Critical Perspectives on Promotional  Cultures Seminar Series

Hosted by Clea Bourne and Milly Williamson

Department of Media Communication and Cultural Studies

Goldsmiths University

All welcome

 

You are warmly invited to the third in our seminar series:

 

Resistance within Promotional Culture: Culture Jamming, Subvertising and Anti-Consumerism

 

Eleftheria Lekakis, 

University of Sussex

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

5:00pm – 7:00pm

Room 251 Richard Hoggart Building

Goldsmiths University 

 

This talk addresses expressions of consumer activism as material and discursive practices of resistance within the marketplace and through promotional culture. Drawing on scholarship from political science, history, cultural studies, as well as media and communications, it explores consumer politics in terms of scale (agency and geography) and targets (aims and outcomes). Exploring push and pull factors in the intersection between resistance and promotional culture, I argue that contemporary consumer activism is ideologically ambivalent. Through completed and ongoing research on boycotts, ‘buycotts’ and subvertising campaigns, it highlights some of the particularities of consumer activism based on its historical and cultural situatedness.

 

Eleftheria Lekakis is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communications at the University of Sussex. Her research explores issues around the intersection between politics, consumption and communication. Her long-titled book Coffee Activism explored the politics of consumption, cause communication, civic engagement and digital media through the case of the fair trade movement and market, while she has published work on consumption and nationalism, alternative media and culture jamming. Eleftheria is the curator of GreekDocs (digital archive of independent documentaries about austerity and crisis in Greece) and editor of Re.Framing Activism (digital platform showcasing research, critique and resources on media activism).

 

Best wishes

Milly and Clea