The Politics of Ethical Consumerism: Citizenship between Individualisation and Participation

For guidance on citations see FAQs. c [not recorded] Version: [not recorded] Copyright and Moral Rights for the articles on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. For more information on Open Research Online's data policy on reuse of materials please consult the policies page. 'The consumer' has become the dominant figure in public debate in the UK, as public policy has been increasingly oriented towards extending choice and introducing market efficiencies into the delivery of public services. The shared assumption that underwrites the arguments of both proponents and critics of 'consumer choice' in these debates is that markets, consumers, and choice are all about individualised, materialistic, privatised and self-interest. In this, both sides cling to a highly idealised model of consumer behaviour, one that assumes that when acting as consumers, people act according to the model of the rationalising utility-maximizer of economic theory. Proponents of the market think that people should act like this, despite lots of evidence that they don't; and critics of the market tend to assume that people do act like this, but think that they ought not to, and therefore intone them to act more responsibly. In this paper, we want to evaluate the degree to which this picture of the activity of exercising consumer choice might actually underestimate the ways in which markets can serve as mediums for the expression of care, solidarity, and collective concern. Even if we accept that being a consumer involves the exercise of 'choice', it is far from the case that all relevant 'choices' follow the model of the individual purchasing decision in the market place summarised above. This paper draws on primary research into the development and growth of the ethical consumer sector in the UK to illustrate the ways in which consumerism and citizenship are not necessarily opposed practices at all. 1 Ethical consumerism is certainly a growth sector in the UK, but this can easily 3 3 be interpreted as an expression of a shift away from active citizenship prompted by a broader process of individualization. In their review of changing patterns of civic engagement in the UK between 1984 and 2000, Pattie et al (2003b, 631) found that " people's participation in conventional political activities (such as voting, contacting a politician, and attending a political meeting) has declined, whereas participation in consumption and contact politics (boycotting goods and contacting the …