Ethical Trade Communication as Mediation: Shifting the Focus of “Political Consumerism”

ABSTRACT This conceptual article proposes an approach to ethical consumption which is an alternative to “political consumerism”. By illuminating the aspects typically overlooked in political consumerism research, it re-embeds individualized ethical consumption in (1) the broader movement, (2) the communicative process, and (3) the social context. By adopting the notion of “ethical trade” it decenters individualized consumption as the exclusive way of enacting ethics in the marketplace, and by focusing on communication, it turns the spotlight away from individual consumers and onto organizations. Drawing extensively on communication studies, it is proposed that the main function of ethical trade organizations is to mediate between the geographically separated consumers and producers. Furthermore, greater sensitivity to the social context is introduced by distinguishing between two modes of mediation: “mediated familiarity” (the transmission of factual knowledge and the construction of affinity) and “moral education” (the subjectification of consumers who consider their impact on “distant others”).