Politicised Consumption - Consumed Politics
The English site will now be actualized unregularly.
Yours Jörn Lamla
Special Issue "Re-Shaping Consumer Policy in Europe"
A Special Issue of the peer-reviewed journal "German Policy Studies" (Vol. 4, No. 1, 2008) is concerned with the processes of "Re-Shaping Consumer Policy in Europe".
Contents (links to abstracts and full texts):
Introduction: Re-Shaping Consumer Policy in Europe: Enabling Consumers to Act? by CHRISTOPH STRÜNCK
Current State and Prospects of Consumer Policy: An Introductory Essay by EDDA MÜLLER
Sustainability Policy and the Law by JENS KARSTEN AND LUCIA A. REISCH
Risk Regulation without Political Conflicts? Regime Structures in Food Safety Politics in Germany, Great Britain and the Netherlands by FRANK JANNING
New Players Enter the Game: Effects of Marketization of Social Policies by FLORIAN BLANK
Consumer Citizen: The Constitution of Consumer Democracy in Sociological Perspective by JÖRN LAMLA
Claiming Consumers’ Rights Patterns and Limits of Adversarial Legalism in European Consumer Protection by CHRISTOPH STRÜNCK
Public Health in the EU: Is Europe subject to Americanization? by PAULETTE KURZER
Legitimising Supranational Risk Regulation: The EU Pharmaceutical and Food Safety Regimes by SEBASTIAN KRAPOHL
New book on "Politicised Consumption - Consumed Politics"
Lamla, Jörn / Neckel, Sighard (Ed.):
Politisierter Konsum - konsumierte Politik
Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2006.
303 pp.
ISBN: 3-531-14895-8
EUR: 34,90
The book is written in German Language
Abstract:
The book explores changes in politics in our age of societal marketization and of an expansive consumer culture. The first part following Lamla’s introduction to the “political sociology of consumption” analyzes the politization of consumption from different angles: What role did consumption play historically in the struggles concerning the economic order? In which manner do consumer-competencies provide dispositions for political action or life-political strategies? Are those people who buy organic food political consumers? Is the “War on Fat” in nutrition a subtle form of governmentality in Foucault’s sense? The articles in the second part turn to the political aesthetic of consumption and analyze some paradoxes of the counter-culture under conditions of late modern consumerism: Where the codes of criticism are massively (mis-)used by commercial brands, political engagement like “adbusting” or “culture jamming” easily drops into some individualistic “lifestyle-politics” that is reduced to expressive values. Beyond ironic commentaries from modern artists like Andy Warhol, new solutions for policymaking are necessary, how to reshape a public agenda and to regain some political power. Part three thus looks at changes in fields like fighting AIDS or struggling for human rights as well as in municipal and other political decision making.
Contents ...
Online-Discussion
In March 2005 we activated our discussion board. After registration users had been enabled to make their own suggestions for the online-discussion. We especially wanted to discuss recent topics or events related to the research on "political" or "politicised" consumption. There was also the posibility for feedback to the content of our conference-website.
On the other hand a online-conference about the "underestimated consumer-power - prospects for the new consumer movement" had taken place on this homepage. An international group of scientists in the research-field "political sociology of consumption" was asked to present their papers online on this website and discuss their ideas and thoughts in our online-forum.
The elaborations of these papers are now published in the "Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegung" (4/2005). English abstracts are available here.
The board is now closed.
Topic: Politicised Consumption - Consumed Politics
Politics and consumption are connected in various ways. The conference wants to highlight the relations between these spheres of action and their institutional complexes from two different lines of sights:
There are not only recent arguments about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and other food scandals, which resulted in the shifting of the relevance of consumption within the scope of national politics, or boycott actions and brand protests (e.g. 'Culture Jamming', 'Adbusting') of globalization-critical movements that stand for the politicisation of consumption. One could also refer to the relevance of consumption for legitimating the polity, which are distinct in the rivalry between the systems of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, for instance, or on the impact of power, status and identity struggles on the practices of consumption, last but not least between ethnic and religious conflict groups.
On the other side politics tend to use the patterns of action and communication (election campaign, media portrayal, stage-management of politicians) from the consumptive part of developed markets. Even the patterns of political participation and the patterns of orientation and selection, with which the citizens take hold of and react to the political offer, change. By discussing the consumption-patterns in politics the conference wants also to show the contemporary and the theoretical potential of the 'sociology of consumption'. Its concepts and the explanation approaches are also being applied to spheres of politics.
A matter of particular interest is the analysis of processes, where on the one hand the trends of politicization of consumption and on the other hand the market- and consumption-orientation of political participation (Dealignment, Lifestyle- or Lifepolitics, short-dated or unsealed forms of participation) overlap. The conference wants to point out the typical characteristics and social dispositions of the 'consumer-citizen'. A closer look could prove to be the key for the sociological understanding of contemporary changes in politics and democracy.
The two Conference-Groups
Central part of the conference will be an online-discussion on the topic of "the underestimated consumer-power - prospects for the new consumer-movement". An international group of scientists in the research-field "political sociology of consumption" is asked to present and discuss their papers, which are not to be presented in Giessen, online on this website. For the publication of the elaborations of these online-papers we have an agreement with the well known German Journal on New Social Movements: Forschungsjournal Neue Soziale Bewegungen (No. 4/2005).
One important aim of this online-discussion is the participation of those speakers, who will present their papers at the Giessen-Conference in June ("Giessen-Group"). They are also asked to present some abstracts or papers online, before the beginning of the conference, and to discuss the papers of the "Online-Group".
The ideal case would be, if we perform an innovative international scientific communication on this website that is transcending the time-space-limits of the local conference and that will give additional impulses to the conference in Giessen.