illustration of corruption and one of the reasons why poverty and ineffective political institutions remain a problem in many countries. Finally, Africa raises questions about the strategy and impact of using sustainability labels in boycotting campaigns. More specifically, we may ask in what ways the connections between political consumerist activities in the Global North can be more directly related with impacts in the Global South. The MENA region adds an important question about the role of religion in political consumerism, which is not often considered. Does using a religious identity in political consumerism contribute to the emancipation of marginalised groups of people or does this perpetuate their situation because they are used by religious leaders? These issues underline the importance for political consumerism scholars to maintain an open attitude to the phenomenon and to be aware of possible northern biases in their research and conceptual reflections. Therefore, despite the relatively marginal
Political Consumerism in Africa and the Middle East 577 role of political consumerism in Africa and the MENA region, there is an urgent need to study it more closely.
Notes 1. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2010/02/19/recent-trends-poverty-middle -east-north-africa (accessed January 4, 2018). 2. See https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-rise-of-the-african -consumer (accessed December 18, 2017). 3. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/31/AR2008083102083 .html (accessed December 18, 2017). 4. See http://www.afrobarometer.org/ (accessed December 18, 2017). 5. See http://www.ecomarkafrica.com/ (accessed November 2, 2017) 6. Organic agriculture is defined by the Codex Alimentarius as “a holistic production management system which promotes and enhances agro-ecosystem health, including biodiversity, biological cycles, and soil biological activity” (FAO COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, 1999). Others, such as Henning, Baker, and Thomassin (1991) and McIntyre et al. (2009), define organic farming more broadly as a philosophy and a system of farming, grounded in values that reflect an awareness of ecological and social realities and the ability of the individual to take effective action. 7. See https://www.ifoam.bio/en/ifoam-standard (accessed October 27, 2017). 8. See http://www.fao.org/organicag/oa-faq/oa-faq3/en/ (accessed November 10, 2017). 9. http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/ofis_public/pdf/CBListAnnexIV.pdf?uid=059C2FB0 -9E5E-6FE7-ADB7DCC6747EBC0F (accessed December 18, 2017). 10. https://annualreport15-16.fairtrade.net/en/power-in-partnership/. 11. See also https://www.dairyreporter.com/Article/2006/01/31/Arla-dairy-sales-crippled -by-Middle-East-boycott (accessed January 3, 2018).
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Chapter 27
In stitu tional C ha ng e s an d Changing P ol i t i c a l C onsum erism i n C h i na Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer
China’s transition from a centrally planned to a market-led economy within three decades is one of the most dramatic social changes of the 20th century—and certainly one with far-reaching consequences (Morrissey, 2011). A consequence of this rapid transformation has been the growing role of consumers as a (potentially) highly powerful segment of contemporary Chinese society. Being driven and shaped by globalization, economic growth, political modernization, emerging middle classes, industrialization/ urbanization, advances in information and communication technologies, and challenges of sustainability, the past four decades have witnessed dramatic changes in the role of consumption in China. The volume, structure, and features of what is being consumed by the Chinese have profound impacts in multiple ways. China is a major consumer society, and the cultural shift from communism to consumerism challenges the sustainability of the country and, because of its size, also the world as a whole. The dominant social organization of Anglo-European societies has evolved over the past several hundred years from agrarianism to industrialism and then to consumerism. The theories and approaches that explain what happened in these industrialized countries fail to adequately capture, explain, or project what is taking place in China. Given China’s unique historical and institutional context, it is highly interesting to examine the phenomenon of political consumerism in China. China’s rapid shift from a developing to a middle-income country, amid a political system dominated by the Communist Party, makes the case of China unique. This chapter aims to highlight the relationship between evolving consumerism and the overall institutional changes in China with a focus on the accommodation of social and environmental concerns. In particular, this chapter will analyse the relationship between institutional changes
584 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer towards more sustainable consumption through state interventions and the choices made by Chinese consumers in everyday life. To this end, the discussion applies a dual perspective by zooming out to present the systematic, structural changes at the macro- level and zooming in to capture the changes in values, social psychology, and behaviours at the micro-level (Zhou, 2012). The rest of the chapter is organized as follows. First, it presents some recent evidence showing the rapid growth in China’s consumer expenditures and the key challenges resulting from this increased growth. Then the chapter discusses the relevance of political consumerism for China. Two cases serve as examples for political consumerism. The discussion begins with food consumption and then moves on to look at energy consumption. The conclusion reflects on the relevance of political consumerism for China’s transition to a more sustainable and socially balanced society. In this process, institutional transformations remain important; but consumer choices, informed by concerns of safety and sustainability, become relevant as well. Considering China’s unique process of transition, there is an urgent need for more research on the form and content of politically oriented decisions by Chinese consumers.
China’s Growth Towards a Consumer Society The National Bureau of Statistics of the People’s Republic of China announced that, in 2017, China’s final consumption expenditure grew by 10.2 percent from 2016, reaching 36 trillion Yuan in total and contributing 58.8 percent of the economic growth of 2017 (China National Bureau of Statistics, 2018). In 2017, per capita expenses reached 18,322 Yuan, 7.1 percent higher than in 2016. It is noteworthy that online retail continued to increase even more rapidly, with an increase of 32.2 percent more than in 2016 or 7.1751 trillion Yuan in total. This upward trend continued in the first quarter of 2018: online retail increased 35.4 percent compared with the same period of 2017 (Meng, 2018). In addition, the per capita disposable income of the rural population grew by 8.6 percent compared with 2016. The growth rate of the rural retail market was 1.8 percent higher than for the urban market. All these signs support the expectation that China is growing into a mass consumption society, thus creating an enormous market for products and services from around the world, and showing that Chinese consumers are destined to take centre-stage in this global bazaar (Wang, 2014). According to a report by the international consumer research company Nielsen, the Chinese consumer confidence index reached a historical high in 2017. Three major trends were observed: premiumisation (i.e., competition through offering higher- quality items that consumers value [Macer, 2015]), green consumption, and explosive development of retail. A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report,
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 585 based on surveys on consumers in ten Chinese cities, shows that more than 70 percent of the respondents recognized the environmental consequences of consumption behaviours, and only 8.82 percent of the respondents denied such connections (Li et al., 2017). The most impressive phenomenon is probably the explosive development of online retail, which is particularly marked by the November 11 (Singles’ Day) shopping carnival, which was initiated by the major e-commerce site Tmall in 2009. Since its inception, this shopping carnival has transformed into a massive national shopping event that is four times bigger than America’s Black Friday. Other online retail sites have followed suit, notably JD.com, which has its own event on June 18. Apart from the huge amount of packaging waste resulting from the surge in online sales over such a short period (e.g., according to Xinhua Daily, Singles’ Day creates 300,000 tons of packaging waste), the manufacturing industry that fuels shopping festivals experiences overconsumption and an increase in its environmental footprint, which is already high (Liu, 2018). There is nevertheless some hope for the promotion of greener consumption as Chinese people are increasingly looking for an improved quality of life rather than for buying cheap products (Syntao Report, 2018). The Alibaba Group Research Center focuses on consumption and macroeconomic research based on its large database from retailers, which helps in picturing sustainable consumption patterns of Chinese consumers. The Chinese Green Consumers Report 2016 by the Ali Research of Alibaba Group (Ali Research, 2016), using its large database, shows a steady and rapid increase in environmentally conscious consumers (65 million by the end of 2015, representing 16 percent of the active online buyers) who spent on energy-saving, environmentally friendly, or health-related products . Although 80 percent of Chinese consumers expressed their willingness to pay more for brands with a commitment to sustainability, which is higher than the global average of 66 percent (China National Bureau of Statistics, 2018), the increase in the Consumer Confidence Index from 2015 to 2017 is an indication of absolute growth in total consumption (Nielsen, 2018). Particularly, when we consider the fact that the Chinese are making more use of the internet and mobile communication when buying consumer goods and services. Up to the end of 2017, the number of Internet shoppers in China reached 533 million, 14.3 percent more than 20161 (China Internet Network Information Center, 2018). Thus one can only expect an increase in negative impacts on the environment and the use of natural resources. First, expanded consumption leads to more pollution, including municipal waste, domestic sewage, automobile exhaust, etc.; second, some new types of consumption patterns, such as online buying and takeout/delivery, produce dramatic pollution (e.g., from packaging). China’s policy response to the problems associated with unsustainable consumption can be traced back to China’s Agenda 21, which was issued in 1994 by the State Council, the highest administration level of the government. However, until recently, the promotion of sustainable consumption remained marginal. By 2012, sustainable consumption was increasingly framed through the concept of ecological civilization, as
586 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer proposed officially in the report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party. In 2016, ten ministries jointly issued Guiding Opinions on the Promotion of Green Consumption. And in 2017, in response to rapidly increasing wastes from the logistics of express delivery, ten ministries jointly issued “Opinions Regarding Greening Packaging from Express Delivery,” aiming to reduce, recycle, and green packaging practices and replace half of packaging material with disposable materials by 2020. The ongoing structural reform is oriented to the supply side and a strategic response to changing demands in the domestic market for safer, healthier, and environmentally friendly goods and services. This structural reform in the supply side was first proposed by the Chinese government in 2015, as a major response to the slowing down of economic growth in the country since 2007 and as an opportunity to optimize the supply side of the market to meet changing consumer demands. So far, green consumption policy measures by different ministries have been fragmented. China is in urgent need of a national program on sustainable consumption. Apart from this governmental involvement, recent years also saw a more active participation of businesses, enterprises, social groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the media, and individuals in discourses on and transitions of consumption. Compared to the disciplinary development and academic research in Western countries, consumption studies in China are a new, emerging, and rapidly developing field (Liu et al., 2017). However, the framing, definition, and application of the concept of sustainable consumption remain unclear due to the variety of terms used, such as low-carbon consumption, green consumption, simple lifestyle, sharing economy, etc. (Zhao, 2013). The notion of political consumerism has rarely been applied by Chinese researchers to study China’s consumerism. The increasing social, economic, and ecological/environmental significance of consumption indicates both challenges and opportunities. First of all, a more comprehensive research framework that can facilitate dialogue and cooperation between different disciplines is needed to generate knowledge on drivers, constraints, politics, and paths of systematic transitions in consumption. While corresponding partly to general trends around the world, China may also serve as a typical case where consumption leapfrogs in terms of growth rates and sustainability because attempts are made to bypass phases of unsustainability that other economies have gone through when developing, diverse trends coexist and complicated driving forces are involved. How to understand the drivers, patterns, and trends of consumption in China is a field worthy of inquiry.
Understanding Political Consumerism in China: A Dual Perspective For various reasons the phenomenon of political consumerism as it has been developed and used in China requires further reflection and reconsideration. It cannot
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 587 be presumed that this is similar to how political consumerism has developed and been used in Western and Northern countries. Academic discourses around modernity, development, and governance have been created and dominated by studies of Western countries. However, these discourses are often of limited use in describing and analysing changing institutions in non-Western countries. China’s development model poses a major challenge to established discourses: “Its key features are not easily summarized in familiar political and economic terms, because the Chinese mix is unique: (Ash, 2015). Institutional changes are the central focus of debates on the “Chinese Model” of development. Debates around the Chinese Model are, however, limited if they are based on incompatible discourses in which important concepts, such as political parties, legitimacy, democracy, and polycentric and monocentric regimes, are defined differently (e.g., see works by Fukuyama, 1992; Li, 2013; Shambaugh, 2015; Zhang, 2012). When contemplating political consumerism in China, one may find that both political and consumerist elements of the phenomenon require further scrutiny. First, one must analyse the evolving role of consumption, followed by some reflections on politics in China. China is rapidly transforming from a developing into a transitional/developed economy, and this transformation takes place within an authoritative political framework (Mol & Carter, 2006). The transition process entails many changes in multiple domains, including the domain of consumption. Market-based consumption, seen as the ability to choose what product to buy for private use, does not have a long history in China. Until not too long ago, China was struggling to secure enough basic food for its growing, mostly rural population. For many years, most consumers were (and some still are) primarily interested in fulfilling their basic needs through consumption of elementary goods and services (food, energy, etc.). Only recently have further options become available for consumers. Nowadays Chinese consumers are able to make a choice on the basis of their own preferences and capacities. This development makes it possible to consider concerns such as sustainability, health, and safety. This growing opportunity to express concerns on issues beyond basic survival has developed in parallel with wider transformation processes in society and the economy through marketization, industrialization, and urbanization. The political element of consumption in China differs in many respects from its standard definition as political action outside of conventional political institutions. The politics of consumption in China has a particular history. Under a highly centralized administrative tradition that lasted until the 1980s, the national government was considered to be in control of markets and services with the aim of securing social welfare throughout the country (Zhong & Mol, 2008). The national government and the Communist Party were considered responsible for developing and implementing these policies in which the wider public did not play a direct role. Since the 1980s, this situation has changed through successive steps of opening up the economy, thus creating more opportunities for domestic and international market actors, particularly through the process of decentralization.
588 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer Decentralization, from central government to local government and from governmental actors to market participants and societal actors, allows for more flexibility in some domains of policymaking and implementation and creates more room for moving away from a rigid, hierarchical, command-and-control system. The environment is one of the domains where more political flexibility is possible and where some forms of public participation are allowed. Consumption is another domain where citizens have more free choices. There is clear evidence that environmental awareness among the Chinese population is increasing and becoming an important political issue. Empowered with increasing information disclosure, from individuals to NGOs and the media, the pathways through which it is possible to influence environmental policy have become more diverse (Zhang et al., 2017). Xie (2009) reports that, in 2008, China had a total of 3,539 officially registered and an estimated 2,000 unregistered environmental groups. The number of registered environmental groups reached 6,000 by the end of 2016 (Ministry of Civil Affairs, 2017). Hereby, Xie observes, that “ENGOs (Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations) and groups do not orient themselves against the state but rather are situated in a grey area between state and society where multiple actors and stakeholders interact” (Xie, 2009, p. 6). This observation confirms that the strategy of most of these groups and their members is not adversarial but focused on raising awareness (Mol, 2009), conforming to the political culture in the country. Also, the different forms of public participation, such as public hearings, that are experimented with in China are designed to “improve the effectiveness of decision-making and to increase the accountability of governance” (Zhong & Mol, 2008, p. 900). Environmental authorities and industries are required to disclose environmental information thereby giving the general public access to this important basis for accountability (Mol, He, & Zhang, 2011). Another form of public participation is a complaint system, whereby citizens can lodge complaints when pollution occurs (Mol & Carter, 2006). More recently, WE-media (i.e., information technology–based, self-created media) are reshaping the landscape of information disclosure and public participation as well. By June 2016, there were 710 million Chinese netizens (people using the internet), of whom 176 million used online services provided by governmental agencies, including official WeChat account services, official websites, Weibo, etc. With increasing numbers of users (active users reached 761 million in March 2016), WeChat is taking over blogs and Weibo to become a new instrument for environmental information disclosure and supervision. For instance, the WeChat-based “12369 environmental protection tip-offs” platform received more than 20,000 reports within less than one year since its operation began on June 5, 2015. In addition, varied WeChat-based public accounts that are devoted to environmental issues are mushrooming, covering topics ranging from air, water, soil, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), policies, news, the environment and health, sustainable consumption, etc. (Zhang et al., 2017). These examples illustrate that, at least in the domain of the environment, citizens are encouraged to play monitoring and supervising roles. More generally, we may conclude that the “political” has a specific meaning in China that differs from how it is perceived in many countries in Europe and North America.
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 589 The space for citizens’ engagement and public debate depends on the (political) sensitivity of the issue and claims that they should build on the (general) public interest. In many European and North American countries, there is more space in public debates to also address controversial and highly contested issues and to bring forward more specific claims. Hence, “political consumerism” in China has a particular form and meaning as it is a more recent phenomenon, developing under nondemocratic conditions and not widespread because the political culture in the country is less adversarial than in other countries. In terms of political consumerism, this means that buycotts and lifestyle forms of political consumerism seem to match better with China’s political culture than boycotts and discursive political consumerism (for a similar appraisal of Latin America see Chapter 25. The past four decades have witnessed a change from consumption dominated by the centrally planned components of China’s national economy to a form that is also steered by major daily practices and by the lifestyles of the Chinese people (see also Chapter 7). This transition occurred as the result of structural socioeconomic changes at the macro- level, but is also the result of changing values and sociocultural characteristics at the micro-level. Changes at both levels are the two sides of the coin of development with Chinese characteristics. Consumption can only be understood more fully from this dual perspective (Si et al., 2017; Zhou, 2011). Only focusing on macro-level reforms and developments will lead to a failure to understand the most important micro-drivers of the 1.3 billion people involved in the Chinese modernization trajectory. The Chinese people have experienced changes in terms of values, their spiritual lives, sociocultural characteristics, and lifestyles, and these changes have been reflected in their consumption practices. Understanding these factors, along with knowledge of institutional contexts and provisioning systems, may better explain changes in consumer politics than a focus on policies and statistics. Such knowledge would facilitate explaining Chinese consumer behaviour rather than just describing it. One needs to observe political consumerism in a consumption practice from two perspectives at the same time: as a macro-level structural institutional perspective; and as a micro-level individual/household/community perspective. In order to combine the dual perspectives in one analytical framework, Figure 27.1 illustrates institutional changes at different levels and their relationships. Institutions in this context are defined as the formal and informal rules organizing a society, facilitating coordination by helping to form expectations. They also function as the constraints and possibilities that shape human interaction (North, 1990). Political consumerism in food consumption and household energy consumption in China is analysed in this broader institutional context. At the level of informal institutions, the discussion focuses on cultural traditions and political ideology. At the level of formal institutions, there is a focus on the polity, political and judicial systems, and property rights, all of which are influenced by culture and ideology and directly constrain governance at the next level in the framework. At the level of governing mechanisms, the focus is on specifying who is included/excluded in the governance of consumption domains, following what rules and how these rules are made, incentives in terms of policy instruments, and how varied
590 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer Level 1: Social embeddedness (tradition of culture and political ideology) Level 2: Institutional environment (polity, political system, judiciary, property rights) Level 3: Governing mechanisms (structure, incentives and functioning…) Institutional changes in China, 1978–present
Transformation of lifestyle and consumption in China (case study: food and energy consumption)
Figure 27.1 Political consumerism embedded in changing institutions in China.
functioning pathways actually work. The following sections give detailed information on the institutional changes at different levels and how these changes are felt by consumers.
Changing Institutions and Consumption in China, 1978–P resent Social Embeddedness Since 1978, the central task of the Chinese government has shifted from class struggle to economic and social development. Regarding informal institutions, traditional Chinese culture merges Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism and remains a force for social cohesion. This extensive and profound cultural framework has functioned as a national quasi-religion over thousands of years (Smith, 1991). The development of socialism with Chinese characteristics is best seen as the integration of Marxism-Leninism with Chinese philosophy and reality (Chen, 2015). The focus of this discourse is on constant experimentation, testing, and reinterpretation and was developed by the Communist Party of China (CPC) to adapt to China’s changing reality. Improving livelihood has been the priority of all governments in Chininese history because this was believed to be the mission of the rulers and the way to win legitimacy. Ensuring food security, for instance, has always been a priority of the Chinese government. Since the turn of the twenty-first century, the CPC and the government have adopted “ecological civilization” as the national development strategy, which was announced in 2012 at the 18th National
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 591 Congress of the Communist Party (the Congress). The essential requirement of this strategy is that the environment must be respected, accommodated to, and protected. The Congress clearly stated that China must incorporate the idea of ecological civilization in all aspects of economic, political, cultural, and social progress, including consumption and lifestyle. President Xi Jinping pointed out that “as socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, the principal contradiction facing Chinese society has evolved. What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life” (Xi, 2017). Hence, ecological civilization became a new component of the political ideology that guides China’s development.
Institutional Environment China’s unique polity, political system, judiciary, and property rights, to a large extent, form the institutional context for policy and governance. According to the constitution, the National People’s Congress (NPC) and its Standing Committee produce and supervise the Head of State, State Council, Central Military Commission, Supreme Court, and the Supreme People’s Procuratorate. These state organs all report only to the NPC. Similar institutional arrangements are established at provincial, municipal, and county levels. The Overall Institutional Reform Plan for Promoting Ecological Civilisation, issued by the Central Committee of the CPC and the State Council in 2015, went further in pushing for optimizing the relationship between the party, the government, markets, and society, specifying rights and responsibilities concerning the governance of public affairs. The introduction of a market economy accelerated many institutional changes. The reform of China’s economic institutions can be divided into four main phases: (1) 1978– 1992: the shift from a centrally planned economy to a planned commodity economy when the central government planned what and how much could be produced and consumed; (2) 1992–2003: establishment of the basic institutional framework of a socialist market economy; (3) 2003–2010: reforms to improve institutions underpinning the socialist market economy; and (4) 2010–present: focus on restructuring and upgrading the economy. The key driver has been the reform of property rights, from state-owned/ collective to private ownership. Establishing the rule of law was required to protect fair and free market competition, to ensure social justice and equity, and to check the exercising of state power, especially the power of local governments. The decline in annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth rates since 2010 indicates that the Chinese economy is entering a new phase, described as the “new normal,” after three decades of hypergrowth. This turning point is being taken as an opportunity for upgrading and restructuring the economy, including not only “ecologizing the economy” in the manner discussed by ecomodernists but also the “greening” of production, consumption, lifestyles, and values in order to achieve an ecological civilization (Xi, 2017).
592 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer In general, the institutional environment has improved the position of consumers and expanded their roles, driven by strengthened authority, more stringent laws and policies, more possibilities for market-based and voluntary instruments, and a greater role for the judiciary and for public participation.
Governing Mechanisms/Approaches China’s state institutions have been modernized to cater to the country’s transition to a market economy and to empower civil society. The current development goals and principles create new requirements for the CPC and government institutions to engage in learning, to provide services, and to be innovative (Yang, 2014). The ongoing structural reform of the supply side puts the focus on quality and health rather than on achieving high growth rates—in other words, on better meeting new demands from the consumption side. With increasing information disclosure and transparency, and greater institutionalization of public participation in the policy process, there has been an enlargement of the space for participation of nongovernmental actors in governance. Consumers, as individuals or groups, are recognized as a key target for transitions towards sustainability. In order to ensure the implementation of development goals, strategies, and action plans, the CPC has made use of two important regulatory approaches: (1) centralization of power cadres; and (2) decentralization of local socioeconomic development policies through a sophisticated bureaucratic system. This decentralization process has been incremental. It became necessary when local governments needed motivation to develop the market economy and social governance, which is crucial for issues like food safety, sustainable consumption, and energy conservation.
Transitions of Consumption in China Along with institutional changes in China during the past decades, consumer lifestyles and consumption modes have undergone dramatic transformations that can be presented as four major stages of transition. Before Chinese economic reform began in 1978, consumption was strictly restricted by national economic development plans. Consumption was subject to investment, and consumer demand depended completely on production supply constraints as investment plans determined the supply of consumer goods (He, 2012). In general, consumption was poor and stagnant with a focus on uniformity for the masses (Wang, 1996). Since reform and the policy of opening up that commenced in 1978, the quality of life for Chinese households has improved greatly. Between 1978 and 1992, when planned economy and market economy approaches coexisted, income became a determining factor, alongside government rationing, that influenced consumption behaviour (Yang,
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 593 2014). Consumption during this stage changed in terms of volume and structure. Per- capita household consumption expenditure in urban areas increased from 457 Yuan to 1,672 Yuan, and in rural areas it increased from 116 Yuan to 659 Yuan.2 The consumption structure of rural residents showed great improvement, with the share of food and drink decreasing while the expenditure for housing increased dramatically. Leaving the time of stagnant consumption behind, this stage showed an important increase in consumption volume. Taking the consumption of domestic appliances as an example, within a few years, in the early 1980s, some home appliances became pervasive in nearly all urban households. Consumers were mainly concerned with satisfying their basic residential needs. Meanwhile, several noneconomic factors started to have effects on consumer behaviour. For example, some consumers with a high income started to pay attention to the quality and function of consumption habits and consumer goods. Since 1992, when China set the target for constructing a socialist market economy, household life and consumption have undergone important changes as well. With the transition from a situation with adequate food and clothing to one of moderate prosperity (Liu, 2001), expanding consumption in the 1980s turned into the pursuit of diversity (Wang, 1996). Consumption kept increasing, so that between 1992 and 2000 per-capita consumption expenditures almost tripled for both urban and rural residents. In addition the structure of consumption changed, as service-related consumption contributed 39.2 percent and 29.6 percent for urban and rural residents, respectively. Consumers were more concerned with consumption that would benefit family health, beautify life, create enjoyment, etc. (Ning, 2008). An increase in health-related consumption became pervasive during this phase, reflected in an increased consumer demand for healthier products, food, education, and cultural services. By the end of the last century, consumption in China had undergone a transition from poverty via subsistence consumption to moderate enjoyment of the pleasures of consumer choice (Xia and Huang, 2015). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, especially after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), further profound economic and social changes took place in the country (see Figure 27.2). Globalization brought China into the world market, and domestic policies were implemented to encourage consumption. Consumer demand showed further diversity and refinement during this phase. The dramatic decrease in the residential Engel-coefficient (as indicated in Figure 27.2; see the decrease in share of food expenditure) proves the further promotion of pleasure and developing consumption. The middle class grew and became the major force driving the Chinese consumption market. As environmental pollution, resource dependency, and climate change became important challenges in recent years, these issues also influenced consumption choices in China (Zhang, 2001). Pollution-free, safe, and ecolabelled products are more in demand by consumers. Sustainable, green ecological consumption is widely advocated by scientists and the government (Yang, 2008). Innovative consumption modes began to emerge along with the rise in innovative economic models. For instance, with the boom in online shopping, the model of “internet + green food” emerged on the market. The next sections expand on how food and energy are specific cases that elaborate on
594 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002
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Figure 27.2 Annual per capita consumption expenditures between 2000 and 2015. Data source: China Statistical Yearbook, 2001–2016 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2001-2016); the prices are corrected for inflation, taking 1985 as the base year.
transitioning consumption and emerging political consumerism along with institutional changes in China.
Food Consumption Politics: Shifting From Security to Safety The case of food consumption illustrates the transitions discussed thus far. China’s agricultural production capacity has risen to a new level, and grain production has grown continuously during eleven consecutive years. For an increasing number of consumers, food-related concerns have changed from access to sufficient food to the quality of food, fundamentally transforming the driving forces in food regulation (Antle, 1999). Constant exposure to contaminated, adulterated, and fake foods have made food safety the most important concern for the Chinese government and its citizens. This shift
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 595 mirrors China’s transition towards a “risk society,” including its rapidly changing food system (Si, Regnier-Davies, & Scott, 2017; Wang, 2018). Nowadays in China, food is produced through a mixture of traditional and modern forms of agriculture and an expanding and intensifying food processing and retailing industry. Consumers and other social actors have to handle the risks and uncertainties this process entails, particularly with respect to the safety of their food (Zhang et al., 2016). Food safety has been a top concern of Chinese consumers. There are multiple causes for recurring food safety incidents and for the lack of public trust in governmental efforts to guarantee the safety of food (Wang, Zhang, & Hu, 2018). Before the latest round of institutional reforms in 2013, China’s regulatory system for food safety had already been the subject of six major reforms, which led to the establishment of an administrative system led by multiple departments. However, an issue as complex as food safety, featuring potential problem spots along the entire food chain from production to consumption, can hardly be safeguarded when multiple departments are involved without effective communication and cooperation. The 2013 institutional reform was expected to radically change this compartmentalized food safety regime. This reform mandated the creation of the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), a ministerial-level authority positioned directly under the State Council. Although the effectiveness of the current CFDA system still needs to be systematically evaluated, this new regime aims to promote cogovernance that involves governmental and nongovernmental actors and focuses on food safety throughout the whole process, emphasizing third-party testing and examination, information disclosure, and consumer participation (Wang, Zhang, & Hu, 2018). Over time, Chinese society has become increasingly open, risk-prone, complex, and pluralistic (Wang, 2016, 2018). In a more open society the governance of food safety requires adopting a collaborative approach, because in such a pluralistic society individuals have more responsibilities and opportunities. The institutional reforms proposed in 2013 could never have had more than superficial impacts without a major revision of the 2009 Food Safety Law that served as the legal basis for the compartmentalized food safety regulation system. The revised Food Safety Law (implemented in 2015) provides clear legal guarantees for this institutional restructuring and also states the legal principles of food safety. The aim is formulated in Chapter 1, Article 3 of the law, which focuses on “prevention as the top priority, combined with risk management, control over the full process and strengthening of social co-governance (shehui gongzhi).” This marked the beginning of a transition of the food safety regime from one that was state- dominated to a model of cogovernance with participation of multiple stakeholders along food flows (Wang, 2018). Along the channels for flows of food, governmental, market, and civil society actors are embedded in multiple contexts at different locations. Farmers as the primary producers of agrofood products are situated at one end of the supply chain, and consumers are located at the other end of the chain. These actors share several commonalities: both groups are high in numbers but poorly organized; both were kept at a distance from policymaking; both had limited access to reliable information; and both lacked trust in
596 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer various institutional arrangements, including certification schemes for green or organic food, that had been established by the government, private companies, and/or civil- society organizations (Yin et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2016). Following the implementation of the Farmers’ Cooperative Law in 2007, rapid development of farmers’ cooperatives paved the way for farmers to participate in the market (Zhang et al., 2010). Consumers, however, remain disorganized. Although initiatives like the 2017 Green Consumption and Green Supply Chain Alliances by the China Environmental United Certification Center, which is affiliated with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, aim to promote communication and information sharing between suppliers and consumers, consumers themselves are not represented in an organized manner.3 The shortcomings in public and private regulations of food safety in the mainstream food supply have inspired experiments with alternative food networks (AFNs) (Shi et al., 2011). The AFNs are emerging networks of producers, consumers, and other actors that embody alternatives to the more standardized industrial mode of food supply” (Renting, 2003). These networks constitute a broad category of initiatives to provide consumers access to safe, more sustainably produced food, including food from farms cultivated by city residents, community-supported agriculture, organic farmers’ markets, and online or offline specialized retail facilities. In the face of food safety challenges, recent years have seen the proliferation of acquaintance-based food supply schemes or alternative food provisioning schemes in China (Si et al., 2017;). Choosing what food to buy where—or, in political consumerist terms, buycotting safe and sustainable food products—is becoming feasible in China. For some groups of consumers with the necessary income, the demand for safe and healthy food is increasing (Si et al., 2017). A case study in Beijing (Zhang et al., 2016) showed that trust in AFNs is established and maintained through direct participation in the production of food or through acquaintance-based food networks. Personalized trust declines when producer-consumer distance and production scale increase. This study found, however, that in 2013 even among the wealthier and more educated consumers in Beijing, only a small proportion regularly used alternative food supply networks. It is noteworthy that this situation has changed since then with the growing popularity of online shopping and Wechat businesses. Food sales from Wechat-based retail or microstores (weidian) has suddenly become a highly trusted mode of shopping. Meanwhile, farmers’ markets, first organized occasionally in Beijing since 2010, now have become regular weekly events that attract thousands of visitors. More than ten similar farmers’ markets are now operating in China, indicating the increasing support and involvement of consumers (Wang, 2017). It is interesting to note that governmental policies have started to respond to changes in food consumption needs. For instance, the environment, the quality and safety of agricultural products, and human health are threatened by large amounts of fertilizers and pesticides used in agriculture, particularly because of their high intensity in combination with their low efficiency and unscientific methods of application. Since 2014, a series of policies have been implemented to control agricultural non-point- source pollution, including the Action to Achieve Zero Growth of Chemical Fertilizer
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 597 Use by 2020, the Action to Achieve Zero Growth of Pesticide Use by 2020, and the Implementing Plan to Promote the Action to Achieve Zero Growth of Chemical Fertilizer Use by 2020 issued by the Ministry of Agriculture (Jin & Zhou, 2018). The No. 1 Policy Document of 2017 of the central government stressed that future agricultural development must be guided towards quality and green modes and create a favourable policy environment for the development of small-scale organic farms. The concept of the “agrobusiness complex” was also promoted for the first time as a new mode of integrated, farmer-oriented, and sustainable rural development, opening up spaces for more direct participation of businesses and consumers. Currently, following the revision of the Food Safety Law in 2014 and institutional reform on food governance in 2013, the Law on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products is also going through a process of revision (Sun, 2018).
Partially Empowered Energy Consumers in China China has made great efforts to promote the transition to a low-carbon, sustainable economy in recent years. A low-carbon transition involves not only technologies but also policies, user practices, and behavioural changes among energy consumers. Consumers are central to the successful uptake of low-carbon innovative solutions, such as smart meters in their homes or large-scale wind farms (EC, 2016). However, since households as energy consumers are situated in specific locations, they are usually locked within certain energy provision systems. As a consequence, they generally have only limited and specific choices in energy supply and are less able to make a choice on the basis of their own preferences and capacities, especially when compared with other consumption domains such as food. Electricity consumption as the major energy source of households reflects this basic feature of energy consumers in China as they are endowed with limited power when choosing an energy option. In Europe, increased transparency and stronger regulation give more opportunities for civil society to become involved in the energy system and respond to price signals (Kowalska-Pyzalska, 2018). Initiated by the European Commission (EC), consumers across the European Union (EU) will in the future have a wider choice of sources of energy supply, access to reliable energy price comparison tools, and the possibility to produce and sell their own electricity (EC, 2016; see also Chapter 20). In China, the situation is different since power generation and the power grid are both highly monopolized; thus end-users are mostly ignorant about what types of electricity (e.g., from coal-fired, nuclear, or renewable sources) are supplied to them. Although renewable electricity development has made great progress in China during the past decades, and China is starting a discussion on market-oriented reform of the electricity market, consumers of electricity still have little power.
598 Zhang Lei, Wenling Liu, and Peter Oosterveer However, consumers in China show increasing potential and a willingness to purchase energy-efficient domestic appliances. To some extent, this trend is driven by subsidy policies that reduce the relative costs of more energy-efficient options. China has recognized the importance of promoting energy-efficient household appliances and has repeatedly highlighted this priority in government plans. A series of measures aimed at improving household-appliance energy efficiency and facilitating a market transformation towards energy efficiency have been designed and implemented. In 2005, China started to implement the China Energy Label, a mandatory categorical-energy information label adapted from the EU categorical-energy label. Now the China Energy Label covers twenty-nine product categories, which include most major household appliances (Zeng et al., 2014). Changes are not only driven by policy measures but also by consumers’ evident preference to select energy-efficient appliances because they want to save on their electricity bills (Zeng et al., 2014) as well as their higher environmental awareness (Wang et al., 2017). This way, the consumption of energy-efficient domestic appliances shows some of the traits of political consumerism in China. Another case is the purchase of new energy vehicles by Chinese consumers. In recent decades, a series of interrelated policies have been promulgated from national to local levels to incentivize the adoption of new energy vehicles in China. As a result, the sales of new energy vehicles has witnessed an average annual increase of 103 percent from 2006 to 2015; the new energy vehicles’ sales volume reached a total of 331,092 in 2015; and ownership of new energy vehicles reached 583,200 by the end of 2015 (both rankings were first in the world; Zhang & Bai, 2017). So far, purchase restrictions and subsidy policies are still the major drivers for adoption of new energy vehicles. But the fast-expanding trend also indicates that consumers are showing more sustainability awareness and proactivity in the domain of automobile consumption.
Conclusion Political consumerism in China can only be understood in a broader context of institutional changes over the past decades. This chapter outlines the relevant institutional changes and how these changes are reflected in the evolution of consumption in China. Consumption has now become a major driver of economic growth and this is emphasized in governmental policies. At the same time, the environmental and health impacts of current modes of consumption are increasingly being recognized, inspiring the consumption of alternative products and changes in lifestyles. With the aid of information and communication technologies, consumers have acquired many more possibilities to make better-informed shopping choices. In this context, there are hopes for transitions towards greener consumption, but there is also evidence supporting an opposite trend towards excessive consumption. In the case of food consumption, Chinese consumers seem to appreciate alternative products in order to cope with food safety risks and uncertainties. Consumers are able to
Institutional Changes and Political Consumerism in China 599 buycott safe and green food products and thereby collectively create pressure on businesses and the government to look for improvements in the safety of food. In the case of home energy consumption, energy policies have been predominantly technocentric in nature. However, consumers are increasingly willing to adopt more energy-efficient products when proper incentives are in place. In China, consumers are becoming more important in economic and political terms; in particular they are empowered with increased incomes, more freedom in shopping choices, and access to internet-based platforms and AFNs. Whether this increased power will also be used to buy more socially and environmentally sustainable products remains to be seen. Political consumerism in China has acquired particular characteristics, distinct from many other countries, because consumer choices remain very much structured by governmental measures. Nevertheless, it remains important to also look into the ways in which consumers actually engage with this context and translate these measures into their everyday lifestyle choices. Actual practices of consumers need be explained with the help of both cultural and structural factors. Future studies need to focus on practices in specific consumption domains from this dual perspective. These studies need to take into account the dynamics in China’s consumer society in order to seek appropriate and innovative solutions.
Notes 1. About 96% of the Chinese were (highly) likely use a mobile app to make a purchase (Nielsen 2016 Q1 Global Mobile Ecosystem Result). 2. The source of these and the other data below are the China Statistical Yearbooks over the years (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 1997–1992); and Xia (2015). 3. Conference on Green Consumption and Green Supply Chain Alliances; see http://www .mepcec.com/activ_377.html, April 26, 2018 (in Chinese).
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Chapter 28
Facilitating P ol i t i c a l C onsum erism i n a n E m erging Ec onomy The Case of Political Consumerism in Thailand Kanang Kantamaturapoj, Natapol Thongplew, and Suwit Wibulpolprasert
In global modernity, the market is no longer an area where sellers only exchange products with buyers. It is rather a place where people fight for their rights and express their values regarding justice, fairness, or noneconomic issues concerning personal and family well-being and ethical or political assessment of favourable and unfavourable business and government practices (Micheletti, Stolle, Nishikawa, & Wright, 2005). Political consumerism refers to the role of individuals as agents of change, who use their buying power not just to satisfy needs but to reveal to the providers of products their specific ethical and political preferences as consumers (Spaargaren & Oosterveer, 2010). Thailand, an emerging economy in Southeast Asia (Charumilind, Kali, & Wiwattanakantang, 2006), has witnessed the emergence of political consumerism since 1972. This chapter begins with a brief profile of Thailand, followed by four cases illustrating the four different forms of political consumerism—boycott, buycott, lifestyle, and discursive strategies. In these four cases, the roles of different actors are explored and assessed and the regulatory and political infrastructures facilitating and constraining political consumerism are analysed. The chapter concludes that political consumerism in Thailand shows how consumers engage in policymaking on issues concerning the conduct of corporations and other market-oriented actors. These individuals can use the market as their arena for politics to initiate and participate in discussions about societal change. To further nurture and ensure successful political consumerism actions in Thailand, the conclusion discusses future research on political consumerism in Thailand.
