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Gender and Ethical Consumption Hall and Holmes Vol Issue 2 Journal of Consumer Ethics October 207 ISSN 255-205X Gender and Ethical Consumption Sarah M Hall and Helen Holmes Towards a New Research Agenda p2-6 THEMED ARTICLES Kirsi Niinimäki Aesthetical or Rational: Gender and Ethical Fashion p7-18 Kiah Smith Gendered Conventions of ‘Ethicality’? p19-30 Lisa Stewart The women Behind the Brands p31-39 Raymond J Jones III et al. Building brand equity p40-48 Andreas Chatzidakis Lessons from the EDGE p49-54 Jana Kleibert and Felix Müller Femininity and the rise of ‘ethical fur’ p55-62 Lauren Greehy Thoughts on perfume: luxury and rhythm p63-71 Yiwei Fang and Jeffery Podoshen Materialism and Conspicuous Consumption in China p72-81 Kate Burningham and Sue Venn Sustainable Consumption in Early Motherhood p82-91 Rebecca Elliott Gender and Green Consumption p92-99 Estela Diaz Predictive Ethical Consumption: Gender and Veganism p100-110 Kirsten Gram-Hanssen et al. Gender and Smart Homes p111-119 INTERVIEW Andreas Chatzidakis Interviews Pauline Maclaran, Catherine Rottenberg & Lynne Segal p120-129 NEWS IN CONSUMER ETHICS p130-133 https://journal.ethicalconsumer.org Hall and Holmes Gender and Ethical Consumption: Towards a New Research Agenda Sarah Marie Hall1 and Helen Holmes2 1 Geography, University of Manchester, UK; 2 Sociology and the Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester, UK. Why gender and ethical consumption? With this introductory paper we make the case for a new research agenda centred on ‘Gender and Ethical Consumption’. To date, a host of exciting research, cutting across humanities and social and environmental sciences, investigates and interrogates the gendered nature of consumption. The debates therein are well-versed and widely cited - from Rachel Carson’s (1962) ‘Silent Spring’ to Mary Douglas and Baron Isherwood’s (1987) ‘The World of Goods’, and Marjorie Devault’s (1991) ‘Feeding the Family’ to Pierre Boudieu’s (1984) ‘Taste and Distinction’ - gender and consumption are regularly interwoven in academic works, and might readily be understood as comfortable bedfellows. Whether an overtone or undertone, the gendered dimensions of consumer culture have long been of academic interest. Indeed, our own research has led us to consider many different crossovers between gender and consumption, whether in crafting (Hall and Jayne, 2016; Holmes, 2015), communities (Holmes under review) or in national discourses and ideologies (Hall and Holmes, 2017). However, conversations on the relationship between gender and ethical consumption are surprisingly, even suspiciously, quiet. This is despite the fact that the field of ethical consumption, as an arena of academic research - which, in its broadest definition, can be taken to include an array of practices and motivations, including sustainability, resourcefulness, and fair trading (see Barnett et al., 2005) - has gained much traction since the early 1990s (Hall, 2011). Research that has sought to address gender and ethical consumption to date includes Hawkins (2012) study of the gendered subjectivities of ethical consumption campaigns in the Global North. Also using qualitative methodologies, Cairns et al. (2013) investigate processes of mothering through organic food consumption. Bateman and Valentine’s (2010) study departs from these somewhat, whereby they explore the extent to which gender (which they define as sex differences) makes to US consumer’s ethical motivations, using survey methods. While we do not wish to dismiss these significant beginnings, we argue that there are so many fascinating possibilities worthy of further attention, whether in how ethical consumption is defined, understood, practised, performed, felt, enacted, crafted, measured, materialised, marketed, imagined, valued etc. according to gender norms, differences and relations, and across a range of contexts, industries, scales and histories. At a time of multiple uncertainties, instabilities and crises, from environmental, to social, political and economic (see Hall and Ince, 2017), when gender identity, morality and consumption practices are as significant as ever, we argue that gender and ethical consumption matters, even if this is not presently reflected in academic agendas. 