Political Virtue and Shopping

Transcription

1 Political Virtue and Shopping

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3 Political Virtue and Shopping Individuals, Consumerism, and Collective Action Michele Micheletti

4 POLITICAL VIRTUE AND SHOPPING Michele Micheletti, 2003 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS. Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Micheletti, Michele. Political virtue and shopping: individuals, consumerism, and collective action/by Michele Micheletti. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Consumption (Economics) Social aspects. 2. Consumption (Economics) Political aspects. 3. Consumption (Economics) Moral and ethical aspects. 4. Consumer protection Citizen participation. 5. Political participation. 6. Individualism. 7. Consumers Sweden Political activity Case studies. I. Title. HC79.C6M dc A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: September,

5 Table of Contents Foreword Preface vii ix 1. Why Political Consumerism? 1 2. History of Political Consumerism Contemporary Forms and Institutions A Study of Political Consumerism Today: The Case of Good Environmental Choice in Sweden Shopping with and for Virtues 149 Appendix The Political Business of Consumerism: A New Research Agenda for the Social Sciences 169 Notes 175 Bibliography 211 Index 237

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7 Foreword This book is part of a large research program that was administered by City University of Stockholm entitled Ethics, Virtues, and Social Capital in Sweden. Its coordinator was Emil Uddhammar. The Axel och Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation generously funded the program and my project. Their funding allowed for course release for research, an international seminar on political consumerism in May/June 2001, and even facilitated my stay as a visiting scholar in the United States in the first months of winter The International Seminar on Political Consumerism resulted in an anthology on political consumerism, Politics, Products, and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present (Transaction Publishers) and consolidated a research network. Many of the seminar participants have offered good comments on my work, and I want to thank them collectively. One participant, Bente Halkier from Roskilde University, sent me written comments on the first draft of this book from March I also want to thank everyone at City University for making my time there both productive and enjoyable. Joel Aberbach at the Department of Political Science, UCLA, helped me greatly with my stay as a visiting scholar at his university. Time away at another university gave me occasion to think and discuss my research ideas in a new and different surrounding. The talk I gave there helped me craft my research agenda more clearly. Then I moved east. Bert Rockman, at that time at the Department of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh, gave me the opportunity to hold a seminar on my research. I received good feedback in Pittsburgh and met people with common research interests. Versions of chapters 1, 2, and 4 were presented at different conferences in Europe and the United States between 1999 and The comments I received helped me to understand the importance of the phenomenon of political consumerism more fully. Political consumerism has been a topic in a number of different courses in Stockholm and elsewhere. Students

8 viii Foreword who attended my lectures gave me valuable comments. My home department, the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, gave and continues to give me the opportunity to develop courses around political consumerism and new forms of political participation. These courses have been golden opportunities for me to discuss a first draft of my completed book manuscript with undergraduate and graduate students. The Swedish Society for the Conservation of Nature, the subject of the case study in chapter 4, had a very open attitude to researchers and provided me with extensive internal material. Four officials gave of their time to discuss green political consumerism with me. Eva Eiderström and Helena Norin at the eco-label Good Environmental Choice unit and Lars Vaste and Anders Friström at the SNF central headquarters deserve special thanks. This book was researched and written within a two-year period on a half-time basis. It was revised in fall During this time, I found that political consumerism is a much richer area for scholarly study than I envisioned at first. Scholars need to do much more work in this field. And I can say that this book is far from my final encounter with the fascinating phenomenon of political consumerism. I hope it is the same for you. Michele Micheletti Stockholm December 2002

9 Preface If you think about it, daily trips to the market to buy food and clothing for our families and more substantive shopping events like purchasing a car, a boat, or furniture for the living room involve many more aspects than just deciding if you like the product and can afford it. We may consider where we want to purchase the product. Some stores may be more appealing than others because of their location, their look, the way they deal with customers, or even how they treat their employees. Maybe we are concerned about where and how the product is made. Does it include chemicals harmful to our health, to the people that made it, or for the environment? Another set of shopping considerations may be the people behind the product. Who are they, and how are they treated? Is child labor involved? Shopping involves more than just economic considerations like the relationship between material quality and price. There are social, ethical, and political issues embedded in shopping decisions as well. Yet most of us do not give a lot of conscious thought to what can be called the politics of a product. We take for granted that the products we buy are made according to our own ethical standards. Or perhaps we do not really care. Most of the time the politics of a product are latent or invisible, but they become visible when citizens give them public significance and begin to see how they compare with their philosophy of life and political persuasion. When citizens act on these considerations they behave as political consumers. Political consumerist considerations play an increasingly important role in the world today. Growing numbers of university students question university policy on the procurement of sports equipment and they give serious thought to the kind of coffee they drink on campus and elsewhere. Groups like the European Clean Clothes Campaign and North American anti-sweatshop movement (or No Sweat as it is called) as well as campaigns like Responsible Coffee and institutions like Forest Stewardship Certification and eco-labeling schemes encourage people from all walks of life to reflect on the role that their consumer choices play in the world today.