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Overview of Thailand Thailand was recognized by the World Bank as the world’s fastest-growing economy between 1985 and 1994 (Goss & Burch, 2001) and labelled as a Newly Industrialized Economy (NIE) by the end of the 1990s, following Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan (Falkus, 1995). The economy was restructured from an agriculture-to an industry-based economy relying on industrial production for export (Intarakumnerd, Chairatana, & Tangchitpiboon, 2002). In contrast to other Asian NIEs, the Thai industrial policy relied solely on foreign investments and technologies and failed to take local technological capabilities up in an integrated manner (Sripaipan, Vanichseni, & Mukdapitak, 1999). Once Thailand entered a serious economic crisis in 1997 (Hewison, 1999), the Thai government had to accept financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (Hewison, 2005; Lane et al., 1999). Nevertheless, the Thai economy bounced back with an average annual growth rate of 5 percent since 1999 (World Bank, 2016) and was ranked among the upper-middle-income countries in 2011 (Asian Development Bank, 2015; Jitsuchon, 2012; World Bank, 2016). Rapid industrialization not only brought an alliance between the state and the industry but also gave rise to new social movements (Laothamatas, 1997). Due to economic expansion (Englehart, 2003) and the rapid spread of education and media (Ockey, 1999), the Thai middle class increased in numbers (Falkus, 1995; Scott, Vandergeest, & Young, 2009). The problems resulting from industrialization provoked Thai middle- class citizens to think about their involvement in actively making societal changes. The middle-class desires for more involvement in societal changes led to the rise of new social movements. The first social movements were focused on political liberalization and economic improvement agendas. Later agendas included imbalanced development and environmental problems as well. Notably, some movements were oriented towards the issue of consumption. Since the 1980s, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and media played a vital role in transforming the public agenda (So & Lee, 1999).
The Emergence of Political Consumerism in Thailand In 1972, political consumerism in Thailand emerged when university students adopted a resolution designating a period of ten days as the “Boycott Japanese Products Period” in protest of Japanese economic imperialism in Thailand (Chittiwatanapong, 1988; Cho & Park, 2013). The aim of this movement was to oppose the Thai government’s economic policies, which were ineffective in resolving the trade imbalance between Thailand and Japan (Sheppard, 2015). However, the real purpose of this students’ movement was to oppose the military government, which was governing Thailand at that time. This
Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy 605 movement led to political riots during several years after 1972. No other political consumerist movement was witnessed in Thailand until 1993, when the cooperation between an environmental NGO, a business organization, and a governmental agency initiated the Thai Green Label as a member of the Global Ecolabelling Network (GEN). The Green Label is an environmental certificate awarded to specific products that are shown to have minimal detrimental impacts on the environment in comparison with other products serving the same function. Thus, the Green Label stimulates market choices and encourages producers to improve the environmental quality of their products in response to consumer demand (Lohsomboon, 2002). Since the 1990s, the forms of political consumerism in Thailand have diversified. The expanding urban middle class in Thailand has hereby become a key stakeholder as an “agent of change.” Consumer organizations and new business actors, especially retailers and media companies, have joined forces in empowering political consumerists and contributing to the development of new forms of political consumerism. More than four decades since the first emergence of political consumerism in Thailand have gone by; however, detailed research on this phenomenon has not yet been conducted. Regardless of (the lack of) research, all four different forms of political consumerism—boycotting, buycotting, lifestyle, and discursive strategies—can nevertheless be observed. Boycotting and buycotting are dominant, while lifestyle and discursive forms are less prevalent and emerged only recently. Boycotting efforts take place through campaigns organized by consumer movements, while buycotts mostly appear in the form of promoting environmentally friendly products. Political consumerist lifestyles are nurtured by middle-class consumers who share common interests and concerns, and discursive political consumerist strategies are developed by citizens who are driven by information about producer activities. In this chapter, these four different forms of political consumerism are explored in Thailand through four illustrative cases.
Boycott: Case of the Parrotfish Selling Ban Parrotfish underpin the ecological function of herbivores in coral reefs; therefore, overfishing of parrotfish can deteriorate coral reef ecosystems (Thyresson, Crona, Nyström, de la Torre-Castro, & Jiddawi, 2013; Thyresson, Nyström, & Crona, 2011). Worldwide, the loss of coral reef is considered a major problem that needs urgent action (Chia-ling, Li-hua, & Jason Pan, 2013; Greenpeace USA, 2015; UNEP, 2016). In Thailand, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) team surveyed the seafood market in early 2014. Newspaper articles publishing the results revealed that parrotfish were sold by modern retailing companies (Kanokwan Homcha- aim, 2014). Later, this issue was also discussed via the Facebook page “Reef Guardian Thailand,” a platform of 4,000 users from various backgrounds, such as academics,
606 Kanang Kantamaturapoj et al. environmentalists, divers, media, and concerned citizens. Reef Guardian Thailand decided to set up a campaign to stop selling parrotfish in modern retail shops. They used the largest online e-petition platform (Huang, Suh, Hill, & Hsieh, 2015), www.change. org, to promote their campaign. An online petition was launched in July 2014 calling on five large retailers in the country—Tesco Lotus, Makro, Central, the Mall Group, and Villa Market—to stop selling parrotfish. The petition argued, “Much scientific evidence clearly indicated that the best way to protect coral is to save the parrotfish. We encourage Thai consumers to stop buying parrotfish and call upon the responsibility of supermarkets to stop putting parrotfish on the shelves and not to wait for government measures” (Reef Guardian Thailand, 2014). Once the online petition was started, it drew huge attention from consumers and the media. At least three television channels broadcasted a special program on this movement. This campaign indicates the growing interest and awareness among Thai consumers in environmental policy of retail corporations. During the campaign, consumers who supported the campaign put pressure on supermarkets by posting pictures of parrotfish on sale and criticizing the supermarkets for ignoring their responsibility. More importantly, on Facebook some consumers expressed their intention to boycott the supermarkets if parrotfish were not removed from the shelves. More than 20,000 people voted in favour of the campaign (Reef Guardian Thailand, 2014). As a result, international retailers and one of the Thailand’s top retailers, including Tesco Lotus, Makro, and Central, quickly banned the sale of parrotfish in their stores. Two weeks after the campaign, the remaining two Thai retailers, the Mall Group and Villa Market, also declared that they would no longer sell parrotfish in the stores of their chain. It was the first time in many years that NGOs created an immediate change without the help of measures issued by the state (The Nation, 2014). Similar movements calling for the boycott of parrotfish sales were found in other countries although in different forms. Greenpeace USA used their grocery store scorecard for major U.S. retailers on seafood sustainability in this boycott (Greenpeace USA, 2015). The boycott of supermarkets selling parrotfish in Thailand shows that the collective action of individual consumers can change the practice of powerful retailers. Media and online platforms facilitated the movement. Facebook played a vital role in raising public concerns, allowing citizen-consumers from various backgrounds to save the coral reefs. The Change.org website proved to be a powerful platform to organize and express the intention of citizen-consumers to boycott supermarkets. Once the media broadcasted the campaign, the information spread to wider audiences and the campaign got more and more supporters for the boycott of supermarkets selling parrotfish.
Buycott: Case of Thailand Green Card Buycott is a form of positive political consumerism, whereby consumers use guided tools, such as labels, to make their decision when buying goods or accessing services
Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy 607 (Micheletti, 2003; Micheletti & Stolle, 2004). In Thailand, the emergence of buycotting for green products and services began in the 1990s when the Green Label and the Energy Label No.5 (energy efficiency label) were established. Viewed as a promising tool to promote sustainable consumption, many ecolabelling schemes have been introduced with the aim to mobilize consumers to buy ecological products since then (Singh & Mulholland, 2000; Vine, du Pont, & Waide, 2001). Both governmental and nongovernmental actors are involved in operating ecolabelling schemes and each of them typically mobilizes consumers to buy solely certified products. Although not all ecolabels were successful in organizing buycotts, Thailand’s most acclaimed label, the Energy Label No.5, is viewed as a success in terms of public acknowledgement and sales of energy-efficient appliances (Singh & Mulholland, 2000; Vine et al., 2001). It was not until recently that a co-organized effort to promote a buycotting campaign was initiated. In 2015, almost all ecolabels for products and services (except organic food) controlled by both governmental and nongovernmental organizations joined forces in creating the “Thailand Green Card” initiative to mobilize Thai citizen-consumers in buying more sustainable goods and services. The concept of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) penetrated Thai national policies in the 1990s and since then the ecolabel has been viewed as a key instrument to enlarge the market for green goods and services and to achieve more sustainable consumption. Many voluntary environmental labels of all types (Types I, II, and III)1 have emerged, such as Carbon Footprint Reduction of Product, Carbon Footprint of Product, Carbon Neutral, Carbon Reduction, CoolMode, Energy Saving, and SCG ecovalue. These labels are awarded by different agencies, including independent governmental agencies, NGOs, private companies, and public-private partnerships. Each labelling scheme has organized its own label independently. The success of ecolabels in mobilizing green consumers to purchase green products varies from one label to another. In most cases, ecolabels do not get wide public recognition that translates into terms of sale of certified products. For instance, the Green Label is not very successful since it is not widely promoted and as a result the public is not very familiar with it (Thongplew, Spaargaren, & Van Koppen, 2014). The Energy Label No.5 is an exception, and it is the most successful and deeply embedded label in Thai society (Kusaka, Kojima, & Watanabe, 2012; Singh, 2000; Vine et al., 2001). The energy label widely promotes a simple key message—“purchasing certified appliances saves money”—and uses simple ratings for products ranging from 1 to 5 (5 is the most efficient) (Thongplew et al., 2014). Considering the cases of the Energy Label No.5 and the Green Label, it can be regarded that the success of ecolabels in Thailand depends upon the intermingling of large and attractive public campaigns and meaningful, straightforward, and informative messages for consumers they can apply in their everyday life. To reorganize ways for using ecolabels to organize boycotting actions, the Department of Environmental Quality Promotion (DEQP) and the Industrial Environment Institute (IEI) of the Federation of Thai Industries co-organized an initiative to congregate scattered actions aimed at buying ecofriendly products into what they called the “Thailand Green Card.” Inspired by the success of the Green Credit Card in South Korea, the
608 Kanang Kantamaturapoj et al. program gathered thousands of green products from all ecocertification schemes in Thailand under one bonus system (Khankaew, 2014). With the help of economic incentives, consumers are encouraged to buy green products. Consumers with an electronic member card (a free application on their mobile phones) who purchase green products may scan barcodes to get green points that can be used for redeeming discounts, cash coupons, or special gifts in partner retailing shops (Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, 2016).2 The DEQP and IEI were key actors in the formulation of the initiative. The DEQP is a governmental agency playing a role in convincing other actors to get involved. As a governmental agency, DEQP is powerful in influencing other actors to participate in the initiative. The IEI, an independent institute under the Federation of Thai Industries, is capable of providing technical knowledge to the initiative. Retailers are important actors and function as participating partners by making green products available in their stores and by providing incentives to consumers. However, the number of participating retailers is rather limited because the Thailand Green Card system conflicts with already existing reward systems. Other participating actors include governmental and nongovernmental ecolabelling organizations (e.g., the Thailand Greenhouse Gas Management Organization (Public Organization), the Department of Alternative Energy Development and Efficiency, the Electrical Generating Authority of Thailand, the Thailand Environment Institute, and the Green Leaf Foundation (Department of Environmental Quality Promotion, 2016). The Thailand Green Card initiative marks important developments in organizing buycotts because in most cases each buycotting action had to be organized separately by ecolabelling organizations for each single labelling scheme without providing economic incentives. This collective buycott initiative poses interesting questions on: (1) the compatibility of economics incentives with the (political and ecological) rationales of Thai citizen-consumers, (2) the effectiveness of governmental agencies as a facilitator in market-driven dynamics, and (3) the responses of markets associated with the changing roles of governmental agencies. At the moment of writing this chapter (2017), the Thailand Green Card initiative has only been up and running for nearly two years and therefore the impact on motivating consumers to buy green products is yet to be seen. Without knowing the actual impacts of the initiative, it is only possible to indicate two constraining factors for engaging consumers in this initiative: the coverage of retailers and the green point system. The limited number of participating retailers not only discourages consumers to participate in the buycott initiative but also lowers the visibility for and familiarity with consumers. The green point system might endanger the success of the initiative as it repeats a key misstep of previous less successful ecolabels, such as the Green Label. To claim green points, consumers need to scan the barcode of the purchased product, which is an additional step compared with normal payment. The green point system therefore may discourage consumers to join as it does not fit into their fast- moving lifestyles as urban citizen-consumers.
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Lifestyle Commitment: Case of City Farmers Various studies showed the connection between lifestyle and buying behaviour. Searching for specific food can be part of a particular lifestyle (Oosterveer, Guivant, & Spaargaren, 2007). Food scandals emerging all over the world make citizen-consumers seek out sustainable food (Oosterveer Peter, 2005). This rationale can be applied in Thailand because pesticide residues in food are among the major concerns of Thai consumers (Banwell, Kelly, Dixon, Seubsman, & Sleigh, 2016; Roitner-Schobesberger, Darnhofer, Somsook & Vogl, 2008; Sriwaranun, Gan, Lee, & Cohen, 2013). Thailand has witnessed a rapid increase in agricultural pesticide use due to the expansion of higher-value crop production (Jeephet, Kamsa-ard, Bhudhisawasdi, Kamsa-ard, Luvira,& Luvira, 2016; Schreinemachers et al., 2015). The amount of imported pesticide dramatically increased from about 110,000 tons in 2007 to 172,000 tons in 2013 ( Jeephet, Kamsa-ard, Bhudhisawasdi, Kamsa-ard, Luvira, & Luvira, 2016; Tawatsin, 2015). During the period 2007–2013, between 49,000 and 61,000 cases of pesticide intoxication were reported annually (Tawatsin, 2015). Most of these cases were farmers who directly worked with pesticides. Besides the effects on farmers’ health, pesticide residues in food emerged as an important food safety issue in Thailand (Posri, Shankar, & Chadbunchachai, 2006). Many incidents of pesticide residues were revealed to the public. Wanwimolruk, Phopin, Boonpangrak, & Prachayasittikul (2016) found a high incidence of pesticides in vegetables while Phopin, Wanwimolruk, & Prachayasittikul (2016) found eight pesticides in all mangosteen (a popular fruit) samples randomly purchased from local markets and supermarkets in Bangkok. These incidents raised significant public concerns about the human health risks associated with this extensive use of pesticides in agriculture (Wanwimolruk, Kanchanamayoon, Phopin, & Prachayasittikul, 2015). The Thailand Pesticide Alert Network (Thai-PAN), a local NGO, found that more than half of the fruit and vegetable samples they tested contained pesticide residues. Moreover, fruits and vegetables that were labelled with governmental certification schemes were most frequently found to contain pesticide residues (Bio Thai, 2016). This extreme finding calls for public attention to food safety because consumers can no longer rely on the government label. Therefore, instead of buying labelled food, which would be an example of boycott, consumers sought other alternatives. In order to seek safe food, a group of consumers in Bangkok changed their lifestyle and started growing their own vegetables instead of buying them from the market. The City Farm Project was initiated in 2010 by a young man, known publicly as the “Veggie Prince.” The project was supported by the Thai Health Promotion Foundation,3 the Sustainable Agriculture Foundation, and the Media Center for Development Foundation (Middleton & Tangworamongkon, 2014). The common values of city farmers are “self-reliance” and a “healthy society.” The members use Facebook group Thai City Farm and the website www.thaicityfarm.com as their communication platform. The number of people joining this Facebook group has increased up to more than one hundred thousand within six years. The group members
610 Kanang Kantamaturapoj et al. generally have a middle-class background and they come from diverse professions, such as musicians, development workers, entrepreneurs, company employees, doctors, and health practitioners (information on the gender balance is, unfortunately, not available). The similar lifestyle of city farmers or urban consumers who decide to grow their own vegetables in small free spaces (“urban gardening”) is also found in cities in other parts of the world. For instance, in Britain, city-farm projects have been established on abandoned land in twenty cities (Smit & Nasr, 1992). In New York, vegetables are grown in a rooftop greenhouse on top of a factory (Dobernig & Stagl, 2015; Specht et al., 2014). In Germany, land in former mining areas is set aside for urban agriculture (Smit & Nasr, 1992). The Thai City Farm group has a close connection with other emerging citizen- consumer groups, such as the Thai Green Market and the Thai Green Consumer Society. Although the three groups have different objectives, they share a common interest in sustainable food and support each other. The Thai Green Market is a group of sustainable food providers, established in 2008. It selects reliable suppliers by adopting their own “participatory accreditation system” and making efforts to find new distribution channels, such as market fairs, home delivery, and direct procurement to hospitals (Kantamaturapoj, Oosterveer, & Spaargaren, 2013). The Thai Green Consumer Society is a group of consumers concerned about health and the environment, meeting at the local sustainable food shops and sharing certain types of food, tastes, and services (See also Forno, this volume; and Monticelli & Della Porta, this volume). It is evident that the formulation of this collective effort by citizens who share the same lifestyle for growing and consuming sustainable foods is facilitated by social media. Facebook is a platform facilitating this lifestyle group of Thai city farmers. It is also the virtual place where people share their lives by posting pictures and receiving comments from people who have a similar lifestyle. With these social media, they create an online community making urban consumers who share this specific lifestyle aware that they can live their lives without the feeling that they are separate from the others.
Discursive Action: The Case of Feed Manufacturing Company Policy on Maize Production Discursive political consumerism is a form of political consumerist activities aimed at expressing opinions for changing corporate policies and practices rather than making decisions to purchase or not purchase products (Micheletti, 2004; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). As an agricultural and food producing country, Thailand is a hub of animal feed production. Many local feed manufacturing companies are subsidiary companies of large food companies producing and selling eggs, meat, and other food products. Deforestation and smoke (from burning of maize residuals) caused by animal feed
Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy 611 production has become a serious concern for Thai citizen-consumers because they do not want to buy foods that are fed with animal feeds from unethical companies. This concern has sparked discursive political consumerism in the form of action to push feed manufacturing companies to revise their business ethics and codes of conduct. Deforestation as a consequence of agricultural activities is not a new problem in Thailand. It has however become a more pressing issue in the case of maize plantations. In some instances, investors hired workers to clear-cut forests for farming. Recently, the demand for agricultural products to produce food, feed, and energy has increased significantly, putting more pressure on forestlands. At the same time, Thai citizen-consumers have become more aware of the environmental and social problems resulting from this development and have become more active in addressing them (Kantamaturapoj, 2012; Thongplew, 2015; Thongplew et al., 2014). Maize production in Thailand involves a globalized food supply chain. The majority of maize is used domestically for producing animal feed, which is supplied to both domestic and international markets. Additionally, the domestic use of animal feeds plays an important role in Thailand’s economy since animal feeds are used to produce meat and meat products for domestic consumption and exports. Key stakeholders in the maize supply chain include farmers, millers, sellers, manufacturers, processors, retailers, and consumers (Archawanuntakul, Yamla-Or, Tanangsnakool, Senapan, Pharatah & Khlongakkhara, 2013). Maize millers and manufacturers are powerful actors having much influence and important negotiation power, while maize growers have little negotiation power. Governmental agencies have little involvement in the maize supply chain (Archawanuntakul, Yamla-Or, Tanangsnakool, Senapan, Pharatah & Khlongakkhara, 2013). Feed manufacturing companies play important roles in selecting raw materials, processing feed products, and selling animal feeds. At the upstream part, feed manufacturers either purchase harvested maize from maize sellers or secure maize from farmers directly through contract farming. Deforestation and smoke caused by maize plantations took place long before the organization of discursive political consumerism. These issues were only brought into the spotlight in 2013, when there was a study on the maize supply chain and news reports on the extensive deforestation and smoke problems in Nan province (a mountainous area in the northern region of Thailand with a large area of national forest reserves). Questions were raised about the correlation between maize plantations and deforestation, the wrongdoings of feed manufacturing companies, and the land rights of poor farmers. More importantly, actions were organized for changing the ways in which feed manufacturing companies sourced and purchased maize. These actions targeted the feed manufacturing companies and aimed to pressure them to revise their corporate policies and practices regarding sustainability in their supply chain. Several actions were observed, including (1) expressions of concern oriented to corporations and the government about the adverse consequences of maize plantations and about the corporate policies and practices of feed manufacturing companies; (2) several national campaigns and schemes to restore the forests and support the farmers; and (3) actions that raised critical questions for feed manufacturing
612 Kanang Kantamaturapoj et al. companies regarding their business ethics but also led to another broader action—the congregation of stakeholders and concerned citizens in public dialogues to address the problem and frame sustainable practices for feed manufacturing companies. Public concerns on the environmental impacts of maize plantations and on corporate policies and practices were expressed on many platforms, including in mainstream media, social media, and the internet. Social media and the internet were important platforms for citizens not only to learn more about the politics of producing animal feedstuff but also to express their concerns, discuss the issue, and share ideas. Two powerful feed manufacturing companies were heavily criticized for being unethical and profit seeking only because they were in a powerful position and able to integrate sustainability in the supply chain and take preventative action. Several national campaigns to restore forestlands and help maize farmers have been organized by NGOs (e.g., Hug Muang Nan Foundation and BioThai) and organized groups of political consumers (e.g., Plookloei campaign). Interestingly, most organized campaigns are not about boycotting feed manufacturing companies, although consumers could have organized boycotts of eggs, meat, and food products from these companies. However, many NGOs and celebrities called on citizen-consumers to become active in reducing the area of maize plantation. One of the well-known campaigns was a volunteer program for planting trees in Northern Thailand called “Plookloei,” organized by Thai celebrities. The campaign went viral in the mainstream and social media and got positive responses from concerned citizen-consumers. This program convinced maize farmers to switch to planting perennial fruit trees and asked citizen-consumers to join forces in activities supporting forest plantations (see https://www.facebook .com/plookloei). This movement is not directly targeted at the feed manufacturing companies, but indirectly it puts tremendous pressures on the feed manufacturing companies to deal with the issue. Next to organizing campaigns, public dialogues involving representatives of feed manufacturing companies, concerned parties, and citizens were held at local and national levels to dissect the causes of the problem and find ways forward. One of the most important dialogues was the consultative platform of all stakeholders organized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which enabled stakeholders to see the importance of public opinion and created deeper understanding about sustainability in the maize supply chain (United Nations Development Programme, 2016). These discursive political consumerist actions have started to bear fruit, as the ideas and issues of concerned parties and Thai citizens have influenced the feed manufacturing companies. Redefining the meaning of sustainability for the maize supply chain and reshaping business ethics in Thailand have begun to take shape. Actors of the Thai Feed Mill Association, the Thai Seed Trade Association, and relevant other parties, including governmental agencies and NGOs, have been engaged in discussion about implementing Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) on maize plantations. Next to the promotion of GAP, public pressure has influenced a key feed seller, a subsidiary of a powerful transnational company, to install new purchasing policies. Now,
Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy 613 the sustainability of the origin of maize (traceability) has been integrated into maize purchasing policies of the company and implemented through a pilot phase. It is evident that these efforts to pressure the feed manufacturing companies have become a success through the active engagement of citizen-consumers who acted as agents of change facilitated by mainstream and social media. Despite the progress in addressing the problems of deforestation and smoke, there are constraining factors that should be addressed to further promote these actions of discursive political consumerism. As responsive actions from the feed manufacturers are only in their initial stage, continuing public involvement and transparency in (sustainable) maize purchasing programs are crucial and serve as prerequisites for the development of a sustainable maize supply chain in Thailand.
Facilitating and Constraining Political Consumerism in Thailand Political consumerism is a domain of political activity where active citizen-consumers take various actions. This section illustrates the key actors and political infrastructures facilitating and constraining political consumerism in Thailand by analysing the four cases presented in the previous section. Key actors of political consumerism in Thailand include government agencies, international agencies, local NGOs, companies and associations, social media users, and citizen-consumers. Interesting to note is that the leading actors of political consumerism in the case of boycotts, lifestyles, and discursive action were local NGOs who raised the issue on the public agenda via social media to provide scientific information to citizen-consumers, establish campaigns, and monitor the result of campaigns. These local NGOs are supported by domestic autonomous public agencies such as the Thai Health Promotion Foundation, which provided financial support to form and strengthen groups of citizen-consumers, for example when developing lifestyle political consumerism through the Thai City Farm group. Business actors react to the movement differently. Food retailers responded positively to the boycott (the ban parrotfish campaign) by stopping the sale and making the commitment that they would no longer sell parrotfish. Many food retailers use sustainability as one of their business strategies; therefore, their positive reaction to the campaign is a way to keep their competitive advantage. It is noticeable that transnational supermarkets reacted to the public movement more immediately and much faster than local supermarkets; this is probably due to sustainability policies at their international headquarters. In the case of discursive political consumerism, local business actors also responded positively but quite slowly. This could be explained by the fact that maize manufacturers and sellers in Thailand have complete control over the maize production chain while citizen-consumers are not direct buyers of animal feed products. Thus,
614 Kanang Kantamaturapoj et al. public campaigns and pressure do not disturb business operations directly but may affect their reputation. Discussion platforms organized by intermediate organizations, such as the UNDP, played a crucial role in solving the problem as they brought together all stakeholders (i.e., feed manufacturing companies, concerned parties, and citizens) to learn more about each stakeholder’s concerns and to discuss the problems and ways of going forward. The case of the Thailand Green Card illustrates the power the government has in influencing other actors to participate in the buycotting initiative as well as the rising power of retailers in creating meaningful buycotting efforts. However, it should be noted that governmental agencies usually prefer nonconfrontational strategies and rarely become a key player in confrontational issues, such as discursive political consumerist actions against the giant feed manufacturing companies. From the four illustrations of political consumerism in Thailand discussed here, it can be concluded that some factors have facilitated but also constrained the development of political consumerism, which can be categorized as follows. Three facilitating factors of political consumerism in Thailand were identified from the cases: (1) the increasing use of ICT (information and communications technology), (2) cooperation with other actors in the societal network, and (3) positive economic instruments. The first factor facilitating political consumerism is the increasing use of ICT. Two forms of ICT—online petitions and Facebook—were used as powerful tools to move the political consumer agenda. According to Huang et al. (2015), electronic petitioning has gained popularity because people can quickly and easily sign a petition even from their own home. Although 99 percent of the petitions in change.org are never marked as “victorious” (Huang et al., 2015), the study confirmed that the internet can mobilize traditionally underrepresented groups to participate in a political activity (Sheppard, 2015) and gain international attention (Dumas et al., 2016). Social media like Facebook also played a major role in mobilizing political consumers’ movements in Thailand. Facebook facilitates raising public interest and connects people who share the same concern in an online community. Instead of relying on the mainstream media, activists nowadays widely use Facebook to share information. In the case of the parrotfish ban, the Thai City Farm group, and the movement on maize production, ICT was the key factor in their success. In the cases of boycotting supermarkets selling parrotfish and discursive action on maize production, Facebook played an important role in providing information to a wide audience with the aim to catch the interest of citizen-consumers. This interest turned into actual action and/or pressure to create real change. By contrast, the lifestyle consumerist group used Facebook as an online community. Interactions in this online community, including discussions, knowledge exchange, and sharing details of everyday life with online neighbours, are meant to create and nurture a shared lifestyle. The second facilitating factor is the cooperation with and support from other actors in the societal network. Knowledge retrieved from actors within the network is essential to organize political consumerist actions. In the cases of the parrotfish ban and feed production, scientific knowledge from specialists was essential to create awareness among the public. The knowledge supported by IEI also assisted in developing and executing the Thailand Green Card initiative. To influence relevant stakeholders and have
Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy 615 them engage in the movement, cooperation with powerful actors is needed. In the case of the Thailand Green Card, DEQP was able to influence various governmental and nongovernmental organizations to participate, allowing the initiative to be launched. Cooperation from celebrities and popular figures made the campaign against maize plantations and feed production become well-known to Thai citizens. Also help from an international intermediary actor (i.e., UNDP) enabled the discussion between citizen- consumers and giant companies (as well as other actors in the supply chain) via a consultative platform. Additionally, financial support is essential, especially for initiating a movement. For example, the Thai City Farm group made use of financial support from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation to set up workshops and activities. The third facilitating factor may be the use of economic instruments as incentives. The case of buycott through the Thailand Green Card is the only case in this chapter that has witnessed the insertion of economic incentives. The provision of economic incentives can be viewed both as an additional benefit to active citizen-consumers, who exercise ecological rationales and vote for (purchasing) green products and services, and as an invitation to passive citizen-consumers to cast their vote in the market by purchasing sustainable products and services. Three constraining factors of political consumerism in Thailand can also be identified from the cases: (1) limitation on number of participants, (2) lack of knowledge, and (3) lack of interest to push political movements to a wider sustainability index. The first constraint is the limitation in terms of the number of involved participants. Most political consumerist efforts have been facilitated through online platforms. Thus, citizen-consumers who have no access to the internet or social media are less likely to participate in the movement or to catch up with new developments. However, the impact of political consumerist actions largely depends on the number of participants. For the Thailand Green Card, only a few retailers participated in the program, which consequently discouraged consumers to participate. This limited number of participating retailers also made the initiative less visible to citizen-consumers. The second constraint concerns the lack of knowledge regarding both scientific evidence and citizen-consumers’ practices and lifestyles. For example, in the case of discursive action on feed manufacturing companies, scientific evidence showing the connection between maize production and deforestation is essential when dealing with giant, powerful feed manufacturing companies. Moreover, the knowledge of possible solutions, such as integrated maize production, is still limited. In the case of the Thailand Green Card, an economic incentive is provided; however, there is a lack of knowledge on the format of the incentive that fits the fast-moving lifestyle of urban consumers. The third constraint factor includes the lack of interest to push political movements to a wider sustainability index and to engage a wider group of citizens in more integrated actions. Although boycotting supermarkets selling parrotfish was successful in drawing public attention to the linkage with overfishing and negative environmental impacts, the activist group did not expand their movement to other endangered marine species. Therefore, a shift towards sustainable seafood provision did not take place. The Thai City Farm group regards their lifestyle group as well-established and they energetically
616 Kanang Kantamaturapoj et al. assist new members by providing workshops and enabling fruitful discussions in social media. However, they are not able to convince wider groups of citizen-consumers to engage. As a result, the number of participants is too small to generate meaningful impacts at a wider level.
Conclusion Political consumerism is a collective action by consumers to influence political or ethical changes with regard to institutional or market practices. Political consumerism in Thailand has developed due to the emergence of a new and educated urban middle class. Throughout the years, the process of political consumerism has been developed in several ways. In the initial stage, the agenda, the form, and the actors involved in political consumerism were limited. Later on, political consumerism in Thailand has shown more diversified characteristics such as (1) more varieties of agendas in organizing political consumerism, (2) more diversified forms of political consumerism, and (3) more actors becoming involved in organizing political consumerist actions. The scale of political consumerism in Thailand is quite large. Besides the four cases illustrated in this chapter, there are many more movements using markets as a political arena. Thus, more research on mapping the relative importance of sustainability and social concerns among consumers in Thailand is recommended. Until now, agendas for political consumerism in Thailand have expanded from economic issues to also include societal and environmental topics. Actions of political consumerism have been expanded from casting votes in the marketplace (boycotting and buycotting) to include discursive and lifestyle political consumerism as well. Actors involved in driving the development of political consumerism now include governmental agencies, environmental NGOs, international organizations, business organizations, and consumer groups. Interestingly, this collaboration between different actors has been established for positive political consumerist actions, such as mobilizing to buycott ecoproducts. In recent years, nongovernmental groups have increasingly played more central roles in initiating actions of political consumerism. In general, political consumerism initiated and formed by nongovernmental groups aim at criticizing unsustainable business policies and practices and nurturing more sustainable forms of lifestyles and practices without involving governments. The governing authority of the state has become less powerful in mediating and solving contemporary conflicts between private companies and Thai citizen-consumers. Corresponding to weakening governing power of the state in a globalized market, the Thai state started to transform from acting as a sole governing body to becoming an influential facilitator in the (green) market arena. As Thai citizen-consumers become more informed, they take action against unethical, unfair, or unsustainable corporate policies and practices through their political actions as consumers, rather than waiting for government measures through a long and tedious
Facilitating Political Consumerism in an Emerging Economy 617 political process. In this regard, the emergence of political consumerism in Thailand shows how consumers can participate in policymaking on issues concerning the conduct of corporations and other market-oriented actors. Individuals can use their role as consumers to initiate and participate in discussions about societal change and, thus, use the market as their arena for politics. The four case studies of political consumerism in Thailand presented in this chapter show the potential of political consumerism as a powerful tool for citizen-consumers to create fundamental changes with regard to institutions, policies, and practices concerning sustainability. However, it is evident that additional studies on both individual and structural levels should be conducted to ensure the success of political consumerist actions. At the individual level, causes and motivations of citizen-consumers to engage in political actions are not yet being studied in detail. More case studies can contribute to an understanding of the topic in this respect. A survey could be conducted to identify the fundamental concerns and values behind the movement of political consumers. Identifying ways to shift and activate interests of the public at large is necessary to individually and collectively motivate citizen-consumers to engage in political consumerist actions. Regarding the structural level, most cases illustrate that information and communication technologies, such as social media and online petitions, are powerful platforms to highlight the agenda, to share information, and to create a sense of belonging. Nevertheless, there are other groups of citizen-consumers, such as elders, who are capable of engaging in political consumerism but still disconnect from social media. Thus, other methodological approaches must be employed to reach the groups that are less eager to expose their actions via social media. In addition, incentives that fit specific lifestyles of citizen-consumers should be explored to facilitate political actions by citizen-consumers.
Notes 1. Type I: voluntary label, verified by a third party on the basis of multicriteria standards indicating the relative score on environmental criteria with a particular product category. Type II: voluntary label, based on self-declared environmental claims. Type III: voluntary label, based on environmental declarations verified by a third party on the basis of a set of environmental and social indicators. 2. Certified against Green Label, Energy Label No.5, Energy Saving, Carbon Footprint of Product, Carbon Neutral, Carbon Reduction, CoolMode, Green Leaf, Green Hotel, Green Industry Level 5, Green Production, G-Upcycle, SCG eco value, or other eco self-declared labels. 3. The Thai Health Promotion Foundation, established by the Health Promotion Fund Act 2002, is an autonomous public agency with the mission to empower individuals in all sectors to enhance their health promotion capability. The foundation earns annual revenue from a 2 percent additional levy on top of the excise taxes on tobacco and alcoholic beverages collected directly from producers and importers.
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Pa rt V
DE M O C R AT IC PA R A D OX E S A N D C HA L L E N G E S I N P OL I T IC A L C ON SUM E R I SM
Chapter 29
Un demo cratic P ol i t i c a l C onsum e ri sm Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud
Recently, white supremacists in the United States have called for a boycott of the film Star Wars. The supremacists thought that its multiracial casting, the female starring role, and the participation of Jewish producers and writers demonstrated a form of ‘anti-white hate’ (Kestenbaum, 2016). Such examples of political consumerism are eye-opening as they allude to the idea that this tool cannot be used only to achieve more equality, enhance human and animal rights, and protect the environment but also to discriminate, spread hatred, pit groups against each other, and practice exclusion. In short, political consumerism can be undemocratic. However, most investigations into political consumerism and other forms of political engagement do not address systematically the fact that, in some instances, citizen and/or consumer actions do not necessarily and always promote democracy or inclusion. Indeed, the interdisciplinary research on political consumerism has rarely studied systematically such exclusive and undemocratic variants. Instead scholars have focused on somewhat “politically correct” forms of political consumerism that aim at protecting the environment, workers, animals, or children. Yet we know that this is not the full story as the market has historically been and is currently being used by groups and political parties as well as individuals to intimidate and discriminate against members of ethnic, racial, and religious groups. Usually such forms of political consumerism go unnoticed for a variety of reasons. This chapter seeks to fill this gap in the literature. It examines nationalistic and xenophobic varieties of political consumerism in juxtaposition to more conventional usages of ths tool. We first ask what we know about such undemocratic forms of political consumerism, how they have been studied in the past, and why we know so little about their more contemporary variants. We then discuss how such nationalistic, xenophobic, and undemocratic forms of political consumerism can be examined more systematically and integrated into mainstream research on political consumerism. The chapter’s conclusion reflects on how to push the research agenda of political consumerism forward to integrate the various cases of consumer power that heed undemocratic goals.
