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Book Reviews

Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between WhatWe Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker.New York: Random House, 2008, 291 pp., ISBN9781400063918, $25.00.

Some readers of this journal with an interest inconsumption may be familiar with the journalistNaomi Klein (2000) and her widely read exposefrom a decade ago on the manifold changes thatwere taking place at the time in the world ofconsumer marketing. Her book No Logo (Klein2000) usefully highlighted a raft of innovations atthe intersection of brand management and youthculture. Klein also indirectly put her finger onthe utmost contemporary economic challenge—how to induce consumers to take on board everlarger volumes of goods so as to keep the wheelsof commerce in a profitable spin.

Rob Walker’s new book is, in many respects,the sequel to Klein’s account. Buying In movesbeyond now familiar marketing strategies such asthe deployment of product placements in majormedia, the mobilization of “cool hunters,” andthe recruitment of “buzz agents.” According toWalker’s fascinating reporting (he also writes theweekly “Consumed” column for the New YorkTimes Magazine), the industry has begun to pushin recent years into new, edgier territory and topractice what he terms “murketing” (a neologismthat blends murky and marketing) to sell all vari-ety of merchandise, from soda water to headachepills.

This new rhetorical coinage is prompted bythe need to draw attention to increasingly col-laborative and interactive relationships betweenproduct promoters and consumers. To be sure,we have come a long way from the days whencommercial persuasion was predicated on regal-ing largely passive audiences with both the realand the imagined attributes of particular goods.

c© 2010 by Yale UniversityDOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00210.x

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The extent to which our lives are cluttered withenticing come-ons of every kind is a sure signthat four-color magazine spreads, 60-second tele-vision spots, and sprawling billboards have notcompletely lost their place. At this point in time,however, the ubiquity of these communicativemodes is more the result of habituated routinesthan of demonstrated effectiveness.

Part of the reason for the declining pull of cus-tomary advertisements, at least according to thebusiness press and some academic commentators,is that we live in the age of the newly empow-ered consumer, who playfully fashions his or heridentities out of a seemingly limitless palette ofcultural resources. This generalized critique fur-ther portrays contemporary shoppers as irascible,unpredictable, and capable of making otherwisepowerful titans cower in their corner offices.

Rather than wade directly into these obvi-ously polemical waters, Walker explains howmany of the marketing innovations that Klein(2000) chronicled have now been superseded bya new generation of practices that forge iterativecultural dialogues—even partnerships—betweenproducers and consumers. Prominent examplesof this form of communication include cultish“products” such as Hello Kitty images and Live-strong bracelets. More purposeful are the activ-ities of various “cultural creatives” who havedevised intriguing (some might claim bizarre)ways to cunningly project a promotional signalthrough the noisy, media-saturated jumble. Pep-pered throughout the book are transfixing vi-gnettes outlining the activities of arguably keyfigures in the murketing vanguard. We learn, forexample, about a peculiar design duo called An-drew Andrew (the repetition in nomenclature isdeliberate), a product customizer who works un-der the appellation Dapper Dan, a frenetic fash-ion mogul named Dov Charney (the force be-hind the company American Apparel), a lawyercum lifestyle-fashion designer who goes by themoniker Bobby Hundreds, and a Warholesquescenester dubbed A-Ron who has fantasticallysought to “brand” his own life.

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Startling though it may seem, stalwart man-ufacturers, savvy upstarts, and deep-pocketedbrand reinventors are now building on seeminglyaccidental fads and cultural entrepreneurialism tosell their wares with hardly a hint of overt sales-manship. The aim is to create ironic spectaclesand to cleverly and furtively situate them withinthe welter of everyday life.

Toyota, for instance, introduced its line ofScion cars by surreptitiously parking the vehi-cles in proximity to mildly rebellious urban fes-tivals as part of its strategy to wrap the brand ina hazy antiestablishment aura. The cagey com-pany that produces Red Bull, a popular “energy”drink, has dispensed with the seemingly timelesspractice of sponsoring talented athletes and pro-fessional sports teams and instead owns its ownAmerican soccer team, which plays under thesame name as the beverage. Such juxtapositionmakes it difficult, nay impossible, to distinguishthe product from the advertisement. The folksbehind Pabst Blue Ribbon (or PBR, as it is moregenerally known these days) stealthily collabo-rate with street-hardened skateboarders to cul-tivate a hue of blue-collar solidarity around abrand of beer that was once closely associatedwith working men in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Inactual fact, the original factory on the shores ofLake Michigan has long been shuttered, and PBRis produced these days (pay no mind to the nostal-gic markings on the label) by a “virtual brewer” inTexas. In other words, unbeknownst to its faith-ful consumers, PBR is a “phony brand” owned bya marketing shell that relies on outsourced pro-duction.

Is there any way out of this murketing houseof mirrors? Like Klein (2000) before him, Walkertries to offer a glimmer of hope. No Logo ferventlycelebrated the antiglobalization movement as asign of growing defiance of the branded culturepurveyed by the likes of Nike, McDonald’s, andThe Gap. An unfortunate consequence of thepresent era is that Walker is forced to cast aboutmuch further and more creatively to find anynotable resistance. In what will seem a curiousturn to most readers, the final pages of the bookare given over to a discussion of the upsurge ofpopular zeal for “crafting.” As he explains, thisenthusiasm grew out of a collection of amateur-produced magazines (so-called “zines”) devoted

to homemade crafts, and the “movement” is nowmost visibly embodied by heavily trafficked Websites such as GetCrafty.com and Etsy.com.

Walker admits that his argument is a reach,but he interprets this interest in do-it-yourselfactivities as a beacon of quiet revolution againstthe seemingly endless flow of cheap, soulless mer-chandise at Wal-Mart. He points out, however,that some crafters, like business owners every-where, find themselves in ethically messy co-nundrums. For example, Buying In describes howsome particularly successful crafters end up re-cruiting itinerant day laborers to keep up withdemand or develop their own promotional cam-paigns to give a push to slow-moving inventory.

In summary, Walker offers a fair and even-handed contextual analysis of how productpromotionalism is becoming increasingly insepa-rable from alternative and mainstream cultures.Although his depictions of murketing are likely tobe unsettling to readers with a critical dispositiontoward the marketing industry, what is surpris-ing is that these forms of commercial persuasionseem to be encountering few obstacles. Such cir-cumstances are perhaps a worrisome indication ofhow deeply consumerism has penetrated contem-porary culture. Buying In delivers an important re-minder to industrial ecologists and others aboutthe need to be attentive to consumer culture andthe role that it plays in driving the consumptionof energy and materials in contemporary society.

Maurie J. CohenNew Jersey Institute of TechnologyNewark, New Jersey

Reference

Klein, N. 2000. No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies.New York: Knopf.

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Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, byMartin Lindstrom. New York: Doubleday, 2008,256 pp., ISBN 9780385523882, $24.95.

