Consumer citizenship: a self-contradictory concept?

Abstract

The concept of consumer citizenship relates to two discourses in contemporary political philosophy. In particular, the concept of citizenship is currently in three central traditions in political philosophy: the traditions of political liberalism, of civic republicanism and of deliberative democracy. Yet, against each of these backgrounds, consumer citizenship looks like a degraded form of citizenship. Because of this result of the first section, I shall take a different stance on consumer citizenship. This concept is in one line with recently explored ‘qualified concepts of citizenship’, i.e. ‘ecological citizenship’. Section two discusses the implications of this approach to consumer citizenship. A third section first states that as a result of the first two approaches, consumer citizenship looks like a self-contradictory concept. Yet, a more thorough look at the tensions in that concept contributes to another interpretation: Consumer citizenship highlights tensions of the concept of citizenship more generally. In particular, consumer citizenship provides an antipode to the concept of consumer sovereignty.