Global_Environmental_Change_12_2002_513Consumption_human_needs

Global Environmental Change 12 (2002) 5–13

Consumption, human needs, and global environmental change

Richard Wilk*

Anthropology Department, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 USA

Abstract

Rapidly increasing levels of consumption ofmaterials, energy, and services are one of the fundamental drivers of global and local

environmental change. Yet consumption is still a poorly understood phenomenon and the social, cultural, economic, and

psychological variables that determine consumption have not been clearly identified. Effective policymaking and prediction is

impossible without knowing what determines and changes consumption levels. Diverse social-scientific models of consumption

are largely incommensurate, poorly articulated, and untested. Rather than argue for one fundamental cause, this author reviews a

number of alternative theoretical approaches, and then proposes a heterodox ‘‘multigenic’’ theory based on the work of

Pierre Bourdieu. Such a theory accepts multiple types of causes of consumption, operating at different analytical levels, from

the individual, through household, community, and ultimately to nations and other groups. Factors impelling and

restraining consumption can therefore be balanced or unbalanced by relatively minor changes in a large number of interrelated

Keywords: Consumption; Consumer culture; Social change; Human needs

1. Introduction

Awide varietyof scholars andactivists have identified modern mass consumer society as a fundamental driver of both global economic growth and environmental damage (Redclift, 1996; Stern et al., 1997). The spread of high-level consumption practices across the planet has the potential to dramatically increase human impacts on both local and global resources, and contribute to continuing climate change (Myers, 1997; Wilk, 1998). Direct consumption of food, water, construction materials, energy and other renewable and nonrenewable resources is the easiest to track and quantify. Indirect consumption also has major impact on the environment; extraction, production, disposal and transportation of goods are linked together in complex ‘commodity chains’ that can make it very difficult to assess the full environmental effects of even common and everyday products like coffee and running shoes (Ryan and Durning, 1997). Nevertheless, the WorldWildlife Foundation estimates that the consump- tion of resources and consequent pollution are currently increasing by around 2 per cent per year (WWF, 1999).

On a global basis the demand for consumer goods is not a simple consequence of income levels. Economic historians now argue that consumer demand has historically been highly variable, and is a fundamental cause of economic growth, rather than a consequence of it (Mukerji, 1983; Tiersten, 1993; Belk, 1995). It is also apparent that populations at the same income levels can have drastically different levels of environmental im- pact, consuming different bundles of resources, using different mixes of energy resources, and emitting widely varyingamountsof greenhouse gases.For these reasons, consumption is a key issue in both predicting future environmental change, and in formulating policies that can lead towards sustainable resource use (Cohen and Murphy, 2001). Environmental scientists should also be concerned

with issues of consumption because they have become a key element in international dialogue about environ- mental change, and a major obstacle to effective international agreements that could control resource use and emissions. The dramatic differences in con- sumption between rich and poor countriesFsome have estimated that during a lifetime one US citizen represents 200 times the environmental impact of a child born in a country like MozambiqueFraise obvious questions about the equity of global agree- ments. When people in developing countries hear

*Tel.: +1-812-855-8162; fax: +1-812-855-4358.

E-mail address: [email protected] (R. Wilk).

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scientists decry global warming, what they hear is ‘‘you’re going to have to stay poor to save the planet’’ (Camacho, 1995). For these reasons, there is an urgent need for useful

and comprehensive theoretical work that will help us understand the forces that drive increasing consump- tion, anddevelop policies andprograms that can lead to more stable and sustainable consumption levels (Mi- chaelis, 2000). Yet there are presently no unifying theories of consumption in the social sciences, though there are many useful ideas scattered around a number of disciplines. In this paper I point out several reasons why existing theories of the dynamics of increased consumption are so incomplete and incoherent, based on my broad (though hardly comprehensive) reading about consumption in a number of disciplines. I identify three major paradigms within consumption theory, and suggest that eachhas its own limitations.Then Ipropose a pragmatic approach to understanding the continuing growth of needs and desires, whichmay transcend some of the limitations of previous approaches. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s practice theory, I sketch a multigenic model, which assumes that a diversity of causes both impel and restrain the expansion of consumption. Such a model provides a number of opportunities for regulation, activism, and communication that can change the direction of change in consumption beha- vior. By pursuing consumption policy more directly, environmental and social scientists can have a major impact on the future of the environment though influencing regulation, policy, education, and markets. But the existing tools for understanding and acting on consumption are incomplete and contradictory.

2. Three paradigms

There have been several excellent reviews of con- sumption theory recently, which note the diversity and complexity of work in a number of disciplines (e.g. Berger, 1992;Miller, 1994). I have reduced this diversity into three basic categories for the sake of clarity (based onamore thorough treatment inWilk, 1996). Each type of theory is grounded in fundamental (and untested) assumptions about human nature, and is connected to deep philosophical issues about the causes of human behavior, as well as methodologies for studying people. This iswhy it is so important to bring these assumptions out and make them clear at the beginning. Individual choice theories seek the basis for con-

sumption within the individual, through the mechanism of the satisfaction of needs. Psychological approaches may trace needs to the process of personality formation, early family interactions, and the actualization of adulthood. Consumption may then be cast as either pathological aberration or healthy means of objectifica-

tion and individuation. A classic example is thework of Csikszentimihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981) which assigns a number of psychological functions to middle- class consumer goods, including self-expression,making a personal history, and providing security. From this standpoint, people need goods in anonymous and stressful modern societies in order to remain healthy and happy. Their basic needs are extended to new objects because of the pressure of advertising, which associates consumer goods with sex, status, self-respect and other fundamental human drives. Other scholars have used similar psychological

theories to develop a distinction between individualist and collectivist cultures (e.g.Hofstede, 1980; Aaker and Williams, 1998). This psychological work converges with the recent spate of post-modern and reflexive theories of consumption, which concentrate on sub- jectivity, experience, identity and selfhood, and the creative and playful potential of consumer culture (e.g. Brown and Turley, 1997; Lash and Urry, 1994). The more materialist and economic branch of indivi- dual/choice theory is based on ideas of rational choice and maximization of utility found in economics and economic psychology. Here people consume to max- imize short-term satisfactions derived directly from goods themselves, though the model has been extended to include services, and the non-material satisfactions of social life, citizenship, and charity (Becker, 1981). Rational-choice theorists assume that consumption is the product of individual choice, driven by an internal hierarchy of needs. To summarize; individual choice theories are primarily

concerned with consumption as needs-driven behavior. Needs areproduced internal psychological andcognitive processes, leading to choices within a marketplace of possibilities. For adults, therefore, advertising and media should be seenmainly as a source of information, whichpeoplemayuse tomakedecisions, andpersuasion that plays on basic psychological needs. But because children are still forming their personalities and needs, and lack the ability to tell good information from bad, they are seen as especially vulnerable to the media, and some form of protection is therefore needed. Social theories of consumption see consumption as a

group phenomenon, a form of collective behavior that helps formgroups and signalmembership (Burrows and Marsh, 1992). Many social theories can be traced back to Thorstein Veblen, who thought that consumption was motivated by social competition and emulation; people use goods for display in modern society because their social roles are no longer strictly prescribed by birth, class, and social standing. In traditional society people consumed according to their rank and social place. Free of fixed social positions, people now consume competitively, endlessly trying to acquire status by emulating those with more wealth and power.