Martin Lindstrom is a compelling storyteller.His latest book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About

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Why We Buy, is a fascinating account of a 3-year,$7 million journey around the world into thou-sands of consumers’ brains to investigate funda-mental marketing questions: How powerful arebrand logos? What effect do warning labels, suchas those found on a package of cigarettes, have?Does sex sell? Does subliminal advertising work,and is it still taking place today? Do the world’sbig religions and successful brands have anythingin common? Lindstrom answers these questionsthrough his skill at weaving together personalstories and detailed research results.

Lindstrom is a global branding expert whoclaims to be on a plane 300 days in a year. His ex-pertise places him in a strong position to advisebusinesses on effective branding and marketingabout the importance of knowing how consumersthink and what compels them to select oneparticular product or brand over another—their“buyology”—to build better brands. The prob-lem is that traditional market research, whichuses both quantitative and qualitative methodsof investigation, such as focus groups and opin-ion polls, is simply not delivering. To supportthis conclusion, Lindstrom lists a few numbers:$12 billion was spent on market research in theUnited States in 2007, and another $117 billionwas spent on packaging, advertising, and otherforms of marketing. In spite of these huge invest-ments, 80% of products launched in the UnitedStates fail before hitting the shelves or shortly af-ter. In Japan, the failure rate reaches a staggering97%.

Neuromarketing is a fairly new field, onemade possible by the emergence of recent brain-scanning technologies, such as functional mag-netic resonance imaging (fMRI). This equipmentis opening the door to a whole new dimension ofmarketing research and is helping to reveal the“thoughts, feelings, motivations, needs, and de-sires of consumers” (6). The fMRI is the key toolthat Lindstrom deploys in his brain research, adevice that registers fluctuations in oxygen levelsin different parts of the brain that are stimulatedor are in use.

The findings of this research are revealing—and often surprising, if not entirely counterintu-itive in many instances. One of the most pro-found revelations has to do with smoking andthe effectiveness of health warnings on packages

of cigarettes. At the London-based Centre forNeuroImaging Sciences, Lindstrom and a teamof neuroscientists set out to conduct brain scanson numerous patients (all smokers to varying de-grees) over a 1.5-month period to determine theinfluence of warning labels on individuals’ de-sire to smoke. The respondents were first askedto complete a questionnaire asking whether theythought warning labels had an effect on themand whether that effect resulted in a reductionof smoking. Most of the smokers indicated thatwarning labels did lead them to curb their smok-ing. The fMRI results, however, showed other-wise:

Warning labels on the sides, fronts, and backsof cigarette packs had no effect on suppress-ing the smokers’ cravings at all. Zero. In otherwords, all those gruesome photographs, gov-ernment regulations, billions of dollars some123 countries had invested in nonsmokingcampaigns, all amounted, at the end of a day,to, well, a big waste of money (14).

In fact, the research revealed that when thewarning labels were flashed in front of smokers’eyes, they actually craved cigarettes. Their nu-cleus accumbens—or the brain’s craving spot—lit up; it was stimulated and wanted to get its fix,despite the clear intent of the label to discouragesmoking.

As Lindstrom documents his diverse experi-ments, other intriguing results emerge and keepthe reader fully engaged in the buyology adven-ture. In Chapter 6, he explores the link betweenreligion and brands; he begins by describing theresults of his “nun study,” in which he performedbrain scans on 15 nuns from the Carmelite orderto examine their neural activity when they expe-rienced the sensation of being close to God. Bythe end of the chapter, the reader discovers thatthe part of the brain that is associated with reli-gious feelings and spiritual experiences (the cau-date nucleus)—the one that produces a sensationof joy and serenity—is the same that registers ac-tivity when people view images associated withstrong brands, such as Ferrari and Harley David-son. One reason for the outcome, Lindstrom ex-plains, is that “like religion, successful companiesand successful brands have a clear, and very pow-erful, sense of mission” (113); indeed, numerous

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parallels exist between successful brands and re-ligion, including storytelling, rituals, and a senseof grandeur.

Other sections of Buyology are equally fasci-nating, including Chapter 2, on the efficacy (or,rather, lack thereof) of product placements intelevision shows and movies, and Chapter 3, onmirror neurons, the imitation factor that compelspeople to emulate others, including for their con-sumption choices. Chapter 8 explores the powerof textures, aromas, fragrances, and tastes, whichcan act as strong catalysts to win a consumer’smind—or kill a brand. Last but not least, Chap-ter 10 reviews the ability of sex to sell (the answeris “not always,” but controversy seems to be con-sistent with selling a product).

Both conventional wisdom and orthodox so-cial scientific thinking like to depict humansas rational beings. Indeed, the very foundationof the neoclassical economic theory that guidesmost of the world’s economies and institutionsis built on the premise that people make ratio-nal choices and maximize their own utility onthe basis of available information. Buyology dis-pels these deep-seated and widely held assump-tions about human nature and paints a differentpicture of humans by exposing our behavior assomething controlled by the whims and vagariesof our unconscious mind.

Emmanuel PrinetExecutive Director, One Earth InitiativeSociety, Vancouver, Canada

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The New Economics of Sustainable Consumption:Seeds of Change, by Gill Seyfang and edited byDavid Elliot. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2009, 240 pp., ISBN 9780230525337, $74.95.

Sustainable consumption has been movinginto the clearing created by industrial ecology.From the outset, industrial ecology has focusedlargely on the production side of the economicinfrastructure. Since the conflation of sustain-able production and consumption at the 1992 RioEarth Summit, this subject has been slowly enter-ing the ambit of industrial ecology. This special

issue is evidence of the movement in this direc-tion.

Seyfang’s book is a valuable contribution tothe understanding of the term sustainable con-sumption. The book unashamedly presents sus-tainable consumption as a radical agenda, juxta-posing two dichotomous visions: new economicssustainable consumption versus mainstream sus-tainable consumption. After an introduction thatelaborates the book’s structure and intentions,Seyfang presents the meanings of these two op-posing visions in two separate chapters, then, inthe next chapter, lays down a set of general princi-ples for innovation. The following three chapterspresent case studies of innovations in food, hous-ing, and currencies, respectively. The book closeswith a wrap-up and discussion of the challengesfacing innovation in sustainable consumption.

Seyfang’s book focuses on the United King-dom, but the basic ideas are applicable in anyconsumer-based economy. The new economicsprogram is supported by the UK-based New Eco-nomics Foundation (NEF), founded in 1986 asan alternative to the principles espoused by theG7 at its 1984 summit.

The familiar, mainstream route is essentiallyone of eco-efficiency or greening, based on in-cremental improvements in resource efficiency,and it enables continued growth. Economic in-stitutions and infrastructure retain their exist-ing liberal market characteristics. Increase in“green” demand shifts production and thereby in-troduces innovations in products and processes.Consumers “change color” but remain individ-ualistic and sovereign. Progress is measured bytraditional measures, and consumption serves asa proxy for well-being.

