REVIEW

Engin E Isin and Guy Kirby Letts

Globalization and Consumer

Citizenship
A Review of
Canclini, Nestor Garcia. 200 1 . Consumers and Citizens: Globalization and Multicultural Conflicts.
Minneapolis, MI: University of Minnesota Press.

While Consumers and Citizens is an interesting pastiche of insightful observations,

overall it is disappointing. We take Canclini at his word when he states, "This book
stands halfway between a research study and a collection of essays" (33). According to
Canclini, the book is the outgrowth of empirical studies on cultural consumption and
his own personal position on various polemics regarding urban cultures (33). The
combination, however, results in a work fraught with internal tensions that lacks
rigour.
Canclini's work attempts to understand how globalization has changed the modes of
consumption and, in turn, altered the possibilities and forms for citizenship in multicultural societies. As his object of study, Canclini examines globalization and the hegemonic tendencies of the urbanization and industrialization of culture in Latin
American cities (3). For, Canclini claims, Latin America's intensitled dependency on
the US is currently transforming citizenship and consumer roles are inadequate (5).
Relations between citizens and consumers, says Canclini, are reflected in the complexity of globalized economic, technological, and cultural changes restricting the
constitution of traditional identities through national symbols:
For many men and women ... the questions specitlc to citizenship, such as
how we inform ourselves and who represents our interests, are answered
more often than not through private consumption of commodities and
media offerings than through the abstract rules of democracy or through participation in discredited political organizations. (5)

For Canclini, this is not the depoliticization of liberal democracy but marks a shift in
the political notion of citizenship, which now includes rights to housing, health,
education, and other goods through consumption (5). These shifts in the modes of
consumption lead Canclini to conclude that consumption is "a site that is good for
thinking" (5). According to Canclini,
[c]onsumption is good for thinking, but not only in keeping with modem
rationality. Not even parties and social movements have succeeded working
exclusively this way. We might conclude, then, that the problems entailed in
the transition from public to the citizen are not very different from those
experienced by party or union militants ... when they attempt to act as rational citizens. (160)

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expenditures and
Canclini claims that consumption is not merely a setting f o "useless
irrational impulses" (5), though he never outlines why consumption is good for
thinking or how the rationality of consumption is linked to the constitution of identity
and altered forms of citizenship. While globalization has changed the modes of
consumption, consumption has not become fully rational either. Such an assumption
neglects the multiple social dynamics of consumption (see du Gay 1996; Edgell et al.
1996; Miller 1998; Slater 1997). Though Canclini does mention the social interaction
of commodities found in symbolic distinction and rituals (4042), it is a leap, in our
view, to conclude that the "symbolic and aesthetic aspects of the rationality of
consumption" (40), or that consumption contributes to the "integrative and
communicative rationality of a society" (40).
Canclini cites Renato Ortiz's findings that "the intellectuals of corporate globalization
foster universalization by exploiting the coincidences in thought and taste in all societies" (93). According to Ortiz, "Coca-Colawas only able to make profits in the Spanish market when it shortened its bottles to the size of other soft drinks in the country
..."(qtd. in Canclini 94). This prompts Canclini to conclude "that a recognition of multicultural differences does not disappear ..." under corporate globalization, and that
"Nations and ethnic formations continue to exist" through "cultural leveling" (94).
Such assertions are not only reminiscent of earlier "sovereign consumption" arguments (see Fiske 1987, 1989, 1991; Willis 1990), but leave us asking whether subtle
regional differences accommodated by Euro-American corporatism are actually multicultural and a form of cultural levelling.
Canclini's emphasis on the rational virtues of consumption is juxtaposed with his criticism of postmodern accounts that see consumption as the dispersion of signs and the
destabilization of shared codes (4043). Canclini does not advocate the erratic eruption of desire (41) but rather, sees consumption as a means of redirecting practices of
citizenship, what he calls interpretive communities of consumers (159). Canclini
observes that civil societies are no longer national communities based on territorial,
linguistic, and political unity, but atomized communities based on symbolic consumption, which provides the basis for shared identities (159). While it is not possible to
generalize the consequences for citizenship through increased consumption, Canclini
suggests that apocalyptic criticisms of consumption are only partially correct:

