Looking Behind the Label: Global Industries and the Conscientious Consumer

Abstract

Looking Behind the Label is an important contribution to the literature on ethical consumption or political consumerism, and, more broadly, will be of interest to scholars and students of consumption, social movements, and global value chains. The authors reject the established terms “political consumerism” (Stolle and Micheletti 2013), for framing “shopping with a conscience” as a necessarily political act, and “ethical consumption” (Barnett et al. 2011), for the presumed implications of a coherent ethical rationale, in favor of “conscientious consumerism.” The central question the book addresses is whether consumer activism and “conscientious consumer” activity “contribute to a fairer, more sustainable model of globalisation” (3). As the authors aver, debate has tended to be between positive and negative appraisals of the culture, politics, and meanings of such forms of consumption. Such debate has tended to be to the exclusion of consideration of, first, the societal structures of constraint and opportunity through which people engage in such consumption activity, and second, and even more starkly, how such consumption activity actually impacts conditions at the point of production.

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