CMNS 221 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2-1: Body Politic, Neoliberalism, Invisible Hand
11 Sep 2016
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Document Summary
Consumption and citizenship are today increasingly recognized as porous, indeed overlapping domains. Civic life was in danger of being hollowed out by jostling private interests. Fascination with the civic potential of consumption has received an impetus from neoliberalism and the backlash of new social movements. With older producer-oriented labour politics in crisis, political energy and legitimacy have moved more easily to consumption as a site of action and mobilization. The reassessment of the civic dynamics of consumption came with the broadening of the political beyond an inherited territorial conception of citizenship and a class- based welfare state. Consumerism creates a new, liquid society, which hollows out a shared public domain, transcends territorial identities and erodes more solid identities based in work and locality. Consumer boycotts put to political use the ideal of freedom, choice and the sovereign consumer given circulation by neoliberal discourse and policies. Most people have become more individualized, and less class-bound.
