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The Social Life of Unsustainable Mass Consumption draws on a variety of theories and research to contribute to our understanding of unsustainable mass consumption. It addresses the role of identities, social relations, interactions, belonging, and status comparison, and how perceived time scarcity is both a cause and an effect of consumption. It examines the power of consumer norms and how overconsumption is normalized and shows how consumption is embedded in the time-space arrangements of everyday life. Magnus Boström contextualizes such drivers within the larger institutional and infrastructural forces underlying mass consumption, including the economy, growth politics, and the problematic promises of consumer culture. Boström further draws on lessons from lived experiments of consuming less and discuss how insights about the flaws of consumer culture can help shape a growing critique and countermovement – a collective detox from consumerism.
Magnus Boström is professor of sociology at Örebro University.
Table of ContentsList of FiguresIntroduction: The Social Roots of Ecologically Destructive ConsumerismChapter 1: Social Relations, Everyday Rituals, and ConsumerismChapter 2: Social Comparison and Consumerism in Stratified Social LifeChapter 3: The Temporalities of Mass Consumption in Social Life: A Lost FutureChapter 4: Sites of Consumption: The Home, The Mall, The InternetChapter 5: The Social Stock of (Not) Knowing: Normalization and Ignorance of Unsustainable Mass ConsumptionConclusion: A Collective Detox from ConsumerismAfterwordReferencesAbout the Author
Consumer society is not simply a breezy marketing formulation but rather constitutes a resolute system of social and economic organization purposefully constructed to achieve specific financial and political objectives. Boström does a magnificent job in this book to articulate the challenges of our contemporary consumerist lives and, most importantly, he identifies several timely pathways for transcending our current predicament.