A New Rising Star? Political Consumerism and New Sustainable Community Movements in a Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Political consumerism has become an important area of research in political participation and social movement studies. Today’s rise in boycotts and buycotts is often explained by the turn that civic groups are taking towards the market as their arena for politics. For many contemporary social movement organizations, market-based political actions adapt to a situation in which national and supra-national institutions are often recognized as unable, or unwilling, to regulate and solve the serious environmental and human rights problems associated with globalization. While boycotts have became a very popular strategy within the Global Justice Movement, more recently many civic groups have taken a new approach to developing long-term healthy communities based on the concepts of sustainability. Instead of exhorting people not to buy, these groups encourage the consumption of local produce in order to attempt to reduce food miles and to stimulate new local economic activity. More specifically, in numerous democratic political regimes, new forms of contentious politics connected to the individual and collective political use of consumption have emerged and consolidated, organizing forms of collective trade and ‘alternative’ consumption. Some examples are Transition Towns, the Italian Networks and Districts of Solidarity Economy based on groups of solidarity purchasing, or cooperative forms of producers/consumers associations such as the French AMAP (Associations pour le Maintien d'une Agriculture Paysanne). Some have even called this process a “sustainable community movement”. Despite the rapid rise of these experiences, empirically the role of grassroots movements which promote changes in individual behaviour as a collective action has been overlooked – especially in a comparative perspective. Currently, there is limited information available on one hand regarding the diffusion of organized forms of political consumerism in Europe which go beyond mere boycott activities, and on the other hand regarding the influence of such forms of political engagement in contemporary democracies. The aim of this panel is to collect papers which investigate: the emergence of new grassroots movements based on innovative consumer behaviour; the political and organizational resources used by civic groups that promote the coordination of individual actions and behaviour in order to solve large problems, such as a new organization of the economy based on environmental sustainability; the effectiveness of such organizations in local, national and international political contexts; the relationships between political consumerism and social movements, interest groups and political parties; the repertoire of actions adopted by grassroots transition groups. A comparative perspective will be particularly appreciated.

Title	Details
Critical Food Movements: In Defence of Individual Choice?	View Paper Details
From Grass-Roots To Digital Ties: A Case Study	View Paper Details
The Utopias of Political Consumerism: The Search of Alternatives to Mass Consumption	View Paper Details
Active Citizenship in Europe: Where does Political Consumerism Fit In?	View Paper Details
Social-Political Entrepreneurs, Political Consumerism and Public Policy in the Global Era: Conceptual Framework and Case Studies in Israel	View Paper Details
Individual and state actors as political consumers – shaping political arenas ‘from below’?	View Paper Details
From Fashion to Ethical Fashion: How Political Consumerist Movements Change Markets	View Paper Details