Everyday consumption practices as a site for activism? Exploring the motivations of grassroots reuse groups

Mike Foden

doi:10.3351/ppp.0006.0003.0004

Abstract

This paper draws on early findings from a study of grassroots groups and individuals engaged in alternative consumption practices: ways of acquiring, exchanging, using and disposing of goods outside of the formal economy. The study focuses on individuals and groups that take items that would otherwise be classed as waste and try to put them (back) to use. It is especially concerned with ethical and political dimensions of these practices: how small day-to-day acts are associated with trying to live according to a set of values and how they might make a difference to wider problems. Two existing ways of theorising the connection between everyday individual acts and social change are put forward: prefigurative politics and political consumerism. Initial findings suggest ambivalence concerning the political nature of such activities, with participants recognising a politics of consumption, but hesitant to describe their engagement in alternative consumption practices as a political act.

Highlights

This paper presents initial findings from a study on alternative consumption practices
While previous studies have provided insightful evidence on the degree to which informal and second-hand forms of exchange are chosen or a necessity (e.g. Williams and Paddock, 2003; Williams, 2003; Williams and Windebank, 2005), this study is especially concerned with ethical and political dimensions of alternative consumption practices: how small day-to-day acts of opting out of the market might be associated with trying to live according to a set of values or making a difference to wider social and People, Place & Policy Online (2012): 6/3, pp. 148-163 p. 149
This paper presents findings from the opening stages of the research, investigating two aspects of how participants make sense of their own engagement in alternative consumption practices: the types of private and public concerns they see as prompting them to consume in certain ways, some resonating strongly with critical accounts of the consumer society; and their different understandings of the part that their individual acts of consumption play in achieving broader change

Summary

Introduction

This paper presents initial findings from a study on alternative consumption practices. If social life is increasingly organised around and enacted through consumption, does this include the ways in which people engage in political action?

Results

Conclusion