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The purpose of this paper is threefold: first, to analyze the origins of Adelco in the context of the “Consumer Orientation Campaign” (Orientación Para El Consumidor, OPEC, in Spanish) promoted by the Ministry of Economy between 1978 and 1981; second, to describe the main characteristics of Adelco during its first years, especially its activities, structure and its international connections; finally, to contribute to the study of consumer organizations in Argentina and Latin America, where very little research has been done on the subject.

This article is organized into three sections. First, it outlines the deep transformations taking place in the Argentine economy during the military regime, highlighting particularly the variations in inflation rates and a series of inflation-related policies. It goes on to offer a brief overview of some new studies in consumer history in Argentina as well as an analysis of the Consumer Orientation campaign, promoted by Martínez de Hoz, the Minister of Economy from 1978 to 1981. Finally, it details the origins and key features of Adelco. For source material, this paper uses a qualitative approach, working with government documents, interviews and magazines. It also makes use of the Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting of Adelco. At the same time, this paper contributes to current debates in the history of consumption.

This paper reaches two main conclusions. First, while Adelco may have presented itself as a non-government organization (NGO) linked to consumer interests and responsive to grass-roots pressures, it maintained a top-down structure with close ties to state policy. Second, Adelco was part of what Matthew Hilton has analyzed as a shift in the consumer movement of the last several decades: a change from collective action to individual choice.

The main value of the paper rests on three factors. First, it offers an insight into the origins of Adelco, the first consumer defense NGO in Argentina. Second, it studies sources that have never previously been analyzed, such as the Minutes of the Board of Directors meeting and personal interviews. Third, it shows the ties between the origins of Adelco and the consumer policy of the military government in Argentina.

The purpose of this study was to explore the innovative and proactive practices adopted by subsistence businesses under the COVID-19 health contingency. Evidence of the current situation and the contingency practices that businesses have implemented in dealing with the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic was collected through a literature review of secondary information sources: bibliographic and hemerographic, as well as in-depth interviews with five owners of artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses.

Faced with uncertainty, artisanal and agricultural subsistence businesses have adopted innovative and proactive survival practices. The closure of markets, the absence of tourism, the suspension of non-essential activities, the lack of mobility and transportation, and the closure of access in rural communities are some of the realities these businesses are experiencing. Subsistence businesses in marginalised areas are a long way from accessing information technologies for online sales and home deliveries, which are implemented by most businesses in urban areas. In contrast, they revert to ancestral marketing practices such as bartering and low prices to earn an income for family food. Despite the loss of over 50% of subsistence businesses in urban and semi-urban areas, online sales through social media and websites, socially responsible initiatives, along with government support programmes, have helped others stay in business.

The present study evaluates the principal forms of socioenvironmental damage suffered by local traditional populations and indigenous communities as a result of the installation and operation of the Pecém Industrial and Shipping Complex. The main problem being pollution in the municipalities of São Gonçalo do Amarante and Caucaia, which is in the Brazilian state of Ceará. As a theoretical framework, we use the concept of “environmental justice,” and “environmental racism.” The latter were used to understand the process of “deterritorialization” of these communities that resulted in extensive impacts on the natural environment, as well as the way of life and productive practices of these communities. Our analyses confirm the destruction of the means that allow noncapitalist exploitation of natural resources, such as artisanal fisheries, subsistence farming, and the use of commons. We show how all these processes are constitutive of environmental injustice and environmental racism. These may contribute to the organization of the resistance and struggle of the affected populations, namely indigenous peoples and traditional communities.

WHILST lubricants, their formulation and scientific study is mainly the province of the chemist, the act of lubrication comes within the purview of Applied Mechanics. It is therefore not surprising that lubrication figured in the proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Applied Mechanics which has been held in Brussels from September 5th—13th.

Based on a decolonial perspective from Latin America, this paper aims to offer a different history of the creation of Brazil’s Consumer Defense Code (CDC), analyzing the process through which Eurocentric influences, especially coming from Consumers International (CI), became present in the development of the code.

A qualitative historical research was developed using marketing amnesia and decolonialism as its theoretical backdrop. Primary and secondary data are used as source of information. Primary data were obtained through interviews with two authors of the CDC. Secondary data were collected from academic articles and books, reports, magazines and consumer organization websites, as well as journalistic articles.

During the drafting of the CDC and after its promulgation, the presence of Eurocentric forces was constant, given the interests of CI and other agents in influencing Brazil’s consumer practices, subordinating them to those of the Global North. This Eurocentric presence was accepted by the Brazilian jurists that drafted the CDC, which led to the incorporation of both laws and bills from Eurocentric countries and the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection into the code.

Such discussions are scarce in marketing, due to the area’s amnestic state regarding the past. While selectively forgetting certain pasts, marketing fails to both acknowledge its tendency to subordinate consumerist actions to those accepted by the Eurocentric world, and to establish analyses that deal with mimetic processes, to minimize asymmetries between companies and consumers, especially in emerging economies, and, even more, dichotomies between the Global North and the Global South.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how, in three different contexts, the National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation narratively uses its past to build an official history concerning its origins that legitimates advertising self-control as a hegemonic narrative.

By using the historical research and the “uses of the past” approach, this study identifies, analyzes and confronts three organizational histories of Conar’s origins (both its official and unofficial versions) in the context of the creation of the Brazilian system of advertising self-regulation.

After a thematic analysis of the documentary sources, the narratives on the National Council for Advertising Self-Regulation’s origins and the self-control process were grouped into three versions: the narrative under the military regime: 1976/1980; the narrative during the process of re-democratization of the country: 1981/1991 and the contemporary narrative: from 2005 onwards. These narratives were confronted and, in consequence, provided, each of them, a different interpretation of the context surrounding the creation and justification for advertising self-control.

The study shows how a consumer defense organization re-historicized its past strategically to gain legitimacy in three different ways through time. It also reveals that organizations strategically use their past to build an intended vision of the future, thus having more agency than the hegemonic literature in management studies usually guarantees. Finally, it exposes the malleability of past narratives through which organizations play a critical role in the ongoing struggle for competing uses of the past. Therefore, the study identifies different organizational stories through time that allow researchers to reflect on several strategic uses of the past by organizations.