Ethical food packaging and designed encounters with distant and exotic others
Article
Machin, D. and Cobley, P. 2020. Ethical food packaging and designed encounters with distant and exotic others. Semiotica. 2020 (232), pp. 251-271. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2019-0035
Type | Article |
---|---|
Title | Ethical food packaging and designed encounters with distant and exotic others |
Authors | Machin, D. and Cobley, P. |
Abstract | There has been criticism of how Fair-Trade products represent workers in remote parts of the world where packaging offers an encounter with distant others which romanticizes and homogenizes them as a pre-modern form of ethnicity. Such workers are shown as always engaged in authentic, simple, honest decontextualized manual labour. And they are depicted as highly appreciative of, and empowered by, the act of ethical shopping. This paper shows that a close social semiotic analysis of Fair-Trade packaging reveals a different set of meanings which sit alongside the decontextualized ones. Designs integrate these workers into more contemporary kinds of modernist, rational, design chic, which communicates its own kind of honesty and authenticity. We consider how this, too, shapes how such consumers encounter distant others and its consequence for the meaning of the act of ethical shopping, where consumers can buy into moral alignment offered by products. |
Keywords | Fair-Trade; social semiotics; packaging; authenticity; consumerism |
Publisher | De Gruyter |
Journal | Semiotica |
ISSN | 0037-1998 |
Electronic | 1613-3692 |
Publication dates | |
Online | 11 Jan 2020 |
25 Feb 2020 | |
Publication process dates | |
Deposited | 02 Oct 2019 |
Accepted | 14 Nov 2019 |
Output status | Published |
Publisher's version | |
Copyright Statement | This is an published version of an article published by De Gruyter in Semiotica. Reproduced in this repository in accordance with the publishers Repository Policy: https://www.degruyter.com/page/repository-policy. |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2019-0035 |
Web of Science identifier | WOS:000513949700010 |
Related Output | |
Has metadata | https://publons.com/wos-op/publon/37508537/ |
Language | English |
https://repository.mdx.ac.uk/item/887vz
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