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Consuming Values and ContestedCultures: A Critical Analysis ofthe UK Strategy for SustainableConsumption and ProductionGill Seyfanga University of East AngliaVersion of record first published: 18 Feb 2007.
To cite this article: Gill Seyfang (2004): Consuming Values and Contested Cultures: ACritical Analysis of the UK Strategy for Sustainable Consumption and Production, Reviewof Social Economy, 62:3, 323-338
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Consuming Values and Contested Cultures: A
Critical Analysis of the UK Strategy for
Sustainable Consumption and Production
Gill SeyfangUniversity of East Anglia
Abstract The term ‘‘sustainable consumption’’ is subject to manyinterpretations, from Agenda 21’s hopeful assertion that governments shouldencourage less materialistic lifestyles based on new definitions of ‘‘wealth’’
and ‘‘prosperity’’, to the view prevalent in international policy discourse thatgreen and ethical consumerism will be sufficient to transform markets toproduce continual and ‘‘clean’’ economic growth. These different perspectives
are examined using a conceptual framework derived from Cultural Theory,to illustrate their fundamentally competing beliefs about the nature of theenvironment and society, and the meanings attached to consumption.
Cultural Theory argues that societies should develop pluralistic policies toinclude all perspectives. Using this framework, the paper examines the UKstrategy for sustainable consumption, and identifies a number of failings in
current policy. These are that the UK strategy is strongly biased towardsindividualistic, market-based and neo-liberal policies, so it can only respondto a small part of the problem of unsustainable consumption. Policyrecommendations include measures to strengthen the input from competing
cultures, to realize the potential for more collective, egalitarian andsignificantly less materialistic consumption patterns.
Keywords: consumption, Cultural Theory, sustainable development, greenconsumerism, economic growth, institutions
INTRODUCTION
Over the last 15 years, ‘‘sustainable consumption’’ has become a core issue on
the international environmental agenda, and the definition which has become
widely adopted in international policy arenas is that originally set out by the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD):
REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY, VOL. LXII, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 2004
Review of Social Economy
ISSN 0034 6764 print/ISSN 1470–1162 online# 2004 The Association for Social Economics
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DOI: 10.1080/0034676042000253936
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sustainable consumption is the use of goods and related products which respond to
basic needs and bring a better quality of life, while minimising the use of natural
resources and toxic materials as well as the emissions of waste and pollutants over
the life cycle, so as not to jeopardise the needs of future generations.
(Norwegian Ministry of Environment (1994), in OECD (2002): 9).
The U.K. strategy for sustainable consumption (DEFRA 2003) builds on this
definition, and promotes the consumption of ‘‘greener’’ products produced in
a ‘‘cleaner’’ manner. However, this apparent consensus about the meaning of
sustainable consumption masks underlying debates and ideological battles
over what might constitute sustainable consumption in practice. The UK
strategy, for example, stands in marked contrast to other, more radical
critiques of current consumption patterns that incorporate social sustain-
ability and equity, and favor a downscaling of material consumption rather
than continued economic growth. What are the scope, objective and rationale
of these two main definitions and the perspectives that they represent? This
paper applies Cultural Theory in a critical analysis of U.K. sustainable
consumption policy, to assess its potential effectiveness, and produce policy
recommendations.
COMPETING CULTURES OF CONSUMPTION
Mary Douglas’s Cultural Theory originated in her work on the anthropology
of consumption and public attitudes to risk. Cultural Theory is one of many
social theories of consumption and environmental decision-making which
seeks to understand patterns of behavior using explanatory tools outside the
conventional economic paradigm. Consumption decisions made in the
household and the supermarket about consumption cannot be viewed as
technically neutral events – they are inextricably linked with values and social
meaning, and are signifiers of cultural allegiance and social relationships.
Preferences are formed, not within individuals or as endowments, but rather
between people in a dynamic manner. Consumption is therefore a moral
activity, one that supports and strengthens particular forms of social
solidarity, and which is symbolic of collective values and interrelationships
(Douglas and Isherwood 1996/1979).
