Political consumerism
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Political consumerism is a blanket concept including fair trade and moral purchasing. It could be seen as more general, or as more specific.
It takes the word Consumerism which is nowerdays portrayed as a bad thing, a sort of hysteric drive to consume, where consumption is no longer motivated by physiological (hunger, thirst, avoidance of incomfort) motives but more by psychological, cultural and social influences many of them overly fuelled by advertising.
Political consumerism takes the stand that for those who are wealthy enough to have multiple choices for filling a need, be the need natural or manufactured, making decisions about what to consume is political in the sense that it assumes the consumer has knowledge of the environmental impact and social impact the production has and these factors are evaluated in addition to price and suitability for use by the consumer.
It emphasizes economic choice not quite as moral choice based on moral cognition but rather more practically as political choice based on some factionally defined criteria. If it's valid, then, factions matter more, and individual morality less, in determining individual buying criteria.
The broader regulation system encompassing the political and economic aspects of these consumers' initiatives is referred to as Consumarchy.
The term the political consumer was first coined by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies in the beginning of the 90ties, and was directed related to the Brent Spar boycott and the boycott against French wine due to nuclear testing on the atoll Mururoa in the southern Pacific Ocean. The boycott meant that French wine sales suffered a 90 pct. drop in Denmark alone.
[edit] References
- Den politiske forbruger - når forbrugeren tager magten Authors: Mogensen, Marie Louise, Svenningsen, Stig Roar Roskilde Universitet, 2005
