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Retail loyalty schemes: a practical theological response to surveillance capitalism and its construction of the flawed prosumer

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Title: Retail loyalty schemes: a practical theological response to surveillance capitalism and its construction of the flawed prosumer
Authors: Eric Stoddart
Contributors: University of St Andrews.School of Divinity, University of St Andrews.Centre for the Study of Religion and Politics
Source: Practical Theology. :1-14
Publisher Information: Informa UK Limited, 2025.
Publication Year: 2025
Subject Terms: Retail loyalty schemes, Theology of hope, T-NDAS, Moltmann, Digital humanism, Solidarity, Prosumers, Catholic Social Teaching
Description: This paper argues that retail loyalty schemes lie at the intersection of three sites of struggle: datafication, competitiveness, and commodification. It is where these overlap that the production of data-doubles (inferred categories into which individuals are placed), digital self-interest, and neoliberal (finance-dominated) economics, coalesce in surveillance capitalism. By re-deploying Bauman’s notion of the flawed consumer, a category of ‘flawed prosumer’ is used in relation to Stoddart’s analytical device of the common gaze, a preferential optic for those who are digitally poor. It is proposed that Christians contribute to public debate three theological themes: solidarity, the universal destination of goods, and the shadow of the cross cast from the future upon the present. It draws upon Kathryn Tanner’s theological critique of financed-dominated economics, Roman Catholic Social Teaching, and Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope to contribute to the public debates promoted by Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism, Christian Fuchs on digital humanism, and George Monbiot on ‘the commons’. The aim is not to adjudicate a ‘Christian position’ on retail loyalty schemes but rather to argue that by giving attention to those who are excluded, better, more humane, digital societies may be imagined in which ‘flawed prosumer’ is a token of honourable subversion.
Document Type: Article
File Description: application/pdf
Language: English
ISSN: 1756-0748
1756-073X
DOI: 10.1080/1756073x.2025.2530817
Access URL: https://hdl.handle.net/10023/32853
Rights: CC BY NC ND
Accession Number: edsair.doi.dedup.....d8520c9ea25aa0a2f6d9855aede9305f
Database: OpenAIRE
Description
Abstract:This paper argues that retail loyalty schemes lie at the intersection of three sites of struggle: datafication, competitiveness, and commodification. It is where these overlap that the production of data-doubles (inferred categories into which individuals are placed), digital self-interest, and neoliberal (finance-dominated) economics, coalesce in surveillance capitalism. By re-deploying Bauman’s notion of the flawed consumer, a category of ‘flawed prosumer’ is used in relation to Stoddart’s analytical device of the common gaze, a preferential optic for those who are digitally poor. It is proposed that Christians contribute to public debate three theological themes: solidarity, the universal destination of goods, and the shadow of the cross cast from the future upon the present. It draws upon Kathryn Tanner’s theological critique of financed-dominated economics, Roman Catholic Social Teaching, and Jürgen Moltmann’s theology of hope to contribute to the public debates promoted by Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism, Christian Fuchs on digital humanism, and George Monbiot on ‘the commons’. The aim is not to adjudicate a ‘Christian position’ on retail loyalty schemes but rather to argue that by giving attention to those who are excluded, better, more humane, digital societies may be imagined in which ‘flawed prosumer’ is a token of honourable subversion.
ISSN:17560748
1756073X
DOI:10.1080/1756073x.2025.2530817