Buying (RED) products--from Gap T-shirts to Apple--to fight AIDS. Drinking a -Caring Cup- of coffee at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to support fair trade. Driving a Toyota Prius to fight global warming. All these commonplace activities point to a central feature of contemporary culture: the most common way we participate in social activism is by buying something.

Roopali Mukherjee and Sarah Banet-Weiser have gathered an exemplary group of scholars to explore this new landscape through a series of case studies of -commodity activism.- Drawing from television, film, consumer...