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What Do We Know About Undemocratic, Nationalistic, and Xenophobic Forms of Political Consumerism? The truth is that we have little systematic knowledge about using the market for undemocratic and exclusionary ends. A few well-known examples come to mind, but follow-up studies or cross-national studies of political consumerism have not engaged in a thorough analysis of various types of political consumerism (however, see Chapter 31 on examples in Europe; and Chapter 30 on the “buy white” history in Australia). The most well-known undemocratic examples are the Nazi-led campaigns and mobilization to boycott Jewish businesses in the 1930s and 1940s (Encyclopædia Judaica Jerusalem, 1971, pp. 1278–1280). National Socialist parties in Sweden, Germany, and elsewhere called on citizens to consciously choose goods (that is, buycott) so that they “don’t buy Jewish” (Micheletti, 2010, chap. 2) and, in so doing, engaged in a “cold pogrom” that was intended to undermine the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Jews. This is arguably the clearest example of the ability to use political consumerism for an antidemocratic and exclusionary cause. Moreover, anti-Semitism has been a consistent source for political consumerism throughout the centuries. Scholars have also discussed the Ku Klux Klan’s (KKK) overall boycott program in the twentieth century as a form of market-based “racial terrorism.” The KKK’s boycotts have targeted African Americans as well as immigrants. KKK activists frequently communicated boycott programs and calls to buycotts in a subtle fashion, for instance by advertising “100 percent” dry cleaners, grocers, and so forth and involving the code “TWK” (Trade with a Klansman) (Blee, 1991; see also Chapter 32). Similarly, researchers have noted a “milder” form of exclusive political consumerism that is based on national identity and national interests labelled as consumer ethnocentrism (Shimp & Sharma, 1987) or consumer animosity, defined and discussed in the section on “Nationalist Political Consumer Action.” Given these historic cases, it seems likely that similar, less transparent campaigns might still be conducted for a variety of causes today, though they may be less public and visible than those in the past. We do not have to look far to see how political hate messages against religious and ethnic minority groups flood market campaigns and the promotion of products or producers in today’s world. As the following discussion of several contemporary examples will illustrate, antigay campaigns and boycotts, anti-Muslim boycotts, and even subtle forms of racial boycotts are still blossoming in the Western world and are a part of everyday life in divided societies across the globe. Why do these undemocratic variants of political consumerism usually escape the attention of scholars? The answer is threefold. First, there are conceptual factors; second, there are issues regarding measurement of political consumerism and types of research
Undemocratic Political Consumerism 627 designs; and, finally, there is a difficulty in finding systematic information and analysis of various such undemocratic cases of political consumerism. The use of shopping behaviour to influence societal values has been described in many different ways. For example, several scholars of political consumerism talk about ethical consumption as a form of consumer behaviour that follows a strict moral code (Bryant & Goodman, 2004; Jacobsen & Dulsrud, 2007). From this angle, moral or ethical values such as honesty, equality, diversity, inclusion, and tolerance guide shopping decisions beyond a concern for the price and quality of products. Using this approach, scholars have highlighted examples of shopping behaviour that intends to protect minorities, animals, children, or the environment. However, the term “ethical or moral consumption” does not really include the wider varieties of consumer behaviour. A broader interpretation of the term “political consumerism” allows for a focus on nondemocratic forms as well, as the term includes various motivations for shopping decisions that go far beyond moral and ethical values to include multiple motivations that are directed at the allocation of resources and values in our society (Easton, 1965). Second, and somewhat related to the first, the measures of political consumerism, especially when focused on the individual level and on cross-national or national analyses, are survey measures. The most standard survey question in this context asks about motivations for shopping choices that “take into account environmental, political or ethical considerations.” Such a question does not tap explicitly into nondemocratic or discriminatory accounts of political consumerism. Indeed, it seems that one of the three specifications of the shopping behaviours in the survey question connotes a type of consumption that is likely inclusive and democratic in that it signals concepts such as ethical consumption. The point is that the word “ethical” most clearly colours the question of political consumerism in a more democratic, inclusive, and egalitarian light. The use of environmental considerations for shopping is also slightly problematic, as it is an attitude mostly related to the political left, although some forms of environmentalism have fascist and authoritarian roots (Olsen, 2000). However, the value combination of environmentalism and political right or authoritarian tendencies are rare (Inglehart, 2008). Thus, only one specification (the word “political”) leaves the option open for a broader approach to consumption, which could most obviously signify discriminatory or exclusive motivations for shopping choices although they are not explicitly flagged in the question. Taken together, these formulations have limitations as they are at worst biased or suggestive and at best incomplete. When specifications of selected political consumer products are added to the standard question wording, they include consumer items such as organic or fairtrade products that are disproportionately part of shopping lists of consumers on the political left. Generally, survey scholars often find that political consumers are more left- leaning in orientation (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013), which might be in part due to biased question wording. The consequence however is that right-wing examples of political consumerism are often forgotten in data collection and analysis although several are available. They include, among others, loosely organized market campaigns by the Christian right for causes such as traditional family values.
628 Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud Since most of the quantitative work on political consumerism is based on these survey items, which ask about shopping based on environmental, political, or ethical considerations, there is not a complete picture of the true variety of motivations behind political consumerism. Very few studies have asked explicitly about different reasons for looking at producers and products beyond price and quality (see, e.g., Stolle et al., 2005). Most importantly, though, survey research is not the best tool to uncover certain types of reasons for shopping decisions beyond right-and left-wing motivations because of the phenomenon of social desirability bias. This means that survey respondents might not honestly say that they follow exclusive or discriminatory principles, for example, even when they do, because they anticipate that such values are not societally acceptable. This might also be problematic for interview methods that cannot easily solicit true motivations behind political behaviour. It is thus understandable that the current approaches to studying political consumerism are unable to uncover how widespread undemocratic instances of political consumerism really are. The following discussion examines examples of undemocratic political consumerism, which will shed light on methodologies and approaches that enable researchers to create a more complete picture of the full varieties of political consumerism.
Historical and Current Nondemocratic Consumer Action This section first considers historical examples of exclusionary boycotts targeting Jews in Europe and North America from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid- twentieth century. The analysis expands by looking at strains of political consumerism that are aimed against other minority groups, such as the LGBTQ community or Muslims. The discussion references the research on consumer racism and addresses its use across various societal groups.
Anti-Jewish Boycotts One of the most prominent forms of undemocratic consumer action are boycotts against selective minority groups. In consumer research this phenomenon is called “consumer racism,” which is defined as an “antipathy toward a given ethnic group’s products or services as a symbolic way of discriminating against that group” (Ouellet, 2007, p. 115). Research shows that consumer racism influences consumer behaviour by affecting consumers’ product judgment. For example, Australians who exhibit high levels of consumer racism have a tendency to evaluate more negatively Chinese products and they are less willing to buy these products (Hill & Paphitis, 2011; see also Chapter 30). Jews have been a target of such
Undemocratic Political Consumerism 629 undemocratic consumer action. As early as the 1880s, the flourishing of anti-Semitism inspired economic boycotts against the Jews in several European countries or regions. In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, there were isolated calls to boycott the Jews; and some of the campaigns were successful (Anti-Semitism: Anti-Jewish Boycotts, n.d.). In Hungary, a major Christian newspaper, Magyar Állam, published a programme for the parliamentary election of 1896 that called for a boycott of the Jews: “Jewish capital must be paralysed, the power of Jewish money must be diminished through our freeing of the Christian people from the hands of the Jews” (Szabó, 2012). During the interwar period, anti-Jewish boycotts were attempted in many countries but most notably in Nazi Germany. After the appointment of Hitler as German chancellor and the ensuing surge of anti-Semitic violence perpetrated by National Socialist leaders and partisans, foreign critics convened at protest rallies in the United States, France, and the United Kingdom. In reaction to these protests and the call for a worldwide economic boycott targeting German goods in March 1933 by foreign critics, the “Central Committee to Combat Jewish Lies and Boycott” was entrusted by the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) with staging a nationwide boycott against Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933 in order to make foreign journalists stop disseminating “lies about atrocities” in Germany. Pickets of Sturmabteilung (SA) were formed in front of Jewish establishments, Stars of David and anti-Semitic slogans were painted on the doors of Jewish-owned businesses and offices of Jewish professionals, and clients were intimidated. Most Jewish store owners were compelled to close for the day. Although some dissidents deliberately shopped in Jewish businesses, the majority of the population avoided purchases at these businesses on that day (Longerich, 2010, 37). However, Goebbels suspended the boycott on the evening of April 1 and was prepared to relaunch it three days later if what he considered foreign lies about atrocities in Germany would not stop. He finally did not relaunch it. This boycott inspired similar initiatives in Poland, where anti- Semitic groups launched boycotts of Jewish business. In 1937, these initiatives were even supported by the Polish prime minister. Although these boycotts “did not greatly affect Jewish industrialists and big businessmen . . . it weighed heavily on hundreds of thousands of small businessmen, artisans, and others” (Anti-Semitism: Anti-Jewish Boycotts, n.d.). Even in North America anti-Semitic boycotts were organized before World War II. In Quebec, for example, a consumer movement named “Achat chez nous,” led by the Quebec fascist political movement’s leader Adrien Arcand and sponsored by leading church officials (Abella & Bialystok, 1996, p. 751), called for boycotting Jews. Its aim was to end Jewish business ownership in Quebec. Although this movement was supported by the church and by the press, it was unsuccessful (Woolf, n.d.). In the United States in 1924, the KKK staged a nationwide boycott against the Jews (Klan Starts Nation-wide Boycott Against Jews, 1924). In sum, several historical documents chronicle the discriminatory anti-Jewish boycotts, usually as an attempt by leading Nazi organizations or fascist or racist movements to mobilize their followers. However, it is not known in more detail how people reacted to these mobilization attempts, whether they participated in full numbers, or if they
630 Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud pushed the original ideas of political leaders further, and often there is little sense of how widespread these boycotts really were. This is also true for contemporary versions of xenophobic or exclusionary boycotts.
Discriminatory Consumer Action Against Other Minority Groups A large part of contemporary examples of undemocratic political consumerism is targeted at gays or the transgender community. In 2015, Billy Graham’s Evangelistic Association announced its members would no longer shop at Tiffany or use Wells Fargo banks after both included gay couples in their advertising. Following the announcement, almost 100,000 users liked it on Facebook and roughly 50,000 shared it (Hodges, 2015). One of the most popular antigay boycotts targeted Starbucks for its pro-gay marriage stance. Similarly, after releasing “pride fries” during Gay Pride month in 2017, McDonald’s faced a boycott (Hodges. 2017). Additionally, the “One Million Moms” group launched a movement to boycott the Disney Channel in response to its new story line about a gay character (Duffy, 2017; see also Chapter 33). In 2017 Anwar Abbas, a Muslim leader in Indonesia, called for Muslims to boycott Starbucks and went so far as to call for the Indonesian government to revoke Starbuck’s retail license (Muslim Leader Calls for a Boycott, 2017; Rizki & Damiana, 2017). The website Dumpstarbucks.com states that “Starbucks has declared a culture war on all people of faith (and millions of others) who believe that the institution of marriage as one man and one woman is worth preserving.” The Dumpstarbucks campaign has over 71,000 pledges according to their website (Why Dump Starbucks?, n.d.). In 2016 Linda Harvey, a Christian anti-LGBT activist, released a list of fifty-eight businesses to boycott for their rallying behind LGBT rights or for their adoption of inclusive policies (Target, Macy’s, Best Buy, and American Eagle are targeted among others) (Duffy, 2016). In 2016 the American Family Association, which states it is “combating the homosexual agenda”, also called for a boycott of Target due to Target’s decision to let transgenders use restrooms corresponding to their gender identity; they claimed the decision “poses a danger to wives and daughters” and that this policy is “exactly how sexual predators get access to their victims” (Sign the Boycott, 2016). An informal Christian group has created a website for faith-driven consumers that proposes a Faith Equality Index rating for companies according to their compliance with Christian values and urges consumers to support the highest-ranked companies. Antigay and antitransgender issues are the top priority of this buycott/boycott call.1 Antigay and antitransgender consumer campaigns are included here as examples of exclusionary political consumerism as the market is being used to convey political preferences that express intolerance of people with different sexual orientations (see Chapter 33). Social media analyses give us an idea of how widespread these campaigns are, although the “Likes” can never tell us about the absolute feedback on political consumer ideas.
Undemocratic Political Consumerism 631 Boycott actions against selective religious or ethnic groups are also common today; for example, in November 2017, several social media users called a boycott of Tesco (a large British grocery retailer) because of a TV campaign Tesco launched before Christmas that featured a Muslim family celebrating the holiday (Belam, 2017). They pledged to boycott Tesco, calling the advertisement a “disgrace” and claiming it was disrespectful towards the Christian faith. Similarly, a Facebook group calling for boycotting Marks & Spencer was created in 2013 in reaction to the decision of the retailer to allow its Muslim staff to refuse to serve pork products and alcohol (Fifield, 2013). In Britain, a blogger advocated for a general boycott of Muslim commercial activities to face the “cultural terrorism” they practiced and to curtail the immigration of Muslim people to Great Britain, preventing them from “committing acts of terror” and draining the economic resources of the country (Chapter 31). He dubbed this effort “economic counter-jihad” (Brits Starting to Boycott, 2013). With these recent examples it is clear that religious values play an important role in this kind of political consumerism and that boycotts targeting Islam-related causes are on the rise. The phenomenon of consumer racism—that is, using the market to target specific ethnic, racial, or religious groups—can be expanded to encompass antipathies towards other groups that are discriminated against (e.g., because of their sexual orientation). Consumer racism, like all forms of racism, is difficult to study because of social desirability, which particularly applies to survey and interview research. Not all approaches have addressed this social desirability issue. The general idea in the study of consumer racism has been to link racist attitudes to consumer choices by exposing the extent to which racist attitudes affect consumers’ product judgement and product evaluation. This chapter discusses here three different approaches. The first approach attempts to measure consumer racism as embedded in shopping choices; the second approach measures racist attitudes with special attention to social desirability bias and then relates them to consumer behaviour; and the third approach is much more behavioural in nature and focuses on the actual consumption consequences of racist attitudes. For the first approach, researchers have developed a consumer racism scale, which links racist attitudes to shopping behaviour and that can be used in various contexts (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998). There are also surveys that have been conducted related to businesses and shops owned by minority groups. For example, in such a survey, respondents are asked to comment on whether Chinese business owners try hard enough to attract customers or whether Americans do enough to support local Chinese (or other minority group) businesses. It has been established through survey research that consumer racism shapes the extent to which people buy products that originate from minority groups. The relationship between consumer racism and discriminatory shopping behaviour is a universal phenomenon across the globe, and the racial motives can be distinguished from economic threats that some majority groups experience in the presence of minority groups (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998).
632 Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud A second approach pays more attention to social desirability with regard to racism. For example, in a study conducted with French Canadians and English Canadians in Montreal, a “Racial Argument Scale” was used to measure racist sentiments towards different ethnic groups (French, English, Chinese, Arabic, Italian, and Spanish) (Ouellet, 2005). Here racism was measured in an indirect way in an attempt to avoid social desirability bias. This scale asks participants to evaluate sixteen different arguments containing some racial stereotypes or discriminatory statements about certain racial groups, mixed in with other types of statements, and the answers are correlated with shopping choices that shun products or services originating from these racial groups.2 Finally, there are studies that link attitudinal racism or consumer racism to actual shopping behaviour decoupled from survey questions. Ouellet (2007) examined whether consumer racism shapes the performance of businesses owned by minority groups in ten white-dominated areas and suburbs of Boston. The performance of seventy-eight Latino-owned companies (shops or consumer service providers such as housekeeping services, dry cleaners, and car repair) were evaluated. The authors then measured the level of consumer racism displayed by 870 respondents from these localities and ranked the ten localities according to their consumer-racism mean. They discovered that Latino-owned companies in the most consumer-racist localities in Boston have a lower performance in terms of profits, sales, and market shares than those situated in the less consumer-racist localities (Ouellet, 2007). Overall, we have little or no real statistics expressing what proportion of the population exhibits consumer racism. This is the case mostly because consumer racism is measured with survey items that range across ten or more answer categories and do not really use a discrete value at which racism is measured. Most research simply attempts to understand whether discriminatory attitudes relate to similarly discriminatory shopping choices. Consumer racism is usually understood to go from the ethnic or religious majority towards ethnic or religious minorities, such as Hispanic/Latino or Muslim subpopulations. However, these sorts of boycotts or buycotts fuelled by intolerance are not only promoted by groups belonging to the majority and directed at minority groups. An example to the contrary is the New Black Panther Party, a militant group promoting black nationalism (which, despite its name, is not a successor to the Black Panther Party and has been condemned by former members of the Black Panther Party). Known for its virulent racist and anti-Semitic discourse, in 2011 the New Black Panther Party organized a “National Day of Action and Unity” to urge people to boycott all “non-black business” (May, 2011). Black Lives Matter called for a boycott of “White capitalism” for the Christmas season (Make this Christmas, n.d.; see also Chapter 32). Their slogan included the statement, “This season we are calling for a boycott of White capitalism and #BuildBlackCommunity. This means no spending with White corporations 11/ 24/2017–1/1/2018!” The movement encouraged people to curb their consumerism and to give to black organizations in lieu of spending money on Christmas presents. They encouraged people to support black businesses, stating, “If you must buy, #BuyBlack,” and providing a list of black businesses and an app to locate them. Thus racialized
Undemocratic Political Consumerism 633 consumer campaigns are still blossoming; yet the Buy Black Facebook sites do not have overwhelming support. Similar activities among African-Americans were used in the 1930s in “don’t buy where you can’t work” boycott campaigns that were part of the civil rights era and at times included anti-Semitic and antiwhite rhetoric; boycotts were also called against Jewish-owned stores (Greenberg, 2006). Several scholars might see this form of engagement as an expression of identity politics and a way of empowerment for discriminated groups (Gardberg & Newburry, 2010). Similarly charged examples come from India, where a Hindu anti-Muslim party called for an economic boycott against Muslims (see also Chapter 2). They argued that the money from Muslim businesses was used to destroy Hindus and their religion (Narula, 2003); the boycott mobilization has led to the looting and burning of Muslim shops and businesses (Engineer, 2003). This discussion points to a general weakness in the scholarship on the phenomenon of political consumerism. It reveals that several motivations for political consumer actions have not been studied and measured sufficiently in historical and contemporary cases. More and different case studies can contribute to our understanding of the variety of causes that motivate political consumerism and whether all forms of political consumerism (e.g., boycott, buycott, discursive political consumerism, and lifestyle politics) are utilized for these causes. For example, are political consumers of understudied causes advocates of the market as a political arena? Do they believe such actions are necessary because individuals must take more responsibility or because government is not attending to their causes properly? The chapter returns to this question at the end.
Nationalist Political Consumer Action Exclusive forms of political consumerism can also take on a nationalist character (see also Chapter 31). While some consumers reject domestic brands because they disapprove of their chauvinistic orientation and their attempt at using nationalist feelings to sell their products (Sandıkcı & Ekici, 2009), other consumers are driven by patriotic feelings to shun foreign-made products. That latter phenomenon is called “consumer ethnocentrism.” Consumer ethnocentrism is “the beliefs held by consumers about the appropriateness, indeed morality, of purchasing foreign-made products” (Shimp & Sharma, 1987, 280). Ethnocentric consumers have a prejudice against imports and hold the belief that buying foreign products is unpatriotic. At times, this antipathy is directed against specific foreign origins, in which case it is called “consumer animosity;” in other cases there is a general attitude against products of all national backgrounds that are not one’s own, which is called “consumer ethnocentrism.” For example, Israeli
634 Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud Jews tend to evaluate more negatively products from the Palestinian Authority (see Shoham & Gavish, 2016). In order to study consumer ethnocentrism, researchers have designed a survey instrument called the CETSCALE to measure consumers’ beliefs about the morality of purchasing foreign-made products versus domestic (originally American-made) products. Research is focused on testing whether these attitudes relate to actual purchasing decisions and behaviour at the shopping counter. This scale consists of a set of seventeen statements along the lines of “American people should always buy American-made products instead of imports;” “Buy American-made products. Keep America working;” “A real American should always buy American-made products.” This scale has been used in several quantitative studies on ethnocentric consumerism and the items have at times been modified to be used in other national contexts (Netemeyer, Durvasula, & Lichtenstein, 1991).3 The scale has been shortened (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998; Shimp & Sharma, 1987) and applied in a variety of countries or regions, such as Palestine (Shoham & Gavish, 2016), South Korea (Sharma, Shimp, & Shin, 1995), Brazil (Strehlau, Ponchio, & Loebel, 2012), Saudi Arabia (Bhuian, 1997), China (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998), Mexico (Jaffe & Martinez, 1995) and Central and Eastern European countries (Kaynak & Kara, 1996; Klenosky, Benet, & Chadraba, 1996). Using this attitudinal scale, researchers have found that consumer ethnocentric tendencies are especially prominent among individuals who perceive that their quality of life and economic livelihood are threatened by foreign competition. Groups from lower socioeconomic groups and people living in geographic locations where there is a lot of foreign competition are more likely to be ethnocentric consumers (Shimp & Sharma, 1987). Similarly, patriotism (i.e., love for one’s country and concern for its national interest) seems to be associated with consumer ethnocentrism (Klein & Ettensoe, 1999). But does consumer ethnocentrism have real consequences with regard to shopping behaviour? That is always the key question in political consumer research. As with consumer racism, not many studies actually ascertain whether political consumer attitudes are indeed reflected in behaviours, but there are a few exceptions. Shoham and Brenčič (2003) tested whether consumer ethnocentrism as measured by the CETSCALE relates to the purchase of local Israeli products. They asked the respondents, “Over the last 10 purchase occasions, what percentage of your purchases was allocated to products manufactured in Israel?” Responses show that consumer ethnocentrism actually predicts local shopping. In another study it was shown that respondents who score high on the CETSCALE are also more likely to own American-made automobiles (Nielsen & Spence, 1997). Research has also discussed a related form of exclusionary political consumer action labelled as consumer animosity, which is defined as the “remnants of antipathy related to previous or ongoing military, or economic events” (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998, p. 90). Consumer animosity is different from consumer ethnocentrism insofar as it is directed at one specific country. Thus, one can find it perfectly acceptable to buy foreign products but avoid the products of a specific country for historical, political, or economic reasons.4 Several pertinent examples come to mind, such as the boycott of French
Undemocratic Political Consumerism 635 products by consumers in Australia and New Zealand because of the nuclear tests in the South Pacific made by France (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998, p. 90), Jewish consumers refraining from purchasing German brands (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998, p. 90), Chinese consumers’ reluctance to buy Japanese products (because of Japan’s occupation during World War II and because of the feeling that Japan engages in unfair economic practices) (Klein, Ettenson, & Morris, 1998, p. 90), and Jewish Israelis’ reduced level of willingness to buy Arab Israeli or Palestinian products (Shoham, Davidow, Klein, & Ruvio, 2006; Shoham & Gavish, 2016). While we know that animosity affects negatively the willingness to buy, it does not shape product judgment (contrary to consumer ethnocentrism). Thus, a consumer can acknowledge the quality of a product while being hostile to its country of origin, whereas ethnocentric consumers tend to have negative views of the quality of foreign products. Klein, Ettenson, and Morris (1998) surveyed 244 Chinese people in the city of Nanjing (which was the site of a slaughter during the Japanese occupation) and discovered that consumer animosity affected consumers’ willingness to buy independently of product judgment.
Exclusionary Consumer Actions in a Polarized World The increasing polarization of Western societies will also be reflected in a rise in consumer action that takes on an exclusionary character. Developments in the post-2016 U.S. election world indicate this trend, when many people deplored and condemned the election of Trump. In response to those reactions Trump supporters called for boycotts of companies that criticized Trump or that opposed his political agenda. Some of these boycotts seem to be simply pro-or anti-Trump. For example, the pro-Trump movement encouraged consumers to support companies that are aligned with Trump’s values, such as Yuengling Beer, Hydrox Cookies, NASCAR, WWE, Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s, Domino’s Pizza, Chick-fil-A, and Home Depot; however, similar boycotts reveal a type of exclusionary political consumer action targeted against some form of minority group. For example, PepsiCo has been targeted because its CEO has condemned the way Trump has talked about women and because she has said her employees were “in mourning” after Trump’s election (Ford, 2016). Grubhub, a food delivery service, was also targeted because its CEO told the employees that “discriminatory activity or hateful commentary” would not be tolerated in his company regardless of whether it “worked for Mr. Trump” and invited anyone disagreeing with the inclusive policies of Grubhub to resign (Ford, 2016). Ben & Jerry’s was targeted because the company supported Black Lives Matter; and Oreo was targeted because it moved factories to Mexico (Ford, 2016). Macy’s, Amazon, the NFL, and Netflix, among others, have been targeted by this boycott for similar reasons. In February 2017, several companies, notably 84 Lumber, Airbnb,
636 Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud Budweiser, Coca-Cola, and Kia, drew calls for boycotts from Trump supporters for their commercials broadcast during the Super Bowl. The commercials in question were perceived as anti-Trump because of their messages of inclusion and equality or because they were perceived as opposing Trump’s immigration order (Trump Supporters, 2017). Similarly, in November 2016, Breitbart, the far-right news website, called for a boycott of Kellogg’s after the Kellogg’s Company decided to cease advertising on Breitbart’s website, saying that the website “wasn’t aligned with [their] values” (Woolf, 2016). Kellogg’s website affirms that diversity and inclusion are “top priorities,” and that they work “toward the more equitable inclusion of women, people of colour, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender individuals, people with disabilities, veterans and other demographic groups” (Kellogg’s, n.d.). In return, Breitbart called for a boycott of all Kellogg’s products, claiming that Kellogg’s decision to “blacklist Breitbart News in order to placate left- wing totalitarians is a disgraceful act of cowardice.”
Concluding Thoughts This chapter’s excursion across various examples of undemocratic consumer actions has revealed that exclusionary and discriminatory consumer actions have usually not been the focus of systematic mainstream political consumer research. In fact, the newest revival of political consumer research is predominantly using survey questions that run the danger of excluding such forms, and they do not allow us to make any distinctions between different motivations or goals of consumer actions. The result is an image of political consumerism that does not really speak to all its facets and variants. This situation has to be remedied in the next era of political consumer research. The chapter’s inquiry brought to light numerous case studies of historical examples that demonstrate how consumer power has been used to discriminate. In the 1980s and 1990s this research has been complemented by some effort to understand racist and nationalist variants of political consumerism through survey research. In part, specific questions were developed to measure whether citizens hold animosities or discriminatory racial or nationalist attitudes against certain groups or countries that are in turn reflected in their shopping choices and market outcomes. Only rarely has this phenomenon been linked back to how targeted ethnic minorities or racial groups fare as a result. Thus, we do not fully know about the type of concerns and motivations that drive undemocratic political consumers, nor do we fully know about the success of such campaigns. It is fairly clear that future research must develop additional measures or revise the presented survey questions here to identify the worries and values that lie behind these undemocratic examples of political consumerism, as current questions do not seem to capture these motivations properly. However, survey research will reach its limitation very soon if it turns out that only a limited number of people are involved in undemocratic political consumerism; however, social desirability bias, as well as the necessity
Undemocratic Political Consumerism 637 of numerous follow-up questions to get at the variety of reasons to boycott or buycott, make survey research difficult as a methodological tool. The lack of consistent research has prevented researchers so far from fully understanding the drive of undemocratic political consumers. It is not clear whether they are motivated by a lack of governmental or policy action—for example, whether they are seeking individualized responsibility to solve societal issues (see Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 1)—or whether they simply seek to express their societal worries or political concerns in multiple ways. It is also not clear whether these ethnocentric or racist consumers feel it is efficacious to express their views and influence the political world; or, contrary to this, whether they feel rather helpless and powerless. Finally, the search for factors that enable undemocratic political consumerism should also address the potential power of different information environments that can certainly mobilize democratically or undemocratically oriented consumer actions. New research approaches that deal better with social desirability biases in that they do not ask respondents directly about sensitive groups or types of products should attempt to get at these open questions. As with any research on sensitive issues, list experiments should be used as an example of how to overcome social desirability bias in survey research (Blair & Imai, 2012). Another successful way is to study the actual shopping behaviour in racially diverse neighbourhoods or to conduct comparative case studies of consumer racism in local campaigns organized by organisations that target minority populations. Overall, it is important to expand the lens of political consumer motivations to include a variety of democratic and undemocratic causes. The chapter’s research has also revealed that different methods for data collection than survey research are needed here. For example, for the study of underground groups that are less eager to reveal their actions publicly for fear of reprisal, more ethnographic approaches (see Chapter 34), including participant observation, seem appropriate as they find the inklings of activism in very concrete and ordinary gatherings as represented, for instance, by music festivals (see Virchow, 2007). Perhaps even everyday shopping encounters can include discussions about the origin of commodities, owners of shops, and world affairs (discursive political consumerism). Another proposal is to study online campaigns of exclusionary forms of political consumerism, especially reflected in social media, to get a better understanding of who organizes them and which motivations are behind them. Google searches might even reveal interesting geographic patterns of exclusionary consumer shopping behaviour. Clearly, racist groups need to be followed in order to see how they utilize the market and consumer power to propagate their goals. Finally, we need to ask how democratic consumer actions compare to their undemocratic and exclusionary variants: Do the same motivations and grievances motivate a whole scale of behaviour including consumerism, or is there something distinct about discriminatory or exclusionary political consumerism? It is clear that systematic research on undemocratic forms of political consumerism will reveal new insights that have not yet been uncovered. It will also revise the image of political consumerism as an activity that can only be used to nurture democracy.
638 Dietlind Stolle and Lucas Huissoud
Notes 1. See more at http://www.faithdrivenconsumer.com. 2. For example, the racial argument scale (RAS) includes statements such as “It has been argued that welfare programs are too often exploited by African Americans in this country,” or “Welfare offices in every state appear packed with African Americans applying for and collecting welfare benefits,” and these statements are mixed with nonracial statements (Ouellet, 2005). 3. A good proxy measure for consumer ethnocentrism has been used in surveys: “Some people have suggested placing new limits on foreign imports in order to protect American jobs. Others say that such limits would raise consumer prices and hurt American exports. Do you favour or oppose placing new limits on imports, or haven’t thought much about this?’ 1) favour new limits 2) oppose new limits 3) haven’t thought much about it 4) don’t know” (Klein and Ettensoe, 1999). 4. A good example of a proxy measure for consumer animosity in surveys is: “Which of the following statements comes closer to your opinion: 1) Japanese companies are competing unfairly with American companies; 2) the United States is blaming Japan for its own economic problems.” Clearly, these questions stem from a period when particular trade issues arose between the United States and Japan, however, the questions might be adjusted to other national contexts.
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Chapter 30
“ Buy White—S tay Fa i r” Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History Stefanie Affeldt
On a rainy November afternoon in 1925, a train left a depot in Sydney. With thousands of people watching, cheering, and waving handkerchiefs, while the band played the unofficial anthem of Australia, “Advance Australia Fair,” it departed on a marketing journey that had never been seen before. The train’s length of more than one thousand feet alone was bound to be impressive, but even more striking was its radiant white coating. The name “Great White Train” was to be taken literally, not only regarding its outward appearance but also, above all, due to its ideological agenda. It was the acme of a large- scale consumer-oriented campaign, devised to spread the message of consumption as the individual’s service to White Australia in the mid-1920s. At the time, this label was a commonly known designation for a policy that claimed the country for the “white race.” Along the same line, when the “fair” advancement of the country was demanded in this context, the addressees were fully aware of the semantic ambivalence of said term—that is, it meant not only just and beautiful but also white. The Buy Australian-Made campaign was associated with the restrictive immigration and population directives of the White Australia policy, and in breaking down national affairs to the individual day-to- day level it also inherited its consumer-focused reasoning from an earlier nationwide campaign to consume “white” sugar for the greater cause of a racially homogeneous society. Both campaigns shed light on a peculiar form of politicized consumption in early- twentieth-century Australia, which diverged from its common shape by emphasizing the exclusion, rather than the exploitation, of “coloured labour” and interlinking economical, racist, and eugenic deliberations. Calling it a “poiēsis” or “another production,” Michel de Certeau (1988, p. xii) defines consumption as an inherently creative process. To decipher the “enigma of the consumer-sphinx,” consumers should be regarded as producers. People consuming commodities were not passively receiving products but actively constructing their social, political, and cultural surroundings. In seeking an understanding of consumption as a means to create difference in the context of overpowering structures and interest
644 Stefanie Affeldt groups, de Certeau included subversive consumption by indigenous populations. But this is only one side of his presentation of the problem. A further specification of his question applied to a historical process of consumerism: What did Australians produce when they consumed Australian products, especially white sugar? This historical chapter investigates how political consumerism merged with processes of exclusion, othering, and racist discrimination in order to provide consumers with an additional benefit, that is, an ideological yet identity-shaping surplus value. For this, firstly, the chapter introduces the dialectics of political consumerism from a historical perspective. Emerging at the point of intersection between an intensifying discourse on races and the developing consumer society in the late nineteenth century, habits of consumption were more than a matter of survival, and this activity was also charged with ideological value. Commodity spectacle and commodity racism were expressions of a Western sense of mission and underlined the popularization and distribution of racist theories. The entanglement of consumption and racism commenced with the first of the grand expositions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries where consumerism and racist perspectives were closely intertwined. investigates how commodity racism underwent a local reshaping in the southern hemisphere and the manner in which it interacted with the country’s nation-building. In the consumption of white sugar, eugenic policies, matters of national defence, and racist chauvinism were conflated as an issue pertaining to Australians on an individual level and whose practical implementation was racist political consumerism. Lastly, the chapter discusses how the Buy Australian-Made campaign and the Great White Train follow the framing of racist political consumerism, which took the ideology of the White Australia policy and transferred its exclusionist reasoning to the consumer market. The White Sugar campaign involved the exclusive consumption of cane sugar produced by European labour in northern Australia, and the Buy Australian-Made campaign spawned its most sensational advertisement stunt, the Great White Train. These campaigns functioned as consumption strategies, expressed as lifestyle consumerism that operated at the theoretical intersection of buycotts and discursive political consumerism. In the two Australian cases, this political consumerism made use of the mainstream society’s discursive strategies. It encouraged consumers to produce political messages by consuming White Australian goods. With their incorporations of nationalist and racist processes in the making of a racially homogeneous society, these strategies were fostered by the government and supported by local industries.
The Dialectics of Political Consumerism Political consumerism is commonly defined as a contemporary phenomenon of “political involvement and global responsibility-taking,” representing “actions by people who
Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History 645 make choices among producers and products with the goal of changing objectionable institutional and market practices” that are “based on attitudes and values regarding issues of justice, fairness, or noneconomic issues that concern family well-being and ethical or political assessment of favourable and unfavourable business and government practice” (Micheletti, 2003, p. 2). It is understood as a “translation of political objectives into consumption choices” (Holzer, 2006, p. 407). Individuals are thus united in a “collective action, formally defined as consumers’ use of the market as an arena for politics in order to change institutional or market practices found to be ethically, environmentally, or politically objectionable” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2015, p. 479). Consumers engage “in boycotting and ‘buycotting’ (i.e. positively choosing) products and producers for ethical and political reasons” (Boström et al., 2005, p. 9). From this perspective, political consumerism is a social movement—with liberal and humanist tendencies—that expresses itself through consumption or the rejection thereof. From a historical perspective, political consumerism is not just a phenomenon of the contemporary world nor even of industrial capitalism. Rather, it has already been deployed relatively early on in the context of an unfolding commodities management, where colonial relationships had a special significance. During the eighteenth century, while “capitalist companies were invading whole continents” (Polanyi, 2001, p. 222) and thus buttressed the connection between conquest and commerce, social relationships in the respective countries of origin underwent a considerable restructuration. One of the first occurrences of politicized consumer behaviour took place on the eve of American independence in the light of British taxation. The British American consumer experience took a drastic change in the mid-eighteenth century when the heightened imports of manufactured goods from the mother country well-nigh sparked a “consumer revolution” (McWilliams, 2005, p. 215). As a result, first steps were taken for a process that enabled a socially divided population to bridge their differences by developing “radically inclusive structures of resistance” (Breen, 2004, p. xiii). The particular colonial situation in America brought forth the “first large-scale political movement ... to organize itself around the relation of ordinary people to manufactured consumer goods” (McWilliams, 2004, p. xviii). While this political action was a boycott avant la lettre—the name-giving incident did not take place until the late nineteenth century (Kuehn, 2015; Micheletti, 2003, p. 38)—American colonists were united in their identity as consumers. Their stigmatization and rejection of imported British goods communicated their suppression and eventually resulted in changes to the tax system (Breen, 2004, pp. 235–242). This, however, is only one side of political consumerism. Rightfully remarked, “there is no guarantee that all citizen involvement always promotes democracy, public and private virtues, equality and justice” (Micheletti, 2003, p. 69). The assessment that consumers’ choices are “outcomes of moral negotiations between different everyday considerations” (Jacobsen & Dulsrud, 2007, p. 477) begs the question what kind of processes unfold in the case of the individual’s morality being affected by a racist atmosphere prevailing in the mainstream society, that is, the systemic analysis of what happens when a “racial state” becomes a “racist state” (Lentin, 2006), that is, when a nation that
646 Stefanie Affeldt identifies itself based on race deploys regulations of population politics and immigration restrictions to foster racial homogeneity. Admittedly, consumers can “support nationalism, intolerance, exclusiveness, and discrimination” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2015, p. 479); often these consumer actions were crowned with success, for “[h]atred has great potential for mobilizing effective action” (Greenberg, 2004, p. 79). Commonly provided examples are the Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work campaigns commencing in Harlem in the 1930s—where picketing and boycott actions in an originally integrationist movement, aimed at defying racism against African Americans, also employed antisemitic, that is, racist rhetoric to further the cause—or illicit agreements by American homeowners to refuse selling or renting to people with a non-Western cultural background in the 1940s and 1950s (Greenberg, 2004; Hinrichs & Allen, 2008, pp. 340–341). Taking into account both morality and hatred as motivations means looking at political consumerism as dialectical, that is, as having progressive and racist elements. While progressive political consumerism aims at societal change and moral improvement of market participants, racist political consumerism is an often brutal strategy of identity formation, in particular in the form of racist demarcation against “others.” The understudied part of this dialectic is examined in this chapter: political consumerism supported—often influenced or regulated by the government—processes of exclusion of those deemed racial others from society, that is, negative societalization (Hund, 2014) in the metropolis at the expense of the colonies. Looking at the history of consumption, it becomes evident that the “emergence of consumer culture relied on the concept of race and the persistence of white- supremacist thinking” (Davis, 2007, p. 3) because colonial goods played a distinctive role. Sugar suggests itself as an excellent example for investigating the dialectic of early political consumerism, that is, the interaction between social or political improvement and racist demarcation—in particular as cane sugar acted as a societal leveller and means of social cohesion but did so based on the degradation of ostracized people. Even before the notorious symbolical act of the pre-phase of the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party of December 1773 (Volo, 2012), sugar had already been ideologically and politically charged. Roughly a decade before, the Sugar Act sparked protest in North America and induced the evasion of sugar taxation by conducting clandestine nocturnal discharging of shipments by local colonists (Morgan & Morgan, 1995, pp. 45–48). In the mother country in the early 1790s, British consumers and merchants boycotted cane sugar from the West Indies to protest against the slave trade. So-called abolition china was imprinted with abolitionist messages, grocers announced in the newspapers that they would only stock sugar unpolluted by suspicions of slave labour, and even the sugar refiners aimed at breaking up the West Indian sugar monopoly (Abbott, 2008, p. 241; Affeldt, 2014, pp. 89–90; Oldfield, 1998). Sugar, however, was not always used to foster humanism and support morality. Together with rum, sugar became an engine of colonialism and economic imperialism as these goods were an indispensable element of the two trade triangles that linked Europe to Africa and the Americas. The first consisted of
Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History 647 the provision of produced goods to Africa, the sale of Africans to the Americas, and the transportation of sugar and other colonial commodities to Europe; the second saw New England rum transported to Africa, African slaves to the West Indies, and molasses for rum production back to New England (Mintz, 1986, p. 43). With its increasing presence in Europe in the nineteenth century, cane sugar became the fuel of the Industrial Revolution—like coal in the furnaces of the industrial tycoons, sugar fired the stomachs of the working poor (Galloway, 1989, p. 1; Hannah & Spence, 1997, p. 22). It not only provided the energy necessary to power through tough work but also consoled its consumers for economic shortcomings and other hardships. Food is described as a means of illustrating social relations: it “encode[s]social events” and expresses “hierarchy, inclusion and exclusion, boundaries and transactions across boundaries” (Mennell, 1987, p. 11; Mennell et al., 1992, p. 10). By this time sugar, for centuries a luxury of the upper classes (Mintz, 1986, p. 96), had finished its trickling down through the social milieus; now even the poorest inhabitants spent great parts of their money to sweeten their tea (Young, 1771 pp. 180–181). Since the cultivation of raw material for colonial products—like chocolate, coffee, sugar, tea, and tobacco—took place in the countries of origin, these “powerful symbols of the empire” (Bickham, 2008, p. 74) enabled a clear “race-based” demarcation at a time when the consumer society was only just emerging (Tomka, 2013, p. 251). As a social binding agent, sugar enabled the creation of an inclusive identity and allowed its users to understand themselves as members of a community based on the consumption of sugar and racistly imagined in contradistinction to its indigenous producers. Sugar’s appreciable underlining of a racist discrimination between hard-labouring “black” producers and benefitting “white” consumers furthered its gender-spanning and class-bridging potential: “with the crucial exception of the slaves themselves, everyone seemed to benefit” (Brown, 2006, p. 53). Subsequent developments in commodity culture saw this consolidating potential expand from sugar to other commodities and, with the liaison between consumption and racism, further popularized the division between ostensibly advanced civilized Western cultures and allegedly retrograde, primitive non-Western cultures that had formerly been investigated by race sciences.
