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2011/2012 No. 6

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William A. Orme

Ilona Mikkonen, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Johanna Moisander and Anu Valtonen

Consumer Resistance as Struggle over Subjectivity

1

Consumer Resistance as Struggle over Subjectivity

Ilona Mikkonen

Aalto University School of Economics, Finland

Nikhilesh Dholakia

University of Rhode Island, USA

Johanna Moisander

Aalto University School of Economics, Finland

Anu Valtonen

University of Lapland, Finland

December 2011

This is the University of Rhode Island Working Paper version of a paper that is in the review

process.

2

Consumer Resistance as Struggle over Subjectivity

Abstract

This paper expands the anti-consumption and consumer resistance literature by directing focus

on an important domain of resistance that has not been dealt with extensively: consumer

subjectivity. Drawing on Foucauldian ideas on power and resistance, organization studies

literature on discursive resistance, and recent works on anti-consumption and identity projects, a

theoretical framework of consumer resistance as struggle over subjectivity is developed. It is

argued that resistive discursive practices can have transformative potential as they facilitate

envisioning and crafting alternative subject positions. This paper contributes by enhancing

understanding of the discursive power that consumers exercise in the marketplace.

Keywords: Anti-consumption, consumer resistance, subjectivity, power, discursive strategies.

3

Consumer Resistance as Struggle over Subjectivity

Introduction

In recent consumer and marketing literature different forms of consumer resistance and other

kinds of anti-consumption practices (Cherrier 2009; Lee, Fernandez and Hyman 2009; Lee,

Motion and Conroy 2009) such as voluntary simplification and dispossession (Cherrier 2009;

Cherrier and Murray 2007), custodian behaviours (Cherrier 2010),product non-usage (Cherrier

2006), and deployment of the nationalist ideology (Varman and Belk 2009), are becoming

increasingly common, and of rising importance to both marketing theory and practice (see for

example Austin 2005; Roux 2007). Consumers, as part of different social movements, are

targeting marketers in order to bring about social and political change, via new practices of

resistance that have been enabled by, for example, social media (Dalli and Corciolani 2008;

Hemetsberger 2006).

As Cherrier (2009) notes, consumer research literature has explored a variety of manifestations

of anti-consumption and consumer resistance “at the level of the marketplace as a whole, the

marketing activities, and/or the brand/product” (p. 181). At the brand/product level resistance is

often manifested in boycotting (Herrmann 1993), or other overt behaviours such as protesting

and complaining (Bradshaw and Hollbrook 2008). At the level of marketing activities resistance

can take form in acts such as active appropriation and resignification of brand logos and

advertising slogans (Ritson and Dobscha 1999). Resistance towards the whole ideological

domain of consumerism has taken many shapes, from using homemade food to counter the

4

market’s invasion of the home and family identity (Moisio, Arnould, and Price 2004) to serving

as a “product custodian” to counter the expansion of throwaway culture (Cherrier 2010).

In this paper we want to expand the anti-consumption literature by directing focus to yet another

important domain of consumer resistance, subjectivity, which has not been dealt with extensively

in consumer research literature. We also continue the recent discussion on Foucauldian

perspective of power that has been taking place in marketing and consumer literature (e.g.

Becket and Nyack 2008; Bonsu and Polsa 2011; Denegri-Knott, Zwick, and Schroeder 2006;

Shankar, Cherrier, and Canniford 2006).

The subject position of ‘the consumer’ is one of the most significant categories of knowledge in

contemporary market culture (Humphreys 2006) One of the important struggles of consumer

resistance takes place in the realm of consumer subjectivity which is being – intentionally or

inadvertently – constructed, shaped and normalized by marketplace ideologies and actors (e.g.

Firat , Dholakia, and 1995; Firat and Dholakia 2006; Moisander and Eriksson 2006; Zwick and

Dholakia 2004a and 2004b; Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008). We posit that in order to

understand the complexity of consumer resistance, it is necessary to study marketplace

ideologies and marketer-constructed consumer subjectivities as the targets of consumers’

discursive strategies of resistance.

