Ramachandra Guha
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.
Lamont C. Hempel
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.
David W. Orr
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!
Carolyn Merchant
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.
Cecile Andrews
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
Cecile Andrews
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.
Ramachandra Guha
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
Carolyn Merchant
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
Endorsement
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
From the Publisher
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
Richard B. Norgaard
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.