An active ethically conscious consumer has been acclaimed as the new hero and hope for an ethically improved capitalism. Through consumersÕ ''voting'' at the checkout, corporations are supposed to be held accountable for their conduct. In the literature on political consumerism, this has mainly been approached as political participation and governance. In this article, we do a critical review of this literature. We do so by questioning the existence of what we call a ''generic active consumer model.'' At the core of this position, there is a belief that the active consumer is a universal entity, available across nations and time. Instead we call for an approach that takes accord of the ways consumers and consumer roles are framed in interactive processes in markets, governance structures, and everyday life. Consumers in different countries assess their responsibilities and their powers as consumers differently due to different institutionalizations within distinctive contexts. We also must take into account how the inertia of ordinary consumption and the moral complexities of everyday life restrict the adoption of an active consumerist role. Hence, the debate on political consumerism should make for a more realistic notion of ethical consumer-sovereignty and its role in improving the workings of capitalism. In our view, these findings have severe implications for understanding both theories of political consumption and the dynamics of political consumption per se.

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Consumer choice, In-store marketing, Foucault, Supermarkets, Power,

The growth of digital ecosystems such as Google, Apple and Uber has led to radical changes in economic activity, work and consumption. It has also challenged established economic, social and organization theory, which has clear limitations in understanding these phenomena. The discourses on these topics are conducted in various arenas, which are not linked, and conceptualise digital ecosystems differently. What kind of theoretical object is this? The purpose of this study is to present an institutional and comparative analysis of the research on platforms and digital ecosystems. We identify four research streams; political, economic, technological and individual. We analyse each stream regarding the key insights, and identify the most important knowledge sources. Then we assess the relevance of classical and modern sociology for understanding digital ecosystems.

A conventional assumption within sociology of markets is that social ties are crucial in economic life, but that too strong relationships between sellers and buyers can create role conflicts and restrict business. Using qualitative interviews with Norwegian exporters and Danish importers, this article examines transactions in the international fish trade. We find that the assumed episodic and highly competitive commodity trade is rooted in dyadic networks and personal trust; inspired by the work of Goffman, we analyse transaction patterns as 'interaction order'. The transaction pattern is dependent on a particular organization of social interaction, interaction in which business dealings are divided into delimited spheres of the 'formal', 'personal' and 'private'. This division reflects a differentiation of the social roles, one in which traders avoid the role conflicts inherent in close relationships. We conclude by stating that economic sociology should probably be less preoccupied with formal network configurations and instead be focused more on how actors actually use social ties in the marketplace to conduct business, and on how these ties are linked to price mechanisms.

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The growth of global digital ecosystems such as Google, Apple and Uber has led to radical changes in economic activity, work and consumption. It has also challenged established economic, social and organisation theory, which has clear limitations in understanding these phenomena. The discourses on these topics are conducted in various arenas, which are not linked, and conceptualise digital ecosystems differently. What kind of theoretical object is this? And what is the role of consumption in digital ecosystems? To investigate these issues, we conducted an investigation in two steps. First, we performed a focused and a comparative analysis of the research on platforms and digital ecosystems. We identified four research streams: the political, the economic, the technological, and the social and cultural. In the second step, we explored a typology of the role of consumption in the four streams, that is, the position in the ecosystem, the consumer agency and the currency of exchange. We associated the consumer as the critical actor of digital ecosystems, because the impact of digital ecosystem development hinges on the way in which consumers perform, accept and integrate the technology into their everyday lives. Our findings highlight that the relationship between consumption and digital technology is multifaceted and non-deterministic.