Consumption As a Practice Of/In Self-Formation: the Neoliberal Politics of Consumption (And Consumer Research?)

Politics loom large in much CCT work but it is often conceived of and rendered intelligible through the individual, autonomous and strategic work consumers do to make themselves moral, gendered, economic, social, political, etc. subjects. Largely unexplored in these accounts of democratization are questions of power at play when the participation of consumers in the rationalization of their own consumption is sold as empowerment and valid democratic expression (Andrejevic 2003). Put differently, detecting in collective struggles over brand meanings an important form of democratization in one thing. Querying the implications of a political-economic regime (Neoliberalism) that orients flows of democratic energies toward brands is quite another. The questions I want to ask, then, relate to the kind of politics our work represents when we no longer see a need to make a distinction between forms of market morality and non-market morality.

Citation:

Detlev Zwick (2011) ,"Consumption As a Practice Of/In Self-Formation: the Neoliberal Politics of Consumption (And Consumer Research?)", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 9, eds. Alan Bradshaw, Chris Hackley, and Pauline Maclaran, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 26-27.