Fine Chocolate, Resistance, and Political Morality in the Marketplace

This article takes the case of fine chocolate to explore resistance in the consumer practice of buying branded products labeled fair trade. Ethnographic research conducted in the US, Europe and Japan at two different points in time indicates that moral satisfaction now joins sensual enjoyment in consumer appreciation of fine chocolate. The article examines social processes shaping fine chocolate into a morally compelling one based on use of fair labor in producing cocoa beans. Looking at the cocoa commodity chain reveals how the marketplace is a locus for challenging status quo. Fine chocolate was transformed from deterritorialized product perceived to come from chocolatiers in West European countries like Belgium and France to reterritorialized product connected to cocoa bean growers in tropical regions of the world. I argue that resistance is not equated with free will located within the individual as an autonomous actor but constitutes a form of agency distributed in an assemblage. Consumers are enmeshed in assemblages that have force or momentum. Examining movements in the fine chocolate assemblage (including chocolate lovers and their senses, chocolate products, producers along the commodity chain, and institutional discourse from media, government and industry) identifies a trajectory of change and correspondence between ethical concern and sensual enjoyment

Ritual, Embodiment and the Paradox of Doing the Laundry

Paradox often provides a starting point for cultural analysis of consumer behavior. The paradox of the laundry in which mothers find the laundry a boring and repetitive task yet hesitate to relinquish the chore to others is examined through the embodied experience of women’s laundry rituals. Performance of the ritual generates feelings of competence in cleaning clothes to an absolute standard of cleanliness and feelings of caring, nurturance and love of family. For mothers, the ritual goal of cultivating subjectivity in children about presentation of self to the world depends on drawers full of clean clothes. Laundry rituals are transformative because they ignite and renew emotions relating to a perceived parental role. This article discusses implementation of anthropological practice in terms of incorporating ethnographic research findings into advertising communications. In the implementation process, agency is key in bridging discourse of mothers and discourse of advertising and in producing culture

Opinions: Ethnographic Methods in the Study of Business

For this issue of the Journal of Business Anthropology, I approached a number of people who have conducted research in, with, on, or for business organizations of one sort or another and asked them to reflect upon their ethnographic experiences. What follows is a series of essays by scholars and practitioners ‒ many of them extremely experienced, but one at the beginning of her career ‒ who between them have provided us with a collation of exemplary practices and insights. It isn’t just restaurant kitchens and home cooking that provide ‘food for thought’, but cruise ships, art museums, General Motors, and an Austrian electrical company. Bon appetit