The Marketability of “Ethical Consumption” and the Citizen-Consumer
I took this photo outside the Whole Foods Market on Fourth St. in Kitsilano. Whole Foods is a grocery store that has built its brand on “ethical consumption”, and stands tall as what Josée Johnston calls North America’s biggest “natural foods empire” (2008). The photo depicts the assortment of cut flowers that are available outside the store, which range from spring tulips to traditional roses. What I found most interesting about the display were the stickers and seals on some of the flowers’ price tickets: a small green circle which lauded the flowers as “Whole Trade”, and listed the producer’s company names. For example, the “Whole Trade Dozen Roses” were produced and exported by AgroCoex, a fair-trade Ecuadorian flower producer. However, some flowers lacked the “Whole Trade” Stamp, and those flowers, like the freesia in the picture, were effectively of unknown origin.
My first question in regards to the photo was what, exactly, “Whole Trade” was. According to Winnie Hsia, an official blogger for Whole Foods Market, Whole Trade is essentially an “extension of [Whole Foods’] core values” (2012). Whole Trade meets “key criteria” in regards to environmental standards, working conditions, and provision of “more money to producers” (Hsia 2012). Essentially, Whole Trade flowers and other products are an embodiment of the “commodity-based consumer awareness campaigns” (2012) Anouk Patil-Campillo highlights in her study.
Whole Foods Market has always provided a conundrum for me: I often question to what amount the corporation follows through on its promises of sustainability and ethical treatment. Their entire brand, from the $15 handmade marshmallows to the Oceanwise salmon, targets what Johnston calls the “hybrid citizen-consumer” (2012). The citizen-consumer is focused on the ethics of consumption, and corporations like Whole Foods monetize that focus by marketing themselves as ethical retailers, even when that ethical code focuses more highly on “consumption” and not “ethical citizenship”.
Johnston notes the ways in which grocery shopping as a whole is a terrain upon which the public and private intersect, where gender plays a huge role: in how food and products are advertised (primarily to women as the main consumers), as well as in how spaces like Whole Foods are feminized and labelled as silly, unreasonable, and “wishy-washy”. Advertizing assumes women are the target market, and initiatives like Whole Trade reflect that. Women, as large buyers of flowers (Patel-Campillo 2012) are targeted in campaigns like “Give a Flower and Give Back” (Whole Foods Market). The Whole Trade Guarantee is in fact highly feminized. On the Whole Foods blog, a flower producer named Lucía is quoted as thanking the Whole Trade initiative for their “washer and dryer” project, which helps her to do her washing for her family during work hours. Her struggle to support her family while working are condensed when she repeats “I had very little free time”. It’s important to note that she assumes both her family’s responsibilities as well as providing for them financially, highlighting the way gender roles continue to be reproduced globally, and the way the Whole Trade logo hopes to connect with their consumer base by focusing on femininity as it’s main advocacy point.
In placing women as the main focus of the initiative, which provides health and childcare as two of its main goals, Whole Foods is very much shaping the way GCCs are controlled by transnational advocacy groups, who choose what products are distributed where and how (Patel-Campillo 2012). However, no matter how pretentious Whole Foods can often be, the Whole Trade Guarantee is third party certified by numerous credible organizations. It is also able to put pressure on GCCs more directly, as Whole Foods is a huge buyer of products from all over the world, including flowers. As opposed to the failed third-party transnational advocacy initiatives Patel-Campillo notes (2012), Whole Foods is a direct player in the global chain, which gives them the power to control and shape the system on a larger scale. As long as they keep their promises, and balance their “niche marketing techniques”, admittedly their dominant reasoning for being a natural, ethical retailer (Johnston 2008) with actual ethical sourcing, perhaps the citizen-consumer can make good choices while purchasing their tulips.
Works Cited
Hsia, W. (2012, Oct. 2). What is the Whole Trade Guarantee? [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/what-whole-trade-guarantee
Johnston, J. (2008). The citizen-consumer hybrid: ideological tensions and the case of Whole Foods Market. Theory and Society, 37(3), 229-270.
Patel-Campillo, A. (2012). The Gendered Production–Consumption Relation: Accounting for Employment and Socioeconomic Hierarchies in the Colombian Cut Flower Global Commodity Chain. Sociologia Ruralis, 52(3), 272-293.
Whole Foods. Whole Trade Certifier Partners. Retrieved from http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/mission-values/whole-trade-program/certifier-partners
Whole Foods. Whole Trade Helps Real People. Retrieved from http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/whole-trade/whole-trade-helps-real-people