When are 'good' citizens actually good citizens?

4.11.12

Although laws try to allocate and designate to people their entitlements and responsibilities as citizens, it is the informal power structures in society that dictate the substantiveness of their citizenship. Unlike the human rights regime, attaching the concept of ‘rights’ to ‘citizenship’ emphasises that accessing one’s rights is inescapably situated in a time and place. Acknowledging this fact gives weight to observations that point out that, although individuals might have the same legal status, some seem to be getting more out of their membership than others.

Some of these arguments, to me, are clear-cut. I noted in my previous blog post, for instance, how homosexuals effectively have fewer rights to public and work spaces as they are peer-pressured out of fully expressing themselves. Cases of sexual and racial discrimination are also examples of social power relations affect access to citizenship rights. Imbalances in socio-economic status create similar results. Think of how those without private property are not given the same opportunity to vote or apply for and receive welfare; of how poorer Americans essentially have fewer rights to quality healthcare as they are deterred by the exorbitant costs of health insurance in the States.

The result of these phenomena is an effectively tiered system of citizenship. The ‘good’ citizens are those who are self-sufficient; don’t sponge off taxpayers for welfare benefits; can afford to own smartphones and notify their local councils of graffiti and potholes. The ‘lesser’ citizens are the ones who don’t uphold these standards. Although all groups in society should have the same amount of rights as citizens, in practice this simply isn’t the case. I fully understand this critique and like I wrote above, for the most part, I’m right on board. However, when I read Josée Johnston applying the framework to the issue of consumer-citizenship in her article ‘The citizen-consumer hybrid: ideological tensions and the case of Whole Foods Market’ I didn’t exactly agree.

Johnston stresses the negative social impact of organic(-promoting) supermarkets like Whole Food Market (WFM), namely, the way they “legitimise the inequalities of capitalist markets by validating elite food consumption as ethical, natural, and part of good ‘taste’” (Johnston 2007, 257). That is, how they normalise class stratification. I agree with Johnston’s point in that I do not consider a situation where groups feel entitled to more rights through a perception that they contribute more positively to society to be desirable. The question I raise, though, is how can the economy possibly be changed for the better by consumer habits if ideas like shopping organic, local, and fair-traded are not regarded as ideals?

Johnston points out that WFM flagrantly promotes a culture of consumerism and leaves consumer-citizenship opportunities purely up to choice. Perhaps Johnston’s problem is that the so-called ‘good’ citizens that shop at WFM are simply not being as ‘good’ as they like to think they are, or do it only to feel ‘good’ about themselves. If WFM did what it says it does – give citizens the opportunity to change society by voting with their dollars – I wonder if Johnston would have been okay with it contributing to society’s class divides.

The problem is organic/local/fair-trade or ‘green’/sustainable consumption seems far away from having the social or political clout it would need to make supermarkets like WFM truly embrace it. From my experience, most people don’t understand what the agenda is all about. This is illustrated perfectly by the opinions of David (not his real name), a friend of mine’s dad. David thinks organic, free-range chicken is a waste of time; that caged chicken has the same nutritional value, can be grown to be bigger, and is more efficient to produce. In his view, anyone who buys organic, free-range chicken has been duped into spending more for an imaginary improvement in taste. I think a lot of people have this view. They brand people who buy organic, free-range chicken ‘vain’, ‘hipsters’, ‘hippies’ or ‘wanky’.

What I realised the other day after watching a PBS video podcast about food miles is that the ‘organic’ tag is more than more ‘tasty’ food, it’s about the environment and climate change. A quick search on Wikipedia informed me that organic farming eliminates the use of man-made fertilisers and pesticides, which saves on the fossil fuels and resources required to produce them and improves the sustainability of the used land. The latter theoretically results in higher yields in the long-run as the land is not rendered unusable through overuse.

I realise that not everyone will buy into this argument like I have (and not everyone believes in anthropogenic climate change) but I would like to think that raising awareness of the fact that labels like ‘organic’, ‘local’ or ‘fair-trade’ is more about feeling like a ‘good’ citizen. While I find it wrong that some citizens can in effect have more rights than others due to social and economic imbalances, surely it is possible for ideals to still exist, for everyone to be on board and know what they are striving towards.