consumer stuck between a rock of victimhood and a hard place called responsibility: political discourses on the 'consumer' in Finnish and German governmental policy documents

Executive governmental authorities contribute a discourse, making-up, outlining and configuring the consumer. The objective of this paper is to elaborate on the discursive construction of the consumer provided by governmental institutions. Exemplified by Finnish and German policy documents, this paper tries to provide an insight on the consumer as the subject that is governed by politics. Thus, a discourse analytic approach reveals according to what rationale the consumer is discursively constructed on a dichotomous sovereignty-vulnerability-continuum. Hence, this paper provides actors and institutions that are involved in consumer policy deliberate basic principles for the understanding of consumers.