Christian Fuentes
Professor
Agencing ethical consumers: smartphone apps and the socio-material reconfiguration of everyday life
Author
Summary, in English
The aim of this paper is to describe and explain how smartphone apps,
designed to assist consumers in making informed ethical choices and
greening their everyday practices, enable and shape ethical consumption.
Taking a socio-material approach and drawing on an ethnographic study
of three ethical consumption apps – the Green guide, the Fair trade app
and Shopgun – the paper shows that these digital devices are scripted to
hybridize with consumers and facilitate key ethical consumer actions.
When consumers follow the scripts of these apps, using them in everyday
practices, the apps put pressure on consumers to act “ethically” by
problematizing consumption in various ways while also, and
simultaneously, endowing them with the agential capacities required to
solve these problems. Consequently, these devices both motivate
consumers and enable ethical consumption, producing, under the right
conditions, capable and self-reflexive ethical consumer hybrids.
designed to assist consumers in making informed ethical choices and
greening their everyday practices, enable and shape ethical consumption.
Taking a socio-material approach and drawing on an ethnographic study
of three ethical consumption apps – the Green guide, the Fair trade app
and Shopgun – the paper shows that these digital devices are scripted to
hybridize with consumers and facilitate key ethical consumer actions.
When consumers follow the scripts of these apps, using them in everyday
practices, the apps put pressure on consumers to act “ethically” by
problematizing consumption in various ways while also, and
simultaneously, endowing them with the agential capacities required to
solve these problems. Consequently, these devices both motivate
consumers and enable ethical consumption, producing, under the right
conditions, capable and self-reflexive ethical consumer hybrids.
Department/s
- Department of Service Studies
Publishing year
2019-03-04
Language
English
Pages
131-156
Publication/Series
Consumption Markets and Culture
Volume
22
Issue
2
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Topic
- Economic Geography
Keywords
- ethical consumption
- digital
- sustainability
- smartphone
- materiality
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1025-3866