Consumption Culture and Sustainability Discourses

Dear Colleagues,

Sustainability has emerged as a dialectical praxis that draws its sustenance from the discussions around depleting world resources, human negligence, and redesigning systems that foster more inclusive, conscious, and ethical methods. The Resource-Based View (RBV) of sustainability addresses the competitive strategization of corporate social responsibilities under environmental and natural challenges and aims at the penetration of the “bottom of the pyramid” markets (Barney, Ketchen, and Wright, 2011; Ciszewska-Mlinarič and Wasowska, 2015). The RBV of sustainability, notwithstanding its importance, tends to overshadow the other constraints and needs for and expressions of sustainability. While RBV offers an operational perspective on sustainability, the sustainability paradigm needs a more holistic treatment.

This call for papers addresses the research direction that examines the interconnections between markets, consumption practices, and sustainability discourses. The hegemonic narratives of capitalistic consumption, mainstreamed through global neoliberal market discourses, have overlooked the articulations of sustainable consumption possible at a more localized, micro-cultural level. Subverting the global anthropocentric consumption agenda, the more sustainable, if not marginal, consumption practices are expressed through identity politics (Soron, 2010; Fuentes, 2017), socio-cultural resistance (Denegri-Knott, Nixon, and Abraham, 2018), subsistence market narratives (Viswanathan and Rosa, 2010), reconciliation dialogues (Barr, Gilg, and Shaw, 2011), issues of ethnicity or multiculturalism (Nemeth, et al., 2019), discourses of community marking and nationalism (Malloy, 2009; Brosius and Michaels, 2020), environmental politics (Halkier, 1999; Albinsson, Ray Chaudhury, and Perera, 2019), minority ethics and human rights (Raman, 2008), traditional episteme or counter-aesthetics (Clarke, 1990; Moldavanova, 2013), gender representations (Merrill, et al., 2019), projection of subalternity (Brown, 2018), and individual/community memory (D’Urso, 2020), among other things. Problematizing and subverting the unsustainable practices of global consumer culture through everyday consumption habits (Connolly and Prothero, 2003; 2008), consumers resist fading into oblivion or being appropriated by monologic global capitalism and seize agency for self-representation. This call for papers invites submissions that intend to project the meta-normative characteristics of the sustainability discourse through sociological theories of consumption. We invite papers that draw on insights from marketing, consumer culture, consumer behavior, and consumer psychology (the list being descriptive rather than prescriptive/exhaustive) and address the issues of sustainability. Conceptual and empirical papers are welcome on topics including, but not limited to:

1. anti-consumption practices and sustainability;
2. consumer identity and sustainability;

• socio-cultural resistance and unsustainable consumption;

1. sustainable consumption and the subsistence marketplace;
2. transnational, multicultural, and hybrid consumption and sustainability;
3. sustainable consumption and discourses of nation/nationalism;

• environmental politics as consumer practices resistant to unsustainable consumption;
• subaltern consumer culture and sustainable consumption;

1. negotiation of race and gender through sustainable consumption practices;
2. consuming sustainable practices through storytelling/memory studies;
3. positivist politics of traditional consumption practices; and

• human rights narratives and minority discourses of sustainable consumption habits.

References

Albinsson, P.A., Ray Chaudhury, S., and Perera, B.Y. (2019). “Youth citizen-consumers in action: The Thunberg effect in addressing  the climate crisis.” Society for Marketing Advances 2019: Changing the ‘Rhythm’ of Marketing:Are We Listening? New Orleans. https://www.societyformarketingadvances.org/resources/Documents/Conference/2019%20Conference/2019SMAProceedings_v4.pdf.

Barney, J.B., Ketchen, D.J. and Wright, M. (2011). “The future of resource-based theory: revitalization or decline?” Journal of Management, 37: 1299–1315.

Barr, S., Gilg, A., and Shaw, G. (2011). “Citizens, consumers and sustainability: Re(framing) environmental practice in an age of climate change.” Global Environmental Change. 21: 1224-1233.

Brosius, C. and Michaels, A. (2020). “Vernacular heritage as urban place-making. Activities and positionsin the reconstruction of monuments after the Gorkha earthquake in Nepal, 2015-2020: The case of Patan.” Sustainability. 12 (20): 8720. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12208720.

Brown, T. (2018). Farmers, Subalterns, and Activists: Social Politics of Sustainable Agriculture in India. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press.

Clarke, W.C. (1990). “Learning from the past: Traditional knowledge and sustainable development.” The Contemporary Pacific. 2(2): 233-253. 

Connolly, J. and A. Prothero. 2003. “Sustainable Consumption: Consumption, Consumers and the Commodity Discourse.” Consumption, Markets and Culture. 6 (4): 275–291.

Connolly, J. and A. Prothero. 2008. “Green Consumption – Life-politics, Risk and Contradictions.” Journal of Consumer Culture. 8 (1): 117–145.

Ciszewska-Mlinarič, M. and Wasowska, A. (2015). “Resource-Based View (RBV).” In   Vodosek, M. and den Hartog, D. (Eds.) Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, Vol. VI. Chichester, West Sussex (U.K.) : Wiley. 1–7. 

Denegri-Knott, J., Nixon, E. and Abraham, K. (2018). “Politicizing the study of sustainable living practices.” Consumption, Market & Culture. 21(6): 554-573.

D’Urso, D. (2020). “Memory as Material of the Project of Sustainability.” Sustainability. 12(10): 4126. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12104126.

Fuentes, C. (2017). “Play a Game, Save the Planet: Gamification as a way to Promote Green Consumption. In Dymek, M. & Zackariasson, P. (Eds.) The Business of Gamification: A Critical Analysis. London: Routledge. 144–160.

Halkier, B. (1999). “Consequences of the Politicization of Consumption: The Example of Environmental Friendly Consumption Practices.” Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning. 1 (1): 25–41.

Malloy, T.H. (2009). “Minority environmentalism and eco-nationalism in the Baltics: Green citizenship in the making?” Journal of Baltic Studies. 40(3): 375-395.

Merill, L. et al. (2019). “Gender and fossil fuel subsidy reform: Findings from and recommendations for Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria.” Energia: International Network on Gender and Sustainable Energy. https://www.energia.org/cm2/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/RA4_Gender-and-fossil-fuel-subsidy-reform_without-Annex-2.pdf.

Moldavanova, A. (2013). “Sustainability, ethics, and aesthetics.” The International Journal of Sustainability Policy and Practice. 8(1): 109-120.

Nemeth, N., et al. (2019). “The role of cultural factors in sustainable food consumption—An investigation of the consumption habits among international students in Hungry.” Sustainability. 11(11): 3052. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11113052.

Raman, R.K. (2008). “Environmental ethics, livelihood, and human rights: Subaltern driven cosmopolitanism?” Nature and Culture. 3(1): 82-97.

Soron, D. (2010). “Sustainability, self-dentity and the sociology of consumption.” Sustainable Development. 18: 172-181.

Viswanathan, M. and Rosa, J.A. (2010). “Understanding subsistence marketplaces: Toward sustainable consumption and commerce for a better world.” Journal of Business Research. 63(1): 535–537.

Dr. Pia A. Albinsson
Dr. Arindam Das
Dr. Himadri Roy Chaudhuri
Guest Editors

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