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With the consumption patterns in rich countries being more unsustainable than ever and the consumption of the 鈥榚merging middle classes鈥� increasing rapidly, it is about time 鈥榗onsumption and development鈥� becomes a field of study. Such a field would necessarily be interdisciplinary and combine analyses of everyday life and the structures of capitalist development. A useful starting point could be found at the intersection of theories of practice and systems of provision.

Consuming the world

Humans consume too much of the earth鈥檚 resources, there is little doubt about that. We eat too much of the 鈥榳rong鈥� kind of food, drive too many polluting cars, fly too many polluting flights, buy and discard too many clothes, shoes, fridges, TVs, mobile phones鈥�the list goes on. Exactly what drives consumption, however, as well as who is to blame for our overconsumption, has been subject to much debate.

Often, a rather simple picture of the state of the world has been drawn in critical accounts: Rich consumers are using too much while the poor are consuming too little, and with globalisation the consumers in the North have been increasingly 鈥榮ubsidised鈥� by the exploitation of cheap labour in the South. And while the poor in the South are struggling to survive, the rich consumers in the North are preoccupied with displaying their social status or expressing their identity through unsustainable consumption of all sorts of unnecessary stuff. There is of course quite some truth to this story, but it ignores the rapidly changing composition of the 鈥榞lobal consumer class鈥� and fails to take into account the complexity of consumption.

The new consumers

The 鈥榬ise of the South鈥� is well-known by now: A range of countries labelled as 鈥榙eveloping鈥� have achieved very rapid growth rates and instead become 鈥榚merging鈥� (). Alongside these macroeconomic developments, the size and purchasing power of middle classes outside the mature capitalist world have grown very rapidly. Indeed, the vast majority of the global middle class is expected to reside in the 鈥楽outh鈥� by 2030 (; ). This shift should challenge our categorisations of the world. At least it鈥檚 clear that the main division between consuming too much and consuming too little does not go between countries but between classes across country borders ().

It is unhelpful to paint a picture of these new consumers as mindless, ecologically blind dupes (Lange, 2016), and it is obvious that it is more urgent than ever to better understand the drivers of consumption and what can change consumption patterns in a more sustainable direction. In a world that is already consuming the planet to excess, and where the mature capitalist countries have not managed to reduce their ecological footprints, the rapid rise in levels of consumption in other parts of the world puts further strain on the environment (see McNeill and Wilhite, 2015). I believe it is about time 鈥榗onsumption and development鈥� becomes a field of study. But what would such a field look like?

Consumption and development

In consumption research outside mainstream economics, consumption usually includes the acquisition, use and disposal of things. This by now large body of research has the last decade seen a significant 鈥榩ractice turn鈥�. In short, practice theory and practice approaches represent a rejection of individual choice as an appropriate starting point for understanding consumption, but also a break with previous tendencies to focus on the spectacular and on status-seeking behaviour within consumption research. Practice approaches instead focus on the mundane, on everyday life and its social and material components (for overviews, see Warde, , ). This is a welcome shift, but one that unfortunately has not focused much on the role of economic structures in shaping consumption patterns. Understanding the conditions for consumption is crucial for understanding how consumption changes, and even more so in contexts of rapid economic development.

Of course, to some extent, development depends on consumption. The poorest need to consume more to live decent lives, and consumption is good, indeed necessary, for economic development (although it is of course possible to achieve economic growth through foreign consumption). In other words, development, particularly in its capitalist shape, in different ways depends on increased consumption. In development economics this is how consumption usually enters the picture, as demand or as an indicator of poverty.

