Consumer De-responsibilization: Changing Notions of Consumer Subjects and Market Moralities after the 2008-9 Financial Crisis
Additional information
Authors
Pellandini-Simányi L.,
Conte L.
Type
Article in conference proceedings
Year
2020
Language
English
Abstract
A growing body of literature discusses consumer responsibilization under neoliberalism. However, after the 2008-9 financial crisis, countertendencies emerged, which have not been sufficiently theorized. Analyzing post-crisis mortgage regulatory discourse in the UK, Hungary and Switzerland, this paper examines these countertendencies and proposes the concept of ‘consumer de-responsibilization’, referring to the shift of responsibility from consumers to the state and financial institutions. We argue that de-responsibilization was underpinned by shifts in conceptions of the consumer subject (from the entrepreneurial to the limited rationality consumer) and in moral ideas of the market (from a deontological to a consequentialist morality). De-responsibilization operates through a top-down, sovereign form of governance. It does not replace, yet constrains the fields of neoliberal governmentality and responsibilization, constituting a hybrid governance system of ‘controlled freedom’. We situate de-responsibilization as a new modality of neoliberalism, which safeguards markets by excluding borrowers that may not be profitable enough.
Conference proceedings
Research in Consumer Culture Theory, Vol. 3
Month
June
Publisher
Georgios Patsiaouras, James Fitchett and AJ Earley
Start page number
153
End page number
156
Meeting name
Consumer Culture Theory Conference 2020: Interrogating Social Imaginaries
Meeting place
Leicester, United Kingdom
Meeting date
26-28 June
ISBN
9788794006033
Keywords
Credit, Consumer policy, Financial markets, Moralities, Responsibilization
