Ethical Consumption, Consumer Self-Governance, and the Later Foucault

Bibliographic Data

ID4865508
AuthorsNoah Quastel (University of British Columbia, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume47
Issue1
Pages25-52
Publication date2008-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueDialogue (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0012-2173 • E-ISSN: 1759-0949
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0012217300002365
OpenAlexW2018356232
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited41

This article analyzes the later work of Michel Foucault on ethics, freedom, and self-governance as it applies to the ethics of consumption and to new ethical consumerist movements such as fair-trade coffee. Foucault's emphasis on practices of the self helps elucidate the virtue ethics involved in consumption choices. Ethical consumption is cast as a set of practices of self-development: through critical activity and the quest for freedom, persons seek to transform themselves to live in reciprocal relationships with other persons and nature. This requires public deliberation and collective action to effect change within ourselves and our practical systems of consumption and production

Action (physics) · Collective action · Consumption (sociology) · Corporate governance · Deliberation · Economics · Environmental ethics · Management · Political science · Politics · Reciprocal · Self-governance · Social science · Sociology · Virtue · Virtue ethics · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Philosophy

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