Trade Justice and Individual Consumption Choices: Adam Smith's Spectator Theory and the Moral Constitution of the Fair Trade Consumer
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066107076957 |
| Date | 01 June 2007 |
| Author | Matthew Watson |
| Published date | 01 June 2007 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
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Trade Justice and Individual Consumption
Choices: Adam Smith’s Spectator Theory
and the Moral Constitution of
the Fair Trade Consumer
M AT T H E W WAT S O N
University of Warwick, UK
A consistent theme of the existing literature is that fair trade consump-
tion practices represent acts of justice. In this article I investigate such an
equation from the perspective of the moral theory of Adam Smith.
Smith explains the development of moral sensibilities via an imaginative
act he calls ‘sympathy’. For Smith, justice prevails in interpersonal rela-
tionships in which the potential for one person to do harm to another is
ruled out because their respective imaginations are in perfect accord,
thus creating a situation of mutual sympathy. I advance two main con-
clusions. First, I argue that fair trade consumption is undoubtedly a
moral act in the manner described by Smith, as it involves consumers
responding to fair trade campaigns in order to trigger their moral sens-
ibilities through exercising their imaginative faculties. Second, though,
I argue that fair trade consumption is not specifically a moral act of just-
ice in the manner described by Smith. The structure of fair trade invites
the First World consumer to display sympathy for the Third World pro-
ducer, but it provides no means for that sympathy to be reciprocated. As
such, instances of genuine mutual sympathy do not arise. From a
Smithian perspective, fair trade consumption practices are an act of
beneficence rather than an act of justice. They thereby reside in the
realm of private virtue rather than the realm of public duty, with sig-
nificant implications for the way in which trade justice is conceptualized
and studied in IPE.
KEY WORDS ♦ Adam Smith ♦ fair trade ♦ sympathy
♦ impartial spectator ♦ justice ♦ beneficence
European Journal of International Relations Copyright © 2007
SAGE Publications and ECPR-European Consortium for Political Research, Vol. 13(2): 263–288
[DOI: 10.1177/1354066107076957]
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European Journal of International Relations 13(2)
Introduction
There has been a marked increase in recent years in First World consumption
of Third World products carrying the Fair Trade label. According to the large-
scale surveys undertaken of such consumers (e.g. Shaw and Shiu, 2002), in
almost all instances this is a conscious decision which is designed to encapsulate
an affirmative action. With very few exceptions, individuals become fair trade
consumers knowingly, and they do so with the explicit intention of expressing
some degree of solidarity with the Third World producers of the products they
consume. The issue of fair trade is very much an issue of international politics,
in that its whole essence rests on the premise that the moral dimensions of
modern exchange relationships extend beyond and across national borders.
This suggests that it is a moral act to purchase a product which allows a dis-
tant stranger to enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle simply by being recognized
as ‘the producer’ of that product.
Moreover, much of the existing academic literature on fair trade names that
moral act specifically as one of justice (e.g. Raynolds, 2002; Hudson and
Hudson, 2003; Renard, 2003; Goodman, 2004). It is the task of later sections
to decide whether such a characterization is appropriate. Even if it is, however,
it still does not tell us exactly how cross-border justice claims of this nature are
internalized by consumers in the first place. A post-hoc examination of con-
sumption practices might well reveal the satisfaction of justice claims in the
purchase of fair trade products, but how do consumers come to sense the ini-
tial need to act justly?
The issue is to explain why some people buy fair trade but others of similar
affluence and social circumstances do not. As such, the decision to be a fair
trade consumer appears to relate less to the general moral principles in evidence
within a society and more to the development of a particular moral psychology
amongst certain individuals. It is for this reason that I set the following analy-
sis within the context of the philosophical work of Adam Smith and, in particu-
lar, that of his Theory of Moral Sentiments (Smith, 1982 [1759]).
