Description
Consumers in the global North participate in a complex tangle of globe-spanning social relations. Consumption sits at the heart of modern globalisation, yet IPE lacks a compelling account of its role in generating, sustaining and resisting the unequal relations of global trade. Boosters of globalisation claim it is implicitly legitimised through its benefits to consumers. More critical accounts condemn wasteful or excessive consumption, encouraged by the demands of capital accumulation. These characterise consumption as either the revealed preference of sovereign consumers, or an afterthought to relations of production. By drawing on a wider literature that understands it as a socially and culturally embedded practice, the research presented here seeks to open the black box of consumption. It is explored through interviews with individual consumers, reflecting on their practices of consumption as captured through diary methods. Using an everyday IPE approach grounded in philosophical pragmatism, consumption is analysed through the concepts of habit, valuation and experimentation. It shows how aggregated individual consumption decisions structure incentives across the global economy, but that the context for these decisions is shaped by the relative abundance globally produced goods. Consumption is revealed as a complex and productive lens for understanding, and transforming, the social relations of the global economy.
Keywords: Consumption, Everyday IPE, Pragmatism, Globalisation, Global Trade
