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Mobile moralities: ethical consumption in the digital realm

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journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-09, 03:05 authored by Kim Humphery, Tim Jordan
Ethical consumption, as a realm of production and exchange, as a framework for purchasing decisions and as political activism, is now well established in a range of nations. As a politics, it points to an interconnected but divergent set of concerns centred on issues of environmental sustainability, local and global economic and social justice, and community and individual wellbeing. While the subject of sustained critique, not least because of its apparent privileging of ‘the consumer’ as the locus of change, ethical consumption has garnered increasing attention. This is most recently evident in the development and widening use of ‘ethical consumption apps’ for mobile devices. These apps allow the user to both access ethical information on products and, potentially, to connect with a broader politics of consumption. However, in entering the digital realm ethical consumption also becomes embroiled in the complexities of digital technocultures and their ability to allow users of apps to be connected to each other, potentially building communities of interest and/or activism. This paper explores this emerging intersection of the ethical and the digital. It examines, in particular, whether such digital affordances affect the way ethical consumption itself may be conceived and pursued. Does the ethical consumption app work to collectivise or individualise, help to focus or fragment, speak of timidity or potential in relation to an oppositional politics of consumption? In confronting these issues, this paper suggests that contemporary ethical consumption apps – while full of political potential – remain problematic in that the turn to the digital has tended, so far, to accentuate the already individualising tendencies within a politics of ethical consumption. This speaks also, however, to a similar problematic in the politics of digital technocultures; the use of the digital does not automatically enable - merely through greater connectivity and information availability – forms of radical politics.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Journal of Consumer Culture

ISSN

1469-5405

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Issue

4

Volume

18

Page range

520-538

Department affiliated with

  • Media and Film Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-09-23

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-09-23

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-09-23

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