Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420
ANALYSIS
The dynamics of willingness to consume
Inge Røpke
Department of Technology and Social Sciences, Technical Uni6ersity of Denmark, Building 322, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
Received 25 September 1997; received in revised form 11 May 1998; accepted 27 August 1998
Abstract
It is increasingly acknowledged that the growing consumption in the North constitutes an important part of global
environmental problems. To improve the possibilities of dealing with this aspect of the problems, this paper explores
some of the driving forces behind the growth in consumption. The first section introduces the environmental debate
on consumption including the relationship between final consumption and the consumption of resources, the recent
political acceptance of dealing with consumption, and the fundamental conditions for consumption growth in the North.
In the following sections, a cross-disciplinary approach is applied in a broad search for the driving forces behind the
willingness to consume. Throughout the exposition two questions are explored: (1) Why are productivity increases largely
transformed into income increases instead of more leisure? (2) Why is such a large part of these income increases used
for the consumption of goods and services with a relatively high materials-intensity instead of less material-intensive
alternatives? The explanations are divided into three groups: first, the economic explanations, including socio-economic
aspects related to the institutional set-up of the economy; second, socio-psychological explanations focusing on
consumption from the perspective of the human being embedded in specific social relations; third, historical and
socio-technological explanations focusing on different aspects of everyday life. The paper concludes with some reflections
on the political implications of the analysis. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Consumption; Consumption and environment; Everyday life
1. The environmental debate on consumption
1.1. Consumption of resources and final
consumption
In the environmental debate, the concept of
consumption is used in two different contexts that
are interconnected, but important to distinguish
from each other: consumption of resources and
final consumption. The first application of the
concept is related to the basic idea of ecological
economics that the human economy is a subsystem
of the biosphere (Daly, 1991; OECD, 1997b).
Three conditions are necessary for the economy:
0921-8009/99/$ - see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S0921-8009(98)00107-4
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420400
that humans can appropriate resources from the
surrounding nature, that they can return waste to
nature, and that the mechanisms of the biosphere
continue to function in a way that enables humans
to survive in it. When the relationship between
the human economy and the biosphere is
conceptualized, the concept of consumption is
used in the sense: appropriation of resources from
nature. This appropriation—the quantity of resources
consumed—results in environmental
problems, both directly through the extraction
and use of the resources and indirectly through
the waste generated later (Schmidt-Bleek, 1993).
The scale of the consumption of resources and the
related environmental problems are determined
by the functioning of the economy as a whole, but
it is very difflcult, not to say impossible, to
analyse the functioning of the economy as a
whole and thus to explain adequately the background
for the resource consumption.
Because of the complexity of the economy as a
whole, it seems more realistic to analyse the dynamics
behind resource consumption from several
different, complementary perspectives. As a helpful
point of departure, a definitional relationship
can be used. Resource consumption correlates
with
“ The micro efficiency in production: how effectively
do the single production units transform
the resources of nature into useful goods and
services?
“ The macro efficiency in production: how effectively
are the efforts of the productive units
combined in the provision of goods and services
for final consumption?
“ The quantity of final consumption per capita.
“ The size of the population.1
In this relationship the concept of consumption is
used in the second application, as a concept
defined inside the framework of the economic
system. The concept of final consumption is based
on the idea that consumption can be distinguished
from production: goods and services are produced,
often through long chains of production
where the end products of one firm are just inputs
for others, but in the end they are finally consumed.
However, as human beings are carriers of
the labour power that is also a necessary input in
production, the consumption of food, shelter,
education etc. could just as well be seen as intermediate
products, and then the concept of final
consumption disappears. Nevertheless, the concept
has an intuitive appeal because large groups
of human beings live at levels far beyond the
fulfilment of basic needs. Of course, it can be
argued that in modern societies labour power has
to be educated, transported etc. to function properly
as inputs in production: the system would fall
apart, if people had only their basic needs fulfilled.
But still it seems to be quite important for
a human being, whether he or she is a wheel in a
system with high or low living standards, and the
concept of final consumption is a way to conceptualise
this difference.
The two concepts of consumption are related to
each other, as the economically defined concept of
final consumption is one of the determinants underlying
the consumption of resources that link
together the economic system and the biosphere.
Obviously, other determinants are important for
the growth of the economic system in relation to
the biosphere, and consumption is, in fact, an
integral part of the complex social processes behind
overall growth. Even though it is problematic
to separate one aspect from a complex whole,
the issue in this paper is not economic growth as
such and the related consumption of resources,
but first of all the dynamics behind the growth of
final consumption.
