activism

This page considers consumer activism.

It covers -

• introduction
• the golden age?
• in the digital era
• activism online
• studies

Detailed pointers to literature on disability politics feature here, along with a discussion of consumer 'gripe sites'.

     studies

International perspectives are provided in Consumers Against Capitalism?  Consumer Cooperation in Europe, North America and Japan, 1840-1990 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield 1999) edited by Ellen Furlough & Carl Strikwerda.

For Australia see A History of the Australian Consumer Movement (Canberra: Consumers' Federation of Australia 1996) edited by Fiona Marsden, In the Consumer Interest: A selected history of consumer affairs in Australia 1945-2000 (Melbourne: Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals 2000) edited by Simon Smith and Basket, Bag and Trolley: A history of shopping in Australia (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 1994) by Beverley Kingston. 

For consumerism in the UK see in particular Matthew Hilton's Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Search for a Historical Movement (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2003).

For the US see Landon Storrs' Civilizing Capitalism: The National Consumers’ League, Women’s Activism, and Labor Standards in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill: Uni of North Carolina Press 2000), Adam Smith's The Power of the Dollar - Consumer Activism in the 20th Century: From the National Consumers' League to the Student Antisweatshop Movement (PDF), Norman Silber's Test & Protest: The Influence of Consumers Union (New York: Holmes & Meier 1983), Kathy Newman's Radio Active: Advertising and Consumer Activism, 1935-1947 (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 2004), Advertising on Trial: Consumer Activism and Corporate Public Relations in the 1930s (Urbana: Uni of Illinois Press 2006) by Inger Stole, No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Garment Workers (New York: Verso 1997) edited by Andrew Ross and Monroe Friedman's Consumer Boycotts: Effecting Change Through the Marketplace and the Media (New York: Routledge 1999).

Meg Jacobs' Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in
Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2005), G. R. Searle's Morality and the Market in Victorian
Britain (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1998), John Benson's The Rise of
a Consumer Society in Britain 1880-1980 (London: Longman 1994), Colin Campbell's The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modem Consumerism (Oxford: Blackwell 1979), Thomas Richards'
Commodity Culture of Vctorian England (Stanford: Stanford Uni Press 1990) and Lizabeth Cohen's A Consumer's Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf 2003) are of particular value.

Other perspectives are provided in Consumer Protection in China: Translations, Developments and Recommendations (Buffalo: Hein 1991) by Donald King & Gao Tong, Social Movements And Free-market Capitalism In Latin America: Telecommunications Privatization And The Rise Of Consumer Protest (New York: State Uni of New York Press 2005) by Sybil Rhodes, Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism (New York: Columbia Uni Press 2001) by Patricia Maclachlan and Steven Vogel's 1999 When Interests Are Not Preferences: The Cautionary Tale of Japanese Consumers (PDF).

The problematical 'no logo' movement is discussed in The Politics
Behind Products (New Brunswick: Transaction 2004) edited by Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal & Dietlind Stolle, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1998) by Margaret Keck & Kathryn Sikkink. Other works of relevance are Naomi Klein's No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (New York: St Martins 1999).

Joel Spring's Educating the Consumer-Citizen: A History of the Marriage of Schools, Advertising, and Media (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum 2003) and Images of American Life: A History of Ideological Management in Schools, Movies, Radio and Television (Albany: State Uni of New York Press 1992) will appeal to deconstructionists.







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