Decolonizing Consumerism Through Transmodernity: Education by the Agroecological Production Units Project

Consumerist education has focused on providing consumers with information to help them make better market choices, shifting responsibility for protection from institutions to individuals. This model, adopted in marketing, tends to reinforce neoliberal logic by individualizing responsibility for consumption and disregarding structural asymmetries between consumers and companies. Drawing on the theories of transmodernity and the pedagogy of the oppressed, this research analyses the education offered by the Cooperative for the Provision of Technical Services for Agrarian Reform in the Agroecological Production Units Project (APUP), presenting an alternative approach to empowering individuals that moves away from traditional consumerist education in marketing. A qualitative study was conducted using four online training courses and in-depth interviews with members of the project’s pedagogical coordination team. Findings reveal that APUP’s educational practices foster critical awareness of oppression, encourage collective responsibility for social transformation and promote agroecological alternatives grounded in cooperation, sustainability, pluriversality and the valorization of local knowledge. Rather than preparing individuals to navigate markets more effectively, the project supports the development of critical and autonomous subjects capable of challenging structural inequalities. The study contributes to marketing by advancing a decolonial understanding of consumer protection rooted in Global South experiences and transmodern forms of education.