Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture (Rights & Responsibilities)

ISBN 10: 0742520676 / ISBN 13: 9780742520677

Published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2003

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Voluntary Simplicity: Responding to Consumer Culture (Rights & Responsibilities)
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Publication Date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0742520676
• ISBN 13: 9780742520677
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A simpler life. In a shadow cast by the jarring beginning of the new millennium, simplicity has an undeniable appeal. Global conflicts, domestic security concerns, and a stalling economy can make keeping up with the Joneses feel like, at best, a misguided luxury. Now is not a time for excess; it is a time, it would seem, to focus on "what really matters." Thus the appeal of voluntary simplicity, a notion that combines the freedom of modernity with certain comforts and virtues of the past.

The authors in this volume speak to the what, why, and how of voluntary simplicity (and even to some extent the where, when, and who). Those included range from contemporary academics to thinkers from the turn of the last century, from ardent supporters to staunch critics. They approach the subject from a variety of perspectives-economic, psychological, sociological, historical, and theological. Each either implicitly or explicitly helps us explore the desirability and feasibility of voluntary simplicity.

About the Authors

Amitai Etzioni is the founder and director of the Communitarian Network and University Professor at The George Washington University. He has served as a senior advisor to the White House and President of the American Sociological Association. He has taught sociology at Columbia University, the Harvard Business School, and the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of 22 books, including The New Golden Rule, Political Unification Revisited and My Brother's Keeper: A Memoir and a Message. A recent study listed him as one of the leading hundred public intellectuals.

David G. Myers is a social psychologist and a professor of psychology at Hope College. His articles have appeared in dozens of scientific periodicals and magazines, from Science to Scientific American. He is also the author of seventeen books, including psychology’s most widely read textbook, which has sold more than eight million copies worldwide. Myers resides in Holland, Michigan.