Mundane objects of social activism: Following the lives of pro and anti-immigration t-shirts

随着社会生活进一步拥抱商品化和表演消费主义，公众舆论似乎成为竞争对象和设计的战场。许多大型电子商务网站现在都有一个“激进”产品专区，尤其是服装，这表明“穿着”政治观点并通过有目的设计的产品进行政治交流的市场正在增长。由于具有暗示性的信息，但口才有限，带有政治色彩的商品通过设计将复杂的地缘政治问题转化为简化的、没有细微差别的口号或视觉信息，通常旨在有意挑衅或在情感上有效。然而，随着社会行动主义的世俗对象越来越受欢迎，不微妙立场的辅助正常化可能会进一步将政治观点转化为简单的“支持”或“反对”话语。在这种背景下，该项目旨在调查“激进”商品的社会代理——比如写着政治口号的t恤——以及它们增强政治影响、话语或行动的能力。更具体地说，这项研究将把欧洲移民辩论视为一个很大程度上是情绪化和分裂性的问题，它越来越多地由一个积极的物质基础设施来维持，这可能会使流行文化中移民问题的两极分化和庸俗化永久化。如果关于移民问题的辩论要通过政治商品在日常生活中自然化，那么这种无处不在的消费主义是否会使当前的社会歇斯底里成为公共生活的正常组成部分，或者更糟的是，使属于辩论范围内的人道主义问题（如避难问题）变得无足轻重？像警报一样，紧急状态和社会关注不可能永远有效。如果闹钟一直开着，它就会变成一个背景噪音。通过采用多案例研究的方法，这项研究计划调查的对象，包括在辩论一方写着“不欢迎强奸难民”的t恤，以及在另一方写着“没有人是非法的”的t恤。从商品的设计、生产和销售到消费者的衣橱，这些都是该研究计划调查的对象。对于每个案例研究，我将使用多站点人种学方法，并进一步整合混合定性方法，如深度访谈和焦点小组。这种复合方法将在“跟随事物”的叙事下结合在一起，旨在追求物质对象的“社会传记”，并揭示人与事物之间的相互作用。我将坚持探索政治商品是如何被消费和感知的，这项研究自然会变成“跟随”激烈的活动家，政治化的消费者，或者最简单地说，在日常环境中“激活”这些物品的奇怪佩戴者。虽然对移民和物质文化的研究非常丰富，但这两个主题主要与跨国经验和/或地理之间的重要性的研究有关。越来越多的文献关注移民在公共文化中的表现，主要集中在批判性话语分析和主流叙事的视觉体制上。值得注意的是，很少有文献明确关注物质文化在这场辩论中所扮演的角色。随着移民和难民在大众文化中的形象日益在妖魔化和受害化之间摇摆不定，物质文化带来的长期两极分化和潜在的话语庸俗化当然不容小觑。在当前的政治气候下，这甚至更为及时，因为人们发现激进政党在大规模两极分化的情况下越来越受欢迎。

As social life has further embraced commodification and performative consumerism, public opinion seems to be a battleground of competing objects and designs. Many large e-commerce sites now have a section dedicated to 'activist' products - clothing in particular - signalling a growing market for 'wearing' political views and communicating politically through purposefully designed products. Due to their suggestive messages but limited eloquence, politically-charged commodities turn by design complex geopolitical matters into simplified, un-nuanced slogans or visual messages, often aimed at being intentionally provocative or emotionally effective. Yet, as mundane objects of social activism grow in popularity, the accessorial normalisation of un-nuanced stands might risk further translating political views into simple 'pro' or 'anti' discourses.In this context, the project aims to investigate the social agency of 'activist' commodities - such as t-shirts reading political slogans - and their ability to enhance political affects, discourses or actions. More specifically, the research will look at the European immigration debate as a largely emotive and divisive issue increasingly sustained by an activist infrastructure of material objects that might risk perpetuating the polarisation and trivialisation of migration issues in popular culture. If the debate over issues of migration is to become naturalised in everyday life through political merchandise, could this consumerist ubiquity make the current social hysteria a normal component of public life or, even worse, trivialise humanitarian issues that fall within the debate, such as issues of refuge? Like an alarm, a status of emergency and social preoccupation cannot be permanently in force. If an alarm stays permanently on, it simply becomes a background noise.By adopting a multiple case study methodology, commodities such as t-shirts reading "Rape-fugees not welcome" on one side of the debate and "No human is illegal" on the other will be the sort of objects this research plans on investigating - from where the commodity is designed, produced and sold to the wardrobe of the consumer. For each case study, I will use a multi-sited ethnographic approach further integrated by mixed qualitative methods, such as in-depth interviews and focus groups. This composite methodological approach will come together under a 'Follow-the-Thing' narrative, which aims to chase the 'social biography' of material objects and expose the inter-play between people and things. I will insist on exploring how political commodities are consumed and perceived and the study will naturally turn into 'following' the vehement activist, the politicised consumer or, most simply, the odd wearer who 'activates' the object in everyday contexts.Whilst research on migration and material culture is abundant, the two topics have mainly been associated in studies looking at the materiality of transnational experiences and/or in-between geographies. The growing body of literature concerned with the representation of migration in public culture mainly focusses on critical discourse analysis and the visual regimes of dominant narratives. Remarkably little literature is explicitly concerned with the role played by material culture in the debate itself. As the representation of migrants and refugees in popular culture is increasingly a pendulum between demonisation and victimisation, the perpetuated polarisation and potential trivialisation of discourses through material culture is certainly not something to take lightly. This is even more timely in the current political climate where radical parties are found to gain popularly under conditions of mass polarisation.