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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how a careful articulation of one’s perspective of a key construct (in this case agency) can facilitate critical reflection and move the field forward (by bridging two hitherto separate agency debates).

Four years of engagement with 24 consumers involving prolonged observations and unstructured depth interviews provided the empirical evidence for this paper.

Even humans who perceive their personal capacity to influence events as limited (whether due to actual or perceived limitations in physiological capabilities, material resources, and/or interpersonal networks) can assemble a network of persons, possessions, and practices to signal the agency to themselves, and to others. These assemblages, which invariably feature indexicons, allow people to construct semiotic agency in ways which are shaped by their habitus.

This research has important implications for social and housing policy because disadvantaged consumers are more likely to rent than own, which limits their capacity to assemble semiotic agency.

This research introduces the new concepts of semiotic agency and indexicons to consumer culture theory and shows how even disadvantaged consumers can deploy these to signal agency to themselves and others.