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A Second Sustainable Consumption Conference

To be held may 27th to 30th 2008 in belgium

Click HERE to find out more

Sustainable Consumption and Society An International Working Conference for Social Scientists Held June 2nd to 3rd, 2006 Sponsored by Research Committee 24 (RC24) on Environment and Society of the International Sociological Association Co-Sponsored by the Department of Rural Sociology and the Agroecology Program University of Wisconsin-Madison

Conference organizing committee

Michael Bell, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Maurie Cohen, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Eva Heiskanen, National Consumer Research Center, Finland
Michele Micheletti, Karlstads Universitet, Sweden
Gert Spaargaren, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

For further information: michaelbell@wisc.edu

For a print-out of the conference Call for Abstracts: click HERE (pdf) or HERE (Word doc).

The conference program is available HERE.

A campus map showing the location of the conference activities is available HERE.

Learn about how to organize a "slow talk" conference HERE.

Overview

Every age has its contested aspirations, central to economic, political, and even moral debates over how we should organize our lives.  Sustainable consumption is surely one such aspiration.  Some economists call it a contradiction in terms.  Some postmodernists call it the latest middle class moralism.  Some Neo-Marxists call it a bourgeois green herring that diverts attention from where the real conflict lies: in production. Yet many others view sustainable consumption as essential for solving the dilemma of balancing economic prosperity with ecologic vitality and social justice.  Sustainable consumption initiatives—recycling programs, energy efficient living, local food systems, fair trade, and more—increasingly gather adherents, pass laws, establish “beyond compliance” regulatory schemes, and reconfigure environmental relations, the economy, and democracy in countries rich and poor.  Thus, whether or not one grants any validity to sustainable consumption as a central aspiration, it is already changing the organization of daily life. 

Assessing these efforts in terms of what they represent, what they may lead to, where they came from, and whether they are or can be successful was the subject of “Sustainable Consumption and Society,” a small working conference sponsored by Research Committee 24 on Environment and Society (RC24) of the International Sociological Association, and co-sponsored by the Department of Rural Sociology and the Agroecology Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  RC24 organized this conference in testament to the growing interest in sustainable consumption among social scientists. Perhaps paralleling the growth in sustainable consumption initiatives, a number of important scholarly volumes have recently appeared on the topic:  Cohen and Murphy’s Exploring Sustainable Consumption (Elsevier, 2001); Princen, Maniates, and Conca’s Confronting Consumption (MIT Press, 2002); Shove’s Comfort, Cleanliness, and Convenience (Berg, 2003); Micheletti’s Political Virtue and Shopping (Palgrave, 2003), and the Nordic Council’s Political Consumerism (Nordisk Ministerråd, 2005).  We aimed to contribute to this literature through the intimacy and interactiveness of a small working conference, so as to better promote engagement, innovativeness, and scholarly development.

The conference was organized using principles of scholarly exchange that the organizing committee came to call "slow talk," in rough parallel with the notion of "slow food." These principles worked out very well, with universal appreciation by the conference participants, several of whom called this the best conference they had ever attended. Click here to read how we organized the conference using "slow talk" guidelines.

The conference was held June 2-3, 2006, on the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the United States.  All members of RC24 were invited to participate, as well as any other interested social scientists.  The conference was also specifically timed to provide an alternative RC24 event in 2006 for RC24 members who were not attending the 2006 meeting in Durban, South Africa.

The Four Conference Themes

The conference organizing committee invited papers in four themes: domestic consumption, democracy,  policy, and theory. The papers we received did not exactly fall out in these themes, but we reproduce below the original call for papers nonetheless.

Domestic consumption: This theme will trace two perspectives on domestic consumption. First, it will consider how domestic consumption involves the reproduction of infrastructures for energy, water, and waste handling.  These infrastructures are under pressures of fragmentation due to privatization and globalization, and new configurations of supply and demand are emerging. These new configurations can be studied from a number of perspectives, such as the sociology of environmental flows. Second, it will consider how domestic consumption is conceived of by many experts and policy-makers as a technical, infrastructural affair best left to the providers to organize.  But if sustainable infrastructures are to emerge, there need to be clear links to the consumption practices citizen-consumers employ in their daily lives, such as cooking, cleaning, bathing, gardening, and commuting. The committee welcomes papers that speak to either perspective, but especially welcomes ones that connect infrastructural change with the dynamics of change in domestic consumption.

