The conflict market: Polarizing consumer culture(s) in counter-democracy

Sofia Ulver

doi:10.1177/14695405211026040

Abstract

At the beginning of the millennium, consumer culture researchers predicted that people would increasingly demand that marketplace actors subscribe to contemporary ethics of liberal democracy. Although their prediction indeed came true, they did not foresee that an algorithm-powered media ecosystem in combination with growing authoritarian movements would soon come to fuel an increasingly polarized political landscape and challenge the very fundament of liberal democracy per se. In this macroscopic, conceptual article, I discuss three assumption-challenging logics—counter-democratic consumer culture, de-dialectical algorithmic manipulation, and growing illiberal consumer resistance—according to which the market increasingly monetizes the conflicts accompanying this polarization and, thereby, reinforces it. I call this new logic a conflict market and illustrate it through three, historically situated and currently conflicting, consumer ideoscapes—the neoblue, the neogreen, and the neobrown—between which consumers engage in marketized conflicts, not in a de-politicizing way, but in an increasingly un-politicizing, de-dialectical, and polarizing way. At the technologically manipulated conflict market, the role of marketers is to monetize politically sensitive topics by creating conflict, knowingly renouncing large groups of consumers, and giving fodder to the political extremes.

Highlights

I mightn’t have done much good in my life, but at least I contributed to the destruction of the planet — and I systematically sabotaged the selective recycling system put in place by the residents’ association by chucking empty wine bottles in the bin meant for paper.Quote from Houllebecq’s (2019) book SerotoninThis quote, from French author Houllebecq’s anti-hero Florent-Claude, is an illustration of one side of the everyday consumer embodiment we popularly speak of as political polarization
How are the market and consumer culture involved in ongoing political polarization? This conceptual article takes its departure in consumer culture theory (CCT) (Arnould and Thompson, 2005), in the intersection of research on algorithmically powered surveillance capitalism (e.g., Darmody and Zwick, 2020) and research on the market’spoliticizing co-optation of political movements (e.g., Veresiu and Giesler, 2018)
I discuss an alternative future for consumer culture, where market actors increasingly monetize political conflict exacerbated by an algorithmical capitalist logic, resulting in what I call a conflict market

Summary

Introduction

I mightn’t have done much good in my life, but at least I contributed to the destruction of the planet — and I systematically sabotaged the selective recycling system put in place by the residents’ association by chucking empty wine bottles in the bin meant for paper.Quote from Houllebecq’s (2019) book SerotoninThis quote, from French author Houllebecq’s anti-hero Florent-Claude, is an illustration of one side of the everyday consumer embodiment we popularly speak of as political polarization. By using academic insights on current algorithmic consumer manipulation (e.g., Darmody and Zwick, 2020) and political narratives in branding (e.g., Kravets, 2012), I develop what I call the conflict market.

Results

Conclusion