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The underlying assumption is that desire for social distinction and social solidarity are a part of human nature, part of what makes it possible for us to live in groups, and that consumption seeks (unsuccessfully) to satisfy these needs. Therefore, when social structure changes, so will needs and consumption. Bourdieu (1984) has done the most to develop social theories of consumption, arguing that consumption reflects under- lying groups of tastes and style that hold social classes together. Logically, in any society where there is social differentiation, consumptionwill have an important role in asserting or challenging rank and status (see Holt, 1998). To summarize; social theories reveal the ways that

consumption serves to maintain and challenge the boundaries of social groups, including nations, classes, genders, and ethnic groups. Consumption is a social code, and people consume to fit in or to stand out (Simmel, 1904). Concepts like status, lifestyles, and standards of living are all based on social thinking, which equates particular patterns of consumption with specific groups. From this perspective, the role of the media is to reflect group characteristics, providing images that reinforce identities and provide reference groups, though people also choose media that fit their group characteristics. Advertising can manipulate these roles, by encouraging emulation of higher status groups, and associating brands and styles with particular social groups. Cultural theorists see consumption as a form of

symbolic behavior that creates and expresses meaning and identity (Holbrook, 1991; Douglas and Isherwood, 1979). This includes a semiotic approach in which commodities are seen as complex texts and forms of discussion (Baudrillard, 1998). Some cultural theorists, particularly in cultural studies, emphasize the playful, creative, and expressive aspects of consumption (Mack- ay, 1997). Others are far more critical of the role consumptionplays in culture, emphasizing theways that consumer culture displaces traditional forms of cultural expression, leading consumers into endless spirals of unhappiness and narcissistic spending (Schor, 1992). Some authors argue that consumer society is a new cultural form, produced and manipulated by small cultural and corporate elites, so it is inherently oppressive and dangerous. A broader comparative anthropological approach proposes that all people, in every kind of society, consume because it creates cultural order, expresses ideas, or helps make sense out of novel circumstances, marking cosmological and temporal categories that make cultural meaning out of diverse experience (Weiss, 1996; Seremetakis, 1994; Douglas and Isherwood, 1979). The underlying assump- tion of all cultural theories is that human beings are expressive, symbolic beings, whose greatest need is to understand each other and the world. Within any

particular culture, consumption follows historically established themes andmeanings, andnewconsumption practices must be adapted locally into this order. One cause of expanding consumption is therefore the erosion of local customs and cultural systems, which leaves people feeling unrooted and empty (Ewen, 1988), and therefore vulnerable to all kinds of novel appeals. To summarize; cultural theories depict consumption

as an expressive act, laden with meaning. People use goods to communicate toothers, to express feelings, and to create a culturally ordered environment. Most theorists argue that in modern societies, mass consumer goods bought in the market have increasingly displaced local, indigenous, creative rituals, objects, and mean- ings. Terms like ideology, semiotics, custom, and worldview are hallmarks of a cultural approach. From this perspective, the mass media are themselves cultural creations that reflect a worldview, but can also displace local cultural expressions with national or global ones. People may resist by appropriating or challenging mass media as well. Advertising does the opposite, hijacking cultural themes and meanings in order to make particular goods and services desirable.

3. Policy implications of the three models

To give an illustration of the three models in action, consider the example of the sports utility vehicles so beloved in North America, a fleet of vehicles that many critics consider emblematic of profligate waste and unsustainability.Eachapproachbeginswith aparticular theory of behavior, which provides both a frame for research and understanding of the consumption of SUVs, and the choice of an appropriate set of policy tools. For an individual choice theorist, the best way to

explain the popularity of SUVs is to find the attributes of these vehicles that satisfyparticular needs, oftenusing survey methods. It would not take very much research to find that drivers overwhelmingly cite safety as their main concern, followed by roominess and comfort, in carrying passengers and cargo. One could also point to the harsh climate in the USA, as well as urban sprawl and long commuting distances as key environmental factors that make an SUV a rational choice. Recent data from the insurance industry would support consumers’ contention that large SUVs are indeed safer for their drivers (though not for those in the vehicles they hit). From this diagnosis of the problem, individual choice

theory leads us in two possible directions for policy- making. The first is to change the environment within which consumersmake choices; for instancewemight in the short term raise taxes on large vehicles or fuel, and in the long run seek changes in transportation regulation

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and urban planning thatwouldmake public transporta- tionamoreviable safe alternative, or carsmore efficient. The second direction would involve educating consu- mers with information that would change their choices (the likelihood of large size actually saving their life is actually very low), or their values (should comfort be more important than the global environment?). Social marketing, such as public-service advertising or journal- ism, would be prescribed. For a social theorist, the problem of SUVs is larger

thanany individual; it is an essential productof a society with abundant but unequally distributed wealth and high levels of social competition, in which automobiles have been the favorite status symbol for almost a century. A study might look carefully at the demogra- phy of SUV ownership, in order to identify the trendsetters and the laggards in a process of social diffusion driven by competition. Are there particular demographic trends that are leading to a growing market? And at what moments in their life are consumers most likely to purchase an SUV? A social diagnosis is likely to prescribe a set of

solutions specific to social groups. Just as advertisers pitch SUVs differently to different ‘‘market segments’’, so policy will have to focus on issues specific to social subgroups. One could then use status competition in a positive way, using marketing to associate small hybrid cars with members of status groups that are emulated, including the wealthy, media stars, and professional classes (Hansen and Schrader, 1997). Contests for efficiency could promote alternative vehicles, while shaming can be aimed at the wasteful. Beyond this micro-level, however, social theories tend to suggest that truly effective policies will be those that reduce social inequality and therefore social competition. In the long run, broader access to higher education, transfer payments, progressive taxation, and the like should reduce the importance of status symbols. Health, environmental, welfare, and other social policies can all be expected to have an impact on consumption, and could be audited and changed to promote more sustainable practices. At their most extreme, however, some social theorists insist that only revolutionary change in the structure of capitalism can halt the expansion of consumption, a policy recommendation that is not likely to have broad appeal.

Cultural theories would offer yet another diagnosis of the SUV, probably based on interviews with consumers and advertisers, historical research, and a detailed symbolic reading of advertisements and other media. A cultural analysis might find that the North American middle class has longbeen swayedby romanticmyths of independent and self-sufficient nuclear families, and both the control of and closeness to nature. The SUV allows consumers to weave together old stories in new ways; and realize contradictory dreams without com-

promising any of them. They can go anywhere in the rugged wilderness, without giving up their comfort, as the modern masters of nature. Dad can dream of a hunting trip, mom can keep the family safe on the way to soccer practice, and the kids can watch TV in the back seat. The SUV is a symbol of the American cornucopia of abundance, a just reward for hard work and Christian virtue. What kinds of policies result froma cultural analysis?

It follows from the diagnosis that any real change in consumption practices is going to require a transforma- tion of values and beliefs. At the local and immediate level, a social marketing campaign could link hybrid vehicles or bicycles to existing important cultural themes like frugality, thrift, and health. Public appeals could emphasize the contradiction between broadly accepted environmental values and the proliferation of SUVs, or their high gas consumption could be linked to depen- dence on foreign energy supplies, building on existing American xenophobia. In the long run, broad cultural change towards values of frugality and sustainability will not result from social marketing, but from educa- tion and small group interaction built around cultural activism. This requires sustained effort at changing school curricula inmany subjects, and support for grass- roots movements like the ‘‘simple living groups’’ and ‘‘sustainability circles’’ that now attract about a half million participants in North America. They use variants of the ‘‘12-step’’ technique to get participants to ‘‘reprogram’’ their cultural values and behavior. This is bynomeans an exhaustive analysis of theSUV

issue, nor does it do any more than scratch the surface on the links between consumption theories and policy tools. What I intend is simply to show that each theory has something important to offer, and none can be rejected logically or empirically. At the same time each one is flawed and partial, and uses only particular kinds of methods, data, and information, while ignoring others. Adherents of one theoretical tradition tend to belittle or ignore research and recommendations that result from the others; in the process they eliminate policy alternatives and actions without any empirical justification. These blind spots, and contention between experts leaves little firm social science support for policyFyou can find an ‘‘expert’’ to support or attack almost any recommendation. The result is thatwe really do not really know what works. Worse, we don’t know why some actions work only in certain settings, and not in others. Given the terrible urgency of global environ- mental problems, why should we reject any possibility thatmaybe effective in the interest of theoretical purity? To some extent these problems cut across all the

social sciences, which are still divided on issues as basic as the goals of science and the existence of truth (Mazlish, 1998). But major environmental problems cannot wait for a grand unified theory of social science

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to emerge. Instead, a pragmatic pluralist approachmust draw on whatever tools can work, recognizing that different explanations for consumptionmay be useful in the right circumstances. If our explanatory models do not have to carry the weight of a philosophical position on human nature, or a moral agenda, the problems of consumer behavior may become much more tractable. Some empirical studies of consumer behavior, especially those done by historians and in marketing, abjure any explicit theory, and instead claim a sort of inductive empiricism.Rather than reject theory, and adopt purely inductive approaches, I would argue it is far better to develop meta-theoretical rules or guidelines that would specify which models are useful in which empirical situations. The result would be a heterodox multigenic theory, which accepts that there are multiple determi- nants of consumption, operating at different conceptual and analytical levels, from the individual, through the household, community, and ultimately to nations and larger groups.

