Windows into the ethically made: affect, value, and the ‘pricing paradox’ in the maker movement

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the ‘pricing paradox,’ an affective-ethical-economic conundrum encountered by small-scale urban craft producers known as ‘makers.’ Set within an industrialized producer-consumer imaginary, the pricing paradox captures a central frustration for makers: ‘ethical’ production inflates prices, consequently generating new ethical questions about accessibility. Unethical prices, in other words, are the cost of organizing one’s production around ethical values. Unable to meaningfully affect the pricing mechanism, makers have responded to this conundrum by seeking ways to open ‘windows’ into their production process, thereby extending an invitation to the consumer and stewarding affective attachments between producer-consumer and consumer-object. The idea is to change the value proposition between makers and consumers and shape an alternative value imaginary in which prices at least make more sense. Additionally, the paper seeks to situate affect more prominently in discourses on moral/ethical economies. As such, the paper uses feminist affect theory to think differently about defetishization, ethical production/consumption, and value more broadly. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion on the politics of windows and their broader situation in the impasse of contemporary capitalism.

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