Strategic Interactions in Consumer Politics: Lessons from the Sociology of Social Movements

Recent trends in the sociology of social movements have highlighted how strategic players engage one another in structured but open-ended arenas, as well as switching among arenas. Players can include individuals as well as intentional groupings of individuals such as formal organizations, informal groups, alliances, and sometimes vaguer (less unified) teams such as social movements or states. Arenas also range from informal meetings to highly rule-bound and ritualized settings, but always with outcomes and decisions at stake. Consumer politics often combines individual and team players, and a strategic-interactionist framework can see how these fit together. For example in the common case of boycotts, it turns out that the compound players tend to have more of an effect than individual consumer choices. In its attention to players, the new perspective emphasizes cultural meanings, the points of view of players, their emotions, and their strategic dilemmas and decision making.