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Green Consumption and Social Change: Debates over Responsibility, Private Action, and Access
Author(s) -
Lorenzen Janet A.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
sociology compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 31
ISSN - 1751-9020
DOI - 10.1111/soc4.12198
Subject(s) - consumption (sociology) , sociology , green consumption , climate change , environmental sociology , aside , action (physics) , race (biology) , greenhouse gas , inequality , economics , social science , gender studies , ecology , art , purchasing power , quantum mechanics , keynesian economics , biology , mathematical analysis , physics , literature , mathematics
Attempting to influence everyday consumer practices is an increasingly popular strategy used to address environmental problems and further social change. This article focuses on exploring the controversial topic of green consumption, a growing area of study that brings together multiple disciplines including environmental sociology and the sociology of consumers and consumption. The article begins with a summary of the literature on green consumption and is then organized around three debates over how green consumption contributes to, or fails to contribute to, social and environmental change. The first debate is over locating responsibility for carbon dioxide emissions, the main contributor to greenhouse gases and climate change. The second debate considers what average people are doing to help address environmental problems. The third debate is about access to green consumption. Should policies work to increase access to greener products and efficient technologies for everyone or does the question of access push aside questions of inequality (race, class, and gender) and sufficiency (how much is enough)? These debates, in different ways, attempt to address the broader question of how social change happens and what we should do to support it.