10 x Preface But why these concerns now? At least part of the answer is globalization and free trade, which bring people around the world closer together in interesting and new ways. Globalization is also making it more difficult for companies to hide the politics of products. An increasing number of labeling institutions and consumer-oriented campaigns are bringing the politics behind products to the fore. Internet campaigns have been started to inform consumers about the politics of specific products; books are written on how to shop for a better world; consumers are mobilized in boycotts and buycotts to choose products in a more politically conscious way; labeling schemes that evaluate the politics of a product are institutionalized, and companies are encouraged to change their policies and develop codes of conduct so that their products reflect ethical, political, environmental, and social concerns. Politics is, therefore, entering the marketplace through the pocketbooks of consumers and organizations that serve them. Concepts such as the citizen-consumer, business ethics, corporate citizenship, social responsible investing, and political consumerism among others have been created to identify this development. The phenomenon of political consumerism is the focus of this book. Although the phenomenon itself is not at all new, the term political consumerism is of recent origin. It was first used in Denmark in the mid-1990s to understand the boycott of Shell Oil. 1 In Danish it is politiske forbruger and was an attempt by its authors to capture the sense of social and political global responsibility that consumers can exercise in understanding material products as more than just objects of material use and consumption. Political consumerism concerns the politics of products, which in a nutshell can be defined as power relations among people and choices about how resources should be used and allocated globally. Political consumers choose products, producers, and services more on the basis of the politics of the product than the product as material object per se. Their choices are informed by political values, virtues, and ethics. They differ from economic consumers who are just looking for a good buy, that is, a satisfactory relationship between material quality and economic costs. Political consumers also tend to differ from lifestyle consumers who shop for products with the sole aim of helping to define and enhance their self-identity. The phenomenon of political consumerism has, as discussed in chapter 2, long historical roots. And it is surprising that scholars have not studied it to any great degree. This aim of this book is to offer a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon and to understand why people engage in political consumerist acts. With this book, I want to

11 Preface xi place political consumerism more securely on the social science research agenda. There are several different ways of studying political consumerism, and they all depend on the disciplinary perspective of the scholar. Market researchers stress the impact of political consumer choice on market actors. They measure its effectiveness by its market share and effect on the thinking and behavior of companies. Sociologists find the phenomenon fascinating because it allows them to penetrate theories of late capitalism, postmodernism, and self-reflexivity. Economists study its outcomes, that is, whether political consumer choice can redistribute resources globally. Students of the history of ideas ponder whether political consumerism is a break from the past in our thinking on the separation of the political from the economic sphere. For political scientists, the fascination concerns the market as an arena for politics. This is by no way uncontroversial for a discipline that has its roots in the study of states, governments, public policy, and political participation in the political system. In political science, my own discipline, we study the phenomenon of political consumerism in two basic ways: as an example of governance, soft laws, and new regulatory tools and as a form of citizen involvement in politics. We investigate the development of new institutions to assess whether they fill regulatory vacuums and curb responsibility-floating. 2 My focus is the second approach. Political consumerism is studied as a form of citizen engagement in politics, though I do discuss its institutional framing and regulatory character in chapter 3. Chapter 1 focuses on why political consumerism has developed as a form of political participation and why it is perceived by many people as a controversial phenomenon. This is done in a discussion on how it can be understood theoretically. Emphasis is placed on political consumerism as a new form of political participation, by which I mean that it conceptualizes itself differently than most other forms of citizen involvement in politics. The chapter discusses how changes in the political landscape have politicized consumption and why our everyday life as consumers is increasingly intertwined with global politics. A new concept, individualized collective action, is introduced to understand how this interconnection becomes political activity. Theoretical attention is also focused on the empowering force of political consumerism and on how private concerns have public meaning by analyzing the relationship between private interest and public virtue. Here I discuss two sources of political consumer activism, the private virtue and public virtue tradition.

