I’ve been happily distracted, in all the general election and coalition mayhem and the musings on the implications of Coalition and hung parliaments for sustainable development.. by a visit the Conservation Economy blog. Jon Alexander, one of its founders, told me about it at our event on Mobilising Democracy to Tackle Climate Change. It’s a space “to provoke a fundamental questioning of the role of marketing, advertising and the communications industries in driving consumption”. Hard-core stuff indeed.
In a 29th April 2010 post, Jon draws a key distinction between consumption and Consumerism. And elsewhere on this blog…
Adding to some of the themes explored in an earlier post on the idea of the ‘consumer citizen’, this post from guest blogger Jules Peck, over at Citizen Renaissance, argues that the mix between consumerism and citizen action for sustainable development needs to be reconfigured in favour of the citizen.
The entry is also posted here.
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By Jules Peck
As we remain firmly rooted in our Western economic bath-tub and emerge from the dusts of Copenhagen, it seems ever clearer that Citizens are the missing link for 2010.
Politics continue to fail us and fail to …
Conversations in the US this week have prompted me to reflect on the potential for the idea of the ‘consumer-citizen’ to drive democratic innovation for sustainable development.
The Consumer Citizenship Network describes a ‘consumer citizen’ as “an individual who makes choices based on ethical, social, economic and ecological considerations. The consumer citizen actively contributes to the maintenance of just and sustainable development by caring and acting responsibly on family, national and global levels”.
Alternatively, in a 2006 paper, Martin Powell, Shane Doheny and Ian Greene describe another approach in which the citizen is understood as a consumer of public …