Such an examination requires an understanding of power which differs considerably form the

two “traditional” perspectives of power, the sovereignty model and the cultural authority model

(Denegri-Knott, Zwick, and Schroeder 2006) that have formed the basis for most discussions on

consumer resistance. Both these perspectives see power as a feature of a specific locality or

5

entity, and primarily repressive in nature. We argue that in the contemporary participatory

marketplace culture, the traditional perspectives alone are no longer sufficient for understanding

and theorizing all the new forms of consumer resistance. A discursive power perspective, which

builds on the work of Michel Foucault, enables us to recognize and appreciate consumer

resistance as not merely destructive and reactive but also productive and proactive. Through

engaging in resistance consumers are constructing “new knowledges and new truths”

(Meriläinen et al. 2004, 545) that are then circulated in the marketplace and culture more

broadly. For example, Goulding and Saren (2009) exemplify gothic subculture as a site of

resistance where conventional gender norms are challenged and alternative sexual politics are

established through a variety of gendered performances. This subculture “positively embraces

the active reconfiguration of gender norms” (p.43). Thus, the individuals are not merely

complaining about conventional gender norms, but actively crafting new ways of being male and

female.

In this paper we develop a theoretical framework that maps out and elaborates on different forms

of consumer resistance that takes place in the realm of subjectivity. We conceptualize consumer

resistance as struggles over subjectivity in which marketer-constructed and imposed

subjectivities are resisted through discursive strategies, often through construction of alternative

subjectivities. Using this approach, we contribute to a better understanding of the discursive

power that consumers exercise in the marketplace.

This framework builds on the Foucauldian ideas on power and resistance, organization studies

literature on discursive and subjectivity-level resistance (e.g. Thomas and Davies 2005a and

6

2005b; Laine and Vaara 2007; Meriläinen et al., 2004), literature on anti-consumption (e.g.

Cherrier 2010; Cherrier 2009; Iyer and Muncy 2009) and recent consumer research literature on

identity projects as consumer resistance (Mikkonen, Moisander, and Firat 2011).

Discursive power and ideologies

Denegri-Knott et al. (2006) have provided a useful cartography of the perspectives on power

within consumer and marketing research. According to the authors, this literature has drawn

from three distinct models of power 1) the consumer sovereignty model which draws from

classical and neoclassical economic thinkers such as Adam Smith; 2) the cultural power model,

which emerges from social science traditions, and focuses on cultural meanings as the site of

power and domination; and 3) the discursive power model, which builds on the French

philosopher Michel Foucault1.

The discursive perspective on power is constitutive in the sense that power builds knowledge,

constructs truth, and forms subjectivities (see Haugaard, 2002). In essence, instead of being

primarily visible and repressive, power is seen as embedded in normalizing disciplinary

discourses, institutions, and ideologies; and it acts on people by persuading them to internalize

sets of norms, views and ideas that make “sensible and accountable that which people should do,

can do and thus do” (Clegg 1989, 156). Power constructs subject positions containing models of

obedience, ideals that we are all enticed into approximating. Power is not held, but practiced

(Nealon 2008, 24), and it thus works in a profound and covert manner:

[I]n a society such as ours, but basically in any society, there are manifold relation of

power which permeate, characterize and constitute the social body, and these

relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented

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without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse...”

(Foucault 1980, 93)

Power operates through discourses. A similar term often employed in culturally oriented

marketing literature is ‘ideology’, understood not in the Marxist sense as ‘false consciousness’,

but as a specific normalizing discourse, which fixes certain meanings within a society as “true”,

“acceptable” and “normal”. In the marketplace context ideologies are the “systems of meaning

that tend to channel and reproduce consumers’ thoughts and actions in such way as to defend

dominant interests in society” (Arnould and Thompson 2005, 874). An ideology is, in a sense, a

regime of truth, a “discourse [a society] accepts and makes function as true” (Foucault 1984, 73).

Power is also intimately tied to knowledge, and is “exercised by virtue of things being known”

(Foucault 1980, 154). To be able to steer their conduct, people, objects, and concepts need to be

rendered “objects of knowledge”. Knowledge – produced in (scientific) discourse – renders some

forms of being, thinking, and talking intelligible and natural, while at the same time excluding

others as meaningless and abnormal or even deviant. Therefore knowledge does not refer to

‘facts’, but to what is currently and widely accepted as reality. Thus, in the marketplace, power is

also deeply embedded in the ways in which we have come to “know” economy, markets and

market practices; and the marketplace actors (consumers and marketers). Capitalism and its

accompanying market economy constitute a regime of truth (ideology) that has become the

normalized way of being in society. Through the Foucauldian lens ‘economy’ appears not solely

as the physical production and consumption of goods and services – and as the ways of

managing scarce resources (i.e., money, materials, and labour) – but as yet another object of

knowledge, and as a realm for the exercise of power.

