ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the lives of nine morally concerned individuals and continues to unravel their personal stories to explore how, having defined themselves as ethical consumers, respondents actively sustain their desired identities through the continuous reflexive monitoring of their ethical consumption commitments against dynamically changing subjective contexts and objective states of affairs. It illustrates the complex interplay between structure and agency and their respective contributions to ethical consumer practices and identities, thereby revealing that the ethical consumption phenomenon is shaped by a wide range of factors operating at different levels. Consumers' deliberate efforts to ensure continuity and stability of their ethical practices are part of their on-going struggle for a coherent, continuous self. Identity disavowal, vocabularies of motives, compensatory reasoning, and subjective framing exemplify some of the ideational strategies used by ethical consumers to negotiate contradictions and discontinuities permeating their behaviours and practices.
