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Week 3: The Ethics of Consumption (The 'Double Fetish', Should we…
Week 3: The Ethics of Consumption
The 'Double Fetish'
Should we care about the products we buy? How far do we care and how far should we care?
Back then - ethical consumption meant avoiding 'big brands' associated with poor working conditions or environmental degradation, buying cosmetics and toiletries that hadn't been tested, buying fair trade or organic products
Globalised production: late 80s/90s proliferation of outsourcing of production from global north to south, media exposes of sweatshop conditions, academics furthering research into 'global commodity chains'
No Logo- indictment of the sweatshop conditions found in newly developing countries, primarily East Asia, vulnerability was the brand and we should attack it through ad-busting and culture jamming- released in the wake of 1999 WTO Seattle protests
Belief in uncovering the social reality of commodity production, informing people about exploitation's would fuel a movement towards more ethical production and consumption
The Commodity Fetish (Marx 1867)- our obsessive fixation with the material object of commodities acted as a veil to hide behind the social reality of exploited labour. In the interests of capital to consume more and more, worrying about workers- an unnecessary distraction
David Harvey argues it could yield extraordinary results- favours de-mystifying and de-glamorising commodities to highlight their exploitative underbelly. Geographical imaginations to map, trace, follow commodity chains
Is seeking the commodity fetish enough? Castree- more useful at providing critiques than answers. Attempts to specify 'the origins' of commodities can lead to essentialising of particular cultures
Ethical Consumption: Cultural Capitalism?- Slavoj Zizek- ethical consumption is a way to buy your way out of feelings of guilt- capitalism has co-opted ethics to preserve its hegemonic domination
Key successes: Many consumers have responded by trying to shop in a more responsible manner. Key successes is the coffee sector which has a number of ethical/sustainable/responsible labels. UK is the world's biggest fartrade coffee consumer and Utz Certified gives a nod against the exploitative conditions faced by many farmers
Immanuel Kant: Universalism- he argues we have much a responsibility to care for people on the other side of the globe as we do for our friends and family
The case for caring across distance- should we extend a sense of community to distant others
Smith- the globalisation of modernity and market forces carries no guarantee the benefits will be widely distributed
Understanding how we impact on the lives and environment of distant others can lead to an extension of a sense of responsibility
Does geographical distance dull our morals- to the point where knowing about exploitation is not enough to spur action - who we know vs people across a distance
Local ties and loyalty- Scruton- believes we should only be concerned about the people in our community and nation, society only exists between people who interact on a face-to-face basis. A cohesive society requires a sense of membership
Scruton- link between physical geographical location as being key to the formation of cohesive moral communities, criticising the liberal notion of universal human rights
Sandel- 1980s communitarian perspective, groups with a shared story or history may share special moral responsibilities towards each other . However, he cites global inequality as a challenge to the idea that we hold a unique moral responsibility towards people we happen to be born in the same community or nation state
Problem of binaries between us and them: we consider ourselves superior, the nation state comes first
Geographical dilemmas of loyalty- where should we buy? Sometimes bad, assumed idea. What kind of wider flows do we want to be associated with? Geographical loyalty should be about the type of flows over the origin of these flows
It is not easy to practice what you preach... an intellectual 'moral turn' rather than a political shift
Is knowledge alone enough? ethical consumption is imperfect, we value our own relationships first rather than distant ones.
Is the power of a geographical imagination enough to light up our moral instincts and spur us into action?
Predictably irrational- we fail to accurately predict human behaviour in the market, when we go shopping we aren't able to weight up all the pros and cons, we don't have the information at hand but our brains are led not only by rationality but by emotions, we will support a policy as long as our favourite person is saying it. We also suffer from decision fatigue
Example of American Apparel- 100% sweat free clothing to the market. a hyper capitalist-socialist fusion
Overly politically supportive stance, make money whilst being ethical at the same time, however objectification of women and company founder was caught up in a scandal of sexual-harassment, brand severely damaged and Jan 2017 went bankrupt
Smarter solutions: Libertarian Paternalism, a nudge forward, put the healthier food in the front of the school cafeteria- opt our rather than opting in for organ donations. Will it help is consumer more ethically?
Smarter solutions? Intergovernmental Regulation- could promote ethical production by giving more power to intergovernmental agencies such as the UN and ILO to audit conditions in factories
Better Work programme