Consumer ethoses in Finnish consumer life stories – agrarianism,economism and green consumerism

This article examines Finnish consumer ethoses and the moral rules that include them. We argue that Finnish consumers legitimize their consumer and spending practices, and constitute themselves as moral agents through three culturally dominant and historically constructed consumer ethoses: agrarianism, economism and green consumerism. The material of the study consists of 53 consumer life stories collected between September 2006 and May 2007 using a writing competition. Through our material, we are able to illustrate how consumers negotiate, produce, transform and contest these three ethoses. We interpret life stories as socially constructed stories. Thus, our aim is to analyse the culturally shared and historically transformed meanings, rather than to reveal the motives or intentions of the individual consumer.