Imposition of consumption practices in the public space: a study on urban cyclin

Abstract

Objective: This research seeks to understand how consumer practices performed in public spaces by consumers belonging to the dominant ideology (large-scale entity) impose their interests to the detriment of other consumers (small-scale entities).

Method: In-depth interviews and observation collected data from a qualitative research in the context of urban cycling and analyzed in a hermeneutic way.

Originality / Relevance: Public spaces should be democratic, egalitarian, and accessible to all. However, since space is the product of social relations, it reveals the interests of dominant ideologies that emerge from citizens, companies, and governments.

Results: The strategies of imposing the consumption practices of urban cyclists in the use the city’s public space reveal the domination structure of the ideology based on the consumption of carbon as fuel for the means of transport. Employed tactics include restricting use of public space and physical threats. Urban cyclists, in turn, naturalize the arbitrariness practiced by consumers participating in the dominant consumption ideology, internalizing the implicit cultural rules of domination to adapt to the social context.

Theoretical / methodological contributions: This study expands the discussion on methods of imposing large-scale entities in relation to small-scale entities in the public space, revealing the processes of domination that occur through consumption practices that restrict and limit forms of use and consumption of a type of space that all citizens are legally authorized to use.

Keyword: public space, dominant ideology, urban cycling