In many cases, this has failed to materialise, with consumers often unwilling to trade-off the benefits they seek for their ethical principles, at least when it comes to the cash register (Carrington et al. It was thought that increasing consumer awareness of the negative effects of overconsumption would translate into greater demands for fairer, cleaner and more sustainable products, or herald a radical reduction in the worst forms of hedonic consumption (Borgmann 2000). We discuss the consequences of these strategies, highlighting how they may legitimise and sustain consumption via moral markets despite the reproduction of social inequality and ecological threats.Ĭlimate change, species extinction, deforestation, child labour, sexploitation and many other ‘evils’ represent a wholesale failure of Brundtland’s sustainability project to address the status quo of overconsumption in, “consumer-driven industrial economies”, (DesJardins 2015, p. In the context of anxieties about personal, social and ecological consequences of consumption, we show empirically how self-managing strategies reify a less contradictory framing of consumption by tapping into alternative cultural discourses on morality.

Using the moral market for ethical tourism as an exemplar of ‘alternative hedonism’, we identify three ‘self-managing strategies’-moderating, abiding and levelling-that re-structure the moral order of consumption in meaningful ways and with profound outcomes. Drawing upon the concept of ‘alternative hedonism’ (Soper, J Consum Cult 7:205–229, 2007 Cult Stud 22(5):567–587, 2008 Ethics and morality in consumption: interdisciplinary perspectives, Routledge, London, 2016 A new hedonism: a post-consumerism vision, the next system project, 2017), we illustrate how consumers experience both morality and pleasure concurrently show how they attempt to reconcile these aspects of the experience and elucidate the implications of doing so. With moral markets currently losing their appeal, we respond to the tendency to view hedonism as an inhibitor of moral market behaviour, and view it instead as a potential enabler.

Advocates of these ‘markets for virtue’ sought to supplant the insatiable hedonic impulse with a morally restrained, self-disciplining disposition to consumption. ‘Fair trade’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ consumption emerged in response to rising concerns about the destructive effects of hedonic models of consumption that are typical of late capitalist societies.

Ethical hedonism