The nature of empowerment in a consumer education program initiated by a supermarket chain

Introduction

Education has become a field for commercial targeting (Ichilov, 2010; Kenway and Bullen, 2001; Molnar, 2000). Schools have long been markets for educational goods, and commercial agents have taken part in producing and distributing resources to the formal educational systems (Martens, 2005; Wilson, 1992). A dramatic rise, however, was noted in the trend of the commercialization of education in the 1990s; since then, this commercialization has worn many guises, such as sponsorships and philanthropy (Battaglio, 1987). Molnar (2000, 2005; Molnar and Boninger, 2007) points to the increasing pedagogical sophistication in introducing commercial agents into schools, maintaining that the application of educational ideas by commercial agents is often overlaid by overt educational objectives, such as teaching proper nutrition to the pupils (for a detailed description of commercialized curricula in various places, see Buckingham, 2011; Kenway and Bullen, 2001; Lawrence, 2003; Marginson, 1996). The aim of this article is to contribute to an understanding of the phenomenon of the commercialization of education, through an examination and analysis of the messages of a consumer education curriculum entitled “Super-smart – Curriculum to promote responsible consumerism,” ¹ which was initiated by the Ribua Ha-kahol chain of supermarkets for junior high schools in Israel. ² By doing so, I will point out the ideological trait of this move and will further contribute towards situating consumer education in social and political contexts (Sandlin, 2005).

Consumption raises moral issues. Time, energy, and money devoted to one sort of acquisition or activity excludes the commitment of time, energy, and money for other sorts of acquisition or activity (Zelizer, 2010). The everyday purchase rationale of people presents an ethical engagement for the proper way to negotiate conflicting needs and resource claims within relationships or communities (Slater, 2010). Consequently, any economic system offers a limited range of choices among goods and services (Zelizer, 2010). Consumer education is therefore about individual and collective moral dilemmas, which Slater calls “moral cosmologies” (2010: 283). The article will analyze the consumer education program, aiming to perceive the economic system that conceived it and directed its moral choices. By tracing these justifications and proclivities, the article will point out the ideological shades of empowerment offered by the “consumer choice” virtue in the program. Finally, the article will offer a feminist lens towards attaching relational ethics to consumer education.

The involvement of businesses and corporations in schools and in educational curricula is a controversial subject (Kohn, 1997). Reservations about blurring the traditional boundaries between schools and commerce stems from the desire to safeguard schools as a commercial-free zone for young people (Kenway and Bullen, 2001). In Israel, from the 1990s onward, a similar trend has been noticed with the increased entry of external private agents into educational institutions. Likewise, there has been a growing involvement of not-for-profit organizations (The Third Sector) in various areas of the school experience over the last two decades. Among other reasons, this is because of the accelerated trend toward privatization (Ichilov, 2010). This article examines the messages of the commercial curriculum by analyzing prominent images of the consumer figure in the set of lesson plans and in the study program’s activities. The effective method of activity that is incorporated in the character of the “worthy consumer” implies certain premises about the nature of reality (Ortner, 1973). Therefore, in this article, I seek to examine the social implications of pedagogic fostering of this notion.

In the 2002–2003 school year, HaRibua HaKahol, one of the largest food retail corporations in Israel, began to operate a curriculum called “Super-smart” as a part of its “corporate social responsibility” policy. The target population of the program consisted of junior high school pupils in cities located in the social periphery of Israel. ³ The formal purpose of the program was “to train the future consumers to better un u derstand the importance of responsible consumerism” (HaRibua HaKahol website). During the research period, 2006–2007, the program was being implemented in 14 schools spread over eight cities. To gain access to the educational system and build a curriculum, the corporation hired the services of an educational consulting firm, headed by Dr Eli Teicher. The program activities consisted, among other things, of lectures by experts on topics such as environmental preservation and advertising, and tours of supermarkets belonging to the corporation (called Mega).

