"A crucial intervention to both critical studies of consumption and research into activism. It authoritatively explores the complex and multiplying links between branding and neoliberal culture, consumer practices and social justice."
– Professor Mehita Iqani, Stellenbosch University

"Eleftheria Lekakis reminds us that as consumers, we can do much more than just buy our way out of social or political problems."
– Professor Melissa Aronczyk, Rutgers University

Consumption and resistance are entwined. From buying fair-trade, to celebrity advocates for social causes, to subvertising and anti-consumerist grassroots movements, consumer activism is now a key part of our fight for social and environmental justice.

This book is a comprehensive exploration of the complexities and dilemmas of using the marketplace as an arena for politics. It goes beyond simply buying or boycotting to critically explore how individuals, collectives, corporations and governments do politics with and through consumption.

Impassioned and always accessible, Eleftheria Lekakis explores:

• The media and economic logics which privilege elite activists.
• The real opportunities to resist and redirect promotional culture.
• Consumer activism as collective and community-building.
• The politicisation of celebrity influencers.
• The centrality of digital media technology.
• A range of transnational case studies pushing the field beyond the Global North.

Consumer Activism: Promotional Culture and Resistance covers the full breadth of theory and practice you need to know. It is an essential resource for understanding, researching and engaging with the global phenomenon of consumer activism. 

Dr Eleftheria Lekakis is senior lecturer in Media and Communications at the School of Media, Arts, and Humanities at the University of Sussex.

"Lekakis’s thought provoking book is an essential guide for researchers investigating consumer activism and for practitioners who believe they can, in the spirit of Graeber and Wengrow, reinvent realities. It opens up questions on how and to what extent these realities can be reinvented through consumption activism, highlighting the complex and nuanced dynamics. " - Consumption, Markets and Culture

"Lekakis critically examines how citizens, collectives and corporations use the marketplace for political purposes. The strength of Consumer Activism rests in its ability to comprehensively navigate readers through the interdisciplinary and shifting terrains of consumer activism studies, advocating for a systematic consideration of the role that nationalism, race, ethnicity, gender, feminism, environmentalism, celebrity, influencer and anti-consumerism play in consumer activism. It is accessible to both new and established scholars in the field of consumer activism, promotional media and communication studies broadly. For students majoring in advertising, marketing and communication studies, the clear and logical content arrangement and timely case studies can help them better understand the complexity of consumer activism and its significance in today’s consumer society. " - Consumption and Society

"Lekakis investigates the dissipation of capitalist consumerism and the immoral practices of current markets, as well as possible alternatives of resistance to destructive capitalist consumerism... One of the strengths of this book lies on its insightful analysis of examples both from the Global North and the Global South. The book takes a truly global approach by strategizing and staging strategies of consumer activists, as well as the cultural differences in a globalized capitalist world.

Lekakis encourages us to re-envision and rethink the possibilities of consumer activism we are presented with in addressing global social change, cultural and environmental challenges. She accomplishes her ambitious objectives by providing an analytically rich book which offers a wide range of interesting topics and a fruitful and productive analysis of consumer capitalism and resistance in the 21st century.   " - European Journal of Cultural Studies