Fashions of righteousness

Abstract

This dissertation explores the rhetorical production of ethical consumption as facilitated by contemporary cause marketing. It critiques the cause marketing rhetoric of three consumer brands: Starbucks, American Apparel and Toyota Prius. Each chapter critiques a distinct strategy of cause marketing, all of which contribute to the rhetoric of civic branding. The introductory chapter traces the history of consumer-cultural theory and then examines some of the competing theories of consumer movement today. Chapter two examines the cause marketing of Starbucks, specifically its “coffee for voting” and Create Jobs for USA campaigns. In it I critique Starbucks’ removal of the cash nexus from its ethical transactions, thus allowing the Starbucks brand to embody civic engagement outside the cash nexus while preserving the ritual of capitalist, ethical consumption. Chapter three examines the ethical aesthetics and aesthetic politics of the clothing brand, American Apparel. In it I critique the clothier’s facilitation of a knowledge economy of ethical fashion, coupled with its sexualizing of social movements. The dynamic creates a postmodern space of ethical fashion where free play is situated as social action and vice versa. Chapter four examines the cause marketing and social responsibility of Toyota Prius and Toyota respectively. In it I critique the displacement of political subjectivity in favor of private innovation, as embodied by the Prius brand. Chapter five concludes with a theorization of what I call civic branding, a new brand dynamic situated between commodity, consumer and cause. Unlike ethical commodification, I argue, civic branding is more nebulous and thus more difficult to critique, as well as more seductive to ethical consumers. I argue that critics must attend more seriously to the rhetoric of civic branding if we are to better interpret and evaluate the ways in which contemporary consumer culture informs modes of civic engagement.