The program was written as an enrichment activity kit meant to supplement the regular junior high school syllabus (sciences, citizenship education, etc.). The field work included ethnography of a year of “Super-smart” activity, through a weekly trip to the participating schools to follow the activity scheduled for that day. As part of the ethnography, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of the lesson plans given out at the schools and on the program’s website (Morgan, 1993). In addition, I observed the lessons that teachers developed based on the lesson plans that they received from the “Super-smart” program. Focusing on the program’s messages meant examining how consumer activity was presented to the pupils and what form of consumer empowerment is offered to them. The limitations of the study stem from the fact that the program is implemented in schools, mainly on special activity days. Therefore, the contents and lessons of the program are imparted to the pupils in a fragmented, quite arbitrary manner. The ideological message underlying the consumer figure in the program is conveyed during the visits to the schools. ⁴

The analysis of findings draws upon a critical-feminist analysis of liberal economic theories, which places at the center of the analysis what is sometimes termed the “caricature” of the autonomous individual (Barker and Kuiper, 2003; Friedman, 1997; Mackenzie and Stoljar, 2000). This critique casts doubt on the perception of the autonomous individual as an individual reliant on herself/himself alone and acting to maximize personal gains while feeling threatened by others. In contrast to this, the feminist approach emphasizes values such as trust, responsibility, and co-dependence (Code, 1991). This alternative position is aimed to “criticize how things are and imagine how they could be different” (Denzin, 2000: 916). The article will first present the key virtue of consumer choice in consumer education, after which, it will review two prominent images of the “worthy consumer” in the program’s contents and activities, namely, the “wise consumer” and the “enterprising self,” and examine their relationship to the consumer choice ideology. Finally, the article will discuss the nature of empowerment offered by the program and the social implications of this commercial–pedagogic fostering and will call for a relational view and an appreciation of “the space between us” in consumer education studies (Ross, 2002: 412).

Consumer choice virtue in consumer education

Consumption is one of the characteristics that define lifestyle in modern society (Bauman, 1988; Campbell, 1987; Giddens, 1991). With the weakening of traditional relationships that provide a collective and stable identity (such as class, religion, or family) (Warde, 1994), the contemporary individual is faced with a “plurality of choices” (Giddens, 1991). This self-regulation comes at the cost of constant risk of getting it wrong, and anxiety attends each choice (Zukin and Maguire, 2004). Particular importance is attributed to processes of identity formation during adolescence. Van-Gorp (2005) describes the young person as one starting out on a voyage of investigation and a comparison of alternatives, structuring various options and communicating these choices to others. In this last step, consumption has a key importance and fulfills a role in self-definition and self-expression. Childhood has come to be regarded as increasingly commercialized, and children are no longer seen as outsiders to contemporary consumer culture (Martens et al., 2004). In light of this reality, new trends have been developing in consumer education programs in the schools (Benn, 2002, 2004; Hellman-Tuitert, 1999; McGregor, 2002, 2005).

Danish consumer researcher Karen Gredal describes the limited consumer knowledge that was required in the past in this manner: “In the old days, a ladle (a long handled spoon for cooking) was a ladle and it was made of wood” (1971, in Benn, 2002: 170). In our times, by contrast, thousands of items, accessories, and materials are offered for sale, and it is almost impossible to be an intelligent and informed consumer. The title of Gredal’s book, The Dangerous Consumer Society, recalls the expression risk society that Beck (1992) coined for contemporary society. The risks that we experienced in the past as citizens and as consumers are being joined by new risks. For example, our foods might be genetically engineered, polluted, or full of unknown additives. Programs for consumer education in Europe and the United States first appeared as part of the curricula of home economics, a field that deals with household and family from the perspective of management of daily life. In Israel as well, the subject of consumption was taught in the past in home economics curricula that were instituted in elementary and junior high schools from the 1960s onward, at first only for girls, and later on for boys as well (Ministry of Education and Culture, 1960, 1981, 1984).

In recent years there has been a change in consumer education programs, and there is a noticeable aspiration to present an alternative to the commercial world and the easy, instant solutions its products offer. Empowerment, according to various approaches in consumer education, is seen as an opportunity to withstand the persuasion tactics of marketing people and advertisers, and the ability to utilize the competitive market by demonstrating knowledge regarding prices and consumer rights (Hayward et al., 2002; McGregor, 2005). In the book Marketing and Consumer Education, published by the German Institute of Consumer Education, this problem was likened to the David and Goliath model, where David is the teacher of consumerism facing the Goliath, who is the marketer (Preuss and Heiko, 1993). The Danish researcher Jette Benn uses the German word Bildung to describe the essence of consumer education, which has a broader meaning than education; consumer education includes liberating and critical aspects and is not limited to the behavioral aspect (Benn, 2002). A consumer education curriculum in Great Britain defined its goal as “an opportunity to help children investigate their role in society as citizens, consumers, and workers, and to be active and responsible members of society” (Hellman-Tuitert, 1999: 21).

