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The paper studies the participation of Gregory Bateson at the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics, that would prove to be a real turning point in his intellectual itinerary.

It bases itself on more or less known documents and on the newer studies on early cybernetics, focussing in particular on the earliest Macy meetings.

Being still an anthropologist, Bateson insisted on the importance and lack of theory in social sciences. Arriving at the first Macy meeting, he hoped that the new researches conducted by Norbert Wiener with others would have helped him to clarify the concept of circular causality that he believed to be a very central theoretical notion in social sciences. Indeed, Wiener was strongly sceptical about the inclusion of social sciences in the new cybernetic programs. Nevertheless, Bateson could learn about negative and positive feedback, about how negative feedback was able to explain finality in a non‐metaphysical way, and discovered the specificity of phenomena concerning information. In addition, he became acquainted with Russell's theory of logical types, which resonated in his mind with his ideas about deutero‐learning. Very quickly, his reasoning about circular processes in society began to include also problems of communication and self‐referentiality.

It wants to explain one of the most important moments in Bateson's scientific evolution, emphasizing theoretical problems in social sciences demanding still now a stable clarification.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse value co-creation in the context of ethical consumption by extending the focus to customers and their relational contexts. The paper unravels the core mechanism of the entire process of value co-creation in ethical consumption by drawing from engagement and awareness as emerging topics in value co-creation perspectives. By expanding the understanding of engagement and awareness as integrating mechanisms, the paper addresses the potential for these elements to shape the holistic consumer experience in an ethical context.

The authors chose to investigate consumer experience in the ethical context of Altromercato, the top seller of Fair Trade products in Italy. Following a phenomenological approach, the authors had the opportunity to gain knowledge on the lived experiences of customers as part of the Altromercato phenomenon. To depict the most important aspects of this experience, the authors chose a thematisation based on transcripts of in-depth interviews.

Drawing from the conceptualisation of the customer as a value co-creator, the work identified two main features in understanding co-creation in an ethical context – engagement and awareness – and two secondary ones as emerging from the empirical analysis – sharing and brand meaning. The two main topics acted as drivers to favour the depiction of our results through the following categories: first, trend following; second, believing; and third, supporting. Each category provides insight into the ways customers co-create.

The study proves the inherent complexity and multidimensionality of customer interactions in an ethical context and supports the recent perspective of service scholars on the systemic and holistic nature of the value co-creation process.

Co-creation depends on roles and activities performed by customers at different touch points. This approach leads firms to strive for better understanding of the contexts shaped by the cultural, social, and relational dimensions.

This work also proves helpful to service research by clarifying how some critics have come to view value co-creation and resource integration as highly general and abstract concepts. Engagement, awareness, brand meaning, and sharing are identified in this work as the core mechanisms on which co-creation practices are based. The study supports even co-creation in ethical businesses as a values-laden concept that depends on the values and value experienced in context.