Mobilizing the ethical consumer in South Africa |
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| Institution: | 1. School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK;2. Department of Geography, Science Laboratories, South Road, Durham University, Durham DH1 3LE, UK;1. School of Astronautics, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150080, China;2. Nonlinear Analysis and Applied Mathematics (NAAM) Research Group, Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia;3. Nonlinear Analysis and Applied Mathematics Research Group (NAAM) and Mathematics Department, Faculty of Science and Arts (Khulais), King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Saudi Arabia;1. School of Nuclear Science and Technology, Xi''an Jiaotong University, No. 28 Xianning West Road, Xi''an, Shaanxi 710049, PR China;2. Shanghai Nuclear Engineering Research & Design Institute, 29 Hongchao Road, Shanghai 200233, PR China;3. Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences, University of Michigan, 2200 Bonisteel, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA;1. School of Environment and Technology, University of Brighton, Lewes Road, Brighton BN2 4GJ, UK;2. Department of Sociology, The University of Warwick, Social Sciences Building, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK;3. 41 Bloxham Road, London E10 7LW, UK;1. Institute of Geography, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH8 9XP, United Kingdom;2. Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom;1. Department of Environmental Health, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA;2. Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health (PHE), World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland;3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, South Kensington Campus, Imperial College London, London, UK;4. Institute for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology, Pettenkofer School of Public Health, LMU Munich, Germany;5. Department of Disease Control, Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK |
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| Abstract: | This paper presents a critical engagement with current initiatives for ethically-labeled goods in South Africa, thus offering an intervention in a literature on ethical consumption that has previously prioritized the global North. Through an interview-based methodology supported by focus groups in the Western Cape, the paper attends specifically to the strategies shaping recent forms of ethical consumption in South Africa on the part of business and civil society. Campaigns and strategies associated with three of the most prominent ethical labeling initiatives in South Africa—Proudly South African, Fairtrade Label South Africa and the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI)—are evaluated. Barnett et al.’s (2011: 90) notion of “mobilizing the ethical consumer” is brought into conversation with ethical consumption literature on local embeddedness in order to assess the ways in which the organizations responsible for these initiatives combine globalizing business and political networks of responsibility with local institutions and values in South Africa. The role played by the discursive construction of a growing South African ‘middle class’ is also acknowledged as part of the process of encouraging ethical consumption on the part of these actors. In conclusion, it is suggested that understanding ethical consumption in South Africa, as elsewhere, requires sensitivity to both transnational networks of globalizing responsibility and localized expressions of ethical consumption. |
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| Keywords: | Ethical consumers Ethical labeling South Africa |
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