This trend has led to the writing of consumer education curricula in schools on the basis of a paradigm known as “the political consumer,” or the consumer as sovereign, which is rooted in liberal economic thinking (Benn, 2002). McGregor (2002) proposes the term “consumer citizenship literacy,” which combines concepts from citizenship education with consumer education, so as to stress the connection between a “good citizen” and a “good consumer.” Establishing this objective places consumer education in the range between “consumerism” and “citizenship” (Buckingham, 2000), or as responsible for the establishment of “consumer citizenship” (Gabriel and Lang, 1995). From an analysis of the consumer education programs between 1938 and 1978 in the United States, Herrmann points to the fact that consumer education gives much weight to the decisions and choices of consumers as individuals. As a consequence, less emphasis is placed on dealing with the broad social ramifications of consumer behavior, market failures, and lack of competition that stem from corporate or monopolistic power. In this way, consumer issues are presented as isolated incidents, among others, because of the fear of dealing with controversial subjects within the curriculum (Herrmann, 1982).

Thus, consumer choice is of great importance in consumer education. Reducing consumer behavior to a reliance on proficiency in calculation and rational choice is controversial (Douglas, 1992; Peters, 2001). In her book on the culture of capitalism, Eva Illouz (2002) emphasizes that this culture is characterized by the illusion of choice and excessive preoccupation with rational choice, precisely in those places where there is no choice. The complexity of “identity work” in consumer activity highlights the dialectics of the consumer choice as rational and non-rational activity (Elliott, 1997; Nava, 1991). Hence, the realization of rationality in various meanings carries with it different perceptions of justice (Macintyre, 1981). Therefore, an examination of the messages of consumer education points to the ethical considerations that are expressed by consumer behavior and the nature of the goals it seeks to achieve (Slater, 2010; Zelizer, 2010). Indeed, recent approaches to consumer education call for the inclusion of social and global justice among the goals of consumer education (Thoresen, 2002). To characterize the rationale that guides consumer choice and consumer activity in the “Super-smart” curriculum, two salient themes of the “worthy consumer” in the curriculum’s studies will be presented, along with a demonstration of how they are reflected in several activities observed.

Making the rational choice – the wise consumer

The first assignment in the section on the family unit is learning to correctly read the contents, measurements, and price of the various products as these appear on their labels. Several activities are designed to practice advanced calculation of the measurements and price of the product in order to promote a rational choice between alternatives. On the company’s internet site, a tip is given that sums up this skill:

Some products are sold in different sized packages. In order to correctly compare the price of the item, it is important to compare the different packages on the basis of one unit measured. What is the cost for 100 grams of the product, in each of the packages that you are comparing? (Ribua Ha-kahol web-site.)

Competing models of empowerment include the consumer model of empowerment versus the critical or liberating model of empowerment (Croft and Beresford, 1995). The consumer model of empowerment includes offering the ability to choose between services and products, and giving information that makes it possible to make an effective choice between them (Cook, 2008; Starkey, 2003). In contrast, the liberating model of empowerment deals with exposing and challenging unequal social structures (Graham, 2002; Starkey, 2003). Furthermore, developing consumer skills is not a developmental task (Cook, 2010). In other words, we consume material goods not only for their utilitarian value or a “need,” but for symbolic value for us, for our lives, our loves, our passions, our hopes and dreams (Appadurai, 1986; Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 1981; Douglas, 1976; Sahlins, 1976). According to this view, economic activity takes place within a context of social bonds, or “enmeshed in networks, institutions, and non-economic relationships” (Polanyi, 1992: 34). Thus, relating to a certain choice as a “need,” instead of as a desire or preference, implies a certain social justification for this choice. ⁶

Preference for the rational purchase poses difficulties because of internal reasons that attract the consumer to favor pleasure and hedonism over a cost-effective purchase, and because of the commercial world that places temptations in front of the consumer. The curriculum’s messages warn the pupils against marketing techniques that are designed to entrap the consumer. In his lecture before seventh grade pupils, Eyal, the deputy-manager of the local Mega supermarket, describes how important it is to examine the entire basket of products and not just to make do with competition over one product or another. During the discussion, other dimensions come to light, which compete in considerations of the rational purchase:

It is a retail game. You take a prominent item like instant coffee, give it a low price to be attractive, and now wise consumption enters the picture. To check that in the end – you don’t fall into the trap of the cheap price. Look at the entire basket of products. Check more. Everyone does this, and we are not blameless. We raise the price on one product and all around … your job is to check. Don’t be naïve (from a lecture by a local supermarket deputy manager to 7th grade pupils).