4. Broadening theory

One of the most difficult problems in understanding the causes and consequences of consumption is the issue of scale. Most of the negative consequences of con- sumption appear at high levels of aggregation, when we are thinkingabout the emissions or resources of a region or nation.

1,2 From this perspective, consumption levels

are a characteristic of a population. At the same time, the prevailing models and theories that attempt to explain consumption operate at the level of the individual consumer, and define various social, cultural, and economic forces that act to create a particular set of preferences, needs, and desires. There is an enormous gap in between, which has received far too little attention in the literature. Individual choices in the marketplace are limited and channeled inmanyways by institutions, infrastructure, regulations, andmarkets.As a simple example, the infrastructure, markets, and settlement patterns of the American suburbs makes it extremely difficult for anyone to choose a mode of transportationother than thepersonal gasoline-powered automobile (Shove et al., 1998). A whole series of

institutions mediate between individual choices and environmental consequences, and each has its own dynamic and appropriate analytical tools. It is appro- priate to focus on households to understand fertility, while a class analysis would be more useful with competitive luxury consumption among the very wealthy (Frank, 1999). This implies that consumption is the complex product

of balances between very diverse force, multigenic in the sense of having many causes, and dynamic in that diverse causes are linked in multiple and complex ways. Dynamism requires an understanding of both forces that impel consumption, and those which restrain it. To a large extent these restraints and limits have been invisible in literature onmodern consumerism, except in the gross and inadequate form of wages or income, which are treated as the only absolute constraint on consumption by economists. Restraints on consumption are an everyday experi-

ence, though they rarely appear in consumer theory. In my rural neighborhood, certain forms of competition and display, for example Christmas lights, are quite acceptable and are even considered sociable. Other forms of consumption, for example of alcohol in outdoor parties, are unacceptable and would be greeted with social approbation, gossip, subtle acts of non- cooperation and other pressure. All children in Amer- ican society learn about the importance of conformity and restraint, and the social dangers of standing out. The Mayan village where I have lived in the Central American rainforest worked in exactly the same way to shape consumption with both incentives and disincen- tives. Anthropologists working in rural communities often discuss the balance between ambition and fear of envy (or witchcraft and other social sanctions) in constraining both consumption and work effort. While community restrictions and other public social controls on incentives and allocation of resources are certainly different in urban industrialized societies, they are hardly absent. Some have shifted from the neighbor- hood and ethnic group into the household and family, where sociologists find powerful restraints on spending and consumption within the dynamics of gender and kinship in marriage and parental relationships (Zelizer, 1994; Folbre, 1994). Restraints have tended to be a silent shadow of

consumption in modern theory, partially because of the common perception that consumer society is ‘out of control’’ and unregulated. Yet the majority of people still live in orderly communities, and consume within relatively narrow limits, constrained by subtle pressures and social conventions that appear externally only as the failure or refusal to consider alternatives. Studies of decision-making in the purchase of houses, for example, show that the majority of choices are exclusions, as consumers jointly decide what kinds of features are

1 This discussionof scale andaggregation is basedalmost entirely on

the work of Josiah Heyman (1999), who has done groundbreaking

work on consumption and the environment. 2 Needs andwants can be treated as consumption frontiers. If needs

are an accepted social standard of living, wants are types of

consumption that are beyond that frontier, and are seen as individual

propensities or options. The area between wants and needs includes

conceivable or desirable practices and objects that have not yet been

absorbed into daily life. We can then usefully portray the dynamics of

consumption changeas the emergenceofnewwants, transformationof

wants into needs, and the eventual elimination of needs (following

Sanne, 1995).

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unacceptable (Park, 1982). A dynamic theory of consumption should therefore focus more attention on limits, andon the institutions, impulses, understandings, and meanings that enforce or sustain them. The most fertile ground for intervention and policy making may well lie in finding ways to elaborate or bolster existing constraints on consumption, rather than in creating new ones or manipulating incentives. Encouraging aversions and distastes may be more effective than changing desires or perceptions of need (Wilk, 1997).

5. An example

Here I would like to sketch an example of how a dynamic and heterodox theory could be constructed, at the level of individual choice and social rules. I have adapted the ‘theory of practice’ proposed by Bourdieu (1977) to suggest that the transformation of desires into needs takes place through the interaction between individual choices and social rules. The growth of new ‘needs’ is a key aspect of the increases in consumption in modern society, aswhatwere once luxuries (for example air conditioning) become necessities (Illich, 1977). But we cannot explain the growth of new needs simply through the analysis of individual psychology, or some entirely social process, taking place in groups. We need to link different levels of analysis, using tools from different social sciences. The problem Bourdieu (1977) addressed was the idea

of social rules. In classical sociology, individual behavior is a product of social rules and standards, butwhere did the rules come from in the first place?How is it possible for the rules to change?According toBourdieu, rules do not determine behavior in a rigid or programmed way, because they exist at a number of levels. They may be either explicit and subject to debate or unconscious; the most deeply unconscious ‘‘doxic’’ habits regulate things like disgust and comfortFthey are actually absorbed into the human body as feelings. Other parts of the ‘‘doxa’’ are the taken-for-granted rules of common sense, which we never question. Then there are less deeply submerged norms and rules of conduct that are respected, but are also subject to dispute andmanipula- tion, which are sometimes written into law. The whole realm of the unconscious, patterned set of

rules and feelings that guide behavior is called the ‘‘habitus’’ by Bourdieu. But it is not static. Social rules, predispositions, common sense and even embodied feelings can all change when they are brought out of the habitus, into the daily world of speech, debate, manipulation, and argument. When people start to talk and argue about what is right, and how rules should be interpreted, rules are subject to manipulation, evasion, and multiple interpretations. Eventually they can become re-established as truth and finally sink back

into the accepted daily practice of the habitus, but they can also change in subtle ways through re-interpreta- tion, or they can be challenged, rejected, or replaced. Consumption standards can be seen the sameway, since standards of consumption, of needs and comfort, are just like other kinds of social rules. They can be deeply embedded in bodily routine, so that for example we no longer ‘feel clean’ unlesswebathe everyday.Or they can becomeobjects of debate and argument;wemight argue with a spouse about whether or not we ‘really need’ a fancy cell phone with a color screen. Again starting with the practice theory of Bourdieu

and related work by Falk (1994), an individual experiences needs as part of the habitus, the taken-for- granted of nature and cosmology. Thus, when a Jamaican ‘‘needs’’ rice and peas at a meal in order to feel full and satisfied, she is drawing on the bodily experience of doxa; needs are felt, not spoken. Butwhen the same Jamaican sings a song about her national pride in rice andpeas as the national dish of the country, need has moved from the realm of the habitus into the conscious and contested area of discussion that Bour- dieu calls ‘‘heterodoxy.’’Now taste canbediscussed and debated; and this happens only when the daily diet of rice and peas is being challenged in new environments and by changing markets that make fast foods a cheap alternative. When any kind of consumption emerges fromthehabitus intoheterodoxy,when it is debatedand argued about and has to be justified or explained, it becomes a ‘‘want,’’ a contested need, and it can be successfully challenged.

5.1. The habitus

I am proposing an approach to consumption that focuses on the cycle throughwhich needs are questioned or challenged, emerging from the space of the habitus into heterodoxy, where they can be debated, expanded, modified, and reframed as ‘‘wants’’, before becoming established in the habitus as new needs, or rejected and repressed. While generations of social scientists have remarked on the ratchet-like way that wants gradually become emplaced as needs (the rising standard of living), they have given the process little serious empirical study (exceptions include Sanne, 1995 and Shove, 2001). Instead they focus on the way that new wants are generated and cultivated in a marketplace through advertising, spectacle, and mass media, as a consequence of modernity. They miss the key counter- movement that naturalizes wants as needs, takes them outof contention, andembodies themas taste, urge, and impulse, while reducing or eliminating others (a gallon of beer a day was considered a ‘basic need’ for working men just a century ago). While the pace and expanse of the cycle of habitus

and heterodoxy has certainly increased dramatically

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under modern conditions, there is no reason to believe that the underlying process has changed. Insteadwe can think of the rate of expansion of existing needs, and the generation of new ones as a product of the changing balance between two general processes.

