The issue of ethical consumption from the social perspective

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is a sociological discussion of ethical consumption, which recently came into focus due to a series of accidents in textile and fashion industries in the so called developing countries. In the introduction, we examine multiple meanings of the term ethical consumption and analyse the results of relevant research, in order to address the existence of heterogeneous categories of ethical consumers, as well as formulate our main thesis on the complexity of ethical consumption in both theory and practice. Using the example of ethical consumer boycotts, we show that they result in diverse strategies employed by the companies and corporations. This way ethical consumption becomes part of a network of multiple interested actors and one of the goods on the market. Particular focus of this paper is placed on the fashion industry, where we observe the contradictions between ethical or “slow” fashion and dominant trends of “fast” fashion, which raises the question about the possibilities of mass implementation of ethical fashion into contemporary textile and fashion scene. In this paper, ethical consumption is seen as an ambivalent phenomenon of high modernity and postmodernity, as debated by a number of contemporary sociological authors. In the conclusion, we additionally point to the necessity of further research on this emergent phenomenon within the specific sociocultural context of Croatia.