The Politics of Consumption/ The Consumption of Politics

As consumer culture pervades the social life of citizens in America and Europe, it becomes increasingly important to clarify the relationship between consumption and citizenship. With this in mind, faculty and students at the University of Wisconsin organized a conference titled ''The Politics of Consumption/The Consumption of Politics.' Held in October 2006, the meeting provided a forum for leading scholars to discuss the interplay of markets, media, politics, and the citizen-consumer. Revised and expanded versions of the papers they presented are collected in this volume with the goal of advancing this emerging area of inquiry. It is our hope that the essays and research papers we have collected here help define the next wave of theory building and research inquiry on file intersections of consumer culture, civic culture, and mass culture. Keywords: citizen-consumers; competitive consumption; civic engagement; lifestyle politics; materialism; political branding; socially conscious consumption; taste cultures