The book’s critique of mainstream sustainableconsumption is drawn from the literature and ananalysis of the effectiveness of current policies inthe United Kingdom and Europe. Already famil-iar to scholars working in the area, it is presentedclearly enough to be accessible for others. Sey-fang identifies a series of failures that created thecurrent unsustainable mess: pricing, information,self-regulation, measurement, enfranchisement,and equity failures. Enfranchisement failures re-flect the lack of power of “ecological citizens”(people actively seeking sustainability) to expresstheir concerns through the market mechanism,

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where their votes (transactions) are swamped bydominant patterns of consumption. Equity fail-ure relates to the imbalance in the power of theecological citizens relative to large, global institu-tions in which individual purchasing actions areembedded.

The new economics model introduces alterna-tives to each of the items in the above paragraph.Part of the book’s richness lies in the nature ofthe critique and its normative alternative. Sus-tainable consumption is not couched primarily inquantitative terms. The key rests in distinctivenew institutions and infrastructure. Consumersbecome ecological citizens acting within commu-nities of place, practice, and interest. Innovationis driven by collective action far beyond the ac-tion of price signals. Progress is to be measuredby new indexes in which well-being is not whollytied to consumption.

The book’s main themes are social and hu-manistic; Seyfang argues for a new understandingof wealth, a richer conception of work, new usesof money, and the integration of ethics back intoeconomic life. Reduction of ecological footprintis only one of five main criteria used to assess theperformance and potential of each of the cases.The others (reasonably self-explanatory) are

• localization,• community-building,• collective action, and• construction of new infrastructures of pro-

vision.

The results of the evaluations of the cases aresummarized in clear and helpful tables.

Space limitations prevent a discussion of allthree case chapters. I found the chapter aboutlocal currencies the most interesting. Three ini-tiatives are discussed: local exchange tradingschemes (LETS), time banks, and Nu Spaarpas,a system of green reward currency piloted in theNetherlands. LETS is a “locally-based skill swapscheme, [with] aims to rebuild local economies”(157). Members use a local currency for transac-tions, and individuals match “wants” and “offers”by consulting a directory and then making directarrangements.

Time banks are a variation on the abovescheme, except that the unit of currency is time.

One hour of work equals one credit, no matterwhat services have been provided. Those whovolunteer their time receive credits for their ac-tions, which they can use later. The types ofservices (e.g., helping senior citizens, watchingpets, simply befriending the lonely) reflect theabsence of community and family connections,which have become lost as social structures haveeroded over the years. This scheme expands theidea of work, explicitly valuing typically unpricedlabor, which is unaccounted for in mainstreameconomics. Time banking produces no revenues,so it depends on government or some form of phil-anthropic support to provide infrastructure. UKpolicy has supported time banks as an alternativeto address unmet social needs and cuts in govern-ment programs and as a general way to “improvepublic engagement with civil life” (150).

Nu Spaarpas awards points for participationin local and environmental activities. Citizensearn points for recycling, using public transit,and shopping locally at designated green mer-chants. Earned points can be used for cinema tick-ets, transit pass discounts, discounts at selectedmerchants, or can be donated to charity. Pointsare administered through an electronic trackingsystem.

Each one of these systems scores differentlyagainst the five criteria. Nu Spaarpas does beston reducing ecological footprint. Time bankingscores highest on collective action. LETS has thestrongest localization impact.

The book’s concluding chapter evaluates thepotential for growth and embedding of the threetypes of new economics innovation into themainstream. Four pathways are detailed: replicat-ing, upscaling, and shifting the mainstream con-text, either by moving the mainstream to lookmore like the innovative niche or vice versa. Ev-ery combination of path and type (food, hous-ing, currency) has significant barriers to becom-ing the new mainstream. The lack of enablingpolicies and programs is, perhaps, the most sig-nificant barrier. This factor illuminates the em-phasis on collective action. All the programs, al-though a few have spread, are still only niches inthe monolith of the mainstream economy. Thearguments and conclusions of the book form acongruent and comprehensive picture of what isneeded to reverse the consequences of bigness,

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commodification, and globalization. Scholars willfind the critique helpful. For planners and policymakers as well as entrepreneurs looking to startprograms along the general framework of the neweconomics, this work is an excellent primer andpractical handbook. For those in the industrialecology community interested in joining the dis-cussion of sustainable consumption, the book isan excellent starter.

John R. EhrenfeldLexington, Massachusetts

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Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infan-tilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, byBenjamin Barber. New York: Norton, 2007, 406pp., ISBN 9780393330892, $16.95. Paperback.

Plenty of data show that Americans consumemore per capita than any other nation. Why theydo so is less understood. Benjamin Barber’s Con-sumed addresses this question, arguing that inthe United States, hyperconsumption is an out-come of the market’s historical development. TheU.S. economy, he states, depends today largelyon selling products that satisfy wants shaped bydesires premised in instinct, as opposed to meet-ing needs identified rationally by the intellect.Products that provide qualities of now, fast, sweet,easy, simple, and fun respond to the impulsiveside of human motivation, associated with child-hood. Aggressive marketing to kids cultivates ataste for such products, simultaneously exploit-ing the young and encouraging a deep-rooted im-maturity that pervades through adulthood. Theconsequences are dangerous for the psychologi-cal and political health of the affluent, both inthe United States and globally. Americans, atthe vanguard of this uneasily comfortable mi-nority, exist in a state of perpetual dissatisfac-tion, eating and shopping at increasing rates tofill voids that correspond to neither hunger nornecessity. Spheres of life not organized aroundproducts erode, and with them a citizenship thatseeks the public good.

How can products be so powerful? Barberdraws from Max Weber’s classic book The Protes-

tant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to describe thedevelopment of market-based production (We-ber [1905] 2002). Weber’s insight was that thissystem flourished in the first two centuries ofAmerican history because a particular culturalform, Calvinist Protestantism, happened to en-courage an ethic favorable to emerging industri-alism. A way of life that emphasized hard work,frugality, and, most of all, reinvestment of cap-ital coincided with and reinforced deeply heldnotions about the relationship between peopleand their creator. In this period, products werewhat we would call today “generic,” unbranded,and meant to satisfy basic needs. Their manufac-ture enabled the accumulation of wealth neededto construct infrastructure and institutions thatwould be crucial to American economic successin the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the de-mands met in this phase of economic history werefinite. As people with money stocked up on whatthey required, the question of how to continue tosell called out for an answer.

This answer, says Barber, would be predicatedon the application of social meaning to prod-ucts, such that what Susan Strasser and colleagues(1988) have called “getting and spending” tookon increasing importance as a way to have fun,solve problems, and explore identity. The dis-tancing of products from strict usefulness andtheir grafting onto “ways of life” have, as mar-ket economies must, grown at ever increasingrates. Today, not so much products but culturalconcepts are marketed; love, creativity, and pur-pose are branded. The tendency to commodify ishard to resist because, Barber says, it is “ubiq-uitous, omnipresent, addictive, self-replicating,and omnilegitimate (engaging in active self-rationalization and self-justification, eroding themoral bases for resisting)” (222). There are fewspheres of activity into which some degree of mar-ketization does not now penetrate.

