The terminology employed to explore consumption ethics, the counterpart to business ethics, is increasingly varied not least because consumption has become a central discourse and area of investigation across disciplines. Rather than assuming interchangeability, we argue that these differences signify divergent understandings and contextual nuances and should, therefore, inform future writing and understanding in this area. Accordingly, this article advances consumer ethics scholarship through a systematic review of the current literature that identifies key areas of convergence and contradiction. We then (...) present the articles in this Journal of Business Ethics Symposium and analyse how these articles fit within the interdisciplinary themes. Subsequently, we develop a transdisciplinary theoretical framework that encapsulates the complexity and contextual nature of consumption ethics. We conclude by outlining how genuinely transdisciplinary research into the intersection of ethics with consumption may develop. (shrink)

As research on ethical consumers and consumption practices has continued to grow, a complimentary body of work concerned less with ethical consumption but more with ethics in consumption has emerged. Problematizing the divide between ethical and non-ethical consumption, this stream of research focuses on the domain of everyday and explores the moral struggles individuals face while engaging in ordinary consumption practices. However, the attention on the ordinary runs the risk of obscuring the contribution of the ‘extraordinary’ or the transcendental to (...) the ethical concerns embedded in the mundane flow of the everyday. This study addresses this blind spot and explores the ways in which religion is implicated in everyday consumption ethics. In doing so, I go beyond a view of religion as an individual trait and emphasize its role as a major institutional structure of the contemporary political economy. The empirical context of the study is the controversy over the so-called halal nail polish. The debate over the products’ appropriateness for Muslim women provides a fertile setting to explore how an ordinary object becomes an ethical problem amid changing relations between religion and market. In order to trace and analyse the linkages between daily practices and institutional dynamics I draw from the moral economy framework and discuss the multiple and conflicting moral repertoires that shape the ethical evaluations of the object. The study offers several contributions to the existing theorizations of everyday consumption ethics and moral economies of consumption. It also highlights the potential of interdisciplinary approaches in providing a holistic understanding of the ethical and moral dimensions of consumption. (shrink)

Over the past years, various accounts of ethical consumption have been produced which identify certain concepts as central to mediating the ethical relationship between the consumer and the consumed. Scholars across disciplinary fields have explored how individuals construe their ethical consumption responsibilities and commitments through the notions of identity, taking care and doing good, proximity and distance, suggesting the centrality of these themes to consumer engagement in ethical practices. This paper contributes to the body of research concerned with unravelling consumers’ (...) conceptually mediated relationship to moral and ethical issues in the sphere of consumption by revealing a new set of ideas through which people interpret and relate to consumption ethics. Drawing upon findings from an empirical study on self-perceived ethical food consumers, I demonstrate that people’s perceptions and views of ethical problems around consumption are bound up with notions of vulnerability, suffering, and harm, and that these notions permeate and impact all aspects of ethical consumer behaviour. The paper concludes by arguing that we need to further explore the conceptual underpinnings of ethical consumer commitments and practices, and expand the conceptual toolkit of research on ethical consumption to account for a wider range of ideas and notions that shape individual as well as collective motivations, intentions, and actions throughout the process of becoming and being an ethical consumer. Finally, the paper suggests a specific analytical framework to facilitate such research. (shrink)