Global Brands, Youth, and Cosmopolitan Consumption: Instagram Performances of Branded Moral Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

In this paper, we consider how global brands, through their growing involvement with corporate social responsibility, facilitate expressions of everyday, moral cosmopolitanism among youth. Focusing on the brands toms and H&M, we use a case study approach to examine how the brands establish contexts of consumption that support cosmopolitan performances – ways of being, feeling, or acting cosmopolitan with the brand. We also use Instagram research to explore how young people activate such cosmopolitan affordances through online activity. Focusing on the moral dimensions of cosmopolitan consumption, we contribute to existing work on aesthetic cosmopolitanism among youth by charting the different ways in which young people also express moral cosmopolitan ideals through their engagement with global brands. The paper provides a critical reflection on branded moral cosmopolitanism, outlining its contradictions, while drawing attention to the complexity of young people’s moral consumer cosmopolitanisms, as they emerge through entanglements of global brands, csr, consumption, and young people’s existing and aspirational orientations, interests, and lifestyles.

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