12 xii Preface Chapter 2 penetrates the historical roots of political consumerism. It analyzes a collection of examples mainly from secondary literature and historical sources, interpreted and discussed through the political consumerism lens. I have chosen to interpret the material in this fashion because the authors referenced in the chapter have in most cases not discussed their examples and cases as illustrations of political consumerist participation. The chapter emphasizes how women, ethnic groups, civil society associations, and revolutionary movements have used consumption and private consumer choices as a tool for change. Most of the material concerns the United States, and I have made an effort to include European examples known to me. The problematic nature of political consumerism historically and currently is stressed in a section dealing with the dilemmas of market-based collective action for politics and democracy. This chapter is important because it helps me to develop research questions about the similarities and differences between earlier and current forms of political consumerism. Contemporary forms of political consumerism are the focus of chapter 3, which discusses its scope, variety, institutionalization, and importance for politics today. The different categories that are explained and analyzed are consumer boycotts, labeling schemes, stewardship certification, and socially responsible investing. The institutionalization of political consumerism is contrasted with other market-based regulatory tools and the characteristics of contemporary political consumerism are systematized. One interesting finding discussed in some detail is trends toward mainstreaming. Chapter 4 takes a closer look at why people engage in political consumerism. What motivates them to get involved in this fashion? Who are political consumers? And how are current forms of political consumerism similar and different from the past? These are broad, encompassing questions that require a variety of research methods and approaches to be answered successfully. My answers come from a case study of green political consumerist activities in Sweden. Sweden was chosen because one would assume that it is an unlikely place for political activism in the marketplace. It is an unlikely setting because the Swedish state is strong, social democratic, and with a good record on environmental policymaking. Following the understanding of political consumerism developed in chapter 1, one would easily assume that Sweden does not need to use the market as a site for politics because it does not have governability problems: the political system works effectively; Swedish citizens have trust in it, and collectivistic rather than individualized collective action tends to characterize their

13 Preface xiii political involvements. Its presence in Sweden is explained by the effects of globalization and postmodernization, which are opening up new opportunities for different kinds of political engagements and individualized collective action. Results from the case study are related back to the discussion in chapter 1, which emphasize the importance of such political landscape changes as globalization, individualization, postmodernization, ecological modernization, risk society, and even governance as catalysts for current political consumerist endeavors. A new research finding from the case study is the similarities between the historical and contemporary forms of political consumerism. Three significant underlying ones are the role played by women as political consumers, the creation of social capital as a necessary condition for political consumerism to be successful, and the importance of the private virtue tradition or focusing on everyday problems of satisfying self-oriented interests for mobilizing citizens politically. Contrary to many other studies of political participation and social capital, my findings also show how political action in the form of political consumerism creates new social capital and broad societal trust. Thus, the causal link is reversed: participation is shown to create social capital in the case study. The role of women as everyday green political shoppers and activists has been instrumental here. Another important research finding is the changing role of government for political consumerism and political action in general. When compared to history and the discussion in chapter 2, the contemporary examples from chapter 3 and case study from chapter 4 show how political consumers tend to appeal to government as a large institutional consumer. This appeal differs considerably from the traditional relationship between citizen and government, which takes its point of departure in government as the maker of public policy. This book discusses how government procurement policy that is its consumer choices interests political consumers. Results from the case study in chapter 4 show how political consumer activists successfully lobbied municipal governments to choose a more environmentally friendly office paper and how this change in government purchasing practices quickly altered the production methods of Swedish paper mills. Swedish green political activists are not alone in noting the impact that large consumers like governments, universities, and businesses can have on corporate policy and behavior. Institutional procurement policy is presently a contentious issue on American university campuses, and it will most likely be an extremely important political battlefield in the future.

14 xiv Preface Chapter 5 asks why we are increasingly concerned with applying virtues in the marketplace, presents and addresses the main criticisms of political consumerism, discusses the relationship between political consumerism and trust and social capital, and ends by pondering whether the new actor categories created from viewing the market as a site for politics citizen-consumers, corporate citizenship, and socially responsible investors, and others represent a new great transformation that is carving a new sphere of action now that we are reshaping responsibility-taking globally and individualizing its causes and effects. It shows how virtues work as generic benchmarks in times of redistribution of responsibility-taking among actors and spheres and discusses the role of bonding and bridging social capital in reshaping responsibility-taking. The chapter also identifies the main criticisms against political consumerism and relates them to the findings in this book. A criticism that is given particular attention is the claim that political consumerism is not effective. This chapter begins a discussion on how effectiveness should be measured that is continued in the appendix, which outlines a research agenda for the study of political consumerism. The discussion shows that effectiveness must be measured in at least five different and interrelated ways that begin with the wording of problem formulations and end with an evaluation of outcomes and problem solutions. Claims of greenwash, bluewash, and sweatwash do not consider the process-orientation of political consumerism and need to be modified.