Confronting Consumption - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0262661284 ISBN 13: 9780262661287

Publisher: MIT Press, 2002

Synopsis

Comforting terms such as "sustainable development" and "green production" frame environmental debate by stressing technology (not green enough), economic growth (not enough in the right places), and population (too large). Concern about consumption emerges, if at all, in benign ways; as calls for green purchasing or more recycling, or for small changes in production processes. Many academics, policymakers, and journalists, in fact, accept the economists' view of consumption as nothing less than the purpose of the economy. Yet many people have a troubled, intuitive understanding that tinkering at the margins of production and purchasing will not put society on an ecologically and socially sustainable path.

Confronting Consumption places consumption at the center of debate by conceptualizing "the consumption problem" and documenting diverse efforts to confront it. In Part 1, the book frames consumption as a problem of political and ecological economy, emphasizing core concepts of individualization and commoditization. Part 2 develops the idea of distancing and examines transnational chains of consumption in the context of economic globalization. Part 3 describes citizen action through local currencies, home power, voluntary simplicity, "ad-busting," and product certification. Together, the chapters propose "cautious consuming" and "better producing" as an activist and policy response to environmental problems. The book concludes that confronting consumption must become a driving focus of contemporary environmental scholarship and activism.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Princen explores ecological and economic sustainability at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Treading Softly: Paths to Ecological Order and The Logic of Sufficiency (both published by the MIT Press).

Review

The issue of excessive, careless, and ignorant consumption has been conspicuously absent in all the talk about sustainability. No longer! These essays break new conceptual ground and clarify the dynamics of consumption with intellectual honesty and political boldness. The authors aim to transform consumption from mindless and destructive to mindful and regenerative. This is a vitally important book!

―David W. Orr, Environmental Studies Program, Oberlin College (2003-01-01)

This book is important not just for its brilliance but for its rarity: few environmental scholars have dared to take on this issue in a manner that goes beyond rhetorical posturing and 'limits to growth' type arguments.

―Lamont C. Hempel, Hedco Professor of Environmental Studies and Director of Environmental Programs, University of Redlands

Consumption deserves serious attention. This volume moves the literature beyond the work of a few isolated scholars and consumption activists to a collective enterprise of solid researchers critiquing and building on each other's contributions. Long overdue, but worth waiting for.

―Richard B. Norgaard, University of California, Berkeley

Confronting Consumption provides a fresh new look at the systemic problems of consumption in the global economy. It offers a highly readable account of the impacts of consumerism on our vulnerable planetary resources and asks whether a sustainable consumption movement may be emerging. Scholars, teachers, and activists alike will be enriched by the book's analysis and inspired by new possibilities for confronting the complexities of consumption.

―Carolyn Merchant, Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics, University of California, Berkeley, author of Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World and Earthcare: Women and the Environment

A dynamic, vital book that takes your breath away! Confronting Consumption shows why consumption is the blockbuster problem that our society can no longer ignore. Readers will feel real excitement as they explore this stimulating book and will begin to understand why thousands of people in the Simplicity movement are turning their backs on 'getting and spending' and reclaiming 'the good life'―building lives of high satisfaction and low environmental impact in a caring and just community.

―Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity

This book addresses, to spectacular effect, the great silence about the vast appetite for resources in contemporary North America. These wide-ranging analyses of consumerism successfully bring together the cultural and the ecological, the structural and the symbolic, the local and the global. They join rights to responsibilities and ethics to public policy. In terms of both vision and execution, this is a landmark volume.

―Ramachandra Guha, author of Environmentalism: A Global History

About this edition

• Publisher: MIT Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0262661284
• ISBN 13: 9780262661287
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 390
• Editor: Princen Thomas, Maniates Michael, Conca Professor Of International Relations Ken