Commodity Spectacle and Commodity Racism Australian racist political consumerism had its origins in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, which witnessed a celebration of commodity culture in the form of world’s fairs and colonial exhibitions. These events proclaimed to the masses the virtues of consumption as a means of collective distinction. The elaborately designed spectacles— which established new conventions pertaining to advertisements, consumerism, and colonial narrations by putting on display progress, wealth, and modernity—not only
648 Stefanie Affeldt were popular in Europe but also were subsequently organized in the United States and Australia. The first of these “pilgrimage sites of commodity fetishism” (Benjamin, 1984, p. 441) was the Great Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations that opened in London’s Hyde Park in May 1851. This “largest display of commodities that had ever been brought together under one roof ” (Richards, 1990, p. 17) propagated progress in technology, industry, and expertise to an audience consisting of people from all societal spheres. Along the lines of the print media’s effect of creating “imagined communities” (Anderson, 1994), the exhibition’s unifying potential breached social boundaries of class and gender and created a “discursive space that was global, while nurturing nation-states that were culturally highly specific” (Breckenridge, 1989, p. 196). Staged shortly after the great social upheavals of the 1848 revolution, the exhibition challenged “established norms about social and physical boundaries” (Auerbach, 1999, p. 158). The installation of Shilling Days and the support of working-class visitors and school classes by employers and charitable institutions further catered to this idea and emphasized the exhibitions’ educational mandate (Hobhouse, 2002, p. 71; Message & Johnston, 2008, pp. 27–46). More than collections of Western commodities, the exhibitions had a global perspective: they put on display items from all continents that were deemed representative for the various societies and added to the idea of classifying knowledge about the world and its inhabitants. The exhibitions were closely associated with nationalism and imperialism because they underscored European justifications of colonialism that propagated the necessity of religious education as well as the introduction of civilization and commerce to indigenous populations around the globe (Corbey, 1993, p. 339). Their displays mirrored and produced current understandings of class, nation, and race and, more than anything before, made colonial alterity immediately tangible. The exhibition of colonial scenarios with plaster casts and original artefacts was, however, not the end of the story. Among other “exotic” presentations, a group of indigenous Australians from Queensland arrived at Sydenham in 1884 (Poignant, 2012, p. 289). They were introduced as “[m]ale and female Australian cannibals,” members of the “strange, savage, disfigured and most brutal race ever lured from the remote interior wilds” that belonged to “the very lowest order of mankind” (Crystal Palace poster cited in Corbey, 1993, pp. 347–348). These “living displays”—and the subsequent installation of “human zoos,” where indigenous actors were to perform their culture and hunting techniques (Blanchard, Boetsch, & Snoep, 2011; Parezo & Fowler, 2007, pp. 5–11)—closely welded together anthropology and entertainment. By this it further substantiated the commodification of colonial frontier experiences and rendered consumable racist distinctions between Western and non-Western societies. Though the colonial exhibitions were not necessarily places of (monetary) consumption, they provided a reference for the discursive political consumerism that took place on an everyday basis and underlined the ideal of white supremacy that informed British, and later Australian, mainstream society. In the spirit of contrasting the civilized metropolis and the crude yet exotic colonial frontier, advertisement campaigns emerging in the latter half of the nineteenth
Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History 649 century drew on a “commodification of racial images” in order to promote their products (Hinrichsen, 2012, p. 61). The imperialist climate of the time fostered the charging of commodity advertisement with racism. Cartoonized and stultified racial others, depicted as subservient workers, cultivated and harvested colonial products, as obedient attendants served luxurious comestibles or provided other services or as ignorant savages gladly received the blessings of civilization. The American Aunt Jemima, the French tirailleur sénégalais of Banania, and the German Sarotti Mohr are only a few of the advertising figures that resulted from the amalgamation of biological and cultural perspectives with the popularization of racial stereotyping (Hinrichsen, 2011). Using the example of soap, Anne McClintock (1995, pp. 207–231) shows how the everyday actions of British consumers made their homes a production place of racial difference. This established consumers as beneficiaries of colonialism and, at least ideologically, supporters of nationalism and imperialism. Such class-and-gender-bridging racist societalization—provided by consumption experiences in the private sphere and by colonial exhibitions in the public sphere—was the result of a “shift from scientific racism to commodity racism” (McClintock, 1995, p. 34). At a time when the “experience of consumption had become all-compassing,” and advertising was the “primary beneficiary of, and vehicle for, the commodity spectacle” (Richards, 1990, pp. 7, 5), graphic depictions of racial others in advertisements, promotional panels, and expositions of commodities and cultures promoted the popularization of narratives about varying races. Commodity racism informed processes of racist political consumerism as it provided a means of participation in all spheres of white society with the possibility to partake in a consolidating act of consumption as whites. It drew on distinctions between indigenous labourers in the colonies and consumers in the metropolis by drawing a racial boundary. Its racist potential was unfolded by the application of discriminatory stereotyping and racialist perceptions to a global socioeconomic framework in which white consumers became accomplices in the exploitation of nonwhite workers. Irrelevant of their societal location, consumers could identify themselves as beneficiaries of colonialism and as members of a society that, compared with indigenous cultures in other parts of the world, had left behind the early primitive stages of societal development. Colonial and international exhibitions with their juxtaposition of white progress and colonial stagnation made these distinctions directly tangible and shaped this particular manifestation of lifestyle consumerism. As Wulf D. Hund presents in detail, the commodified contrasting of Western and indigenous cultures was “a form of system promotion, merging the spatial dimensions of colonialism with the political dimensions of imperialism, the economical dimensions of capitalism, and the ideological dimensions of racism” (Hund, 2013, p. 33). He expands on Wolfgang Fritz Haug’s deliberations of “commodity aesthetics” as relating to the “beauty developed in the services of the realization of exchange-value” in trade transactions and the necessity of the “use-value” as the consumer’s motivation in a “commodity exchange” (Haug, 1986, pp. 8, 14). As a result, the colonialists’ advertisements and displays not only promised use value. Additionally, it “had an instant ideological use value”
650 Stefanie Affeldt and thus allowed for an inclusive identification as members of a community premised on “white supremacy” (Hund, 2013, p. 36). To understand this racistly defined membership, Anja Weiß suggests expanding Pierre Bourdieu’s reflections on social distinction with the notion of “racist symbolical capital.” While economic and cultural capital serve to locate the individual’s societal status, racist symbolic capital accredits social validation that “translates into economic and cultural capital, but ... is not identical to it”; rather it is a “collective resource which can however be emphasized and utilized by individuals as representatives of a group” (Weiß, 2010, p. 47). In the case of the colonial exhibitions, this permitted even visitors to the Shilling Days, who did not have the financial means to actively participate in the commodity culture of the Great Exhibition, to reap the identity-building virtue of colonial exhibitions and advertisements. Regarding the Australian campaigns of racist political consumerism—White Sugar and Buy Australian-Made—the imported British consumer racism provided an initial point for a discursive political consumerism that no longer exploited but completely shunned “coloured labour” in the spirit of white supremacy and an idealized white nation.
Australia and the White Sugar Campaign This prioritizing of the expulsion of nonwhite workers over colonial exploitation was most evident when examining the history of Australian cane sugar and its transformation into a product conveying an utmost ideological surplus. From the start, sugar consumption played a particular, unifying role in the Antipodes. Not only did the first commanders and the military personnel receive regular sugar allowances but also, from the mid-1790s, the convicts, too,were provided sugar as part of their rations. As an additional reward, it soon became “integral to the management of convict labour” (Griggs, 1999, p. 80), and its distribution even in the lower milieus of society was much higher than in the mother country. A convict reported to his parents: “As for tea And Sugar I almost Could swim in it” (Richard Dillingham in 1836 cited in Maxwell-Stewart, 2007, p. 54). While in the early decades the sugar was brown and moist, with the establishment of the national sugar industry and local refining factories the quality of Australian sugar improved until, in the last decade of the nineteenth century, “even the working man would take nothing but purely white sugar” (Maxwell- Stewart, 2007, p. 54). Even before the beginning of settlement, sugar cane had been explicitly considered as one of the plants to be cultivated in the new British colony; cane setts from the Cape of Good Hope arrived aboard the First Fleet in Botany Bay in 1788. Initially, those who were conceded its consumption were also supposed to produce it. These deliberations
Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History 651 drew on earlier associations of forced labour with the cultivation of sugar cane, a linkage rigidified on the American sugar plantations where it was consolidated as the product of black slave labour in the sixteenth century (Affeldt, 2014, pp. 61–73). Cane and unfree labour was thus an association that could not be easily eroded. After decades of futile attempts, sugar cane could eventually be grown in commercially viable dimensions; however, the inexpensive servile work force was no longer available because convict transportation had been discontinued. In search of a new resource of workers, the planters fell back to traditional connections with “black labour”: from the mid-1860s on, South Sea Islanders were introduced to help establish the industry. When, in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the labour movement’s opposition to the recruitment of South Sea Islanders increased, this was first of all an ideological campaign. Their struggle for the valorisation of the British-Australian workers’ whiteness was rooted in the emergence of the working class in contradistinction to nonwhite workers on the goldfields and the development of class relations that was shaped by questions of race (Affeldt, 2010). As the central element of Australian identity around the turn of the twentieth century, whiteness was the most crucial ingredient in the transformation of the Queensland sugar industry into a “white man’s industry” (Chataway, 1921, p. 140). This was brought about by a network of nationalist and unionist groups as well as the other Australian colonies’ pressing for a solution of the “black labour question” in order to allow Queensland to join the nascent Commonwealth of Australia. As a consequence, one of the first pieces of legislation—the Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1901—eventually made compulsory the deportation of the Islanders and effectively cut off the sugar planters’ labour resources. Thus, the enforced demographic change was only the first transformatory step. The initial reluctance of the Europeans to recruit as cane workers necessitated further engagement in terms of the ideological whitening of sugar cane: work in the cane fields continued to be associated with slavery and inferiority. The European workers’ racist reasoning argued that the current working and living conditions did not meet a level suitable for white workers. Continued negotiations between the newly emerged sugar unions and sugar planters escalated in the extensive 1911 Sugar Strike—the “first major, prolonged and acrimonious industrial dispute” (Armstrong, 1983, p. 106). The labour movement’s struggle incited backing by other unions but even more so by the nationwide public, which seconded the claim that “if the sugar company cannot support married men it is not an industry fit for the white men, or fit for the white man’s country” (Argus, 1911, p. 7). The strike expressed the demand for the conversion of racist symbolic capital—credited to white workers based on their contradistinction to the “racial others”—into tangible “wages of whiteness” (Roediger, 2007), meaning improved working conditions and wages deemed appropriate for white workers. In particular, by claiming their racial and cultural distinction from their South Sea Islander predecessors, the European-Australian workers eventually achieved the validation of their whiteness and exacted economic compensation.
652 Stefanie Affeldt With the repatriation of the South Sea Islanders, a bounty system was established that rewarded employers who recruited white, preferably British, cane cutters. A legislative amendment that required the passing of a dictation test, similar to that mandated by the Immigration Restriction Act, effectively reduced the employment of non-European workers, and the heightened wages and subsistence costs were additionally compensated by a financing model that provided for the taxing of all sugar consumed in Australia. The now white sugar industry was further shielded from undesired competition by embargoes and import duties on sugar from overseas (Affeldt, 2014, pp. 360–362). However, this protection of white sugar did not go unchallenged, in particular because it was the Australian consumers who had to bear the burden of financing the sugar industry (Barnard, 1963, p. 532). Especially in the southern states, the support of the northern industry was considered benefitting only Queensland at the expense of all Australians—either when they bought high-priced sugar in the stores or consumed products, like jam, bakery products and desserts, that passed on the additional costs to the consumers. Prominently, the Federal Housewives’ Association questioned the justification of the increased sugar price, boycotted the sugar, and demanded to have the ban on “black- grown sugar” from overseas lifted to lower the sugar price to one “that would enable workers to live decently” (Sydney Morning Herald, 1927, p. 11). Such challenges to the legitimation of the white sugar industry called for a continuous invocation of the racist community and the consumers’ moral duty to the nation. In doing so, the proponents of White Sugar activated elements of racist political consumerism, drawing on the commodity racism specific to the Australian context. While in the British mother country commodity racism in the form of the consumption of sugar and other colonial goods was based on the joint white exploitation of nonwhite producers, Australian White Sugar promoted white supremacy in its exclusionist acts of consumption and unified the consumers in their defence of an allegedly vulnerable White Australia. In other cases, traditional commodity racism prevailed. It was not that all imports were scorned or even prohibited. Even though the South Sea Islanders were no longer deemed appropriate cane cutters, the copra trade with them remained substantial (Coghlan, 1904, pp. 267–268). Other colonial goods—like tea, coffee, and cocoa—were also imported and were advertised in the Australian newspapers using traditional stereotypical patterns that highlighted their exoticism, juxtaposed producer and consumer, and thus promised the additional ideological use value of white supremacy. Some of those who opposed the expensive Australian sugar and suggested opening the borders in favour of inexpensive, less ideological sugar did point out this discrepancy. If “black” tea, coffee, and chocolate could be swilled down with a comforting feeling, why should “black” sugar get stuck in the consumer’s throat? Australians “drink black-labour tea every day, therefore it will do ... no harm to sweeten that tea with black- labour sugar,” as an Adelaidean claimed in his letter to the editor (Craigie, 1922, p. 12). But the proponents of White Sugar, which included politicians and nationalists nationwide, would have none of this. The reasoning was most prominently expressed by
Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History 653 the White Sugar newspaper campaigns launched in the 1920s and 1930s. In their (oftentimes full-page) announcements, the Sugar Growers of Australia appealed to the consumers’ intelligence as well as to their national pride. Drawing on key elements of White Australia, they combined racial purification of the society and moral justification of nationalist consumerism with eugenic policies of land settlement. The Sugar Growers emphasized the industry’s potential to foster European immigration. Their evocation of the “yellow peril” was linked to other manifestations of White Australia culture, which propagated outward seclusion and inward consolidation. Their reasoning referred to scientific findings of the time, which questioned the unchallenged survival of the “white race” and urged in particular the defence of the Australian continent (Pearson, 1894). The latter’s special position—culturally British, geographically in close proximity to Asia—underlined its importance as the “true bulwark of the [white] race” and last keepers of the “race-heritage” (Stoddard, 1920, p. 226). The ostensibly overpopulated Asian countries were assumed to look for new settlement space in the underpopulated areas of Australia’s shores—the so-called empty north. Fears of this kind found further expression in theatrical pieces, poems, musicals, songs, flyers, statistics, newspaper reports, political debates, and a literary genre called “invasion novels” that told disquieting stories of hostile takeovers by foreign foes and the repercussions for Australia and its people (Affeldt, 2011). The White Sugar campaign drew on these ideological narratives and underlined the role of the white cane cutters as a “stronghold” against foreign powers. Furthermore, they emphasized the role of the sugar consumers as actors in the daily reconstruction of the White Australia narrative. The importance of the sugar industry and White Australia was most emphatically expressed by Prime Minister William Morris Hughes, who reasoned in 1922: “[Y]ou cannot have a White Australia in this country unless you are prepared to pay for it. One of the ways in which we can pay for a White Australia is to support the sugar industry of Queensland” (Argus, 1922, p. 29). By short-circuiting racism, nationalism, and political economy, Hughes made it absolutely clear that the support of the sugar industry was more than a political issue—it was a national concern. The survival of White Australia required the survival of the white sugar industry, and hence consuming sugar became a moral duty to the nation. The success of the White Sugar campaign was evidenced by the never-failing sugar consumption in Australia. In fact, from the first days of settlement it was ever- increasing, and for many decades into the twentieth century Australian consumers were at the top of the per capita consumption of cane sugar (Griggs, 1999, p. 74). As the flagship of White Australia, the sugar industry prided itself with “Queensland [being] the only country in the world growing cane with well-paid white labour” (Worker, 1914, p. 8); and still, four decades later, “King Sugar” and “the only “white” sugar industry in the world” continued to be celebrated (Orlov, 1950, p. 22). In the context of racist political consumerism, Australianness was measured according to the daily readiness to support this “truly Australian” industry. Consuming the expensive product became a symbolic act of nationalism and granted the permission to deem oneself part of the white Australian community.
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The Buy Australian-M ade Campaign and the Great White Train During the same decade as the advocates of White Sugar promoted the sociopolitical importance of the Queensland sugar industry and consumption as an Australian’s moral duty to the nation, the Buy Australian-Made campaign was launched by the Australian- Made Preference League. The League was formed in April 1924, with the object of fostering “[p]atriotism that pays” (Australian-Made Preference League, 1925b, 18), that is, a buycott campaign calling for giving preference to Australian over foreign goods and committing to the goal of preserving White Australia. Shrouded in plans to “advance” its economic power, this was meant to be accomplished by strengthening the nation’s own assets: “For industry is greater than politics. It is the very life-blood of a nation” (Nelson, 1926, p. 51). This body metaphor went beyond the idea of the economic cycle as a circulatory system; it actually referred to eugenic deliberations concerning the health of the Australian “racial corpus.” It aggregated questions concerning the increase of Australia’s population and the defence of “their” continent with the compulsion for a racially homogeneous “white,” or rather British, nation. In the same vein, the League expanded on their strategies: “The manufacturing industries of a country are its greatest bulwarks. Every factory is a fort” and they are “doing more to defend the shores of the country than even its greatest ammunition plants can claim to do. For industry means progress. Progress means power. Power is security. The best lines of defence that can be built against the unfriendly aggressor is a line of factories running north and south and east and west in this fair land of Australia” (Australian-Made Preference League, 1925b, p. 4). Like the White Sugar campaign, the Australian-Made Preference League’s argumentation was formed along the lines of populating the continent as a means of securing it against purportedly pending attempts of takeover by foreign foes. Consistent with the notion of an imagined racist community based on consumption, the League declared itself to be a “non-class movement,” which sought to “unite all classes in an earnest desire to develop the industries of Australia” and “offer[ed] a platform on which employers and employees can stand together and work together for a common end” (Daily Examiner, 1926, p. 6). This was meant to be achieved by applying the White Australia policy to the goods market. Boycotting commodities that were manufactured abroad or by “coloured labour,” purchasers should favour goods produced by local white workers. In doing so, its label of “Australian-Made”—which, like the White Sugar campaign, acknowledged the power of individuals to contribute to the greater cause in the overall structure of national policies—merged economic, nationalist, and culturalistic aspirations. Buying locally manufactured products was a means to strengthen Australian industries and retaining the monetary power within the nation to the benefit of local white producers. The increased demand would lead to heightened production and bring about an increase in demand for labour, thus creating new jobs and reducing unemployment.
Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History 655 Furthermore, it would be an incitement for European immigration, hence serving the populating of Australia’s “empty” parts. Purchasing Australian products equalled expressing one’s commitment to a common national identity. The League not only sought ways to bring the rural population into contact with urban tastes, but by characterizing country and city people based on their purchasing activities this form of political consumerism created a shared identity of “the Australian consumer.” “Made in Australia” was a testimony to the nation’s technological progress and likewise proof of the competitiveness, and even superiority, of Australian products. The industries were considered able to keep apace with other modern civilizations; and there was no longer a need to rely on imported—even less so Asian—commodities. The most extensive promotional event conducted by the Australian-Made Preference League has so far largely escaped critical analysis (Affeldt, 2014, pp. 472–498; Evans, 2015, pp. 268–269). The Great White Train toured New South Wales twice in the late 1920s and spread its buycottist message of preference of homemade products to the rural parts of the state. This large-scale commercial stunt even attracted attention in the other Australian states—either due to the “phenomenal” interest “it created by its travel throughout the mother State,” as a Perth newspaper reported (Sunday Times, 1926, p. 4), or because states like Tasmania considered it to advertise their own industries (Burnie Advocate, 1926, p. 2). The exhibitions and the journeys were largely financed by renting out exhibition space to over thirty firms and businesses; the government supported the campaign by providing a “generous subsidy of £5,000” (Bagnall, 1926, p. 54). The Great White Train was white in both its appearance and its agenda. It was coated in white enamel; along the side of the train the slogan “Buy Australian-Made” and the name “ ‘Australian-Made’ Preference League” were written in great red letters (Daily Examiner, 1926, p. 6). The arrival of the train, “a long line of white cars brilliantly illuminated by electric light,” was signalized by searchlights sending beams of light into the night sky that were “visible for 40 miles” (Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 1926, p. 6; Singleton Argus, 1925, p. 5). The exhibition was set up in fifteen semi-louvred vans that created an almost 700-foot-long promenade. Only introduced to Australia two years prior, wireless broadcasting had its own place aboard the train (Harte, 2002, p. 138). Running on a special wavelength with a reception radius of 950 miles, this mobile radio station broadcasted the “good news” of consuming “whiteness” in the form of speeches and general information to the public as far away as Victoria, and Australian children tuned in “each night” to hear their “bed-time stories” (Corowa Chronicle, 1925, p. 4). The locomotive bore the Australian coat of arms with a kangaroo, an emu, and the Southern Cross and was inscribed with the motto “Advance Australia.” The latter was meant to be understood in multifarious ways. Traditionally, the railroad was seen as symbolizing technology and progress, connecting the advanced urban realms with newly opened swaths at the colonial frontier—likewise, despite its restricted physical range, the Great White Train widely disseminated the promise of prosperity for the whole of white society.
656 Stefanie Affeldt Moreover, it was not by chance that the train’s arrival and departure were accompanied by the tune of “Advance Australia Fair.” Roughly half a century after its creation and another half a century before its becoming the national anthem, the song was an audience favourite. It was but one of the white Australian cultural outpourings that, by infiltrating everyday activities, helped to substantiate and commodify narratives of White Australia and allowed for the replenishing of the racist symbolic capital. The anthem’s classified, gendered, and racialized lyrics tell about “white” male Australians being “rightful” heirs to the allegedly dwindling original population; their predestined, fruitful appropriation of the continent; and their duty to forever keep it safe from “land-grabbing” external enemies (Affeldt, 2014, pp. 311–319). It thus excellently captured the imperative of the day of populating the country with “suitable” settlers and defending it against possible encroachments by Asian powers. The audience of the time was fully aware of the ambiguous reading of “fairness,” with “fair” embracing three meanings: “just, beautiful, white” (Kelen, 2005, p. 218). This made for a fitting “triple entendre,” summing up the campaign’s—as nationalist as racist—message of giving “just preference to the beautiful local products in defence of White Australia.” Against this backdrop, the commonly chosen toast “Advance Australia” and the lecturers teaching the eager listeners “how they can assist to ‘advance Australia fair’ ” (Queanbeyan-Canberra Advocate, 1926, p. 3) were not only reminders of the indoctrination of industrial progress but were interwoven with the racism that was at the core of society. The League argued: “The public of the present day demand the rigid enforcement of a White Australia policy as applied to humans to prevent the country being over-run with colored foreign races. The SAME POLICY SHOULD APPLY TO FOREIGN MANUFACTURES” (Australian-Made Preference League, 1925a, p. 4). The newspaper reporting further disseminated this call for racist political consumerism by announcing that the Great White Train “is here for the purpose of demonstrating the fact that a great inherent principle underlies the creation of a Great White Australia” (Tweed Daily, 1926, 4) and to circulate “its great ‘White Australia’ lesson of ‘Buy Australian-Made’ ” (Forbes Advocate, 1926, p. 2). The connection of economic aspects with racist perspectives and eugenic programmes distinguished the Buy Australian-Made campaign from the 1930s Buy British campaign. While the former was based on principles of white supremacy and the securing of the Australian continent for the white race, the latter campaign—initiated by the Empire Marketing Board—focused on the promotion of a prospering British Empire and did not hesitate to advertise products from its colonies (Constantine, 1986). The nation- focused consumption of Australian- Made products was practiced right away. The exhibition on board the train educated visitors about industries using Australian workers. This was supplemented by a couple of public talks given during the stay of the train. In them the lecturer called upon the visitors’ contribution: “[m]any bought goods made by the yellow or black people, yet they [the consumers] were in favour of a White Australia,” now that they were giving “a fair idea of the quality of the goods manufactured in Australia ... all of them would buy goods made in their own country” (Monaro Mercury and Cooma and Bombala Advertiser, 1926, p. 2).
Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History 657 Additionally, “Australian-Made Preference Shopping Weeks” were organized and awards were handed out for the best “Australian-Made window display.” “The colour scheme was white, in keeping with the Great White Train, White Australia, etc.,” reported an article on a “winning window” (Illawarra, 1926, p. 7). The visits by the train and its self-declared class-spanning mission of praising local products were used to recruit associate members from the working-class audience who followed the call to “Be a Good Australian” and “pledge to give preference at all times to ‘Australian-Made’ goods and products ... and never to make a purchase without stating ‘Australian-made’ preferred” (Australian-Made Preference League, 1925b, p. 8). The message was well- received by the audiences, as evidenced by a letter to the editor taking up the connection of “Preference to Australian-made Goods and the White Australia policy” and calling on consumers to “boycott those who are so un-Australian as to employ foreigners in preference to Australians” (Pool, 1926, p. 4). More importantly, the Australian- Made Preference League targeted even the youngest members of the society. The Great White Train organized events to educate schoolchildren about the imperative and amenities to resort to nationalist consumption. School classes were led through the exhibitions, and official lecturers of the Australian-Made Preference League visited schools. The call for essays, to be judged and priced by a jury, accomplished two things. Firstly, by paraphrasing the League’s slogans, the young authors were impregnated with notions of nationalist consumerism and the notion that not only could everyone contribute to the preservation of White Australia but also that they could identify as a member of an extensive community on a more tangible and accessible level than exertion of their electoral rights and regardless of their social position. Secondly, the prized essays were published in the newspapers and served as an elongation of the Buy Australian-Made campaign. Written in the voice of a pupil, and hence providing a simplified access to the ideology of racist political consumerism, it was especially these essays that most pronouncedly forged links between the white nation and the buycott of Australian-made goods. In this spirit, one of the junior authors flawlessly connected the efforts of retaining a racially homogeneous society to consumption habits by asking: “Why preserve a ‘White Australia Policy’ and encourage the buying of foreign made goods?” (Queanbeyan Age, 1926, p. 3). A repeatedly published essay by a female pupil echoes the long-term construction of White Australia since the 1880s and neatly summarizes the racist message at the core of the campaign: “Japan, Java and the islands to the north of Australia are teeming with people, and although we have a law which says that no foreigner can come into Australia, because we want Australia to be a ‘White Australia,’ they may emigrate into our land in spite of our laws, unless we do something to prevent it. The uninhabited parts of Australia are inviting these people to come and live here, and unless we increase our population and buy our own manufactured articles they will come and destroy our ‘White Australia’ policy. ... Our nation depends upon us to buy Australian-made goods, and to impress us more deeply than before, she has sent a messenger in the form of the Great White Train” (Rankin, 1926, p. 7).
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Conclusion Examining political consumerism’s many facets includes analysing its dialectics as both progressive and exclusionary, that is, as having at the same time elements fostering political change and societal improvement and racist processes that provide for means of unification based on the degradation, or exclusion, of “othered” groups. Racist political consumerism in Australia was expressed as a boycott of overseas products that were deemed irreconcilable with the ideology of White Australia and also as a buycott of products that promoted ideas of white supremacy in general as well as the preservation of a self-supporting, racially homogeneous Australia in particular. All in all, the political consumerism put into practice in the form of White Sugar and Buy Australian Made bore characteristics of lifestyle consumerism that incorporated the broader societal atmosphere of the time and drew on nationalist narratives that cautioned against its endangered position while at the same time praising Australia’s singular responsibility in the purportedly pending “race war.” In particular the White Sugar campaign reflected the omnipresence of “whiteness” as a crucial element of true Australianness. As a discursive political consumerism, it drew on community-unifying commodity racism. The latter was imported from the British mother country but was then shaped locally by appropriating the ideal of a White Australian society and securing white supremacy by the ostracizing of “coloured labour” in preference of “white” goods. In particular in the politicizing of sugar consumption, an everyday action was made a symbolic act of national loyalty: the utilization of sugar was declared a constituent of the validation and (re)construction of “Australian whiteness.” Examining these historical Australian cases also illustrates how closely interwoven racism and everyday culture are and how, as a social relation and as one “motive” of political consumerism, racism manages to bridge social gaps and overwrite gender and class differences in favour of an imagined racist community. Against the backdrop of recent statements proclaiming policies of “America First” and “Buy American and Hire American” (Trump, 2017), deliberations about the implications of (historical) racist political consumerism could prospectively provide explanations for contemporary developments.
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Chapter 31
P olitical C onsume ri sm and Nationa l i st St ruggles in E u rope Eleftheria J. Lekakis
Political consumerism is not always connected with advancing human rights or environmental justice. It is also possible to observe political consumerism as a phenomenon increasingly connected to the rise of nationalism. The nation remains a contested category where inclusion and exclusion within its bounds can manifest itself as imagined, interethnic, or interreligious struggle. As a strong agent in the age of globalization, the nation remains especially salient in the aftermath of the global financial crisis (Calhoun, 2007; Rantanen, 2012). What follows is an examination of the intersection between political consumerism and nationalism as expressed in three European countries at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It outlines how political consumerism can and has been used for democratically dubious purposes, which can threaten social equality. The chapter argues that political consumerism can also lend itself to politics that are not always progressive and, in doing so, aims to address a gap in the literature: “one important example that is completely understudied is what is called here undemocratic political consumerism” (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015: p. 267, emphasis in original). Among the characteristics of democratically dubious cases is the avoidance of products based on racial, ethnic, or religious criteria; the connection between separatist struggles and consumption; and the preference for ethnocentric consumption in narrowly defined terms. Nationalism is tied to economic development, which, in its turn, is hampered by the crisis of capitalism. As such, it can produce social and political struggles that can appear through the phenomenon of political consumerism, such as the rejection of products, brands, and companies that are defined as “foreign.” This chapter discusses three cases through which questionable political consumerism has become manifest. First, consumers in a neighbourhood of East London in England in 2015 threatened to boycott their local supermarket because it only offered halal meat on its hot food counter. While this might not read as an offensive boycott towards the Muslim community, it evokes consumer choice concerning national identity and suggests that some (religious) groups are more befitting of that identity over others. Secondly, since 2004 there has been an ongoing
664 Eleftheria J. Lekakis boycott of Catalan cava (sparkling wine), which underscores the nationalist struggle within Spain as manifested in its wine market. Here, there is a clear clash between the regional and national politics of consumption. Finally, the phenomenon of ethnocentric consumption in Greece as it appears in the context of austerity is an example of undemocratic political consumerism. While the intentions might include democratic goals such as the improvement of national wellbeing, there are cases where the same narratives are mobilised by extreme-right fascist organisations that define national identity in very strict ethnic and often religious terms. This chapter explores undemocratic forms of political consumerism related to the ideological ambiguity of nationalism through a comprehensive theoretical framework and a series of examples that illustrate the ways in which such ambiguity can manifest itself. I focus on the contemporary context of Europe because in this context it is possible to highlight a number of tensions in the relationships among the local, the regional, and the national. The chapter proceeds by theorising the intersections of political consumerism and nationalism before illustrating tensions through different case studies.
Theorising Political Consumerism and Nationalism According to the concept of political consumerism, citizens choose to engage in acts of political consumerism, such as boycotts, buycotts, and discursive or lifestyle politics, with political arguments in mind (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015). Follesdal (2004) presents five such arguments: of agency (referring to the nonparticipation in acts that are outside one’s moral remit), of identity and self-expression (referring to participation in acts that demonstrate one’s values), of identity and expression of mutual respect (referring to participation in acts that express autonomy of the self but also respect the autonomy of others), instrumental arguments about the resocialization of wrongdoers (aiming towards the moral transformation of business), and instrumental arguments about changing business practices (aiming towards policy intervention and regulation of business). At their core, arguments for political consumer action have been driven by concerns of labour rights, animal rights, trade justice, social justice, and environmentalism. Yet, political consumerism “can also be a tool to support nationalism, intolerance, exclusiveness, or other forms of hatred” (Stolle & Micheletti, 2015, p. 39). Furthermore, as Follesdal (2004, p. 16) cautions, “there is no guarantee that civil society is particularly civil.” There is also no guarantee that acts of political consumerism are always driven towards the betterment of societies. Sometimes such acts can hinder inclusion of minority groups and foster intolerance. There are limited examinations of undemocratic, even dangerous, cases of political consumerism. Early literature suggests that “any examination of consumer protests must consider their potential pitfalls as well as their potential for social change” (Greenberg,
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 665 2004, 63). Cheryl Greenberg (2004) analyses consumer protests involving American black communities in the period from the 1930s to the 1950s and identifies ideological variations evident in these struggles. Examples include World War II and postwar campaigns among black communities to resist racism in Harlem businesses (e.g., Boycott Jewish and Buy Black campaigns in 1958), as well as violent actions by the white resistance to housing and neighbourhood integration in the 1940s and 1950s. Her historical examination of the tensions between nationalism and political consumerism illustrates potential pitfalls of the democratic assumptions behind the phenomenon. For instance, both the degree of success and the ideological underpinnings of consumer action are fundamental factors in appraising political participation. As scholars of political consumerism, she writes explicitly, “we must always keep in mind that whether it succeeds (is the goal achieved?) and whether we want it to succeed (is the goal desirable?) are two distinct questions that must be kept separate” (Greenberg, 2004, p. 64). In seeking to advance the civil rights of black people at the national level, black nationalists targeted the businesses of Jewish people. Despite the lack of collective community support towards the Boycott Jewish campaign, for instance, the tactic of singling out Jewish businesses worked, and many of them left Harlem, suggesting that “scapegoating may not seem morally defensible, but it can be effective” (Greenberg, 2004, p. 75). Furthermore, the mobilization of whites against neighbourhood integration was so effective that it necessitated action by the Supreme Court to outlaw their tactics, suggesting that “hatred has great potential for mobilizing effective action” (Greenberg, 2004, p. 79). Given the cautionary notes, it should be noted, however, that use of racialized political consumerism has been effectively used to mobilise groups in nationalist struggles (Brown, 2015). The lessons learned from a historical analysis of nationalist struggles in the United States suggest that we should examine political consumerist action with regards to not only its success (direct or indirect) but also its ideological underpinnings and democratic desirability (see also Chapters 30 and 32). What is nationalism and how does its different articulations intersect with political consumerism? Nationalism for Ernest Gellner (1983) is a principle based on the equivalence of political and national units. The principle of nationalism can manifest as a sentiment or as a movement; in the first case it is experienced, while in the second it is actualised on the basis of that sentiment. In this conception, political and national units are constructed through the dominant ethnic group that generates a specific version of the nation tailored to serve its interests. The ideology of nationalism can evoke sentiments and direct actions as well inclusion or exclusion of groups of people from the state and its associated social organisations. Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1993, p. 118) highlights that “the majority of nationalisms are ethnic in character,” but teases out exceptions in the distinction between nationalism and ethnicity. The ambiguity inherent to nationalist ideology is that it “may appear as a conflict between particularist and universalist moralities” (Eriksen, 1993, p. 119, italics in original). Where social organisation is based on universalist principles of justice, ethnicity might be presented as a particularist approach that can challenge social cohesion and disrupt the state. Universalism here refers to the way in which the ideology of the nation is constructed by the state, while
666 Eleftheria J. Lekakis particularism refers to the way it is contested and reworked by citizens. Therefore, this ambiguity always involves a negotiation of power, with a tendency to be applied top- down while acting from bottom-up. A universalist approach to political consumerism and nationalism assumes that the nation is a homogeneous category with certain rights and responsibilities in the exercise of democratic rights. A particularist approach to political consumerism and nationalism can be connected to a more bottom-up approach where negotiations of nationalism are expressed by individuals through choice architecture. As the ideology of nationalism is intrinsically based on the ambiguous relationship between the two approaches, it is possible to view how citizens can engage in undemocratic political consumerism despite their perception that they are exercising their democratic rights. Michael Billig’s approach on banal nationalism challenges its universalist elements. In particular, he aims to expose the ways in which nationalism is constructed from above. Yet, the nation is also contested from below, with different levels of citizenship expressing a particularist approach to it. This tension is inherent in the construction of the nation as a category for the organisation of social and political life. Billig (1995) distinguishes between the hot nationalism of forms of extremism and the latent, nearly unquestionable, banal nationalism in the constant and conspicuous reproduction of the nation through its rituals and symbols. Hence, the implication of national symbols (e.g., British beef) in nationalist struggles (e.g., the tense relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union [EU]) is facilitated by their construction as an essential part of British national identity and heritage. While democracy is encouraged as a national imaginary, and engaged as leverage for the power of the state, that power is sometimes used to utilise ethnic criteria in a top-down manner, often also being underscored by racial difference. Examples of racial segregation in the United States or apartheid in South Africa should serve as a reminder of this. Theories of economic nationalism and consumer nationalism explore, accordingly, how the market envelops nationalist ideology and how individuals express this through their everyday lives. Economic nationalism is linked to the capitalist system of production in nineteenth-century England (Greenfeld, 2001). It seeks to explain how national power is articulated as “the positive relationship between nationalism, democracy and economic development” (Nakano, 2004, p. 221). In line with Greenberg’s (2004) exploration of undemocratic tales of political consumerism from African American history, Dana Frank (1999) outlines economic nationalism in the United States, historically, by illuminating the thin line between nationalist buycotts and boycotts for economic betterment and anti-immigration sentiments. She suggests that the early “buy American” campaign was a useful “nationalist smokescreen through which to increase one’s profit rate, as prices rose in response to shortages” (Frank, 1999, p. 21). Similarly, I have elsewhere discussed the relationship between political consumerism and the resurfacing of economic nationalism during times of crisis (Lekakis, 2015). My close analysis of a Greek buycott campaign illustrated how political consumer action can create the conditions for the blurring of patriotism and ethnocentrism, therefore exhibiting the ambiguity of nationalism discussed above.
