ABSTRACT
The chapter explores the societal foundations for the possibility of a moralization of modern markets, and do so without a detailed analysis of the modern consumer culture that works toward establishing different types of consumers, or of social mechanisms that are supposed to account for differential consumer behavior. It further concentrates on the question whether what is portrayed as past and present consumer culture that is mainly populated by either self-conscious consumers or irrational consumers. The chapter also addresses the issues of the moralization of the markets in modern economies, using the cases of biotechnological products and environmentalism as the empirical referents. The moralization of market conduct is more than merely the presence of greater and lesser uncertainties or risks associated with human conduct. The response to the development and the promise of biotechnological products in the marketplace is by no means easy to reconstruct, let alone to anticipate in terms of future pattern.