Concerning environmental risk, the model put forward by Douglas and
Wildawsky (1983) and developed further by Thompson et al. (1990) and
Thompson and Rayner (1998) consists of a two-by-two matrix, shown in
Figure. 1 and discussed below. It proposes a model of four competing
worldviews associated with models of cultural solidarity and social
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organization which are based upon particular myths of nature,1 which in turn
present differing diagnoses of environmental problems and prescriptions for
their solution. In this model, the axes represent degrees of social regulation or
equality (grid) and social contact or competition (group). These are:
individualists (who regard nature as robust and benign), egalitarians (who
see nature as fragile), hierarchists (who believe nature can be managed within
limits) and fatalists (for whom nature is unpredictable). A fifth group,
autonomous hermits, is outside the matrix and is neither influenced by, nor
seeks to influence others; this group is usually disregarded as a residual
category. Proponents of cultural theory hold that the model is both universal
Figure 1: The four worldviews in Cultural TheorySource: Thompson and Rayner 1998.
1 As Thompson and Rayner explain, ‘‘in social science, myths are not fictions or fanciful tales. . . they are
stories that embody fundamental truths underlying our assumptions about everyday or scientific reality’’
(1998: 282). Myths of nature and forms of social organization are here treated as interdependent categories,
iteratively justifying and determining each other within a cultural solidarity.
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in application and in scale – it represents the entirety of possible social
organizational states and is equally valid for households as for nation states
(Thompson et al. 1990).
These forms of social solidarity are constantly in competition with each
other, seeking to gain ground or influence with more people, institutions and
transactions, at the expense of others. According to Cultural Theory,
dominance by one way of life will prompt a reaction from an opposite cultural
form. Cultural Theory’s normative stance is towards political pluralism. Ney
and Thompson (1999) assert that a functioning democratic society will benefit
from allowing all three pro-active positions to have a voice in the policy-
making process, and minimizing fatalism. Indeed, they claim that when one or
more discourse is marginalized or silenced, the negative aspects of the
dominant worldviews are not held in check, with repercussions for all. For
example, the unrestrained free market (individualism) will lead to exploitation
and environmental degradation, and these tendencies are held in check by
government regulation (hierarchy) and environmentalists (egalitarianism)
(Seyfang 2003b).
Hierarchists: Responsible Consumption
Hierarchical cultures feature high degrees of both grid and group bonding,
with highly ordered social organization and low degrees of competition.
The social organization this worldview represents is one of stratified
collectivity, and respect for authority, status, experts and tradition. The
myth of nature which fits this type is one where the environment is
tolerant and predictable within definite limits – a certain degree of
uncertainty is present but equilibrium can be maintained using rules-based
structures and expert-led regulatory systems to incorporate environmental
principles into management techniques and accounting systems. Conse-
quently, a balanced and managed form of economic growth is desirable,
within structures and regulations established by experts (a top-down
approach). Sustainability requires experts to identify limits to resource use
and monitor ecological systems to protect the environment. Because
consumption is tightly bound with social status, needs are assumed to be
fixed and relative to one’s place in the hierarchy; consumption is tied up
with history and tradition as well as social standing. The hierarchical
diagnosis of the cause of environmental problems is population pressures:
ever-growing numbers of people with fixed per capita consumption needs
cannot be reconciled with limited resources. However, resources can be
collectively managed and efficiency increased according to carefully
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managed programmes of environmental improvement to cut the resource
throughput for given levels of consumption. Sustainable consumption for
hierarchists is therefore about consuming (and reproducing) in a
responsible manner, respecting traditions and limits, and accepting state
regulation to protect these. Contemporary analysts such as Weizsacker et
al. (1997) and members of the scientific elite such as the Royal Society
(Heap and Kent 2000) continue this theme.