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Consumer subjectivities

Ideologies also produce subjects that fit into, constitute, and reproduce the social order; which in

turn is constructed in discourses of power (e.g. Barker 2000, 81; Moisander and Valtonen 2006,

197). We use the term ‘subject’ to refer to the core ideas that we hold about human beings, not

tied to any one individual. The subject “is not the speaking consciousness, not the author of the

formulation, but a position that might be filled in certain conditions by various individuals”

(Foucault 1977, 115, italics added). Subjects, in this view, are not fixed and permanent. Human

subjectivity is not defined biologically, but historically (Hall 1992, 277): we are not subjects, but

we are made subjects through normalizing ideologies that render certain forms of personhood

thinkable or unthinkable, acceptable or deviant, normal or abnormal. Foucault explored these

processes of normalization in the institutional contexts of prisons (1977) and hospitals (1975). In

marketing and consumer literature the normalizing tendencies of ideologies has been discussed

in terms of systematic predisposition of consumers toward certain kinds of identity projects

(Arnould and Thompson 2005).

The consumer as a subject position is created through a multitude of practices that render her

knowable on both macro-level of capitalist discourse (e.g. Humphreys 2006; Zwick and

Dholakia 2004a and 2004b) and the micro-level of industries (Thompson and Tambyah 1999;

Moisander and Eriksson 2006), brands (Holt 2006), and consumer policy (e.g., Autio,

Heiskanen, and Heinonen 2009); all which construct and present “ideal” consumer subject

positions to be filled.

9

The consumer, as we know her, argue Miller and Rose (1997, 4) is a subjectivity that was ‘made

up’ in the post-war period from 1950 to 1970. More recently, Zwick and Dholakia (2004b, 36)

have argued that “the consumer… does not exist outside this constitutive field of discursive

power” that operates though marketplace ideologies and technologies. Customer Relationship

Management (CRM), for example, can be approached as a discourse that is premised on the

database’s power to differentiate and particularize consumers. Databases, through which

companies can generate and access identifiable customer profiles, enable “codification,

classification, and comparison [of consumers]” (Zwick and Dholakia 2004a: 216). Thus, CRM

emerges as a disciplining technology aimed at producing an individualized customer, a customer

that can be isolated from all others, and “becomes [an] observable, measurable, and quantifiable”

(2004a, 219) object “upon which the marketer can now act strategically” (2004b, 32).

Importantly, both in the post-war England and in contemporary marketing practice and literature,

the consumer is constructed as an essentially free and active decision maker, communicator, and

contributor (Cherrier and Murray 2004). According to many critical writers, there is a good

reason for such a subjectivity to be constructed and upheld. Bauman (1992, 51) contends that the

“reproduction of the capitalist system is... achieved through individual freedom” and Zwick,

Bonsu, and Darmody (2008, 164) argue that the ‘free consumer’ is a deliberately constructed

subject position that is in the interests of the marketers. Indeed, as consumption serves a key

purpose in capitalism by ensuring the steady flow of capital the idealization and normalization of

consumption-centered subjectivity is vital for the workings of modern economies in their current

form (Jubas 2007). Materialism, while often condemned in our everyday language, is in many

10

ways an essential feature of the contemporary economic system (Cherrier 2010), and as such

needs to be reproduced and advanced, made honourable instead of shameful.

Resistance as struggle over subjectivity

The consumer has in itself become an ideal subject position in contemporary (Western) societies.

Consumption is both the right – and the responsibility – of an active, mindful member of society.

In the ideological discourses circulating in marketplace cultures, consumption is constructed as a

democratizing activity, which creates well-being for all members of society (Jubas, 2007).

It is not inevitable, however, that consumers take on these subjectivities to build their identities

and lifestyles. Foucault (1983) discussed resistance as struggle for a new subjectivity. He argued

that most of the contemporary “oppositions” (“men over women”, “medicine over population”)

can be seen as examples of struggle against subjection (Foucault 1983, 211); they are struggles

that are “against the ‘government of individualization’” and struggles that “revolve around the

question: Who are we?” (Foucault 1983, 212). This type of resistance requires that people refuse

what they have been made into; and invent, not discover, who they are (Bernauer and Mahon

2004) by creating new forms of subjectivity that can subvert government.

