Why do Americans waste so much food and energy?
Is a single global consumer culture covering the
world?
What is really causing Global Warming?
What
can we do to reduce Environmentally Harmful Consumption?
I
will add links to this site as I find them. Right now
a good starting place is a paper I have written for
the National Research Council/National Academy of Sciences committee on global
environmental change, which defines some of the key issues. ("Emulation
and Global Consumerism." in Environmentally Significant Consumption.
Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change, National
Research Council.
Here are some links to other resources on
global consumer culture and global environmental issues:
Ø
The International
Society for Marketing and Development is a loose collection of academics in marketing and other related
fields, many in developing countries. They have excellent annual meetings, much
more international than most consumer-research groups.
Ø
The Association for Consumer Research is an
organization of academics and marketers, who hold annual meetings in the
Ø
Guliz
Ger at the
Ø
The Center for a New American Dream is
devoted to teaching wasteful North Americans to think about the environmental
consequences of consumption, and promote frugal lifestyles.
Ø
Don
Slater, whose excellent book "Consumer Culture and Modernity" is
reviewed elsewhereon this site,
also has a useful and informative web resource called the Consumer Culture
Research Site. Superb bibliography, course outlines, and interesting
selection of links.
Ø
Center for Renewable Energy & Sustainable Technology( CREST),
Ø
One
of the most interesting sources of consumer information on the
Ø
Wonder whatever happened to the Marxist critique of
commodity capitalism? Its on the web at a site called
THE COMMODITY FETISH
TIMES, which includes a lot of impassioned marxist
rants, and links to other sites on the "Commie Ring."
Ø
A
link to a newsletter called "Use Less Stuff," advised by
archaeologist Bill Rathje, includes a lot of
practical tips about ways to cut down your waste stream. cygnus-group.com/ULS/About_ULS.html . They have just published a new book called "use
less stuff."
Ø This website on living lightly has similar advice. http://www.scn.org/earth/lightly/karvsacp.htm
Ø
Frugal Corner is a
comprehensive list of anti-consumer and 'live lightly' web links, and includes
a lot of practical information on cutting waste.
Ø
The Media Foundation publishes Adbuster's magazine. Their website is interesting,
graphic, and comprehensive. Concentrates (to an extreme) on the role of the
media, especially TV, in promoting consumerism and suppressing alternatives.
They sposnor "Buy Nothing Day" and other
forms of protest.
Ø
Voluntary Simplicity Study Groups and
Circles are a growing trend in the
Ø
The Context Institute is a
nonprofit research organization, "exploring and clarifying just what is
involved in a humane sustainable culture - and how we can get there."
Emphasis on philosophy, ethics, and values, with a number of papers on global
issues. Depends heavily on ideas of spirituality and community activism, light
on data.
Ø
Allen Hammond's book
"Which World" discusses possible global futures, including a good
deal of discussion of the growth of consumer culture. Good futurist
projections, in an excellent website based on the content of the book. Some
useful teaching resources here, though not a font of optimism.
Ø
The
book Global Problems
and the Culture of Capitalism by Richard H. Robbins is one of the best
introductions to global issues I have seen. It has an associated website with
lost of excellent academic and activist links, extensive extracts of the book,
and a generally balanced discussion of major issues including consumerism.
Ø
The
project on Environmentally Significant Consumption, funded by the European
Science Foundation, has held two wonderful conferences at the
Ø
Ø
An
excellent new site on the cross-cultural study of food
habits has recently appeared, assembled by Robert Dirks at
Ø One interesting place is Corporate Watch, which tracks global capitalism from the perspective that transnational corporations are the villains. Kind of like the point of view in Korten's "When Corporations Rule the World." A lot of their information comes from "The Corporate Planet: Ecology and Politics in the Age of Globalization" (Sierra Club Books, 1997). http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/feature/index.html. In the same vein we have the Multinational Monitor at http://www.essential.org/monitor/monitor.html.
Ø
Dominique
Bouchet, professor of Marketing at
Ø
Peoplink is an organization that tries to create new person-to-person links in
the global economy by using the internet to connect poor artisans in developing
countries with buyers in the prosperous north. Their website is http: www.peoplink.org.
PEOPLink
Internet for Global Trade
and Democracy
Back
to Richard Wilk's Homepage ||||| Visit
the Global Babble page!
Last update:
Suggestions for resources to add? Click here.