What are we buying into?: A holistic empirical analysis of the production, circulation and reception of discourses on ethical consumption, with a focus on de-politicisation.

Supplanting the current analyses of ethical consumption within society, the aim of this research proposal is to study ethical consumption in Flanders as a struggle between different discourses on ethical consumption, by focussing on the concept of de-politicisation. Merging the stringent empirical approach of the case studies with the critical aim of the theoretical analyses, we put forward ethical consumption as a concept which is above all discursive in nature. To study the (contingent) role of ethical consumption within society is to map existing discourses about ethical consumption by either organisations or citizen-consumers as diverse kinds of ethical consumptions and critically dissect the underlying assumptions of these discourses.

Keywords:CONSUMPTION

Disciplines:Applied sociology