Post-Consumerism

Synopsis

My interest in post-consumerism grows out of work on sustainable consumption. There are growing indications that the consumer society that came of age in the United States during the years following World War II and then diffused more widely around the world is starting to fade. Though there is a tendency to associate consumerism with pervasive advertising and product promotionalism, at its root it rests on a foundation shaped by macro-scale factors including demographic conditions, fiscal policies, natural resource endowments, and political priorities. The combination of an ageing population, increasing income inequality, growing resource scarcity, and aversion to public investment is taking its toll on consumer society as a dominant system of social organization. As the middle class struggles in the face of stagnating incomes and rising household expenses, social polarization in the United States and other countries is intensifying and leading to what some commentators have termed an “hourglass society.” Consumer society is likely to become further imperiled by the coming commercial diffusion of digital technologies that will reduce demand for human labor, and hence the supply of middle-class jobs that generate the incomes to fuel consumerist lifestyles.

Related Books

2017

The Future of Consumer Society: Prospects for Sustainability in the New Economy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2017

Workers—and Consumers—of the World Unite! Opportunities for Hybrid Cooperativism, in Joseph Blasi, Carlo Borzaga, and Jonathan Michie, Eds., Oxford Handbook of Cooperative and Mutual Business, Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.

2015

Toward a Post-consumerist Future? Social Innovation in an Era of Fading Economic Growth, pp. 426–441 in Lucia Reisch and John Thøgersen, Eds., Handbook on Research on Sustainable Consumption, Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.

The Decline and Fall of Consumer Society? Implications for Theories of Modernization, pp. 33‒40 in Chuanqi He and Alberto Martinelli, Eds., Global Modernization Review: New Discoveries and Theories Revisited, London: World Scientific Press.