ABSTRACT
To date, much engagement with ethical consumption, understood as consumer preference for products involving minimal social and environmental exploitation, has centred primarily on the motives and actions of ‘ethical consumers’ and on the niche marketing that has evolved in response to their purchasing preferences (Miller,1995; Micheletti, 2003; Micheletti, Follesdal and Stolle, 2004; Barnett, Cloke, Clarke and Malpass, 2005; Harrison, Newholm and Shaw, 2005). 1 The main object of consideration in social theory has, thus, been the emergence and development of diverse ethical practices of consumption within the existing structures of the growth market economy (see also Chapter 8 in this volume for a discussion of the limits of ethical consumption within the growth-oriented economic system). In philosophy, too, the main focus has been on the moral rationale and implications of those practices within that global order: with what it is that makes some purchases more ethical than others and whether this is to be accounted for by reference to the moral intentions of those doing the shopping or with a regard to the actual consequences of their actions. There is a certain realism in this understanding of the project of ‘ethical consumption’ given the entrenchment of the global market today and the wellestablished and pervasive influence of those arguing that economic growth and the advancement of consumer culture are the main means to a ‘high’ standard of living and the only reliable vehicle of freedom and democracy (Friedman, 1962; Feher, Heller and Markus, 1983; Campbell, 1987, 1995, 2002; Heller, 1987; Fukuyama, 1992; Hayek, 2014[1944]). Government and corporate elites, for their part, tend to put their faith in economists who argue that eco-modernising technologies will allow economic expansion indefinitely to continue and that we can have unending (if somewhat ‘greener’) growth with little alteration in lifestyle (Hayer, 1995; Mol, 2001; Huber, 2004; Stern, 2007, 2009).