Egalitarians: Reducing Consumption
The second group, Egalitarians are characterized by low-grid ties
(implying democratic, devolved decision-making and a high degree of
equality) and high group bonds (social cohesion, justice and equity are
important, with low degrees of competition) and see nature as a fragile
and precariously balanced system. For Egalitarians, the root of
unsustainable development is profligacy and over-consumption, driven by
the western capitalist mode of production which demands continual
economic growth and consumerism which does not meet real human
needs. This conflicts with a fragile Earth’s limited resources and carrying
capacities, and hence current lifestyles are held to be unsustainable. The
solution in this view is to reduce consumption in line with the fixed
resources available through a radical change in lifestyles and a shift in the
goals of economic development in industrialized countries away from
material consumption per se, and towards quality of life – reducing
consumption and adopting voluntary simplicity or downshifting (adopting
frugal and naturalistic consumption patterns based on local provisioning)
into a ‘‘conserver society’’ as a moral imperative. Since the environment is
viewed as a limited resource, there is a large emphasis on conserving and
redistributing resources to increase the wealth of developing countries
while reducing the material consumption of developed nations – in this
view, environmental degradation is intertwined with social injustice, and
so national and international inequality must be addressed in order to
solve environmental problems. Sustainable consumption, for egalitarians,
requires less consumption on a societal level. The social arrangements
required for such changes require strong collective action and include
challenging the existing capitalist economic system (since economic growth
is a prime cause of the environmental problem) and replacing it with
small-scale, decentralized participative democracies and self-reliant econo-
mies – in other words, egalitarian institutions (Ekins and Max-Neef 1993,
Schumacher 1993, Douthwaite 1996).
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Individualists: Opportunistic Consumption
The third group, Individualists, represent low-grid ties (little social regulation),
and low-group bonds – atomized individuals acting with high degrees of
competition and inequality. This position is closest to the traditional ‘‘rational
economic person’’ beloved of neo-Classical economics, and Individualists
believe competitive markets will deliver efficient solutions to resource scarcity,
and that personal responsibility in self-regulating networks is preferable to
governmental controls on the liberty of the individual. Given such faith in the
market, the myth of nature which justifies this perspective is that the
environment is benign and cornucopian, responding robustly to human
intervention, and can be freely traded-off against other forms of capital (for
example, human capital or manufactured capital provide substitutes for some
environmental services), which supports an experimental and opportunistic
approach to environmental management (Lomborg 2001). Individualists hold
that environmental degradation is a result of incorrect pricing mechanisms in
the marketplace and failure of property rights regimes to account for
environmental and social externalities. Consumption patterns, in this culture,
are opportunistic, conspicuous and cosmopolitan: ‘‘skilfully managing needs
and resources upwards’’ through economic development (Dake and Thomson
1993: 424). Governments are expected to correct prices and provide regulatory
frameworks to influence producers to be more eco-efficient – so sustainable
consumption in this view equates to the consumption of sustainably produced
goods (or ‘‘greener’’ economic growth), rather than any substantive shift in
consumption patterns (Holliday and Pepper 2001, OECD 2002)
Fatalists: Ad-hoc Consumption
The fourth group, Fatalists, are isolated from the rest of society (they have
low group bonds, with high inequality), but quite highly constrained in their
position by social rules – they perceive that their lives are manipulated by
external factors but feel unable to change them (they experience high grid
ties). This group views life as a lottery, with outcomes decided by chance.
They have no collective identity, feel powerless to change things, and take a
passive, rather than pro-active stance in relation to social organization and
governance, being uninvolved in politics and not planning for the future. The
myth of nature which corresponds with – and justifies such a position is one of
nature being essentially unpredictable and capricious, and so environmental
planning and management is futile – fatalists are not motivated to devise
sustainability strategies. Fatalists’ consumption patterns are therefore
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unplanned, haphazard and opportunistic in the short term – making the most
of ‘‘lucky’’ opportunities and coping through the bad times.
From the framework of Cultural Theory, we can see that sustainable
consumption and the institutions for allocating resources will be interpreted
and structured quite differently, according to the values of the various
cultures. Indeed, what is seen as desirable action within one culture may be the
very cause of environmental crisis within a competing paradigm. Dake and
Thompson (1993) empirically examined household consumption patterns and
behavior, and identified the four distinct cultural types robustly represented
among a cross section of the population. Cultural Theory is therefore good at
explaining irreconcilable differences, such as disagreements about sustainable
consumption which represent more than merely a lack of scientific knowledge.