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 667 More specifically, Caldwell (2002) has posited that the nationalisation of food is a method of “authenticating” the nation. The location of power within approaches to nationalism is, therefore, important. Billig’s banal nationalism regards the construction of a nation and the ideology of nationalism as a top-down process, whereby through the discourse of the state and the media a universalist vision of nationalism is communicated to citizens. Studies on the bottom-up negotiations of this vision of nationalism are explored through approaches to everyday nationhood (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008; Skey, 2011). These approaches seek to analyse the reproduction of the nation at the level of everyday life through discourse, choice, performance, and consumption. A study by Fox (2006) explores the collective experience of consuming the nation in a postcommunist, multiethnic region of Romania; he suggests that while national holidays and international sports competitions “share the same symbolic repertoire with nationalist politics . . . brandishing the flag in a show of support for one’s football team is less of a momentary outburst of nationalist pride than an expression of football fervour draped in the national colours” (Fox, 2006, p. 232). Hence, the national colours point to a specific national ideology, while how people make sense of their belonging to their nation through those national colours are complementary approaches. Nationalism can be and is often expressed through consumption, whether at the level of institutions or individuals, whether banal or everyday. At the intersection of banal nationalism and everyday nationhood we find the notion of gastronationalism, which “reflects and refracts social conditions under which market-based identities engage with national boundaries, the public recognition of difference, and the importance of community” (DeSoucey, 2010, p. 449). At the backdrop of the development of gastronationalism there is neoliberal globalisation, a transnational form of capitalist production with strong financial centres and deepening inequalities. DeSoucey notes how gastronationalism can express cultural identities, as well as validate material, commercial, and institutional processes. As Savage et al. (2010) suggest, “we need to be attentive to the way that global flows and diasporic identities, far from encouraging utopic, liberal cosmopolitan identities, actually facilitate new kinds of particularistic ethnic and national identities” (Savage, 2010, p. 613). Gastronationalism, therefore, presents yet another ambiguity, as it is dialectically produced by the push of cosmopolitanism and the pull of nationalism. Castelló and Mihelj (2017) suggest that the cultural and social implications of economic nationalism in everyday life can be understood through the understudied concept of consumer nationalism; they suggest that there is a political and symbolic type of consumer nationalism. The present study conceptualises consumer nationalism as a form of political consumerism that comprises consumer actions driven by nationalist identities and discourses. Among studies of political consumer nationalism, Castelló and Mihelj (2017) situate examples of material preference or abstention that are rooted in political struggles and aim for political ends. Examples here include the U.S. boycott of French products during the Iraq war in 2003 because of French opposition to military intervention (Ashenfelter et al., 2007) or the Greek boycott of German products during the implementation of austerity measures (Lekakis, 2017). Symbolic
668 Eleftheria J. Lekakis consumer nationalism, for the authors, refers to the discourses and actions aiming for cultural ends. For example, they evoke the example of a pro-independence retailer in Catalunya (vamcats.cat) who sells clothing and accessories adorned with national symbols. Similarly, Edensor (2002) suggests that consumer goods can maintain or promote national identity. Yet, while symbolic consumer nationalism can offer an outlet for national identity expression, it is not necessarily exclusive to citizens of the specific nations, as evident in the appropriation of flags and national symbols by fashion brands. In summary, key points that can be drawn from the above cases concern the blurry boundaries of the relationship between political consumerism and nationalism. Nationalist ideology can be ambiguous, as it walks the thin line between particularistic and universalist approaches (Eriksen, 1993). Economic nationalism is akin to banal nationalism in the sense that it seeks to authenticate the nation (through the marketplace). Consumer nationalism appears in different forms of political consumerism embedded in everyday nationhood, which is activated in a variety of forms and through material and discursive elements of the nation. Nationalism expressed through consumption is inherently neither benign nor malevolent but has some undemocratic features. While we cannot assume all nationalist struggles are dangerous, the examples discussed in this chapter demonstrate a lack of democratic desirability.
Methods Used and Reflections on Methodological Challenges This section reflects on methodological approaches to the question of nationalism and political consumerism and highlights some issues that arise in such an ambiguous terrain. Among the studies in this area, there is a range of both qualitative and mixed approaches. Among the qualitative studies, Cheryl Greenberg’s (2004) historical account of African American history of the 1930s and 1940s in the United States focuses on case studies of political consumerism campaigns. Nicole Marie Brown (2015) expands on the historical manifestations of “racialized political consumerism” as a political project of black Americans; her case studies are business initiatives (especially the Black Star Lines) from the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Through archival research of historical documents, she highlights the transnational dimensions of blackness mobilised by political consumerism. In previous work I adopted a case study approach to a revived historical campaign for a nationalist buycott (“buy Greek”), which highlights the tensions between democratically inclusive and exclusive politics in times of crisis (Lekakis, 2015). Enric Castelló and Sabina Mihelj (2017) develop a conceptual model for the relationship between nationalism and economic life through the concept of consumer nationalism. Jon Fox undertakes an ethnography (participant observation, interviews, and survey) to explore Romanian everyday nationhood in terms of how it is experienced and understood through national holidays, commemorations, and European championship football matches.
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 669 A research approach consisting of mixed methods is Michaela DeSoucey’s (2010) work on gastronationalism in which she develops a theoretical model through multimodal analysis. First, at the macro-level, the study collects a database of the EU’s program for origin-destination labelling in order to explore patterns; and at the micro-level it develops a case analysis of the politics around foie gras through a multisituated ethnography (participant observation and interviews). Vasiliki Fouka and Hans-Joachim Voth (2016) conducted an analysis of the leading Greek newspaper in terms of reported clashes between the German and Greek governments (2008–2014) in combination with statistical data on new passenger vehicles registered in each prefecture during that period. Xavier Cuadras-Morató and Josep Maria Raya (2015) conducted an econometric analysis of sales of different types of Catalan cava in the Spanish market (2001–2012) in combination with the news on the Catalan cava boycott in the main Spanish daily newspapers in order to explore its effect at the national level. The studies that have directly related nationalist struggles to political consumerism are therefore significant but limited. Problematic forms of contemporary political consumerism are difficult to study through conventional methodological approaches, especially given the ideological ambiguity of nationalism. Dubious democratic usage of the marketplace for nationalist struggles is often less visible, and when it is not it is articulated by regressive forces. While some cases of unambiguous and undemocratic political consumerism might be clearly identified, there is often less research on these. Two explanations can be offered for this. First, scholarship on political consumerism has produced a generally progressive understanding of social change through the politics of consumption. Second, the relationship between nationalism and consumption has typically been related with studies of state policies and the project of nation-state building. There is a broad and interdisciplinary range of literature on the relationship between the nation and the market (Lekakis, 2018). Yet, contentions based on nationalisms and experienced through the marketplace remain understudied. Perhaps this is due to the ambiguity of nationalist ideologies. On the one hand, undemocratic usage of the marketplace is often less visible, and when it is not it is articulated by regressive forces. On the other hand, while some cases of unambiguous and undemocratic political consumerism might be clearly identified, there is often less research on these, perhaps due to perceived threat by forces of intolerance and racism.
Boycott Halal in England: Religion at the Heart of a Multicultural Nationalist Struggle Calls to boycott halal have gained traction in some parts of the United Kingdom in the early 2010s, while it has also been visible in Denmark, Australia, and the United
670 Eleftheria J. Lekakis States. Targets have included multinational corporations and supermarket chains that offer halal meat. In the United Kingdom, fast food chains such as Subway, Nando’s, Pizza Express, and Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) have introduced trial periods or programmes that consider the population demographic in each new store location for selective or exclusive provision of halal products.1 During the time of writing, KFC has placed approximately one hundred outlets on a “halal trial” because “feedback from consumers has indicated that there is significant demand for halal food from KFC, and we’ve chosen these stores as they are in areas where we expect demand for halal restaurants.”2 They further specify that the trial is directly related to its commercial success. If people will buy it, they will keep procuring it. Halal meat is at the heart of nationalist struggles within England, where tensions over national belonging continue to rise. Calls to boycott halal are related to concerns about the changing social formation of parts of the United Kingdom through the integration of Muslim populations. According to Islamic law, “halal” meat involves a particular process of killing the animal in a manner complying with the Qur’an or Koran.3 It suggests that the animal must be alive and healthy immediately before the killing and be drained of all its blood immediately after. On the contrary, “haram” meat is not of acceptable standards and “should be avoided by all conscientious Muslims.”4 In 2015, the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs posted guidance on animal welfare that includes the EU regulation 1099/2009 on the protection of animals during their killing,5 and specific guidance on Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (WATOK) regulations for England.6 In both, provisions are made for the procurement of halal meat based on religious rites. The decision of several supermarkets and food vendors to sell halal meat, however, has caused some public outrage. The arguments behind the calls to boycott halal meat vary, but they relate to arguments of agency and arguments of identity; specifically, boycotts are used as a means of avoiding “complicity by seeking non-participation with evil” (Follesdal, 2004, p. 5), as well as a means of self-expression. Agency here refers to the capacity to act based on belief about the politics of consumption, while identity refers to the extent to which involvement in political consumerism represents an issue with which the individual can identify him-or herself. For some, there is a direct link between halal meat, Sharia law, and terrorism. In 2015, a man in Manchester pleaded guilty to racially aggravated criminal damage after placing stickers on supermarket meat products suggesting that halal is barbaric and funds terrorism.7 The man claimed to be driven by concerns about animal rights and the conditions under which the animals were killed in halal slaughterhouses.8 Yet, the sticker also made a direct link between halal meat and terrorism, suggesting an understanding of Islam as intrinsically linked to terrorist activities. In the same year, a branch of the ASDA supermarket chain opened in Barking, East London and became the target of a Facebook group that called for a boycott because the store was only going to provide halal meat.9 Once more on the basis of animal rights as well as consumer choice, protesters
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 671 defended their right to not purchase halal meat. The person who organised the campaign was quoted in The Express: I am so angry as a British consumer, who has shopped and lived in Barking all my life, that my choice as a consumer has been compromised. I do not agree with the slaughtering process of halal meat, and the fact this has happened in a British store is outrageous.10
The emphasis on “Britishness” here illustrates that the boycott halal call to action is not only about consumer choice; it is about British consumer choice. Here is where nationalist ideology manifests its ambiguity; the organiser understands ASDA as a “British” store (it was founded in Leeds in 1949) regardless of the fact that the store’s parent company is Walmart (since 1999). Therefore, in this consumer action, the problem lies in the definition of an understanding of the nation and national identity associated with ethnicity (whiteness) and religion (Christianity). Boycott halal actions are, in the very least, democratically dubious. Arguments that drive the anti-halal consumer action appear to focus on animal rights and consumer choice but are also clearly aligned with understandings of proper (arguably non- Muslim) Britishness versus non-Britishness (arguably Muslim citizens). This consumer action is not outspokenly a hate crime.11 However, it cannot be read separately from the struggles of multiculturalism in the British nation, rising segregation and intolerance, and anti-Muslim racism (Awan & Zempi, 2015). Furthermore, the sharpest rise of Islamophobic attitudes towards Muslim communities since 9/11 has been observed in the United Kingdom (Al Atom, 2014). The boycott halal case is an example of the nationalist struggles over Britishness that foreground racialisation, ethnicity, and religious beliefs at the expense of the integration of Muslim populations.
Boycott Catalan in Spain: Regional Autonomy at the Heart of a State Nationalist Struggle The history of the Spanish nation is especially fraught with tensions over the autonomy of the regions of Catalunya and the Basque Country. During the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), these regions declared their autonomy. The Generalitat (regional government) was created under the leadership of the Revolutionary Left in Catalunya. This changed drastically with the dictatorship of General Franco (1939– 1975), which promoted “an extreme brand of Spanish state nationalism” (Elorza, 1995, p. 332). Francoist Spain is also known as Nationalist Spain as his regime aimed to obliterate cultural difference across the seventeen regions, especially the Basque Country
672 Eleftheria J. Lekakis and Catalunya. Franco’s dictatorship revoked Catalunya’s autonomy, repressed political opposition, and persecuted Catalan activists. With the end of Franco’s regime, democracy was restored; but his nationalist project was legally ensured in section two of the new Constitution of 1978, which claimed “the indissoluble unity of the Spanish Nation,” as well as “the right of selfgovernment of the nationalities and regions of which it is composed” (Spanish Constitution, 1978). In Catalunya, the Generalitat was restored and a new Statute of Autonomy was adopted soon after. Despite Spain’s states of autonomy, tensions have remained evident within the country. At the level of governance, Catalunya’s push for independence and the Spanish state’s pull have been playing out since 2005 when the regional parliament passed a proposal for a new Statute of Autonomy. In 2006, the Statute was ratified by approximately 74 percent of the citizens of Catalunya in a referendum, but I was contested by the governing People’s Party. In 2010, the Spanish Constitutional Court rewrote and reinterpreted approximately forty articles of the Catalan Statute. In 2012, following the largest demonstration in Catalunya and the rejection of the Catalan president’s offer for a new fiscal agreement by the Spanish prime minister, early elections were held and 80 percent of the Parliament of Catalunya supported the right to self-determination. In 2013, two million citizens formed a human chain covering the distance from the north to the south of the region (The Catalan Way towards Independence). Tensions between the central and regional parliaments concerning the latter’s decisions to rush the independence of Catalunya from the Spanish state have amassed over the years. In 2015, an independence coalition called Junts pel Si (Together for Yes) came to power, committing to an independence referendum in 2017. This was rejected by the Spanish state, but conducted on October 1, resulting in violent clashes between Spanish riot police and Catalans across the region. Additionally, through everyday nationhood, nationalist struggles can become manifest in the rivalry between the football clubs Real Madrid and Barcelona and in the boycott of Catalan products, especially cava.12 The cava boycott dates back to 2004 when the Catalan Parliament declared its intentions to pursue an independence referendum.13 Since then, there have been several small-scale calls for a Catalan boycott as the backdrop of political elections or negotiations between the Spanish and Catalan governments.14 The success of the boycott is relatively marginal. For example, in 2005, there was a recorded decline of almost 7 percent in cava sales,15 but two years later sales had risen back to previous levels. Furthermore, the two companies that jointly control two-thirds of the cava market (Freixenet and Codorníu) were focused on exports to Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan.16 Despite its failure to have a negative commercial impact on Catalunya (Cuadras-Morató & Raya, 2015), the boycott is mostly based on instrumental arguments with regards to resocializing wrongdoers (Follesdal, 2004). In this sense, the Catalan boycott was as an attempt to reprimand the region for their push to separatism. The Facebook page “Boicot a los productos de Cataluña” posits that the cry for Catalan independence is the greedy desire of a rich region that does not want to share “her resources with her sisters.”17 Neither this page nor the blog to which it is attached provide
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 673 any details of the organising group. Their repertoire of actions includes both a boycott of businesses with headquarters in Catalunya and a buycott of businesses from other regions without the intention of harming any in particular; this “would allow historically poor, disadvantaged and neglected regions to prosper.”18 At the push of Catalunya for independence, Spanish consumers are called to exercise their purchasing power to stop Spanish separatism.19 There is a direct clash, then, between Spanish (state) nationalism and Catalan (regional) nationalism. On the other end of the boycott, Catalunya’s political struggle for national independence has integrated narratives of economic nationalism. In this case, the search for Catalan nationalism is tied to slogans such as España nos roba (Spain is robbing us).20 As an example of political consumerism and nationalism, the boycott of Catalunya demonstrates how antagonisms between nationalism and regionalism are expressed. Yet, at the same time, we see different levels of nationalist struggle within Spain. For example, the Ministries of Industry and Culture have pushed forward the Moda Espaňa initiative, which can be understood as political consumer nationalism, as opposed to the symbolic consumer nationalism in the case of a shop that sells apparel with the Catalan self-determination flag and symbols (Castelló & Mihelj, 2017). Examples such as the Catalan boycott demonstrate ambiguity, in the sense that they present arguments of identity and self-expression, as well as identity and (lack of expression) of mutual respect.
Boycott Germany in Greece: Anti-Austerity at the Heart of a Banal Nationalist Struggle Nationalist struggles within Greece have also been manifested at different levels, such as a resurfacing of economic nationalism through the revival of “buy domestic” campaigns (Lekakis, 2015), as well as stoking the fire of everyday nationhood through discursive political nationalism, evident in the case of the #BoycottGermany hashtag (Lekakis, 2017). After the end of the military junta in the early 1980s, the “buy national” campaign O “Επιμένων Ελλη-νικά” (Insist on Greek) was launched.21 The very same campaign was relaunched after the first years of the financial crisis in Greece, making use of the same video from the 1984 campaign. The reappearance of the video featured an annotation in the beginning that reads, “30 years ago we had prophetically sounded the alarm.”22 The first time the campaign is presented as a civic duty, while the second time it is represented as reprimanding. This can be understood as economic nationalism, political consumer nationalism, or even an extension of banal nationalism (Billig, 1995). In any case, it is a form of political consumerism that is championed by the state or state-affiliated actors, and therefore it represents a top-down nationalist ideology. Furthermore, as the crisis has animated hot nationalism and as the party connected to
674 Eleftheria J. Lekakis the fascist organisation Golden Dawn came to power, nationalist struggles through political consumerism as a Greek buycott have also been appropriated by fascist forces.23 In addition, the promotion of domestic products is regarded as malpractice by the European Union, where the Single Market Strategy aims to foster a transnational “home market.”24 Attempts to promote ethnocentric consumption such as those by Insist on Greek had been curbed since the country’s entrance to the EU, but as they recently state: Today . . . more than ever the need for reactivation of all those who insisted and insist on Greek, who promote the Greek economic, social and cultural identity is evident within the frame of a balanced European integration. That’s why INSIST ON GREEK reopens the same road, so we can go along and support our home in the hard times that we are going through now.25
Here is where the ambiguity of nationalism emerges. After three rounds of austerity measures that were imposed by institutions of the European Union (European Community and European Central Bank) in combination with the International Monetary Fund, and that sank heavily on society, the request to continue following its mandates is regarded as controversial. The argument here, therefore, is one of identity and self-expression in the face of further recession. This case of economic nationalism is further fuelled by the consequences of austerity policies for society. The ambiguity of this example is also evident from the fact that the promotion of free trade (both within and beyond the context of the EU) is an ideology promoted by neoliberal globalisation. Hence, free trade is not necessarily progressive and democratic. However, neither is the turn to economic nationalism as a response, as it remains a top-down approach and also fosters a universalist approach to Greek nationalism that is often used and abused by undemocratic forces such as Golden Dawn. Forms of political consumerism have also manifested themselves as anti-austerity, specifically evident in the tensions between Greece and Germany. With Germany at the core of European Union decision making and promoting a pro-austerity stance, anti- German sentiments have resurfaced in Greece, as it suffered war crimes and atrocities under Nazi occupation (1941–1945). Hence, there is a historical memory that can mobilise national sentiments against the German nation. A study by Fouka & Voth (2016) analyses how selective historical memory can animate deeply rooted antagonisms; their study of the German boycott illustrates different reactions that varied by region depending on reprisals (torching of villages and killing of civilian populations) during the Occupation. The first boycott of German products was called by the Greek Consumers Association in February 2010 and it was successful in decreasing the number of German car sales during months of heightened conflict. Fouka & Voth (2016, p. 21) find that although German war crimes during the Occupation are embedded in the Greek national subconscious, “what distinguishes areas of high versus low reprisal activity are either individual memories of past conflict or the personal, intergenerational transmission of such memories.” Differences in mnemonic relation with the Occupation breed different approaches to the German boycott. Furthermore, the #Boycott Germany campaign
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 675 treads a thin line between banal and hot nationalism, demonstrating the ambiguity of nationalism as both a potential tool for resistance and a mechanism for reinforcement of the state (Lekakis, 2017).
Discussion What these three cases illustrate are different variations of the relationship between political consumerism and nationalism. Whether it is multicultural, separatist, or economic struggles within the nation, it is possible to connect political consumerism with top-down state-driven expressions of the nationalism. Yet, there is a constant interplay between top-down and bottom-up negotiations of nationalism, which are characteristic of its ambiguity. Following Cheryl Greenberg’s (2004) call to examine both the success and ideological underpinnings of political consumerism, it is possible to comment on the success of the cases above. Regarding success, the halal boycott might be effective at the level of individual stores, but at the corporate level the option is there to stay, provided that the population demographic represents it or that it is successful during the trial period. The Catalan cava boycott was not successful, but the antagonisms it represents continue. The German car boycott was successful in decreasing the number of German car sales during different historical periods. Regarding the ideological underpinnings of political consumerism, it is possible to identify a tension between progressive and regressive articulations of the relationship between consumption and nationalism. The progressive side aims for social change, justice, and equality at a universal level, while the regressive one aims for insular, inward-looking, and exclusionary values and goals. What the discussion has illustrated, however, is that nationalist struggles in these European examples exhibit an ambiguous set of arguments and aims in relation to political consumerism. In all of the cases, there is an argument of identity—and by extension national identity. Nationalist ideology exhibits the interplay between particularistic and universalistic elements, yet nationalist forms of political consumerism tend to be constructed as universalist. When examining the halal boycott, British national identity is associated with Christianity. When exploring the Catalan boycott, Spanish national identity is presented as universalist. When exploring the Greek buycott and German boycott, citizens of both countries are imagined as similar to their nation-state counterparts. Nationalism, through political consumerism, is based on such contradictions between universalist and particularistic elements. There are various tensions in expressions of nationalism through political consumerism. Nationalist struggles through political consumerism reflect a dynamic relationship between banal nationalism and everyday nationhood; yet, they are ideologically more regressive than progressive. To think about banal nationalism and political consumerism is to think about the mobilisation of citizens towards action that benefits the state. To think about everyday nationhood and political consumerism is, in
676 Eleftheria J. Lekakis turn, to think about the way in which national identity is negotiated through different everyday avenues, inclusive of consumption. In their bases, the arguments that each of the cases examined put forward are not necessarily malicious or always intended as exclusionary. Several of them put forward arguments of agency (respecting animal rights) or identity (expressing an autonomous political self), but the ideological motivations behind their actions are not always democratic or ethical in terms of progressive social change. At best, the demands behind the cases discussed in this chapter represent a nationalist smokescreen through which struggles remain pertinent in contemporary European countries. Yet, the broad landscape of political consumerism also includes several examples that can contest the top-down approaches of banal nationalism or economic nationalism. For instance, after the crisis, in Greece, as in Southern Europe more broadly, political consumerism was manifested through alternative modes of economic organisation and resilience at the heart of political consumerism (see Chapter 22). Such cultures of resilience have demonstrated the potential to reject universalist models of economic nationalism, for example through the declaration of noncollaboration with forms of fascism (Rakopoulos, 2014). Although the spectrum of nationalist ideology can be manifested as evidently fascist or latently socially exclusive, possibilities for progressive resistance remain. However, what the above discussion has illustrated is that it is important to be wary of the ways in which the ambiguity of nationalism is expressed through political consumerism.
Conclusion Theory on political consumerism can be fruitfully complemented by an examination of its intersection with nationalism. This paper has presented key theories that appraise the relationships among nationalism, the marketplace, and political consumerism. The study of nationalism has underscored the importance of ambiguity in terms of its particularistic and universalistic dynamics. Concerning the marketplace, nationalism can be understood through concepts such as economic nationalism or consumer nationalism, where the first refers more to cases where the state is involved in attempts to reorganise the market for political purposes; whereas consumer nationalism is more concerned with citizens engaging in consumption for or against a nationalist ideology or identity. These models can be derived from understandings of banal nationalism or everyday nationhood, respectively, while there are always dynamic interconnections between the two. An understanding of banal nationalism allows us to underscore ambiguity by exploring the daily construction and reminders of the nation through its symbols. As an extension, we can take into account economic nationalism whereby the use of national attributes is extended to products and consumers. On the other hand, studies of everyday nationhood focus on the experiences of consumption with nationalist
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 677 undertones. Gastronationalism addresses both the level of state institutions and everyday life. Akin to this, a model of consumer nationalism has been developed that distinguishes political and symbolic consumer nationalism. To understand nationalist struggles vis-à-vis political consumerism, we must understand the intersection of these top-down and bottom-up dynamics. Indeed, we must relate the question of their success with that of their ideological underpinnings while taking into account the ambiguity of nationalist ideology. Highlighting the ideological basis upon which nationalist struggles are launched is crucial in identifying its political aims, whether they are progressive or regressive. To illustrate the ambiguity of the relationship between political consumerism and nationalism, this paper offered three examples. Nationalist struggles are multifaceted and played out at the local, regional, national, and transnational levels in the European Union. Whether we think of halal meat, Catalan cava, or German cars, there are instant associations with quality and morality depending on one’s position not only within the nation but also within a set of social circumstances where it becomes easier to express one’s national identity through the marketplace. The examples chosen are not exhaustive of the possibilities of mobilisation for undemocratic purposes through political consumerism. For instance, an analysis of democratically dubious nationalist struggles at the transnational level can be undertaken; one site where such tensions are already manifest and are likely to increase would be a study of Brexit and political consumerism. Whatever we are thinking about the broader rise of xenophobia within or beyond Europe, it is important to investigate the ways in which the ambivalence of nationalism maps onto political consumerism and the ways in which this ambiguity becomes incendiary for undemocratic ends.
Acknowledgements The author would like to thank the editors of this volume, Michele Micheletti, Peter Oosterveer, and Magnus Boström, for their generous and sustained support, as well as colleagues Joan Ramon Rodriguez-Amat and Katherine Farrimond for their helpful comments at the early stages of the work.
Notes 1. For information on Subway: (http://subwayreading.co.uk/menu/halal/ (January 10, 2017). For information on Nando’s: https://www.nandos.co.uk/halal (January 10, 2017). Furthermore, in 2004, the tabloid The Sun targeted Pizza Express because of their use of halal chicken in a sensationalist “scandal” exposure https://www.washingtonpost.com /news/worldviews/wp/2014/05/08/inside-britains-big-dumb-halal-pizza-scandal/?utm _term=.a2296ddf39bf (January 10, 2017). 2. https://www.kfc.co.uk/halal (January 10, 2017). 3. For further information, see the Halal Food Authority (HFA), a nonprofit organisation that certifies meat through its label: http://halalfoodauthority.com/faqs/definition-of-halal
678 Eleftheria J. Lekakis (January 10, 2017). The HFA suggests that stunning cannot be used to kill an animal, with some exceptions. 4. http://www.animalsinislam.com/halal-living/investigating-halal-meat/ (January 10, 2017). 5. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/T XT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32009R1099&fro m=EN. 6. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/1782/contents/made. 7. http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/halal-food -stickers-salford-arrest-8721178 (January 12, 2017). 8. http:// w ww.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ news/ g reater- manchester- news/ c urfew -salford-man-who-plastered-9718412 (January 12, 2017). 9. http:// w ww.barkinganddagenhampost.co.uk/ news/ business/ shoppers_ t hreaten_ to _boycott_asda_barking_over_halal_meat_1_4229306 (January 8, 2017). 10. http:// w ww.express.co.uk/ n ews/ u k/ 6 06053/ A sda- h alal- m eat- h ot- f ood- c ounter -shoppers-boycott-supermarket (January 8, 2017). 11. According to the Metropolitan police, as a hate crime, “an Islamophobic Offence is any offence which is perceived to be Islamophobic by the victim or any other person, that is intended to impact upon those known or perceived to be Muslim” (http://www.met.police .uk/crimefigures/textonly_month.htm) (January 8, 2017). 12. Cava is a highly symbolic product of Catalunya. More than 90% of it is produced in the region by the Champagne method, in which wine is fermented twice and sugar added to make it bubbly (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/847dd5f4-9acf-11db-bbd2-0000779e2340 .html?ft_site=falcon&desktop=true#axzz4WQAChdLB) (December 20, 2016). 13. Some place the origins of the boycott in 2004, suggesting it arose as a response to a call by Josep-Lluis Carod-Rovira (leader of the Catalan Republican Left) to boycott Madrid’s campaign to host the 2012 Olympic Games http://articles.latimes.com/2005/dec/12 /world/fg-cava12 (December 20, 2016). 14. https:// w ww.marketingdirecto.com/ anunciantes- general/ anunciantes/ b oicot- a - l os -productos-catalanes-las-marcas-y-empresas-responden (December 20, 2016). 15. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/08/world/europe/ready-aimpop-clash-in-spain-has -sparkling-edge.html (December 20, 2016). 16. http:// w ww.nytimes.com/ 2 006/ 0 3/ 0 8/ w orld/ e urope/ r eady- a impop- c lash -in-spain-has-sparkling-edge.html and http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/847dd5f4-9acf-11db -bbd2-0000779e2340.html?ft_site=falcon&desktop=true#axzz4WQAChdLB (December 20, 2016). 17. The page had 41,190 likes on January 21, 2017. 18. https:// w ww.facebook.com/ p ages/ B oicot- a - l os- p roductos- d e- C atalu%C3%B1a /166498610160648 (January 20, 2017). 19. https://boicotalosproductosdecataluna.wordpress.com/ (January 20, 2017). 20. http://politica.e-noticies.es/espana-nos-roba-la-cartera-segun-los-jovenes-de-ciu-46722 .html (December 22, 2016). 21. This generally translates to “s/he who insists wins,” but the word “wins” becomes the word “Greek” when a few more letters are attached to the front of it. So, the campaign carries the message s/he who insists on Greek, but effectively also wins. 22. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAZzz8NalhI (December 1, 2016). 23. Golden Dawn has been setting up such discriminatory “solidarity” initiatives (food kitchens and social groceries). For example, on one occasion, they started distributing food
Political Consumerism and Nationalist Struggles in Europe 679 “for Greeks only,” while playing a Greek version of the Nazi hymn by Horst Wessel (http:// www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=376655, January 18, 2017). 24. EUROPEAN COMMISSION (2016) Single Market for Goods. Retrieved from http:// ec.europa.eu/growth/single-market/goods/ (January 18, 2017). 25. http://www.epimenonellinika.gr/index.php/history/our-history (January 22, 2017).
References Affeldt, S. (2018). “Buy White—Stay Fair”: Racist Political Consumerism in Australian History. In M. Boström, M. Micheletti, and P. Oosterveer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of political consumerism, pp. 643–662. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Al-Atom, Basem. (2014). Examining the trends of Islamophobia: Western public attitudes since 9/11. Studies in Sociology of Science, 5(3), 83–88. Ashenfelter, Orley, Ciccarella, Stephen, & Shatz, Howard, J. (2007). French wine and the U.S. boycott of 2003: Does politics really affect commerce? Journal of Wine Economics, 2(1), 55–74. Awan, Imran, & Zempi, Irene. (2015). We fear for our lives: Offline and online experiences of anti- Muslim hostility. Retrieved from http://tellmamauk.org/wp-content/uploads/resources /We%20Fear%20For%20Our%20Lives.pdf [21 January 2017]. Billig, Michael. (1995). Banal nationalism. London: Sage. Brown, Nicole M. (2015). Freedom’s stock: Political consumerism, transnational blackness and the Black Star Line. Critical Sociology, 41(2), 237–248. Caldwell, Melissa L. (2002). The taste of nationalism: Food politics in postsocialist Moscow. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology, 67(3), 295–319. Calhoun, Craig. (2007). Nations matter: Culture, history and the cosmopolitan dream. Oxon: Routledge. Castello, Enric, & Mihelj, Sabina. (2017). Selling and consuming the nation: Understanding consumer nationalism. Journal of Consumer Culture. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177 /1469540517690570. First published date: February 1. Cuadras-Morató, Xavier, & Raya, Josep Maria. (2015). Boycott or buycott?: Internal politics and consumer choices. B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 16(1), 185–218. DeSoucey, Michaela. (2010). Gastronationalism: Food traditions and authenticity politics in the European Union. American Sociological Review, 75(3), 432–455. Edensor, Tim. (2002). National identity, popular culture and everyday life. Oxford: Berg. Elorza, Antonio. (1995). Some perspectives on the nation-state and autonomies in Spain. In H. Graham and J. Labanyi (Eds.), Spanish Cultural Studies: An Introduction, pp. 332–336. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. (1993). Ethnicity and nationalism: Anthropological perspectives. London: Pluto Press. Follesdal, Andreas. (2004). Political consumerism as chance and challenge. In M. Micheletti, A. Follesdal, and D. Stolle (Eds.), Politics, products, and markets: Exploring political consumerism past and present, pp. 3–20. New Brunswick: Transaction Press. Fouka, Vasiliki, & Voth, Hans- Joachim. (2016). Reprisals remembered: German– Greek conflict and car sales during the Euro crisis. Retrieved from SSRN: https://ssrn.com /abstract=2340625 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2340625 [January 15, 2017].
680 Eleftheria J. Lekakis Fox, Jon E. (2006). Consuming the nation: Holidays, sports, and the production of collective belonging. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 29(2), 217–236. Fox, Jon E., & Miller-Idriss, Cynthia. (2008). Everyday nationhood. Ethnicities, 8(4), 536–562. Frank, Dana. (1999). Buy American: The untold story of economic nationalism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Gellner, Ernest. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Oxford: Blackwell. Greenberg, Cheryl. (2004). Political consumer action: Some cautionary notes from African American history. In M. Micheletti, A. Follesdal, and D. Stolle (Eds.), Politics, products, and markets: Exploring political consumerism past and present, pp. 63–82. New Brunswick: Transaction Press. Greenfeld, Liah. (2001). The spirit of capitalism: Nationalism and economic growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lekakis, Eleftheria J. (2015). Economic nationalism and the cultural politics of consumption in austerity contexts: The rise of ethnocentric consumption in Greece. Journal of Consumer Culture. http://doi.org/10.1177/1469540515586872. First published date: June 12. Lekakis, Eleftheria J. (2017). Banal nationalism and consumer activism: The case of #BoycottGermany. In Michael Skey and Marco Antonsich (Eds.), Everyday nationhood: Theorising culture, identity & belonging after banal nationalism, pp. 285–304. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Lekakis, Eleftheria J. (2018). Buying into the nation: The politics of consumption and nationalism. In O. Kravets, P. Maclaran, S. Miles, and A. Venkatesh (Eds.), The Sage handbook of consumer culture, 499–515. London and New York: Sage. Nakano, Takeshi. (2004). Theorising economic nationalism. Nations and Nationalism, 10(3), 211–229. Rakopoulos, Theodoros. (2014). The crisis seen from below, within, and against: From solidarity economy to food distribution cooperatives in Greece. Dialectical Anthropology, 38(2), 189–207. Rantanen, Terhi. (2012). In nationalism we trust? In M. Castells, J. Caraça, and G. Cardoso (Eds.), Aftermath: The cultures of the economic crisis, pp. 132– 153. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Savage, Mike, Wright, David, & Gayo-Cal, Modesto. (2010). Cosmopolitan nationalism and the cultural reach of the white British. Nations and Nationalism, 16(4), 598–615. Skey, Michael. (2011). National belonging and everyday life: The significance of nationhood in an uncertain world. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Stolle, Dietlind, & Micheletti, Michele. (2015). Political consumerism: Global responsibility in action. 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spanish Constitution. (1978). Spanish Constitution. Retrieved from http://www.congreso .es/p ortal/p age/p ortal/C ongreso/C ongreso/Hist_Normas/Norm/c onst_e spa_texto_ ingles_0.pdf Yun Park, B. (2018). Racialized political consumerism in the United States. In M. Boström, M. Micheletti, and P. Oosterveer (Eds.), Oxford handbook of political consumerism, pp. 681–698. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter 32
R acialized P ol i t i c a l C onsum eri sm i n the U nited Stat e s Bo Yun Park
In the United States, political consumerism has evolved alongside the country’s racial struggles. Even before the term “boycott” was coined, the Founding Fathers of the United States were using the strategy of nonconsumption of British products to make their voices heard (Breen, 2005; Glickman, 2009). Throughout American history, and in particular during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, African Americans used the tactic of boycotting in order to advance their rights (Friedman, 1999; Goldberg, 1999). Other ethnic groups, including Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans, later took part in boycotting in order to protest racial discrimination. White supremacist groups, like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), also called for different kinds of boycotts in order to promote their cause. With the rise of capitalism and the emergence of a consumer society (Micheletti, 2003; Micheletti & Stolle, 2008; Nava, 1991), American consumers of various ethnic backgrounds have acted as political actors buying into the idea that political consumerism was necessary and effective. The belief in their efficacy and the rise of globalization have contributed to a sharp increase in the use of political consumerism as a form of political participation in recent decades (Stolle et al., 2005). Appealing to the idea of shared cognitive and moral understandings, boycotting and buycotting have now been established as popular forms of political participation in the United States and elsewhere (Forno & Ceccarini, 2006; Strømsnes, 2009; Neilson, 2010; Baek, 2010; Newman and Bartels, 2011; Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2014; Chapter 24). Political consumerism concerns market- oriented engagement, which includes “consumer’s choice of producers and products based on a variety of ethical and political considerations” (Stolle & Micheletti, 2006, p. 48). Boycotts and buycotts related to racial issues can be labelled as forms of racialized political consumerism—encapsulating
682 Bo Yun Park instances in which “(1) race is invoked to help encourage, describe, or explain consumption patterns and experiences, and (2) marketplace sites of consumerism [that] are used or targeted for some political purpose that is designed to influence how resources are allocated toward a specific racial group” (Brown, 2015, p. 239). Here, “race” is understood as a social construct rather than a biologically meaningful term. In fact, it refers to a socially constructed category that people have used to denote various groups of people based on their perceived skin colour. While the concepts of race and ethnicity are often used side by side, the two terms are conceptually different: “Races are distinguished by perceived common physical characteristics, which are thought to be fixed, whereas ethnicities are defined by perceived common ancestry, history, and cultural practices, which are seen as more fluid and self-asserted rather than assigned by others” (Clair & Denis, 2015, p. 857). The definitions of both concepts have evolved in time, but their empirical and theoretical importance have never faded in the American context. Building on these ideas of race and ethnicity, the concept of racism has mostly been defined as “an ideology of racial domination” (Wilson, 1999, p. 14).1 In a country where different forms of political consumerism have been used both by and for ethnoracial minorities, one may consider (1) how ethnoracial minority groups have used the strategy of boycotts, buycotts, and other forms of political consumerism to deal with racial conflicts, along with the question of (2) how the American people— regardless of their race or ethnicity—have mobilized those tactics in response to racial struggles.2 Both variants of the intersections between political consumerism and racial struggles should be examined in order to assess the impact that political consumerism has had for different ethnoracial groups and for the American society in general. Although boycotts and other forms of political consumerism have mostly been thought to contribute to the construction of a more inclusive democracy (e.g., Marien et al., 2010; Micheletti and Stolle, 2012), scholars have also argued that racialized political consumerism could lead to opposite tendencies (Brown, 2015). Addressing the need to reflect on the meaning and significance of a tactic that is considered to be a longstanding political tradition, this chapter provides an analytical guide for the study of racialized political consumerism. Even if it focuses on the specific case of the United States, with its distinct political culture and racial conflicts, the arguments could also provide insights for further studies of political consumerism in other parts of the world. Looking at the ways in which political consumerism has co-evolved with deeply-rooted racial and interethnic struggles, this chapter (1) illustrates the historical usages of political consumerism in racial struggles in the United States, (2) discusses the different forms of political consumerism that have been used by ethnoracial minorities, and (3) critically assesses the concept of racialized political consumerism from a theoretical standpoint.
Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States 683
Racialized Political Consumerism in U.S. History Tracing it back to the Founding Fathers’ boycott of British tea at the Boston Tea Party, scholars have highlighted the important role that political consumerism has had in the history of the United States (Breen, 2005; Glickman, 2009). In his account of American consumer activism, Lawrence Glickman (2009) identifies the different eras that have accompanied the development of a longstanding political tradition:
• American Revolution • Abolition • Confederate nationalism • Labour boycott • Progressive era consumer activism • The origins of the consumer movement • Silk boycott • Consumer movement in war and postwar years • Anticommunism to antiliberalism • The rebirth of consumer politics • The new consumer activism
Looking at these different segments of American history, he demonstrates that Americans took part in political consumerism even before the term “boycott” was adopted and widely used. Named after Charles Cunningham Boycott—an exploitative British land agent—by the American radical James Redpath in October 1880, the practice of (non) consumption quickly became a long-lasting political tactic used in the United States. If political consumerism has a history as long as that of the United States, the issue of racial conflicts stands out as another hallmark of American history that can be traced back to the country’s earliest days. While a detailed account of a history of racial struggles in the United States evades the scope of this chapter, it is worth noting that certain periods of U.S. history saw the accentuation of racial conflicts—thereby prompting a wider spread of political consumerism in the country. The juxtaposition of political consumerism and racial struggles in the United States more specifically harks back to the times when slaves were considered as commodities that could be traded on what was once known as the slave market: “many White Southerners . . . acknowledged slave trading and owning as a form of consumption” (Glickman, 2009, p. 97). In a country deeply marked by the slave trading system of the past, political consumerism and racial struggles have evolved hand in hand. Political consumerism was quickly adopted by African Americans and their allies in dealing with racial conflicts over the abolition of slavery: Abolitionists of the antebellum
684 Bo Yun Park period decided to boycott slave-made products in order to promote the abolition of slavery. The southern proponents of “nonintercourse,” on the other hand, “employed nearly identical tactics to promote antithetical goals, putting their shared belief in the power of organized consumption to work for opposing causes” (Glickman, 2009, p. 3). While the causes advocated by each group were very different, the strategies and themes remained mostly the same: using people’s buying power to signal a political stance. African Americans also turned to the use of political consumerism to fight against the Jim Crow laws, which legally discriminated against a significant portion of the American people by mandating racial segregation in public facilities at both the local and state levels.3 Boycotts can also be exemplified in the famous Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 considering the important role it played in the Civil Rights Movement (Friedman, 1999; Goldberg, 1999). More recently, the conflicts between African Americans and police forces have emerged as a good illustration of the use of racialized political consumerism in the United States. Historically, racialized political consumerism has also been used by other ethnic groups. Glickman reports, “As early as 1882, and for the next several decades, many Chinese threatened to boycott American goods because of America’s treatment of Chinese immigrants and passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act” (Glickman, 2009, p. 125). The boycott of Japanese silk was another example of political consumerism that happened in the global arena, targeting products produced by a specific ethnic group (Glickman, 2005). As exemplified by these boycotts both within and outside of the United States, the use of racialized political consumerism was not restricted to African Americans, but was also adopted by other minority groups as well. Considering the importance of both racial struggles and political consumption in the United States, one would expect social scientists to have investigated their interrelation at great length. It is surprising to see, however, that while many of the most widely cited studies on political consumerism do mention the use of boycotts by different ethnoracial groups (e.g., Stolle et al., 2005), only a limited number of studies juxtapose the two in a systematic manner (Brown, 2015). The ethnoracial dimension is less prioritized than that of demographic variables, such as gender, income, and age, in identifying the predictors of political consumerism (see also Chapter 24). Scholars have yet to conclude if the increase in the use of political consumerism is also observed across different ethnoracial minority groups. As little attention has been given to the use of different forms of political consumerism by various ethnoracial minorities in the United States, it is warranted to call for further analyses of how race and political consumerism intersect. In order to assess the role that political consumerism has played in racial politics in the United States and elsewhere, one must approach the question from two different angles: the first one involves instances when members of ethnoracial groups have used different forms of political consumerism to make their voices heard on a specific issue, which does or does not relate to matters of racism or racial inequality; the second relates to cases in which American people—regardless of which racial or ethnic group they belong to—take part in boycotts or buycotts to make a political statement related to racial struggles. While these two types of cases are certainly distinct from one another, they
Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States 685 are definitely not mutually exclusive. Their intersections result in four types of analytical categories: (1) Ethnoracial minorities using different forms of political consumerism over issues of a racial nature (e.g., racism, stigmatization, discrimination, inequality). (2) Ethnoracial minorities using different forms of political consumerism over issues that are not explicitly about racial matters but have indirect or unintended consequences for ethnoracial minorities. (3) Ethnoracial majorities mobilizing different forms of political consumerism over issues of a racial nature (e.g., racism, stigmatization, discrimination, inequality). (4) Ethnoracial majorities mobilizing different forms of political consumerism over issues that are not explicitly about racial matters but have indirect or unintended consequences for ethnoracial minorities. Historical and contemporary cases tell us that the line between these demarcations might not be clear-cut. Yet, social scientists ought to analytically separate them in order to identify the different mechanisms that feed each phenomenon. For instance, one could ask why ethnoracial minorities use the strategies of boycotting and buycotting— as opposed to other forms political engagement—while dealing with issues of racism. Investigating the structural factors, such as social marginalization or discriminatory policies, that stood in the way of African Americans’ use of other forms of political participation, such as voting, could be a good point of departure. Similarly, scholars could investigate the cases in which ethnoracial minorities deploy the strategy of political consumerism to promote their cause in spheres that are supposed to be nonracial (e.g., education, housing). Looking at the use of political consumerism over both types of issues (racial vs. nonracial) could unveil the mechanisms of diffusion of boycotts or buycotts over a wide variety of topics. In the same vein, one could also analyse the reasons behind white Americans’ use of political consumerism over racial or nonracial issues. Why would white Americans— less marginalized than other ethnoracial groups—engage in racialized political consumerism as opposed to more conventional forms of political participation? In what way did their engagement in racialized political consumerism strengthen their cause? To what extent was it an integral part of their identity politics? Answering these questions in light of the conclusions drawn for other ethnoracial groups could greatly enhance our understanding of the different ways people take part in racialized political consumerism. This fourfold classification not only makes room for a more systematic analysis of these types of questions, but also sheds more light on the importance of considering ethnoracial dimensions when analysing the different predictors of political consumerism. To date, gender, age, income levels, and education have been the attributes that caught the eye of social scientists who attempted to analyse the different attributes of political consumers (e.g., Newman & Bartels, 2011). Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti (2005) have found that gender matters the most, as women are more likely to take part
686 Bo Yun Park in political consumerism. While scholars have extensively written on the links between gender, education, income, age, and political consumerism, the racial dimension has been substantively less investigated. A handful of scholars did look at the racial dimension more closely: for instance, Harp and colleagues showed that young African Americans were more likely than white teenagers to engage in political consumerism (Harp et al., 2010). Yet, this study only looked at the political and social attitudes of teenagers between twelve and seventeen years old, which means that the literature still lacks research findings about other segments of the population. It is also important to note that the conclusions that have already been drawn for particular groups (e.g., Copeland, 2014; Harp et al., 2010) could greatly vary across contexts—as the trends found in the United States might not be found in Europe and vice versa.
The Various Forms of Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States Political consumerism can take on various forms, ranging from the more common boycotts and buycotts to less intuitive forms of discursive political consumerism, donations, and selective investments. Here follows an analysis on how each of these forms have been used by different ethnoracial minorities in the United States—including African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans among others. This analysis will make room for suggestions of future studies that could contribute to the existing literature.
Studying Boycotts and Their Use by Different Ethnoracial Groups Speaking of “black consumerism,” scholars like Weems (1998) or Mukherjee (2011, p. 182) have examined how boycotting allowed African Americans to make political statements that would have a nationwide impact. Not only did they use boycotts, but they actually took the lead in the development of this tactic by expanding the range of targets: they reoriented boycotts from individuals and businesses to different institutions in the public sphere. While most of the boycotts of the nineteenth century targeted particular persons or businesses, the boycotts used by African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s were oriented towards institutions in the public and cultural spheres, including various types of facilities operated as public utilities (Glickman, 2009, p. 162). Recently, they also took the lead in boycotting new types of services, including digitalized services
Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States 687 such as Uber, a ride-sharing company whose leaders had been criticized for having close ties with political figures making racist statements. The Black Lives Matter movement is another recent illustration of the diversification of the targets of political consumerism.4 In fact, the movement called for a series of boycotts of different types of public and private services to protest against racial inequality and police brutality. Fuelled by the death of several African Americans as the result of police encounters in 2013 and 2014 (Carney, 2016; Mcivor, 2016), the Black Lives Matter movement called for a yearly boycott of the Black Friday shopping event through the #NotOneDime campaign (since 2014), as well as a boycott of white-owned businesses during the 2017 Christmas holiday season. Earlier that year, Black Lives Matter activists had also asked people to boycott the National Football League for having blacklisted players who decided to kneel during the national anthem to protest racial inequality in the United States. On the other side of the spectrum, the supporters of the Blue Lives Matter movement,5 or the pro-police movement that was formed in response to Black Lives Matter, started to promote the consumption of Blue Lives Matter apparel in order to show support for police officers. Items of Blue Lives Matter apparel were also bought in more significant numbers whenever protests would take place in the streets of Washington, DC or New York. As such, the tactics of boycotting and buycotting have followed different generations of African Americans to this day—from the abolitionists’ era and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s to the recent protests of the Black Lives Matter movement (Lebron, 2017). Just like African Americans, Hispanic Americans also contributed in the diversification of targets: for instance, the 1999 boycott of network TV, organized by a coalition of Latino media groups that aimed at “[l]ambasting the dearth of Latino faces—and the even greater lack of positive images among those faces—in film and network TV,” expanded the range of groups that were targeted by going beyond individual businesses or governmental institutions (Kolker, 1999). Similarly, Asian Americans boycotted different types of businesses. For instance, the entire Asian American community called for the boycott of United Airlines in the spring of 2017 in order to protest the way a Chinese American passenger had been treated as he refused to step down from a plane: the man had been injured and dragged down by police officers when he decided to keep his seat on an overbooked flight (Thompson, 2017). Keeping in mind the role that African Americans and Hispanic Americans have played in the proliferation of boycotts and buycotts, scholars have also pointed out that political consumerism has not only been used in racial conflicts between minority groups and white people, but also in conflicts among different minority groups (Kim, 1999; Park, 1996). This is best illustrated by the boycotts of Korean stores by the African American community at the time of the 1992 Los Angeles (LA) riots (Park, 1996). African Americans were protesting the way they had been treated by Korean merchants in the inner city of Los Angeles and called for boycotts of Korean stores in a number of cities across the United States. This was later commonly referred to as the “Black-Korean Conflict” (Kim, 1999).
688 Bo Yun Park While documenting these events, however, scholars have not investigated whether the dynamics of political consumerism in intergroup conflicts were different from the ones that concerned confrontations between ethnoracial minorities and white people. Even more limited have been comparisons of boycotts used by ethnoracial minorities with ones used by white supremacist groups. Studying the women of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Blee (1991, p. 147) explains that boycotts “drew on women’s traditional role as manager of the family’s consumption. A boycott brought even the act of shopping into the fight for racial and religious supremacy. It infused the ordinary tasks of Klanswomen’s lives with political content.” While scholars like Blee (1991) do show examples of how the KKK has used boycotting, it remains unclear whether the dynamics of such boycotts differed from the ones conducted by other ethnoracial groups. In fact, we have yet to know if her findings would converge with patterns found among ethnoracial minorities or whether they would be applicable to other white supremacist groups. In addition, most of the studies that look at the use of boycotts have considered them as discrete strategies deployed by individual groups without necessarily tying back to the theoretical framework of political consumerism (e.g., Jasper, 1997). For instance, Jasper (1997) looks at the different uses of boycotts within the social movement literature but does not present them as forms of political consumerism. In fact, it is not presented as a systematic analysis of the meaning and significance that this particular form of political consumerism has had on American consumer society and racial politics in the United States. Here, accordingly, is also an opportunity for theoretical and empirical cross-fertilization.
Studying Buycotts and Their Use by Different Ethnoracial Groups Evolving alongside its sister tactic, buycotts have also been widely used by ethnoracial groups. Going against the perception that buycotts might be recent developments that came with the rise of the consumer society, buycotts can actually be traced back to the Free Produce Movement of the nineteenth century—at least as it pertains to the American case (see also Affeldts’s chapter for further details on the Australian case). During the antebellum era, abolitionists promoted the buycott of nonslave products, such as sugar. As identified by Glickman (2009), these buycotters “were the first consumer activists to propose what scholars today call the ‘buycott,’ a commercial alternative to abstention, and the first to suggest labelling ethical goods” (Glickman, 2009, p. 72). Buycotting has been assessed to be less contentious than boycotting as it provides a more inclusive alternative to abstention from consumption and exclusion of target groups (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008). Zooming into a period of intensified racial conflict further validates this point: As Lewis Gunn remarked in 1838, “To throw away the articles, would as much encourage slavery, as to use them. If their price has gone into the hands of the slave- holder, all the support which slavery can derive from them has already been
Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States 689 secured.” For the free produce activists, individual consumption—not the actions of merchants, nor the use of things already bought, nor the symbolism of ostentatious disuse—was the key link in the causal chain. (Glickman, 2009, pp. 72–73)
Unlike the boycotting strategy that triggered the exclusion of a targeted individual, business, or institution, the tactic of buycotting has invited people to put their individual consumption at the service of a moral cause. It not only offered a commercial alternative that would not harm the economy but also involved a more inclusive rhetoric. That is not to say that the use of buycotts made things less oppositional. Adamantly keeping their own stance, the proponents of “free produce” and the champions of “nonintercourse” reinforced their respective stances while using buycotts as well. In fact, “most nonintercourse associations, which sprang up in towns and cities all over the South, urged members and fellow citizens not only to shun goods from the North but also to buy Southern goods” (Glickman, 2009, p. 93). Despite the similarities they share in terms of their antagonist nature, it would be misleading to treat boycotts and buycotts as similar activities that can be measured by one variable that encompasses them both (Copeland, 2013; Keum et al., 2004; Shah et al., 2007). Considering that buycotters and boycotters might have different characteristics, Baek (2010) calls for a more systematic analysis of the sociodemographical differences between the two groups (Baek, 2010). Yet, the lack of empirical data on the use of buycotts by minority groups (as opposed to the ample number of studies done on the use of boycotts) hampers a systematic comparison between the two strategies. Future research should investigate the extent to which patterns differ.
Studying Discursive Political Consumerism with the Rise of Social Media Defined as “the expression of opinions about corporate policy and practice in communicative efforts directed at business, the public at large, family and friends, and various political institutions” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2008, p. 752), discursive political consumerism is a strategy that aims at impacting a business’s reputation rather than involving the promotion or sanction of monetary transactions. It is also a form of political consumerism that is significantly less studied—especially as it pertains to different ethnoracial groups (Gil de Zúñiga et al., 2014). This can be attributed to the fact that their use of discursive political consumerism in engaging with the greater public has been limited as the voices of ethnoracial minorities have not been given an equal weight in the public sphere for a long period of time. Nowadays, the rise of social media and new opportunities to express one’s opinion both online and offline calls for a thorough consideration of the use of discursive political consumerism by different ethnoracial minority groups. As seen in the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, social media now plays a crucial role in mobilizing people around a cause, and these methods of communication could well become a new venue for discursive
690 Bo Yun Park political consumerism among African Americans. While scholars like Parigi and Gong (2014) have started to incorporate the rise of social media and new forms of analysis in their research on political consumerism, arguing that online ties play an important role for movements using political consumerism as “they create audiences for private actions” (Parigi & Gong, 2014, p. 236), what is not yet known is the extent to which these strategies are used and what consequences they bring to different ethnoracial groups.
Studying Other Related Forms of Political Action: Donations and Selective Investments Direct donations and selective investments have also been considered as part of political consumerism, even if donating has often been described as a “more traditional type of participation than is political consumerism” (Sandovici & Davis, 2010, p. 328). Sandovici and Davis (2010) have looked at donations more closely in their analysis of the different individual-level attributes that increased one’s propensity to make direct monetary donations. Comparing these attributes with the propensity to take part in boycotting and buycotting, they find that women and young people are more likely to participate in this particular type of political consumerism (Sandovici & Davis, 2010). Other scholars like Brown (2015) have looked at the selective investments of African Americans in particular. In doing so, Brown identified that the “selling of stock to secure capital for black businesses” (Brown, 2015, p. 243) had been “the largest and most audacious displays of massive Black American transnational political consumerism” (Brown, 2015, p. 238). Here, selective investments, including the ones that Brown (2015) looked at, could be considered as a form of socially responsible investments (SRIs). While the literature on SRIs has flourished over the years (Carroll, 2008; Hill et al., 2007; Sandberg et al., 2009), the dynamics have yet to be analysed through a racial lens. As of today, the scholarship on this topic largely remains race-neutral, focusing on the ways in which firms in general take part in corporate social responsibility and select socially responsible investments. A deepened analysis of these different methods in the context of specific ethnoracial communities would provide fertile ground for future research. What are the recurring patterns found behind the selective investments made by different ethnoracial minorities? And to what extent are the selective investments motivated by racial concerns different from other types of selective investments?
The Value and Significance of Racialized Political Consumerism Given how prevalent racialized political consumerism has become nowadays, it is now necessary to assess the impact that this particular form of political action can have on
Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States 691 democratic societies. This section discusses the different ways to analyse the implications of racialized political consumerism. In doing so, it demonstrates that the juxtaposition of the political and consumer-based dimensions of political consumerism brings to the surface some normative tensions regarding social inclusion and exclusion in democratic societies.
Racialized Political Consumerism: Leading to a More Inclusive United States? Political consumerism has been considered to bring about a more inclusive society as it provides more outlets for minorities to express their political opinions (e.g., Barnett et al., 2005; Marien et al., 2010; Micheletti & Stolle, 2012). Scholars have argued that political consumption increases people’s awareness about political issues and promotes political activism for a great number of citizens (Willis & Schor, 2012). Yet, in order to critically assess if racialized political consumerism can bring about a more inclusive society, social scientists ought to go beyond the assessment of an increase in political participation via unconventional means. In fact, they ought to examine the actual impact that political consumption has on institutional and cultural changes that reflect a more integrated country (see Chapters 31 and 33). The literature on boundaries and boundary work from cultural sociology can be helpful in analysing these various changes. In their review of the studies on boundary work, Lamont and Molnar (2002) conceptualize symbolic boundaries as the “conceptual distinctions made by social actors to categorize objects, people, practices, and even time and space” (Lamont & Molnar, 2002, p. 168). Social boundaries, on the other hand, are “objectified forms of social differences manifested in equal access to and unequal distribution of resources (material and nonmaterial) and social opportunities” (Lamont & Molnar, 2002, p. 168; see also Pachucki et al., 2007). By assessing the impact that political consumption has on people’s perception of these boundaries and the cultural changes that they bring about, scholars should be able to draw more solid conclusions on whether political consumerism makes room for a more inclusive society or sets the path for a more fragmented one. As such, it would be important to empirically analyse the extent to which concrete acts of political consumption affect that boundary work of certain groups. To what extent did the boycotts or buycotts organized by leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement affect the boundary work that people undertake vis-à-vis African Americans? Was the emergence of the All Lives Matter movement a result of the political consumerism that had been deployed by Black Lives Matter activists? Through the collection of systematic surveys and well-documented interviews, scholars should be able to assess the ways in which political consumerism affects the way people view those of in-groups and out-groups and, in the long-run, brings about cultural and institutional changes in society.
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Racialized Political Consumerism: Reinforcing the Divisive Lines? While political consumerism has given access to various forms of political participation for a greater number of people, it has also been found to have shortcomings and unintended consequences. Indeed, scholars have attested that racialized political consumerism “was unsuccessful in leading to sustained improvement in the conditions of African Americans” (Brown, 2015, p. 237). Not only was it ineffective in bringing about sustained improvements, but political consumerism was also found to be associated with high levels of political distrust in society (Newman & Bartels, 2011). Findings like these could support a hypothesis that an increase in the level of political consumerism reflects, and possibly leads to, an increase in the level of political distrust. Such a distrust could potentially reinforce divisions between different ethnoracial groups present in the United States. Political consumerism could fortify the symbolic and social boundaries that exist in a society in two concrete ways: first, it could give more weight to an “us” versus “them” logic by asking people to buy into oppositional mindsets not only in politics but also in markets. As shown in The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration, groups tend to “define their collective identity in opposition to one another, in an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ relational logic” (Lamont, 2000, p. 57). This rationale could potentially be reinforced with the rise of political consumerism as the political issues at stake become prevalent not only in the political sphere but also in the market sphere. Since the market sphere is inevitable for family and social networks of all kinds, the spillover effects might become more widespread. The emergence of the Blue Lives Matter movement and the different forms of political consumerism that it has endorsed, in opposition to the different forms of mobilization of the Black Lives Matter movement, could be a good example of the diffusion of the “us” versus “them” rationale. As supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement refused to serve two police officers at a Dunkin’ Donuts in New York City, pro–Blue Lives Matter sentiments were refuelled: police officers eventually called for a boycott of the doughnut company (Taylor, 2017). In the same vein, the Blue Lives Matter activists called for a nationwide boycott of the ice cream company Ben & Jerry’s for their endorsement of the Black Lives Matter movement. Rather than leading African Americans and police officers toward reconciliation, the different boycotts and buycotts that have taken place from both sides of the aisle seem to have rather perpetuated “us” versus “them” mindsets. Second, it could raise the concern that not all citizens would be able to take part in boycotts or buycotts for financial reasons. Scholars have investigated the relationship between people’s income and the likelihood that they will participate in different forms of political consumerism (e.g., Baek, 2010). If buycotts are found to be the tools of the “haves” rather than the “have-nots,” it could well develop into another point of contention. Thus, scholars ought to address the following question in a more systematic
Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States 693 manner: To what extent can people have equal economic access to different forms of political consumerism in this era of increasing economic inequality?
Conclusion In the United States, political consumerism and racial conflicts have developed hand in hand. Various stages of history show that ethnoracial groups have significantly contributed to the development of political consumerism as a distinct form of political participation in the American context. They have not only diversified the pool of targets, but also innovated different types of political consumerism that would involve services of various kinds. Given the numerous cases of political consumerism in the United States, scholars ought to analyse the ways in which different ethnoracial groups have mobilized various forms of political consumerism: they could do so by analytically assessing the differences between (1) cases that involve only ethnoracial minorities as opposed to (2) cases that involve both ethnoracial minorities and majorities. Another axis of comparison that could shed light on our analysis of racialized political consumerism would be (1) cases that are directly related to racial matters and (2) cases that are only indirectly related to racial issues (via unintended consequences to specific ethnoracial groups). Keeping these different dimensions in mind, it would be mistaken to assume that the patterns found for boycotts would be directly applicable to other forms of political consumerism and vice versa: the issues at stake, the types of actors, or the resources needed for the different strategies would vary; the patterns of political consumerism would thus diverge as well. Scholars need to more systematically take into account the racial dimension in their studies of political consumerism. Both quantitative and qualitative methods can help researchers bring race and political consumerism side by side. In quantitative studies of the predictors of political consumerism, one could well suspect the existence of interaction effects between race and the other attributes that have been studied thus far. Looking at how race intersects with age, education, income, or gender could significantly advance the understanding of different facets of political consumerism today. On the other hand, rigorous qualitative studies concerning the value, meaning, and significance of racialized political consumerism could greatly enrich the existing literature on political consumerism in general. A more systematic dialogue between the scholars of political consumerism and the social scientists studying racism, racial discrimination, or racial inequality would also benefit the research on both sides. Not only would scholars of political consumerism gain a better understanding of the role that race has played in the different forms of racialized political consumerism, but researchers of racial conflicts would also get a better grasp of the different strategies used by ethnoracial minorities to promote their cause.
694 Bo Yun Park Scholars would gain from investigating the impact that different forms of political consumerism can have on the boundary work that ethnoracial groups perform vis-à-vis one another. They would also find value in examining the ways in which symbolic and social boundaries trigger one’s propensity to take part in different forms of political consumerism. These scholars could also assess if racialized political consumerism in turn reinforces the existing boundaries that we see in society. Finally, there is a pressing need for more comparative research on the different types of racialized political consumerism. Would the patterns of racialized political consumerism found in the United States be portable across different contexts, in Europe, Australia, or Latin America for instance? How would they diverge in countries that have a different approach to racial issues, like France—a country with a political culture that does not explicitly use the term “race”? Considering that the racial politics that unfolded during World War II left French people and their European counterparts very reluctant to collect ethnicity or race-driven statistical data, how differently should scholars study racialized political consumerism in Europe? Comparisons of different political cultures and models of understanding racial struggles would definitely enlighten our understanding and assessment of the significance of racialized political consumerism in various contexts.
Notes 1. As noted by Clair and Denis (2015, p. 857), “The term race was first used to describe peoples and societies in the way we now understand ethnicity or national identity. Later, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as Europeans encountered non-European civilizations, Enlightenment scientists and philosophers gave race a biological meaning. . . . Today, race often maintains its ‘natural’ connotation in folk understandings; yet, the scientific consensus is that race does not exist as a biological category among humans.” 2. Here, the term “racial struggles” is used as an expression encompassing the different forms of racism, racial discrimination, and racial inequality found in the United States (Clair & Denis, 2015). 3. The Jim Crow laws reinforced racial discrimination in the United States as they mandated racial segregation in all public facilities from 1896 until 1965. Today, African Americans’ boycotts of streetcars are assessed to have significantly contributed to the dismantlement of the Jim Crow laws (Glickman, 2009). 4. For more information about the Black Lives Matter movement, refer to: https:// blacklivesmatter.com/. 5. For more information about the Blue Lives Matter movement, refer to: https:// bluelivesmatternyc.org/.
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Racialized Political Consumerism in the United States 697 Strømsnes, K. (2009). Political Consumerism: A Substitute for or Supplement to Conventional Political Participation? Journal of Civil Society, 5(3), 303–314. Taylor, Kate. (2017). “I don’t serve cops”: People are calling for a Dunkin’ Donuts boycott after police officers were reportedly refused service. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www .businessinsider.com/police-doubling-down-on-a-dunkin-donuts-boycott-2017-8. Thompson, Cadie. (2017). People are threatening to boycott United Airlines after a passenger was dragged off the flight. Business Insider. Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider .com/united-airlines-doctor-removed-boycott-2017-4. Weems, Robert E. (1998). Desegregating the Dollar: African American Consumerism in the Twentieth Century. NYU Press. Willis, Margaret M., and Schor, Juliet B. (2012). Does changing a light bulb lead to changing the world? Political action and the conscious consumer. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 644(1), 160–190. Wilson, William Julius. (1999). The bridge over the racial divide: Rising inequality and coalition politics. Berkeley, CA, and London: University of California Press. Zúñiga, Homero Gil de, Copeland, Lauren, & Bimber, Bruce. (2014). Political consumerism: Civic engagement and the social media connection. New Media & Society, 16(3), 488–506.
Chapter 33
Problem atic P ol i t i c a l C onsum e ri sm Confusions and Moral Dilemmas in Boycott Activism Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral
Simple, straightforward, and seemingly unproblematic is how political consumerism is often depicted. This means that social movements and consumer-oriented networks formulate clear and consistent goals on the weaknesses and faults with how corporations handle the political, environmental, and/or ethical matters associated with the production and consumption of their goods and services. Then they mobilize individuals and groups into boycotts, buycotts, discursive actions, and/or lifestyle change (the four forms of political consumerism) in attempts to convince corporations to change their ways and meet the cause’s demands. This unproblematic conception of political consumerism implies that consumers, the targeted corporate entities, and others understand the political consumer’s claim and its aim, actions, and desired effects. However, as discussed in this chapter, particularly boycotting political consumerism can deviate from this conception in important ways. What makes political consumerism problematic? One way of answering this question is by identifying unproblematic and problematic political consumerism theoretically in an ideal type model derived from moral philosophy and then applying it to different cases. The next section presents an ideal type and uses it to analyse three well-known clear cases of political consumerism and then two other cases that have aroused controversy and confusion. The concluding section offers general comments on the comparisons and moral dilemmas included in and created by political consumerism, including reflections on the challenges facing researchers when studying more problematic political consumerism. The highlighted, more unproblematic cases of political consumerism are the Nestlé, Nike, and South African boycotts. The more problematic ones are activism against the Walt Disney Company and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (hereafter BDS) concerning Israel’s settlements in the occupied territories of the West Bank
700 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral (including East Jerusalem), the Gaza Strip, and the Syrian Golan Heights. All cases are chosen because they have aroused public interest and exhibit important similarities and dissimilarities for understanding political consumerism’s complex nature. They have spanned over several years, and boycotts have been their primary mode of activism. Additionally, scholars have not systematically studied the cases critically. What makes them different are the choice of target and the character of their boycott mobilization. Nestlé, Nike, and Disney are transnational corporations (economic entities); South Africa and Israel are sovereign states (political entities). While targeting corporations involves activists choosing what products and services to boycott, targeting a sovereign state implies a “surrogate boycott” involving surrogate (substitute) boycott targets (Balabanis, 2012) such as economic entities involved with the state.
Theorizing Political Consumerism’s Moral Grounding Why and how can political consumerism be problematic for its proponents, supporters, targets, and others? Scholarship on political action in the context of moral dilemmas offers a good starting point for identifying important arguments that justify political action. This theorizing says that a political cause is justifiable when it evokes an overriding moral reason for its aim, actions, and demands. This implies that the cause is not encumbered with moral dilemmas or confusions. For political and moral philosophers, the overriding moral value justifying all political action, and therefore making it morally sound (nondilemmatic) and clear (nonconfusing), is its anchoring in universal human rights. This cluster of rights concerning discrimination issues forms the primary moral reason for questioning political action (Mills, 1996; Sinnott-Armstrong, 1988, p. 12). In other words, discrimination supersedes other reasons for political action (see OHCHR, n.d.). When applied to political consumerism, this means that unproblematic political consumerism involves a cause with a highly convincing moral claim about discrimination, which overrides—trumps or supersedes—other important reasons that might be evoked for or against the cause. This applies even if the cause may have ramifications and implications of a democratic, economic, religious, or political nature for its supporters, targets, and associated third parties. Theoretically, this also means the moral acceptability of three central components of political consumer activism: its goals, targets, and forms. This implies that the choice of target, the demands put on it, and the choice of market-based tools are justifiable because they implement the overriding moral claim in political action. From this theory, a simple ideal type model (see Weber et al. 2003) can be constructed to compare and analyse political consumerism’s moral grounding. The model identifies the main elements or characteristics of unproblematic and problematic political consumerism. Its key element is the presence or absence of an overriding moral claim
Problematic Political Consumerism 701 of nondiscrimination in the cause. This means that an ideal-typical unproblematic political consumer cause has an overriding moral claim that convincingly justifies its (1) choice of target (identified agent of wrongdoing), (2) activist demands on the target, and (3) choice of market-based tactic (forms of political consumerism) to pressure the target to change its ways. Theoretically then, unproblematic political consumerism is not dilemmatic, dubious, or confusing. It is morally justifiable as a suitable and effective way to help solve important political problems and challenges. In contrast, ideal-typical problematic political consumerism includes moral dilemmas about the cause, goals (demands), targets, and actions. Examples of more unproblematic political consumerism are the long-lasting Nestlé, Nike, and South African boycotts—all extended boycotts that have been richly studied and are, therefore, not extensively reviewed here. The Nestlé boycott’s overriding moral claim is children’s human rights. The Infant Formulation Action Coalition (INFACT), a network of diversified groups, accused Nestlé of harming infant health in less developed countries by selling and marketing baby formula. Although other corporations did likewise, Nestlé was the primary target because of its dominance as a brand (see Chapter 10). The reasoning was if Nestlé could be forced to change its practices other corporations would as well. The coalition resorted to boycotting after failed efforts for governmental regulation on the matter. Its cross-national boycott helped to put the problem higher on the international political agenda, including adoption of an international code for marketing breast milk substitutes. Nestlé decided to follow it; INFACT called off the boycott. However, the reorganized transnational activist network, International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), accused Nestlé of violating some code provisions and reinstated the boycott in 1984 (Bromberg Bar-Yam, 1995; Johnson, 1986; Post, 1985; Sasson, 2016; Sikkink, 1986). Nestlé denounces IBFAN’s accusations (Nestlé, n.d.). The Nike boycott is similar. Antisweatshop activists demanded that big brand Nike Inc. take the lead in improving workers’ treatment in outsourced manufacturing in developing countries. Unlike the Nestlé case with the umbrella coordinating network (INFACT, IBFAN), activism against Nike was less coordinated; some of the looser networks adopted a more confrontational orientation than others. Nevertheless, the cause’s moral claim, also communicated in innovative culture jams (a form of discursive political consumerism, see Chapters 24 and 9), was decent and non- nondiscriminatory treatment of workers in the overseas factories where Nike manufactured its products. Cause groups turned to political consumerism because a governmental solution for the global sweatshop problem appeared dim. The boycott started in the early 1990s and died down in the mid-2000s once Nike began addressing the sweatshop problem more seriously (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chaps. 5 & 6; see also Chapter 14). The surrogate boycott of South Africa targeted businesses operating in the country (Friedman, 2001, p. 237). It is the best-known case of a surrogate boycott (see Chapter 3; Stefano & Henaway, 2014, p. 21); other examples are boycotts against the United States, France, Russia, Turkey, and other states for reasons including human
702 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral rights, foreign affairs, and war involvement (Chavis & Leslie, 2009; Fershtman & Gandal, 1998; Friedman, 2003; Hulme, 1990; Jensen, 2008). The anti-apartheid cause mobilized individual and institutional consumers (i.e., public and private purchasing organizations) to boycott South African products and to force multinational corporations and others to divest in (cut off economic ties with) the country, which is a form of socially responsible investment activism (see Chapter 6). Activists also called academic, cultural, and sports boycotts in attempts to isolate South Africans from professional activities abroad. The United Nations (UN) officially condemned apartheid as inhumane treatment (discrimination) and encouraged nation-states and various organizations to disengage from South Africa (UNRIC, n.d.). The cause for nondiscrimination had clearly formulated demands directed at the targeted economic entities and the South African government that, in moral-philosophical terms, trumped other considerations about the boycott’s economic, political, and unintended effects. Seen together, these three examples illustrate how overriding moral claims on human rights violations can form the core of boycott activism. Scholarship indicates that the targeted entities (Nestlé, Nike, and the South African government) understood clearly the boycott demands and ensuing actions. The examples also show how diversified networks and groups can join together to protect and promote nondiscrimination even when activism is loosely structured and ongoing over several years. Here a key commonality is the lack of a moral dilemma that could lead to confusion and questions about the boycott’s goals, demands, and outcomes. Therefore, these boycotts are close to ideal-typical unproblematic political consumerism. They include one overriding moral claim (human rights protection, nondiscrimination) and have a forthright action repertoire with a coherent message to consumers and the targeted agents of wrongdoing.