5.2. Naturalization

The first can be called ‘‘naturalization’’, encompass- ing many forms of social control. For analytical purposes, it comes in two characteristic forms. The first, submersive naturalization maintains the status quo by keeping needs submerged (or buried) in the habitus where they are only partially accessible, by continually asserting that the existing order is natural. It is not hard to see how ritual, group work experience, and child socialization, as well as silencing acts and emotions of embarrassment or shame can naturalize particular needs. When you cannot even express your desire, much less act on it, or where there seems to be no name for what you want, you are facing submersive naturalization.

Repressive naturalization is the second kind; it pushes wants and desires into the status of needs, by legitimiz- ing them, linking them to existing needs, or stigmatizing alternatives. Acts of aggression or violence may accompany repressive naturalization, but the more pervasive forms include displays of power, gossip and slander, and repetition. The goal is often to make some practice unthinkable, while making others seem ‘‘nor- mal’’. Fear certainly plays a role in repression, but often pressures are much more subtle and pervasive or are instilled throughhabit.AMayamanonce toldmeabout his first encounter with shoes when hewent to school in a nearby town where he was the only Indian. His schoolmates laughed at his bare feet, and gradually he got into the habit of wearing shoes; by the time I met him he thought that going barefoot was unhealthy and disgusting. Repressive naturalization disciplines us not to question our needs, but acts of rebellion and resistance can successfully resist repressive naturaliza- tion. In my recent research on children’s food habits, I have seen struggles with parents over the question of whether eatingmeat is ‘natural,’ and sometimes children win and develop a new definition of a normal diet.

5.3. Cultivation

The opposite process to naturalization is cultivation, which extends, and expands existing needs in new directions, bringing bodily experience into open dis- course, display, debate andcontention. Somecultivation takes place in every society as an aspect of socialization and aging, as children learn new tastes and needs for each stage of life, social position, and gender role. Some

forms of ritual, for example rites of passage, cultivate new needs at the same time as they repress old ones. Other kinds of cultivation emerge from what Bour-

dieu calls ‘‘praxis’’, the improvisational and pragmatic action of everyday life faced with constant problem solving and changing technology. Most praxis plays within established cultural rules, poses no challenge to the established order, and passes unmarked. But some- times people find new ways of doing thingsFchanging theway a tool is used, or trying out a new kind of food, which then challenge common sense. In these cases, changing behavior involves more than choice and decision; it requires a change in the habitus. Accepted ways of doing things have to be discussed, adapted, and rationalized anew. This is merely a sketch of how a dynamic and

multigenic theory of consumptionmight be constructed. Bourdieu’s theory of practice is a starting point for considering the interaction between processes embedded in individual psychology and rationality, in cultural systems of meaning and communication, and social institutions and economic structures. One can see how, starting with this perspective, it would be possible to trace the ways a policy intervention, for example improved appliance labeling, leads to a change in peoples’ habits and culture, as well as (or instead of) in their immediate purchasing behavior. We could classify forms of consumption into those deeply embedded in daily bodily practice (showering daily for example) and those that are subject to question and debate, and are more easily changed (air conditioning the whole house). By implication, long-term effective solutions to environmental problems caused by con- sumption have to take place at the level of perceived needs, and eventually in daily praxis. Strategies for this kind of change have to follow cycles of cultivation and naturalization. Therefore, we urgently need to develop some testable models of the ways social, psychological, and communicative practices can naturalize new prac- tices and understandings.

6. Implications and applications

What does thismean for the practitioner, particularly those engaged with environmental policy, interested in finding ways to reduce energy and material consump- tion?Onone handmyargumentsmay seem tomake the prospect of effective intervention far more complex and difficult than simply taxing carbon or mandating recycling. But so far many clear and simple solutions have proven impossible to implement, and others have had almost no effect on the upward trajectory of North American consumption. Seen in anotherway, themodel of a dynamic of pushes and pulls, of interplay between habitus and praxis, could be an opportunity to find new

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kinds of policy tools andmeans of influencing behavior. One could, for example, think aboutways to strengthen existing restraints rather than providing overt disin- centives like tax increases, or legal restrictions, which often do not effectively limit consumption.Amultigenic modelmakes available topolicymakers amuchbroader range of tools, that do not just operate by affecting individual choices, but also through changing social groups andboundaries, and cultural systemsofmeaning and value.

7. A concluding example

Bank (1997) provides an example that can be used to show the importance of amultigenic approach to energy consumption. Inpoor townships of SouthAfrican cities, kerosene continues to be the principal fuel used for cooking, despite frequent dangerous fires and the availability of safer gas and electricity.

3 Bank connects

the choice to continue to use kerosene, despite its costs and dangers, to a wide range of cultural, social, and economic aspects of the townshipswhere sheworked. In local culture, for example, buying, selling and using kerosene are considered women’s work, while men are more involved in providing and paying for electricity and gas. Men resist a shift away from kerosene because it increases their obligation to the family budget; many women prefer kerosene because they can obtain it informally throughborrowing from friendswhen cash is short. Kerosene is culturally embedded through the local cuisine, in which the favorite staple dishes are cooked slowly over a very low flame. Economic aspects other than total cost also favor kerosene, since it can be burned in cheaper stoves, and it can be bought and stored in small bottles and cans, fitting into a cash-poor economy with irregular employment opportunities. Bank’s analysis makes a clear distinction between the

kinds of tactical choices people make in their everyday lives, within the constraints of gender, social organiza- tion, and ideology, and their strategic efforts to change what I have called the habitus, the taken-for-granted arrangements that structure choice. While the paper stops short ofmaking useful policy recommendations, it does point to changes in marriage practices and house- hold budget arrangements that are providing openings for changes from kerosene to electricity in cooking. From the same analysis, it is not hard to see how technical changes in stoves and appliances, pricing of

fuels, or the provision of day-care facilities could all be incentives to reduce the use of kerosene. In its analytical breadth, the study invites creative thinking about awide variety of linkages between fuel use and other social activities.

7.1. Linkages

A multigenic model therefore offers the prospect of linking consumer policy, often confined to practical realms of price and utility, to much broader social and political policy issues. Within a specific empirical context, a multigenic analysis could justify connecting energy consumption behavior to gender relations within the family, community governance institutions, health and nutrition, or property development regulations. While many may consider such interventions to be outside the range of environmental policy interventions, governments are already deeply involved in consumer policy-making in all of these areas. They just do not usually consider these sorts of policies to have any relevance to the environment. Because of the theoretical problems I have identified

above, and also because of poor communication among disciplines and approaches, social scientists have tended to ignore or criticize theories or methodologies with which they are unfamiliar or uncomfortable. It is easier to reject other approaches than it is to acknowledge the importance of areas outside one’s own expertise, or problems that are not answerablewith the kinds of data or methods one is used to working with. But as I have argued, the reality of consumer behavior requires broad approaches that do not assume, a priori, what kinds of variables and what kinds of knowledge or data or analyses are going to be fruitful. Instead of contending paradigms, we have to work to find out how different social and environmental sciences can truly complement each other. Onlymulti-disciplinary teamswithbroadmandates to

gather diverse kinds of data, able towork together using a variety of analytical models and theoretical tools, would be capable of carrying out the necessary research. Rather that beginning with a narrow definition of a problem to be solved with a pre-selected policy intervention, they would have to progressively redefine their problem and consider a broad range of policy alternatives. Such a team would have to include quantitative and qualitative researchers, willing to do multi-level research, and spend a great deal of time learning to effectively communicate with each other. Ultimately, a multigenic theory can provide a basis

for broad multi-stranded policy solutions to conserving and lowering consumption of energy. While many countries and international organizations have in practice adopted such mixed strategies, in practice they are often seen as contending methods, rather than

3 Bank asserts that electric and gas fuels are cheaper than kerosene,

as part of her argument against economic rationality.Yet she does not

consider the costs of appliances or transactions costs, so this assertion

remainsweak.Butwhydoes anargument for the importanceof culture

and social factors have to be built on an argument against economic

rationality? They are not mutually exclusive, except from the

standpoint of theoretical fundamentalism.

