The latest issue of the journal Area has just published a Review Forum on the Globalizing Responsibility book which came out of a research project on the politics of ethical consumption. The Forum arises from a session held at the RGS-IBG conference in 2011, which included critical commentaries on the book by Alex Hughes and Mike Goodman. Both Alex and Mike have written responses to the book for the Forum. They raise various issues at stake in analysing and evaluating the politics of this field, including conceptualisations of the materiality of consumption, postcolonial approaches to consumption, issues of inequality and corporate power, and the role of media and communications practices in the extension of ethical discourses around consumption. We have a response/clarification/defence of the approach pursued in the book, grandly titled Problematising Practices, which, as the name might suggest, elaborates a little on the idea of focussing on ‘problematisation’ as both an object and method of analysis.