Ethical consumerism is on the rise. No longer bound to the counter-cultural fringes, ethical concerns and practices are reaching into the mainstream of society and being adopted by everyday consumers – from considering carbon miles to purchasing free-range eggs to making renewable energy choices. The wide reach and magnitude of ethical issues in society across individual and collective consumption has given rise to a series of important questions that are inspiring scholars from a range of disciplinary areas. These differing disciplinary lenses, however, tend to be contained in separate streams of research literature that are developing in parallel and in relative isolation. Ethics in Morality and Consumption takes an interdisciplinary perspective to provide multiple vantage points in creating a more holistic and integrated view of ethics in consumption. In this sense, interdisciplinary presupposes the consideration of multiple and distinct disciplines, which in this book are considered in delineated chapters. In addition, the Editors make an editorial contribution in the final chapter of the book by combining these separate disciplinary perspectives to develop a nascent interdisciplinary perspective that integrates these perspectives and presents platforms for further research.

Increasingly, consumers in North America and Europe see their purchasing as a way to express to the commercial world their concerns about trade justice, the environment and similar issues. This ethical consumption has attracted growing attention in the press and among academics. Extending beyond the growing body of scholarly work on the topic in several ways, this volume focuses primarily on consumers rather than producers and commodity chains. It presents cases from a variety of European countries and is concerned with a wide range of objects and types of ethical consumption, not simply the usual tropical foodstuffs, trade justice and the system of fair trade. Contributors situate ethical consumption within different contexts, from common Western assumptions about economy and society, to the operation of ethical-consumption commerce, to the ways that people’s ethical consumption can affect and be affected by their social situation. By locating consumers and their practices in the social and economic contexts in which they exist and that their ethical consumption affects, this volume presents a compelling interrogation of the rhetoric and assumptions of ethical consumption.

This edited volume presents new and unconventional views of many traditional moral values, such as humanity, human dignity, moral right (of life), justice and responsibility. The originality of the contributions here is their analysis of these values and approaches from the point of view of non-utilitarian consequentialism and ethics of social consequences as one of its forms. The authors present new ways of solving many contemporary ethical and moral issues, including, for example, in bioethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics, teaching ethics, and cyber ethics, based on non-utilitarian consequentialism and ethics of social consequences. They also confront these approaches with other ethical theories and philosophical traditions, which serve as further incentives for the development of non-utilitarian consequentialism and ethics of social consequences in philosophical, applied and professional ethics.

A no-holds-barred examination of 'ethical' consumerism.

Ethical consumerism is on the rise. No longer bound to the counter-cultural fringes, ethical concerns and practices are reaching into the mainstream of society and being adopted by everyday consumers – from considering carbon miles to purchasing free-range eggs to making renewable energy choices. The wide reach and magnitude of ethical issues in society across individual and collective consumption has given rise to a series of important questions that are inspiring scholars from a range of disciplinary areas. These differing disciplinary lenses, however, tend to be contained in separate streams of research literature that are developing in parallel and in relative isolation. Ethics in Morality and Consumption takes an interdisciplinary perspective to provide multiple vantage points in creating a more holistic and integrated view of ethics in consumption. In this sense, interdisciplinary presupposes the consideration of multiple and distinct disciplines, which in this book are considered in delineated chapters. In addition, the Editors make an editorial contribution in the final chapter of the book by combining these separate disciplinary perspectives to develop a nascent interdisciplinary perspective that integrates these perspectives and presents platforms for further research.

Focusing on ethical consumers, their behavior, discourses and narratives as well as the social and political contexts in which they operate, this text provides a summary of the manner and effectiveness of their actions.

This book shares a collection of novel ways to re-conceptualize and envision the moral imperatives of consumption, thereby providing invigorating insights for future dialogue and intellectual and social action. It privileges a consumer moral leadership imperative, which augments the conventional management imperatives of sustainability, ethics, simplicity and environmental integrity. There are 13 chapters, including first-ever discussions of non-violent consumption, transdisciplinary consumption, consumer moral adulthood, integral informed consumption, conscious and mindful consumption, biomimicry informed consumption, and consumer moral leadership as a new intellectual construct. The book strives to intellectually and philosophically challenge and reframe the act, culture and ideology of consuming. The intent is to foster new hope that leads to differently informed activism and to provocative research, policy, entrepreneurial and educational initiatives that favour the human condition, the collective human family and interconnected integrity. This book strives to move consumers from managing for efficiency to leading for moral efficacy, the ability to use their existing moral capacities to deal with moral challenges in the marketplace. The very core of what it means to be a morally responsible member of the human family is challenged and re-framed through the lens of consumer moral leadership.