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This 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.
List of contents
1. Consumption, sustainability and everyday life.- 2. Capitalism, consumption, and the transformation of everyday life: The political economy of social practices.- 3. Household Energy Practices in Low-energy Buildings: A qualitative Study of Klosterenga Ecological Housing Cooperative.- 4. Solar water heating: informing decarbonization policy by listening to the users.- 5. Sufficiency in China's energy provision. A service understanding of sustainable consumption and production.- 6. Practices, provision and protest: Power outages in rural Norwegian households.- 7. The rise and fall of the 'people's car': middle-class aspirations, status and mobile symbolism in 'New India'.- 8. Practical aeromobilities: making sense of environmentalist air-travel.- 9. Everyday life and how it changes: studying 'sustainable wellbeing' with students during a pandemic.- 10. Towards sustainable transport practices in a coastal community in Norway. Insights from human needs and social practice approaches.- 11. Value Mapping: Practical Tools for Wellbeing and Sustainable Consumption.- 12. Can economics help to understand, and change, consumption behaviour? - 13. Towards sustainable consumption: reflections on the concepts of social loading, excess, and idle capacity.
About the author
Arve Hansen is a researcher at Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway, where he leads the centre's research group on consumption and energy and the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. His research focuses on sustainable consumption in Norway and Southeast Asia, with particular focus on the relationship between everyday practices and economic systems.
Kenneth Bo Nielsen is Associate Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo, Norway, and leader of the Norwegian Network for Asian Studies. His research is focused on political economy, land politics, dispossession, and social movements, with a particular emphasis on India where he has worked for two decades.