Democracy and Sustainable Consumption: For this theme, we seek papers that focus on the democratic considerations of sustainable development. Suitable topics include how this dimension can be harmonized with the economic growth and ecological dimensions of sustainable development; the role of the political consumerist movement in sustainable development; and the impact of production and consumption on human rights, workers’ rights, and other local and global social justice issues. Of interest are also papers that address the dilemmas or tensions between sustainable development’s ecological and democratic dimensions, that evaluate “beyond compliance” regulatory schemes designed to change consumption patterns, and that examine consumer- and group-initiated attempts to reframe how we view our personal responsibility in sustainable development processes.

Sustainable consumption and policy: A growing number of countries have begun to develop “national sustainable consumption plans” and new forms of political activism have coalesced around consumption and consumerism. This stream solicits papers on how social scientific knowledge informs policy programs and activist campaigns to foster sustainable consumption (especially in terms of food provisioning and mobility practices). We are also interested in contributions that shed light on the formation of new discursive communities involving public officials and policy entrepreneurs, as well as efforts to reframe more familiar social and ecological issues as “consumption problems.” There is evidence of increasing dissatisfaction with incremental strategies for moving toward less energy- and materials-intensive modes of consumption and this stream will also consider the efficacy of more ambitious transitional approaches.

The theory of sustainable consumption:  For this theme, we encourage a potpourri of approaches and perspectives that engage theoretical debates on what sustainable consumption is, could be, and should not be—or even whether it should be at all. We invite papers that find their point of entry in actor network theory, critical realism, ecological dialogue, ecological modernization, inconspicuous consumption, risk society, social constructionism, the sociology of flows, the treadmill of production, and yet other perspectives heard from or not yet heard from—and perhaps especially the latter. We are especially interested in papers that offer means for moving debates past current conceptual impasses.

The Conference Venue and Activities

Madison, Wisconsin is a delightful American city, noted for its four large urban lakes, many parks, pedestrianized downtown, glorious State Capital building, and the lovely lakeside campus of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Madison is also a progressive city (at least by US standards) with regard to sustainable consumption. It is known for its car-sharing and free bike programs, extensive bike paths (roughly 100 miles), five farmers markets (two of which are year-round), community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives, restaurants that source ingredients locally, fair trade organizations, and its wide variety of green businesses.  Many of of these initiatives are organized on a county-wide basis, across Dane County, the county in which Madison is located. The conference included opportunities for participants to interact with those involved in several of these local initiatives.

For interested participants, the day before the conference (June 1st), there was a “sustainability bike tour” of Madison’s sustainable consumption initiatives, using Madison’s free “red bikes.”  The conference dinner was held on Friday night, and made extensive use of locally-sourced and fair traded ingredients, and was prepared by the Underground Food Collective. On Saturday, the conference lunch was held outdoors at the Dane County Farmers Market in Madison, reputedly the largest farmers market in the US. 

Madison is a lively city at any time of the year, with lots of good places to eat (click here for a list of suggestions, and here for a map of them), and over a hundred clubs with live music. During the time of the conference there was also a jazz festival going on in the immediate vicinity of the conference, with much of the music outside on the Memorial Union Terrace, a lovely spot on the lakeshore.

Pierre's Blog

Pierre Stassart of Belgium's Liège University maintained a blog throughout the conference, complete with photos. He invites you to enjoy it here. Nota bene to English speakers: Pierre's blog is in French.

For further information: michaelbell@wisc.edu

For a print-out of the conference Call for Abstracts: click HERE (pdf) or HERE (Word doc).

The conference program is available HERE.

A campus map showing the location of the conference activities is available HERE.

Take me to Mike Bell's home page.

Page last modified October 23, 2007