Consumption is not often addressed in the literature on social movements even though consumer organizations and consumer tactics have been successful in achieving social change. This paper offers an analytical framework for studying the politics of consumption, which suggests that consumers can be conceived of collectively as active agents rather than passive individuals. I capture this active agency through four concepts: mobilization, problematization, identification, and contention. I focus on one consumer organization, the National Consumers' League, and its three consumer tactics, white lists, white labels, and legislation, in order to demonstrate how the analytical framework I construct can be applied.
This article examines the role consumer tactics played in the American Federation of Labor's (AFL) strategy of business unionism. In particular, it explains how the AFL used its consumer tactics to try to mobilize the purchasing power of union members and their families to fight for higher wages and shorter working hours. The historical data collected for this article demonstrates that the AFL was not ignorant of the relationship between production and consumption, or the worker and the consumer. I discuss how the AFL used its consumer tactics to try to build solidarity across its affiliated trade unions and provide a way for the wives, daughters, and mothers of union men to become involved in the labor movement through consumption. I argue that these consumer tactics need to be fully acknowledged, as they were pivotal in some of the most contentious struggles between the AFL and business at the turn of the 20th century.
Nicos Poulantzas was born in Athens, Greece. He was active in the Greek student movement of the 1950s and participated in various communist and leftist organizations throughout his career. After completing a degree in law in Greece, Poulantzas moved to France, where he received a doctorate in the philosophy of law in 1965. His first major work,
Political Power and Social Classes
, was published in 1968. Poulantzas held a number of academic appointments in France, and at the time of his suicide was professor of sociology at the University of Vincennes.
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