Problems with the defetishization thesis: Ethical consumerism, alternative food systems, and commodity fetishism

Agriculture and Human Values

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 109-117

  Gunderson, Ryan ^a  

^a MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Alternative food systems; Commodity fetishism; Environmental sociology; Green consumerism; Sociology of consumption; Treadmill of production

Indexed keywords

EID: 84880683918     PISSN: 0889048X     EISSN: 15728366     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s10460-013-9460-8     Document Type: Article

References (73)

1. Adorno, T.W. 1984. Aesthetic theory. New York, NY: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
2. Alkon, A.H. 2008. From value to values: Sustainable consumption at farmers markets. Agriculture and Human Values 25: 487–498.
3. Alkon, A.H., and C.G. McCullen. 2011. Whiteness and farmers markets: Performances, perpetuations … contestations? Antipode 43(4): 937–959.
4. Allen, P., M. FitzSimmons, M. Goodman, and K. Warner. 2003. Shifting plates in the agrifood landscape: The tectonics of alternative agrifood initiatives in California. Journal of Rural Studies 19: 61–75.
5. Allen, P., and M. Kovach. 2000. The capitalist composition of organic: The potential of markets in fulfilling the promise of organic agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values 17(3): 221–232.
6. Allen, P., and A.B. Wilson. 2008. Agrifood inequalities: Globalization and localization. Development 51(4): 534–540.
7. Altieri, M.A. 1998. Ecological impacts of industrial agriculture and the possibilities for truly sustainable farming. Monthly Review 50(3): 60–71.
8. Ashley, D. 1997. History without a subject: The postmodern condition. Boulder, CO: Westview.
9. Belasco, W.J. 2007. Appetite for change: How the counterculture took on the food industry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
10. Bloch, E. 1986. The principle of hope. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
11. Bookchin, M. 1980. Toward an ecological society. Cheektowaga, NY: Black Rose Books.
12. Cowe, R., and S. Williams. 2000. Who are the ethical consumers? Manchester: Booklet for the Co-operative Bank.
13. Dickinson, R., and S.C. Hollander. 1991. Consumer votes. Journal of Business Research 22(4): 335–346.
14. Elson, D. 1988. Market socialism or socialization of the market? New Left Review 172: 1–44.
15. Elson, D. 2002. Socialising markets, not market socialism. In Socialist register 2002: Necessary and unnecessary utopias, ed. L. Panitch, and C. Leys, 67–85. Black Point, NS: Fernwood Books.
16. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. 2006. Livestock’s long shadow: Environmental issues and options. Rome: FAO.
17. Foster, J.B. 1999. Marx’s theory of metabolic rift: Classical foundations for environmental sociology. American Journal of Sociology 105(2): 366–405.
18. Foster, J.B. 2000. Marx’s ecology: Materialism and nature. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
19. Foster, J.B., B. Clark, and R. York. 2010. The ecological rift: Capitalism’s war on the earth. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
20. Foster, J.B., and F. Magdoff. 2009. The great financial crisis: Causes and consequences. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
21. Freud, S. 1918. Totem and taboo: Resemblances between the psychic lives of savages and neurotics. New York, NY: Vintage.
22. Fridell, G. 2007. Fair-trade coffee and commodity fetishism: The limits of market-driven social justice. Historical Materialism 15(4): 79–104.
23. Fromm, E. 1976. To have or to be? New York, NY: Harper & Row.
24. Goodman, D.J. 2004. Reading fair trade: Political ecological imaginary and the moral economy of fair trade foods. Political Geography 23(7): 891–915.
25. Gould, K.A., D.N. Pellow, and A. Schnaiberg. 2004. Interrogating the treadmill of production: Everything you wanted to know about the treadmill but were afraid to ask. Organization and Environment 17: 296–316.
26. Guthman, J. 2003. Fast food/organic food: Reflexive tastes and the making of “yuppie chow”. Social and Cultural Geography 4(1): 45–58.
27. Guthman, J. 2004. Agrarian dreams: The paradox of organic farming in California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
28. Guthman, J. 2007. Commentary on teaching food: Why I am fed up with Michael Pollan et al. Agriculture and Human Values 24: 261–264.
29. Heartfield, J. 2008. Green capitalism: Manufacturing scarcity in an age of abundance. London: Mute.
30. Hilton, M. 2003. Consumerism in 20th-century Britain. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
31. Horkheimer, M., and T.W. Adorno. 1969. Dialectic of enlightenment. New York, NY: Continuum.
32. Hudson, I., and M. Hudson. 2003. Removing the veil? Commodity fetishism, fair trade, and the environment. Organization & Environment 16(4): 413–430.
33. Imhoff, D. 2010. Vote with your fork: It’s time for citizens to take back the food system. In The CAFO reader: The tragedy of industrial animal factories, ed. D. Imhoff, 366–373. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