R. Wilk / Global Environmental Change 12 (2002) 5–1312

complementary or even synthetic. While the develop- ment and testing of multigenic theories is sure to be complex and difficult, the rewards could therefore be substantial.

Acknowledgements

I thank K. Anne Pyburn, Adriaan Perrels, Willett Kempton and two anonymous reviewers for extremely useful suggestions and comments that helped substan- tially in revising this paper. Important aspects of the paper were developed during discussions with Elizabeth Shove, Hal Wilhite, and other participants in the 1998 Lancaster Workshop on ‘‘Consumption, Everyday Life and Sustainability’’, sponsored by theEuropean Science Foundation, though of course none of them are responsible for this final product. An early version of this paper was presented at the 1999 summer study of theEuropeanCouncil for anEnergyEfficientEconomy.

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R. Wilk / Global Environmental Change 12 (2002) 5–13 13

http://www.library.arizona.edu/ej/jpe/consumpt.htm

http://www.panda.org/livingplanet/lpr99/

Consumption, human needs, and global environmental change

Introduction
Three paradigms
Policy implications of the three models
Broadening theory
An example

The habitus
Naturalization
Cultivation

Implications and applications
A concluding example

Linkages

Acknowledgements
References

14 Afterword Beyond the paradox of the big, bad wolf

Thomas Hylland Eriksen

You and I, lucky enough to be alive at the outset of the third millennium CE, live – objectively speaking – in paradise. This particular ‘you and I’ does not, alas, refer to humanity tout court, but to the richest fifth of the global population, somewhat more than a billion people; us who constitute the global middle and upper classes; we who inhabit the leafy suburbs of the global village, who enjoy a fast internet connection and a remote control for our television set, who ask ourselves what we should have for dinner and daydream about a nice holiday. It is those 20 per cent of us who consume 80 per cent of the world’s wealth, to which category everybody who reads these words, naturally, belongs. Never before in human history or prehistory have so many people had so much – so many things, so many opportunities for partaking in rewarding leisure activities, such good health, so much freedom of choice, such a high life expectancy. Entirely average people enjoy a material standard of living which in most respects surpasses that of the landed aristocracy in the mid-nineteenth century.

It must be conceded that on the whole we do have fewer thoroughbred horses and crystal chandeliers, fewer private chamber orchestras and less silverware than nineteenth-century aristocrats. But at the end of the day, that may not matter so much. In the mid-nineteenth century, statisticians estimated how thick the layer of horse droppings covering the streets of central London would be a century later, provided the current development continued. The scenario was alarming. The pessimists envisioned a future when the preferred footwear for crossing Piccadilly Circus would be wading boots or perhaps stilts. A few years later (in 1864), the Underground opened its first lines, and another few decades later, the horses had become a pure tourist attraction, analogous to the sperm whales of Lofoten (northern Norway) at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The sign had not changed its physical appearance, but suddenly it signified tourist titillation rather than economic utility.

In all earnestness, it must be conceded that we who belong to the global middle class manage pretty well without two hundred crystal glasses and pompous, dusty and impractical chandeliers. Chamber orchestras, naturally, have long since been replaced by affordable Asian stereo systems capable of reproducing music at virtually the same quality as the original, at any time of day or night.

Syse, K. L., & Mueller, M. L. (Eds.). (2014). Sustainable consumption and the good life : Interdisciplinary perspectives. ProQuest Ebook Central <a onclick=window.open('http://ebookcentral.proquest.com','_blank') href='http://ebookcentral.proquest.com' target='_blank' style='cursor: pointer;'>http://ebookcentral.proquest.com</a> Created from latrobe on 2021-05-21 04:45:21.

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Perfectly ordinary people who belong to the global middle class – and it includes the vast majority of West Europeans – live in spectacular luxury, regardless of the basis for comparison. We live in warm, bright, clean and not least spacious dwellings. (In 1946, a two-room unit with a kitchen and a bathroom was considered a functional European family flat.) On the whole, notwithstanding allergies and personal preferences, we can eat whatever we want to. The food is quality controlled and generally tastes good. (It is well known that the animals we sometimes eat do not necessarily lead fulfilling lives, but animals were not necessarily happy in earlier times either.) Thanks to improved methods of production, an inexpensive wine from Australia or South Africa tastes as good as, if not better than, wines imbibed by royalty a couple of centuries ago. In contrast to nineteenth-century aristocrats, we are also able to enjoy the exotic tastes of bananas, oranges and mangoes all year round, in addition to a range of foodstuffs they had never heard of.

Books, to mention another example, have become incredibly cheap. Many cost less than an average hour’s salary, and the selection is unlimited. We can listen to our favourite music whenever we want to, even when the musicians are asleep or dead. When we North Europeans take our four, five or six weeks of annual vacations, millions of us can spend some of them at a pleasant hotel in a remote area. A hundred years ago, Norwegians in general had no holidays; fifty years ago, they went on a camping trip to neighbouring Sweden or Denmark; and by now, Thailand has become a standard destination for a family vacation. By 2013, more than 80 per cent of the Norwegian population went on at least one holiday trip abroad, spending on average two weeks a year in a hotel.

When members of the global middle class have a spare moment, and they often do, since the number of working hours has decreased steadily in the last hundred years, they have many options. Some engage in various leisure activities, from golf to singing in choirs, but they can also be entertained or enlightened by others at whim. Concert halls, cinemas, sports arenas and theatres sell tickets within purchasing range for most, and at home, practically everybody has one or several television sets with a varied selection of enlightening, distracting or entertaining programmes. During the last few years, the internet has also become an important source of entertainment, distraction and enlightenment.

The level of education is increasing, and the proportion of jobs which are hazardous to health or physically exhausting is being reduced (or outsourced) by the year. The number of hours spent on housework among European women has decreased steadily since the Second World War, at the same time as the size of the dwellings has increased.

Moreover, we live longer than earlier generations, including the aristoc- racy, which had a tendency of dying halfway through life from consumption or broken hearts. This is also the case with the materially poorer countries, except those African countries which are most affected by AIDS. Average global life expectancy in 1900 was 31; a hundred years later it was 66.8 (more than a doubling!), and in many of the richest countries it hovers around 80 (Morgan 2002). Many of you who read this will live to be a hundred. We stay healthier

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than earlier generations, thanks to medicines and vaccination programmes, better nutrition and changes in the world of labour. The dehumanising and dangerous jobs in agriculture, mining and industry have been humanised in our part of the world, and in the global middle class it is uncommon that people are physically exhausted at the age of 40. Today, our kind of people – the wealthiest fifth of humanity – simply do not grow old the way they used to. Some years ago, a dear colleague and friend died, and his death was especially sad because he was so young, only 62. But as late as 1928, the American demographer Louis Dublin predicted that the ceiling on life expectancy would be reached at a national average of 64.75 years. He was in fact an optimist, as expected longevity in the USA at the time was 57 years (Dublin himself lived to be 87).

We have lived in paradise for some time now. Most of the denizens of our global middle class world only know absolute scarcity and poverty through stories from mass media. If they live in countries with severe inequality, they are nevertheless intermittently exposed to glimpses of poverty on their way to work or leisure activities. One exception is immigrants from poor countries and their children. Although their social mobility has in most cases been spectacular, they have vivid memories of scarcity, which remains a fundamental reality in the country of their close relatives.

Two general aspects of life in paradise deserve mentioning. First – and this is the case with all earthly paradises – it cannot last forever. Second – and this concerns our specific paradise – we now know that objectively paradisical conditions do not necessarily make the inhabitants of paradise satisfied. Studies from the UK and the USA suggest that the subjectively experienced well-being (‘SWB’) has not increased noticeably since the 1950s (Offer 2006), that is a time without holidays in the sun, mobile telephones, colour television and Saturdays off. There is also influential and much-cited research that suggests that well-being is not correlated with income, at least for those who do not live in absolute poverty (see e.g. Easterbrook 2003). Researchers are not entirely agreed amongst themselves: Some claim that more money fails to make an impact only for the richest 25 per cent, while others have argued that most people in fact do not enjoy a higher level of well-being with an increase in material welfare, provided they had enough to begin with.

