d University / Research Policy Institute / [email protected]Dealing with values that differ across concerned consumer groups and policy makers – ethics/values as elements in societal concerns Workshop on the Economic And Trade Implications of Policy Responses to Societal concerns OECD, Paris, 2-3 November, 2009 Mikael Klintman, Lund University, Sweden [email protected]URL: http://www.fpi.lu.se/en/klintman
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Workshop on the Economic And Trade Implications of Policy Responses to Societal concerns
Dealing with values that differ across concerned consumer groups and policy makers – ethics/values as elements in societal concerns. Workshop on the Economic And Trade Implications of Policy Responses to Societal concerns OECD, Paris, 2-3 November, 2009 Mikael Klintman, Lund University, Sweden - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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”[…] interests, pleasures, likes, preferences, duties, moral obligations, desires, wants, needs, aversions and attractions, and many other modalities of selective orientation (Pepper, 1958:7)
”deeply rooted conceptions about a set of phenomena”(Lindén, 1997:4).
Myth I: “The four value dimensions are best dealt with as distinct and clearly separable dimensions of people’s value judgements”Ethical, aesthetic, and material values are often intertwined: Examples: • Tomatoes falsely labelled as ”domestic” or ”organic” taste better
than unlabelled tomatoes (Ekelund & Tjärnemo, 2004)
• “Conventionally grown, domestic products are often preferred over ecologically grown, foreign ones.
• “Local” and “domestic” are often framed as equal among consumers
A mixture of value dimensions must be dealt with in market and trade policy making
Myth II: “Conflicts between deeply rooted values can be dealt with through bringing in better facts of the same kind.”
No, we must distinguish between two types of conflicts:
- disagreements, which take place within one common frame,and - controversies, which take place between separate frames.
“[F]raming is a way of selecting, organizing, interpreting, and making sense of a complex reality to provide guideposts for knowing, analyzing, persuading, and acting. A frame is a perspective from which an amorphous, ill-defined, problematic situation can be made sense of and acted on” (Rein & Schön, 1993:146).
Myth III: ”Most values within societal concerns surrounding agriculture can be handled within one or two voluntary standards, for instance an organic standard”
Myth IV: “downplaying the value-based conflicts that take place in policymaking surrounding societal concerns will reduce confusion and increase trust among the public” • green food consumers are particularly ambivalent and uncertain in their
choices (Connolly & Prothero, 2008),
• green consumers have particularly reluctant attitudes towards claims among various organisations of fully meeting societal concerns (Crane, 2000).
Two unsound positions with regard to policy processes:• simple (blind) trust (which may oscillate to:)
• simple (blind) mistrust
Value-base conflicts should be dealt with openly in order to stimulate a• reflective trust (in the policy process, Boström & Klintman, 2008)
Myth V (concluding): ”The worst thing about values is that they distort otherwise fairly tame, scientific processes in the food sector”No, the worst thing is that values are often hidden behind
This raises the following questions • All values should be discussed, but should all value dimensions be seen
in policy decisions?
• What value dimensions (ethical, aesthetic, etc.), and value orientations (principle- & conseq.) ought to be the relevant parts of societal concerns subject to market & trade policies?
• (How) could the relevant value dimensions & orientations be disintegrated in analyses and policy processes?
• How should values based on erroneous or over-simplified, factual claims be dealt with in market & trade policies (e.g., ”local = environmentally friendly”).
• How should ”the intrinsic value of consumers-right-to-know” be dealt with, in light of information overload, and ambiguous implications, in market & trade policies?
ReferencesBoström, M., & Klintman, M. (2008). Eco-standards, product labelling and green consumerism. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.Connolly, J. & Prothero, A. (2008). Green Consumption: Life-politics, risk and contradictions. Journal of
Consumer Culture 2008; 8; 117 Crane, A., 2000, « Facing the Backlash: Green Marketing and Strategic Reorientation in the 1990s, » Journal
of Strategic Marketing 8, 277-296.Ekelund L & Tjärnemo H. (2004a) Consumer Preferences for Organic Vegetables – The Case of Sweden Acta.
Horticulturae 655 pp. 121-128.Eurobarometer (2007). ”Europeans, Agriculture, and the common agricultural policy.”, 276/Wave 66.3TNS EB
2007 Klintman, M. (2002a), ‘The Genetically Modified (GM) Food Labelling Controversy: Ideological and Epistemic
Crossovers’, Social Studies of Science, Vol.32, No.1, pp.71–91.Klintman, M. (2006). Ambiguous Framings of Political Consumerism: Means or end, product - or process
orientation? The International Journal of Consumer Studies. Special issue, entitled: ‘Promoting and Debating Political and Ethical Consumerism around the World’ 30 (5), 2006, pp. 427-438.
Klintman, M. & Boström, M., 2006, « ‘Editorial », The International Journal of Consumer Studies. Special issue, entitled: ‘Promoting and Debating Political and Ethical Consumerism around the World’ 30 (5), 2006, 401-404.
Lindén, A-L. (1997). Perspectives on man, value orientation, behaviour and sustainable development. In A-L. Lindén (Ed.), Thinking, Saying, Doing. Lund: Dept. of Sociology, Lund University.
Pepper, S. (1958), The sources of value. Berkeley, CA: UCB press. Schön, D.A. and M. Rein (1994), Frame Reflection, New York: Basic Books
• The four value dimensions must be dealt with as intertwined.
• In inter-frame controversies, only frame critical debates and new types of facts & are useful.
• Value differences be discussed as openly as the facts
• The entire range of values cannot be entirely adoped into one or a few policy schemes (e.g., organic labelling), but they should be deliberated in close relation to the current schemes in a frame-critical manner.