POLI 342 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Conspicuous Consumption, Consumerism, Neoliberalism
11 May 2018
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April 9: The Individualisation of GEP
Types of Action in addressing environmental problems
• Eat local
• Recycle
• Compost
• Less packaging
• Use public transit
• No plastic bags
• Eat less meat/animal products
• Buy 2nd hand
• Carpool
• Turn it off
• Less conspicuous consumption
• Volunteer for NGOS/SM
• Use less water
• Less air travel
Why do we gravitate towards things that we can do as individuals more than collective
responses? (The Individualisation of Environmentalism)
• The Lorax Analogy – basic premise: industrialist harvesting trees until they run
out; unless someone cares a lot, nothing is going to get better. Environment lies in
our individual ethos.
o Although other institutions encourage environmentalism, it is often through
changing our own personal behaviour
• Why shift to individualisation?
• Does it help/harm our ability to achieve broader environmental outcomes?
Case Study: Conscious Consumerism
• More and more North Americans make deliberate choices to purchase sustainable
goods – but why?
o Constructivism – dynamic identities and interests
▪ Emergence of economic neoliberalism in the 1980s in the US and UK
(free trade, less govt; more NGOs, social action)
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