The tragedy of this, for Barber, is not primar-ily that kids lose their innocence early as theyare drawn into shopping instead of playing orthat adults shop as play instead of thinking, cre-ating, or helping others. Totalized marketizationhas hobbled the development of true citizenshipin affluent societies, and this leaves little hopethat the pressing needs of the majority of theworld’s population, who are not affluent, will be

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met. Here Barber connects cultural infantilism tothe notion that market mechanisms and protec-tion of personal liberty together constitute theonly legitimate and effective basis for democracy.This widely held view, which has thrived in theUnited States since President Ronald Reagan’stenure in the 1980s, had its roots in the Enlight-enment’s contestation of overt tyranny, when as-sertion of individual rights really did free people.Later in history, this same emphasis on personalfreedom worked well to contain unionism andpopulism, making economic heroes of the “dare-devils, speculators, and adventurers” (55) whopushed the American frontier. Over time, per-sonal liberty came to mean not just freedom frombodily oppression but freedom to take, own, anduse up. This development was crucial to Ameri-can economic growth yet came erroneously, saysBarber, to define democracy.

With today’s dominant marketing strategy or-ganized around selling the ephemeral and the un-necessary, the majority of people who lack thebasic necessities of life are not considered “con-sumers.” How to turn this around is the moralpoint of Barber’s book: If the affluent can disen-gage from childish consumption and turn theirenergy and money toward the cultivation of thepublic good, they will not just grow up, they willestablish a framework for democracy that corre-sponds to today’s urgency for human emancipa-tion from want. Essential to this change is the de-velopment of transnational forms of democraticparticipation among the affluent and the poor.The market is now global, but structures of cit-izenship remain stuck at the national or localscale, when they exist at all.

There are, of course, implications for materialsustainability in Barber’s argument as well. If wemake and buy more of what we need and lessof what we desire without need, we will reducethe overall profligacy of our utilization of naturalresources, possibly drawing citizens closer to thereal conditions of production on local or regionalscales. Achievement of this shift, argues Barber,will moreover entail strong, international regula-tory structures, a proposition that will make freemarketeers, as well as green capitalists, cringe:“The state has a legitimate monopoly on forceand is able to enforce its laws” (297), he writes,and enforcement of responsible practice, through

sticks far more than carrots, is what Barber ar-gues is needed to contain, cleanse, and redirectmarkets in healthy directions.

Barber’s book is important. It bravely critiquesthe relation of markets to politics in an era whenmany progressives seek to use markets to pro-mote the public good, particularly in the areaof sustainable consumption. Barber is at his bestwhen trying to describe the maddening contra-dictions of “a society without villains or conspir-ators, composed of good-willed but self-seekingindividuals,” that produces “a radically commer-cial culture which many of those same individ-uals despise and for which no one is directlyresponsible even though more than a few maybe said to contribute to its making (129). So-cial systems that construct themselves are toughto describe, as are tendencies of individuals andgroups to work against their own fundamentalinterests. As a result, Consumed is not a pleasantread, and Barber’s energetically dismal prose styleis, at times, exhausting. As with many excellentcritiques, his vision of what is to be done is frus-tratingly underdeveloped. As the book ends, hewrites,

Today, under the hyperconsumerist condi-tions we have examined here, the civic call-ing will feel to many people like a va-cant phrase, global citizenship like a utopiandream. I do not have a formula for their real-ization. (359)

Perhaps Barber will turn his astute scholarship tothis task in his next work. In the meantime, Con-sumed remains a valuable, passionate, and, mostof all, truly mature contribution to our consider-ation of the social, ecological, and psychologicalunsustainability of American consumption.

Samantha MacBrideNew York UniversityNew York, New York

References

Strasser, S., C. McGovern, and M. Judt, eds. 1998.Getting and spending: European and American con-sumer societies in the twentieth century. New York:Cambridge University Press.

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Weber, M. [1905] 2002. The Protestant ethic and thespirit of capitalism. Edited, translated, and with anintroduction by P. Baehr and G.C. Wells. NewYork: Penguin Books.

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Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy forTransforming Our Consumer Culture, by John R.Ehrenfeld. New Haven: Yale University Press,ISBN 9780300137491, $28.00.

John Ehrenfeld’s book starts with a fascinatingtale of how people find direction by just listeningto their gut feelings. During a workshop Ehrenfeldattended, the participants took turns facing thegroup to announce what “possibility” each wouldbe on leaving the program. When Ehrenfeld’sturn came, he had no idea what to say. But

when I turned up and faced the group I heardmyself saying: “I am the possibility that hu-man and other life will flourish on the Planetforever.” Like the rest, I proudly wore my un-expected utterance as my name tag for therest of the day. (xviii)

Now, years of deliberation later, this im-promptu utterance has become the essence ofEhrenfeld’s most recent book. He starts with anessentially philosophical deliberation on whatsustainability implies. Using some basic causalloops from system dynamics, he argues that re-ductionist approaches that focus merely on sus-tainability problems usually provide quick fixesthat leave the fundamental root causes of unsus-tainability untouched. For Ehrenfeld, “Factor 4”or “Factor X” approaches merely slow down hu-mankind’s unsustainable trajectory; they do nottouch the essence of the problem.

With this assertion, Ehrenfeld moves awayfrom the mass-flow-based analytical approachesand related technical solutions that industrialecologists seem to have made the core of theirscientific discipline. Building on the work of Hei-degger, Maturana, Max Neeff, Maslow, and oth-ers, Ehrenfeld guides the reader to what he sees asthe essence of sustainability: nothing more andnothing less than rediscovering the purpose ofhuman life on earth and providing the appro-

priate conditions for this purpose. Ehrenfeld ar-gues that the rationality and role of technologyas it has developed since the Enlightenment andthe Industrial Revolution have led to a situationin which technology and the provision of stuffhave become the prime sources of human satis-faction. Mankind has moved from a “being” modeof life to a “having” mode of life. A worldviewhas developed that sees everything—includinghuman life itself—through a utilitarian lens. Hu-man needs are met largely through commoditizedconsumption, which, in turn, is influenced bypowerful social forces, such as advertising andpeer pressure. The result is that humans livepoor, commoditized lives, in which they makechoices constrained heavily by external factors.Worse, because the pseudo-satisfiers provided byconsumerism fail to deliver “authentic lives,” anaddictive consumerist call for more stuff is cre-ated that only reinforces the unsustainable pat-terns of consumption and production in moderneconomies. Utilitarian quests for personal happi-ness have led to a narcissistic and individualisticculture, in which humans are incapable of takingcare of other concerns that Ehrenfeld sees as be-ing as basic as the self: taking care of others, andtaking care of the world. For Ehrenfeld, a trulysustainable world should provide conditions forauthentic ways of being—in short, flourishing.

The fullness of the revealed world and itspossibilities for Being depend on the mode[of living]. Authentic living means a life lessdirected by the cultural “other” (the societalstructure) and more directed through freerchoice by the self. With authenticity modernhumans can possibly break free from the gripthat technology has upon them, at least longenough to begin caring for themselves, otherhumans, and the world of nature. (121)

I am quite enthusiastic about these parts ofEhrenfeld’s book. He makes a daring, well-researched, and convincing case that the sustain-ability agenda cannot focus on the material partof the equation alone but must encompass thewider questions about what is the purpose of life.

Writers such as Fritz Schumacher and Ivan Il-lich made this point in the 1970s. Virtually allmajor religions on earth offer profound and of-ten millennia-old thoughts on this question too,

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a fact that remains undiscussed in the book—it may be that Ehrenfeld deliberately wanted toavoid the religious aspect in his work. The lackof reference to the work of Nobel prize winnerAmartya Sen is, however, surprising. Particularlywith books such as Development as Freedom (Sen1999) and his “capability approach,” Sen hasprovided many insights that could give impor-tant support to Ehrenfeld’s ideas. Furthermore,Ehrenfeld may highlight the negative side of theconsumer economy a bit too much. Sixty yearsago, life was probably much more dominated byexternal factors than it is now. Work was usuallymonotonous, and 50- or 60-hour work weeks werethe norm rather than the exception, which leftpeople just limited time “off duty.” Religion couldsometimes pervade social life unpleasantly. Lifeand social contacts were confined to the village,island, or valley where one lived.

This is, however, not my main problem withthe book. In the last chapters, Ehrenfeld offers avision of how a change to a more sustainable soci-ety can be made. Referring to Gidden’s structura-tion theory, Ehrenfeld argues that the structuresof signification (beliefs), legitimation (norms),and domination (power) are fairly stable and,because they structure agency, are not the mostsuitable leverage points for change. In Ehrenfeld’sview, technology is much more fluid and henceshould be used as the leverage point. Throughnew designs, products should be developed thatquestion users about existing contextual scripts,the seeds for broader structural and behavioralchange. Designing new institutions, implement-ing adaptive governance, and highlighting thespecial role of business complete the change man-agement model suggested in the book.

I found this part of the book rather disappoint-ing. It misses the lessons of decades of researchinto social construction of technology and systeminnovations. Ehrenfeld does not analyze funda-mentally which forces drive the reproduction oftechnologies and institutions. This can leave thereader with the simplistic impression that suchtechnologies can be “designed at will.” Nothingis further from the truth. Redesigned technologiesand institutions that fit with existing structures(beliefs, norms, and power structures) are likelyto be much more successful than those that goagainst the existing structures. Sure, introducing

a dual-flush toilet will work—it is not a nuisanceto use, and after decades of messages about watershortages, public norms have become sensitive towater saving. But how about that car that aftereach trip makes you feel guilty by stating with asweet voice how much carbon dioxide you emit-ted, so that you might use it more consciously?No car manufacturer is going to be so suicidal atthis stage. We need a few more Al Gore moviesand Robert Stern reports before public opinionwill accept this as a positive norm.

Arnold TukkerTNODelft, The Netherlands

Reference

Illich, I. 1978. Toward a history of needs. New York:Pantheon.

Schumacher, E.F. 1973. Small is beautiful. New York:Harper and Row.

Sen, A. 1999. Development as freedom. Oxford, UK:Oxford University Press.

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Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, by EllenRuppel Shell. New York: Penguin, 2009, 296 pp.,ISBN 9781594202155, $25.95.

In her book Cheap: The High Cost of DiscountCulture, Ellen Ruppel Shell, an American jour-nalism professor, highlights a very timely and im-portant topic. This volume has strong potentialto reach a broad audience, but I personally thinkthat for industrial ecologists and other scientists,it is also useful to pay attention to this discussion.Why are all sorts of products so cheap? Why arewe so disposed to look for the “good deal”?

Ruppel Shell argues that Americans—andmost of her observations hold for Europeans aswell—have developed something of a mania forgetting a good deal. Seeking out low prices hasbecome an end in itself. Low prices are, afterall, democratic. Everyone has the right to ev-eryday luxuries. People are more focused on thegood deal than on the object at the heart of thatdeal. The author has a name for this culture:cheap.

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For many consumers, price has become botha business and a human obsession. Why is thisso? To answer this question, Ruppel Shell dis-cusses the work of numerous experts: neurologists,evolutionary biologists, psychologists, behav-ioral psychologists, cognitive scientists, market-ing professionals, mathematicians, economists,sociologists, historians, moral philosophers, po-litical economists, and nutritionists. She takesthe reader through a fascinating retrospec-tive of the founding fathers—John Wanamaker,Henry Ford, Frank Woolworth, Eugene Ferkauf,William Levitt, Ingvar Kamprad, and others—who developed manufacturing and retailing mod-els predicated on high volume and low price.Their successes were due to the deployment ofeffective merchandising techniques and seduc-tive pricing methods as well as the design of effi-cient delivery systems, discount stores, and outletmalls. In writing her book, the author travelledextensively in the United States as well as toSweden (for a field trip to IKEA) and to China tolearn about the dramatic consequences of cheap.

Ruppel Shell reminds us that discounting hasnot always been popular and widely accepted.The American Dream—and I would also saythe European Dream—implies a desire for whatmoney can buy, and in recent years the rangeof desirous items has grown faster than house-hold incomes. Affordability has become an im-portant part of the agenda in both politics andbusiness. Consumer spending has escalated andbecome an expression of citizenship. Accordingto economic doctrines of the 1930s, consumptionwould move nations into prosperity, and institu-tions were developed to socialize people into thisway of thinking. Periodic crises of overproductioncould be managed through the manipulation ofconsumption. For Americans (and others), con-sumption ceased to be a privilege and became aright, even a patriotic duty. And if consumptionis to be regarded in such terms, products have tobe affordable. Social equality meant access not tothe means of production, but rather to a grow-ing range of consumer goods. Consumption alsobecame a form of leisure and tourism. Why areoutlet malls always situated in remote locations?Ruppel Shell argues that this is a tactical decision.Trips to outlets demand an investment of time,deliberation, and energy beyond what we invest

in most other spare-time activities. We have towork to get there. And, once there, we are mo-tivated to buy in excess to justify the expensivejourney.

The title of the book hints at the author’scritical view of this hegemonic culture. Readerswill not be surprised to learn that Wal-Mart is akey target, but more ethically minded retailers,such as IKEA, are also portrayed as fundamen-tally hypocritical and unsustainable. What is thetrue cost of cheap? The fact that low prices in af-fluent nations are linked to sweatshop conditionsand enormous environmental destruction in de-veloping countries is not news, but Ruppel Shellprovides clear illustrations of the global linkages.One chapter has the witty title “Cheap Eats,” butit is not so amusing to learn that people starve inSudan because Americans and Europeans wantinexpensive food.

