The author's academic interest in how shopping relates to adult learning goes back several years, to the author's Ph.D. program. Concerns are wide ranging, from social and material inequities manifest in unfair labor conditions for producers, to environmental degradation, to the tendency to favor economic viability single-mindedly over ecological sustainability. Critical shoppers might change their practices as they encounter and learn from new social movements, and they might apply what they have learned from movements while they consider their own practices. This chapter explores how shopping practices that challenge mainstream consumerism can be understood as forms of social movement learning and civic engagement, and illuminate complexities and paradoxes inherent in these processes.