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ABSTRACT
Based on a reflexive and critical analysis of the citizen protests that pervaded Brazilian cities in June 2013, in this article we argue that a significant part of the demonstrators’ dissatisfaction took the form of a new politics of consumption with particular characteristics, including the subversion of the culture jamming concept by citizens and by corporations. Our main contribution is to provide the Brazilian protests as an illustration of a new politics of consumption, where ‘citizen-consumers’ direct their dissatisfaction toward the government using tactics that, historically, were considered counter-hegemonic and directed to the market, as is the case of the culture jamming. Likewise, the corporations present themselves as partners of those citizen-consumers. Mobilizing a dialectical reasoning, our results invite readers to reflect on the ambiguities among politics of consumption and culture jamming, and the challenges they bring to organizations and society.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 MPL (in Portuguese, an acronym for movimento passe livre) is a non-partisan movement, founded nationally in 2005, with an initial agenda that argued for free public transport for students and was then subsequently extended to achieving zero fares for the whole population. In the protests of 2013, however, the demand was for the elimination of the increase in bus fares that occurred in that year in various Brazilian cities.
2 Although the demonstrations occurred across all the big cities of the country, our analysis is centered in the protests that took in São Paulo as what happened in this city is somehow representative of the other protests and about which more reports where published.
3 In this article, we mobilize two distinct concepts: the citizen–consumer and the consumer–citizen. The first represents the citizen that start to see the public as a space guided by a private and consumption logic. The second represents the consumer assuming a political positioning, as citizens.
4 According to a report published by the Brazilian magazine Exame on the day of the large June 17th demonstration, ‘548,944 posts and comments were recorded on the main social networks. Twitter was the most widely used network for commenting on the demonstrations and registered 483,839 (88%) of the publications. Among the most widely used hashtags were #vemprarua [come to the street], #ogiganteacordou [the giant has woken up], #protestosp [São Paulo's protest], #mudabrasil [change Brazil] and #semviolencia [no violence]’ (Campri Citation2013 – bold italics added). A video posted on Facebook on the following day, June 18th, was viewed 74,000 times. The video merges real shots of the demonstrations, images of crowded buses and police aggression with images from the Johnnie Walker advertisement, with a great remix of ‘Come to the street’ (see note 4) as the musical background.
5 Address for watching the subversion by the Fiat campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGai5q27pUg (accessed on 01/10/2015)
6 https://sportiznet.wordpress.com/2013/05/20/fiat-incentiva-torcedores-com-slogan-vem-pra-rua/ (accessed on 01/10/2015)
7 http://forum.outerspace.terra.com.br/index.php?threads/v%C3%ADdeo-flagra-espancamento-de-jornalista-pela-pm-heuheu-borrachada-em-maconheiro-s%C3%93-que-n%C3%83o.336108/page-2 (accessed on 01/10/2015)
8 http://vivapernambuco.com.br/index.php?start=153 (accessed on 01/10/2015)
10 It is no coincidence that, in the video that subverts the images of the Fiat advertisement against a backdrop of the song ‘Come to the street’, the images of an absolutely packed bus appear, with people hanging out of its door. Maricato rightly remembers the role government played in this process, since ‘there are more subsidies for the circulation of cars than for public transport. The priority for individual transport is complemented by the infrastructure work that is dedicated to the circulation of cars’ (Maricato Citation2013, 25).
11 http://www.escalaproperties.com/2013/06/an-insiders-view-on-the-protests-in-brazil/ (accessed on 01/10/2015)
12 We are not imposing here a unique interpretation, but one interpretation. Some analysts could see in the labels FIFA-standards and Louis Vuitton bag an expression of irony. Yet, from our view of the middle and right classes’ profile of those participants, and the whole context and atmosphere surrounding them, we interpret as a sign of consumerist aspirations within a quite individualist frame.
13 http://designtaxi.com/news/352783/Coca-Cola-Security-Cameras-Capture-Random-Acts-Of-Kindness-And-Love/ (accessed on 01/10/2015)
14 http://www.agenciaspasso.com.br/itau-transforma-o-brasil-em-um-grande-estadio-de-futebol/ (accessed on 01/10/2015)
15 The commercial also has a lot of people dressed in green and yellow, which are the colors of the Brazilian flag. These colors and the flag itself were very much used by demonstrators in the protests of June 2003 in a clear manifesto to a certain nationalism.
16 See the commercial at http://www.adnews.com.br/publicidade/brasil-se-transforma-em-estadio-gigante-em-nova-campanha-do-itau. (accessed on 01/10/2015)
17 Burgess (Citation2001, 114) shows how in the UK ‘people now regularly complain about travel firms for providing disappointing package holidays, for example – even though it is hardly surprising that very cheap holiday deals do not improve our quality of life’.