The Contested Consumer: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Consumer Activism and Consumer Governance

On 8 and 9 September, the project team hosts the online workshop The Contested Consumer, with participants from different academic fields. Over the two days, the participants will discuss the history of consumer representation with a twofold aim:

• To bring together researchers from the fields of consumer activism and consumer governance, respectively, and to ask how the two may be better integrated.
• To develop an analytical framework that combines an institutionalist approach with a central focus on the role of actors, ideas, and practices, thus highlighting the dynamic and contested nature of consumer representation.

Scholarship about the history of consumerism and consumer governance is abundant, yet it suffers from internal fragmentation. One strand of academics is primarily interested in the development of consumer governance, the legislation that has been enacted to protect consumer rights, and the institutions that have assumed a central role in protecting and interpreting these rights. A second group of social historians and scientists focuses on the development of consumer organisations, their organisational structures and activities, and the values embedded therein. Of special interest to this group is the role of ‘ethical’ or ‘political consumerism’ as a particular form of social activism aimed at changing consumption patterns and power relations.

Bringing together these two strands raises new questions about the impact of consumer organisations on the development of consumer protection policies and, vice versa, the enabling or hampering effects of institutional and legislative frameworks on consumer representatives and activists. When does political consumerism lead to changes in consumer governance? What is the role of the different actors involved?

These two strands of research are closely connected to questions of representation. After all, the institutions and the organisations which concerned themselves with consumers did so from a certain conception of consumer interests and how they could serve those interests.