Political Virtue and Shopping

That customer in the checkout line ahead of you holding an item in one hand and a credit card in the other could be launching a political action. According to Michele Micheletti’s Political Virtue and Shopping, a strategic purchase can be political, and when it is political, in her view, it is virtuous. “Political consumption” is a new term for a not so new phenomenon, an effort on the part of consumers to invest in the “politics of products” by evaluating the social and ecological context of production when they decide what to buy, or not to buy. When they undertake a coordinated effort to influence public or corporate policy by the pattern of their purchases, they are engaging in “individualized collective action.” The contradiction embedded in the phrase points to the dilemma that the author encounters in arguing her point. If it is individual and private and self-interested, can shopping also be collective or public or socially active? The author addresses these concerns head-on in her chapter on theory. “Ecological modernization” and “reflexive modernization” are two theories that focus on similar issues of consumerism; both argue that modern problems of pollution and the risks of production require action outside of the traditional political institutions of nation states. Citizens, aware that they must take new responsibility, forge new relationships that put into place effective forms of regulation and international risk monitoring. These new forms of regulation are designed to offer to industry the incentive to manufacture “clean, green” products. Then informed consumers are expected to identify and buy only those products marked with labels that guarantee compliance with the regulations. The new schemes mix public and private, economic and political modes, and they assume that politics must take place independently of the nation-state and its geographically defined territory. The corporation is now a center of political focus, the market is the method, and individual consumption is the action. To Micheletti, that makes consumers another center of political focus. The concept of individualized collective action underlines the novel, diffuse, postmodern nature of this kind of political participation in distinction to the traditional kind of collective participation directed at political systems. She argues that when they are informed by judgment, autonomy, and solidarity, the small decisions of everyday shopping become democratic statements. The new consumer makes selfauthored, self-interested decisions based on ever-changing self-identities that use institutions only as points of departure for action. But with her emphasis on individual self-referential choices, the author cannot give the collective nature of the action much footing. It seems to hinge on loose networks of consumers discovering and acting on their personal responsibilities in concert. The book’s most compelling chapter is the author’s extended case study of the development of a widely used eco-labeling scheme in Sweden. In the 1980s, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SNF) began by announcing a boycott (“negative political consumerism”) of some paper products. The announcement produced widespread media coverage, and consumers responded. SNF expanded its boycott campaign to cover batteries and washing detergents. Then it put the few environmentally friendly detergents on a “green” list, encouraged consumers to purchase these items, and succeeded when several large retailers decided to stock only the listed detergents. When the SNF published a widely read green consumer guide, the consumer movement took off. In cooperation with four supermarket chains, SNF created an entity dedicated to expanding the eco-labeling process. The unit, Good Environmental Choice, operates as an independent agency, developing licensing requirements and testing products. But here lies an issue that Micheletti does not quite resolve. Though consumers may have played an important role as activist shoppers in the development of Good Environmental Choice, her case study reveals that institutions, primarily NGOs, played a far more central role than she indicates. And though the author contends that consumers