Ethics, schmethics. So I buy 'fair trade' coffee. That costs a bit more. So that means I have to spend a bit less on everything else, or do without some essentials. The average third world worker is no better off either way. So I consciously buy the cheapest I can bear.
One solution, revolution. And that's not just some slogan. It happens to be true.
Rich,
My only real comment is that "problematise" isn't a word, at least according to my dictionary. Critisize would probably be better. I tend to agree with you that you're perhaps attacking straw men here, but that's not to say that the article doesn't have merit in reminding us, rather than informing us, of it's key point.
Ad Nauseam,
You spend more on your coffee, and buy less of something else for the week; maybe alcohol, or whatever. How does this fail to the make some people in the third world better off? They're getting paid more as a result.
I simply don't follow.
Alex,
It's also not in mine, although the American spelling is listed here. In any case it's a term which comes up frequently in academic texts.
I did wonder about trying to respond to a more nuanced position vis-a-vis fair trade, but I think the more straightforward polemical approach probably gets the basic idea across better.
Ad Nauseum,
Like Alex, I'm not sure I follow. Fair trade may be more expensive, but is hardly massively so. What sort of essentials would that amount of money force you to go without?
"fair-trade tea from recycled cardboard cups"
And that's just the vegan version...
Alex - it may not be in a dictionary, but it flies around at least my department like nobody's business. Maybe it is more in favour with 'postal' types and absent in analytical philosophy - probably due to the nature of the question.
Ad Nauseam - how do you think a revolution is going to happen, exactly? If nobody can be bothered to make small changes, how the hell are we going to make big ones? Are you sure you'd get out of bed on the morning the revolution kicked off? (and would your crappy choice of coffee sustain you for long if you did?!?)
I suspected it might be a word popular in continental disciplines. At any rate, it's worth pointing out that making things harder to read by using words that are unfamiliar to most of the population doesn't do anyone any favours.
Alex,
A quick search on Google Scholar suggests the term isn't limited to continental philosophy. Nevertheless, your point about terminology which people understand is well taken.
The problem (for want of a better term) is that it never occurred to me that anybody wouldn't be familiar with the word. I am just so used to hearing it dropped into lecture, seminars, articles and discussions that to me it seems perfectly normal. Perhaps I need to get out more.
All good points, but I think a better critique of "ethical consumerism" is that it is, simply put, still unethical.
It is predicated on the idea that well-paid wage slavery, for example, is ethical. It does nothing to question the boss/worker/consumer relationships that make up capitalism, it does not challenge private property, and it does not encourage, like you say, collective action necessary both to challenge these oppressions or to create alternative forms of organisation. Worse yet, it successfully recuperates dissent against capital back into forms that thoroughly reconstitute those very relationships of oppression.
And even then, most fair trade wages are still hopelessly inadequate.
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