Abstract
The two quotations above are equally familiar, yet in different contexts. The first, expressed by an environmental economist, formulates moral concerns over the global impacts of consumption in general. The second, put forward by a housewife, makes explicit the ethical concerns behind a particular consumption practice of seating all the family around the breakfast table. Despite their coexistence, there is a clear tension between the two discourses. The first considers consumption as destructive both practically and morally. The second sees it as a necessary element of maintaining some of the most important values of everyday life: the family, the home, decency and even a moral backbone.
The consumption of the average U.S. citizen requires eighteen tons of natural resources per person per year and generates an even higher volume of wastes (including household, industrial, mining, and agricultural wastes). Some of these wastes are released to the atmosphere, rivers, and oceans; others are landfilled or incinerated; a small proportion is recycled. The standard conception of economic development envisions the rest of the world’s population as moving steadily up the ladder of mass consumption, eventually achieving levels similar to those achieved by the United States and some European economies. Clearly, the environmental implications of the global spread of mass consumption for resource use and environmental waste absorption are staggering. … In accepting increasing marketization as normal, and recommending it strongly to developing nations as a route out of poverty, we tend to ignore such negative correlates. Again, the effects on resource consumption and the environment are especially evident, but the insidious effects of the shifting boundary are more general. The undermining of community and family, as well as the replacement of spiritual values with commercial ones are now joined by the distancing of the individual from the natural world, with attendant environmental degradation. (Harris, 1997, pp. 269–72)
It’s a very good feeling that we sit down together, we have breakfast in a completely different way than if we didn’t sit around a properly laid table. I think this is very important in the family. And the children, if they get used to it they will have this requirement as well. Because — I often say this — if this is lacking for someone, then I say that one has no soul. I think these small things are needed for me to be tolerant and generous. … It’s important that one has an inner (moral) backbone. (Excerpt from an interview with S.R., entrepreneur and housewife, Budapest, Hungary, 2007)
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© 2014 Léna Pellandini-Simányi
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Pellandini-Simányi, L. (2014). Ethical Consumerism and Everyday Ethics. In: Consumption Norms and Everyday Ethics. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137022509_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137022509_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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