Consequences of the politicization of consumption: the example of environmentally friendly consumption practices

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In a number of European societies, consumers are ascribed with a co-responsibility for solving environmental problems by changing their consumption patterns. These attempts to place part of the implementation of environmental political solutions on the kitchen table agenda of consumers constitute a politicization of consumption. The argument of the paper is that the complexity of environmental political strategies become further complicated by having to take into consideration consumers' everyday life experiences with such politicization. These everyday experiences comprise a socio-cultural linkage of the environmental problematique. The characteristics of this linkage as being intersubjective, compound and contingent are somewhat neglected in environmental policy and planning and in research in this field. The paper presents an empirical analysis of how a group of young Danish consumers understands and handles the claim for environmental consideration, which they respectively reject, negotiate and integrate in ways that are related to their experiences and their social network and in ways that are ambivalent. By combining an everyday life analytical approach with a concept of the public sphere, the potential consequences for environmental politics are discussed under two headings: the problems under the heading of privatization and the possibilities under the heading of democratization. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: