Abstract
A thoroughly engaging read, Fair Trade and the Citizen-Consumer provides critical insights into the ‘everyday social flow[s] and “do-ability” of consumer practices and performances’ (p. 181) of fair-trade consumption. This in-depth, contextually-grounded and culturally-situated investigation into fair-trade and, importantly, non-fair-trade consumers problematizes the dominant framing within studies of ethical consumption and activist discourses of the individual citizen-consumer as an active agent for change. Wheeler’s ‘disturbance’ of the neo-liberal figure of the citizen-consumer works to fill in the missing yet critical empirical details of the everyday moral and practical messiness of ethical/fair-trade consumption that more abstract theorizations of ethical consumption have failed to grapple with (e.g. Barnett et al., 2011). Building on and deploying a practice-theory approach, the book articulates that, while fair trade may be widely recognized as a moral action, how it is practised is highly contextual and dynamic. Specifically, Wheeler’s comparisons between the UK, Sweden and the USA highlight the variety of ways in which people understand and engage with fair trade across different historical, national and cultural contexts.
With this practice theory approach, her extensive conversations and focus groups with fair-trade (non-)consumers and analysis of the fair-trade-themed questions in the UK’s National Omnibus Survey, Wheeler develops a series of original and far-reaching analytical points. First, through this first-ever engagement with non-fair-trade consumers – in parallel with those who purchase fair trade regularly – the book offers critical insights into Sayer’s (2011) notion of the somewhat class-defying ‘lay normativities’ to suggest that ethical consumption is often only one way that individuals act in the face of poverty and under-development. Here, Wheeler raises specific questions about the role of the fair-trade citizen-consumer, suggesting that non-participants should not be couched in moralistic discourses of passivity, apathy and indifference but should be considered an active challenge to the continuing responsibilization of consumption. In particular, Wheeler found that, somewhat paradoxically, non-fair-trade consumers ‘rejected the notion of consumer “choice” as a meaningful tool for alleviating poverty in the developing world and yet regarded the concept of fair-trade as worthy’ (p. 177). In a related point, she found that it was only when some of her less-well-off, non-fair-trade consumers felt they did not have economic access to purchasing the moralized goods of fair trade did they then become attuned to questions of economic power and class and ‘whose definition of morality is most valid’ (p. 139); for Wheeler, her research points out the growing realization that ‘there is no simple relationship between social class and fair trade’ (p. 138).
Second, away from the discourses and headlines of the global fair-trade movement, the book’s findings point to the need to not only see fair-trade consumption as an extension of the already existing practices of many of its consumers, but that – echoing the findings of Barnett et al. (2011) – these supposedly individualized acts, through the medium of choice, are thoroughly embedded in a series of social networks and assemblages that include the state, businesses and social movements. In this, rather than focusing on the individual nature of their citizen-consumer engagements, proponents of fair trade, and particularly those involved in the fair-trade town movement in the UK, focus on their actions as part of a collective culture in an imagined community with other fair-trade consumers and supporters.
Third, and worth an extended quote given its importance, Wheeler states that: those who want to motivate sustainable consumption behaviour need to move away from the model of the consumer as an individualist chooser. Consumers are not infinitely malleable, and the provision of information alone is inadequate to change people’s behaviour. Placing consumer choice in the centre of policies to change patterns of consumption ignores how the consumer is constrained by normative and collective processes that are themselves stabilised and reproduced through the routine performances of social practice. (p. 181)
To a great extent, this complicates the current, widespread ‘nudge’ and social marketing approaches – both of which are heavily consumer-focused and information/education-oriented – to fostering more sustainable societies. Following Carolan (2011) and Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy (2010), Wheeler’s volume suggests that understanding the actual everyday, embodied and, indeed, visceral practices of sustainability is crucial in designing policies for more sustainable (consumption) futures. While this book builds on previous arguments, in conjunction with other scholars (e.g. Evans, 2011; Shove, 2010) and those mentioned above, Wheeler stands at the forefront of what might be termed the ‘practice turn’ in the cultural politics of sustainability.
While the book appealed to both of us as scholars having done work on different parts of the fair-trade network – from that on the production spaces and networks of fair-trade wine (Herman) to those on the cultural politics of fair-trade labelling and its celebritization (Goodman) – we see the book as relevant to scholars from a range of disciplines, not least sociology, engaging in all aspects of research on fair-trade, ethical consumption and cultural politics of contemporary neo-liberal capitalism. On the whole, this book is an accessible and thought-provoking offering that works to engage critically with fair trade rather than merely celebrate it. Fair Trade and the Citizen-Consumer offers a critical and timely intervention, drawing attention to the lived realities of fair-trade consumption, and provides a useful platform to inform and stimulate further debate and research.