Confronting Consumption
392
Confronting Consumption
392eBook
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Overview
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.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780262303675 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | MIT Press |
| Publication date: | 06/21/2002 |
| Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 392 |
| File size: | 617 KB |
About the Author
Michael Maniates is Professor of Political Science and Environmental Science at Allegheny College. He is the coeditor, with Thomas Princen and Ken Conca, of Confronting Consumption (MIT Press, 2002).
Ken Conca is Associate Professor of Government and Politics and Director of the Harrison Program on the Future Global Agenda at the University of Maryland.
Table of Contents
| Contents |
| 1 Confronting Consumption |
| Thomas Princen, Michael Maniates, Ken Conca |
| Part I The Consumption Angle |
| 2 Consumption and its Externalities: Where Economy Meets Ecology Thomas Princen |
| 3 Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy A Bike, Save the World? Michael Maniates |
| 4 Commoditization: Consumption Efficiency and |
| an Economy of Care and Connection Jack Manno |
| Part II Chains of Consumption |
| 5 Distancing: Consumption and the Severing of Feedback Thomas Princen |
| 6 Consumption and Environment in a Global Political Economy Ken Conca |
| 7 The Distancing of Waste: Overconsumption in a Global Economy Jennifer Clapp |
| 8 Environmentally Damaging Consumption: The Impact of American Markets |
| on Tropical Ecosystems in the Twentieth Century Richard Tucker |
| Part III On the Ground |
| 9 In Search of Consumptive Resistance: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement Michael Maniates |
| 10 Jamming Culture: Adbusters' Hip Campaign Against Consumerism |
| Marilyn Bordwell |
| 11 Think Globally, Transact Locally: The Local Currency Movement |
| and Green Political Economy |
| Eric Helleiner |
| 12 Caveat Certificatum: The Case of Forest Certification |
| Fred Gale |
| 13 Citizens or Consumers: The Home Power Movement |
| as a New Practice of Technology |
| Jesse Tatum |
| 14 Conclusion: To Confront Consumption |
| Thomas Princen, Michael Maniates, Ken Conca |
What People are Saying About This
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
—
author of The Circle of Simplicity
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.
John Kenneth Galbraith once complained of the 'near total silence' with regard to the 'gargantuan and growing appetite' for resources in contemporary North America. It is that silence that has now been addressed, to spectacular effect, by the contributors to *Confronting Consumption.* 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.
— author of Environmentalism: A Global History and The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himilaya
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.
— Professor of Environmental History, Philosophy, and Ethics , University of California, Berkeley, and author of Radical
Ecology: The Search for a Livable World and Earthcare: Women and
the Environment
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
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 CollegeConsumption 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.