„Was brauche ich wirklich?“ Konsumgewissen, Selbsttechnologien und raumsensibler Konsum

Abstract

Relating individual and local ways of consumption to global social and ecological issues has become more and more common in recent years, a phenomenon which can also be understood as a rescaling of political participation. Using a poststructural approach of subjectivation/subjectivity, I suggest to understand the increasing awareness of the origin of commodities as the result of a twofold process: on the one hand there is discursive empowerment, on the other hand, there is performative enactment; both lead to the emergence of consciously acting consumers, the crucial technology being the negotiation and questioning of personal wants and needs. In the following paper, I want to show this point by drawing on both ethnographic and netnographic fieldwork with users of a social network who refer to themselves as „conscious consumers“. It concludes by discussing the idea of empowering consumers through rescaled political participation.