Buying (RED) products—from Gap T-shirts to Apple—to fight AIDS.

Drinking a “Caring Cup” of coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to

support fair trade. Driving a Toyota Prius to fight global warming. All

these commonplace activities point to a central feature of contemporary

culture: the most common way we participate in social activism is by

buying something.

Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser have gathered an exemplary

group of scholars to explore this new landscape through a series of case

studies of “commodity activism.” Drawing from television, film,

consumer activist campaigns, and cultures of celebrity and corporate

patronage, the essays take up examples such as the Dove “Real Beauty”

campaign, sex positive retail activism, ABC’s Extreme Home Makeover, and

Angelina Jolie as multinational celebrity missionary.

Exploring the complexities embedded in contemporary political activism, Commodity Activism

reveals the workings of power and resistance as well as citizenship and

subjectivity in the neoliberal era. Refusing to simply position

politics in opposition to consumerism, this collection teases out the

relationships between material cultures and political subjectivities,

arguing that activism may itself be transforming into a branded

commodity.