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Ethical Consumption (ethical + consumption)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	80%

Selected Abstracts

Protecting the Environment the Natural Way: Ethical Consumption and Commodity Fetishism

ANTIPODE, Issue 3 2010
James G. Carrier
Abstract:, One of the ways that conservation and capitalism intersect is in ethical consumption, the shaping of purchasing decisions by an evaluation of the moral attributes of objects on offer. It is increasingly important as a way that people think that they can affect the world around them, including protecting the natural environment. This paper describes commodity fetishism in ethical consumption, and the degree to which this fetishism makes it difficult for ethical consumers to be effective both in their evaluation of objects on offer and in influencing the world around them. It looks at three forms of fetishism in ethical consumption: fetishism of objects, fetishism of the purchase and consumption of objects, fetishism of nature. [source]

A sociological perspective of consumption morality

JOURNAL OF CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR, Issue 5 2007
Robert Caruana
This paper considers how a sociological perspective of morality can inform understandings of consumption. In light of recent research that identifies moral forms of consumption practice at a socio-cultural level (e.g. ,ethical consumers' and ,voluntary simplifiers') it is apparent that an important relationship between consumption, society and morality continues to be of relevance and interest to consumer research. However, research into ethical consumption, fair trade, sustainability, green consumption and more recently consumer citizenship presuppose certain assumptions about the moral nature of the subject at the centre of their investigations whilst not evidencing an explicit or coherent understanding of the underlying sociological conception of morality itself. Accordingly, there is a need for consumer researchers framing their studies at a sociological level to be clearer about the conceptual nature of morality and, moreover, how it relates in a meaningful way to the theoretical claims made in their research. In response, this paper examines the dominant paradigmatic conceptualisations that constitute a sociological perspective of morality. Particularly, it considers (1) how a number of key sociological perspectives on morality can locate streams of consumer research better than is currently the case, (2) how these perspectives suggest that current research into fair trade and ethical consumption invoke a certain type of morality whereas a broader concept is available and finally (3) how a pluralist sociological conception of morality will allow consumer researchers to reframe the types of questions they can ask and so too the types of answers they may find. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Making a difference: ethical consumption and the everyday

THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 2 2010
Matthew Adams
Abstract Our everyday shopping practices are increasingly marketed as opportunities to ,make a difference' via our ethical consumption choices. In response to a growing body of work detailing the ways in which specific alignments of ,ethics' and ,consumption' are mediated, we explore how ,ethical' opportunities such as the consumption of Fairtrade products are recognized, experienced and taken-up in the everyday. The ,everyday' is approached here via a specially commissioned Mass Observation directive, a volunteer panel of correspondents in the UK. Our on-going thematic analysis of their autobiographical accounts aims to explore a complex unevenness in the ways ,ordinary' people experience and negotiate calls to enact their ethical agency through consumption. Situating ethical consumption, moral obligation and choice in the everyday is, we argue, important if we are to avoid both over-exaggerating the reflexive and self-conscious sensibilities involved in ethical consumption, and, adhering to a reductive understanding of ethical self-expression. [source]