The Classness of Ethical Consumption in Context: How Social Class Structures Buycotting in Japan and Switzerland

In recent decades, ethical consumption, or consumer practices that are understood not only in instrumental but also in moral terms, has been on the rise. Concurrently, the discussion on its relation to social class has also intensified, with research providing conflicting results. We propose shifting the debate from asking whether ethical consumption is essentially a class phenomenon to asking under what conditions it becomes one. We use the term classness to denote the extent to which ethical consumption is associated with different forms of capital in social space. Focusing on buycotting, the purchase of products with ethical qualities such as organic or fair trade, we argue that its classness varies across socio-economic contexts depending on the market development of ethical products. Country-specific market structures attenuate the degree of class structuration and modulate the mechanisms through which class operates. Our analysis of original survey data from Switzerland and Japan (n = 2,012) confirms this argument. Buycotting’s class struturation is substantially stronger in Japan than in Switzerland. In Japan, it is mainly driven by differences in knowledgeability, whereas in Switzerland it primarily reflects a socially distinct taste for ethical consumption. Buycotting’s classness must hence be understood in context.