In this episode of the Business Talk podcast, host Deepak speaks with Dr. Tad Skotnicki, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, about his groundbreaking book The Sympathetic Consumer: Moral Critique in Capitalist Culture. Drawing on his training at the University of California, San Diego and earlier studies at the University of Chicago and the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Skotnicki weaves social theory, cultural sociology, and the history of ethical consumerism into a powerful account of how ordinary purchases become sites of ethical struggle and political imagination. Through concepts such as anonymous commodities and Marx’s notion of commodity fetishism, he traces a three-century history of consumer activism, from abolitionist sugar boycotts to fair trade certifications, showing how diverse movements repeatedly organize politics around the figure of the consumer and the question of where goods come from and who makes them. The introduction highlights both the imaginative and sensuous strategies activists use to cultivate sympathy across distance and invites listeners to reflect critically on why their political imagination so often runs through acts of buying, without abandoning consumer politics altogether.

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