‘We have everything, but that’s all we have’, said the Norwegian folk singer Ole Paus some years ago. Although this observation was later quoted by two prime ministers in their televised New Year’s speeches, it has not led to perceptible shifts in politics. Even in incredibly rich Norway it would have amounted to political suicide to propose reduced consumption and a reduced material standard of living – in spite of the fact that it is now fairly widely known, and not least experienced, that increased well-being or happiness in an affluent society depends on other things than an ever higher material standard of living.

The view that it is necessary to reduce carbon emissions, and thus energy consumption, and indeed economic growth, in order to halt climate change is not universally held, but it is widespread and influential. There are few objections from politicians or editorialists whenever the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on

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Climate Change) presents conclusions to the effect that energy consumption and lifestyles in the affluent countries have to change. The need to be serious about the threat of irreversible global warming frequently figures in public speeches; yet, next to nothing is being done about the issue, and so far, few vote for politicians who sincerely promise to contribute to developing a post-extractive or carbon- neutral society. Nearly everybody, moreover, agrees that money, power and fame do not make you happy, and yet exactly such values govern both the workplace and the economy as such. Most members of the global middle class would say, if asked, that we are a single humanity who has to find ways of living together, yet there is considerable intolerance towards culturally different groups. The most significant contradiction, or double-bind, however, is that which exists between growth and sustainability. One cannot have it both ways in the long run; through our spectacularly successful and comfortable way of life, we are simultaneously undermining the conditions for our own existence. Perhaps it is true that in the global middle class we have everything, but ultimately that’s all we have.

What is missing? Perhaps the short answer is hope. That is to say, contemporary affluent societies are lacking hope. To most people belonging to the global middle class, life after death is – at the most – a vague notion. It is far too weak to provide sufficient hope to live by. Moreover, material scarcity has been left behind, at least for now, and there is little indication that it will return in our lifetimes. The satisfaction of material needs, in other words, is not a source of hope either. With a minimum of security precautions, we Europeans can move safely wherever we might wish to in our near surroundings, without having to fear attacks from wild animals or gangs of bandits. If we become ill, we may reasonably expect to recover. Throughout the history of humanity, the struggle for survival has been a major topic and a major source of hope. This is no longer the case among the privileged classes. Hope is no longer necessary to keep us going; life now runs on an autopilot.

For this condition, I propose a diagnosis I label the syndrome of the big, bad wolf. The foundational story is as follows. The voracious and always hungry Zeke Wolf, who lives in a dense forest not too far from the dwarfs’ quarry and Cinderella’s stepmother’s mansion, has one big, overarching project in his life, namely to capture, cook and eat three delicious, pink pigs who live less than a mile away in the same forest. For this reason, he gets up every morning and lays his dastardly plans after consuming a frugal breakfast (usually oatmeal porridge). He develops original disguises (a favourite being the elderly, gangrenous woman with a stick and a basket of apples) and builds sophisticated traps, conjures up labyrinthine routes through the forest as if he were a master chess player, and lies in hiding with great patience near paths he knows the pigs often take. He subscribes to the local press in order to follow news of public events such as fancy fairs, where the pigs might be present; he becomes an actor, an engineer and an athlete, all for the sake of capturing the pigs.

Usually, the pigs are one step ahead of the wolf, but on at least one occasion, he succeeded in catching them. The details elude me, but I remember him bundling the three plump pigs together with a length of rope and dropping them

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in his big iron pot. The water began to warm up as Zeke Wolf chopped up onions and carrots, adding them to the water along with a few pinches of salt, and it seemed as if all hope was gone for the pigs. It was at this point that Practical Pig, the smartest of the three (the one with the blue dungarees and cap), turned towards the wolf and asked him: ‘So, Zeke Wolf, what are you going to do tomorrow, then?’

The wolf was visibly shaken by the question. What on earth was he going to do tomorrow? For a moment, he pondered the issue at hand, gazing emptily in front of himself, and turning away, he released the pigs – an act he immediately regretted, but by then they had already jumped out of the window and run away.

In a rare glimpse of reflexivity, Zeke Wolf realised that his entire raison d’être rested on the project of catching, killing, boiling and finally eating the three little pigs. Without the pigs on his horizon, he would have no reason to rise from bed in the morning.

We the affluent are Zeke Wolf on the day of the hangover. Overfed and giddy, we lie on the couch asking ourselves what we should do tomorrow. Depending on his class identity, the wolf might have spent the rest of his life with a remote control and a six-pack in front of the television, or on a terrace in southern Spain near a golf course, with a glass of white wine. Briefly, there are strong indications that we need some new pigs to hunt.

The serpent in this earthly paradise may be called hopelessness. It is tautologi- cally true that you may lose hope in the end if you are hopelessly poor, but you may also lose it if you are hopelessly rich. There is no surplus of excruciatingly difficult, but urgent and deeply necessary, collective projects around here for the time being. Dreams tend to be small, private and generally realistic. If you spend November evenings dreaming of an emerald lagoon on a tropical island, and you end up going there already next February, the dream is too puny and too realistic. (You end up disappointed anyway, as the island turns out to be a sleepy and uneventful place with bad food and mosquitoes.)

Being healthy with a long life expectancy helps, but it is not enough. It also helps to be able to read Dickens and listen to Mendelssohn (or, for that matter, Ludlum and Springsteen) whenever you wish, and to eat your fill of first-rate food daily, but that’s not enough either. It certainly helps to live in a society where nobody needs to go hungry to bed, but after a while, we take this for granted as well, following the law of diminishing returns, and it scarcely occurs to us that we ought to be grateful for all this. The good life, and the good society, is, somehow, something else.

The planet has a poverty problem and an environmental problem that cannot be solved by one state alone, and in an important sense, we are in the same boat. We live in one world; we are one humanity. Where I sit, writing, in the extreme north-west of the Eurasian continent, we are nevertheless capable of boredom, and it is partly due to the fact that we lack a future-oriented, collective project. It is as though all problems have been solved. The Nordic countries and similar places, from the Netherlands to New Zealand, have overachieved. We have

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developed the most well-organised, decent, materially rich and wholesome societies seen throughout world history. However, I have already mentioned that earthly paradises do not last, and ours is fast being dethroned by its inherent contradictions. In Oslo, where I sit, there is an increasingly visible gap between Norway, the world champion in global solidarity and promoting sustainability abroad, on the one hand; and Norway, the filthy, disgusting country addicted to oil – a country responsible, through its petroleum exports, for 3 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions although it has less than 0.1 per cent of the total population.

It is no longer easy to argue against the view that something ought to be done about the way of life predominating in the global middle class. Anything else would be short-sighted, cruel and indecent. The colonisation of the future by the present has become a colossal problem.

Research on happiness and ‘subjective well-being’ has not led to the formu- lation of a set of general laws of happiness. Yet, the chapters of this book suggest, along with a few thousand years of sustained philosophical, religious and artistic reflection on the place of humanity and the quest for the good life, that a few provisional conclusions might be pertinent:

• Human beings are simultaneously driven by a desire for equality and com- munity (the solidarity instinct) and a desire to stand out as individuals (the competitive instinct). In a good society, the two impulses keep each other reasonably well in check; too much community deprives the individual of freedom, while too much individuality leads to accelerating inequality.

• Great discrepancies in prosperity and opportunities for self-realisation make people unhappy and discontented. In enormously unequal societies, the rich fear the poor, and the poor hate the rich. The less the differences in actual (not just formal) life opportunities, the better (Wilkinson 2005).

• A great deal of the subjective well-being or life-satisfaction experienced is partly caused by inherited tendencies, yet both our cultural surroundings and the events we go through contribute to our well-being. It is possible, as some American psychologists claim, to learn how to think positively, but this exercise may not help if you find yourself at the bottom of the ladder in a hierarchical, highly competitive society.