Organization studies has drawn from this Foucauldian conceptualization of resistance: for

example, Meriläinen et al. (2004, 545) describe resistance as the ‘counter discourses’ and

‘reverse discourses’ that challenge “the ways in which an individual is defined, labelled and

classified”. Thomas and Davies (2005a; 2005b) theorize micro-politics of resistance, and Laine

and Vaara (2007, 36) utilize the concept of discursive struggle to illustrate how specific

discourses and the subjectivities they offer can “serve as a means of managerial control”. In

11

consumer research literature, however, subjectivity as a realm of power and resistance has thus

far been discussed only in a handful of empirical works (e.g. Moisander and Pesonen 2002;

Goulding and Saren 2009).

For example, Mikkonen, Moisander and Firat (2011) elaborate on consumer cynicism in online

environments as a form of resistance against the normalized forms of subjectivity. When the

currently prevailing marketplace ideology is seen as offering only objectionable subject

positions, they are rejected through ridicule and intellectual condemnation. At the same time,

these critical consumers actively assemble an alternative form of subjectivity, essentially

disillusioned and critical towards the market and the marketing institution.

Consumer resistance can, therefore, be conceptualized as a struggle over subjectivity in which

the targets of the resistance are marketer-constructed and imposed subjectivities rather than any

specific marketing practices. In this conceptualization resistance includes not only openly

vocalized criticism and intentional disregard towards hegemonic organizational discourses, but

also the construction of alternative subjectivities. The resistive discursive strategies can, in time,

affect the cultural ideologies and discourses by producing “new knowledges and new truths” that

“constitute new powers” (Meriläinen et al. 2004, 545). Thus, while many of the “traditional”

ways of resisting, such as boycotting (e.g. Herrmann 1993), can be seen as culturally destructive,

the discursive modes of resistance can also entail creative and productive value; through

resourceful use of cultural narratives and norms (Goulding and Saren 2009; Moisander and

Pesonen 2002) and playful, imaginative practices (Mikkonen and Bajde, forthcoming) consumers

produce and craft new emancipatory spaces (Firat and Dholakia 2006).

12

The framework of consumer resistance as struggle over subjectivity is illustrated in Figure 1.

Drawing from broader cultural conceptions and ideologies, marketplace ideologies construct,

proffer, and mobilize certain consumer subjectivities. These subjectivities become normalized in

the marketplace, as they are presented in different cultural texts as the ideal or natural forms of

being; ideologies, after all, not only tend to make certain configurations of being visible, but at

the same time marginalize others. For example, Markkula, Mikkonen and Vicdan (2011) discuss

style manuals directed at women as a form of government, as they construct an ideal female

subject. The ideal woman appreciates the choice of dress as a highly important aspect of her life

and consequently takes a high interest in her clothing. She is willing to make any changes

necessary based on a critical rule-based scrutiny of herself. On the other hand, a woman who is

either disinterested or unwilling to engage in such rule-based scrutiny becomes an object of

ridicule.

FIGURE 1 HERE

Consumers are not, however, preordained to fill the proffered and imposed subject positions. The

marketer-created subjectivities are resisted through various discursive strategies that

problematize the existing – and may facilitate crafting of alternative – subject positions. These

strategies can vary in terms of assertiveness from reasonably cordial to downright aggressive and

confrontational, and in their prominence from rather understated to blatantly aggressive (e.g.

Dobscha and Ozanne 2001; Mikkonen, Moisander and Firat 2011).

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Discussion

We contend that conceptualization of resistance as “struggle over subjectivity” constitutes a

significant extension of research on anti-consumption and consumer resistance. Such

conceptualization enables recognition of forms of power that are embedded in normalizing

discourses, and challenges our current understanding of consumer-marketer power dynamics in

the marketplace.

‘The consumer’ cannot be seen only as detached, rational individual making purchasing

decisions. Instead the category of the ‘the consumer’ is a subject position that has been produced

in modernism (Cherrier and Murray 2004, Firat 2001; Firat and Dholakia 2006; Firat and

Venkatesh 1995; Murray and Ozanne 1991), and the liberal-democratic ideology (Sassatelli,

2006). Constructing people as (free) consumers is an effective form of responsibilization (Rose

1991): consumers are made moral agents, who are responsible for making the “correct” choices

through which they vote and, supposedly, police companies (e.g. Shaw, Newholm, and

Dickinson 2006), and for making sustainable development possible (see Moisander, 2001).

