Against Consumer Ethics

Abstract

AbstractConsumer food ethics has re-emerged over the past 30 years as a popular form of activism to address concerns with the dominance of corporate interests in the global food system. Proponents of consumer ethics contend that informing consumers about injustices in the food system via labels or awareness campaigns will lead to collective rejection of unethical food corporations and the embrace of ethical products. This approach has been criticized on a variety of grounds, including its reliance on and eventual co-optation by market mechanisms. In response to these criticisms, food activists and scholars have promoted a consumer ethic that embraces local and alternative food systems, thereby producing an alternative consumer ethic purportedly outside of market logics. While these alternative practices have much to commend them, we argue that alternative food systems are invariably oriented towards consumer interests and thereby run into similar problems faced by earlier iterations of consumer-based ethics. We argue against the persistent focus on consumer ethics as means of substantially disrupting food systems, whether global, local or alternative.