• Human beings, moreover, desire recognition, that is to be respected – or even admired, at least on a good day – for what they are and what they do. There are many ways of achieving recognition, from driving a boat really fast in a competition with others who also drive their boats really fast; by taking care of children in a caring and humorous way; by publishing erudite papers or cooking the world’s best pasta, or in one of a thousand different ways. Although some universal tendencies are embedded in our evolved nature, culture and history decide how they can best be expressed. A century and a half ago, a man in his forties could garner great respect in the American South if he owned many slaves, had a dignified paunch and a good hand with the whip, and kept his daughters’ honour intact until they married. Today,

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similar ideals would scarcely gain anybody widespread respect anywhere, and certainly not in Alabama. Values, in other words, change. One day, perhaps in a not too remote future, people will obtain other people’s respect and social recognition through ecologically sustainable ways of behaving.

• Finally, experience and history tell us that large-scale collective projects may satisfy both the demand for equality and solidarity, and the need individuals have to prove themselves. When involved in such projects, you do something with others, and you have the chance to display yourself at your best.

All of this is fairly uncontroversial, notwithstanding the internal disagreements among happiness researchers concerning the relative significance of genetic factors, the role of inequality and a few other things. These minor disagreements notwithstanding, recent research on well-being and life-satisfaction implies that there is no necessary connection between, for example, extensive driving and flying, uninhibited energy consumption and happiness in a society. At the same time, it is no less obvious that had we, in our neck of the woods somewhere in the affluent world, quit using fossil fuels altogether, beginning tomorrow morning, the majority of the population would have experienced a steep decline in well-being, coupled with not insignificant rage directed at the powers that be. Authoritarian measures introduced without soliciting popular opinion are never popular. Short of dictatorial measures, changes must therefore come about through a broad reassessment of the nature of the good life. The arrow of time will not change its direction on its own accord.

The easiest choice is always to continue with business as usual. Already thirty years ago, green activists were jokingly telling each other that ‘we are standing at the edge of the cliff, about to take a long step forwards’. Pessimists argue that we have already taken that step (like the man jumping from a skyscraper, shouting, as he passes the fiftieth floor, that it is going rather well), and that the world as we know it will soon be gone as a result of the flooding and droughts, melting glaciers and rising seas, huge migration waves, pestilence and mass deaths caused by climate change. It is tempting to draw the connection between these contem- porary prophets of doom and those who were waiting for the apocalypse in the year 1000. Yet the fact that the most spectacular predictions are likely to be mistaken does not mean that prospects are great. Global climate does change, and yes, there will be repercussions everywhere.

And yet, even if the entire scientific and public debate about climate change should be exposed as a gigantic piece of propaganda (although it is hard to guess who should be responsible for such a gargantuan conjuring trick and why), there are good reasons to address the values and way of life in our kind of society. The final stages of material welfare growth, after all, did not increase the general well- being, only the level of frustration; and simultaneously, welfare growth up here made millions less happy down there, since their relative deprivation was a constant reminder of global injustice.

Neither classic socialism nor liberalist market ideologies offer satisfactory models, even if we disregard their dismal environmental record – the former

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inhibits the individual’s need to excel at something, while the latter is splendid as long as you experience smooth sailing, but the moment you hit a reef, there is nobody to blame but yourself.

The question is which kind of societal model is compatible with what we now know about well-being and life-satisfaction, as well as being ecologically sustain- able. That question has been addressed in several of the chapters in this book, and I now propose to take it for a final spin. An annual publication, which deserves more attention than it gets, is The Happy Planet Index, published by the radical New Economics Foundation (2013). Intended as a supplement and a corrective to the UNDP’s annual Human Development Report, the index takes the global conversation about happiness and the quality of life a step in an interesting direc- tion. The people behind the report, mostly economists, calculate the relationship between SWB and life expectancy on the one hand, and ecological footprint on the other hand, that is – in brief – how much you have to pollute in order to enjoy a certain degree of life satisfaction and length. The NEF have, thus, entirely discarded GDP as a relevant criterion, which seems to be justified, as huge amounts of quantitative research now show that beyond a certain minimum level, there is no clear correlation between the average income in a country and the level of well-being. Other factors, such as the distribution of wealth (measured in gini coefficients), are far more important (Wilkinson 2005; Wilkinson and Pickett 2009), and inequality is now slowly being introduced as a fourth pillar by the Foundation.

The report usefully confirms things that most of us knew already; for example, that the rich live longer and pollute more than the poor. At the same time, it enables us to view the world in a slightly new way, with new connections and new potentials for change. For example, it documents that the inhabitants of the USA leave an ecological footprint which is 60 per cent higher than that of Germans, and yet the Germans live four years longer than, and are about as happy as, the Americans. Several Latin American countries are at or near the top of the table (the top five are Costa Rica, Vietnam, Colombia, Belize and El Salvador). The inhabitants of Costa Rica live long, pollute modestly and report – on the whole – that they are satisfied with life. Compared to a country like Finland, they naturally save a lot of energy on simpler housing and no central heating. Perhaps the kind of life quality that, in a place like Norway, requires a 300-square-metre house, a mountain cabin, HDTV and two annual vacations in warm places can be achieved in El Salvador with a 70-square-metre house with some afternoon shade on the terrace, well-behaved children and a plaza nearby with music, dance, food and drink on Saturdays. In earlier editions of the report, small island-states like Vanuatu and Dominica were near the top; in the latest versions, these countries are, for methodological reasons, not included.

Some countries vary little regarding ecological footprint, but considerably when it comes to satisfaction and longevity. Jamaicans live 27 years longer than Equatorial Guineans (figures from the 2008 report; the latter country was not included in 2012), but they pollute about as much (or little), and Jamaicans are – understandably – palpably more satisfied with life than Equatorial Guineans,

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who live in an exceptionally brutal and insensitive dictatorship with huge inequalities.

There are other interesting variations and correlations as well. Hondurans report a far higher quality of life than Latvians; the two nationalities have roughly the same life expectancy, and the ecological footprint of the Latvians is more than twice that of the Hondurans. This difference reflects the importance of cultural values and cultural style, network types and trust, but also intangible but real factors such as the experience of improving versus deteriorating trends in societal development. As mentioned, small, manageable island societies with relatively dense networks and short social distances, incidentally, did well in the earlier versions of the report, when they were included.

The most interesting finding is perhaps that the countries which do best in the Happy Planet Index are neither those at the top nor those at the bottom of the UNDP Human Development Index, but those in the middle. The inhabitants of the poorest countries suffer from all kinds of deprivations, while the richest countries pollute far more than others without this being compensated through increased well-being or longevity. The spiralling growth which has led to a doubling in world energy consumption since 1975 has done little to improve the quality of life among those who were already reasonably well off then.

The first OECD country on the Index is New Zealand, in 28th place, followed by Norway (the impact of petroleum exports is not included in the footprint measurement); both countries are ranked below Indonesia and the Philippines and just above India and the Dominican Republic. The first Muslim country is Bangladesh, in 11th place, while the Gulf States are near the bottom of the table due to their huge carbon footprint, with Qatar and Bahrain in 149th and 146th place, respectively (the total number of countries in the index is 151). The USA is, owing to its very high carbon footprint, ranked as number 105 and China as number 60. In spite of Western propaganda to the effect that the Chinese are now the worst polluters in the world, the average Chinese leaves a modest carbon footprint (less than a third of the Americans), lives beyond 70 years and report (possibly with some subtle indirect nudging from the Party) that he is quite content.

The report confirms the provisional conclusions made earlier and strengthens arguments developed in the other chapters of this book, namely that it is not necessary to destroy the planet’s ecology or to pester one’s neighbour in order to be content with life.

The opposite may indeed often be the case. Most people, one may presume, would prefer to be liked rather than feared, and now that we increasingly find ourselves in a catch-22, a double-bind (Bateson 1972) between growth and sustainability where it is being confirmed every day that you cannot have it both ways, it is far from unlikely that many members of the global middle class will change their priorities. Driving gas-guzzling cars will appear tasteless and stupid if you live in the city: the oversized SUV becomes a sign indicating that the owner is out of kilter, analogous to showing off your prestige by parading a dozen well- trained slaves in New Orleans in 1870. Flying becomes an increasingly rare

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necessity as long as it lasts, and will then slowly be phased out (provided solar- powered planes do not take over the market).

