Rethinking consumer agency in the global economy

For the average British consumer, even the most mundane commodities they encounter depend on raw materials and labour sourced from across the globe. Consumers are at the heart of modern globalisation as participants in a complex tangle of globe-spanning social relations, yet International Political Economy lacks a compelling account of their role in generating, sustaining and resisting the unequal relations of global trade. Instead, the consumer remains trapped within the black box of statistical aggregates. This can obscure more granular questions of how and why consumers make the choices that they do. In place of the empirical study of consumers themselves lie axiomatic assumptions about the nature and extent of their agency. This thesis sets out to a richer, sociological account of consumption to IPE’s global perspective. To do so, it develops a dataset that studies the everyday consumption practices of 34 South Yorkshire households, recorded through consumption diaries and interviews. This provides the basis for an account of consumer agency located in a Pragmatic understanding of human agency, which can better account for the balance of habit, deliberation and creativity that shape people’s encounters with the material commodities they consume. In particular, by focusing on how the act of valuation is shaped by these different dimensions of agency, a new, bottom-up perspective on the consumer’s role in the global economy can be developed. This is grounded in two conceptual devices, regimes of everyday valuation and the social standard of living, that help unpick the complex relationship between consumer behaviour and the contingent conditions of the global economy in which it takes place. This reveals the role played by consumers in sustaining the unequal relationships of global trade, whilst also highlighting potentially transformative avenues for change.