Smith prioritizes individual motivation in his explanation of moral being
(Montes, 2004: 112). As such, it is the active aspect of making moral choices
that matters to him (Mitchell, 1987: 420). Moral actions cannot be under-
stood for Smith without first identifying the precise nature of the virtue that
influenced the action. He understands individuals as being constantly involved
in social situations in which they have to decide whether a harm has been done
or a good is absent, before then being required to make a further decision
about how best to respond to that initial judgement via the affirmation of a
particular virtue. If the decision is that a harm has to be negated, then the
response requires an act of public duty, and for Smith justice is the most
common manifestation of such acts. By contrast, if the decision is that moral
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Watson: Trade Justice and Consumption Choices
behaviour is compensating for the absence of a good, then the response
requires an act of private beneficence, and public duty is not involved in the
individual’s moral calculations.
The manner of Smith’s moral reflections is therefore justification in itself
for choosing his work as the starting point for my discussion of the ethics of
fair trade consumption. Moreover, the return to Smith is further warranted
in this instance because fair trade works within the structures of market
exchange (Watson, 2006), thereby reinforcing their dominance, and Smith’s
moral theory was designed specifically to understand the ethics of market
society. My argument proceeds in three stages. In section one, I analyze
Smith’s description of the way in which the individual internalizes a specific
moral psychology. I pay particular attention to the link that he posits
between acts of the imagination, the desire to be judged as having behaved
sympathetically and the development of moral dispositions. In section two,
I show that both the political energies of fair trade campaigners and the mar-
keting of fair trade products are aimed at inducing imaginative acts in the
minds of potential consumers. They are designed to create vicarious, albeit
only ever one-way, relationships between imaginatively active First World
consumers and the Third World producers of fair trade products. In section
three, I explore the potential limits of such relationships and, by extension,
the limits of the success of fair trade as a development strategy based on the
satisfaction of justice claims. These arise from Smith’s concern that sympathy
requires intimacy and that, as such, there are psychological constraints on
initiating imaginatively induced sympathetic relationships across both phys-
ical and social distance.
I conclude that this problem may not be completely insurmountable in
practice, as it can be shown that the decision to prioritize the consumption
of fair trade products conforms very much to what Smith had in mind as a
moral act. However, from a Smithian perspective the content of that moral
act is not justice. I do not rule out the possibility of being able to draw such
a connection by using the alternative conceptual frameworks of other moral
theorists, but the connection does not exist when starting with Smith. This
is important, because the equation of fair trade purchases and acts of justice
has been crucial to the dynamism of the fair trade campaign, which perhaps
explains why it has also been reflected so consistently in the academic litera-
ture on the subject. Nonetheless, from a Smithian perspective it appears to
be beneficence rather than justice that serves as the moral basis for the prac-
tice of fair trade. Using Smith’s account of the way in which the individual
develops particular moral dispositions, First World consumers’ fair trade con-
sumption decisions are triggered by private virtue rather than by public duty.
They counteract the absence of a good in the broad sphere of Third World
development rather than prevent a harm being enacted on specific Third
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European Journal of International Relations 13(2)
World producers. I finish by reviewing the implications of my analysis for
how to conceptualize trade and the corresponding conditions for trade just-
ice within IPE.
Smith, the Impartial Spectator and the Social Basis of
the Moral Imagination
In order to investigate the possibility of deriving a Smithian perspective on the
moral psychology of fair trade consumers, it is important to start with an
overview of his broader analysis of the internalization of moral dispositions as
a whole. For Smith, the key to understanding how individuals choose to act
lies in understanding the interpretive processes which precede the commit-
ment to the act itself. Action cannot be condensed merely into the moment
of its execution. That moment also has a significant pre-history of reflection
and contemplation, and these in turn are rooted in the human cognitive and
communicative capacities that make life in society possible.
The moral system that Smith attempts to elucidate is one that is based on
observation of everyday human interaction (Mitchell, 1987: 406; Khalil, 1998:
219–20). For, it is through those interactions that individuals...
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