In an earlier time, most household consump-tion was based on domestic production, but todaygoods are regularly manufactured in China, of-tentimes by migrant workers who are completelydeprived of rights and humane treatment. Whenpeople assembled their own products—Ford’sModel T is a prominent example—they weremore knowledgeable about the circumstances ofproduction. It is more common today for theirgrandchildren to be employed in service occu-pations and consequently to know increasinglylittle about what it means to be a producer ofphysical goods.

The book also argues that cheap induces usto develop a taste for low quality. Cheap foodtastes better because it is what we have learnedto enjoy. Cheap products lack durability, and wedo not expect them to hold up. Because we donot anticipate robust performance, we becomecareless. For many consumers, products are blackboxes. We know only how they should func-tion and have lost the capacity to repair them.And because low price signals low quality, we ex-pect less and take less care of the products webuy.

The journalistic style of this book makes foreclectic reading. Although the author providesnumerous explanations for our discount culture,she does not offer much in the way of syntheticanalysis. The reader is left to his or her own de-vices to create fusion out of the treatment. Most

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of the relevant factors are there: globalization,capitalism, retail power, clever and powerful men,seductive marketing and pricing techniques, andpsychological and neurological dispositions. Al-though the breadth of Ruppel Shell’s reporting isimpressive, I would have appreciated more inter-pretative integration.

There is nothing more subjective than price,the author claims, with reference to a long listof earlier thinkers on the matter. Yet one is leftto wonder whether the trend is only toward dis-counting. Do all consumers in all circumstancesreally want and demand cheap? Perhaps RuppelShell could have done more to place the issueof low price in a wider social context by drawingon work in the sociology of consumption that re-lates price to social status and fashion. She alsofails to consider the potential of countermove-ments of cheap. I am thinking here of growinginterest in fair trade products and Slow Foodas well as policy discussions around sustainableconsumption, green branding, and eco-labeling.The book is overly focused on what it attemptsto problematize—price and discounting—and itfails to consider countervailing trends that en-tail searches by consumers for more leisure time,quality goods, and less materialistic values.

Nonetheless, Ruppel Shell’s preoccupationwith low price, the history of this retailing prac-tice, and what it does to us and the earth is ex-tremely significant. I was, however, initially dis-appointed with the book’s final chapter, “ThePerfect Price.” It seemed to me that the authordoes not show much imagination about whatto do about our conundrum. She implies thatthe route out of our hegemonic discount culturepasses through the aisles of another retailer: theWegmans chain of high-end supermarkets thatoperates in the mid-Atlantic region of the UnitedStates. (As a Scandinavian, I am not personallyfamiliar with Wegmans but am able to relate to itbecause similar retailers exist in the Nordic coun-tries.) The promotion of such a recommendation,after nearly 300 pages critiquing contemporarypractices, struck me at first as terribly inconsis-tent. On second thought, however, I found thather suggestion provided a certain source of relief.Ruppel Shell looks here for pragmatic interven-tions rather than for abstract solutions. She isfocused on the concrete microscene of everyday

consumption. We will need to shop one way oranother in the future. There is indeed a role tobe played and responsibility to be assumed by allactors in the system. The question is how theyshould act. I do not delude myself by thinkingthat it is possible to establish the “perfect price,”but, to be honest, I do not think Ruppel Shellthinks so either. But maybe it is possible to con-ceive of a new culture that understands the ex-ternal costs of cheap. The book ends on a hope-ful note: “As individuals and as a nation we canturn our attention to what matters, secure in theknowledge that what matters has never been andwill never be cheap” (232).

Magnus BostromSodertorn UniversityHuddinge, Sweden

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Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We ChangedFrom Protecting the Environment to Protecting Our-selves, by Andrew Szasz. Minneapolis, MN: Uni-versity of Minnesota Press, 2009, 323 pp., ISBN9780816635092, $18.95, paperback.

While reading Andrew Szasz’s Shopping OurWay To Safety: How We Changed From Protectingthe Environment to Protecting Ourselves, I foundmyself thinking about Todd Haynes’s 1995 film,Safe. The heroine is an American housewife over-whelmed by exposure to, in essence, contempo-rary life itself; her efforts to escape the toxins ofmodernity become more and more extreme, andthe films’ harrowing conclusion finds her sealedin a kind of hermetic igloo. Szasz detects whatamounts to similar behavior rippling out acrossAmerican consumer culture. In the popular press,the apparent trend among some shoppers to buyeco-friendly home-cleaning products, or organicmilk, or whatever, is treated as cheery news ofawareness and, implicitly, positive change. Szaszsees things quite differently. “A person who, say,drinks bottled water or uses natural deodorant orbuys only clothing made of natural fiber is nottrying to change anything,” he writes. “All theyare doing is trying to barricade themselves, indi-vidually, from toxic threat” (4).

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Szasz has a label for this behavior: invertedquarantine. Instead of sealing off the sick, weimagine that we can seal in our healthy selves. As-sessing this strategy, he concludes that not only isit futile, it’s dangerous. To reach that conclusion,Szasz is methodical. Possibly he’s a bit too method-ical, as he spends almost 100 pages on analogousexamples of his inverted quarantine notion, withchapters on the U.S. bomb-shelter craze of the1950s and on suburbanization—individualisticresponses to complex, system-based problems(nuclear war and the various ailments of innercities).

When he gets to today’s existential risks andhow 21st-century citizens respond to them by wayof shopping decisions, he first examines whethereach threat (from water, from the food sup-ply, from the air we breathe and the clotheswe wear) is real. By and large, his answer isyes. There are a few reassuring moments—Szaszdoesn’t think synthetic fabrics are actually allthat threatening. Conversely, I was startled toread that a hot shower is; it causes one to in-hale trihalomethanes, which “have been linkedto” (161) forms of cancer. He also cites researchfinding “a cocktail mix of chemicals” (101) in um-bilical cords tested after the birth of even healthybabies. Even when the data don’t show potentialharm, Szasz notes often throughout the book thatthey seldom rule it out. (Szasz describes “the typ-ical trajectory of regulatory standards” (137) likeso: “As scientific understanding improves, earlierstandards prove to have been too lax, and the ex-posure level deemed to be safe has to be lowered”[137]).

But enough bad news—let’s get to the worsenews. It turns out that very few of the market-place responses to potential environmental harmoffered by global consumer culture are all thateffective. Plus, slugging a bottle of the purest wa-ter has no impact on the many other ways weindirectly encounter the nonbottled water sup-ply: through plant and animal agriculture, indus-try, and so on. The same goes for water filters,which may reduce exposure to contaminants butdon’t eliminate it. As Szasz puts it, “Water pol-lution is inscribed on our way of life” (109). Andthat’s just one category. Dabbling in the inverted-quarantine marketplace, as most shoppers surelydo, has little effect. And the time, effort, andmoney involved in implementing “the full pro-

gram” (173) of the inverted-quarantine lifestylewould be immense—even if all the stuff workedas promised.