Dilemmatic Disney Boycotting Like the iconic brands Nestlé and Nike, the Walt Disney Company occupies a unique position in the history of political consumerism. Established in 1923, it is now the largest global entertainment corporation, functioning in over forty countries and fifty languages. Scholars consider Disney entertainment a “goldmine of agency of socialization” (Jackson, 2002, p. 3) and highly influential globally. Disney’s position and association with controversial political developments explain why it has been a major target for political consumer activism (Best & Lowney 2009). Disney’s role in socializing citizens and its involvement in politics has a long history. In World War II the Disney figure Donald Duck helped convince Americans that paying taxes was a patriotic duty (Donald Duck, 2010). The company and its key animated figures Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse were also involved in the U.S. Good Neighbor Policy in Latin America, aimed at counteracting the ties some countries had with Nazi Germany (Burton, 1992). Donald Duck comics and other Disney entertainment would later figure in discussions about Disney’s strong stance for capitalist ideology
Problematic Political Consumerism 703 and U.S. political and cultural imperialism in the Southern Hemisphere (Dorfman & Mattelart, 1984). Walt Disney, the leading owner of the company, also engaged in politics. He publicized his negative views of labour unions and collective bargaining and was actively involved in the 1950s so-called witch hunt for communist sympathizers in the United States. In one way or another, Disney has always been involved in politics. Later Disney became part of the tug-of-war between traditional or morally conservative values and progressive or liberal ones. Education and popular culture have been key arenas in this ongoing “American cultural war” (Hartman, 2015). In the 1960s and 1970s, leftist counterculture groups fought what they saw as Disney’s support for morally conservative “American family values” and its intolerance of diversity of all kinds. Other boycott activity occurred in the 1990s. Some groups followed this earlier activism, claiming that Disney’s entertainment simply reproduced conventional and outdated social stereotypes. Women activists attacked Disney’s stereotypical portrayal of women; others focused on what they considered Disney’s diminutive and negative portrayal of African Americans as well as Italian, Hispanic, Arab, and Native Americans. All had separate boycotts about Disney’s stereotyping (Craven, 2002; Lugo-Lugo & Bloodsworth-Lugo, 2009; Robinson et al., 2007; see Towbin et al., 2004 for a discussion and additional references). The antisweatshop movement also boycotted Disney. Yet despite these differences, almost all listed boycotts in the 1990s concerned postmaterial concerns, new left identity politics, and multicultural values now part of U.S. society. Scholars, journalists, other observers, and Disney spokespeople note how Disney entertainment began to adapt to these values in order to keep up with the changing times (see, e.g., Orlando Weekly, 2000). What complicates this case and makes it more confusing and problematic is that other civil groups targeted Disney at the same time but for completely different reasons. They formed the other side of the U.S. cultural war, claiming that Disney’s entertainment was “increasingly abhorrent to a healthy culture,” that its theme parks “tolerate, if not promote, alternative lifestyles and perversions” (Miller, 2011, p. 9), and that Disney threatened Christian family values and the American way of life (Juschka, 2001, p. 33; SBC, 1996). These groups demanded that Disney produce entertainment more in line with its family entertainment of the past, calling a nationwide boycott in 1995 and 1996. Their key concern was Disney’s stance for gay rights and same-sex marriage, which they viewed as a “manifestation of a depraved nature” and “not a normal lifestyle” (SBC, 1988). The main groups, the Southern Baptist Convention (the largest U.S. Protestant denomination with over sixteen million members), the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and the American Family Association, also asked supporters to engage in divestments and discursive actions (for an ongoing one see the pro-life and pro-family community petition “Sign the Boycott: Tell Disney ‘NO’ to LGBT Agenda in Beauty and the Beast”; LifePetitions, n.d.). They believed that their political consumer activism was influencing Disney (SBCLife, 1998; Toalson, 1999). What the multicultural and moral conservative boycotts had in common was the belief that Disney’s entertainment had negative effects on how Americans imagined their history and collective identity (see Giroux, 1995; Tavin & Anderson, 2003). This general
704 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral boycott activism is problematic for two main reasons. First, the same Disney goods (entertainment, theme parks, stores, and merchandise such as toys and other movie tie-in goods) were boycotted for highly different reasons, thus sending confusing messages to the Disney corporate boardroom. It would, therefore, have difficulty knowing which claims were behind the loss of sales and reputation. Some of the boycott activism evoked the overriding moral claim of nondiscrimination (demanding that Disney end ethnic, gender, racial, family, and age stereotyping in its entertainment and improve its labour practices at home and abroad); other activism wanted to harm Disney economically to force it back to its earlier view of good family entertainment and to stop supporting homosexuality (which is a violation of human rights and nondiscrimination; UN, n.d.). Second, potential supporters might be confused about the boycott’s effect, thus wondering whether it would be interpreted as a “vote” for the wrong cause. While discursive political consumer activism could avoid this problem (e.g., the abovementioned Christian fundamentalist petition and antisweatshop and other Disney culture jamming; Sandlin & Milam, 2008), potential boycott supporters could not. They were in a moral bind (dilemma): wanting to support a boycott cause but worrying that their support would be chalked up to the wrong side. Some boycott mobilizers admitted that the multiple and diverse reasons for boycotting Disney were contradictory and confusing and threatened to demobilize support. But they tried arguing that their reason for boycotting superseded others. For instance, the antisweatshop Disney boycott stated, “the Southern Baptists are right in boycotting Disney. But they are doing it for all THE WRONG REASONS. If they want to boycott Disney, it should be for Disney’s blatant exploitation of women and children who work under sweatshop conditions through the world” (as quoted in Micheletti, 2010, p. 69). For these two main reasons, the Disney boycotting phenomenon should be understood as a more problematic case of political consumerism. It is fascinating that the Christian fundamentalist boycott triggered a clear reaction from the company’s CEO, Michael Eisner, who denied that their boycott had an economic effect and called its supporters a “splinter group” and “nuts” (as reported in SBCLife, 1998).1 Even more interesting is that Disney received support from groups that previously boycotted it. Gay activists mobilized to counter the fundamentalist Christian boycott and divestment call by asking supporters to invest economically in all kinds of Disney goods, thus calling for gay buycotting to counter moral conservative boycotting. Whether the “pink [gay] dollar” buycott helped buoy up Disney economically cannot be determined. Scholars generally find it difficult to evaluate the economic effect of boycotts (see Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, pp. 219–222). There is general agreement that the boycott was ineffective; the Southern Baptists called it off in 2005 (The Economist, 1997; MSNBC, 2005). Even more intriguing is that the Walt Disney Company became a political consumer activist because of its corporate citizenship policies (Micheletti & Stolle, 2012). The company directly participated in the U.S. cultural wars when, in 2016, it threatened a surrogate boycott of the U.S. state of Georgia if a legislative bill allowing religious groups to refuse service to the LGBT community became law (CNN Wire Service, 2016; Kineavy,
Problematic Political Consumerism 705 2016). Thus, in various ways Disney continues to engage in the U.S. cultural war over identity politics, multiculturalism, and human rights. In some cases it is the target of action; in others it is a political consumer actor seeking to promote its corporate citizenship mission by using its purchasing power to wield influence. Importantly, the Disney case illustrates weaknesses and challenges of boycotting well-known, highly reputable, and iconic brands. Such targeting is problematic because conflicting interests may also decide to boycott the brand, which creates confusions and moral dilemmas about using the market as an arena for politics. The case also shows how big brands easily become arenas for societal struggles and forces generally beyond their control, in this case the U.S. cultural wars, and how corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship can force corporations to take sides in controversial political issues and engage in political consumer activism to defend their own values and policies.
Moral Dilemmas with Boycotting in the Israeli Case Like the South African example, boycotting to change Israeli policy in the occupied territories is primarily a surrogate boycott. However, unlike the South African case, it illustrates how morally dilemmatic political consumerism can be when two overriding claims of nondiscrimination clash: nondiscrimination of Palestinians and anti-Semitism. The case is further complicated by the historical legacy of anti-Semitic boycotting and anti-Jewish political consumerism (particularly from the 1930s; see Encyclopædia, 1971) and the traumatic past of both Israelis and Palestinians (Hollander, 2009), thus illustrating the importance of a historical and political context for political consumerism more generally. In the following discussion, the first subsection focuses on BDS’s goals, political actions, and contradictions in relation to the ideal type model. The second subsection focuses on the moral dilemmas that BDS poses for governments and the final subsection summarizes the problematic character of this particular case.
The Boycott Movement: The Case of Israel Boycotting is a common nonviolent political instrument social movements use to seek societal change and promote freedom, justice, and equality.2 This form of political consumerism plays a central role in the conflict between Palestine and Israel and particularly for BDS. Although the boycott dimension of the BDS campaign is three-tiered (economic, cultural, and academic), this discussion mainly focuses on the first one. The starting point for BDS is that Israel is not complying with international law and that other states fail to hold Israel accountable for its legal violations highlighting the 2004
706 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel’s decision to build a wall in the occupied Palestinian territory violates international law. That same year the UN General Assembly endorsed and asked Israel to comply with the ICJ’s decision. It is, therefore, possible to see the BDS as “not a unilateral measure” but a demand for international laws to be enforced (Sourani, 2013, pp. 69–70). The BDS aims at pressuring Israel in a similar fashion as the South African case (see Chapter 3). In addition, BDS hopes that its boycott will achieve “withdrawing support for Israel and Israeli and international companies that are involved in the violation of Palestinian human rights, as well as complicit Israeli sporting, cultural and academic institutions” (BDS, n.d., p. a). It views political consumerism as important because “targeted consumer boycotts are convincing retailers across the world to stop selling products from companies profiting from Israel’s crimes” (BDS, n.d., p. b). Thus BDS seeks to isolate Israeli companies and institutions economically and politically. The BDS movement was started in 2005 by 170 Palestinian civil society organizations, including unions, political parties, churches, women’s organizations, professional associations, and refugee networks. Supporters of BDS even include some progressive Jewish groups, mainly in the United States; Israeli citizens are also invited to support the cause. The movement’s demands are that Israel: (1) ends “its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the wall”; (2) recognizes “the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality”; and (3) respects, protects, and promotes “the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194” (Palestinian Civil Society, 2005). It asks supporters to boycott Israeli banks that finance construction in settlements and corporations that profit from the occupation. The movement also seeks support from student groups, city councils in different countries, national governments, and the European Union (EU). The BDS states that it targets the Israeli state because Israel denies these rights to Palestinians, not because most of its citizens are Jewish (The Palestine Solidarity Movement, 2011). It mobilizes both international civil society organizations and individual consumers in its boycott and divestment call, thus identifying an oppressed people (Palestinians), an oppressor institution (the Israeli state), and mobilizing citizens into global solidarity actions (Ananth, 2013, p. 137). Thus, it resembles the South African boycott, where the “international movement was not simply working on behalf of oppressed South Africans, but in conjunction with them” (Kasrils, 2013, p. 28). There has even been student and faculty activism at universities, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom, for an academic boycott against Israel. Some professional academic associations have also hotly debated the issue. Many of them decided not to support the boycott, such as the American Anthropological Association and the Modern Language Association (Jerusalem Post, 2017; Traphagan, 2016). However, churches in the United States have viewed the BDS more favourably. The Presbyterian Church USA, the United Methodist Church, several Quaker entities, the Mennonite Central Committee, and the United Church of Christ passed a divestment and boycott resolution targeting five companies (Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, G4S, and Veolia) because of their involvement in the occupied territories (972 Magazine, 2015).
Problematic Political Consumerism 707 What does the BDS boycott? The BDS movement focuses on goods that Israel produces and manufactures in the occupied territories, including fruits and vegetables, manufactured goods (Caterpillar bulldozers, SodaStream home drink machines, Ahava cosmetics, and Hewlett-Packard). It also targets G4S, the world’s largest security company, because of its role in the treatment of Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli prisons and claims that Palestinian political prisoners are tortured (Electronic Intifada, 2014). During Israel’s Operation Protective Edge against Gaza in the summer of 2014, BDS called a boycott of Garnier products because Garnier provided care packages (deodorants, soaps, face creams, and other cosmetics) to women soldiers in the Israeli army (Boycott Garnier, 2014). The movement’s activists also target market actors outside of Israel (YNet, 2016). In 2016, BDS organized an international action week against Hewlett-Packard for its role in “Israel’s human rights violations” (BDS, 2016a). Some important European companies have terminated their ties with Israel, including the French transnational company Veolia (working on infrastructural matters such as water and waste management, public transport, and energy services provided to the settlements (BDS, 2015); the French telecom company Orange, which contracted with Israel’s Partner Communications (Electronic Intifada, 2016); and the Irish buildings materials corporation CRH, associated with Israeli Nesher that supplies cement for the construction of walls in Israel and settlements (BDS, 2016b). Others have decided not to use pension funds for investments and/or divested from Israeli banks.3 The Palestinian BDS National Committee claims that the boycott and divestment call has been somewhat successful. However, it must be emphasized that it is difficult to estimate its general effectiveness and that the Palestinian National BDS Committee is often the only source documenting the effects. Thus, an impartial assessment is difficult. Nevertheless, according to the 25th World Investment Report, there was a 46 percent drop in foreign direct investment in Israel in 2014 (Jerusalem Post, 2015). Important to note is that BDS is not without contradictions and confusions, thus illustrating characteristics of its more dilemmatic and problematic nature. First, there is the problem of distinguishing between the settlements and Israel’s economy, thus raising the question of whether “either or both the occupation and Israeli apartheid must be the target of boycotts” (McMahon, 2014, p. 73). This problem creates confusion for the actors when it comes to mobilizing support for BDS and even for the enterprises that BDS targets in its boycotts. Some actors argue that the boycott must include all Israeli products because the two economies are inseparable and the settlement economy cannot survive outside the Israeli economy (Hever, 2013, 112; Kasrils, 2013, pp. 28–29), thus reinforcing the argument that the occupation is profitable for Israel because the “settlement enterprise is still more of an asset than a liability” (Schaeffer Omer-Man, 2016). Therefore, BDS demonstrates a complication concerning the extent to which the state of Israel and occupied territories are separable. In short, is Israel’s existence as a sovereign state in question or is it only its occupation of the Palestinian territories? Second, BDS involves a clear moral dilemma involving two overriding claims of nondiscrimination that clash in debates and actions associated with BDS. The question is, therefore, how can support for BDS be justified to protect Palestinian rights when it can also be used to fuel
708 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral anti-Semitism? Interestingly, it is the same international law that legitimizes BDS’s actions and recognizes the state of Israel’s right to exist (McMahon, 2014, p. 72). These two concerns about identifying BDS boycott targets and BDS’s general ramifications have haunted the movement and involve risks of alienating supporters from it. The BDS movement is not immune to criticisms about fostering anti-Semitic tendencies. Its actions need to be put into a larger context involving the treatment of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany in 1930s. Moreover, the Arab states’ boycott from 1945 with the foundation of the Arab League, and the introduction of the resolution that not only member states but also other Arab territories should “prohibit the importation and use of the products in the Jewish industry in Palestine” in order to oppose the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, should also be taken into account (Sarna, 1986, p. 7). This boycott of Israel was to “prevent Arab states and discourage non-Arabs from directly or indirectly contributing to Israel’s economic and military strength” (Turck, 1977, p. 472). In 1951 a Central Boycott Office (CBO) was set up to implement the boycott; national offices were also set up in each member state (Losman, 1972, p. 108). While the boycott’s main goal was to impair Israel’s economy, Saudi Arabia’s boycott practices took an anti-Jewish turn when it issued boycott instructions in 1952 about not conducting “business abroad owned or controlled by Jews or that employed Jews” (Sarna, 1986, pp. 14–15). Other such instances have been reported as well (Losman, 1972, p. 110). While such developments have fostered anti-Semitism, the CBO’s General Principles of Boycott of Israel “contains no boycotting criteria based on religion or ethnic origin” (Turck, 1977, p. 480). The BDS movement has put effort into explaining that it has never intended to directly target the Jewish people or Israelis as Jews. It identifies itself as an “inclusive, anti-racist human rights movement” principally opposed to “all forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia” (BDS, n.d., p. a). There are many Jewish BDS activists within and outside of Israel, such as the “Boycott from Within” group coordinated by Israeli Jews.4 The presence of Jewish voices is important to confront accusations of anti- Semitism (Pappe, 2013, p. 137). However, it is not only this historical context that makes support for the BDS problematic in some circles. The question is also whether and to what extent it is justifiable to make Israeli citizens suffer the consequences of boycott and divestment efforts that, in fact, target the Israeli state. This concerns the difficulty of drawing the line between a nonviolent political action and its unintended consequences. Is it BDS’s responsibility if its actions are used for the wrong purposes and by the wrong hands? Here BDS shows similarities with the general boycotting of Disney discussed in earlier in the chapter.
Multilevel Government Political Consumer Engagements on Settlement Goods These concerns also challenge governments. Most national governments, including the EU, agree that the Israeli settlements are counterproductive to the general Middle East
Problematic Political Consumerism 709 peace process. At the same time they generally find BDS’s political consumerism challenging both domestically and internationally (Barry, 2007; Fishman, 2012; Lovatt & Toaldo, 2015). Domestically BDS is seem as polarizing society, and there are policy discussions about banning BDS from college campuses in North America, Great Britain, and Australia due to clashes between BDS and Israel supporters. Governments also view BDS activists differently: some maintain that they are terrorists, other that they are human rights defenders (ABC, 2013; Jafar, 2017; Kovacs, 2016; Seidman, 2016; Trudeau, 2015; Watanabe, 2016; Wertheimer, 2016). Governments also differ on what is at stake when it comes to BDS. Some governments have evoked the overriding claim of trade nondiscrimination and even anti-Semitism in policy discussions and legislation on trade with Israel and Israeli consumer goods. A prime example is the United States. Its federal and state governments have repeatedly condemned boycotting goods from Israel; it views settlement goods as part of Israeli supply chains. The federal government disavowed the Arab League’s post–World War II boycott, passed legislation on the matter as early as 1959, and specified in 1977 that it was illegal for U.S. companies to cooperate with the boycott (Weiss, 2017). The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Antiboycott Compliance monitors and enforces this legislation. Additional legislative measures against BDS have been repeatedly submitted to the U.S. Congress. The proposed “Combating BDS Act of 2016” would, for instance, authorize government to divest from entities that support the BDS boycott (H.R. 4514, 2016). Similar measures have been passed in twenty-one U.S. states (as of July 2017) (see http://righttoboycott.org/). An important argument for prohibiting BDS’s political consumerism (boycott and divestment) is that it is contrary to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) principle of nondiscrimination (H.R. 825, 2015). Certain BSD critics even maintain that the U.S. government should oppose the 2016 UN Human Rights Council resolution urging the taking of “immediate measures to prohibit and eradicate all policies and practices that discriminate against and disproportionately affect the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory” (UN, 2016; Weiss, 2017). Canada has also taken a strong stance against BDS and its political consumerism. Its federal government declares that BDS fuels global hatred and anti-Semitism and includes attempts to delegitimize and demonize Israel (Public Safety Canada, 2015). It condemns all efforts by Canadian organizations, groups, or individuals to promote BDS at home and abroad (House of Commons, 2016; JTN, 2016). Israel’s reaction is even stronger. The Knesset passed an antiboycott law in 2011 prohibiting “the public promotion of academic, economic or cultural boycott by Israeli citizens and organizations against Israeli institutions or illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank” (Adalah, 2011) and has prepared a bill that would “forbid the granting of entry visas or residence permits to foreign nationals who have called for economic, cultural or academic boycotts of Israel or the settlements” (Haaretz, 2017a). The strategic affairs minister has also announced that he wants to create a database of Israeli citizens involved in BDS against Israel or the settlements (Haaretz, 2017b).5 Other countries reason differently, as illustrated by the Irish Parliament’s position on not supporting BDS but recognizing that it has a “legitimate political viewpoint, albeit
710 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral one regarded in Israel as deeply hostile” (Irish Parliament, 2016; Irish Times, 2016). The Netherlands, Sweden, and some other European countries have also evoked the principle of freedom of speech and association for allowing BDS to operate in their countries and mobilize support among consumers and civil society. Implicit in this cross-national and international debate are the advantages and disadvantages of political consumerism as part of the Middle East peacemaking process. A particular concern is its confrontational nature. The BDS movement’s boycotts and divestments are seen as threatening to the development of economic cooperation through free trade and commerce in the Middle East region. Its political consumerism is accused of simplifying the complexity of the Israeli-Palestine conflict into a matter of consumer choice and, as mentioned earlier, its mobilizing activities are seem as polarizing society. Thus, BDS involves national governmental debates on the moral claims of nondiscrimination and constitutional principles such as freedom of speech and association (Harvard Law Review, 2016). It perplexes public representatives and organizations. At times the court system has had to step in. In France, the courts overturned a local government’s decision to prohibit a BDS meeting, with the argument that the decision infringed on the constitutional right of freedom of association (Telesur, 2016). Courts in other countries have also settled disputes, for instance on the legal right of governments as public procurers to engage in BDS’s political consumerism (ABC, 2013). In an important decision in 2016, the London High Court of Justice ruled that the British national government cannot prohibit cities from boycotting Israeli settlement goods and divesting in companies associated with the occupied territories—as long as the local councils have good ethical reasons for doing so and follow international law. It thereby overruled the national government’s ban and rejected the contention that such market-based actions were anti-Semitic and contravening national laws on equality (Independent, 2016). The British government has, however, taken further steps to stop city councils from using public procurement as a political consumer weapon against Israel, stating that it wants to put an end to “town hall boycotts” (Gov.UK, 2017). The BDS movement has also perplexed and challenged the EU, which felt pressure from member-states and European civil society to do more once the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks showed severe signs of failure (Beaumont, 2015). Following a series of European Parliament resolutions, the European Commission (EC) in late 2015 issued a formal interpretative notice declaring that products coming from Israeli settlements cannot be labelled as “Made in Israel.” The commission, carefully stressing that it was adhering to international law and existing EU legislation, said that it wanted to give European consumers transparent information on the “country of origin” of many foodstuffs and household products. Its interpretative notice also turns responsibility over to EU member states, charging them with enforcing Israeli compliance and seeing to it that their retailers and supermarkets help verify correct adherence to EU policy. This soft law policy is similar to the practices in certain EU member-states. For instance, since 2009 the United Kingdom has had a policy that advises supermarkets on how to distinguish between foods from the settlements and Palestinian-manufactured goods (Guardian, 2009). Some member-states advise businesses in their jurisdiction about the legal and
Problematic Political Consumerism 711 financial ramifications of not following the guidelines; this has led to divestment activities in certain European countries (EC, 2015; Persson, 2015). Others have done less. In its policy notice, the EU has, thus, sought to avoid the accusation of supporting BDS and a general boycott of Israel, while at the same time attempting to appease BDS supporters within the EU. In short, within the EU the moral dilemmas surrounding BDS are framed as a matter of consumers’ rights for transparency and freedom of choice. The European Union’s soft law measures have not gone unnoticed internationally. Israel and the United States criticize them, claiming that the EC is using trade regulations for political purposes and that the EU’s policy is an anti-Jewish and anti-Israel boycott in disguise. Some scholars agree (e.g., Sabel 2016). In a statement after the notice was released, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled global “historical memory of what happened when Europe labelled Jewish products” (Galai, 2015). The BDS movement considers the policy as “hardly a proportionate response to repeated Israeli war crimes” (JTA, 2015abc; NYT, 2015; Times of Israel, 2015; WJS, 2015). In sum, the EU has attempted to navigate an international political minefield with the help of supply chain logic and by turning operative responsibility for this soft law policy over to others, including consumers.
Morally Problematic BDS Political Consumerism The BDS movement illustrates how complex and problematic political consumer activism can be when it involves a clash of overriding moral claims. Here anti-Semitism is posed against discrimination of Palestinians that stems from Israel’s occupation of territories outside its sovereign limits. Aside from human rights and nondiscrimination, the case involves democratic freedoms—activists’ freedom of speech and freedom of association—and negative effects on third parties, for instance Israeli citizens who might suffer the consequences by being held responsible for their state’s actions and, therefore, face economic hardship. Additionally, unlike many other cases of political consumer activism involving simply corporate targeting but similar to other major surrogate boycotts, governments worldwide are drawn into the controversy; they have also taken different positions on BDS. Some have decided that anti-Semitism is the overriding moral claim, thus justifying harsh antiboycott legislation as applied in the United States, Canada, and Israel. The EU has devised another approach by turning considerable responsibility for deciding whether or not to support BDS over to others. It has, thus, implemented a “responsibilization strategy” that offloads the morally complex and dilemmatic political issues involved with the settlement goods on others. This puts consumers and other market actors on the spot. Ultimately, it is these actors who must deal with the clash of competing overriding moral claims and figure out whether political consumer boycotting is the best way forward for handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another form of political consumerism, namely buycotting, could, of course, be considered. While there are some goods with fairtrade labels and some ethical enterprises working on this matter, these goods are not well-known and not easy to find in
712 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral most countries (Canaan, n.d.; Zaytoun, n.d.). Buycott political consumer activism has been used in other politically challenging settings, for instance to counteract the Mafia in Italy (Forno & Gunnarson, 2010; Rivaroli et al., 2017).
Conclusion Political consumerism is not always clear-cut. It can be confusing and complex, and it does not always directly promote democratic progress. Our cases illustrate when it is more unproblematic, that is, when political consumer activism involves an undisputable, overriding moral claim applied in undisputable and justifiable political action (e.g., the Nestlé, Nike, and South African examples) and when, as in the Disney and BDS cases, it can be highly complex and challenging—both morally and politically. The Disney case shows how market-based activism targeting one well-known and reputable corporation can be confusing and can cause moral dilemmas for potential supporters and organizers. Even more problematic is when overriding moral claims clash, as in the BDS case, and force involved actors and institutions to make uncomfortable decisions and choices. Boycotting in political consumer activism seems particularly prone to these problems because support can come from unintended sources, though other chapters in this Handbook (see Chapters 31 and 34) discuss how buycott activism can also be complex and confusing. Political consumerism can, therefore, be problematic in terms of goals, targets, and messages to the targets. More research on the problematic nature of political consumerism is necessary. Political consumerism’s moral claims need to be unpacked and analysed. Important fields of research might include the role of religion in political consumerism, which, as indicated in our cases, seems to play a variety of roles. Other topics might include political consumer action against popular fast-food chains (McDonald’s, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken) and the anti-GMO (genetically modified organism) activism primarily against the transnational seed-producer Monsanto. Moral arguments about animal treatment (fast-food boycott activism) or environmental concerns about ecosystems (anti- GMO activism) might, for example, be contrasted with other concerns about basic human needs, for instance a homeless person’s need for an inexpensive, nutritious warm meal indoors or the significance of how some GMO food is higher in nutrients and more resistant to certain diseases for undernourished people generally. In these cases, it appears important to ponder in an open fashion whether basic human needs for survival, a minimally good life, and food security might not override claims for better treatment of farm animals and prohibition of animal consumption (the case of fast-food activism) or concerns about GMOs in the ecosystem (see Chapter 8; Micheletti & Stolle, 2012; Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, chap. 5). These ideas are controversial but they are discussed internationally in some circles. Here the ideal-type
Problematic Political Consumerism 713 model can help to sort out, contrast, and evaluate the arguments against a moral philosophical standard. Studying more problematic cases poses several scholarly challenges. First, it can be difficult to find suitable and objective primary source material for scientific analysis. In the Disney case, some sources (including reliable corporate-selling data and media interviews) are not readily available, thus revealing an important general research challenge for political consumer study of particular significance for more problematic cases. In the BDS case, many of our sources come from Israeli and Palestine media presentations or NGOs that have taken a stand on the matter. Scholars must, therefore, apply the source criticism (historical) method for evaluating information sources (Garraghan, 1946). This method includes studying the source’s validity, reliability, and relevance to the topic at hand. A good grip of the source’s originators and their intention and purpose is necessary for evaluating its use as empirical material. Facts and statements from one source should also be verified through other independent sources. Language proficiency is also important for access to more direct sources without relying on translated summaries and NGO and media reporting. Second, creating one’s own empirical material through, for instance, interviews and participant observation is a good idea. However, this may be problematic when the case is controversial and polarized, thus making it difficult for the scholar to get access to people to interview, including receiving visas to do field work in geographic areas such as in the occupied territories. Third, researchers studying a problematic form of political consumerism might be—and have been—accused of position- taking. Here just wanting to study a topic can be interpreted as activism in itself. These problems with conducting research might be particularly difficult when it comes to well- known corporations and states protective of their reputation. Finally, scholars should know the history of a political consumer action. For instance, new boycott actions might actually be part of a longer controversial history of previous actions or, at least, be interpreted as part of them. Thus, before studying a sensitive or problematic case of political consumerism, scholars should learn its historical, political, and economic context. Such contextualization may also help scholars understand why, as in the BDS case, governments and countries react so differently to political consumer causes and actions.
Notes 1. Documentation from the Today Show and 60 Minutes is not readily available. See instead https://search.alexanderstreet.com/preview/work/2860911 for parts of the transcript of the Eisner interview on 60 Minutes. 2. This section is based on Didem Oral’s research conducted through a Swedish Institute scholarship based at Stockholm University. 3. Examples include the United Methodists for Kairos Response’s pension fund (United Methodists for Kairos Response, n.d.) and the Dutch pension fund PGGM (BDS, 2014). 4. For a more detailed analysis of Boycott from Within, see Oral (2018): “Peace Movements in Militaristic Societies: Israel and Turkey as Unidentical Twins” (unpublished PhD diss.).
714 Michele Micheletti and Didem Oral 5. While the Palestinian BDS National Committee called this attempt to create such a database a way of “repressing Israeli citizens for their political thought and human rights work” (BDS 2017), Israeli BDS activists interpreted it as a “good sign” which shows that they are on the right track (Haaretz 2017c).
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Chapter 34
S om e Dilem mas of P olitical C on sume ri sm Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra
When consumers make choices that are politically, ethically, or environmentally motivated, they are typically doing so with at least the hope, and at times the assumption, that their approach to consumption results in making the world a better place. But as critical research on political consumerism has increasingly shown, attempts at more ethical forms of consumption bring about dilemmas of their own. The moral frameworks that inform political consumerism are always rooted in longstanding local histories, which will invariably include the tensions, social differences, and economic realities that shape all forms of consumption. Like all consumers, politically motivated consumers have their own perspectives and blind spots. To make an ethical purchase using one set of criteria may frequently result in maintaining or even exacerbating inequalities or injustices when measured by other criteria. The nature of such dilemmas in political consumerism can best be understood with reference to specific examples that are rooted in their local or regional contexts. This chapter proposes that one striking example is that of ecotourism in the Philippines. Understanding the Philippines as a society in which all forms of consumerism are socially distinctive in a deeply uneven terrain of cross-class differences, this chapter will focus on the emergence of ecotourism as one important space in which dilemmas of political consumerism can most clearly be seen. While ecotourism can be viewed as a form of political consumerism, it also obscures and at times compounds environmental hazards, local political tensions, and cross-class differences. Drawing from the growing literature on ecotourism in the Philippines, and from Webb’s own ethnographic research on the island of Palawan, this chapter describes the broad dimensions that shape political consumerism in the Philippines—with a particular focus on the importance of class relations—before discussing the rise of ecotourism and presenting a case study from the Underground River, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the island of Palawan. Ecoconsciousness in the Philippines remains primarily a middle-class, even elite, affair. Since the late twentieth century, emerging interest in lifestyles consciously considered
722 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra sustainable has taken divergent forms across Metro Manila and provincial municipalities, including buying organically labelled products, cycling, community gardening and shopping at boutique farmers’ markets. For many consumers engaged in such practices, they do so within a broader context of engaging with the mainstream economy and tend not to live “off the grid” nor to engage in explicitly radical forms of social or political organisation. For example, the purchase of organic food products may typically take place within suburban shopping malls, and the most successful weekend farmers’ markets in the business district of Manila occupy parking lots that are filled with cars during the weekdays. The basis of much middle-class ecoconscious consumerism, then, is rooted in concerns about the quality of mass-produced goods and associated health concerns or about large conglomerates overpowering local small businesses. To live a somewhat “green” lifestyle, a middle-class Filipino in the city will often require a considerable degree of social and financial capital to sustain more costly consumption practices and to engage in the work of seeking out unusual alternatives. Whether intentionally or not, most “green” consumers in the Philippines make claims to social distinction through their embracing of ecoconscious products, as their seeking of “local” or small-scale tourism products is frequently made with reference to questions of taste (Bourdieu, 1986; see also Pinches, 2010; Webb, 2017). In contrast, the consumption practices and livelihoods of poor Filipinos are often understood as being environmentally harmful or at best neutral. Some livelihoods that are low in prestige and low in income, such as the scavenging of rubbish for recycling or resale of goods, are associated with pollution and dirt even while the rubbish being scavenged is largely created by better-off citizens. In cities such as Metro Manila, poorer citizens consume recooked food discards and suffer social stigma as a result (Alejandria- Gonzalez, in press). Such practices are a consequence of food insecurity resulting in economic strategies that differ from seemingly similar practices found in wealthier economies such as forms of dumpster-diving based on ideological or environmental principles. In regional areas, some fishing, agricultural, and forestry practices that poorer Filipinos engage in have been blamed for the destruction of marine environments, deforestation, and pollution. When low-income Filipinos are more positively represented as engaged in ethical and sustainable forms of production and consumption, it is often because they have been targeted by charity initiatives and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as those that divert former scavenger communities into new forms of work, women’s cooperatives that transform juice packets into bags (Milgram, 2010), or alternative gardening projects (Hobson & Hill, 2011).
Background: Class and Consumption in the Philippines Global trade and the transnational movement of consumer goods have been at the heart of Philippine society and economy for many centuries. The capital of Manila, as the
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 723 Asian stronghold of the Spanish empire, was a key part of the Galleon trade that brought Chinese goods and American silver across the Pacific Ocean for 250 years between 1565 and 1815. In contemporary times, consumer goods remain a fundamental part of everyday life for Manila’s citizens, now living in a city of nearly thirteen million that is one of the most densely inhabited spaces in the world. Mass consumption shapes the lives of most Filipinos, whether they are regular shoppers in the country’s many shopping malls or working as scavengers on rubbish sites. The urban Philippine landscape, whether in Manila or in other cities and periurban areas, is one in which the material features of a longstanding capitalist economy are abundantly present. Billboards, restaurants, and shopping arcades dot the roadsides, and even in rural or low-income areas sari-sari stores selling small grocery items can be found in every village, while advertising for soft drinks and mobile phone credit hang from streetposts or are plastered on sides of buildings. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to suggest that Filipinos are deeply immersed in consumer capitalism, and that such consumer capitalism shapes the lives of the very rich and the very poor—and the growing middle class in between—in different but equally important ways. In the Philippines, socioeconomic relations that result from deeply uneven market engagements have long made consumption a moral affair. The diversity of consumption practices to be found in the Philippines can be understood with reference to several key factors: firstly, despite the decades in which political power was highly centralised under the control of President Ferdinand Marcos (1965–1986), the Philippines is marked by a strong civil society. The 1987 Constitution of the Philippines recognises that civil society organisations and NGOs play active and formalised roles in many processes and policies related to local development, poverty alleviation, labour, and community organisation and education (Asian Development Bank, 2013). A second key factor in contemporary Philippine society is the economic importance of overseas workers and emigrants; in 2015, personal remittances constituted approximately 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The country’s dependence upon remittances for more than fifteen years has transformed migratory patterns, family relations, education trends, and political movements—and has also transformed consumption patterns, as overseas workers fund new acquisitions for their families in the Philippines and hope to return home after many years having built a house, set up a business, or otherwise established their economic security. A third dimension that characterises the Philippines’ consumer capitalism is the popularity of shopping malls in urban locations. Although shopping malls were historically associated with U.S. American suburban culture, in the contemporary world shopping malls have become an essential part of consumer lifestyles across Asia, with the Philippines leading the way and hosting four of the world’s ten largest shopping malls. Shopping malls have become the de facto public and leisure space for middle-class Filipinos, where time is spent not only shopping but also eating, socialising, participating in cultural activities, and attending religious services. As a number of scholars have noticed, an understanding of class difference as entrenched and culturally meaningful dominates the Philippine experience of place,
724 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra politics, language, and entertainment (Doronila, 1985; Kerkvliet, 1995; Pertierra, 2016; Pinches, 2010; Rafael, 2008). Political consumerism in the Philippines is also experienced and practiced within this context of class difference. While this is the case in many parts of the world, where the exclusive purchasing of organic foods or ethically produced clothing, for example, may also be understood as a claim to class distinction, class differences are especially pronounced in the Philippines. Ecoconscious lifestyles and consumer practices remain largely the domain of elite and middle-class Filipinos, and as such, engagement with sustainable and environmentally friendly consumption may be seen as a marker of class distinction, and it is sometimes accompanied by criticisms of the urban and rural poor for issues ranging from the presence of rubbish to deforestation. Political consumerism in the Philippines therefore not only has been used by citizens as a way of shaping the nation’s economic, environmental, and social future but also has become a means of experiencing and debating the cultural dimensions of class relations.
The Emergence of Ecotourism in the Philippines Situating the dynamics of ecotourism as part of ongoing historical processes concerning diverse contexts can assist in understanding some broader dilemmas of political consumerism. In the Philippines, as elsewhere, there are ambitious aims for ecotourism. The potential of ecotourism to generate income is part of national strategies to reduce poverty, whilst simultaneously supporting biodiversity and conservation of “nature” and contributing to broader nation-building. The possibility of achieving this balance often rests upon the idea of ecotourism as an economic alternative to large-scale resource-extraction activities such as mining and logging, and also to popular livelihood activities such as fishing and upland cultivation. That is, ecotourism’s status as a potentially sustainable form of national development is often based on being presented as more sustainable than other industries in terms of detrimental environmental impacts.1 And yet the country’s ecotourism research sector has long acknowledged that so- called sustainable tourism development in the Philippines tends to require economic, social, and environmental trade-offs rather than balance, which raises important questions about who benefits from ecotourism as a strategy for national sustainable development (Alampay, 2005, p. 10). Ecotourism in the Philippines has been built on a substantial foundation of domestic tourism. For decades the promotion of “local” ecotourism sites as a natural heritage for Filipinos has been part of national policies on development and tourism. Since the 1970s such promotion has specifically targeted millions of balikbayans, Filipinos living permanently abroad who may have acquired citizenship elsewhere (Pido, 2015; Rafael, 1997, pp. 269–270; Rieder, 1997; Rodolfo, 2009, pp. 237–243). Under the Aquino government
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 725 (1986–1992), Philippine tourism was framed as both for Filipinos and to be supported by Filipinos. The notion that Filipinos should visit places of their own collective heritage throughout the country was extended through schemes to subsidise travel and develop accommodation and tours appropriate to the tastes and budgets of “the ordinary Filipino” (Rieder, 1997, p. 225). The promotion of ecotourism and national pride was a focus of the Estrada administration at the turn of the century (Rodolfo, 2009, p. 240).2 In the early twenty-first century, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo attempted to further encourage domestic tourism through a programme to move public holidays to weekends and a promotional campaign that included national media coverage of her visits to key tourism destinations across the country (Alampay, 2005, p. 1; Rodolfo, 2009, p. 240). Since the 2002 National Ecotourism Program, building national ecotourism markets has continued to focus on the development and marketing of key local sites (Dela Santa, 2015, p. 167). While many aspirations surrounding ecotourism—from the state, industry, and Filipino citizens—concern international visitors, the contributions of Filipino tourists to national ecotourism markets have been considerable. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was the support of a broader domestic tourism market that partially buffered a burgeoning Philippine ecotourism market when disease outbreaks, kidnappings, and concerns about terrorism impacted severely on international visitor arrivals (Rodolfo, 2005, p. 36). The increasing accessibility of domestic tourism to some Filipinos, along with the domestic support of national tourism markets, converged with growing forms of middle class in the country. The rise in middle-class identities has been of considerable interest to researchers of politics and consumer culture in the Philippines, who have suggested “that there are new and substantial layers of people in between” burgis (bourgeois/rich) and masa (the masses/poor) and that “their collective existence is becoming more important, and that their identities are to be discovered primarily in their consumer practices and capacities” (Pinches, 2005, p. 293). While class may not necessarily be a primary or unifying form of identity in the Philippines,3 the rise of middle-class lifestyles is increasingly shaping perceptions of daily life in the Philippines and pursuits of alternative futures (Turner, 1995). The motivations and practices of the newly grown Filipino middle class are diverse and are not always expressed through political consumerism. But since the late twentieth century, ambitions for ecotourism have positioned such middle-class Filipinos at the centre of efforts to develop ecotourism, investing in the notion of a national, natural heritage that could be both utilised and protected through market-based means (see, e.g., Bagarinao, 1998, p. 237). In the twenty-first century as “eco” has come to have a different kind of lifestyle value, it is much more common for tourism products to be branded as ecotourism. However, this does not necessarily indicate that tourism has increasingly become of lower environmental impact and greater social and economic benefit for local residents. As greater numbers of middle-class Filipinos are participating in consumption practices branded as ecotourism, what it means to visit sites of “nature” has changed significantly from the kinds of practices that were popular amongst smaller numbers of Filipino and international ecotourists in the
726 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra late twentieth century (Libosada, 1998). Environmental anthropologists working in major Philippine ecotourism sites have questioned whether consumption practices that are being called “ecotourism” might better be referred to as “tourism of the environment,” rather than as tourism that is necessarily environmental (Eder, 2008, p. 151; Fabinyi, 2010, p. 422; see also Alampay & Libosada, 2005, pp. 127–131). Considering this distinction requires acknowledging that ecotourism does not necessarily result in ecological conservation (West & Carrier, 2004). Ecotourism practices often focus on delineating certain types of nature and making these recognisable and accessible for consumers. As such, ecotourism practices do more than commodify an existing nature. What West and Carrier argue often occurs instead is a form of virtualism, where ecotourism locations become materially remade to better resemble the images of nature that circulate through market-based flows and that tourists themselves idealise (West & Carrier, 2004, p. 485). So how might those interested in ecotourism as a form of political consumerism make sense of these dilemmas—the politics of how the environment is valued through tourism practices, aspirations for how ecotourism might contribute to national development and nation building, and the potential buying power of middle-class Filipino consumers to transform consumer practices as domestic tourists? As Lamers et al. discuss in Chapter 17 the practices of “conscious and affluent” consumers are embedded within often paradoxical trade-offs between the potential benefits and impacts of specific tourism activities. The subsequent sections offer one possible way of exploring these tensions by examining some examples of what ecotourism practices and visiting places of “nature” have looked like in the Philippines since the late twentieth century. The discussion elaborates on the themes raised in this brief outlining of the emergence of ecotourism in the Philippines: that as ecobranded tourism has become more affordable and of greater interest to increasing middle classes of Filipinos, significant transformations of ecotourism practices have occurred; that significant policy and discourse suggest that local tourism sites are part of a natural, national heritage that belongs to all Filipinos; and that ecotourism regularly involves significant trade-offs that require researchers to critically question who benefits from ecotourism. In considering these themes, visiting places of natural heritage might be seen as potentially productive practices where certain Filipino citizens might aspire to use leisure to further both national pride and protection of the environment. Yet, studying the dilemmas of political consumerism requires giving substantial attention to the cultural politics of the lifestyle and discursive dimensions of political consumerism. Doing so means acknowledging that while forms of consumption branded as environmental have become more available to more Filipinos, they are hardly available to most. This brings the discussion to its central point of investigation: the conceptualisation of ecotourism and other forms of political consumerism in the Philippines has long been based on a discursive division steeped in broader social differentiations—a class-based distinction between those who can afford “environmental” consumer lifestyles and those who should be made to have more “environmental” livelihoods. There are several problematic dimensions to this distinction that are apparent in key trends within ecotourism in the Philippines since the late
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 727 twentieth century and have a broader relevance to considering the dilemmas of political consumerism.