Being a fitness chooser – the enterprising consumer

The second topic in the family unit is understanding the commercial point of view. The rationale for learning the commercial viewpoint is to expose the pupils to the way manufacturers, companies, shops, and advertisers think and act. This understanding is supposed to offer the pupil some type of protection against their messages and temptations. As Dr Teicher, the program adviser, tells the Channel 2 reporter who came to interview and covered the class activity at a Mega supermarket branch for the weekend news broadcast, “While learning how advertising is created, you learn to become immune to it.” According to this approach, “crossing the lines” and becoming exposed to marketing know-how and skills creates critical thinking about it: “We are ‘revealing our secret’ to the pupils, in order to, I would say, create the antibodies.” In this section we will examine the way commercial activity is presented to the pupils and what tools they are given to cope with it.

One of the activities proposed is analyzing advertisements, when the pupils learn the characteristic features of ads designed for children. Thus, for example, there is a list of “The 10 ads best remembered by children” (Sharon-Rivlin, 2000). The lessons that deal with the subject detail what is a “good” ad from a marketing point of view, when the criterion is its ability to send messages effectively. The emphasis on the effectiveness of the ad also appears in the lecture given by Adi, a brand manager for the Mega supermarket chain. The lecture deals with features of a successful ad: the factors that make an ad outstanding, attractive, and effective:

We will speak a little about what is a good ad, what does it mean to break through the limits of a routine, banal ad. Let’s start with an anecdote … in 1968, at the Mexico Olympics, Dick Fosbury came along and stunned everyone by jumping backwards – and won the gold medal. Today everyone jumps the Fosbury Flop and the record went through the roof. A good ad is an ad that “does a Fosbury.” (From a lecture by the corporation brand manager to 9^th grade pupils).

Another aspect in commercial literacy studies, this time from the perspective of the manufacturers, is expressed in the third study unit: “The story of a product,” which consists of industrial “entrepreneurial thinking” ⁸ – familiarity with the world of products from the perspective of the merchants. After analyzing several products and understanding the need they fill, the pupils are asked to have a brainstorming session to turn up unsupplied needs for which they can design new products. If in the process of examining purchasing considerations, the consumer is called upon to rein in his urges and fulfill his needs only, the commercial response to these needs calls for marshaling imagination and creativity in order to expand the range of products that strive to be included in the response to this need.

In the language of Max Weber, one might say that the commercial agents restore the enchantment that was taken away from the calculated, reserved world of the wise consumer. This entrepreneurial-consumer rhetoric is related to an individualistic culture (Heelas and Morris, 1992) and to individuals taking responsibility as “enterprising consumers” who use their consumer freedom of choice to become involved in personal and public issues (Cronin, 2000; Peters, 2001). Here, the suitable and worthy individual appears as an economic agent whose existence is dependent upon a plurality of choices of action (Bröckling, 2005).

The fusion of individual characters and economic, business-venture qualities represent a form of power which, in Foucauldian terms, works through subjectivity (Peters, 2001). Accordingly, the entrepreneurial, competitive individuals manifest government and self-government (Burchell, 1996; Foucault, 1991). This trend is reflected in “the consumer citizen” unit of the program. The connection between consumer “free choice” and civil–democratic choice is found in the context of contacting and influencing the commercial agencies and the governmental establishment that is responsible for regulating commerce. As Dr Teicher emphasizes to the pupils, “And if he doesn’t answer [the person in charge of the consumer’s rights], then contact the Minister of Industry and Commerce. And if he doesn’t handle it, when you grow up, don’t vote for him!” The message to the pupils is that they have to protect their own rights and adopt a proactive approach that will actualize the fact of their being a power equal to the commercial agents: to complain.

The consumer complaint is a formal means and instrument held by the consumer for demanding justice (Danet, 1989). The actual act of complaining, then, like the act of choosing one service over another, demonstrates the civil–consumer contract. According to the study program, the pupils actualize their civil and consumer rights in consumer activity. To elaborate on the discussion concerning the social ramifications of the image of the “worthy consumer” in this curriculum, the concept of “empowerment” and its relationship to the notions of consumer choice in the program will be examined.