1.2. Change in political focus
In political discussions about the background
for environmental problems and the possible
strategies to cope with the problems, the focus is
slowly changing. In Rio sharp contrasts were
obvious, with the North arguing that population
growth in the South was the main cause of envi-
1
The relationship corresponds to IPAT, except that the T is
here split into a micro component (how effectively is the
individual good produced) and a macro component (how
effectively are individual goods combined into final consumption).
The split directs attention to macro efficiency, which is
often overlooked in the preoccupation with technological
change.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 401
ronmental problems, while the South pointed out
that the North appropriated ever more resources
through increasing consumption (Redclift, 1996).
Even though the North demonstrated very little
understanding for the views of the South, Chapter
4 of Agenda 21 stated that the rich countries
should take the lead in achieving sustainable consumption
and production. Characteristically, consumption
and production were mentioned
together, because the preferred strategy to cope
with the problems was to promote technological
change in order to safeguard consumption and
economic growth. However, since Rio, the focus
has slowly been changing, and it is increasingly
acknowledged that growing consumption in the
North contributes substantially to environmental
problems, and considerations about the need to
change lifestyles are popping up in official publications
(Natur- og Miljøpolitisk redegørelse,
1995).
As a part of the follow-up after Rio, OECD in
1995 established a Work Programme on Sustainable
Consumption and Production (OECD,
1997a). The Programme still reflects OECD’s
preference for pointing to increased production
efficiency as the main way ‘to uncouple high living
standards from natural resources input and pollution
output’ (back page), but it is acknowledged
that consumption and lifestyle must also be dis-
cussed.2
However, it is emphasized from the beginning
that consumption as such is not a
problem: ‘the sustainable consumption and production
debate is not de facto an agenda for
reducing consumption in general. Action to promote
sustainability must be based on a case-bycase
analysis of potential constraints to
consumption and production of any particular
good, service or natural resource’ (p. 7). The
report mentions the problem of ‘rebound effects’:
‘The achievements gained through an eco-efficient
economic development strategy could be overwhelmed
by continued growth in consumption
(and the production which that engenders)’ (p.
24), but the awareness of this problem is not
really used to question the case-by-case strategy.
Obviously, the environmental benefits of a change
in consumption practices in one area can easily be
counterbalanced by increased consumption in
other areas, if overall growth is not limited. For
instance, a successful policy to reduce private
motoring would imply the saving not only of
energy, but also of money, which could be converted
into extended weekends by plane to interesting
places entailing increased energy
consumption (the example is not taken at random,
as this area of consumption is growing very
rapidly).
The intention in this article is, therefore, to
look at aggregate consumption. Obviously, different
consumption activities differ very much with
regard to their environmental impact, and in principle,
it is easy to imagine a continuous growth in
the economically defined consumption without a
corresponding growth in the consumption of resources—even
under the assumption of unchanged
technologies. This would be possible, if
the population used income increases to buy
labour-intensive goods and services: theatre and
music performances, courses in new skills, lectures
on interesting topics, art objects, high quality
clothes and houses made as handicrafts, child
care, and massage treatments. However, little indicates
that such a re-orientation of consumption
is actually taking place. On the contrary, the
growth in consumption seems to be materials- and
energy-intensive, also in the rich countries, as is
indicated by the increasing number of housing
square meters per person (Hille, 1995; Danmarks
Statistik, various volumes), the number of cars
and the distances travelled (Durning, 1992), the
growth of air travel (Durning, 1992), the household
ownership of appliances (Durning, 1992),
and the spread of air conditioning (Wilhite et al.,
1996). These indicators of final consumption can
be supplemented by input and waste indicators
that also support the thesis of materials-intensive
growth: e.g. the growth in paper consumption
(OECD, 1997a), electricity consumption (Redclift,
1996) and waste generation (Redclift, 1996; Wuppertal
Institute, 1995; van der Wal and Noorman,
2
The need to focus on more than just efficiency is exposed
in a table on commercial energy consumption (p. 42): even
though energy consumption per $ of BNP was 538% higher in
Russia than in USA, energy consumption per capita was 56%
higher in USA than in Russia in 1993.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420402
1995). While the increase in consumption can thus
be accompanied by increasing resource consumption,
the increase is not necessarily proportional.
For instance, the study by Biesiot and Moll (1995)
indicates that growing income is accompanied by
a less than proportional increase in both direct
and indirect energy consumption. Some data
point in a different direction, illustrating for instance
a decrease in the use of steel in the OECD
(Glyn, 1995), but it is beyond the scope of this
paper to deal extensively with the relative importance
of the different evidence. It seems likely that
the overall growth of final consumption implies
an increase in the consumption of resources, so it
makes good sense to go beyond the case-by-case
analysis and deal with overall consumption in an
environmental perspective.