The aim of this tool is to allow for plural rationalities, values and objectives to
be examined side by side, without recourse to untenable claims of objective
superiority, rightness, or truth.
THE UK STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION AND
PRODUCTION
The U.K. government defines sustainable consumption and production as:
Continuous economic and social progress that respects the limits of the Earth’s
ecosystems, and meets the needs and aspirations of everyone for a better quality of
life, now and for future generations to come.
(DEFRA 2003:10)
It further states:
given that there are limits to the Earth’s ecosystems to absorb pollution and provide
resources, the only way to maintain economic progress in the long term without
approaching these limits is to decouple economic growth from environmental
degradation . . . [and focus policy] on the most important environmental impacts
associated with the use of particular resources, rather than on the total level of all
resource use.
(DEFRA 2003: 11, 6)
This directly builds upon the government’s approach to sustainable
development, which is founded upon a belief that stable and continued
economic growth is compatible with effective environmental protection and
responsible use of natural resources – i.e. ‘‘cleaner growth’’ and improved
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resource productivity: ‘‘abandoning economic growth is not a sustainable
development option’’ (DETR 1999: para 3, 12). This is to be achieved through
a range of market-based measures which seek to account for externalities and
fill information gaps: making the polluter pay, eco-taxes, government
purchasing initiatives, consumer education campaigns and instituting
voluntary eco-labelling schemes (DETR 1999).
The report states that ‘‘government regulation has a clear and vital role to
play in ensuring that markets operate efficiently, excessive or unnecessary
regulation can obstruct efficient functioning of the market’’ (DEFRA 2003:
24). The government’s role is therefore to correct prices and provide
regulatory frameworks to influence producers to be more eco-efficient and
offer consumer choices of ‘‘green’’ and ‘‘ethical’’ products. Hence, sustainable
consumption is implicitly defined as the consumption of more ethically or
efficiently-produced goods (i.e. with no absolute reduction in consumption),
and consumer behavior is the driving force for change and ‘‘market
transformation’’ as consumers exercise their preferences for environmental
goods or social rights in the market (Pearson and Seyfang 2001, ETI 2004).
Which myth of nature underlies these policies? The environment is clearly
seen as having some limits which must be respected, and there is a strong
emphasis on seeking the advice of expert scientists to determine these limits.
These core characteristics of the U.K. government strategy identifies it as a
blend of Individualistic and Hierarchical cultures. There is an acceptance of
certain environmental limits, and a reliance on experts to identify these as the
basis for setting market frameworks, but also a policy preference for market
institutions in environmental decision-making, and a belief that technological
advances in production will provide environmental improvements without
radical changes to lifestyles. There is an outright denial of the importance of
considering overall resource use, or of questioning economic growth, which
systematically excludes Egalitarian cultures and concerns. This perspective is
typical of the discourse at national and international level, and echoes
statements made by governments (OECD 2002), and the corporate sector
(Holliday and Pepper 2001). The implications of this position will now be
critically analyzed using Cultural Theory.
ASSESSING THE UK STRATEGY
Beginning from an Individualistic Cultural position, there are a number of
market failures which prevent the market mechanism from delivering
sustainable consumption. First, current pricing structures allow for social
and environmental costs to be externalized from market prices. As a result,
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the market sends the wrong signals. The U.K. government is attempting to
address this market failure through economic instruments such as the Climate
Change Levy or the Landfill Tax, but full resource pricing is unlikely to be
comprehensively adopted, especially when it competes with conventional
economic policy goals. Second, there are information failures to overcome, to
provide consumers with information about the environmental and social
implications of consumption decisions. Government action to improve
market information includes public awareness campaigns and independent
labelling schemes such as the ETI (Holdsworth 2003). Third, only products
and brands with which individuals are familiar are subject to consumer
pressure. Producer consumption, public procurement and most investment
products are effectively invisible to end-consumers, and this ‘‘institutional
consumption’’ places the vast majority of consumption decisions outside the
hands of individual domestic consumers and is largely immune to the market
transformation potential of sustainable consumerism (Lodziak 2002).
