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.