How Can We Imagine a Post-Consumerist Character?

Abstract

Abstract:The prospect of environmental catastrophe dictates planning for a world-wide reduction in the consumption of commodities in the coming decades, as well as a stabilisation of population. Reducing desires for goods, however, entails rejecting the mentality of consumer society, which has dominated first the west, then much of the rest of the world, for more than a century. This talk examines a number of historical and literary utopian proposals for exiting a luxury-centred commercial model, including Lycurgus, Fénelon, and various socialists; and for modifying its assumptions and operations, notably in the USSR. It suggests that updating such proposals, while difficult, is not impossible, and is indeed unavoidable.