While research has examined the plight of vulnerable workers, the role of consumers who drive demand for slave-based services and products has been largely neglected. This is an important gap given both historical evidence of the effectiveness of 18th and 19th century anti-slavery consumer activism and recent attempts to regulate slavery through harnessing consumer power, such as the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015. This article draws on data from in-depth interviews with 40 consumers, to identify their understanding of modern slavery, before revealing the neutralising and legitimising techniques they use to justify their (in)action. Our findings contribute to, and extend, neutralisation theory by exploring its applicability in this unique context. We also position techniques of legitimisation as central to understanding how modern slavery is tolerated through a variety of discursive and institutional factors.

中文翻译：

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消耗工人的剥削？消费者对现代奴隶制的诉求和理由

尽管研究调查了弱势工人的困境，但很大程度上忽略了推动对基于奴隶的服务和产品需求的消费者的角色。考虑到18和19世纪反奴隶制消费者激进主义的有效性的历史证据，以及最近通过利用消费者力量来调节奴隶制的尝试，例如英国的2015年《现代奴隶制法案》，这是一个重要的差距。本文借鉴了以下数据：在揭露他们用来证明自己的作为作为依据的中立化和合法化技术之前，与40位消费者进行了深入访谈，以了解他们对现代奴隶制的理解。我们的发现通过探索中和理论在这种独特背景下的适用性，对中和理论做出了贡献，并对其进行了扩展。