But consumption is deeply embedded in everyday lives in every society (although how and why consumption of particular goods take place, as well as how resource intensive it is, varies greatly). Research on consumption thus boils down to fundamental questions related to why humans behave as they do. The fact that there seems to be no end-point of escalating 鈥榙esires鈥� for consumer goods has intrigued social scientists. Even the old modernisation theorists did not expect this development, with Walt Rostow () for example assuming that at some point people would become so wealthy that increasing income would lose its charm and the pursuit of material goods would no longer dominate people鈥檚 lives (Rostow鈥檚 lesser-known sixth stage of development). Cultural readings of consumer society have often explained the tendency to consume more and more through rather mystical psychological-cultural concepts such as 鈥榗onsumerism鈥�. Economists, on the other hand, expect people to spend most of their money and save some of it, and increasing income in turn results in increasing aggregate demand. However, both economists discussing demand and cultural accounts of 鈥榗onsumerism鈥� have little to tell us about where the propensity to consume particular commodities really emanates from. As (1986) has noted, demand is frequently treated as an outcome of some infinite and transcultural desire and fixed needs. However, he points out, demand 鈥榚merges as a function of a variety of social practices and classifications, rather than a mysterious emanation of human needs, a mechanical response to social manipulation [鈥�], or the narrowing down of a universal and voracious desire for objects to whatever happens to be available鈥� (, 1986: 29). The point that I want to make here is that these social practices are in turn grounded in material structures and conditions, and can indeed change in response to changes in these.

Provision and practices

One of the most prominent approaches to analysing political-economic structures while maintaining the overall focus on consumption is found in Ben Fine鈥檚 (, ) 鈥榮ystems of provision鈥� (first developed in , 1993). Fine (: 79) has defined systems of provision (SOP) as 鈥榯he inclusive chain of activity that attaches consumption to the production that makes it possible鈥�. Following Fine鈥檚 approach, we also need to incorporate the whole process before acquisition in order to understand consumption, in other words a consumer object鈥檚 backward linkages. The approach has however been criticised for focusing too much on economic structures. In the words of (2002: 7), in SOP the consumer 鈥榚merges only to disappear again into a production centred framework鈥�. And this raises a theoretical conundrum; if we acknowledge that production processes and systems of provision must be included in a holistic account of consumption, how do they affect everyday practices?

My suggestion boils down to a theoretical framework where consumption is approached through social practices, which in turn are analysed through their bodily, social and material pillars (as in ). This builds on the re-emergence of practice theories, but suggests that these pillars should be analysed through macro-scale systems of provision and political-economic frames and conditions for practices. This is ambitious, yet necessary in order to capture the complexity of changing consumption in contexts of rapid economic development. A development approach, with its focus on state strategies and policies related to processes of systemic change, as well as on the economic geographies and regional and global contexts of these, has much to contribute to understanding the conditions for consumption. But without an empirical grounding in the actual 鈥榙oings鈥� of the people consuming, in the everyday practices consumption takes place in, macro-level approaches provide a shallow reading, stripped of the ability to understand the multifaceted meanings and drivers of consumption.

References

Appadurai, A. (1986). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fine, B. (2002). . London: Routledge.

Fine, B. (2013). . Ephemera, 13(2), 217-248.

Fine, B., & Leopold, E. (1993). . London: Routledge.

Goodman, D., & Dupuis, E. M. (2002). . Sociologia Ruralis, 42, 5-22.

Hansen, A., & Wethal, U. (2015). Emerging Economies and Challenges to Sustainability. In A. Hansen & U. Wethal (Eds.), . London and New York: Routledge.

Kharas, H., & Gertz, G. (2010). In C. Li (Ed.), China’s Emerging Middle Class: Beyond Economic Transformation. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press.

Lange, H. (2016). Same, same – but different: On increasing meat consumption in the Global South, in: Sahakian, M., Saloma, C., Erkman, S. (Eds.), . Routledge, London.

McNeill, D., & Wilhite, H. (2015). Making sense of sustainable development in a changing world. In A. Hansen & U. Wethal (Eds.), . London and New York: Routledge.

Otero, G., Pechlaner, G. and G眉rcan, E. C. (2013). . Rural Sociol, 78: 263鈥�289

Rostow, W. W. (1991 [1960]). . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sahakian, M., & Wilhite, H. (2014). . Journal of Consumer Culture, 14(1), 25-44.

UNDP. (2013). . New York: UNDP.

Warde, A. (2005). . Journal of Consumer Culture, 5(2), 131-153.

Warde, A. (2014). . Journal of Consumer Culture, 14(3), 279-303.

*Parts of this piece draw heavily on the author鈥檚 PhD Thesis: Hansen, Arve (2016): 鈥�.

 

Arve Hansen is Postdoctoral Fellow at Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo.听

 

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