Newly emerging ethical trade practices in the South African wine industry are examined as a way of engaging with debates about the ability of alternative trade approaches to facilitate meaningful opportunities for socioeconomic development in the global South. The South African wine industry has undergone rapid restructuring since the end of apartheid in order to meet the demands of international markets. However, transforming racially skewed ownership and skill patterns is proving a particular challenge. In this paper we outline some of the initiatives that have been introduced to stimulate socioeconomic change within the industry. By utilising analytical tools such as commodity chains, networks, and cultural approaches we demonstrate that a complex array of forces is driving change on the ground. Such forces include national imperatives derived from the legacy of apartheid and the concerns of consumers in the global North. We conclude by considering the types of local and global constraints that need to be challenged if these initiatives are to be successful in facilitating meaningful socioeconomic transformation within the wine industry.

Emerging research on the increasing significance of consumption in the global South is concerned with its links to the globalizing middle classes. Against the backdrop of optimism invested in the new global middle classes to fuel consumption-led growth, this paper contributes to new debate about the articulations and significance of ethical consumption in the global South. Missing from much current mainstream policy, media and academic debate is acknowledgement of the diversity of the global middle classes and an understanding of how ethical interpretations and behaviour differ in various consumer markets around the world. In response, this paper draws on qualitative research in South Africa’s Western Cape to explore the cultural significance of everyday ethical realities in shaping consumption in the global South. In addition to addressing the relative absence of research into ethical consumption in global South contexts, the paper makes two key contributions based our findings. First, it challenges the tendency, particularly in economic discourses, to generalise about the ‘new’ global middle class consumers by highlighting the significance of locality and context in shaping consumption practices in the Western Cape; specifically it finds that, for diverse middle class consumers, thrift is an important ethical choice and practice determining consumption patterns. Second, it highlights the significance of everyday ethical practices in shaping consumption in the Western Cape, focusing specifically on how thrift is imbricated in concerns with not just economic constraint, but also care, habit and aspiration. The paper concludes with reflections on the wider implications of these findings and suggests that they illustrate a need to theorise ethical consumption from contexts in the global South, on their own terms