Adopting Hierarchist and Egalitarian worldviews raises a further set of
criticisms, along with emerging possibilities for alternative strategies. First,
the neo-liberal (Individualistic) conception of sovereign consumer as rational
satisfier of wants is in decline, and psychological and sociological theory has
much to say about the drivers and meanings of consumption (Fine 2002,
Miller 1995). Multi-layered rationales for consumption are suggested by
Egalitarian and Hierarchical worldviews, and include self-expression, self-
validation, self-esteem, identity, group loyalty, status display, aspirational
consumption and political statements – any one of which might compete with
the desire to consume sustainably.
Second, even when consumers do take action and producers respond, the
voluntary nature of these responses leaves them continually vulnerable to
changes in management, public concern, and fashion. For example, in the
UK, Littlewoods clothing stores were a major participant in the Ethical
Trading Initiative, but a new management team with different priorities
withdrew from the initiative (ETI 2004). A Hierarchical culture would
advocate government regulation and standard-setting to consolidate these
improvements.
Third, in the Individualistic model of market transformation, consumer
purchases are the only votes that count. This is socially unjust, according to
competing cultures, as it privileges the competitive market at the expense of
other systems of exchange, and ignores the preferences of those unable or
unwilling to participate in the market. External barriers to participation
include the affordability, availability and convenience of obtaining sustain-
able products. Internal barriers include individuals feeling powerless to
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change the system (a Fatalistic worldview), disenchanted with corporations
and government (an Egalitarian view), and a preference for products that are
simply not available (Holdsworth 2003). Despite the commitment to
consumer sovereignty inherent in the Individualistic culture, a broader
perspective shows that consumers are not at all ‘‘free to choose’’. The
conventional market cannot offer the non-commodified goods, ‘‘authenticity’’
and local connectivity that many desire (witness the anti-globalization
movements and the growth of social enterprise and alternative channels of
consumption), and it cannot offer the lifestyles which would be preferable to
other cultural outlooks (Maniates 2002, Jackson and Michaelis 2003, Levett
et al. 2003, Porritt, 2003). For example, while consumers can choose from a
range of more-or-less energy efficient cars using several different fuels, there is
little scope to choose public transport, or to live close enough to work and
shops to be able to walk and cycle. In these ways, consumers are effectively
locked in to particular consumption patterns by the overarching social
structures of market, business, working patterns, urban planning and
development (Sanne 2002), and a strategy for sustainable consumption which
recognizes these constraints must address structural factors too – either
through top-down Hierarchical planning, or up from grassroots Egalitarian
social arrangements.
When individuals choose to consume outside the commercial and
competitive market, to access non-commodified products and services
through the social economy and informal exchange networks, the market
cannot account for and respond to their preferences – other than a reduction
in demand. Community initiatives to promote alternative models of economic
exchange, needs-satisfaction and socially-embedded development through
non-commodified consumption are plentiful – though generally marginalized
by policy frameworks (Manno 2002, Leyshon et al. 2003). Consumers choose
alternative channels of provisioning for many reasons, including a desire to
practise Egalitarian non-materialist values.
An illustrative example is that of community currencies such as Local
Exchange Trading Schemes (LETS) and time banks, where new forms of local
money are designed to serve a social, community or environmental purpose.
A LETS is a cashless economy which allows people in a locality to exchange
goods and services without using money, and there are now about 300
schemes in the U.K. involving some 20,000 people (Williams 2000). LETS has
been widely described as ‘‘green’’ money for its potential to strengthen
decentralized self-reliant local economies, encourage recycling and sharing of
resources, and enable people to access ‘‘environmentally friendly’’, low-
consumption alternatives to mainstream market offerings such as locally
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grown food, or handicrafts (Douthwaite 1996, Seyfang 2001). A second model
of community currencies is Time Banks, whose currency is based on time, and
everyone’s time is worth the same. By rewarding the unpaid labor that people
put into their communities and social reproduction, time banks encourage
reciprocity, build social capital, and challenge existing hierarchies of labour
value – all of which are Egalitarian principles. Time banks are growing in the
UK: the first project was established in 1998 and the 2002 national evaluation
found that there were a total of about 2,196 members in 36 projects and nearly
64,000 hours exchanged (Seyfang 2003a). By 2004, the number of projects
had grown to 68 (www.timebanks.co.uk). They are attracting participants
among the most socially excluded neighbourhoods in the UK, where Fatalism
might normally be expected to prevail, perhaps because they offer accessible
means to redefine social institutions of wealth and work (Seyfang 2001, 2004).
