Power and Politics in Sustainable Consumption Research and Practice

With growing awareness of environmental deterioration, atmospheric pollution and resource depletion, the last several decades have brought increased attention and scrutiny to global consumption levels. However, there are significant and well documented limitations associated with current efforts to encourage more sustainable consumption patterns, ranging from informational and time constraints to the highly individualizing effect of market-based participation. This volume, featuring essays solicited from experts engaged in sustainable consumption research from around the world, presents empirical and theoretical illustrations of the various means through which politics and power influence (un)sustainable consumption practices, policies and perspectives. With chapters on compelling topics including collective action, behaviour-change and the transition movement, the authors discuss why current efforts have largely failed to meet environmental targets and explore promising directions for research, policy and practice. Featuring contributions that will help the reader open up politics and power in ways that are accessible and productive and bridge the gaps with current approaches to sustainable consumption, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable consumption and the politics of sustainability.

List of FiguresList of TablesAuthor BiographiesIntroductionPower, Politics and Unsustainable Consumption Lucie Middlemiss, Cindy Isenhour, Mari MartiskainenSection I: On Political Economy and Sustainable ConsumptionA Consuming Globalism: On Power and the Post-Paris Agreement Politics of Climate and ConsumptionCindy IsenhourPractice Does Not Make Perfect: Sustainable Consumption, Practice Theory and the Question of PowerDennis SoronSources of Power for Sustainable Consumption: Where to LookDoris Fuchs, Sylvia Lorek, Antonietta Di Giulio, Rico Defila Section II: On Governmentality and the Notion of the Subject in Sustainable Consumption Pro-environmental Behaviour Change and Governmentality: Counter-Conduct and the Making up of Environmental IndividualsTom Hargreaves Freedom, Autonomy and Sustainable Behaviours: The Politics of Designing Consumer Choice Tobias Gumbert The ‘Double Dividend’ Discourse in Sustainable Consumption: A Critical CommentaryLucie Middlemiss, David Wingate and Anna WesselinkSection III: On the Politics of Identity and Difference in Sustainable ConsumptionHousing as a Function of Consumption and Production in the United KingdomMari Martiskainen Power and Politics in the (Work-Life) Balance: A Mixed Methods Evaluation of the Risks and Rewards of Downshifting Jacob Hammond & Emily Huddart Kennedy Who Participates in Community-Based Sustainable Consumption Projects and Why Does It Matter? A Constructively Critical ApproachManisha Anantharaman, Emily Huddart Kennedy, Lucie Middlemiss and Sarah BradburyIndex

Cindy Isenhour is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and in the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, USA. Mari Martiskainen is a Research Fellow at Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, UKLucie Middlemiss is Associate Professor in Sustainability, and Co-director of the Sustainability Research Institute, in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Leeds, UK.