Ethical consumption practices: Co-production of self-expression and social recognition

Abstract

Ethical considerations regularly demand references to the moral climate, which, as a form of grand narrative or regime of truth, provides direction for choices between right and wrong, good and bad, ethical and unethical. Yet from a postmodern perspective, the moral climate has scattered into countless narratives, such that what is good or ethical may no longer be certain everywhere and in every situation. In a postmodern world, no essential grand narrative, regime of truth, or foundational ethical direction exists, because the self has been rendered free and autonomous from traditional values. As an independent agent, the postmodern self confronts a plethora of possibilities. Although the confrontation of multiple narratives appears in radical postmodern theory as saturating and disorienting, this article posits that clear signs of ethical directions within postmodern pluralism remain.