Daily practices, consumption and citizenship

Abstract

This paper promotes a reflection on the relationship between daily practices and consumption. Understanding how conflicts, resistance and consensus are generated from daily consumption practices opens up possibilities for reflecting on the construction of sustainability in the context of diversity, one of the landmarks of the globalized world. Within this socio-cultural context, the central issue is: can consumption generate citizenship practices? The concepts of subject and agent help one think about collective action and subjectivation processes and their interferences on the collective consuming behavior. Based on empirical data from a research carried out in the municipality of Estrela in 2007, in the Taquari Valley -Rio Grande do Sul (Southern Brazil) on local reality consumption practices, it was possible to conclude that various reasoning mechanisms and values underlie the daily consumption practices. Citizenship construction, based on consumption practices, depends on the subject's reflection capacity on his/her daily practices or on what goes through the circulation of environmental information based on sociability spaces.

Cultura de Consumo, Sustentabilidade e Práticas Empresariais: Como as Empresas Podem Contribuir para Promover o valor Simbólico da Sustentabilidade nas Atividades de Consumo?

“…Alguns estudos enfatizam a necessidade de avaliar as implicações da mudança cultural e de valores sobre a percepção, atitudes e comportamentos do consumidor sobre as questões ambientais (Ester, Simões, & Vinken, 2004;Kilbourne, & Carlson, 2008). Outros estudos exploram a necessidade de um novo modelo de consumo com ampliação das responsabilidades do consumidor sobre o seu ato de consumo, incluindo a dimensão ética e de cidadania (Hansen, & Schrader, 1997;Portilho, 2005;Briceno, & Stagl, 2006;Mazzarino et al, 2011;Hoffmann, & Hutter, 2012;Mont et al, 2014). Há aquelas que discutem sobre a insuficiência das pesquisas sobre o comportamento do consumidor e apontam para a necessidade de adotar uma abordagem interdisciplinar do consumo num sentido mais amplo, que inclua, além dos aspectos culturais, os aspectos estruturais (Heiskanen, & Pantzar, 1997;Dolan, 2002;Schafer, & Crane, 2005;Mont, & Plepys, 2008;Thøgersen, 2010;Assadourian, 2010;Costa, & Teodósio, 2011;Silva, 2012;Silva, & Oliveira, 2012).…”

Voting at the Marketplace: Political Consumerism in Latin America

“…However, the available data support the assumption that signifi cant increases in numbers of individuals holding postmaterialist values occurred in Argentina only in the 1990s. 3 Likewise, in this region, research has yet to prove an association between political consumerism and postmaterialism or other indicators of lifestyle politics (Barbosa et al 2014;Mazzarino et al 2011). If value change cannot be ruled out as an infl uence, especially among urban middle and upper middle classes, the constellation of factors behind documented episodes of political consumerism suggests that other forces should also be considered.…”