Making space for ethical consumption in the South

Abstract

Additional information:Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract: This paper argues that, given the rapid growth in the middle classes across the Global South, debates about ethical consumption need to be reconfigured to admit these middle classes, not as a problem but as a possibility. It establishes the potential to constitute Southern consumption as a surface of mobilisation for ethical consumption and, through working from the specificities of the South in Bangladesh, demonstrates how within-South framings unsettle and challenge existing NorthSouth understandings of ethical consumption. The paper makes three specific contributions.(1) It shows how North-South conceptual understandings of ethical consumption as political consumption might be reworked to admit the South. (2) Through an examination of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh it demonstrates the absence of a politics of consumer responsibility amongst the Bangladeshi middle classes, and suggests how a politics of responsibility might be forged, through paying attention to Southern brands and supply chains. (3) Through an examination of the Aarong retail brand of the corporate NGO BRAC, the paper shows that ethical consumption exists in Bangladesh, not as ethical consumption but as ordinary consumption with ethical effects. The paper concludes by considering the wider implications of these findings for furthering academic and practitioner debate.

Moderating Role of Connoisseur Consumers on Sustainable Consumption and Dynamics Capabilities of Indonesian Single Origin Coffee Shops

“…They have the tendency to try understanding, evaluating, and appreciating the consumption of objects, subjectively showing a preference towards certain coffee attributes such as the origin of the coffee, the serving method, and others [9,38]. Connoisseurs enjoy more of the behavior as a leisure activity as well as emphasizes the different self-identities with many of the consumers group where its characteristics are empathy to the environment, not having a problem with the price, and subjectively caring about the goods and service they consume [9,[39][40][41]. Because of the various attributes, these CCs have the potential to build their own subculture that is different from regular consumers [35,39,42].…”

“…Sustainability 2018, 10, x FOR PEER REVIEW 3 of 17 friendly products more than general consumers [3,40,41]. They have the tendency to try understanding, evaluating, and appreciating the consumption of objects, subjectively showing a preference towards certain coffee attributes such as the origin of the coffee, the serving method, and others [9,42].…”

Fair trade and consumer social responsibility

“…While the majority of consumer research on Fair Trade to date has focused on the Global North, recently Fair Trade products have been introduced into new markets such as India, Brazil, South Africa and Kenya (Fairtrade International, 2016, p.14). These emerging markets are still significantly under-represented within the extant academic literature (Biggs & Lewis, 2009;Andorfer & Liebe, 2012;Raynolds & Bennett, 2015, Gregson & Ferdous, 2015. Fair Trade's involvement and activity as a market creator and innovator in the Global South may also have wider relevance for business strategy and commercial operations in an increasingly global business environment (Doherty et al, 2015).…”

Ordinary ethics and craft consumption: A Southern perspective

“…Bringing the framework of ordinary ethics to bear on Southern consumption, as a small body of work is beginning to do, is therefore timely and valuable. McEwan et al's (2015) study of everyday practices of grocery shopping as expressions of care among middle-class consumers in the Western Cape, and Gregson and Ferdous' (2015) theorisation of the ordinary ethics of middle-class consumption of handicrafts in Bangladesh, are two examples of an emerging literature that takes seriously the diversity of ethical interaction among consumers in the global South. These two studies observe that thrift, and ordinary consumption that has ethical effects, respectively, need to be included in re-working the concept of ethical consumption.…”