At the same time, consumers are responsibilized to consume. While the contemporary trendy co-

production discourse (e.g. Vargo and Lusch 2008) appears to blur, even erase, the modernist

separation of consumers from producers and production, critical voices have questioned whether

“putting consumers to work” (Zwick, Bonsu, and Darmody 2008, see also Cova and Dalli 2009)

in fact benefits them, or whether it is a clever ruse through which consumers are made to take on

the duties of the producers. In the value co-creation literature consumer responsibilization is, in

14

fact, strikingly transparent: for example, Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004a; 2004b; 2000), the

“fathers” of the concept value co-creation, have repeatedly called for consumers to “shoulder

more responsibility” (2004a: 7) in the marketplace and for their own actions.

The discursive perspective to power and resistance enables us to evaluate critically and

problematize the empowerment discourse that currently seems so widely accepted. The

discursive perspective renders visible the construction of the consumer. Regardless of

fashionable labels – such as ‘consum’actor’ (Cova and Cova 2009), and ‘prosumer’ (Toffler

1980) – people are increasingly constructed as consumers, in commercial markets as well as in

areas that were previously considered being ‘outside’ of the marketplace (e.g. Firat 2001). The

‘consumer-patient’ (e.g. Chance and Deshpandé 2009; Møldrup 2006) for example is “expected

to be responsible for his/her health and to have sought the information that is needed to share the

making of decisions with practitioners” (Hardey 2010, 135); the ‘mother-consumer’ is a

thoroughly ‘good’, selfless being, who – motivated by “instinctual love” – will provide her

family with only the best products and services (Cook 2003); the consumer in the marketplace of

love shops for mates (Ahuvia and Adelman 1993).

It is by no means suggested here that we should embrace the perspective of consumers as

“largely irrational or foolish, to be manipulated through methods not far removed from those of

political propaganda” (Miller and Rose 1997, 3) at its face value. The discursive power

perspective, in fact, suggests that consumers are not inevitably ‘hailed’ into certain subject

positions, but there is always a possibility of challenging the subjectivities made available via

15

marketplace ideologies. The idea of struggle, in fact, highlights the notion that the range and

forms of available subjectivities is not stable, but constantly under redefinition and renegotiation.

Within organization theory, the discursive perspectives, which have been discussed more widely

than in marketing and consumer research, have also become a target of rather strong criticism.

Some writers, such as Fleming and Sewell (2002) have taken the position that nothing short of a

complete revolution is acceptable when assessing resistance. In this vein, Contu (2008, 367)

writes off most of the discursive strategies of resistance as practically inconsequential, arguing

that…

[t]hese transgressive acts that we call “resistance” are akin to a decaf resistance,

which changes very little. It is resistance without the risk of really changing our ways

of life or the subjects who live it.

Here she continues on a path laid out by Paul Piccone, Michael Buruwoy, and Slavoj Zizek (see

Fleming and Spicer 2003) that have all argued that critical negativity towards domination can be

a conserving rather than a disruptive force. Piccone (1976, 1978 in Fleming and Spicer, 2003)

coined the term artificial negativity, which suggests that any system of power in fact relies upon

“a degree of channelled criticism in order to avert stagnation”. Thus, they argue, many discursive

and material practices of dissent may in fact serve as tension-releasing safety valves, which

allow people to blow off some steam, so to speak, but do very little to actually upset the

structures of power. While Fleming and Spicer (2003) deal with cynicism in particular, it is easy

to see how these criticisms could also be extended to other forms of discursive resistance such as

humour, parody, irony, and sneering. The problem, they conclude, is that these forms of dissent

discreetly reproduce existing relations of power because they give individuals an impression of

being autonomous agents, while still acting in ideologically inscribed ways: a McDonalds

16

worker may well wear a “McShit tee” under her work uniform, but “crucially...she performs as

an efficient member of the team nevertheless” (Fleming and Spicer 2004, 160).

In a very similar vein, many writers within cultural studies and consumer research literature have

pointed out that consumer resistance is often rendered harmless when it is appropriated and

commodified by marketing agents and institutions. Whatever forms of rebellion consumers may

conjure up, the market will quickly absorb them, appropriate them, assign them economic value

with branding and packaging, and then (re)sell them back to consumers (e.g. Holt 2002;

Peñaloza and Price 1993; Rumbo 2002). This market co-optation argument is put forth sharply

by Holt (2002, 89), who maintains that..

