Negotiating Environmental Change: New Perspectives from Social Science
(Summaries of chapter 10 (UN) sustainable consumption)
Temporary industrialization and capitalism has seen the conflict between economic growth, increases in personal consumption and increasing the environmental damage. And research shows that the environment has reached its limits. Facing the global challenge, some argued that the appeal of reducing the usage of natural resource in the first UN Environment conference in Stockholm, in 1972, might slow down the economic growth. After 20 year, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the focus of the environmental issue changed to how to cope with present levels of economic activity. Johannesburg in 2002 was debating about how to manage the increasing impacts of human activities.
The economic-technological system of industrialization maintains the increasing of personal consumption. Meanwhile, it provides the methodologies to measure the environmental issues although modelling the impacts of economic activities is still difficult. Most of social scientific researches focus on production issues and address that the north depletes and degrades more environmental resources. Consequently, a useful heuristic ecological classification has been produced to bring home the scale of differences in lifestyles and livelihoods of people living in different parts of the world.
A brief historical overview of the economic, social and cultural significance of consumption in modernity starts with the definition of ‘consumption’, but it has different meanings and interpretations when considering of the variety of time and places. For example, some scholars argued that the goal of human beings was to achieve happiness. The commonest feature of consumption in modernity is the changes of living styles of mass populations.
Section one: different approaches
To measure the impacts of mass population on environment, different academic disciplines offer rather different approaches. Within economics perspective, consumption is the circuit of commodity and service which involves the purchasing decision making of multi-actors such as individual, government, agencies and organizations – consumers exercise rational choice based on information and individual preferences to maximize utility. Within sociology and cultural sides, consumption is to construct a lifestyle and a self identity. Within environmental and natural sciences, consumption means the transform of matter and energy which use resource and produce waste – to determine the impacts, the proximate cause and driving forces behind it.
Section two: cognitive models and env-relevant behaviours
Cognitive perspectives explain that the process of an individual changing their behaviours is a learning process. A concise model is the Dominant methodological approach which suggests that offering new information and knowledge of impacts of human activity, environmental awareness will rise. However, research shows that increasing in public awareness is no substantive changes in behaviours.
Maslow’s needs hierarchy addresses that emotional and spiritual needs are met only when more basic physical and material needs have been satisfied. However, environmentalism argued that environmental concern was a ‘luxury’.
Needs-Opportunity-ability (NOA) model suggests that consumers are motivated by needs and opportunities represented by the economic and technological availability, behavioural control represent the ability of the individual to exercise their options. However, the needs is enormously variable, complex and culturally specific.
Economic measures might be a efficient way to change consumption behaviours, but it also raises significant political issues.
Section three: new researches – ecological-socio-technological networks
