Political Consumerism and Fairtrade: Some Critical/Theoretical Points

In the past decades, fairtrade and political consumerism became two paradigms of sustainability at large. And above all, in the context of social metamorphosis, they reflected another chapter of postmaterialist values update’s. Then, could we talk about a sort of “gastropolitics” (or, better, “gastropolity”)? And could we talk about this subject inside the frame of a political sociology of sustainability? Political consumerism refers to the deliberate purchase or avoidance of products, goods, or services for political reasons. And political consumption is a field of research at the intersection of consumer research and political sociology. Political consumption means the consideration of ethical or political motives in the decision to buy certain kind of products and to choose certain typologies of goods. Political consumerism is mainly expressed through boycotts and buycotts by consumers who want to make clear their political, ethical and environmental concerns. With this paper we would like to try to use some of these categories to discuss some examples and models of Fairtrade as a paradigm that has emerged in recent years in public discourse, disputing on what are possible critics and “objections” concerning so-called “Fairtrade debate”. And finally, we would like to use, on the other hand, as concrete case studies, two examples that although rather “classic”, studied in the relevant literature, serve us to critically explore the edges and involutions of the fairtrade and consumerism paradigm. Two very different brands that nevertheless seem to embody the extremes of this paradigm: on the one hand that of Slow food and on the other that of Whole Food.