Drawing on 14 months of in‐depth ethnographic research, this paper explores the difficulties and barriers that Swedish citizen‐consumers face in their attempts to reduce their environmental and social impacts. The research reveals that while many find it quite easy to turn off their lights, ride their bike to work, or buy organic apples, generalized anti‐consumption proves to be much more difficult – even for the aware, interested, and committed men and women participating in this research. Contrary to the contemporary dominance of theories which link sustainable action to awareness, I argue that in the Swedish context the most significant barrier is not lack of information but rather concerns with conformity, equality, and fairness – suggesting that efforts to encourage sustainable living depend not only on appeals to reflexive and rational consumers or the promise of alternative identities, but also on structural changes that require political and industrial leadership. The research, therefore, raises questions about the effectiveness of neoliberal environmental governance and the contemporary focus on consumer responsibility in sustainability policy. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Technological solutions to the challenge of dangerous climate change are urgent and necessary but to be effective they need to be accompanied by reductions in the total level of consumption and production of goods and services. This is for three reasons. First, private consumption and its associated production are among the key drivers of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, especially among highly emitting industrialized economies. There is no evidence that decoupling of the economy from GHG emissions is possible at the scale and speed needed. Second, investments in more sustainable infrastructure, including renewable energy, needed in coming decades will require extensive amounts of energy, largely from fossil sources, which will use up a significant share of the two-degree carbon budget. Third, improving the standard of living of the world's poor will consume a major portion of the available carbon allowance. The scholarly community has a responsibility to put the issue of consumption and the associated production on the research and policy agenda.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused dramatic and unprecedented impacts to both global health and economies. Many governments are now proposing recovery packages to get back to normal, but the 2019 Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Global Assessment indicated that business as usual has created widespread ecosystem degradation. Therefore, a post-COVID world needs to tackle the economic drivers that create ecological disruptions. In this Perspective, we discuss a number of tools across a range of actors for both short-term stimulus measures and longer-term revamping of global, national, and local economies that take biodiversity into account. These include measures to shift away from activities that damage biodiversity and towards those supporting ecosystem resilience, including through incentives, regulations, fiscal policy and employment programs. By treating the crisis as an opportunity to reset the global economy, we have a chance to reverse decades of biodiversity and ecosystem losses.

Introduction: Reuse & Repair in the Age of Ecological Crises and Circular Economy In a time of acceleration, overproduction and hyper-consumption (Crocker and Chiveralls, 2018; Lipovetsky, 2011; Schor, 1998) reuse represents an obstacle, or perhaps a countervailing tendency: to slow things down, to reassess what has been cast aside, to go back rather than forward. This is something the world's scavengers and charity shops have long understood (Larsen, 2018; Medina, 2007), but the focus on and importance of reuse would seem to be growing, as products and buildings composed entirely from virgin materials are scrutinized and on the decline-in an era of environmental concern (Urry 2010). At the same time, discussions of reuse and repair have simultaneously become attractive notions for scholars across disciplines (Alexander and Reno, 2012; Cooper and Gutowski, 2015), all of whom share an interest in revaluation as a way to expose the shaky foundations of the monstrous web of life and death that Jason Moore (2017) dubs 'the Capitalocene.' According to Crocker and Chiverallis: 'reuse can be understood as a deliberative project of value transformation that challenges dominant paradigms and cultural constructions while building alternative social and physical

Abstractc iso_1058 117..134Far removed from a direct connection to the land and environmental feedback, most urban inhabitants have little choice but to rely on external sources of information as they formulate their understanding of sustainability. This reliance on analytical, scientifically produced, and highly technical sources of information-such as life-cycle analyses, carbon footprints and climate change projections-solidifies definitions of sustainable living centered on technological resource efficiencies while concentrating the power to define sustainability with experts and the industrial and political elite. Drawing on 14 months of ethnographic field work in and around Stockholm, Sweden, this paper explores how urban alienation shapes ideas about sustainable living among ecologically concerned citizen-consumers and how the urban focus on efficiency has led many to argue that the grass is now greener in the city. Meanwhile this ethnographic research demonstrates that the efficiency-based perspectives so dominant in urban settings are contested by other Swedes who argue that sustainable living also depends on localized connections to the land and communal self-sufficiency. Despite these contrasting perspectives, research presented here suggests that these views are united in the Swedish context by a historically-rooted concern for global equity. As such, the concept of "a fair share of environmental space" resonates with many Swedes who are concerned about human and environmental health, regardless of where they live or how they define or practice sustainable living.

a b s t r a c tNew developments in consumption-based emissions accounting suggest that the reductions claimed by wealthy, environmentally progressive nations have often come at the expense of increased emissions elsewhere e and thus net growth in global GHG concentrations. This paper traces Sweden's attempts to translate growing recognition of displaced emissions into national environmental policy. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic research and policy analysis in Sweden and China, we argue that while the logical implications of consumption-based analyses point to the need to address production and consumption as an integrated system, complex governance challenges and the political precariousness of these ideas have thus far limited policy to the reinvention of consumer awareness campaigns and an international extension of long-standing ecological efficiency efforts. We argue that consumption-based emissions indicators justify more ambitious demand-side policy response.

Climate anthropology has broadened over the past decade from predominately locally focused studies on climate impacts to encompass new approaches to climate science, mitigation, sustainability transformations, risks, and resilience. We examine how theoretical positionings, including from actor–network theory, new materialisms, ontologies, and cosmopolitics, have helped expand anthropological climate research, particularly in three key interrelated areas. First, we investigate ethnographic approaches to climate science knowledge production, particularly around epistemic authority, visioning of futures, and engagements with the material world. Second, we consider climate adaptation studies that critically examine discourses and activities surrounding concepts of vulnerability, subjectivities, and resilience. Third, we analyze climate mitigation, including energy transitions, technological optimism, market-based solutions, and other ways of living in a carbon-constrained world. We conclude that anthropological approaches provide novel perspectives, made possible through engagements with our uniquely situated research partners, as well as opportunities for opening up diverse solutions and possible transformative futures. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology, Volume 49 is October 21, 2020. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

No abstract