UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles the Ethical
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Ethical Consumer: Narratives of Social and Environmental Change in Contemporary American Literature A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in English by Amanda Evelyn Waldo 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Ethical Consumer: Narratives of Social and Environmental Change in Contemporary American Literature By Amanda Evelyn Waldo Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Los Angeles Professor Allison B. Carruth, Chair ABSTRACT: Consumers in the U.S. have increasingly (and often paradoxically) turned to their consumption as a space from which to address social and environmental problems that range from sweatshop labor to global warming; the diverse consumption strategies that they have embraced –boycotts, local and organic food, fair trade, downshifting and more – are all a part of a larger movement and discourse called ethical consumption. A flood of recent novels, memoirs and nonfiction books make this activist, productive, expressive kind of consumption their central theme (and in the case of several of the memoirs, their organizing conceit). The authors of these works have suggested interesting expansions of the ethical role not just of commodity consumption but of media consumption as well: the imaginative literature of ethical consumption models ethical consumption for its readers, and it sees itself shaping attitudes about consumption that will in turn shape economic, social and environmental realities in the world. The ii ambition of that project (and the enthusiasm with which readers have taken it up) lends a sense of urgency to my own. My dissertation looks at representations of ethical consumption in this growing body of imaginative literature in order to understand how and on what terms it intervenes in consumption. I argue that the language and forms that these texts use to imagine ethical consumption matter: that they privilege particular perspectives, communicate ideological investments, and shape the interpretation of events in ways that inflect their interpretation of both the practice of ethical consumption and the real-world problems that ethical consumption responds to. I frame the contribution of literary criticism in terms of its interrogation of those forms. iii The dissertation of Amanda Evelyn Waldo is approved. Elizabeth DeLoughrey Susanna B. Hecht Richard A. Yarborough Allison B. Carruth, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv Dedication I dedicate this dissertation with love and gratitude to my father Steven Wheelock Waldo, who would have been “just tickled.” v Table of Contents Abstract ii Dedication v List of Figures vii Acknowledgements ix Vita xii 1 Introduction 1 2 The Pleasure of Taste as Embodied Knowledge in David Mas Masumoto 42 3 “a story in someone’s head”: A Cafecito Story and Fair Trade Advertising 103 4 “Kind of canaries”: Risk Positions and Thought Leadership in the UFW “Wrath of Grapes” Boycott 160 5 Eco-consumption Memoirs 214 6 Resisting Responsibility Transfer in Consumption Project Memoirs: Constrained Consumption in On a Dollar a Day 254 Conclusion 297 Bibliography 309 vi List of Figures FIGURE 3.1 “Sacred Grounds Organic Fair Trade Coffee: Fiancée” Ad agency: The Campaign Place, Sydney, Australia. FIGURE 3.2 “Sacred Grounds Organic Fair Trade Coffee: Lawnmower.” Ad agency: The Campaign Place, Sydney, Australia. FIGURE 3.3 Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Naomi Amankwaa. Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. FIGURE 3.4 Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Rita Nimako. Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. FIGURE 3.5 Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Beatrice Mambi. Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. FIGURE 3.6 Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Priscilla Agyemeng Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. Telegraph's Ad of the Week. Published in The Telegraph the week of the G8 summit (July 2005). FIGURE 3.7 “Just Developed an Appetite for Fighting Global Poverty?” Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Priscilla Agyemeng Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. vii Luke's advertising agency. Published in The Telegraph the week of the G8 summit (July 2005). FIGURE 3.8 “Craving a Better World or Just Another Piece?” Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Rita Nimako. Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. Published in The Telegraph the week of the G8 summit (July 2005). FIGURE 3.9 “Eat Poverty History.” Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Beatrice Mambi. Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. Published in The Telegraph the week of the G8 summit (July 2005). FIGURE 3.10 “Its Not Just the Taste That Makes You Feel Good.” Divine Chocolate advertisement featuring Rita Nimako. Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. Published in The Telegraph the week of the G8 summit (July 2005). FIGURE 3.11 “Suddenly Into Fair Trade Now That It’s Chocolate Flavored?” Photograph by Freddie Helwig and St. Luke's advertising agency. Published in The Telegraph the week of the G8 summit (July 2005). viii Acknowledgements This dissertation would never have been completed without considerable support from my wonderful friends and family. I especially want to thank Deborah Gale, Anne Austin, Jen Durham Austin, Emily Nelson, Janelle Weigel, Alexandra Milsom, Kate Wolf, Erin McNellis, Deb Doing, Marea Hall, Libby Schmidt, Emily Weise, Adrienne St. Aubin, Suzanne O’Brien, Makiko Muraoka, Michelle Bumatay, Wendy Franklin, Sabine Meyer, PJ Emery, Kate McCullough, Jenny Cooper, Michelle Clay, Jason Gendler, Richard Waldo, Kathy Waldo, Chris Evers, Carolyn Larsen, Jamie Wessel, Bob Waldo and Alyssa Caridis. Thank you for your friendship and for that thing that you did or said once or many times. It helped more than you probably imagined. My mother Pat Waldo has helped in more ways than I can mention here. Proofreading, babysitting, emotional support and financial support including a well-timed laptop are just the beginning. My sister Hilary Waldo provided many good meals and a few invaluable glasses of wine and has been an enthusiastic babysitter. My sister Becca Owen has been a tremendous help over the past weeks as I have worked on final revisions. And my husband Steve has been incredibly supportive, commuting between Los Angeles and San Francisco while I wrote the prospectus, coming home from work each day to take care of our newborn son while I worked on revisions, and reminding me of the person I mean to be. I have been supported over the past year by a departmental dissertation fellowship from the UCLA department of English, funding which enabled me to complete the ix dissertation. Over the years my studies have also been supported by scholarships from the Brisbane Chamber of Commerce. Mike Lambert has been a valuable and patient source of information about everything from funding to filing, and his help has been instrumental in my completion of this dissertation. I first became interested in representations of ethical consumption at Cornell University where I benefited from a summer research grant from the College Scholar Program and additional funding from Jonathan Culler, which allowed me to travel to Julia Alvarez’s coffee farm Alta Gracia in the Dominican Republic. Mary Pat Brady was an invaluable mentor both for that project and in general, and has become a dear friend. Cornell is also where I met Elizabeth DeLoughrey, and I feel supremely lucky to have started graduate school at UCLA at the same time that she began teaching there. Elizabeth introduced me to the book that ignited my interest in this topic and was instrumental in the development of this project. Her thoughtful comments and high expectations have pushed me to reach farther at each stage of the project. Also at UCLA, Jenny Sharpe helped me to imagine the broad shape of the prospectus and provided helpful feedback at my prospectus defense. Susanna Hecht also provided valuable feedback on the prospectus. Richard Yarborough useful feedback and got me past the substantial hurdle of choosing a provisional title for the project by pushing me to do so during one of our meetings. I am especially grateful for the generous attention he has shown to help me improve my writing. When I met with Allison Carruth to discuss this project she was the first person I had spoken with who had read and been interested in many of these books. I have found x each of our conversations since then both useful and invigorating. She has challenged me intellectually and has supported me personally, and I cannot imagine having completed this project without her help and support. Finally, I want to thank my son Jonah. I finished the first complete draft on your due date. You thoughtfully arrived late, and here I am completing final revisions as you nap on my chest. I won’t say you’ve always been exactly cooperative, but your grandfather always said that perfection is a moving target. You have given me the sense of perspective I needed to let this project be finished even as it is not perfect. xi Vita Amanda Waldo graduated from Cornell University in 2006 with a Bachelor of Arts in English (summa cum laude) and Gender and Global Studies (magna cum laude). She presented an early version of Chapter One of this dissertation as a paper at the American Comparative Literature Association conference on Collapse / Catastrophe / Change, and also chaired a panel on Radical Homemaking at the American Studies Association conference in 2014. As a graduate student at UCLA she helped to coordinate the 2009 Mellon Lecture Series “A Cultural Pre-History of Environmentalism” a well as the 2013 conference “Global Ecologies: Nature, Narrative, Neoliberalism.” She has also worked as an instructional technology consultant to facilitate the use of technology for teaching and research through UCLA’s Center for Digital Humanities.