Description
Book SynopsisThis open access book seeks to understand why we consume as we do, how consumption changes, and why we keep consuming more and more, despite the visible damage we are doing to the planet. The chapters cover both the stubbornness of unsustainable consumption patterns in affluent societies and the drivers of rapidly increasing consumption in emerging economies. They focus on consumption patterns with the largest environmental footprints, including energy, housing, and mobility and engage in sophisticated ways with the theoretical frontiers of the field of consumption research, in particular on the ‘practice turn’ that has come to dominate the field in recent decades. This book maps out what we know about consumption, questions what we take for granted, and points us in new directions for better understanding—and changing—unsustainable consumption patterns.
Table of ContentsPart I: Introduction
Foreword: Remembering Hal Wilhite
Rick Wilk
1. Consumption, sustainability and everyday life
Arve Hansen and Kenneth Bo Nielsen
2. Capitalism, consumption, and the transformation of everyday life: The political economy of social practices
Arve Hansen
Part II: Energy, technology and everyday consumption
3. Household Energy Practices in Low-energy Buildings: A qualitative Study of Klosterenga Ecological Housing Cooperative
Karina Standal, Harold Wilhite, and Solvår Wågø
4. Solar water heating: informing decarbonization policy by listening to the users
Mithra Moezzi, Harold Wilhite, Loren Lutzenhiser, and Françoise Bartiaux
5. Sufficiency in China’s energy provision. A service understanding of sustainable consumption and production
Marius Korsnes
6. Practices, provision and protest: Power outages in rural Norwegian households
Ulrikke Wethal
Part III Consuming mobility
7. The rise and fall of the ‘people's car’: middle-class aspirations, status and mobile symbolism in ‘New India’ Kenneth Bo Nielsen and Harold Wilhite
8. Practical aeromobilities: making sense of environmentalist air-travel
Johannes Volden and Arve Hansen
Part IV: Wellbeing and sustainable consumption
9. Everyday life and how it changes: studying ‘sustainable wellbeing’ with students during a pandemic
Marlyne Sahakian
10. Towards sustainable transport practices in a coastal community in Norway. Insights from human needs and social practice approaches
Mònica Guillén-Royo, Amsale Temesgen, Bjørn Vidar Vangelsten
11. Value Mapping: Practical Tools for Wellbeing and Sustainable Consumption
Chris Butters and Ove Jakobsen
Part V: Making consumption more sustainable
12. Can economics help to understand, and change, consumption behaviour?
Desmond McNeill
13. Towards sustainable consumption: reflections on the concepts of social loading, excess, and idle capacity
Dale Southerton and Alan Warde
Afterword: Capitalism, climate, consumption and Corona
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