34. Isenhour, C. 2010. Building sustainable societies: A Swedish case study on the limits of reflexive modernization. American Ethnologist 37(3): 511–525.
35. James Jr., H.S. 2006. Sustainable agriculture and free market economics: Finding common ground in Adam Smith. Agriculture and Human Values 23(4): 427–438.
36. Johnston, J. 2008. The citizen–consumer hybrid: Ideological tensions and the case of whole foods market. Theory and Society 37(3): 229–270.
37. Johnston, J., and S. Baumann. 2007. Democracy versus distinction: A study of omnivorousness in gourmet food writing. American Journal of Sociology 113(1): 165–204.
38. Lang, T., and Y. Gabriel. 2005. A brief history of consumer activism. In The ethical consumer, ed. R. Harrison, T. Newholm, and D. Gabriel, 39–53. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
39. Lasch, C. 1979. The culture of narcissism: American life in an age of diminishing expectations. New York, NY: Warner Books.
40. Lukács, G. 1971. History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
41. Lyon, S. 2006. Evaluating fair trade consumption: Politics, defetishization and producer participation. International Journal of Consumer Studies 30(5): 452–464.
42. Magdoff, F., and J.B. Foster. 2011. What every environmentalist needs to know about capitalism: A citizen’s guide to capitalism and the environment. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
43. Mandel, E. 1986. In defense of socialist planning. New Left Review 159: 5–37.
44. Mandle, J. 2000. The student anti-sweatshop movement: Limits and potential. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 570(1): 92–103.
45. Marcuse, H. 1964. One-dimensional man. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
46. Marcuse, H. 1972. Ecology and revolution. Liberation 16: 10–12.
47. Marx, Karl. 1964. On the Jewish question. In Karl Marx: Early writings, ed. T.B. Bottomore, 1–40. New York: McGraw-Hill.
48. Marx, Karl. 1973. Grundrisse. New York, NY: Vintage.
49. Marx, Karl. 1977. Capital, vol. 1. New York, NY: Vintage.
50. Marx, Karl. 1981. Capital, vol. 3. New York, NY: Vintage.
51. Mészáros, I. 1995. Beyond capital. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.
52. Nicholls, A. 2002. Strategic options in fair trade retailing. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 30(1): 6–17.
53. O’Connor, J. 1998. Natural causes: Essays in ecological Marxism. New York, NY: Guilford.
54. Pepper, D. 1996. Modern environmentalism: An introduction. New York, NY: Routledge.
55. Pilling, G. 1980. Marx’s Capital: Philosophy and political economy. New York, NY: Routledge & Keagan Paul.
56. Roff, R.J. 2007. Shopping for change? Neoliberalizing activism and the limits to eating non-GMO. Agriculture and Human Values 24(4): 511–522.
57. Sartre, J.P. 1956. Being and nothingness. New York, NY: Pocket Books.
58. Schnaiberg, A. 1980. The environment: From surplus to scarcity. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
59. Schudson, M. 2007. Citizens, consumers, and the good society. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611(1): 236–249.
60. Shaw, D., T. Newholm, and R. Dickinson. 2006. Consumption as voting: An exploration of consumer empowerment. European Journal of Marketing 40(9/10): 1049–1067.
61. Stolle, D., and M. Hooghe. 2004. Inaccurate, exceptional, one-sided, or irrelevant? The debate about the alleged decline of social capital and civic engagement in western societies. British Journal of Sociology 35(1): 149–167.
62. Stolle, D., M. Hooghe, and M. Micheletti. 2005. Politics in the supermarket: Political consumerism as a form of political participation. International Political Science Review 26(3): 245–269.
63. Strong, C. 1997. The problems of translating fair trade principles into consumer purchase behavior. Marketing Intelligence & Planning 15(1): 32–37.
64. Szasz, A. 2007. Shopping our way to safety: How we changed from protecting our environment to protecting ourselves. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
65. Thompson, C.J., and G. Coskuner-Balli. 2007. Enchanting ethical consumerism: The case of community supported agriculture. Journal of Consumer Culture 7(3): 275–303.
66. Union of Concerned Scientists. 2012. Industrial agriculture. http://www.ucsusa.org/food_and_agriculture/our-failing-food-system/industrial-agriculture/. Accessed 29 Apr 2012.
67. Veblen, T. 1953. The theory of the leisure class. New York, NY: The New American Library.
68. Weber, M. 1978. Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
69. York, R., E.A. Rosa, and T. Dietz. 2010. Ecological modernization theory: Theoretical and empirical challenges. In The international handbook of environmental sociology, ed. M.R. Redclift, and G. Woodgate, 77–90. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
70. Žižek, S. 1999. The ticklish subject: The absent center of political ontology. New York, NY: Verso.
71. Žižek, S. 2004. The structure of domination today: A Lacanian view. Studies in East European Thought 56: 383–403.
72. Žižek, S. 2008. Violence. New York, NY: Verso.
73. Žižek, S. 2010. Living in the end times. New York, NY: Verso.