Abstract:This article examines the limitations of the concept of sustainable consumption in terms of the inadequate attention given to the social, cultural and historical contextualization of consumption. I argue that Macromarketing should adopt modes of inquiry that more fully engage with this contextualization. The implicit assumptions of 'sustainable consumption' center on the rational individual and his or her needs and wants, and neglect the significance of consumption practices as embodying the relations between individuals. Acts of consumption are not in opposition to, and prior to, macro structures and processes, they are macro processes at work. Consumer practices are cultural and social practices that have historically developed, and are manifestations of both local and global linkages of social interdependencies. To continually look at the consumer as the cause of the ecological problem effectively decontextualizes consumption from such interdependencies. It posits a macro problem onto a micro situation and seeks the solution there.Keywords: sustainable consumption; consumer culture; history; social process
INTRODUCTIONThe purpose of this article is to demonstrate the inadequacy of contemporary accounts of sustainable consumption in terms of their static, individualistic and rationalistic tendencies. This is not an endorsement of a postmodern approach, but rather an attempt to stress the need for accounts of consumption, and therefore of the possibility of achieving sustainable consumption, within the historical flow and flux of social and cultural processes. Such processes encompass their own shifting power relations and struggles, which enable alternative visions of society to emerge. Every national society has its own history, though such histories are inevitably intertwined with others. Therefore, when we seek to develop solutions towards sustainable development in terms of sustainable consumption, we need to attempt to trace particular histories of consumption, in their changing form and function, in order to identify culturally specific modes of intervention; in order to make change more likely. This means definitions of 'sustainable consumption' must be multiple and fluid. Existing definitions are prescriptive. They do not describe what consumption is, but what it should be. It is precisely the assumptions of these universal prescriptions that are contested here.