What shoppers are buying, then, isn’t reallyprotection, it’s a pleasing illusion of safety. Andthus the real threat: complacency. We’re con-cerned enough to buy bottled water but notconcerned enough to follow, or demand, a com-prehensive political and policy program thatwould truly address the very real problems weface. What Szasz is, of course, arguing for is moresystematic solutions—tougher standards, stricterregulations, better rules, basically. Although hecertainly doesn’t come across as standing in op-position to the broad notion of sustainable con-sumption, he’s making a deeper point that shiftsin policy and resource management—presumablycarried out on a global scale—are what will reallymatter.

Returning to the theme of the early chapterrecounting that curious era in which somethinglike half of Americans claimed to be at least con-sidering building a bomb shelter (which, on somelevel, could have been construed as a provoca-tion that might have increased the odds of anatomic war), Szasz notes that citizens eventu-ally wised up and stopped. But this isn’t reallyvery inspiring. Surely many of those citizens wereconcerned about the possibility of nuclear war,but what most actually did about it was preciselynothing. Perhaps relevant political leaders werewise; perhaps everybody just got lucky. Mean-while, attitudes toward government as a problem-solving institution have, to put it mildly, deteri-orated in recent decades, and it is precisely themarketplace that many, in countries around theworld, have chosen to trust instead. Szasz makesa great case that shopping for safety is a mistake,but he doesn’t offer much in the way of hopefuland convincing counterpossibilities for the typi-cal consumer’s ability to demand or influence theglobal policy initiatives he would prefer. I wonderwhether his readers might conclude that, really,the problems are far beyond their ability to affect,let alone solve. And thus, we scurry back to ourhermetic igloos, hoping we’ll get lucky again.

Rob WalkerNew York, New York

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Prosperity Without Growth: The Transition to aSustainable Economy, by Tim Jackson, London:Earthscan, 2009, ISBN 9781844078943, $22.50.

It takes a bit of courage to pretend that, 35years after the publication of “Limits to Growth”and the pioneering work on the “steady-stateeconomy,” one could add something to what gi-ants such as Donella and Dennis Meadows andHerman Daly have already written. Tim Jack-son has succeeded in this challenge, however.Based on a report that he wrote in his capacityas economics commissioner for the UK Sustain-able Development Commission, his latest bookprovides truly fresh insight into the complexitiessurrounding renewed interest in the “degrowth”debate.

In the first three chapters, “Prosperity Lost,”“The Age of Irresponsibility,” and “RedefiningProsperity,” Jackson does what many other au-thors have done before him—namely, he showsthe problems associated with current modes ofeconomic development. He reiterates familiar ac-counts of resource depletion, dangerous climatechange, and ecosystems degradation. The finan-cial crisis has demonstrated that humanity hasnot even been able to create a sustainable eco-nomic system. And success in terms of prosperityis limited and continues to be measured entirelyin the narrow metric of economic utility. Thisstrategy has led to consumerism and material-ism that—as Jackson puts it, in terms borrowedfrom the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen—does not necessarily lead to more “capabilitiesfor flourishing” (37). The sobering conclusionis that our economic system is highly unstablewithout growth and only survives by generatingecological and financial debts. It does not de-liver what truly matters: enhanced capacity toenable the vast majority of people on earth toflourish.

In the next four chapters, however, the nov-elty and subtlety of Jackson’s thinking come intotheir own. Departing from the standard practicesof many of the commentators who have walkedthis trail before him, Jackson poses the questionof why—despite the obvious failures describedin his first three chapters—the seemingly un-stoppable machinery of growth remains in place.Chapter 4, “The Dilemma of Growth,” untangles

an initial catch-22: Perpetual growth is an erratic(and probably elusive) objective for the reasonsalready indicated, but degrowth is unstable, too,and, at least under present conditions, leads to ris-ing unemployment, failing competitiveness, andspiraling recession. It is hence not surprising thatpolicy makers place their bets on the apparentwin−win approach offered by the promise of de-coupling material and energy use from economicgrowth.

But in Chapter 5, Jackson demonstrates thatthis is just a myth. The challenge of meeting thecarbon-reduction target of 80% set by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),combined with both the diffusion of affluentlifestyles for all and continuous economic growth,implies that decoupling by a factor of more than100 is required. Such circumstances must, asa matter of fact, entail fundamental economicrestructuring.

Chapter 6 explains that the existing structurehas a perverse economic and social logic. The pur-suit of profit stimulates newer, better, or cheaperproducts and services through a continual processof innovation and “creative destruction.” Theconsumer side of the system has coevolved to ful-fill a complementary role, ready to absorb all thisnovelty. The “empty self” is stimulated to embarkon status-seeking and an individualistic lifestyle,using material goods as proxies for dreams and as-pirations. Chapter 7, titled a “Green New Deal,”may be a step in realizing structural change, butwhat is described is, in essence, an updated notionof Keynesianism that holds danger for becomingoverly focused on “kick starting” the growth en-gine anew.

In Chapters 8 and 9, Jackson indicates thatchanging the underlying structure is predicatedon two things. We first need to develop a“macroeconomics for sustainability”: an eco-nomic model that does not depend on growthto provide stability and values ecological invest-ment in a more appropriate way. We also needto overhaul the social logic that currently drivesconsumerism. Jackson argues that it is necessaryto stimulate structures that foster an alternativehedonism, based on intrinsic values such as self-acceptance, affiliation, and sense of belonging.The economy needs to be geared to provide ca-pabilities for “flourishing within limits.”

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In the final three chapters, Jackson offers hisown picture of how the envisioned changes couldbe stimulated. Government has a key role here,but he is quick to highlight the role of “[t]heconflicted state” (166).

As long as . . . stability depends on growth . . .

there will inevitably be a tendency for gov-ernment to support social structures that re-inforce materialistic, novelty seeking individ-ualism. Because that’s what it takes to keepthe economy afloat. (169)

Jackson’s proposed transition program is com-posed of three elements that deal sequentiallywith the deep and subtle lock-ins that he iden-tifies in the book. First, we must come to ap-preciate ecological limits. Second, we must fixthe economic model—by developing an ecolog-ical macroeconomics; investing in jobs, assets,and infrastructures; increasing financial and fis-cal prudence; and getting rid of gross domesticproduct (GDP) as a measure of success. Thesemoves could create the freedom for governmentto maneuver and for others to deal with the thirdand final task: changing the social logic of con-sumerism. Specific objectives could include im-plementing work-time policies, tackling systemicinequalities, and measuring capabilities for flour-ishing. Only under such circumstances could wedismantle the damaging culture of consumerism.

