The Troubling Equivalence of Citizen and Consumer

Abstract

As Todd Gitlin observed in his 1978 critique of Personal Influence, Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld (1955) in that work treated consumer choices and political choices at the voting booth as methodologically equivalent. Many critics since have identified this purported equivalence as a flaw in American social science that reduces politics to consumer behavior. But is it a flaw? This article contends that consumer choices can be and have often been political; that political choices can be and often have been consumer-like; and that the distinction between citizen and consumer, intended to uphold the superiority of the citizen's role, in fact may itself be damaging to public life. It calls for a reconsideration of what the differences between the worlds of politics and consumption really are.

Coffee Activism and the Politics of Fair Trade and Ethical Consumption in the Global North

“…The examination of democratic agency is also explored below in terms of the faulty equation of consumer acts with citizen acts (cf. Schudson, 2006). I have elsewhere discussed the political fulfilment of political consumerism in terms of its intensity, referring to the combined awareness, involvement and impact of an ethical cause in the political arena (Lekakis, 2012).…”

Consuming conventions: sustainable consumption, ecological citizenship and the worlds of worth

“…As such, this paper takes a cue from debates around the relationship between citizenship and consumption (Schudson, 2006;Trentmann, 2007;Soper and Trentmann, 2008) especially those that have addressed environmental sustainability (for example Spaargaren, 2003;Seyfang, 2006;Spaargaren and Mol, 2008 see also Hobson, 2004;Slocum, 2004a;Soper, 2007). The requirement for individuals to practice ecological citizenship by engaging in practices of sustainable consumption is not without it its critics.…”

To Buy or Not to Buy: Who are Political Consumers? What do they Think and How do they Participate?

“…, 2005). In other words, critics regard political consumption as merely a citizen's expression of private interests, lacking public‐spiritedness, democratic potential or the ability to produce communal mobilization (Barnes, 1983; Cohen, 2001; Schudson, 2006; 2007).…”