The nature of empowerment in the curriculum

Consumer choice is a leitmotif in the “Super Smart” program. What may be learned from this fostering of a consumer choice virtue about the nature of the empowerment that the curriculum wishes to confer upon the pupils? Empowerment is a contested concept, with different underpinning assumptions and ideologies (Pease, 2002). Starkey (2003) stressed the importance of ensuring that any definition of empowerment is underpinned by a theory of power. The program’s contents and activities encourage the pupils to make the “right,” rational, and calculative choice, and become “wise consumers.” Weber’s distinction between formal and substantive rationality reveals an un-neutral value mechanism of domination (Brubaker, 1984). After all, there is no way of rationally choosing among competing values (Slater and Tonkiss, 2001). Apparently, choice liberates some, but exacerbates the oppression of others (Bauman, 1988). Nevertheless, according to the program, being a wise chooser paves the way for a neo-liberal governance (“the consumer-citizen”) as well as for a personal subjectivity (“the enterprising self”) (Rose, 1989), creating a consumer who “shoulders the responsibility for maintaining the social order through his ‘good’ choices” (Zukin and Maguire, 2004: 182). This raises the question of how the consumer-choice empowerment in the program masks the power relations and interests of disadvantaged groups in society (Starkey, 2003), which in particular are the target population of the “Super Smart” initiative.

Cook (2007) distinguishes between transitive empowerment and intransitive empowerment. Transitive empowerment may be transferred from the context in which it was originally created to other contexts and practices. Thus, for example, the ability to realize and translate the political right to vote may be realized and translated into other collective demands for additional forms of equality. In contrast, intransitive empowerment is realized only in the original context in which it was created. The Brazilian educator Paulo Freire developed a theory of critical pedagogy to empower weak groups in society. The critical pedagogy approach that he developed focuses on the political dimensions of personal problems and, like the feminist perspective, comprehends the importance of the socio-historical and political context in the conceptualization of “empowerment” (Alcoff, 1994; De Lauretis, 1986). ⁹ According to his analysis, a distinction must be made between the sense of personal power and the empowerment that is related to freedom and a change in society and class status. Therefore, the culture of “self-improvement” stands in contradiction to the critical effort of social change (Freire, 1970; Shor and Freire, 1987).

The strong emphasis that is placed on knowledge in the “Super-smart” curriculum (“the wise purchase”) on consumer rights, and the right to complain about a defective product or service (“consumer citizenship”), as well as on participating in the commercial world (“commercial–marketing literacy”), indicates a type of empowerment in the personal sense, and expresses a culture of self-improvement and self-reliance. In the terms coined by Freire, we can call the empowerment taught in the curriculum “problem-solving education”, which is characterized by individual entrepreneurial and consumer training (Shor and Freire, 1987). “Problem-posing education” in consumer education simultaneously exposes the connection between economic sovereignty and power on the one hand, and social status on the other, in a way that enables peripheral groups in society (in this case teenagers from Israel’s social periphery) to express their aspiration for freedom from control. Sue McGregor (2005) proposes an outline of stages towards exercising empowerment in consumer education, beginning with awareness and suspicion toward various forms of control and limited access to resources, through the question of “what action can I take, now that the blinders have been removed from my eyes?” (443).

A central aspect in the model of liberating empowerment or in education to posing problems is identifying problems from the pupils’ life experiences and turning them into topics of study. As opposed to pedagogy that wishes to furnish tools to participate in the commercial world, or as Freire says, “an act of depositing” knowledge in the hands of the learner, liberating pedagogy seeks to connect the world of the pupils with the culture and language being studied (Freire, 1970: 72). Ignoring the learner’s prior knowledge, and presenting knowledge as a “deposit” or gift of the teacher, in this case of the Ribua Kahol Supermarket chain to the pupils, is suited to a banking theory of education, where the teacher deposits with the pupils subject matter that is detached from the reality of their life experiences. The great emphasis on “needs” in the curriculum is accompanied by a refusal to grant legitimacy to the pupils’ desires and wishes (Aronowitz and Giroux, 1985), thus positioning most consumer activity in the range of non-legitimate behavior that must be restrained and rectified. This position reduces consumer education to a purely “technical” economic proficiency and to the level of competition alone, instead of revealing the broader contextual aspects of consumption and the way in which it is embedded within children's everyday life and interpersonal relationships (Buckingham, 2011). Nonetheless, viewing consumption as an isolated act stands in contrast to promoting cooperation as a guiding principle of social life (Tufts, 1918). ¹⁰

At the heart of the “Super-smart” curriculum stands the figure of “Homo Economicus,” that calculated, intelligent creature who plans his decisions and choices according to their maximum utility (Cook, 2001). The logic of rational choice, phrased in terms of utilitarian calculation, expresses a perception of “the separated self.” Within this “politics of choice,” individuality is rather a compulsory route to selfhood (Skeggs, 2005: 974). The pedagogical fostering of the “rational chooser” virtue in the “Super Smart” program rather implies inadequacies of the program’s target population’s consumer behavior. In Bauman’s words, the pupils of the social periphery of Israel are typified as “flawed consumers,” who make “wrong” consumption choices (Bauman, 1998: 37–38).