2 Journal of Consumer Ethics Vol Issue 2, October 207 Hall and Holmes With this collection, therefore, we aim to explore the ways gender and ethical consumption may converse, connect, or collide within academic research, in order to kick-start more consolidated and dedicated engagement with these debates. To frame these burgeoning discussions, we find ourselves asking three key questions: • What can current research tell us about the relationship between gender and ethical consumption? • What theories, methods or approaches might help us to better understand this relationship? • What are the implications for understanding ethical consumption through the lens of gender, or gender through the lens of ethical consumption? We also provided these questions to the authors writing in this issue, as a means of pushing and prompting the boundaries of their own scholarship and understandings of gender and ethical consumption. This framing also proved critical when authors’ approaches to gender and ethical consumption were revealed to be wide-ranging and at times incompatible and contradictory. Approaching gender and ethical consumption As already indicated, the connections between gender and ethical consumption are numerous, overlapping and interrelated, and this special issue does not, cannot claim to address all avenues in this ripe field of study. Needless to say, we identify two key approaches to taking forward this new research agenda, as observed from the contributions in this issue. The first theme is ‘gendered ethical consumption’, or how the motivations, practices, and politics of ethical consumerism have gendered dimensions and can reveal gendered differences. Within this approach, authors tend to erect particular parameters to study, for instance in focusing on practice they might look at how something is made, consumed, discarded and so forth, or in politics focus on a particular social group, set of beliefs, or identity formation. Thus, one critique that might be made of such an approach is that it cordons off elements of ethical consumerism and subjects them to a gendered analysis, when in actuality the picture is more complex. Here, the way in which gender is understood and applied is also open to various interpretations: from critical perspectives that see gender as a socially constructed category indiscriminately applied to and used synonymously with ‘sex’; to gender identities as manifest in materials, bodies and enactments that render them ‘real’, even in a relative sense (see WGSG, 1997). When gender is applied as analytical tool - i.e. to note differences between genders, gendered norms or preferences - this can inadvertently have the effect of reifying the very gendered assumptions that are the object of enquiry and may serve to entrench gender inequality and discrimination. The second approach can be termed ‘gender theory and ethical consumption’, i.e. applying feminist or gender-sensitive perspectives to investigating ethical consumerism. This may include theorising ethical consumption by applying feminist theories and concepts such as care, responsibility, or embodiment (e.g. Hall, 2011; Hawkins, 2012). Alternatively, it may involve the application and utilisation of feminist-inspired empirical techniques and methodologies that value experience, voice and empowerment, or approaches that enrol compassion, reflexivity and subjectivity (see Davies, 2008; Moss, 2002; Roberts, 1981). Such an approach might also be described as ‘gendering ethical consumption’, in that by acknowledging and unsettling notions around gender and gendered dispositions, so too might the plurality of ethical consumption be opened up beyond binary concepts of ethical/unethical, good/bad, producers/consumers. How these two approaches sit together or https://journal.ethicalconsumer.org Hall and Holmes apart can allow us to critically deconstruct and interrogate understandings of both gender and ethical consumption, whilst simultaneously exploring connections within. The themed issue This themed issue comprises a diverse set of papers and conversations about gender and ethical consumption, which together represent a step forwards in recognising this subject as an important and vibrant research agenda. Amongst the thirteen contributions there is much diversity to note, with studies located in various disciplinary traditions (including anthropology, business and management, design, development studies, economics, and human geography) as well as geographical contexts (including China, Denmark, Kenya, Spain, UK and USA). The collection opens with Kirsi Niinimäki’s paper on gender differences in ethical fashion. Using survey data collected with Finnish consumers, Niinimäki argues that motivations for ethical consumers can be differentiated according to gender which should be adopted within campaigning and marketing to encourage more sustainable consumption practices. Kiah Smith’s paper then explores multiple conventions of ethicality in Kenya’s French bean industry, and implications for when understandings of ethical sourcing differ between women smallholders, consumers and retailers. Focusing on Oxfam’sBehind the Brands campaign, Lisa Stewart unpicks key lessons from the methodology and findings of the project, and makes the case for third party analysis of
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