New insights on consumer activism: advancing a prefigurative framing of alternative consumption

Abstract

Bauman (2012) argues that we are currently amid an ‘interregnum’ a time of significant instability, turmoil and general social anxiety coupled with a sense of hope and fervour for possible futures (Gramsci, 1996). Vast socio-economic inequalities, emphasised by COVID, coupled with escalating living costs and rapid ecological degradation, feed a growing consciousness that capitalism is neither equipped nor inclined to address society’s multiple social, political and ecological crises. Marketing scholars are responding to these ‘wicked problems’. For example, Fitchett and Cronin (2022, p. 9) call for the deromanticisation of the market – ‘an ideological break with market-centrism and capitalist realism’. While Lloveras et al. (2022) suggest that scholars work ‘towards a future in which the only type of marketing possible is one that is coherent with the deep, radical transformations’ (p. 17) associated with a degrowth approach to the market. Similarly, this special section called for an exploration of transformative counterhegemonic spaces and movements that draw on prefigurative politics. The prefigurative turn has swept through the social sciences, originating in political science (Boggs, 1977) and migrating to psychology (Trott, 2016), anthropology (Graeber, 2014), geography (Jeffrey & Dyson, 2021), and increasingly, marketing (Casey et al., 2020; Chatzidakis et al., 2012) Prefigurative politics are typically associated with radical political movements like anarchism (Franks, 2019), feminism (Hamouda, 2022), alter-globalisation (L. S. Yates, 2020) and, to some degree, Marxism (Törnberg, 2021). These movements are often embodied in counter-hegemonic social, political or economic projects or via an alternative, creative means of resistance (L. S. Yates, 2015). The concept captures a variety of social experiments which critique the status quo (Cornish et al., 2016) whilst constructing ‘alternative or utopian social relations in the present either in parallel with or in the course of, adversarial social movement protest’ (L. S. Yates, 2015, p. 236). The term ‘prefigurative politics’ is often attributed to Carl Boggs. However, the theory and practice pre-existed his commentary. Day (2005) traces its roots as far back as Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) and credits Gustav Landauer (1870–1919) with the insight that we can construct a desired world in the shell of the old ‘if mutual aid is always with us a principle, then socialism can be created, for those who choose it, at the time and place of their choosing’ (p. 89). This kind of action is typified by rejecting the ‘politics of waiting’ and embracing ‘the immanent possibilities of the here and now’ (Springer, 2014, p. 3), using these alternatives as ‘theatrical spectacles that publicly represent political ideologies and convince others of their correctness’ (Portwood-Stacer, 2012, p. 99). Thus, activists literally live their ideals, establish organisations and create spaces which reflect their desired end-state. There is no ‘clear qualitative difference between means and ends: both are, so to speak, mirrored in the practice concerned’ (van de Sande, 2013, p. 232). For instance, during the 1960’s and JOURNAL OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT 2023, VOL. 39, NOS. 9–10, 852–856 https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2023.2244299