FASHIONING SOCIAL JUSTICE THROUGH POLITICAL CONSUMERISM, CAPITALISM, AND THE INTERNET1

Authors:
  • MMMichele Micheletti
    Michele Micheletti
  • DSDietlind Stolle
    Dietlind Stolle
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Abstract
Consumers, consumer goods, brand names, logos, and corporations are increasingly important in global struggles for social justice. Global social justice networks use a variety of innovative means to encourage shoppers to consider the hidden politics behind consumer goods and corporate brand names. They are using this power of mobilization to push transnational corporations to take more responsibility for the social consequences of their policy and practice. There is also a ‘pull factor’ in late market capitalism in the form of new market actors, structures, and vulnerabilities that are pulling global corporations into progressive social change. This article studies the role of the outside (market external) push factor of political consumerism and the role of the inside (market internal) capitalist pull factor in fashioning global social justice. It discusses the three basic forms of political consumerism and why political consumerism has become a global political force. It uses the contemporary anti-sweatshop movement to illustrate how political consumerism puts claims on the global economy. By drawing on historical scholarship on the importance of the rise of capitalism for anti-slavery in the 1700s and 1800s, the article argues that late capitalism makes buyer-driven corporations consider global social values in their production practices. A special section focuses on how a particular case of culture jamming combines the push and pull factors to capitalize on the vulnerabilities of late capitalism by using innovative corporate Internet marketing to communicate global anti-sweatshop politics.

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