Livelihoods, Lifestyles, and Ecotourism Simply assuming that ecotourism is “good” for the environment obscures the complexities, contestations, and politics of measuring environmental impacts (Bryant & Goodman, 2004; Wilk, 2004). In the Philippines, ecotourism is often understood as offering an alternative to livelihood activities considered to be inherently environmentally destructive. The idea that ecotourism is providing “better” livelihoods for the environment is often appealing to ecotourists, and it can be used to support notions that their presence in ecotourism locations not only has a low environmental impact but also is actually beneficial for residents and the environment (for examples of such perspectives, see the discussion of coral reef–focused volunteer tourism in Southern Negros in Nolan & Rotherham, 2012). But there are frequent tensions between ecotourism projects and different livelihood activities of heterogeneous local residents, which suggest that class- based distinctions between environmentally friendly lifestyles (most often of the rich) and local livelihoods (typically of the poor) are socially significant. Such distinctions exist in part because the benefits and costs of ecotourism are themselves unevenly distributed. Therefore, although it is often presented as an “alternative” economy, ecotourism is steeped within (and may even exacerbate) social differentiations within the broader political economy of resource valuation, use, and distribution. Much research on Philippine ecotourism over the past two decades explores the question of who benefits from ecotourism as a strategy for national development (Alampay, 2005, p. 10). Tourist encounters with endemic wildlife, for example, often require highly involved and politicised reconfigurations of ecology, livelihoods, and economies. As the tarsier, a small primate, has become the face of the Bohol tourism industry, significant local transformations have occurred to make these nocturnal and arboreal animals accessible to tourists, for example, through forms of captivity branded as sanctuaries (Catibog-Sinha, 2008). Contrary to a romanticism of community participation, these interactions are largely driven and facilitated by key individuals and organisations (Aure & Escabi-Ruiz, 2005). Furthermore, the broader promotion of tarsiers as a Bohol tourist attraction has been argued to disturb local livelihoods such as upland cultivation (Cañete, 2003). As upland cultivation across Southeast Asia has been long maligned by governments and some environmental activists (Dove, 1983, 1993; Eder, 1990), ecotourism can in this case become another form of state, civil society, and private governance over those residing in highly valued environments whose livelihoods do not align with market-based approaches to conservation (Bryant, 2000; Dressler, 2009). This example demonstrates a problem common
728 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra to political consumerism—while pressure is often put on upland cultivators to cease livelihood practices denigrated as environmentally destructive, they are rarely major stakeholders in ecotourism ventures in the Philippines. Ecotourism is also often presented as an alternative economy to fishing, a ubiquitous livelihood across the coastal archipelago. In Donsol, a butanding (whale shark) tourism industry was established in the late 1990s, driven by government protection of whale sharks, and initiatives by the national branch of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF-Philippines). Popular narratives of Donsol’s transformation over recent decades widely promote the idea that fishing offers Donsol residents a much less lucrative local economy than facilitating tourist encounters with whale sharks. The spectacle of these intimate interactions, which include swimming with the impressive whale sharks, has led to Donsol gaining a significant reputation amongst international and domestic tourists. However, the increasing dependency of local livelihoods on tourism has contributed to key challenges as tourist arrivals have increased and the appearance of whale sharks locally has ebbed and waned in recent years. Companies and staff under pressure increasingly permit overcrowding, swimming within the proximity of whale sharks, and tourists’ touching of animals (Quiros, 2005, p. 45; for other examples of livelihood politics relating to dolphin watching and crocodile tourism, see Dela Santa, 2013; van der Ploeg et al., 2011). Meeting members of a “local community” is often an expectation of many ecotourists (Alampay & Libosada, 2005, p. 134; West & Carrier, 2004, p. 483). These expectations are often reproduced through the marketing of ecotourism destinations to domestic and international tourists. Local ecotourism guides often reproduce a notion that there are significant distances between domestic tourists and those often designated in the Philippines as “cultural minorities,” for example by warning prospective visitors of culture shock and suggesting that tourists refrain from introducing “outside” influences to their hosts (Libosada, 1998, 2003). Seminal studies have demonstrated the complexities of tourism’s cultural politics by examining how such ideas and practices are reproduced through specific interactions between hosts and guests (Smith, 1977; Smith & Brent, 2001). Ethnic differentiations are often performed by Filipino cultural brokers who appropriate imaginaries of cultural minorities for national and international audiences. Patrick Alcedo explores how events such as Aklan’s famous Ati-atihan festival have been used to simultaneously marginalise and appropriate indigenous Atis peoples in the formulation of a broader Aklanon and Filipino social identity. A key feature of this event has been the practice of non-Atis Aklanons to “performatively imagine” Atis bodies by covering their own bodies in soot (Alcedo, 2014, pp. 39–40). Alcedo accounts how a group of Atis performers attempting to participate for the first time in the festival were deemed by event organisers to look insufficiently “tribal,” particularly compared to those non-Atis Aklanons who enter the festival’s competition in categories such as a generic tribal genre and a more specific Balik Ati (Return to the Atis) category. These competition categories were strategically added as a result of local government interest in using the festival to attract tourists (Alcedo, 2014, pp. 38–39). This tribal genre is also performed by upper-middle-class Filipino choreographers and dancers as entertainment
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 729 at Philippine beach resorts (Ness, 2003, pp. 88–100). Sally Ann Ness suggests that it is through performing such appropriations within the “tourist landscape” that such ethnic imaginaries are actualised and come to have their own forms of reality—not only for tourists but also for cultural brokers such as performers (Ness, 2003, pp. 94–95). Such performances of imaginary Others by Filipino cultural brokers effectively rely on the absence of the groups being represented, whose presence would challenge popular stereotypes about the lifeways of ethnic minorities in the Philippines. In many cases these absences occur because such groups reside beyond the immediacy of ecotourism hotspots, even while ecotourism shapes their lives. Maria Cherry Lyn Rodolfo’s (2009) study of domestic tourism in Puerto Galera argued that sustainable tourism planning must do more to consider residents living in the further surrounds of key sites. Often these are people who must bear the social and environmental impacts of ecotourism whilst being on the periphery of potential economic benefits. This is a particularly important concern when former local residents have been geographically displaced from ecotourism sites. In the case of Balanan Lake, in Negros Oriental, the creation of accessible and impressive “natural places to relax for affluent citizens willing to pay the price” was based on the removal of residents from the surroundings of the lake through a government resettlement project, a process met with varying responses from diverse ex-residents (Oracion & Hiponia, 2009, p. 109). All of these examples demonstrate that what constitutes ecotourism in the Philippines remains highly contested, at a time when tourism activities are increasingly branded as “eco” in response to the added value of this term. What is referred to as ecotourism by different Filipinos can be embedded within radically disparate aspirations and will likely change over time. In considering some of the broader dilemmas of political consumerism, such examples provide material for reflecting on questions of who benefits from consumption practices branded as (or consciously considered to be) ethical, political, or environmental. As such, the goal of this chapter is not to define or evaluate what can be validly considered within the scope of ecotourism or green consumption. Instead the discussion here is concerned with a notable shift that has emerged since the late twentieth century. This shift significantly concerns the expectations of an emerging group of middle-class domestic tourists in the Philippines for whom nature is being made more impressive, accessible, comfortable, and certain -in keeping with tourists’ expectations, budgets, and time constraints. Activities that might previously have been defined as “nature tourism” (such as travelling more extensively within national parks, having less-facilitated interactions with wildlife, trekking to remote sites, or camping) are deliberately excluded from package tours branded as ecotourism. Such ecotourism products are increasingly targeted at middle-class Filipinos, with the popular model of inclusive day trips based on air-conditioned minivan transfers between tourist accommodations and key sites. Leisure spaces called “adventure,” “nature,” or “eco” parks across the Philippines feature an increasingly varied range of attractions such as ziplines, climbing walls, butterfly gardens, animal feeding or rides, all-terrain vehicle tours, and restaurants. “Nature tourism” and more recent ecobranded tours likely are experienced by different consumers with different tastes
730 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra and motivations. However, both appear underpinned by a supposition that leisure can productively be used to instill an appreciation of nature, even as notions of what constitutes nature and how it should be experienced differ extensively across diverse practices and consumers. It is these shifting dynamics, and the questions they raise for studying political consumerism, to which the chapter now turns by exploring a case study from Puerto Princesa City on Palawan Island.
Case Study: Consuming Environments on Central Palawan Island Since the 1990s significant efforts have focused on promoting Palawan as the ecotourism or ecological tourism capital of the Philippines, and since the latter part of the twentieth century, travelling to Palawan to embrace nature has become regarded as a desirable leisure activity.4 Previously Palawan was considered to be a remote part of the Philippines, and key associations included a former leprosarium, piracy, and endemic malaria. From the mid-twentieth century onwards Palawan became reimagined as a Philippine frontier, and the population of the province increased dramatically as a result of domestic migration (Eder & Fernandez, 1996, pp. 8–13). These waves of large-scale migration resulted in radical transformations of environment, economy, and social life to the considerable detriment of indigenous peoples who experienced displacement and multifaceted marginalisation. By the end of the twentieth century, the competition for land and valuable forest and marine resources increased to crisis levels and now serves as a central feature of daily life for Palawan residents (Seki, 2009, p. 546). While the reputation of Palawan as the Philippines’ last frontier remains as an image reproduced through the region’s tourist-scape, Palawan has been alternatively considered by many as a “battleground” for environmental and social justice (Eder & Evangelista, 2014, p. 4). Such histories of environmental politics are crucial to understanding the dynamics of ecotourism on Palawan and potential motivations for engagements with political consumerism. In the post-Marcos era, Palawan became a hub for environmental activism, and NGOs played a crucial role in connecting Palawan environmental politics to Filipino citizens and consumers during this period.5 Raymond Bryant explains how the Haribon Foundation transformed from a birdwatching society to a nationally prominent environmental NGO through campaigns focused on issues such as deforestation on Palawan during the 1980s and 1990s (Bryant, 2005, pp. 75–80). The foundation’s membership model targeted urban middle-class members beyond Palawan to promote events and products with the dual aims of recruiting new members and generating fundraising at a national level (Bryant, 2005, pp. 122–123). Haribon’s establishment of a chapter in Palawan was a significant catalyst for burgeoning environmental activism in Puerto Princesa City, and the efforts of Haribon and other NGOs significantly contributed to a 1992 moratorium on commercial logging in the province.6
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 731 Following this moratorium, and the 1990 UNESCO designation of the province as a Biosphere Reserve, the 1990s was a period when the provincial capital, Puerto Princesa City, was reimagined in crucial ways as a place associated with nature. Whilst there are several prominent sites on the city’s ecotourism circuit, the city’s longstanding principal site is the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park (PPSRNP), commonly known as the Underground River.7 Since the 1990s tourist arrivals to the river have dramatically increased, and domestic tourists constitute a significant majority of recorded visitors to the park. Many local government agents attribute peaks in arrivals to two periods: the designation of the park as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999; and a national campaign, which in 2011 culminated in the river being declared one of the New 7 Wonders of Nature (N7WN) through an international, voter-determined competition. As more tourists have visited the park in response to the promotion surrounding these campaigns, the dynamics of visiting the park have changed substantially. While visitors once regularly took local transport to the park, and might remain overnight or for some days, in recent years the increasing prominence of the Underground River has reached the point where visiting the park has become synonymous with a brief tour of the river, facilitated through privatised day trip tours (see Webb, 2017). This transformation has meant not only that greater numbers of visitors are spending less time visiting less of the park but also that the kind of activities that were attractive to small numbers of “nature tourists” in the late twentieth century are no longer possible now that hundreds of tourists visit the site each day (see, e.g., Libosada, 1998). As the site has increased in prominence, it has become popular with much larger numbers of tourists seeking very different ways of experiencing nature (Dressler, 2011). Whilst these shifts were certainly underway once the park achieved World Heritage status, the N7WN campaign resulted in unprecedented tourist arrivals and associated transformations in ecotourism markets. From the commencement of the N7WN competition in 2007 until 2012, domestic visitors to the park increased from over 49,000 (nearly 78 percent of total visitors) to nearly 250,000 (over 84 percent of total visitors) per annum. How might scholars of political consumerism understand this surge in domestic tourism and subsequent transformations in practices of ecobranded tourism in Puerto Princesa? How might the diverse and potentially ambiguous motivations of domestic tourists visiting this “local” site contribute to debates about how political consumerism is defined and measured (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013)? Central to considering these questions is understanding that many domestic tourists proposed that their visit constituted both a form of support for the river’s entry in the N7WN competition (and associated aspirations for tourism and national development) and an opportunity to visit a place of their own natural heritage (see Webb, 2017).8 A campaign to support the Underground River as the “lone Philippine entry” in the N7WN competition was initiated by local government and business efforts, which gained the support of President Benigno Aquino. Promotion of the campaign targeted Filipinos beyond Palawan, especially in urban centres and throughout the extensive Philippine diaspora. The campaign was highly successful, and supporting the campaign by visiting the site became a broader
732 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra civic concern. In Webb’s informal conversations with domestic tourists during this period, she was regularly thanked for visiting Palawan by Filipino tourists who stated that they considered welcoming and thanking foreign visitors to be part of their civic responsibility to support tourism. The national campaign manager, Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Ramon Paje, suggested that support produced by Filipinos could not only promote the Underground River as an ecotourism site but also further instill values of environmental protection across a Philippine public (DENR, 2011). Promotion of this discourse within the campaign, through the statements of politicians, emphasised that the promotion of the Underground River as a local ecotourism site was a strategy for national development, and promised that the economic and environmental benefits of a successful outcome would be felt on a national level. The appeal of this strategy to so many Filipino consumers who promoted the campaign must be considered in terms of the high social value placed on coming together to achieve communal outcomes, and discussions about the possibility for Filipino citizens to ensure the success of the campaign often referenced a bayanihan spirit of communal labour supported by a sense of shared identity.9 In addition to tourism, another crucial consumption practice that Filipinos engaged in to support the campaign was text voting in the competition. In a country where millions of mobile-savvy consumers constantly use texting to facilitate key aspects of everyday life, the potential to “mobilise” this expertise was acknowledged to be crucial to ensuring a successful inauguration of the Underground River as one of the “7 wonders” and a source of national pride (Aquino, 2011). When the Underground River was declared a winner of the competition, this heavily referenced pride concerned not only pride that the Underground River had gained international recognition but also pride in the ability of millions of Filipinos to make a local site of Philippine natural heritage one that was internationally recognised.
National Pride and Class Dynamics in Philippine Ecotourism Through the consumption practices of Filipino citizens, a local ecotourism site became a matter of national concern, pride, and aspiration for national development. Crucially, the transformations described relied extensively on the labour of invested citizens and consumers, many of whom considered their involvement to be a meaningful investment or a kind of civic duty. Importantly, this included those who engaged in the campaign through everyday acts of promotion or media consumption but who would never actually go to visit the Underground River. A taxi driver in Metro Manila, for example, in promoting the Underground River as a destination to Webb, explained why he personally could not afford to travel to the site in terms of precise and detailed economic estimates of each stage of the trip. A middle-aged woman working as a domestic helper
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 733 in a Puerto-based lodging house, who regularly answered visitor questions and connected tourists with local travel agencies to book their tours, suggested that the reason she had not visited the Underground River was because the day-trip price was equivalent to her monthly salary. The majority of domestic tourists to Palawan are those able to “indulge” in travel as a form of leisure because their income levels exceed the minimum wage (Alejandria-Gonzalez, 2016, p. 502). The option to engage in practices of travel as a form of support for the campaign therefore both reflected and reproduced particular class-based dimensions of political consumerism. The dramatic surge in domestic tourists to the Underground River was not only an impact of the campaign but also a constitutive force in shaping the campaign itself. The kind of consumption practices tourists engaged in, and their circulation of these practices through social media, recommendations, and pasalubong (gifts given to family, friends, and colleagues upon the visitor’s return), contributed extensively to the momentum of further tourism growth during this period. The Palawan ecotourism case study highlights a tension between the aspirations of consumers and the consequences of their consumer practices. The increasing popularity of visiting the Underground River within the emerging market of Filipino tourists has greatly contributed to the shifting dynamics of what is now being branded as ecotourism on central Palawan Island. But what are the benefits and impacts of this popularity—and how and for whom can they be measured? Consumers’ perspectives on the potential of their practices to bring about desirable transformations were based on diverse, thoughtful, and often critical reflections about how Filipino citizens and consumers might shape the environmental and economic futures of the nation. However, such aspirations were often significantly distanced from the livelihoods and lifeways of low-income Filipinos, including many residing in the surrounds of the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park. While the arrival of so many middle-class Filipino consumers is certainly resulting in the economic and environmental transformation of Palawan Island, the effects of these changes must be the subject of in-depth investigation rather than assumed to be “pro- environment.” Critically questioning who benefits from transfigurations of nature and capital provides one way of addressing the complex impacts of markets in ecobranded commodities. In the case of the Underground River, “the local community” has often been cited as a beneficiary of ecotourism. Yet this term serves to obscure more often than it provides any insight into questions of who constitutes membership of this community and how individuals or groups have (or have not) benefited from specific aspects of an increasing range of what is now being branded as “eco” tourism. For many indigenous peoples residing across the three Ancestral Domains that surround the Underground River, tourism has exacerbated longstanding issues of land grabs and environmental governance. Over generations, Tagbanua and Batak families have been vilified for pursuing livelihood activities such as uma (shifting cultivation), whilst simultaneously being excluded from the benefits of protected areas and ecotourism (Dressler, 2009; Eder, 1990; McDermott, 2000). Historically, indigenous peoples in the region have been marginalised from potential benefits, such
734 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra as employment by the national park or local tourism establishments, and revenues generated through entry fees or tour bookings (Dressler, 2009). Considering such marginalisation as a historical process is crucial to understanding the cultural politics of aspirations for using markets to achieve social, political, and environmental transformations. In Webb’s own fieldwork in the region, Tagbanua residents’ attitudes could not be simply summarised as either wanting or not wanting tourism. For example, over the course of several years one Tagbanua elder discussed his possible idea of building a small hut in order to host visitors through a kind of homestay arrangement, but he also disparagingly suggested that tourism was a purposeless form of recreation and described the detrimental cosmological and ecological impacts of increasing tourism on forest activities central to contemporary Tagbanua lifeways. Such ethnographic insights demonstrate, firstly, that individuals can hold multiple and seemingly contradictory perspectives on the opportunities and challenges of ecotourism simultaneously; and, secondly, that these perspectives can change over time. This is important to consider given that residents’ experiences of tourism and market engagements are not static. The marginalisation experienced by many people in Palawan has deepened with the increasing growth and privatisation of eco branded tourism on a massive scale. The “winners” in the local tourist economy of Palawan tend not to be indigenous peoples nor those with the lowest incomes. In turn, middle-class tourists visiting Palawan from metropolitan centres do not always have favourable or enlightened views about the lifestyles and livelihoods of local indigenous and low-income communities they encounter. Unsurprisingly, there are tensions between broader middle-class aspirations held by tourism officials, government policymakers, and some NGOs for environmentally sustainable promotion of natural heritage and income generation and the lived experiences of those indigenous and/or poor people who live within or near the park. The costs of ecotourism are complex, uneven, and often located beyond the observation of many ecotourism consumers (Eder & Evangelista, 2014). It remains unclear, then, whether the development of ecotourism in areas like Palawan is providing significant economic benefits or environmental protections for local residents or indeed for the Philippines as a nation.
Conclusion There remain significant challenges for the question of “who are political consumers,” particularly across the diverse global contexts in which people often have different engagements with democratic paradoxes (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013). Of these challenges, defining and measuring the motivations of heterogeneous consumers is one of the most complex (Stolle & Micheletti, 2013, esp. p. 68). In the Philippines, ecotourism and other forms of ecoconscious consumption are not necessarily deeply associated with political activism or with radically reorganising Philippine society, and as such, many Filipino
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 735 ecotourists may not self-identify as engaged in political consumerism. Even those tourists who considered their support for the campaign part of a civic participation would much more likely describe themselves as doing their duty as Filipinos, rather than explicitly identify as political consumers or ecotourists. Nevertheless, ecotourism businesses depend upon a broad discourse of environmental respect and engagement with nature that has been mobilised by tourist agencies, governments, and members of local communities. The discourse of environmental respect is rooted in ethical values of sustainability, community engagement, and a pride in national heritage. In this sense, ecotourism is a form of political consumerism as ecotourists spend their money and time on an emerging genre of tourism that identifies them as being environmentally aware and culturally sensitive. A significant literature has examined the limitations and inconsistencies in how these ethical orientations actually play out in practice; researchers have found that the label of ecotourism often obscures the exacerbation of social inequalities, the transformation of ecosystems, and the intensification of privatised commercial practices across remote areas of the Philippine archipelago. As the example of ecotourism in Palawan indicates, future research on political consumerism must carefully address the essentialisation of so-called community benefits. A much-required and welcome contribution to the literature will be further work on the methodological challenges of documenting complex, multiple, and dynamic perspectives of market-based approaches to environmental, social, and political transformation. This will necessitate further understanding of who benefits from specific forms of political consumerism and critical reflection on how, and by whom, these benefits are being measured and defined. Ethnographic approaches to these questions can be especially conducive to generating the kind of rich, in-depth data that can connect the complexities of specific peoples’ dynamic perspectives and experiences over time with broader political and economic systems. A key methodological challenge for scholars keen to embark upon ethnographic studies of political consumerism is the extensive time required to undertake the research process that generates empirical data to provide essential insights into the diversity of consumption practices and their potential transformations. Such a time-intensive approach makes it a most suitable undertaking for scholars with location-specific, long-term research plans, for those planning doctoral studies or similar, and for team-based research projects. This chapter has examined the cultural politics of class as one way of considering some dilemmas of political consumerism. The case study of ecotourism on Palawan demonstrates the local entanglements of interest groups and resources, both natural and commercial, that come into play in generating a growing industry of middle-class ecotourists arriving from other parts of the Philippines. The Underground River case study also demonstrates how the application of “eco” to a set of cultural practices (in this case tourism) has become widespread and particularly attractive to middle-class Filipinos, whose steadily growing spending power has informed the direction of national tourism policies. Political consumerism in the Philippines has therefore not only been used by citizens as a way of shaping the nation’s economic, environmental, and social future but has also become a means of experiencing and debating the cultural dimensions of
736 Sarah Webb and Anna Cristina Pertierra class relations. Such cultural dimensions of class relations have long been understood as central to Philippine society and so are a key issue in understanding political consumerism there. But, in turn, the Philippine example may illustrate the importance of understanding class dynamics in forms of environmentalism, ecotourism, and associated consumer practices elsewhere in the world. Central to this relevance of class dynamics for political consumerism more broadly is a challenge to the assumption that ecobranded consumption is inherently good for the environment. Although this has been a highly attractive idea within market-based conservation for a considerable time, specific forms of political consumerism frequently shape the politics of priorities even as those invested in them might aspire for balance.
Acknowledgements Our thanks for the generous advice and comments from the editors of this volume. Webb’s research was made possible through funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation via a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. Webb thanks Wolfram H. Dressler and Will Smith for feedback on many of the ideas raised in the Palawan case study, and thanks those whose experiences and perspectives are the basis of this research.
Notes 1. See, e.g., comments by Environment and Natural Resources Secretary Gina Lopez (2017, February 3), “DENR Shuts Down 23 Mining Areas,” Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved from http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/867793/denr-shuts-down-23-mining-areas. 2. In 1999 President Joseph Estrada’s Executive Order No. 111, Establishing the Guidelines for Ecotourism Development in the Philippines, created the National Ecotourism Development Council, following a joint memorandum circular (No. 98-02) between the Department of Tourism (DOT) and the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR). 3. Cultural analyses of emerging class identities in the Philippines have demonstrated the need for scholarly engagements with middle class as a relational rather than absolute category, taking into account the significant fluidity and ambivalence of Filipino middle-class identities (Garrido, 2008, p. 447; Seki, 2012, pp. 190–192). 4. The name “Palawan” is commonly used to refer to both the main Palawan Island and the broader Palawan province, which also includes over 1,700 small surrounding islands. This case study is based on research conducted by Webb on Palawan Island from 2008 to 2013, drawing in most instances from twenty months of ethnographic fieldwork between 2010 and 2012. Data was generated through extensive participant observation with tourists and residents in Puerto Princesa, qualitative interviews, business and livelihood surveys, and analysis of media reports and promotion of the PPUR-N7WN campaign (including travel blogs, social media, and advertisements). 5. For the dynamics of these NGO engagements over time, see Austin & Eder, 2007; Broad & Cavanagh, 2001[1993]; Novellino & Dressler, 2010; Theriault, 2014. 6. Research on the violent political economy of logging on Palawan prior to this moratorium demonstrates why this was such a significant transformation (Broad & Cavanagh, 2001[1993]).
Class and Ecotourism Practices in the Philippines 737 7. Previously named the St. Paul Subterranean River National Park; an initial site of 3,901 ha was established as a national park in 1971. In the early 1990s management of the park was devolved from the DENR to the city government in response to national policy (Republic Act No. 7160), and in 1994 entry fees were introduced. In 1999 the national park was significantly expanded to 22,202 ha in order for the site to be designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Dressler, 2009). Efforts to acquire this heritage status for the park provide an example of the kind of branding and promotional activities that continue to be linked to tourism aspirations. The flagship of these tourism aspirations have long been focused on the park’s subterranean river. 8. These discourses were reproduced in multiple ways throughout the campaign; ideas disseminated through press reports, social media, text messages, and advertisements were the subject of everyday conversation. In over a hundred informal conservations with domestic tourists during the study period, variations of these statements were continually made to Webb. 9. For an in-depth discussion of the social values briefly referred to here, see the work of Filipino anthropologist F. Landa Jocano.
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Chapter 35
Prohibi t i on, Legaliz ati on, a nd P olitical C on sume ri sm Insights From the U.S. and Canadian Cannabis Markets Elizabeth A. Bennett
Cannabis is both globally ubiquitous and illegal under international law. People in almost every country grow it (UNODC, 2016, pp. 21–22), at least 2 percent of the world’s population consumes it (WHO, 2016, p. 1), and it is more commonly trafficked and seized than any other psychoactive substance in the world (UNODC, 2016, pp. 21–22). Although cannabis is prohibited under international law, several states and subnational regions have legalized cultivation and/or consumption or relaxed enforcement of prohibitory laws. In those places, the legal status of cannabis has become complicated, especially because illegal activities persist. This chapter examines political consumerism in the context of newly legalized markets. The objective of this chapter is to describe and explain the interplay between legality and political consumerism. The empirical analysis draws insights from a case study of cannabis in Canada and the United States. It argues that political consumerism can affect legal status and that legal status, in turn, can affect political consumerism. In the case of cannabis, political consumerism helped facilitate legalization by challenging stereotypes and social norms. Legalization coincided with three changes in political consumerism. First, the goal of political consumerism shifted from normalizing cannabis consumption to creating a specialty market. Second, the approach to political consumerism shifted away from alternative lifestyles and toward ethical purchasing. Third, leadership shifted away from the demand side (cannabis consumers) and was taken on by actors on the supply side (producers, processors, and retailers). Analysis of this case shows how changes in legal status may not only create special challenges for political consumerism but also generate consequences for consumers, producers, social justice outcomes, democracy, and the environment.
742 Elizabeth A. Bennett The chapter introduces the concepts of legal status, political consumerism, and cannabis. It also provides background information about the political economy of cannabis, the U.S. and Canadian markets, and challenges facing social science researchers in this field. The case study shows how legal status and political consumerism interact. It first examines political consumerism’s goals, approaches, and leadership from the late 1990s to early 2010, when Canada and several U.S. states legalized cannabis for medicinal— but not recreational—consumption. It then examines political consumerism from the mid-2010s to the present, when Canada and several U.S. states legalized recreational cannabis. The discussion describes how political consumerism can interact with legalization advocacy, examines how legal status can create challenges for engaging in political consumerism, identifies the consequences of legal status on the outcomes of political consumerism, and highlights the ways in which these consequences challenge and support democratic politics. As described in the volume’s introductory chapter, the term “political consumerism” refers to the application of political values and actions to a market context (see also Stolle & Micheletti, 2015). Those who engage in political consumerism draw on their attitudes and values to identify, critique, and challenge objectionable practices. Actors may work collectively or act independently. Political consumerism takes place at the individual, group, organizational, institutional, system, network, or social movement levels of analysis (Micheletti, 2003, p. 2). However, individual actions are intended to contribute to systemwide change, effective when executed in concert with others (Schor, 2010, p. 3). For this reason, political consumerism is sometimes theorized as “collectivized individual action” (Bossy, 2014). Political consumerism takes many forms, including ethical purchasing, such as boycotts, buycotts, and product certifications (Harrison, Newholm, & Shaw, 2005); alternative lifestyles such as vegetarianism, voluntary simplicity (see Haenfler, Johnson, & Jones, 2012); and culture jamming, such as ad busting and guerilla billboard takeovers (Lekakis, 2017). This chapter shows how alternative lifestyles helped to usher in legalization and describes the development of ethical purchasing initiatives in newly legalized markets. This chapter examines political consumerism in the context of cannabis. It uses the term “cannabis”—as opposed to the common vernacular of “pot,” “dope,” “ganja,” “weed,” or “marijuana”—because Cannabis is the plant’s genus and the term used in international treaties. In Canadian and U.S. public policy, “cannabis” and “marijuana” are used interchangeably to refer to the substance produced and consumed for medicinal or psychoactive purposes. However, some eschew the term (e.g., Thompson, 2013; Wilder, 2016) because U.S. policymakers and law enforcement officials popularized the term in a racist and xenophobic scapegoating campaign in the 1930s (Hudak, 2016, pp. 24–26). “Medicinal cannabis” refers to the consumption of cannabis for healing or palliative purposes, while “recreational cannabis” refers to the consumption of cannabis for other purposes. “Hemp” is a cannabis varietal grown for its fibrous properties and industrial applications, as opposed to medicinal or psychoactive effects, and it is not the focus of this chapter (see Ely, 2012). This chapter examines the relationship between political consumerism and legal status. To be clear, “legality” is a sociopolitical construct that is used to legitimize some
Prohibition, Legalization, and Political Consumerism 743 activities and criminalize others (Gomberg-Muñoz, 2011; Thomas & Galemba, 2013). Here, the terms “legal” and “illegal” refer to a sector’s standing with regard to state law.1 In the case of cannabis, legality is not always straightforward, as described in the following section. The term “semilegal” is used to refer to sectors in which supply, demand, and exchange mechanisms take place both legally and underground, with some actors operating in both markets at the same time (e.g., Caulkins et al., 2012; Eagland, 2016). Legality is distinct from “licitness,” which refers to social acceptance and norms (Abraham and Van Schendel, 2005, p. 18). Thus, in some contexts, cannabis may be at once illegal (i.e., prohibited by the state) and licit (i.e., socially accepted) (Polson, 2013). This chapter examines political consumerism in the cannabis sector during its transition toward legality in the United States and Canada.
Politics, Ethics, Consumers, and Cannabis The Global Cannabis Market The international political economy of cannabis is complex and changing. On a global scale, cannabis is, by far, the most widely consumed psychoactive substance that is illegal under international law (WHO, 2016, p. 1). An estimated 183 million people have consumed cannabis (in 2014; UNODC, 2016, p. 1)—five times more than the population consuming opiates or opioids (UNODC, 2016, p. 1). Since 1998, the proportion of the global population consuming cannabis has remained steady (UNODC, 2016, p. 44). Unlike most drugs, which are produced in small pockets, cannabis (a leafy green plant) is grown in 129 countries (UNODC, 2016, p. 21). To compare, only 49 countries produce opium poppy and seven grow coca (UNODC, 2016, p. 21). Cannabis is also the most commonly trafficked drug. Although more than 200 substances are under international control, over half of the 2.2 million drug seizures that occurred in 2014 were confiscations of cannabis (UNODC, 2016, p. 22). These seizures occurred globally in 95 percent of reporting countries (UNODC, 2016, p. 22). In short, “cannabis continues to be the most widely cultivated, produced, trafficked and consumed drug worldwide” (UNODC, 2016, p. 43). Despite its ubiquity, cannabis remains an internationally controlled substance. Three treaties serve as the basis for global cooperation: the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs; the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances; and the 1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances. The 1961 Convention, which has been ratified by all but eleven countries, mandates that states restrict the cannabis industry to medical and scientific purposes; enact specific protocols for medicinal cannabis, such as limiting production to the amount necessary to meet domestic demand; and adopt domestic laws that criminalize participation in the
744 Elizabeth A. Bennett controlled substances market outside of these purposes (UN, 1961, see articles 3, 4, 23, 28). The International Narcotics Control Board, an independent quasi-judicial body, monitors the implementation of these conventions and encourages compliance (INCB, 2017). Over the last five years (2012–2017), several countries and subnational regions have increased access to cannabis for medicinal purposes, decriminalized market activities, and/or legalized recreational consumption. The Czech Republic, Mexico, and Costa Rica, for example, have decided not to punish personal possession of small amounts of cannabis (see Malkin & Ahmed, 2015 on Mexico, for example). Canada, Uruguay, and some U.S. states have gone further, permitting cultivation, sales, and consumption of cannabis for recreational purposes (see, e.g., Cerda & Kilmer, 2017, pp. 45–47 on Uruguay). While these countries do not constitute a majority, they suggest a potential trend toward greater acceptance of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes. As one magazine quipped, there are many places where cannabis is “legal-ish” (Glass & Robinson, 2015).
Cannabis Legalization in the United States and Canada Like most countries, the United States and Canada are signatories to the three principal treaties on international drug control (UN, n.d.). They are also at the heart of the global cannabis industry: most cannabis is produced in North America, much of it is consumed there, and consumption levels are increasing. In the United States, cannabis is illegal at the federal level, and those who engage in the industry can be prosecuted (DEA, 2017). However, individual states have been using voter referenda to legalize medicinal cannabis since 1996 (California) and to legalize recreational cannabis since 2012 (Colorado). Today, twenty-eight states have legalized medicinal cannabis and nine states have legalized recreational cannabis, though not all have created the regulatory frameworks and completed the processes required to make products legally available. As of mid-2017, recreational cannabis can be bought and sold in three states—Colorado, Washington, and Oregon (Lyons, 2017). In 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice responded to this wave of legalization, announcing it would defer marijuana regulation to state legislatures, whilst retaining the right to review and challenge state laws (NCSL, 2017). Although U.S. cannabis regulations differ among states and between the medicinal and recreational markets, there are several common features. Growers must apply for a license from the state and abide by cultivation regulations such as quantity of plants, pesticide use, security, transportation, and wastewater management (OLCC, 2017). Dispensary owners must also apply for a license from the state and abide by regulations such as age restrictions, quantity maximums, and purchasing only from licensed growers. In all legalized states, the illegal market persists, with growers, distributors, and consumers often moving between legal and illegal markets (Kleiman et al., 2015). According to several polls conducted in 2016 and 2017, about 60 percent of Americans support full legalization (for adult recreational and medicinal consumption) (CBS
Prohibition, Legalization, and Political Consumerism 745 News, 2017; Gallup, 2016; Quinnipiac University, 2017) and 56 percent think that marijuana consumption is socially acceptable (Marist, 2017). Similarly, children increasingly report that they do not disapprove of adults who try cannabis (Miech et al., 2017). About 52 percent of Americans have consumed cannabis, 22 percent currently consume cannabis (Yahoo/Marist, 2017), and 2.3 million people (less than 1 percent of the population) are registered medical users (MMPP, 2017). Disordered cannabis consumption (abuse or dependence) affects about 1.6 percent of Americans over twelve years of age, or 1.3% of the total population (ADAI, 2017; NIDA, 2015; SAMHSA, 2015). This is about four times less prevalent than disordered alcohol consumption, which affects about 6.4% of Americans twelve years and older (SAMHSA, 2015). In the United States, “marijuana has gone mainstream” (Hudak, 2016, pp. 1, 116). (See Table 35.1.) In Canada, medicinal cannabis has been federally legal since 1999 (Bear, 2017). Patients were allowed to grow a small number of plants at home or designate someone to grow on their behalf, creating an industry composed of small cannabis farms. In 2014, however, Health Canada shifted policies to support a medical marijuana supply chain that more closely resembled synthetic pharmaceuticals. It began issuing licenses for large “commercial operations” and made home-grows illegal. As a result, cannabis production quickly became dominated by a small number of large-scale commercial producers able to finance compliance with costly regulations. By the end of 2016, a series of acquisitions and mergers established Canada’s “big pot” industry (Davis, 2017), and the combined market value of Canada’s six largest marijuana companies reached nearly CAD$4 billion (Casey & Skerritt, 2016). As of June 7, 2017, there were forty-five licensed producers, with about half (twenty-six) in Ontario, ten in British Columbia, and the remaining nine divided among New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta (Health Canada, 2017). Table 35.1 Cannabis Consumption and Public Opinion in the United States and Canada
Consumption
Opinion
Self-reported survey data
United States
Canada
Consumed cannabis at least once over course of lifetime
52%
24%
Currently consume cannabis (purpose unspecified)
22%
13%
Registered for medical consumption*