Consumer Management in the Internet Age

Joshua Sperber is assistant professor of political science and history at Averett University.

• Introduction: We’re All Managers Now (and We’re Doing It for Free) Chapter 1: How the Consumer Was Invented (and Is Being Reinvented): A Brief History of the Consumer Chapter 2: Yelp: Working for Pleasure (and to Make Others Rich) Chapter 3: Rate My Professors: A’s (and Debt) for Everyone! Chapter 4: Conclusion

The consumer has been alternatively depicted as the sovereign of the market, the unwitting dupe of advertisers, and the heroic boycotter whose activism helped create democracy. In this splendid and original study, Joshua Sperber gives us the consumer as the disciplinary agent of modern capitalism. Combining eye-opening empirical investigations of Yelp and Rate My Professor with a sophisticated Marxist account of the gig economy, Sperber shows how the consumer is increasingly serving a managerial function in the economy. Whether through surveillance of workers, detailed internet surveys, and online ratings and reviews, the consumer is doing for free what managers were once paid to do. With a prose that is as powerful as it is plain, Sperber documents how critical the consumer is to production: not as a market of taste outside the production process, but as a disciplinary force within the production process.