Jackson’s volume has many parallels with JohnEhrenfeld’s (2008) recent book, Sustainability byDesign, reviewed elsewhere in this issue. Bothtreatments stress the bankruptcy of materialis-tic, individualistic, and status-seeking lifestyles asmeans to fill the “empty self.” Both authors arguethat the economy should provide “capabilitiesfor flourishing.” But—also in comparison withother books—Jackson’s analysis is truly uniquein meticulously disentangling the interdependen-cies between the economic logic of production,the social logic of consumption, and the conflict-ing position of the state that keeps the unsustain-able machinery of growth moving. Jackson alsoprovides an original perspective that identifiesleverage points for change that hold the prospectof eventual effectiveness. I have not encounteredsuch a bright and insightful analysis since thepath-breaking work of the Donella and DennisMeadows and Herman Daly.

Does this mean that I am satisfied in ev-ery respect? I, of course, have some questionsthat remain unanswered. First, Jackson implicitlysuggests that conspicuous, material, and status-seeking consumption is the source of all iniquity.But the average consumer (including relativelywell-off people, e.g., myself) generally spend ap-proximately 80% of their income on “ordinaryconsumption”: mortgages, insurance, energy, au-tomobile expenses (after all, a car is a necessityin most places in the world), school fees, and soforth. So is there really such massive room to re-duce consumption without pain, as Jackson sug-gests? Second, I wonder whether Jackson has un-derestimated the systemic forces that stand in theway of the changes that he calls for. Can nation-states or even economic blocks such as the Euro-pean Union embark on his degrowth programwithout suffering declines in their global eco-nomic competitiveness? Even after the massivebanking crisis of 2008, we see that politicians areunable to agree on something so seemingly simpleas a global cap on bankers’ bonuses. Such issues,however, constitute points for further elaborationin the splendid overall program that Jackson hasproposed in his book.

Arnold TukkerTNODelft, the Netherlands

References

Daly, H. E. 1992. Steady state economics. Second editionwith new essays. London, UK: Earthscan.

Ehrenfeld, J. 2008. Sustainability by design: A subversivestrategy for transforming our consumer culture. NewHaven, CT: Yale University Press.

Meadows, D. H., D. L. Meadows, J. Randers, andW. W. Behrens, III. 1972. The limits to growth.New York: Universe Books.

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System Innovation for Sustainability 1: Perspec-tives on Radical Changes to Sustainable Consump-tion and Production, edited by Arnold Tukker,Martin Charter, Carlo Vezzoli, Eivind Stø andMaj Munch Andersen. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf,2008, 480 pp., ISBN 9781906093037, £50.00.

This book is an important contribution tothe growing body of knowledge about sustainable

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consumption and production. It is the first pub-lication to emerge in a series from the EuropeanUnion−funded SCORE! project, one of the mostsuccessful attempts to build a network of aca-demics and practitioners in the field. The firstphase of SCORE! focused on disciplinary ap-proaches, and this book consists of papers pre-sented and discussed at the launch meeting inCopenhagen in 2006. SCORE!’s second phasefocused on three consumption domains: trans-portation, housing, and nutrition. Each of thesedomains will be covered in a separate book;the first, on transportation, has just appeared(Geerken and Borup 2009).

Sustainability is an elusive concept, but itgains focus when it is structured along theproduction−consumption axis. After all, we areall consumers, and by consuming we influence thesupply chain. The book approaches this issue fromthe disciplinary angles of business, design, andconsumer and public-policy studies, under theumbrella of a systemic change concept. The busi-ness perspective focuses on “greening the busi-ness,” including the supply chain, eco-marketing,and efforts to get green products on retail shelves.Rolf Wustenhagen and Jasper Boehnke presentalternative business models for energy, and Pe-ter Wells does so for the automotive industry.Marcus Wagner discusses innovation and thePorter hypothesis, and Frank-Martin Belz con-tributes a very interesting chapter on sustainablemarketing.

The design perspective focuses on designingsustainable products, services, and systems, in-cluding a lot of creativity and stakeholder in-volvement. Ursula Tischner writes about socialsustainability and radical change and offers resultsfrom a sustainable office project. Francois Jegoudescribes the Emerging Demand for SustainableSolutions (EMUDE) project, which looked, to-gether with stakeholders, to innovative solutionsfor daily problems. Chris Ryan describes eco-innovative cities in Australia, and Benny Leongdiscusses the question of whether a radical sys-temic shift toward sustainability is possible inChina. The answer is that there are glimmersof hope and that the next 15 years will be crucial.

In the section on consumer perspectives, GerdScholl focuses on product-service systems and onthe symbolic meaning conveyed by consumption

and embedded in lifestyles and in everyday life.Dario Padovan uses the well-established notionof social capital to describe lifestyles and con-sumption patterns in the Italian city of Padova,and Irmgard Schultz and Immanuel Stieß addressthe same issues through a social−ecological ap-proach. Lifestyle differences are important for un-derstanding different consumption patterns, as il-lustrated in a chapter by Edina Vadovics, fromHungary.

The section of the book devoted to policyperspectives focuses on technological innova-tion (especially system innovations and transi-tion management) and the innovation systemapproach. Matthias Weber, Klaus Kubeczo, andHarald Rohracher write about system innova-tions in innovation systems, and Rene Kemp de-scribes transition management and policies in theNetherlands. The chapter by Oksana Mont andTareq Emtirah describes product-service systemsin the context of systemic changes.

Each of these four parts consists of individualstudies and an overarching review chapter writ-ten by the theme’s editors that reflects on thedrivers, the state of the art, the opportunities, themodels of change, and the limitations. A finalchapter, authored by Arnold Tukker, summarizesthe entire book and offers guidance to changeprocesses and keys to success.

This highly structured approach offers agreat deal in terms of presenting cutting-edgeresearch, conceptualizations from various per-spectives, strategies for change, and policy de-velopment. The book even offers perspectivesfrom diverse countries, such as Hungary andChina.

The question remains, however, how far thenotion conveyed by the subtitle (Perspectives onRadical Changes) has been pushed. To effectivelytackle climate change, countries need to makedeep reductions in both greenhouse gas emissionsand global poverty, and the necessary transfor-mations will entail radical changes. This book,however, offers a rather incremental approachthat does not critique the prevailing economicgrowth paradigm or the widespread notion ofconsumer sovereignty. There is little consider-ation of life satisfaction and well-being, and thebook does not examine the deeper driving forcesof boundless consumption. Institutional change

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and deep learning receive little attention. Thepolicy perspectives of change toward more sus-tainable systems of consumption and produc-tion are somewhat underdeveloped. Social move-ments are hardly described.

Nevertheless, this edited collection offers anexcellent state of the art in sustainable consump-tion and production research. It is an emerginginterdisciplinary field of study, and much moreremains to be done. The book inspires and callsfor a great deal more action and research. Indeed,one offspring is already established—the NorthAmerican SCORAI network just convened itsfirst workshop (www.scorai.org). Motivated by

SCORE! but with a different approach, it tacklessome of the same issues.

Philip J. VergragtTellus InstituteBoston, MA

Reference

Geerken, T. and M. Borup, eds. 2009. System innovationfor sustainability 2: Case studies in sustainable con-sumption and production—mobility. Sheffield, UK:Greenleaf.

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