Shopping for Change

Consuming with a conscience is one of the fastest growing forms of political participation worldwide. Every day we make decisions about how to spend our money and, for the socially conscious, these decisions matter. Political consumers "buy green" for the environment or they "buy pink" to combat breast cancer. They boycott Taco Bell to support migrant workers or Burger King to save the rainforest.

But can we overcome the limitations of consumer identity, the conservative pull of consumer choice, co-optation by corporate marketers, and other pitfalls of consumer activism in order to marshal the possibilities of consumer power? Can we, quite literally, shop for change? Shopping for Change brings together the historical and contemporary perspectives of academics and activists to show readers what has been possible for consumer activists in the past and what might be possible for today's consumer activists.

Louis Hyman is an Associate Professor of History at the ILR School of Cornell University, the cofounder of Cornell's History of Capitalism Initiative, and the incoming director of ILR's Institute for Workplace Studies in New York City. He is the author of Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink and Borrow: The American Way of Debt. Joseph Tohill teaches twentieth-century American and Canadian history at York University and Ryerson University.

Shopping for Change is a compelling call to harness the full potential of the consumer marketplace to create a more equitable, democratic society.

Amitai Etzioni, author of The New Normal:

This book could not be more timely. Smarter, more active, and more restrained buying is what is called fo. Shopping for Change provides an outstandingly detailed guide for how to proceed.

Lawrence Glickman, author of Buying Power:

Hyman and Tohill have produced a valuable collection that belongs on the short shelf of essential histories of North American consumer culture. This book will become a go-to resource for scholars and activists alike.

Shopping for Change is replete with the documented beliefs that individual and collective political purchasing reduce and redirect the basic reservoir of giant corporate power—the dollars we give them that they use against the people and the planet. Read this book and shop wisely, sometimes shop less, and, increasingly, shop together for your democratic voice.