Austerity and sufficiency: the changing politics of sustainable consumption. (original) (raw)
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Metaphors are essential devices for fostering collective understanding and forging political commitment across diverse constituencies. Due to the ineffectualness of prevailing linguistic representations of climate change, discursive entrepreneurs have begun to invoke over the last few years new imagery that frames the challenge as tantamount to a protracted state of armed hostility. This process of rhetorical militarization has been most prominent in the UK and it is subsequently creating opportunities for policy makers to propose greenhouse gas reduction strategies that are reminiscent of wartime austerity programs. A particular approach that has attracted considerable interest is consumer regulation involving the imposition of annual quotas on personal carbon emissions. This idea is best understood as a variant of the comprehensive civilian rationing programs that were deployed during and after World War II. Because any eventual scheme to reduce greenhouse gas production at the individual level will require consummate public legitimacy, this historical experience can serve as a useful reference point for the design of contemporary interventions. To this end, the discussion highlights the methods that the British government used to sustain compliance with the war and postwar consumption control regimes. Of special interest is the role that black market trading and other illicit forms of commerce played during these periods. The conclusion reflects on the status of consumerism in contemporary lifestyles, considers the risks of political interference with consumer prerogatives, and draws some insights from this earlier experience with rationing.
Austerity Ireland, the New Thrift Culture and Sustainable Consumption
Journal of Business Anthropology
In this article, I discuss whether austerity measures have an impact on individual consumers’ orientations towards sustainability. Through an ethnographic examination of second-hand markets, in particular flea markets and second-hand baby goods markets, I examine whether economic crisis has changed people’s consumption habits in Irish society. While the study of sustainability has a long, interdisciplinary history, little is known about the relationship between austerity and sustainable consumption patterns, particularly in an Irish context. Thus, this study questions whether reduced spending and consumption patterns may serve the interests of sustainability politics.
Austerity: An Economy of Words
Berghahn, 2018
This essay starts with a personal account of the near starvation of Europe after the Second World War. We called it rationing then. The memory of Britain's "finest hour" in standing alone against Germany for two years was harnessed to the idea of "shared sacrifice". The word "austerity" is Roman, a cousin of the Greek oikonomia (economy). Both expressed the interests of conservative land-holders in their millennial struggle against the power of money. Keynes fought this idea between the wars and the developmental states that flourished for 30 years after 1945 temporarily followed the opposite path of increasing popular spending power. Keynes provided a class analysis of who benefits and loses from inflation and deflation. The term "austerity" has been revived by the western regimes that succeeded the 1980 neoliberal counter-revolution against Keynesianism. This time the political power is based on money not land, but "national capitalism", with its origins in the 1860s, was always based on an alliance between capitalists and the traditional enforcers. Increasingly it seems that economy has become a smokescreen of misleading words. The essay examines the austerity programs implemented in Britain and Europe after the 2008 financial crash and asks if we can still excavate the power that lies behind the words. A coda is added in 2022 as the transition from national capitalism to a new era of war, revolution and economic collapse increases the stakes in this old struggle over ideas and politics. The age of austerity I don't think we called it austerity then. Its general name was rationing and it began during the war, when Britain imported much of its food across hostile seas. The Labour government of 1945-1951 had to justify rationing even though cargo ships were no longer being sunk by U-boats. The country was broke and sometimes the harvest failed. Sugar, eggs, bread, butter, meat, bacon, tea and potatoes were rationed for varying periods, along with non-food items like soap, petrol and clothes. Most milk was used to make cheese, known as 'Government Cheddar'. A delightful memoir of those times-84 Charing Cross Road (Helen Hanff, 1980)-recalls the excitement of receiving a food parcel from America or Australia. But foreign gift food parcels of 5lb or more were soon deducted from a family's rations in the name of equality.
This paper contributes to a growing body of literature highlighting the limitations of behaviour change and the emergence of a social practice approach to reframe responses to escalating resource consumption. Drawing insights from interviews with Australian households and workshops with behaviour change practitioners, we demonstrate how the ‘Going Green’ discourse, which focuses on targeting individuals to participate in ‘easy’ sustainability actions, overlooks the majority of consumption implicated in everyday practices. This leaves unchallenged the complex ways our lives are becoming more resource intensive. We argue for an ontological framing of social change underpinned by theories of social practice. Rather than considering policies, regulations and infrastructures involving urban form, housing, transport and infrastructure provision as ‘external factors’ separate from behaviour, practice theories accord them integral status in the constitution of social order and change. This represents a more challenging agenda for practitioners and governments in shifting and transforming everyday life.
Behaviour Change for Sustainable Consumption
Journal of Consumer Policy
The Paris Agreement goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C by 2100 translates into a carbon dioxide (CO 2) equivalent emission reduction from around 40 gigatons in 2020 to around 5 gigatons (Rockström et al. 2017). As part of a long-term strategy to achieve this goal, technological innovations are necessary, but not sufficient. Another necessary element is changes in consumer and household behaviours, which cannot wait for the long term. In the EU, for example, households account for nearly 20% of total CO 2 emissions (Eurostat 2017). Furthermore, there is a large variation in private households' consumption patterns, which shows that demand-side interventions targeted at private households are indeed promising (Dubois et al. 2019). The largest contributions to CO 2 emissions from private households come from personal transport, thermal energy use, electricity consumption, and accommodation as well as consumption of food and consumer goods and services (Kalbar et al. 2016; Steen-Olsen and Hertwich 2015). Private households can substantially reduce their CO 2 emissions by adopting new or altering the use of in-home and transportation-related technologies or changing consumption patterns related to food and other consumer goods (Gardner and Stern 2008). This special issue focuses on strategies to induce behaviour changes for sustainable consumption in private households and on key motivational and contextual prerequisites. The aim is to provide insights on instruments and prerequisites for radical behaviour changes, for which the included papers draw on a variety of theoretical and methodological angles and approaches. Content-wise, the papers focus on understanding motivational and contextual facilitators and impediments for changing both specific impactful behaviour and broader behaviour changes. The discussed policy interventions span from a broader policy framework
Ecological Economics, 1999
This paper explores the complex relationship between economic consumption and human welfare (or well-being). Conventional economics suggests that increasing levels of economic consumption lead to increasing levels of well-being. However, this view has been criticised on both environmental and social grounds. On the one hand, the material impacts of increasing consumption are environmentally unsustainable. On the other hand, material consumption can conflict with crucial social and psychological components of human welfare. This paper develops a perspective on human welfare which is based on Max-Neef's characterisation of human needs. It discusses the implications of this alternative perspective for the conventional viewpoint and illustrates the importance of it with reference to patterns of consumer expenditure in the UK over the last 40 years. The authors suggest that -from this perspective-modern societies may be seriously adrift in their pursuit of human well-being. However, they also point out that addressing this situation provides far more opportunity for ecologically-sustainable development than is generally recognised.