In his criticism of neo-liberalism, Pierre Bourdieu sees it as an ideology that dissolves the relationships of solidarity between people “in a cold water of calculation” (Mitrovic, 2005: 41). According to this analysis, the autonomous human being who has free choice needs no others because his needs, like social justice, are realized by individual choice (Lyotard, 1993). In contrast to this tension that springs from the separation between feeling and justice, feminist criticism presents relationality, or the ability to be connected – connectedness – as an alternate form of autonomy, “stressing continuity and change in configuration, rather than replacement and separation” (Gilligan, 1982: 48). Feminist ethics reject the premises of economic logic according to which people act out of egoism and cost–benefit considerations. Radical cultural feminism criticizes the fundamental perception behind these premises – the distinction between the separated self and the relational self (Cook, 2007; England and Kilbourne, 1990; Thompson, 1996).

This critique challenges, both morally and politically, the ideal of personal autonomy emphasized in the curriculum that stems from a neo-liberal ideology. ¹¹ The educational messages in the “Super-smart” curriculum place emphases on the utilitarian–individualistic rationale or the exchange value as the “ultimate pedagogue” (Cook, 2001: 95). An alternate approach to consumer education would stress a competing fundamental value, i.e. buying out of a connection to others (McGregor, 2009), described by Eleanor Vaines (1993) in the context of home economics, as “power with others” (25). A feminist conceptualization values the relational nature of the self or, using Sandel’s terminology, embraces an “encumbered self” (Sandel, 1998).

Many studies point out that people, particularly children, participate in consumer practices as an expression of belonging, care, and responsibility for others (Chin, 2001; Cook, 2008; Miller, 1987, 1998; Pugh, 2009). The “Super-smart” curriculum, in contrast, highlights the professional consumer, productive and entrepreneurial, who buys his place in the social contract. This “autonomous chooser” is detached from the reasons for his enthusiasm for products on the one hand, and from his partners in the social contract on the other.

A crucial aspect of the individualistic bias of consumer choice ideology, which reflects the wider social implication of the commercial curriculum studied, is its overlooking of the growing gap between choosing and the ability to control one’s life (Bauman, 2000; Zukin and Maguire, 2004). The enterprising figure reflected in “the choosing self” (Slater, 1997: 59) in the program fits the neo-liberal ideology and maintains social order through his/her “good” choices (Cronin, 2000; Slater, 1997). Moreover, people who do not have access to “choice” can only display the “lack,” and therefore cannot exhibit a good self (Skeggs, 2005). In other words, consumer choice empowerment reduces social justice to the freedom to choose between products (Cohen, 2003; Talbot, 2000). The eligible consumer is held responsible for choosing between products and services, as well as for producing himself/herself (Skegg, 2005). As a result, the program’s target population can only blame themselves for their situation and position in the social periphery of the society (Bauman, 2007).

In conclusion, “Commercial literacy” wishes to contribute knowledge and tools to the pupils for coping with the commercial–competitive world, while at the same time it incorporates messages that contribute to justifying this reality (Geertz, 1973). This ambition highlights an additional level of consumer culture involvement in the children’s modes of learning (Kenway and Bullen, 2001) and demonstrates the way in which the technical–isolating empowerment, or as Cook terms it (2007: 44), empowerment “that is going nowhere,” forges ahead and “goes to school.” Ultimately, this form of self-managing “autonomous chooser” empowerment masks power relations and class interests.

In contrast, the feminist ethics reject abstract individualism and hold that human needs must be filled in relationship (Ross, 2002). As an alternative to the seductive power of notions such as “consumer choice” or “wise consumer” to hide inequalities, a relational conceptualization could inspire an “encumbered empowerment;” i.e. a relational approach to consumer education will urge pupils to infuse their self-reflecting thoughts, based on their own experiences. The conservative nature of the commercial curriculum tempers the potential for pupils to be critical and powerfully speak a “language of possibility” (Farahmandpur, 2010: 65).