| |
|
Thanks, both.
I guess I'm not defending any particular position here, just trying to find my way around what Jesse called the 'problematic nuances of the field of ethics.' This has turned out to be a really long post actually, and perhaps not overly clear as I was thinking as I typed. Also, although I took Quantum's post as my start point, none of this is particularly directed at hir or the content of that post. With that in mind...
My motivation for buying fair trade goods ,or eating only vegetarian food, or purchasing recycled things, or boycotting Nestle or whatever is based on my ethics.
That's a really good way of putting it, and sort of encapsulates why I'm confused here. You say afterwards that you try to support those organisations that 'do good in the world'. But so far as I can see, not all 'good' is straight-fowardly ethical or moral. I'm not suggesting that you thought otherwise mind, but bear with me a while.
Take food.
It can be 'good' because it provides sustenance and keeps my body working, or it can be 'bad' because it is not nutritious, or worse, rotten or diseased.
It can be 'good' in the sense that its well-cooked, flavourful, ripe, tasty. It can be 'bad' in the sense that its under-cooked, foul-tasting, unripe, stale.
(And perhaps it can also be 'good' in a secondary sense, in that it is the end result of a process that has other effects, irrelevant to the characteristics of the food itself.)
So we have a couple of possible senses of 'good'. I'll call the first one material good, i.e. something that changes or maintains objective material conditions with some particular (desireable) result.
The second 'aesthetic good', i.e. subjectively pleasurable.
The third sense doesn't really work with the food example, because its the sense in which I apply the word to moral agents. I can't say 'The chocolate is good' in the same sense as I can say 'Jesus is good'. This is what I think I mean when I refer to an ethical good. I use it to refer to particular people and their acts, or the dispositions of character that mean they would behave in a particular way in a particular situation.
It also occurs to me that all three of these uses might all actually derive their sense from what I called material good - I'll might come back to that in another post/thread.
Now my problem is that I can't situate 'fair trade' or, more importantly, 'ethical shopping' within that spectrum. Or rather I can, but it makes the latter non-sensical.
I think 'Fair Trade' is supposed to be a good in the same way that my healthy food was good. It will change the material conditions of particular workers, such that they can flourish, rather than struggle as they do at the moment.
Now perhaps 'ethical shopping' derives its 'good' from this, i.e. 'good' is said of it in a secondary sense. Ethical shopping is good because it encourages material changes of the sort that will allow humans to thrive.
'Of course it does', you're saying, 'that's exactly what I said when I buy certain products because I think they do some good!'. But bear with me a little longer...
Now because I (idiosyncratically?) understand 'ethical' to apply only in the third of my three senses, I think calling this particular act 'ethical shopping' might be a misnomer. I think the act of shopping shows me very little of moral interest about a person's character - I'm conjuring up hideous caricatures of a middle-class shopper turning his nose up at the local homeless guy as he stumbles home with bags full of 'Fair Trade'. Obviously that's a fairly fluffy and inconsequential example, but what I'm trying to say is that I think there's something horribly distorted in representing consumer acts as indicators of moral character.
Now I'm not sure this is what Quantum, or anyone else, is saying. Does the fact that you'll buy one product rather than another mean you are a better person? Perhaps you reflect on the 'good' that will hopefully come about as a result, and its your awareness of this that makes you good? Or perhaps your character doesn't come into it at all, and when you say what you buy is 'based on your ethics', you mean based on a sense of 'good' which has nothing to do with you particular character.
Anyway, as I've said, I understand the good purportedly brought about by fair-trade in the 'material' sense - it will change the objective conditions in which some workers live. I think the phrase 'ethical shopping' obfuscates this and, for me at least, hints at the idea that making a particular consumer choice makes one a good person.
This worries me because I think it serves to mask the role actually played by fair trade. I think if we understand fair trade purely as an attempt to alter the material conditions of workers, then it should be assessed purely on these terms. There's generally some hint that its 'capitalism' that has led to the inequalities that affect the workers in the first place. This suggests that if its capitalism that has led to these inequalities, then its the structural features of 'capitalism' that we should be analysing if we want to resolve them.
It seems to me that Fair Trade only treats the symptoms of capitalist economy without doing anything about its structure - its simply a modification of practice, not an alternative. The Cadburys/Green and Blacks case is a really good example of this. Cadbury didn't look at Green and Blacks example, think 'my god they're doing good', and change their own business practice to follow suit. That's just not how capitalism works. Instead they bought out the company, promised to let it maintain its 'independence' and 'ethical integrity' (of course! that's mainly why it sells so well!), without doing anything about their own, wider industrial practice.
Getting there, getting there, I promise... It strikes me that phrases like 'ethical shopping' serve to mask what's going on here. They vaguely suggest that the consumer is 'doing good' when they buy ethical products, that they're being good when they buy 'ethical' products, creating a warm sense of well-being and satisfaction, maybe even a bit of sel-righteousness (why isn't everyone as good as me, then this would all change!), and, most importantly, selling lots of chocolate/coffee/whatever in almost exactly the same way as before. People criticise capital, it adapts and reaccomodates them, making them feel good too.
Now maybe the important thing is 'almost exactly the same'. Frair Trade has, by all accounts, had some positive effect. But I think a better name for the practice would be something like 'political shopping', because it really focuses on the intended goal (and also, actually, because the phrase is so ridiculous that it provokes a critique of the whole concept). I think this might also help us think about exactly how 'fair trade' might be effective. This is not through individual consumer choices, made on the basis of products available. Its by trying to get large institutions to change their buying practices, in response to specific demands or situations. This is what really hurts corporations, and makes them take notice. The (student) UK Coke campaign refered to by Quantum is an excellent (failed) example. It was initiated in response to a direct request by unions at the Columbian bottling factory, not on a vague notiong of what was 'right' or 'good' in general. Although the campaign did try to raise consciousness among the student body, this wasn't really so that they'd change their individual buying patterns - it was so that they'd replace anything directly connected to Coke in their institutions (e.g. can machines), and write to Coke on an institutional level to say why they were doing this. It culminated with some students bringing a motion to NUS council trying to make it cancel its contract with Coke and change to Pepsi. Coke exercised its financial clout, making it impractical for the NUS to switch contracts - Coke stayed.
Now this model of 'fair trade' is very different from 'ethical shopping' as I've come across it in magazines and newspapers (two page spreads of delicious fairtrade chocolate etc), and situates it firmly with an overtly political analysis of what's going on in the world. My whole point in starting this thread was to test out the idea that the use of 'moral' language had a part to play in this, and the need for a more nuanced understanding of 'good' and 'ethics'. I mean maybe what I'm saying here is exactly what everyone else means by ethical good - perhaps all good is 'ethical'. I'm just trying to work out whether this is what I think, or what I ought to think... |
|
|
