Consumer Activism - Conceptions of Consumer Movement

Conceptions of Consumer Movement

Three elements are necessary, according to Touraine, for the ideology of a social movement: identity, opposition, and totality. Identity is the self and collective identity of the members of the social movement. Opposition is the identification and description of the adversary. Totality is the indication that objectives will be achieved through struggle. This conception has been appropriate for the other movements, including the lesbian and gay, civil rights, and feminist movements. Consumers are cast in the social movement as common people, while the activists are those leading them into the conflict with business executives and elites. Activist members do not only target corporations and attempt to change their behavior, but they seek to elevate the awareness of consumers collectively with the purpose of altering consumer culture.

Read more about this topic:  Consumer Activism

Famous quotes containing the words conceptions of, conceptions, consumer and/or movement:

    None of the feathered race has yet realized my youthful conceptions of the woodland depths.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    It is conceivable at least that a late generation, such as we presumably are, has particular need of the sketch, in order not to be strangled to death by inherited conceptions which preclude new births.... The sketch has direction, but no ending; the sketch as reflection of a view of life that is no longer conclusive, or is not yet conclusive.
    Max Frisch (1911–1991)

    Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.
    Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)

    What stunned me was the regular assertion that feminists were “anti-family.” . . . It was motherhood that got me into the movement in the first place. I became an activist after recognizing how excruciatingly personal the political was to me and my sons. It was the women’s movement that put self-esteem back into “just a housewife,” rescuing our intelligence from the junk pile of “instinct” and making it human, deliberate, powerful.
    Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)