In many cases, LETS and time banks have emerged as community responses
to the negative impacts of unrestrained global capitalism – possible evidence
of a spontaneous upsurge of competing cultures to a dominant paradigm.
Fourth, the scale of the policy instrument does not fit the problem. The
environmental problems which sustainable consumption intends to address
(climate change, ozone depletion, deforestation, declining fish stocks) are
supra-national in scale. Egalitarians claim that they therefore require
negotiated, collective efforts to resolve, rather than an ‘‘invisible hand’’ of
market transactions, and Hierarchists look to scientists to provide the data to
drive that collective rules-based action. From the Egalitarian perspective, the
global institutions which currently propagate unsustainable patterns of
consumption (for example corporations, the WTO – strongly Individualistic),
are also operating at a global level, with power and influence disproportionate
to that of individual consumers. Furthermore, ‘‘when responsibility for
environmental problems is individualized, there is little room to ponder
institutions, the nature and exercise of political power, or ways of collectively
changing the distribution of power and influence in society’’ (Maniates 2002:
45). So Cultural Theory proposes that the drive for sustainable consumption
must operate through institutions consistent with Egalitarian and Hierarch-
ical perspectives, with vertical and horizontal networks of solidarity,
regulation and collective efforts for change to challenge existing regimes of
market hegemony and materialism (Manno 2002). Such action could be
channelled through government and other social institutions (such as churches
and schools) to publicly questioning the rationale of continual economic
growth, regulate corporate behavior, and encourage active citizenship.
Finally, the UK strategy refuses to question the scale of consumption (in
fact, it roundly rejects abandoning economic growth), while this is a central
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issue in the alternative Egalitarian discourses promoted by ‘‘green’’ and ‘‘new
economists’’ and ‘‘deep ecologists’’ such as Schumacher (1993) and Porritt
(2003). Indeed, the Egalitarian discourse is much more visible in continental
Europe, where the Green Party plays a larger role in national politics and
social democracy is a stronger force than in the U.K., which is leaning more
and more towards the US neo-liberal (Individualistic) social policy model. In
these views, there is a fundamental distinction to be made between economic
growth (and consumption) measured by GDP, and well-being. Measures of
the economy make no distinction between activities which enhance quality of
life), and those which do not (expenditure on pollution clean-up technology,
sales of tobacco, congested roads, for instance). More fundamentally, it is
restricted to defining ‘‘wealth’’ as that produced in the formal economy alone,
and neglects value produced by non-commodified goods and services
(Robertson 1990, Ekins and Max-Neef 1993, Douthwaite 1996).
The U.K.’s own Commission on Sustainable Development are among
those who take this Egalitarian line, and claim that linking sustainable
development to growth, as the U.K. government has done, is impossible, as
they are ‘‘tying it to the very economic framework that was responsible for
unsustainable development’’ (SDC 2001: para 32). Egalitarians propose a
range of alternative accounting systems to measure social well-being, for
example adjusting GDP by subtracting the costs of environmental degrada-
tion and income inequality, and adding in the value of unpaid labor. These
would begin to reorient economic policy towards meeting broader goals than
economic growth – after all, what gets measured, counts (Jackson 2004). This
Egalitarian perspective argues that if the fundamental purpose of the
economy is to increase well-being (yet natural resources are fixed), then it is
possible to conceive of many ways in which this can be achieved while
reducing material consumption, resource use and conventional economic
activity. This requires not simply gains in efficiency, but restructuring the
institutions of lifestyles and livelihoods in order to rationalize (and reduce)
consumption (Levett et al. 2003, Reeves 2003).
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
By viewing the U.K. government’s strategy for sustainable consumption and
production through the lens of Cultural Theory, we have seen just how
dominated government policy (and indeed international discourse) is by the
Individualistic culture and market-led approach to sustainable consumption.
