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“Mixing Pop (Culture) and Politics”: Cultural Resistance, Culture Jamming, and Anti-Consumption Activism as Critical Public Pedagogy Author(s): Jennifer A. Sandlin and Jennifer L. Milam Source: Curriculum Inquiry, Vol. 38, No. 3 (Jun., 2008), pp. 323-350 Published by: on behalf of the Wiley Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of
Toronto Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25475909 Accessed: 21-04-2015 21:24 UTC
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“Mixing Pop (Culture) and Politics”: Cultural Resistance, Culture Jamming, and Anti-Consumption Activism as
Critical Public Pedagogy JENNIFER A. SANDLIN Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ, USA
JENNIFER L. MILAM Texas A&M University
College Station, TX, USA
ABSTRACT
Culture jamming, the act of resisting and re-creating commercial culture in order
to transform society, is embraced by groups and individuals who seek to critique and
(re)form how culture is created and enacted in our daily lives. In this article, we
explore how two groups?Adbusters and Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop
Shopping?use culture jamming as a means of resisting consumerism. We theorize
how culture jamming as practiced operates as critical public pedagogy, through the
ways in which it (1) fosters participatory, resistant cultural production; (2) engages learners corporeally; (3) creates
a (poetic) community politic; and (4) opens tran
sitional spaces through detournement (a “turning around”). We propose that when
viewed as critical public pedagogy, culture jamming holds potential to connect
learners with one another and to connect individual lives to social issues?both in
and beyond the classroom. However, we also posit that culture jamming as critical
public pedagogy is not a panacea nor without problems. We also discuss how culture
jamming may in fact at times hinder critical learning by imposing a rigid presence on the viewer-learner that limits creativity and transgression, and how it risks
becoming co-opted by the very market forces of capitalism it opposes.
“Todo lo compro de marca y consumo a todas horas. Mierda ahora estoy obligado a ser
feliz!” [Everything I buy is brand name, and I shop all the time. Shit, now I’m forced to be
happy!]
?Sign worn by a group of culture jammers called “Ecologistas en Accion”
celebrating Buy Nothing Day (Dia Sin Compras) in Madrid, Spain, November 24, 2006, as they dressed up as disappointed consumers holding
overflowing shopping bags and wailed and sobbed in busy streets and shopping malls in Madrid’s busiest commercial centers
? 2008 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Curriculum Inquiry 38:3 (2008) Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Maiden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK
doi: 10.1111/J.1467-873X.2008.00411.x
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324 JENNIFER A. SANDLIN AND JENNIFER L. MILAM
In the United States, many consumer economists call the day after
Thanksgiving “Black Friday” and count it as one of the busiest shopping days of the year, as well as the official beginning of the holiday shopping season. During the most recent Black Friday (November 23, 2007), U.S. consumers spent $10.3 billion (up 8.3% from 2006) in this post
Thanksgiving festival of consumption (ShopperTrak RCT Corporation, 2007). However, on this same day activists across the globe were celebrating a different cultural holiday, Buy Nothing Day (BND), which began in 1992 in Vancouver, Canada, and has spread to over 65 countries. BND brings together citizens who seek freedom from the manic consumer bingeing
currently colonizing the holidays, and calls attention to the ecological and ethical consequences of overconsumption (Adbusters Media Foundation,
2007). Examples of recent activities from BND include the following:
The “Space Hijackers,” a group of activists in London, enacted the
“Half Price Sale.” Wearing T-shirts exclaiming “EVERYTHING IN
STORE HALF PRICE TODAY!” they entered popular London retail stores and pretended to be employees, folding and straightening clothes and helping customers. They also placed leaflets explaining the philosophy of Buy Nothing Day in the pockets of the clothing items for sale.
In Tokyo, activists collected free ad-carrying packs of facial tissue, which are typically given away in busy commercial shopping areas.
Activists altered the ads and inserted Buy Nothing Day information
sheets in the tissue packs before handing them out.
In New York City, Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping held a Buy Nothing Day parade, which started at Macy’s department store at 5 a.m. During stops along the parade route, Reverend Billy
exorcized a cash register at Victoria’s Secret and said an anti
consumption blessing in front of Old Navy.
We view these various “culture jamming” activities as
examples of “anoma
lous pedagogies” (Ellsworth, 2005, p. 5) and critical public pedagogies. In this
article we explore how community activist groups and others brought
together by a shared vision of a more just society
enact cultural resistance
through the tactics of “culture jamming.” In so doing,
we also speculate on
how the “public”?the audiences who view or engage with this activism?
might experience these potential moments of critical learning. Culture jamming is activity that counters “the continuous, recombinant
barrage of capitalist laden messages fed through the mass media” (Handel
man, 1999, p. 399). The term was coined in 1984 by the San Francisco
based eletronica band Negitivland in reference to the illegal interruption of the signals of ham radio (Carducci, 2006; Darts, 2004). Lasn (1999), founder of Adbusters Media Foundation, explains that culture jamming is
a metaphor for stopping the flow
of consumer-culture-saturated media.
