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Poverty is a powerful context that affects billions of consumers around the world. An appreciation of this context and the ways it shapes thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is essential to understanding the vulnerabilities of low socioeconomic status (SES) consumers. We synthesize research on consumption in poverty by reviewing some of the social vulnerabilities and frequent neglect, discrimination, and stigmatization encountered by low-SES consumers, as well as the cognitive challenges emerging from the experience of financial scarcity. These social, cognitive, and societal vulnerabilities highlight the importance of behaviorally informed programs and policies to address consumer vulnerability in contexts of poverty.

This article problematizes the concept of freedom rooted in liberalism, examining the detention of historian Ilan Pappe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at Detroit Airport in the United States as an emblematic case study.

The research adopts a methodological triangulation approach, based on an analysis that combines data about the event and theories about the concept of freedom, problematizing authors who focused on the relationship between the individual and society in a liberal context, where individualism serves as the basis for specific conceptions of social relations.

Through the use of authors such as John Stuart Mill and John Locke, as well as the contributions of authors like Norbert Elias, it is argued that true freedom is relational, rooted in social interdependencies and the social construction of an individuality that is not individualistic but intrinsically linked to collective aspects.

Pappe’s case illustrates the tensions between individual freedom and collective interests, highlighting the need to reassess freedom of expression in complex political and social contexts.

This article proposes a more inclusive and interconnected view of human freedom, where individual and collective interests are negotiated within a dynamic web of social relations.