In his article Carrier discusses “ethical consumption” within the framework of commodity fetishism, focusing on Fairtrade coffee and eco-tourism in Jamaica. He argues that in ethical consumption certain commodities are represented by specific conceptual categories (such as “non-exploitative”) and images (such as smiling co-operative farmers for Fairtrade, or coral reefs and fish for ecotourism) as a way to make ethical issues legible to consumers. Doing so makes these issues easy to see but also causes them to be defined in specific ways. It also makes invisible certain aspects of production; for example the migrant farmers who often are hired to harvest coffee beans or the many other indicators of ocean health that are either not visible or unattractive (like grass beds). Ethical consumption also tends to focus primarily on consumer action, viewing it as an individual choice and divorcing it from the chain of processes involved, such as shipping and roasting, or the side effects of tourism. These are obscured by images of beautiful reefs and specific consumer activities.
A major consequence of this, as Carrier argues, is that it strengthens the assumption that social problems can be solved by consumption, rather than major societal change. This has implications for agriculture, seen in Fairtrade as well as local and organic food; all movements with valuable goals but with the risk of being fetishized. While Carrier does not discuss solutions to this he does bring up issues which are important to take into account when discussing different aspects of environmental consumerism.
Carrier, James G. “Protecting the Environment the Natural Way: Ethical Consumption and Commodity Fetishism” From Antipode, vol. 42, issue 3 (2010): 672–689.