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Going Green: The Process of Lifestyle Change 1
Author(s) -
Lorenzen Janet A.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
sociological forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1573-7861
pISSN - 0884-8971
DOI - 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2011.01303.x
Subject(s) - sociology , pragmatism , bricolage , narrative , action (physics) , perspective (graphical) , consumption (sociology) , process (computing) , environmental ethics , social science , public relations , epistemology , political science , art , philosophy , linguistics , physics , literature , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , computer science , operating system
This article draws on 40 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews of three groups of people who restrict their consumption in various ways: voluntary simplifiers, religious environmentalists, and green home owners. I identify common patterns in the emergence of green lifestyles across all groups. Green practices are not isolated decisions or actions, but components in an ongoing project. As a result, green lifestyles are often experienced as both a work in progress and a provisionally coherent life narrative. Furthermore, I explore bricolage, the cobbling together of resources at hand by nonexperts, as a mechanism for lifestyle change and expand the concept to include environmental practices and themes. I adopt a pragmatist perspective to understand lifestyle change as a deliberate process undertaken in response to a problem left underaddressed by current policies and practices. This article also weighs in on the debate in the sociology of culture over how culture influences action.