Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Explaining, Assessing, And Changing High Consumption, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

These writings reflect the renewed interest in the 1990s of scholars and the public in questioning the consumer society, an interest that the political crises engendered by 9/11 have overshadowed but not eliminated. In The Overspent American, Schor explains the emergence of strong doubts about high consumption by arguing that a “new consumerism” of escalating desires has evolved that is increasingly costly to the American high consumers themselves.

High Consumption And Global Justice, Harry Van Der Linden

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

Justice requires that high consumption in affluent societies be slowed down for the sake of eradicating extreme poverty in the developing world and improving the condition of its very moderate consumers. High consumption places environmental and resource burdens and restrictions on the economic growth options of developing countries without bringing commensurate benefits. Moreover, high consumers enjoy products made in less developed countries by workers who have inadequate wages and often labor in unhealthy and unsafe conditions.

Contemporary high consumption is characterized by a continuous raising of the standards of satisfactory spending. This process is visible in many American consumption patterns: …