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CONSUMING VALUES AND CONTESTED CULTURES

Abstract

The term “sustainable consumption” is subject to many interpretations, from Agenda 21’s hopeful assertion that governments should encourage less materialistic lifestyles based on new definitions of “wealth” and “prosperity”, to the view prevalent in international policy discourse that green and ethical consumerism will be sufficient to transform markets to produce continual and “clean” economic growth. These different perspectives are examined using a conceptual framework derived from Cultural Theory, to illustrate their fundamentally competing beliefs about the nature of the environment and society, and the meanings attached to consumption.

Cultural Theory argues that societies should develop pluralistic policies to include all perspectives. Using this framework, the paper examines the UK strategy for sustainable consumption, and identifies a number of failings in current policy. These are that the UK strategy is strongly biased towards individualistic, market-based and neo-liberal policies, so it can only respond to a small part of the problem of unsustainable consumption. Policy recommendations include measures to strengthen the input from competing cultures, to realize the potential for more collective, egalitarian and significantly less materialistic consumption patterns.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Within the history of Western thought, one might say that the literature reviewed here seeks to merge two branches of philosophy: aesthetics (the study of beauty) and axiology (the study of values). We do not trace the origins of these discourses to their philosophical roots here. For readers interested in exploring the aesthetic moorings of this discussion, Belfiore and Bennett (2007, 228-33) provide a gateway into the aesthetic literature. Those interested in the axiological angle may turn to Holbrook’s brief overview as an introduction and guide towards further reading (1999, 3-4). A common assumption in the frameworks discussed in the second chapter of this review is that the value of arts and culture is created in the encounter between a person (or multiple people) and an object (which may be tangible or intangible, as in an idea or activity). In this view, value lies neither fully formed in the object, nor is it entirely produced in the eye of the beholder—but is produced in the encounter of the two. While the authors reviewed here share this point of view, it is by no means universally accepted. For instance, Goldman (2006, cited in Belfiore and Bennett 2007, note 11) argues that valuing art based on the experiences it produces in fact devalues the work. Our review starts with the work of two economists, Throsby (2001) and Klamer (2004), who establish that arts and culture give rise to forms of value that cannot be captured within the framework of mainstream, neo-classical economics. Both Throsby and Klamer maintain that ‘cultural value’ cannot be expressed in the same units of measurement as ‘economic value’. Indeed, the cultural value of an experience may be lost if it is assessed in economic terms. Other frameworks seek to broaden our understanding of the value and impacts of arts and culture by calling attention to components that have previously been overlooked. To provide analytical clarity, the authors propose various means of dividing the overall value into constituent components. For instance, Holden (2006) differentiates between intrinsic, instrumental and institutional values; McCarthy et al (2004) distinguish between instrumental and intrinsic benefits on the one hand, and between private and public benefits on the other; and Brown (2006) identifies five clusters of benefits. These attempts to analyse the value and impacts of cultural experiences (ie, separate them into their constituent elements) have been criticised for artificially drawing boundaries between types of value and impact that are integrally intertwined, and thereby diminishing the appreciation of the whole. There is indeed a longstanding debate about whether the attributes of cultural objects can be split up or whether they are only to be understood as a whole (Bourgeon-Renault 2000, 12).