This consensus of views gives the illusion that there is nothing left to debate,
and that such perspectives are uncontroversial, but this is not the case.
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Cultural Theory illustrates plural rationalities and values competing for
influence. There is, however, a dearth of empirical evidence to substantiate
Cultural Theory, and so an immediate and pressing need is for research to
identify the proportions of consumers who identify with each culture. This
will enable policymakers to design strategies to appeal to particular groups of
consumers with targeted policies, rather than assuming an homogenous
whole.
What does all this mean for policy? Cultural Theory’s normative
prescription is for a pluralistic democracy, which gives voice to the three
pro-active cultures (claiming that they balance each other for the greater
overall good) and seeks to minimize fatalism. Policy implications are
threefold. First, existing market-based tools and instruments need to be
improved to overcome the pricing and information market failures which
currently send the wrong signals to consumers. However, attending to these
limitations is only part of the solution, which must be complemented and
supported by a second strand of strategies informed by Hierarchical and
Egalitarian cultures, to produce optimal social outcomes.
Specific recommendations are to introduce government regulation to build
on and protect the improvements brought about through voluntary,
corporate self-regulatory initiatives (a Hierarchical approach). At present
there are welcome signs of consumer-driven market change, but these are
constantly threatened by changing consumer interests and fashions.
Corporate voluntary measures could be instituted in regulation as new
‘‘minimum standards’’ and continuously ratcheted up, to consolidate and
strengthen government boundary-setting of the market. In contrast,
Egalitarian strategies for sustainable consumption tend to be decentralized
‘‘bottom-up’’ community initiatives such as the community currencies
discussed earlier, which eschew Hierarchical controls, but nevertheless require
support to develop. Smith (2002) argues that social and economic niches for
alternative technologies and consumption patterns such as these can be
carved out, and provide valuable pioneering examples which the mainstream
may learn from and potentially adopt in the future. Yet, they are hampered by
higher levels of decision-making, in terms of funding and practical support.
They need ‘‘policy space’’ in which to operate – regulatory frameworks need
to allow these non-conventional initiatives to thrive and achieve their aims. A
further Egalitarian-based policy change is to introduce alternative national
accounting mechanisms which measure national well-being rather than
material consumption.
The third policy strand required to achieve an effective pluralistic strategy
for sustainable consumption is to reduce Fatalism, and so increase the
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number of people willing and able to take a pro-active stance towards
sustainable development. The traditional measure of a Hierarchical model of
political engagement – voting turnout in a representative democracy – has
shown a sharp decline in recent years, with increasing numbers of people
feeling detached from public life (Electoral Commission 2004). Local
participative or direct democracy – Egalitarian institutions – address this
democratic gap, and have become increasingly important as a structure for
engaging citizens fully with decision-making. There is enormous scope for
innovation in local government to introduce a range of empowering
deliberative tools which aim to combat Fatalism by bringing people together
to discuss pertinent issues, and enabling decisions to be taken as far as
possible by the communities affected by them, and rewarding their
engagement (Seyfang 2003a, Walker 2003).
Applying a Cultural Theory lens to an analysis of the U.K. sustainable
consumption strategy has shown that there is no consensus on what
sustainable consumption means, and no justification for concentrating policy
upon only one interpretation, as this alienates the holders of alternative
cultural values and results in sub-optimal social outcomes. Furthermore,
Cultural Theory favors a broadening of the strategy to include Hierarchical
and Egalitarian institutions, and active state intervention to promote
alternative structures for provisioning. Taking this view, governments would
achieve more significant shifts towards sustainable consumption by support-
ing and making space for enthusiastic grassroots community groups, rather
than through a top-down coercive approach, or by leaving it to the market.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research was carried out as part of the Programme on Environmental
Decision-Making, at the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the
Global Environment, University of East Anglia, for which the author grate-
fully acknowledges ESRC core funding. Thanks also to the editor, the anon-
ymous referee and Andy Jordan for comments which resulted in a far
improved paper; remaining inadequacies are the author’s sole responsibility.
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