ABSTRACT This commentary calls on our scholarly community to rethink what Fascism might be in the twenty-first century, and what its origins in social media consumption might have to tell us about the connection between neoliberal market cultures and political instability. I argue that Fascism is still a relevant concept for analysing our present moment, as long as it is not framed by early twentieth-century definitions. Rather than use Fascism as a convenient label, it should be understood as a manifestation of a particular post-Enlightenment form of conduct, namely cynicism. It is this mindset, that of the cynic, which ought to be at the centre of current analyses of the causal relationship between digitally mediated consumption forms and the carious fragmentation of formerly stable democratic institutions. The commentary concludes by outlining the contours of a research programme on consumer cynicism.

ABSTRACT Gender categorisations permeate markets and fuel gender inequalities. A marketplace strategy to address this is gender-bending, whereby marketers reposition products targeted to one gender to another. In this paper, we explore whether gender-bending challenges or reinforces the gendered norms that maintain gendered inequalities. We examine this through a qualitative research study of dolls designed for boys. Our study demonstrates that gender-bending traverses hybrid masculinities that both challenge and reinforce masculine norms. Specifically, whilst the signalling of alternative masculinities challenges masculine norms, these norms are still reinforced through the signalling of hegemonic masculinities used to render the gender-bended product more palatable. Our paper demonstrates that gender-bending is more than a gender reversal and can involve the navigation of complex gender dynamics in the marketplace. Further, we advance understandings of hybrid masculinities in consumer culture by highlighting the capacity of gender-bending to disrupt gender hierarchies – especially for boys.

ABSTRACT Inspired by decolonial studies, this paper explores how Eurocentric coloniality shapes marketing management practices and, in turn, how these practices enact colonial ontologies within the cultural space of Brazilian football. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a major Brazilian football club, we demonstrate that marketing management was introduced into football administration as a Eurocentric reference of modernity. By colonizing managers, marketing practices and discourses engineer a symbolic and material apparatus that positions subjects within a colonial matrix of power. This apparatus operates by establishing three interconnected colonial ontological conditions: spatial-material, behavioral, and rational. These conditions work to colonize supporters’ imaginaries, bodies, and rationalities, hierarchizing local supporting culture, its materiality, and its subjects as an inferior “other” in relation to imagined Eurocentric modernity. Our conclusions expand decolonial marketing studies by revealing the specific colonial ontological conditions produced and enacted by marketing management, culminating in the coloniality of being.

ABSTRACT How do new companies attempt to captivate customers in a food market they are substantially seeking to transform? Plant-based meat has been marketed as a revolutionary food product that will not only transform markets but also provide better health and reduced environmental harms. Building on conceptualizations of captivation, we analyze video ads from leading brands. Our results highlight four modalities of consumer captivation that we refer to as (a) Cali-ology, emphasizing a “West Coast” lifestyle filled by lively gatherings of people enjoying food together; (b) scientism, mobilizing technology and turning chemistry into magic; (c) celebritism, emphasizing health, athletes and a-list celebrities as supporters of plant-based meat; and (d) tasteology, defining sensory knowledge and pleasure as developed by social practices and what is inside foodstuffs. Inferring a transition from matters of concern, such as health and environment, to consumers’ sensory pleasure, these modalities together make up what we term plant capitalization.

ABSTRACT Electric Vehicles (EVs) are promoted as a sustainable way of transport claiming to be environmentally friendly, with different governments in India launching several schemes to promote them. Recent studies reveal that EVs release more toxic emissions than their non-electric counterparts. Furthermore, the batteries result in the extraction of minerals from the Global South. In this article, we draw from Marxist criticisms of consumerism, sustainable development, and technological fetishism to interrogate how notions of sustainability are legitimised to support EV consumption in India. Dependency theory has been employed to study how policies to provide a sustainable means of life for a few are enacted at the expense of most. By examining India's EV policies within global dependency relations, the article demonstrates how EV promotion represents a form of commodity fetishism reproducing unequal development patterns.

ABSTRACT This essay rethinks poetry in consumption studies, not as a methodological tool or reflexive supplement, but as the intrinsic logic in the capitalist economy of desire. It contends that poetic language allows creative expressions of desire within the limits of a language itself. Poetry therefore plays with the limits of a language whereas transgression exceeds them. By extending a poetic logic to economic analysis, this essay claims that a “poetic economy of desire” can stretch into new areas of desiring while simultaneously holding on to its integrity – thus mirroring capitalism’s remarkable dynamicity and capacity of self-renewal, which nonetheless never threatens the axiom of capital. Therefore, any vision of a post-capitalist economy must adapt an equally dynamic poetics as capitalism itself, but its inviolable limit – its claim for a new axiom – must be something socially and environmentally fairer.

ABSTRACT This article explores how the global idea of “clean” and “modern” energy promoted by Sustainable Development Goal 7 (SDG7) is reinterpreted in Langas, a Kenyan informal settlement shaped by internal migration and postcolonial legacies. The Kenyan government embraced SDG7’s vision, promoting liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) bottles as a “clean” and “modern” energy solution to displace polluting fuels like firewood, charcoal and kerosene. However, ethnographic fieldwork in Langas reveals that residents consume LPG bottles not solely for their practical use, but as aspirational objects signifying social distinction and access to Western lifestyles. Their material features – colour, shine and shape – carry symbolic weight, expressing a local sense of “modernity” that diverges from that of global energy narratives. By examining the meanings ascribed to LPG bottles in Langas, this article contributes to debates on the consumption of ideas in postcolonial contexts, highlighting the limits of universalist approaches to energy transition projects.

ABSTRACT This review interrogates representations of hybridity in the Turkish television series The Turkish Detective, focusing on spatial, narrative, and character hybridity. It shows that while hybridity facilitates negotiation and adaptation in the business sphere, it also reflects global power asymmetries, as Turkish producers seek validation from dominant Anglo and North American markets. Framing hybridity as both a creative strategy and a mode of structural compliance, the review contributes to consumer culture theory by revealing how global production systems shape hybrid representations. Ultimately, it argues that while dizis promote cultural exchange, their hybridity often reinforces existing global cultural hierarchies.

ABSTRACT The article explores themes of consumerism and marketing in the work of Bernard Stiegler. I focus mainly on the influence and deviations from Marx in Stiegler’s thinking on consumption. The key concept connecting Stiegler to Marx is proletarianisation, signifying a loss of knowledge and participation of both the producers and consumers. Stiegler develops a provocative thesis that contemporary hyper-industrial and hyper-consumerist societies reach a stage of generalised proletarianisation covering most, if not all, strata of society. This thesis was met with several criticisms. I present two main ones aimed at him from Marxist positions. First, Stiegler presents an overly apocalyptic view, giving up resistance. Second, he takes the class out of Marxism, making it unfit for analysis of social inequality. In dialogue with these criticisms, I offer a more lenient interpretation of Stiegler and outline how his philosophy can be used for research on consumption or marketing.