Alternative Consumption

Alternative or critical consumption refers to a varied set of consumer practices that critically address contemporary consumer culture. It both indicates alternative, ethically coded products, such as Fair Trade goods or organic produce, and networks of provision and consumption alternative to mainstream, massmarket relations, such as farmers' markets or box schemes. These phenomena have been steadily on the rise for nearly two decades in advanced economies, at times with remarkable rates of growth—such as Fair Trade coffee growing 67% per year in the U.S. market (Arnould 2007; Harrison, Newholm, and Shaw 2005; Lyon and Moberg 2010). More broadly, the European Social Survey has shown that approximately one-third of Europeans have boycotted certain goods or/and have bought goods for political and ethical reasons. With the new millennium, new social movements of an alternative-global variety have resorted to the whole spectrum of consumer actions (e.g., boycotts, naming and blaming, ethical merchandising) to widen the repertoire of political participation and address global issues. A variety of collective actors—oriented toward pleasure and responsibility such as Slow Food or toward solidarity and sustainability such as most Fair Trade nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—are contributing to shaping alternative views of the market. This variety is reflected in the many nuances of the discourses about the role of the “critical consumer,” their uneven resonance, and the varying economic and political effectiveness of attempts to approach commodities as bearers of environmental, ethical, and political concerns.

However, an overarching cultural theme in alternative consumption initiatives can be identified, according to Roberta Sassatelli: that consumer choice is portrayed as neither universally good nor a private issue but as a matter of responsibility with political potential. Most forms of alternative consumption share some interest in environmental issues, some address redistribution concerns, and many confront the increased disentanglement between production and consumption. People as [Page 36]consumers are asked to consume better as they feature as the prime motor of desired changes. As a source of power, consumption is not to be given up altogether, it has to be reformed. Consumer choice is framed as a practice with momentous consequences, expressing consumer sovereignty only if consumers take full responsibility for the environmental, social, and political effects of their preferences and are ready to reconsider their consuming life.

Three themes in particular seem to emerge in varying degrees and combinations: a civic view of markets as chains interdependent among equals, the value of collective goods, and the pleasures of frugality. Civic notions contend that market relations thrive among equals, and in fact to realize the market's social potential, we need it to be a fair social space, which places value on initiatives for the redistribution of economic power. Likewise, goods that transcend individual, exclusive enjoyment (in particular, the environment and biodiversity) are conceived of as the essence for consumers' quality of life, but are all too often neglected by capitalist market relations: consumer choice is thus a way to internalize environmental factors. Finally, the classic liberal view of the relationship between consumption and happiness is regarded as simplistic. This matches a growing body of literature in philosophy and the social sciences that argues that people's well-being might be understood in terms other than their expenditure and that starts from notions of “quality of life” that add environmental or communitarian depth to a short-term, individualist, and private vision of individual choice. This may even imply some form of “voluntary simplicity,” “sobriety,” or “downshifting” in consumption, rejecting upscale spending and long working hours, and living a simpler, more relaxed life to discover new pleasures and enhance personal satisfaction, as well as to further socioeconomic equality and environmental awareness.

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