Globalizing Responsibility E-Book

Clive Barnett

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 504

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical Consumption presents an innovative reinterpretation of the forces that have shaped the remarkable growth of ethical consumption. * Develops a theoretically informed new approach to shape our understanding of the pragmatic nature of ethical action in consumption processes * Provides empirical research on everyday consumers, social networks, and campaigns * Fills a gap in research on the topic with its distinctive focus on fair trade consumption * Locates ethical consumption within a range of social theoretical debates -on neoliberalism, governmentality, and globalisation * Challenges the moralism of much of the analysis of ethical consumption, which sees it as a retreat from proper citizenly politics and an expression of individualised consumerism

Leseprobe

Globalizing Responsibility

RGS-IBG Book Series

Published

Globalizing Responsibility: The Political Rationalities of Ethical ConsumptionClive Barnett, Paul Cloke, Nick Clarke and Alice Malpass

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This edition first published 2011

© 2011 Clive Barnett, Paul Cloke, Nick Clarke and Alice Malpass

Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell's publishing program has been merged with Wiley's global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell.

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The right of Clive Barnett, Paul Cloke, Nick Clarke and Alice Malpass to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Globalizing responsibility : the political rationalities of ethical consumption / Clive Barnett ... [et al.].

p. cm. – (RGS-IBG book series)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-4558-9 (hardback)

1. Consumption (Economics)–Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Social justice. I. Barnett, Clive.

HC79.C6G583 2010

174–dc22

2010038163

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Contents

Series Editors’ Preface

Preface and Acknowledgements

1 Introduction: Politicizing Consumption in an Unequal World

1.1 The Moralization of Consumption

1.2 Justice, Responsibility and the Politics of Consumption

1.3 Relocating Agency in Ethical Consumption

1.4 Problematizing Consumption

Part One Theorizing Consumption Differently

2 The Ethical Problematization of ‘The Consumer’

2.1 Teleologies of Consumerism and Individualization

2.2 Theorizing Consumers as Political Subjects

2.3 The Responsibilization of the Consumer

2.4 What Type of Subject Is ‘The Consumer’?

2.5 Does Governing Consumption Involve Governing the Consumer?

2.6 The Ethical Problematization of the Consumer

2.7 Conclusion

3 Practising Consumption

3.1 The Antinomies of Consumer Choice

3.2 Theorizing Consumption Practices

3.3 Problematizing Choice

3.4 Articulating Background

3.5 Conclusion

4 Problematizing Consumption

4.1 Consumer Choice and Citizenly Acts

4.2 Articulating Consumption and the Consumer

4.3 Mobilizing the Ethical Consumer

4.4 Articulating the Ethical Consumer

4.5 Conclusion

Part Two Doing Consumption Differently

5 Grammars of Responsibility

5.1 Justifying Practices

5.2 Researching the (Ir)responsible Consumer

5.3 Versions of Responsibility

5.4 Dilemmas of Responsibility

5.5 Conclusion

6 Local Networks of Global Feeling

6.1 Locating the Fair Trade Consumer

6.2 Re-evaluating Fair Trade Consumption

6.3 Managing Fair Trade, Mobilizing Networks

6.4 Doing Fair Trade: Buying, Giving, Campaigning

6.5 Conclusion

7 Fairtrade Urbanism

7.1 Rethinking the Spatialities of Fair Trade

7.2 Re-imagining Bristol: From Slave Trade to Fair Trade

7.3 Putting Fair Trade in Place

7.4 Fair Trade and ‘The Politics of Place Beyond Place’

7.5 Conclusion

8 Conclusion: Doing Politics in an Ethical Register

8.1 Beyond the Consumer

8.2 Doing Responsibility

Notes

References

Index

Series Editors’ Preface

The RGS-IBG Book Series only publishes work of the highest international standing. Its emphasis is on distinctive new developments in human and physical geography, although it is also open to contributions from cognate disciplines whose interests overlap with those of geographers. The Series places strong emphasis on theoretically informed and empirically strong texts. Reflecting the vibrant and diverse theoretical and empirical agendas that characterize the contemporary discipline, contributions are expected to inform, challenge and stimulate the reader. Overall, the RGS-IBG Book Series seeks to promote scholarly publications that leave an intellectual mark and change the way readers think about particular issues, methods or theories.

For details on how to submit a proposal please visit:

www.rgsbookseries.com

Kevin Ward

University of Manchester, UK

Joanna Bullard

Loughborough University, UK

RGS-IBG Book Series Editors

Preface and Acknowledgements

This book is one of the outcomes of a three-year research project entitled Governing the Subjects and Spaces of Ethical Consumption, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (Grant Number RES 143250022).1 The project was part of the ESRC/AHRC Cultures of Consumption Programme.2 The argument developed in the book draws on empirical research conducted in and around the city of Bristol in the south-west of England, as well as research on national-level policy, NGOs and business organizations.

