Commodity Activism

Roopali Mukherjee (Editor) Roopali Mukherjee is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the City University of New York, Queens College, and the author of The Racial Order of Things: Cultural Imaginaries of the Post-Soul Era.Sarah Banet-Weiser (Editor) Sarah Banet-Weiser is Professor and Head of the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. She is the author of four books, including Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (2012), which won the International Communication Association's Outstanding Book Award, The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (1999), Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship (2007), and Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (2018). She is the co-editor of Cable Visions: Television Beyond Broadcasting (2007) and Commodity Activism: Cultural Resistance in Neoliberal Times (2012), both available from NYU Press.

"Without doubt this important collection of essays will contribute significantly to the new and growing field of 'critical consumer studies'." - J.R. Mitrano (CHOICE) "Commodity activism has a long history but never has its significance been more complex to unravel than today, when the boundaries and direction of political action are unclear, commercial forces mobilize consumers values to secure their emotional loyalty, and individual consumers hope their choices mean that & something is being done. Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser's smart, empirically rich and globally wide-ranging new collection provides us with very welcome coordinates in this difficult terrain." - Nick Couldry,author of Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism "Commodity Activism is eminently useful. Mukherjee and Banet-Weisers collection is animportant intervention into what had become a tired debate about political agency and consumer culture. It is also a very timely anthology, helping us better understand the practices of a current generation ofactivists who recognize that the terrain upon which they struggle is not some idealized land of pure politics outside the influence of consumer culture, but instead, a challenging topography of brands and logos, style and story, celebrity and spectacle." (International Journal of Communication) "Commodity Activism will be out of interest to a wide range of scholars, including those focused on critical/consumer studies, American studies, media studies, and critical rhetorical studies. Any academic interested in exploring consumer politics, or contemporary trends in social activism, or in constituting social controversy, will find this text replete with starting points for future scholarship." (Journal of American Culture)

• Acknowledgments Foreword Marita Sturken Introduction: Commodity Activism in Neoliberal Times Sarah Banet-Weiser and Roopali MukherjeePart One: Brand, Culture, Action 1 Brand Me "Activist" Alison Hearn 2 "Free Self-Esteem Tools?" Sarah Banet-Weiser 3 Citizen Brand Laurie Ouellette 4 Good Housekeeping Jo LittlerPart Two: Celebrity, Commodity, Citizenship 5 Make It Right? Brad Pitt, Post-Katrina Rebuilding, and the Spectacularization of Disaster Kevin Fox Gotham 6 Diamonds (Are from Sierra Leone): Roopali Mukherjee 7 Salma Hayek's Celebrity Activism Isabel Molina-Guzman 8 Mother Angelina Alison Trope 9 "Fair Vanity" Melissa M. BroughPart Three: Community, Movements, Politics 10 Civic Fitness Samantha King 11 Eating for Change Josee Johnston and Kate Cairns 12 Changing the World One Orgasm at a Time Lynn Comella 13 Pay-for Culture John McMurria 14 Feeling Good While Buying Goods Mari Castaneda About the Contributors Index