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POLITICAL CONSUMERISM 281

increases in safety is equal to the price at research in rural economic sociology that is
which suppliers are able to produce the increases. interested in the critical study of networks of
At such an equilibrium, the level of safety supplied food production, distribution and consump-
by the market will reflect a level of risk
which is non-zero but acceptable. (Wilcock et al., tion (Allen et al., 2003; Goodman, 2000,
2004: 62) 2003; Goodman and Goodman, 2001). In
contrast to the works mentioned earlier, these
This extract illustrates a purely ‘economicist’ clearly situate consumerism within systems
reading of economic regulation: the level of of representation and social relations that
acceptable risk is that which emerges ‘natu- determine the particular form of networks of
rally’ from the equilibrium between two production, distribution and consumption.
prices. The collective decision, the regulation The main argument is that, in the case of
of the economy by the political community, ethical or sustainable consumerism, the
has no place in this reading. Consequently, relations of production and consumption are
changes in consumer choice occur when there reconfigured, on the one hand, by changes in
is individual perception of a risk and an the social imaginary and, on the other hand,
alternative product is available for consump- by globalization’s effects on local spaces, in
tion at an acceptable price. Clearly, using this other words, a socio-territorial reorganiza-
formal model to calculate costs and benefits tion of production. From this perspective,
only succeeds in explaining acts of food con- individual consumer habits are influenced by
sumption by beliefs and attitudes, without culture, identities, social imaginaries and by
explaining how they arise and what contingent factual elements. We could, there-
they mean. These explanations are ‘under- fore, conceive of responsible consumerism as
socialized’. While habitus is taken for the effect of a change in the social imaginary,
granted, social determination is effectively in food tastes and/or in consumers’ political
ignored and the ideological dimension is set ideas, in short, by a cultural change. In that
aside. Although valid at the micro-sociological meaning, although implemented individually
level to understand behaviour of subjects who in a private space, consumerism is an activity
give no evidence of reflexivity or of an impar- which is largely socially determined.
tial judgement of consumer society, this type According to David Goodman and his col-
of explanation cannot take account of the leagues, the social imaginary which makes
critiques of those who claim to be ‘political up the discourse on responsible consumerism
consumers’. In fact, these political consumers is mainly concerned with the redefinition of
locate themselves at the margins of consumer relations between humans and nature, a rede-
society, whereas the works mentioned above finition made necessary by the perception
are right in its midst. Clearly, research in of the finiteness and fragility of the earth’s
marketing and consumer studies conceives ecosystem. Since the first ecological cri-
of consumerism, regardless of how it is tiques, a number of elements drawn from
expressed, as an act of membership and col- ecologists’ analytic framework have pene-
laboration with the liberal capitalist politico- trated social representations and, today,
economic system. discourses often promote consumer habits
which are radically different from those
prevailing in the consumer society from
the 1950s to 1990. During this first period
RESPONSIBLE CONSUMERISM AS A of the establishment of a society of mass
CHANGE IN VALUES AND AN consumption, the imaginary was one defin-
IMPROVEMENT OF CAPITALISM ing social status by the quantity and
quality of the family assets. Mass production
A second interpretation of changes in food and consumption were seen as a means
consumption habits is offered by American of reducing status inequalities by offering