Page 52 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

CONSUMER SOVEREIGNTY

CONSUMER SOVEREIGNTY

Rule by consumption. The citizen and the consumer have largely
been pitted against each other in discussions of competition policy and
deregulation over the past decade. Citizenship is the framework for
membership within a political community, providing us with
entitlements as members and requiring that we maintain a level of
participation within that community in order to sustain it. In
democratic nations, citizens are sovereign, as they are the principal
decision-makers who decide on the governance and rule of the state
through voting and other forms of political engagement (such as
interest-group activity).
Consumer sovereignty, on the other hand, suggests that our choices
as consumers are our primary means of exerting influence over the
market, ultimately with social ramifications. By choosing which
products we purchase we affect the choices on offer and determine
what succeeds and fails in the marketplace. For example, by refusing to
buy aerosol cans that contain CFCs we are able to prevent greenhouse
climate changes by putting pressure on companies to produce an
alternative that will sell.
By positioning citizens as consumers we may see a reduction of
society’s democratic character and potential. As Graham Murdock
expresses it: ‘Whilst the exercise of citizenship presupposes collective
action in pursuit of equality and fraternity as well as of individual
liberty, the ideology of consumerism encourages people to seek private
solutions to public problems by purchasing a commodity. It urges
them to buy their way out of trouble rather than pressing for social
change and improved social provision’ (Murdock, 1992: 19). But
Murdock’s scenario does not allowfor the possibility that ‘buying our
way out of trouble’ can in fact result in social change, and not always
for the worse. Consumption can become a ‘patriotic duty’, as it did in
the US after September 11, 2001 – the Governor of California for one
visited Disneyland to plead for tourists in the name of economic
recovery.
However, the theoretical divide between citizen and consumer is
somewhat problematic. First, a central component of citizenship is
that we have a means of learning how to behave and act as citizens.
Our cultural consumption, and in particular our media consumption,
teach us about our society and howto act in it. The activity of
consumption therefore plays an important role in the formation and
promotion of civic virtue in today’s society (see Hartley, 1999).

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