Science fiction? Daydreaming? Perhaps, but not necessarily. The dramatic transformation in the public attitude towards tobacco smoking shows that cultural mores and habits may change rapidly. Beginning in California in the 1980s, negative attitudes towards smoking spread like wildfire during the next decade and into the twentieth century. By 2010, smoking in public spaces had become anathema in large parts of the world, from India to South Africa, from Ireland to Colombia. When the smoking ban in restaurants and bars was introduced in Norway in 2004, pundits predicted that half of these establishments would be out of business before Christmas. Yet, it took only a few months before the absence of tobacco smoke, even in brown cafes patronised by workmen and heavy drinkers, had been naturalised and internalised. Smokers were literally left out in the cold, and today, some think wistfully, albeit with a tinge of disgust about the dim and distant past more than twenty years ago when everything smelled vaguely of tobacco smoke. This may be the ultimate fate of ecological irresponsibility as well. Now that it has been conclusively proved that it is not necessary for human beings to undermine the conditions for their continued existence in order to be happy, there are no good arguments for continuing on that particular path.

The small, mountainous country of Bhutan – east of Nepal, north of India and south of Tibet – is often mentioned in the happiness literature as a counter- example to Western ‘affluenza’. In 1976, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck declared that it would be wise not to open the country to Western influence. His son, King Jigme Khesar Namgyal Wangchuck, largely follows up his father’s policy, but has decided on a few reforms, such as introducing television and political elections. There is still no mass tourism in Bhutan, and it is a McDonald’s-free country with little commercialisation. This is in itself far from a guarantee for a high quality of life; neither the Cambodia of Pol Pot nor Stalin’s Soviet Union were particularly McDonaldised. However, Bhutanese authorities have decided on ‘gross national happiness’ instead of the Western standard ‘gross national product’ as a yardstick for measuring how well the country is doing. Unlike Pol Pot, they do not massacre people who can read, and unlike Stalin, they are not obsessed with beating the Americans in childish competitions within sport, chess or space travel. Recently, the Centre for Bhutan Studies in Thimphu has begun to operationalise criteria for national happiness. They include obvious dimen- sions such as health, education and good governance, but also less common criteria such as cultural vitality, ecological diversity, time use and psychological well-being. Interestingly, Bhutan is not included in the Happy Planet Index due to a lack of comparable data. The Bhutanese authorities try to learn from the mistakes of the West without having to commit them. The Bhutanese have a life expectancy about ten to 15 years shorter than that of the global middle class, so the health care system arguably leaves a bit to be desired; yet, the average lifespan in Bhutan is the same as what Louis Dublin, back in 1928, estimated to be the highest possible average for a society. In South America, the popular movements

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associated with the concept of buen vivir (living well) – based on local, often indigenous, notions of sustainability and the good life – follow a similar logic (Escobar 2013), with growing success locally in countries such as Ecuador, Colombia and Bolivia.

Much could have been different here as well. A growing proportion of the global middle class not only believe that it is necessary to reduce consumption, but positively yearn for a life bringing them into closer contact with themselves and the ecology of which they are part. Of course, consumption does have its rewards (even if short-lived). To some, buying shoes gives a form of pleasure that may be compared to the pleasure others experience when listening to jazz. Modernity can be an extraordinarily rewarding epoch in which to live; the point is that it is possible to continue leading a modern life without destroying the planet, and without reducing one’s quality of life. Soon, perhaps, people who love shoes will again begin to have them repaired instead of throwing them away, and perhaps they will start buying shoes that have not been sent halfway around the planet in a shipping container. There are some intuitively understandable, liberating aspects of a slower, less consumption-intensive life. Rather than working oneself to death on the stock exchange, we can be herders in the morning and fishermen in the afternoon, and in the evening we may hold our beloved’s hand as much as we wish, provided we prefer that to criticising.

A revolution is not required in order to reach this kind of a situation, which many desire. The question remains, however, as to why nothing has happened so far, after decades of increasing affluence, which has not led to a concomitant increase in life-satisfaction, but instead threatens to undermine its own condi- tions. A short answer, to do with path dependency, is that business as usual is always the easiest option. Both the powerful and the less powerful have invested so much in the presently hegemonic model for growth and prosperity that changing the course will require a new mentality. Since the fossil fuel revolution around the year 1800, development and increased happiness have been associated with increased energy use. What is now called for may seem tantamount to reversing the arrow of time, which seems intuitively wrong.

For this reason, it is necessary to show that an ecologically sustainable future does not amount to turning the clock back. Two main arguments have been proposed against the hegemonic world order in this regard: It did not just create wealth, but also poverty; and it destroys the environment and the life oppor- tunities for our descendants. To this I have added a third argument: The growth model which did lead to an increased quality of life (and not just a higher standard of living) for millions in the past two centuries no longer helps make people happier. The positive effect of affluence on the quality of life decreases and eventually vanishes when basic needs are satisfied. Granted that this is the case, a new language, new models for thought and a new epistemology are needed in order to talk about development and progress, where ecological footprints and life quality, not economic growth and increased production, form the baseline. What is needed more than anything is a net growth in the domain of political imagination.

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In a society with considerably lower disposable monetary income than what is typical of the rich world today, it would suddenly seem rational to begin to look after one’s belongings again. Services would become cheaper; goods would become more expensive. There would again emerge a demand, in the richest countries, for tailors and furniture upholsterers. When your scanner broke down, you would have it repaired instead of buying a new one. There would be fewer meetings and less reliance on Microsoft Outlook. More poetry and live music. Fewer costly, alienating and ecologically destructive construction projects. More small-scale enterprises, fewer megacorporations. More free time and less rubbish. You might even take a boat from Portsmouth to Buenos Aires instead of a plane; the trip would do you good, and it would take 13 days rather than 13 hours.

Late in the evening, over a drink, most people, including politicians, agree with this reasoning. What is required today – following the latest reports from the IPCC about climate change, the newest research on what makes people happy and the last news stories about the proportion of Americans who take pills every day just to keep going – are politicians and community leaders who have the courage to declare, without caveats, that the spiral of growth must be reversed as from next year, that the richest should start, and that there are good reasons to rejoice in our ability to do this.

In order to shake off the syndrome of the big, bad wolf, a large, collective project is necessary. Such a project would enable us to transcend ourselves, to do something both difficult and necessary, to reap other people’s recognition for it, to take part in an encompassing and encouraging community and to perform some morally defensible acts in the world. Such a project would reconnect politics and everyday life among the global middle classes with planetary needs. At the moment it may seem remote, but we have reached a historical crossroads where it is becoming visible. Details must by necessity be worked out locally, but some common elements are environmental responsibility, justice, slow time, personal challenges and a reasonable balance between rights and duties.

The time since the global turn towards neoliberalism, around 1980, has been a long period of transition. Material scarcity had been overcome in the global middle classes, and there were no plans for the future beyond the consolidation of affluence. Self-realisation became an objective in itself, an empty signifier with no ulterior goal. The treadmills were filling up, literally and figuratively speaking. Irony became the preferred mode of engagement. With the hindsight of the early twenty-first century, it is clear that ways out of this impasse are within reach. What is on the horizon is a difficult, necessary, collective project with the promise of simultaneously saving the planet and enabling the global middle classes to shake off the syndrome of the big, bad wolf.

Bibliography

Bateson, G. (1972) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine. Easterbrook, G. (2003) The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse.

New York: Random House.

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Eriksen, T. H. (2001) Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age. London – Sterling, VA: Pluto Press.

Escobar, A. (2013) ‘Teritorios de la diferencia: La ontología política de los “derechos al territorio”’. Document prepared for the SOGIP workshop Los pueblos indígenas y sus rerechos a la tierra. Paris, 18–21 June 2013.

Morgan, K. (2002) ‘Forecasting Long Life: How low can human mortality go?’ in Sci. SAGE KE 2002 (19), nw62.

New Economics Foundation (2013) The Happy Planet Index. www.happyplanetindex.org (accessed 7 October 2013).

Offer, A. (2006) The Challenge of Affluence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wilkinson, R. (2005) The Impact of Inequality. London: Routledge. Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost

Always Do Better. London: Allen Lane.

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http://www.happyplanetindex.org

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