Economic growth remains the focus of both policies and societies worldwide. In the meantime, social inequality rises and the ecological destruction of our planet continues to accelerate. We know that things have to change, but struggle to imagine a good life beyond the consumption driven lifestyles we have established for ourselves in. In this new publication Is Different Really Enough? Thoughts on a New Role for Consumption, experts from different parts of the world address the question of consumer responsibility in the necessary transformation process towards more sustainable societies and set out to look for new roles for consumption.
JULY 24, 2013 | FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG
Is Different Really Enough? Thoughts on a New Role for Consumption
Economic growth remains the focus of both policies and societies worldwide. In the meantime, social inequality rises and the ecological destruction of our planet continues to accelerate. We urgently need ideas that transcend the borders of the uniform thinking in which we have established ourselves, often accepting too easily the alleged lack of alternatives as an excuse for inaction.
The challenges of our consumption - driven society are primarily systemic. Individualising responsibility for its transformation will not only not be enough, but also wear out solidarity and deepen social inequality. Instead, we need initiatives that encourage people to resolidarise and rediscover spaces of political action. Among other things, this will contain the need for a redefinition of many values that lie at the center of our living - together.
Discussing sustainability and consumption means discussing the question of how much we can still consume. As long as we keep thinking that we can progress towards more sustainable lifestyles by consuming not less, but only »better«, we will most likely fail to even ask the right questions.
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Besides concrete action targeted at corporate reform and a reorienting of institutions, actions will also have to be directed towards an at least partial decoupling of consumption from the social functions it fulfils, meaning we will need to find and provide socially viable alternatives. As for the processes for distributing social recognition throughout society, for example, an important step towards the decoupling of social status and consumption would be to restructure the employment and working sector in a way that allows for different mechanisms of recognition - allocation beyond money and its most visible expression, consumption. »Instead of disqualifying people without paid employment, everyone is able to participate and contribute, because people are valued in terms of their time and actions in these alternative systems of production and consumption« (Julia Backhaus).
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So, where do we go from here? In fact, one of the most important lessons might be that we will have to come to accept and appreciate that a certain amount of insecurity and antagonism of ideas will always accompany us on our search for more sustainable ways of living together. With the path towards sustainable lifestyles still widely uncharted, for now it makes sense to focus not only on the destination, but also to consider the way ahead already as part of the change we are calling for. Accordingly, we have to make sure the transformation will be a democratic – that is, an emancipative process that does not foreclose, but open up points of access for as broad a public as possible. This process, of course, will take time. For it to succeed, we will have to make sure that all of these actions are being increasingly embedded in society and will be propped up by parallel larger - scale changes that lead to »(…) supportive framework conditions on national or even global scale – including appropriate policy agendas, subsidy schemes, indicators, etc.« This means, we need a fundamental systemic change that does not build upon the individualization of responsibility that will wear out social solidarity and has already distorted our ideas of freedom and community, but rather encourages people to rediscover their actions as meaningful, and to reopen spaces of political action. Because »the greatest danger is that we believe that things cannot be changed and that it is no longer possible to find democratic solutions for the human existence « (Jô Portilho).
Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung: Is Different Really Enough? Thoughts on a New Role for Consumption
