Consuming Sustainability
Critical Social Analyses of Ecological Change
How do our consumption decisions affect ecosystems? Can we rely on governments to maintain environmental wellbeing? Do rural peoples “see” the environment differently from urban residents? Is sustainability possible? We are confronted with personal and political decisions every day that affect the environment, yet, we often do not know how to assess, much less understand, our individual role in them. In Consuming Sustainability, the authors examine several contemporary environmental controversies in Canada to illustrate how a critical perspective can aid in understanding the complex social, economic and political issues that characterize our relationship to the environment, and of the potential for change within them. Key concepts in environmental social science are introduced and used to clarify environmental and ecological controversies and to address broader questions regarding structure, human agency, activism and the potential for sustainability in Canada and the world.
About the book
How do our consumption decisions affect ecosystems? Can we rely on governments to maintain environmental wellbeing? Do rural peoples “see” the environment differently from urban residents? Is sustainability possible? We are confronted with personal and political decisions every day that affect the environment, yet, we often do not know how to assess, much less understand, our individual role in them. In Consuming Sustainability, the authors examine several contemporary environmental controversies in Canada to illustrate how a critical perspective can aid in understanding the complex social, economic and political issues that characterize our relationship to the environment, and of the potential for change within them. Key concepts in environmental social science are introduced and used to clarify environmental and ecological controversies and to address broader questions regarding structure, human agency, activism and the potential for sustainability in Canada and the world.
Authors
Contents
- Power and Sustainability (Kierstin C. Hatt and Debra J. Davidson)
- Clothes Encounters: Consumption, Culture, Ecology and Economy (Ineke C. Lock and Satoshi Ikeda)
- Water: The Struggle to Decommodify a Human Right (Stephen Speake and Mike Gismondi)
- You Are What You Eat (Ella Haley, Kierstin C. Hatt and Richard Tunstall)
- The Air up There (Debra J. Davidson and Josh Evans)
- Space, the Canadian Frontier? Landscape and Canadian Identities (Jeff Masuda and Jeji Varghese)
- Economy, Work, and the Environment in Canada (Satoshi Ikeda and Mike Gismondi)
- Are We Becoming Hazardous Material? (Ella Haley and Richard Tunstall)
- Entropic Futures (Mike Gismondi and Debra J. Davidson)
- Towards a Sustainable Future (Debra J. Davidson and Kierstin C. Hatt)
- Glossary
- References
