Consumption, Markets, and Sustainability

Güliz Ger Bilkent University, Ankara

Key findings in consumption studies and implications for

sustainabilityDynamics and logics that construct consumption, including its excesses

Consumption: social mechanisms, dynamics, practicesDiscourses/ideologies that impel and frame consumption Markets & network of market actors

Alternative strategies/trials to generate changes in consumption practices

BeginningConsumerism - masses

Few: Voluntary simplicity (downshifting) and green consumption (buying environmentally friendly alternatives on offer, buying "used" or "pre-owned" products, recycling, sharing, etc. )

The gap between representation and reality: consumer’s choices and preferences

Knowledge-to-action gap

Value-to-action gap

Consumption: Social mechanisms, dynamics,

practicesSocial comparison

Constitution, objectification, and communication of identity and relationships

The fashion cycle and the “Diderot Effect”

Rituals, celebrations, and gift-giving

Everyday routines

Legitimation of excessive consumption

Hedonism and novelty

Desire

Lessons learntIndividual choices and desires are socially constructedConsumers desire to desirePeople seek pleasure AND moralityConsumption serves to deal with and resolve tensions:

To break free versus socialityDifference versus belongingTransgression versus moral conduct

Meanings matterMateriality mattersRoutines are difficult to change but they do changeParticulars matter: particular practice in its particular (socio/political/historical/economic) contextWho’s done it? A network of multiple actors

Discourses, ideologies that impel and frame

consumption “The good life” - prosperity

Consumerism

Normality

Convenience, comfort, cleanliness

The idea of the self: autonomous individual, consumer sovereignty, free choice

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Countervailing discourses can fight against the dominant ones.

Can “sustainability” counter “consumerism”?

Markets & network of market actors

From duty to individual desire

“Products are to satisfy the sovereign consumer; businesses respond to demand”

Cultural intermediaries: media, films, the world of advertising, the world of fashion

Product design and aesthetics

Production and technological innovations

Governments and regulatory bodies

Towards sustainability: What NOT to do

Inform & educate individual consumers and stop there

Put all the responsibility on the consumer

Invite people to adopt sober or austere lifestyles on environmental or moral grounds

Ask people to go on a permanent consumption diet

Define unspecified or confusing goals: ‘‘saving the planet’’ or ‘‘saving energy’’ - ignore what is meaningful in social life and fail to engage with relevant social practices (abstract representations are meaningless unless made specific to the situation at hand)

Circulate ambiguous discourses

Towards sustainability: What to do

1. Mobilize more than one of the market actors: alliances, collaborations

Towards sustainability: What to do

2. Bring relationships & affiliations with other people to the fore

Compare consumers to others like them

Consumers desire what desirable others desire and seek to do what they do; so first convince the desirable others

Towards sustainability: What to try

3. Make sustainable practices alluring: Use the market against the market (jiu jitsu principle)

o Collaborate with the market and cultural intermediaries - fashion industries, media (conventional and social), marketing, movies, etc.

o Present ecological goals as “positive” and “glamorous”

o Frame sustainability itself & sustainable products and services aso Fun, enjoyable, coolo Aesthetically & sensually pleasingo Stylish

ExampleLondon on Tap campaign

Mayor of London and Thames Water and the local utility company

First campaign: price and information on taste, environmental impact, and health unsuccessful Then: ordering tap water in fancy restaurants – a social taboo

A new material object (to replace bottled water): the designer carafe, made from recycled glass, which offered a new means for communicating environmentally sound – and stylish – consumption preferences.Public debate

Another exampleLes Mangeurs - restaurant and food shop in Geneva

locally produced and seasonal foods and beveragesMembers sign on to the program to receive seasonal vegetables on a monthly basis When customers accept what is provided by the local farmers and seasons, this is a way of freeing up people’s time: rather than thinking about what to eat and shopping in stores to prepare meals, the ingredients in the basket dictate what food will be prepared – which reframes ‘‘individual freedom of choice’’ as time-consuming and burdensome.

(Sahakian and Wilhite 2014)

Towards sustainability: What to try

4. “Routine busting” – support emergent

innovative practices which might

become routinized and widespread, and

then compete with or even replace the

less sustainable ones

Towards sustainability: What to try

5. Support emergent new social movements

Voluntary creative communitiesE.g. Community supported agriculture

Towards sustainability: What to try

6. Encourage open public communication and debates

civil society, NGOs, public debates on the media

--- Might reinforce countervailing discourses ---

And, of course:

Encourage eco-technological innovations: to increase energy and raw material efficiencies

Encourage eco-design innovations: designing products for repair, reuse, renovation, remanufacturing, and as a last resort, recycling

THANK YOU!

ger@bilkent.edu.tr