Ethical Consumerism with Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier

A talk by French author Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier on Ethical Consumerism, presented by SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Moderated by Jeff Derksen, SFU English Department.

Consumers are often importuned to exercise responsibility in the market and to consume with an eye to their obligations as citizens. They express their ideals directly through their purchases, participating in larger-scale protests: boycotting products from a large multinational corporation, buying “ethical” products, resisting advertising campaigns, and supporting alternative forms of trade. Evidence of an engaged consumption style is thus manifested in multiple ways. Whether in the form of a small collective action or a mass movement, the capacity to put new environmental or ethical social issues on the political, economic or media agenda via the market is quite real. This suggests a possibility to contribute to the social fabric, and to create a consumerism not only as a forum for expressing needs and wants as the market has done in the past, but as a space for the construction of citizen responsibility.