Market Sensemaking for Consumers’ Collective Political Agency

Abstract

Employing the theoretical lens of Weick’s work on sensemaking, this article explains how consumers collectively decipher and pursue their political interests. Based on historiographic data among Gaúchos in Southern Brazil, the findings detail how improvised enactments of consumer culture trigger interpretive capacities that decipher the effects of the enactments on the group and how articulation of hot conflict and cool inference interpretations politicizes such enactments. Ultimately, such socially engaged articulation informs committed interpretation, compromise, and consensus, which in turn motivate and justify subsequent enactments advancing group interests. The discussion elaborates the importance of sensemaking capacities and articulation, and the significance of committed interpretation in enabling and blocking collective compromise and consensus. This research contributes to knowledge of: (1) meso-level processes of collectively reasoned action among members of a consumer culture, (2) group structure that enhances consumers’ collective market sensemaking, and (3) particular market sensemaking challenges for consumption politics in a postcolonial context. The article closes with suggestions for further research in other forms of consumer culture in postcolonial conditions.