These criticisms are partially correct, but the expansion of communications

and consumption generates associations of consumers and social struggles,
even among marginal groups, who are better informed about national and
international conditions. Imaginary communities are sometimes "scenes"
that make evasion possible, and at other times circuits where social bonds,
sundered by urban sprawl or delegitimized by the loss of authority by parties
and churches, are reconstituted. (159-60)
In order to articulate consumption with a reflexive exercise of citizenship, Canclini
proposes the regulation of commodities and consumption (4546). Policy initiatives
in this direction are intended to alter forms of citizenship and regulate the increased
consumption of goods and services in Latin America. Canclini sees the inherent problems with unrestricted consumption under globalization but believes it can be used to
reconceptualize social interaction, which would act as the basis for a culturally integrated supranational federalism in Latin America (47). This project, however, seems
overly ambitious and reckless in terms of the unintended consequences that such policies would create. Canclini ignores the social problems of Euro-American consumer
societies (such as suicide, depression, eating disorders, and addiction) seeing them
instead as models for consumer citizenship in Latin America.
Though Canclini's book focuses on consumers and citizenship, his definition of citizenship is undeveloped. While we define citizenship to be "both a set of practices
(cultural, symbolic and economic) and a bundle of rights and duties (civil, political
and social) that define an individual's membership in a polity" (Isin and Wood
1999:4), Canclini focuses almost exclusively on cultural consumption as a set of practices that shape the sphere of citizenship (22). According to Canclini, the dissatisfaction with juridical-political notions of citizenship has led to forms of cultural
citizenship as well as citizenship defined by race, gender, and ecology (22). Whereas
the state provided the framework for a variety of forms for public life participation,
Canclini believes the market now does so through the medium of consumption (22).
However, Canclini downplays the role of juridical-political citizenship in liberal democratic states, which is still an active site for political struggle. In this way, Canclini overemphasizes consumption as a means of deep political transformation at the expense
of a more varied approach that would utilize both consumption and juridical-political
forms as a means of redressing citizenship.
Throughout the book, one is struck by the absence of contemporary literature related
to the study of consumption, citizenship and postcolonialism. His over-reliance on
the work of Appadurai and his citation of Grossberg's Cultural Studies (1992) as a
representative work on contemporary consumption illustrates this point (8). Canclini's promise to draw on new empirical studies regarding cultural consumption in
Mexico (6, 33) is overstated and disappointing. Despite an engagement with the
notion of glocalization ( 3 4 , 58-60), Canclini continues to construct a global~local
dichotomy throughout the book. This dichotomization is also mirrored in his imaginary distinction between anthropology and sociology, the former being "qualitative"
and the latter being "quantitative" disciplines (49-51). Perhaps the most troubling
aspect of Canclini's work is the redefinition of fundamentalism, which creates a nega-

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tive perception of marginalized peoples whom he sees as "indigenous and nationalist

movements that interpret history in a Manichaean manner, reserving all virtues for
themselves and blaming others for the problem of development" (11). Canclini's view
that the subaltern is undemocratic, dogmatic, fundamentalist, and authoritarian reinforces the idea that inequality is a form of multiculturalism, a theme that runs
throughout the book (3, 71, 138-44).
Like the intellectuals he cites in globalization that exploit the thought and taste of
other societies, Canclini's romantic and nostalgic notion of the European city (6-7)
andfldnerte (80-82), as well as his love affair with European rationalism and Western
consumerism undermines metropolitan multiculturalism and the emergence of an
autonomous Latin American hybrid cultural formation. Canclini's conception of consumer citizenship as Latin America becoming a part of the multicultural globalization
seems to undercut his own argument that globalization is not the triumph of "one way
thinking" nor the end of ideological diversity (3).
References

du Gay, Paul. 1996. Consumption and identity at work. London: Sage.

Edgell, Stephen, Kevin Hetherington, and Alan Warde. 1996. Consumption matters: The production and experience of consumption. Oxford: Blackwell.
Fiske, John. 1987. Television culture. London: Methuen.
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1989. Understanding popular culture. Boston: Unwin Hyrnan.

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1993. Power plays, power works. London and New York: Verso.

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Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler, eds. 1992. Cultural studies. New York
and London: Routledge.
Isin, Engin F. and Patrica K. Wood. 1999. Citizenship and identity. London: Sage.
Miller, Daniel. 1998. A theory of shopping. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Slater, Don R. 1997. Consumer culture and modernity. London: Polity Press.
Willis, Paul. 1990. Common culture. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.