We would like to thank the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol for hosting the project throughout its duration, including Jonathan Tooby for his assistance in photographing ethical consumption activities around the city. We would like to thank all of the participants in the Cultures of Consumption Programme, from whom we have learnt an enormous amount, and in particular the Programme Director, Frank Trentmann. Thanks also to Jessica Pykett for her contribution to the research project. The project benefited enormously from the input of the members of an advisory panel, Tracey Bedford, Rob Harrison, Roger Levett, Terry Newholm and Allan Williams, and we thank each of them as well as all of the participants in two end-of-project events, held at the Open University Regional Centre in Bristol and at the Royal Geographical Society in London in 2005, for their always helpful and critical feedback on our unfolding research plans and analysis. We would like to thank the CREATE Centre in Bristol and the Fairtrade Foundation for their help in hosting the Taste of Life photography exhibition in June 2004, and Siobhan Wall for bringing her exhibition The Clothes She Wears to the RGS in 2005. Finally, we would like to thank all those people in and around Bristol and beyond who agreed to take part in this project as research subjects, whether as interviewees, focus group participants or informal contacts.

At Wiley-Blackwell, we would like to thank Jacqueline Scott, Liz Cremona and Tom Bates for their help, and patience, with the preparation of this book. Thanks also to Kevin Ward, as Series Editor of the RGS-IBG Book Series, for his encouragement and advice, and thanks too to two anonymous reviewers of the original manuscript for helping us clarify our argument.

Some of the material published here has been published previously in different contexts. Parts of Chapter 2 include material from Barnett, C., Cloke, P., Clarke, N. and Malpass, A (2008) ‘The elusive subjects of neoliberalism: beyond the analytics of governmentality’, in Cultural Studies 22, 624–653, reproduced with permission of Taylor and Francis Group. Parts of Chapter 4 include material from Clarke, N., Barnett, C., Cloke, P. and Malpass, A. (2007) ‘Globalizing the consumer: doing politics in an ethical register’, Political Geography 26, 231–249, reproduced with permission of Elsevier. Chapter 6 is a revised and extended version of an article that first appeared as Clarke, N., Barnett., C., Cloke, P. and Malpass, A. (2007) ‘The political rationalities of fair-trade consumption in the United Kingdom’, Politics and Society 35, 583–607, reproduced by permission of Sage Publications Ltd. Chapter 7 is a revised version of an article that first appeared as Malpass, A., Cloke, P., Barnett, C. and Clarke, N. (2007) ‘Fairtrade urbanism: the politics of place beyond place in the Bristol Fairtrade City campaign’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31, 633–645, reproduced by permission of Wiley-Blackwell.

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions in the above list and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

Chapter One

Introduction: Politicizing Consumptionin an Unequal World

1.1 The Moralization of Consumption

In contemporary debates about climate change, human rights, social justice, sustainability and public health, patterns of everyday consumption are commonly identified as both a source of harm and as a potential means of addressing various problems. In turn, consumers are routinely challenged to change their behaviour through the exercise of responsible choice. In this book, we develop a genealogical analysis of the institutional, organizational and social dynamics behind the growth in ethical consumption practices in the United Kingdom. We theorize this phenomenon in terms of the problematization of consumption and consumer choice. We argue that the emergence of ethical consumption is best understood as a political phenomenon rather than simply a market response to changes in consumer demand. By this, we mean that it reflects strategies and repertoires shared amongst a diverse range of governmental and non-governmental actors. The emergence and growth of contemporary ethical consumption is, we propose, indicative of distinctive forms of political mobilization and representation, and of new modes of civic involvement and citizenly participation. In developing this argument, we seek to counter the common view that the emergence of ethical consumption activities is a sign of the substitution of privatized acts of consumer choice for properly political forms of collective action. In order to move beyond the terms of this negative evaluation of ‘consumerism’, we argue that it is necessary to displace ‘the consumer’ from the centre of analytical, empirical and critical attention.

In this book we develop the argument that the emergence of ethical consumption should be understood as a means through which various actors seek to ‘do’ politics in and through distinctively ethical registers. Above all, it is the register of responsibility that is prevalent in the diverse activities that make up the field of ethical consumption. We argue that ethical consumption campaigning is a form of political action which seeks to articulate the responsibilities of family life, local attachment and national citizenship with a range of ‘global’ concerns – where these global concerns include issues of trade justice, climate change, human rights and labour solidarity. In short, we are interested here in understanding how ethical consumption campaigning seeks to ‘globalize responsibility’.

In developing our argument, we take our distance from the two dominant social science traditions of thought about the politics of consumption. In the first, consumption serves as a privileged entry point for thinking about the attenuated moral horizons of modern life. In this paradigm, Marx’s account of commodity fetishism is reframed as a hypothesis about the deleterious effects of affluent consumers having no knowledge about the origins of the goods that they consume. On this view, responsible action requires the development of cognitive maps that connect spatially and temporally distanciated actions and their consequences through the provision of explanatory knowledge. The moral charge of research on commodity chains and value chains lies in the claim that by reconnecting locations of production, networks of distribution and acts of consumption, the alienating effects of modern capitalism can be exposed. Behind this style of analysis is the assumption that the secret to motivating practical action lies in helping people to recognize their entanglement in complex networks of commodification and accumulation.