[c]onsumers are revolutionary only insofar as they assist entrepreneurial firms to tear

down the old branding paradigm and create opportunities for companies that

understand emerging new principles. Revolutionary consumers helped to create the

market for Volkswagen and Nike and accelerated the demise of Sears and

Oldsmobile. They never threatened the market itself. What has been termed

“consumer resistance” is actually a form of market-sanctioned cultural

experimentation through which the market rejuvenates itself.

As aptly noted by Giesler (2008), there seem to be two alternative theoretical explanations of

what co-optation is, both rather bleak: either “commercialism creeps in and destroys” any

subversive distinctiveness that consumer resistance may hold “simply feeds the flames [of

consumer capitalism], creating a whole new set of positional goods for these new rebel

consumers to compete for” (Health and Potter 2004, 322, cited in Giesler, 2008). Consumer

creativity and the ability to conjure up new meanings and expressions are “grist for the branding

mill” (Holt 2002, 88) that is constantly on the lookout for new raw materials to process into

commodities. And once a symbol, taste, idea, or whatever is responsible for subversive

distinctiveness of a group or movement gets appropriated, according to the co-optation theory,

17

there is no way of reclaiming it. To drive the argument home Thompson and Coskuner-Balli

(2007, 136) cite Clark (2005 225):

Even punk, when reduced to a neat mohawk hairstyle and a studded leather jacket,

could be made into a cleaned-up spokesman for potato chips... Like their subcultural

predecessors, early punks were too dependent on music and fashion as codes for

expression; these proved to be easy targets for corporate cooptation . . . which mass

produced and sterilized punk’s verve.

Since similar examples are aplenty, especially in the history of subcultures, we need to ask

whether there is a possibility of resilience against co-optation and commodification? And if so,

what are the characteristics of the more unwavering modes of resistance? It can be argued that

many highly visible forms of resistance, especially those that are easily traceable to an

(organized) source, have rarely provided the expected and anticipated subversive efficacy: highly

distinctive stylistic expressions are rather easy to emulate and repackage. And when it is possible

to pinpoint and locate the specific acts of resistance and the particular people responsible for

them, these acts and arguments can be counter-argued and offset (e.g. Bolfing 1989; Bunting and

Lipski 2000; Wang, 2005). Thus, we think it is justified to ask whether the visible means of

resistance, such as boycotting, have resulted in any ‘real’ changes in our consumer culture.

In fact, it is our suggestion that perhaps resistance in the realm of subjectivity may prove to be

more elusive, and less amenable to co-optation. Discursive forms of resistance, especially those

that are subtle and conciliatory, are much more difficult to identify and locate than vocal visible

forms of resistance. Thus, they can be also be more difficult to isolate and cancel out; especially

the forms that work under the cloak of anonymity of online environments or in the privacy of

people’s homes and involve neither an organized formal structure nor external coordination of

activities can be difficult to detect and normalize.

18

Furthermore, it is essential to notice that the rather gloomy outlook of co-optation seems to

spring from the (Marxist) idea that consumer resistance ought to enable consumers to escape the

marketplace and consumer culture altogether. Some would challenge this viewpoint, questioning

whether such an escape is required, or more importantly, even possible (e.g., Arnould 2007;

Kozinets 2002).

We do not interpret this as a hopeless situation. From a Foucauldian perspective we can hardly

envision a situation that would be “outside” of any power structure, but the current structure can

certainly be altered and even replaced with another order. Hence, we maintain that resistive

discursive practices, which may facilitate envisioning and crafting alternative subject positions,

can have transformative potential (Mick 2006; Ozanne 2011). Through resistance in the realm of

subjectivities individuals can avoid becoming the people that ideologies suggest they should be;

critical dis-identification from and crafting meaningful alternatives to existing subject positions

challenges current ideological realities of consumer culture that marketing institutions assemble

and uphold.

Within every system of power there exists a possibility for opposition and resistance. As the

power exercised in the realm of subjectivity is essentially discursive, so are the strategies through

which resistance is exercised.

1 It should be noted that these models are by no means specific to marketing and consumer disciplines, but rooted in

broad historical paradigms. For example, they roughly parallel the perspectives offered by Haugaard (2002) in

Power: A Reader.

19

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Figure Error! Main Document Only. Theoretical framework of consumer resistance as struggle over subjectivity

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