Local and Green, Global and Fair: The Ethical Foodscape and the Politics of Care

The core values of the ethical foodscape—ecological integrity and social justice—can assume very different political forms unless they are fashioned into a coherent and progressive narrative of sustainability. This paper explores the politics of sustainability through the prism of three major issues. First, the carbon-labelling controversy is used to highlight the potential conflict between green campaigners (who extol the benefits of local food) and social justice campaigners (who support fairly traded food from afar). Second, school-food reform is used to demonstrate that local and global food, far from being mutually exclusive options, can both be part of the constitution of a sustainable food system if global food is framed in cosmopolitan terms. Third, the paper engages with the politics of care literature to explore a question that underlies the above issues, namely, how and why we care for others. It is argued that ethical consumerism, a key part of a progressive narrative of care, is not sufficient to counter the challenge of climate change—the greatest threat to ecological integrity and social justice.