Social Change and the Coming of Post-consumer Society

Consumer society is an unquestionably complex social construct. However, after decades of unremitting dominance there are signs emerging that it is starting to falter, both as a coherent and durable system of social organization and as a strategy for societal advancement. Debates concerning how we can transition beyond present energy- and materials-intensive consumer society are beginning to gain greater salience.

Social Change and the Coming of Post-Consumer Society aims to develop more complete appreciation of the relevant processes of social change and to identify effective interventions that could enable a transition to supersede consumer society. Bringing together leading interdisciplinary experts on social change, the book identifies and analyzes several ongoing small- and modest-scale social experiments. Possibilities for macro-scale change from the interlinked perspectives of culture, economics, finance, and governance are then explored. These contributions expose the systemic problems that are emblematic of the current condition of consumer society, specifically the unsustainability of prevailing consumption practices and lifestyles and the persistence of inequalities. These observations are summarized and extended in the final chapter of the book.

This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable consumption, sustainability transitions, environmental sociology, and sustainable development.

I. Consumption and Social Change: An Introductory Discussion and Synthetic Framework
1. Introduction, Halina Szejnwald Brown
II. Niches of Social Innovation
2. The New Sharing Economy: Enacting the Eco-habitus
3. Toward a More Solidaristic Sharing Economy: Examples from Switzerland
4. Social Change at the Nexus of Consumption and Politics: A Case Study of Local Food Movements
5. Institutionalization Processes in Transformative Social Innovation: Capture Dynamics in the Social Solidarity Economy and Basic Income Initiatives
6. Consumption and Social Change: Sustainable Lifestyles in Times of Economic Crisis
III. Post-consumerist Transitions
7. Learning from History: When "Gestures of Change" Demand Policy Support
8. Finance: An Emerging Issue in Sustainable Consumption Research
9. Beyond "GDP" Indicators: Changing the Economic Narrative for a Post-consumerist Society?
10. Consumption, Governance, and Transitions: How Reconnecting Consumption and Production Opens Up New Perspectives for Sustainable Development
IV. Social Change Toward Post-consumer Society
11. Conclusion and Outlook