1.3. Dri6ing forces
Historically, the growth of consumption gathered
momentum with the industrial revolution.
The dramatic extension of the division of labour
and the urbanisation in the wake of the industrial
revolution created the conditions for a way of
living where few people grow their own food,
while most people work in the formal economy
and buy their necessities in the market. Inside the
framework of this way of living, the level of
consumption has grown immensely. Household
income has increased concurrently with the labour
productivity increases resulting from the processes
of industrialisation and market competition. Besides
the forces of market competition, the generation
of income in the North has been based on
two fundamental pre-conditions. First, the
availability of cheap fossil fuels has been decisive,
and only the fact that the social and environmental
costs of industrialisation have not been paid
by the producers has made the labour productivity
increases possible. Had the system somehow
internalised the environmental costs, the technological
development would have focused far more
on improving resource productivity—implying
fewer environmental problems and a lower material
standard of living. Second, political and economic
mechanisms have secured an immense
transfer of resources from the South to the North,
without which the North could not have consumed
so much (Martinez-Alier, 1990, 1995; Leff,
1995). Fundamentally, consumption growth has
thus been conditional on the division of labour,
urbanisation, industrialisation, competition, the
use of fossil fuels, and the appropriation of resources
from the South. These fundamental driving
forces are still active, and immense transfers
of resources still take place from the South to the
North (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Redclift,
1996; Røpke, 1994).
When the ever growing consumption is questioned
for environmental and distributional reasons,
the question arises of whether people in the
rich countries will be ready to halt the forces
behind this growth. In mainstream economics this
would seem to be very difficult, because the growing
consumption is seen as a result of people’s
demand: people obviously want to consume constantly
more—otherwise they would not do so
(they just reveal their preferences). On the other
hand, environmentalists and cultural critics have
often argued that the enormous growth in consumption
has not really made people happier. Up
to a certain level, material progress increases welfare,
but most people in the rich countries have
passed this level long ago (a few examples from
the abundant literature on this issue are Argyle,
1987; Max-Neef, 1992; Durning, 1992; Jackson
and Marks, this issue; Røpke, forthcoming).
Some would even claim that growing consumption
is the result mainly of the intense efforts of
industry to seduce people into buying goods that
they fundamentally do not want (Spargaaren,
1997). If this were the case, it would probably not
be so difficult to reach a consensus in democratic
societies that market forces should be curbed to
reduce consumption. Unfortunately, the situation
is much more complex. While, on the one hand,
the neoclassic perception of consumption desires
is too simplified and apologetic, the critical view,
on the other hand, tends to underestimate the
importance of consumption. Besides the fundamental
conditions for consumption growth, mentioned
above, several more specific factors and
circumstances drive consumption and contribute
to explaining why it is so difficult to get political
support for measures to curb consumption. Con-
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 403
sumption is woven into everyday life, the activities
that are decisive for the quality of life and the
images of the good life, so consumption is difficult
to isolate as something that can be reduced without
diminishing quality of life. Paradoxically, this
can very well be the case, even if it is also true
that well-off people do not become happier with
increased consumption. The main point here is to
emphasise that we are neither completely happy
with ever increasing consumption, nor merely victims
of producer-forced consumption. The driving
forces at work are much more complex, and the
intention of this article is to take a closer look at
the more specific mechanisms behind the growth
of consumption. This does not mean that the
more fundamental conditions for growth are not
appreciated, such as the transfer of resources from
the South, the international trading system etc.,
but priority is given to include some perspectives
that have not had so much attention in the economic
debate so far. To deal with the environmental
and distributional problems related to ever
increasing consumption, it is necessary to understand
not only economic forces, but also human
motivations—as a pre-condition for creating support
for political intervention.
The paper thus focuses on more specific answers
to the question: What are the driving forces
behind the growth in consumption, and especially
behind the willingness to consume? Such a broad
question invites a cross-disciplinary approach and
a broad search for answers. The idea of the paper
is to include a great variety of explanations drawn
from several different social science disciplines to
illuminate the problem from many sides and reveal
the scope of the different explanations. In
relation to ecological economics, the paper is in
the socio-economic tradition that includes social
and institutional perspectives (Norgaard, 1994;
Gowdy, 1994; O’Hara, 1995, 1996). However,
consumption has not been a central issue in this
tradition so far, so few studies can be directly
referred to.
The explanations are divided into three groups:
first, the economic explanations, including socioeconomic
aspects related to the institutional setup
of the economy; second, socio-psychological
explanations focusing on consumption from the
perspective of the human being embedded in specific
social relations; third, historical and sociotechnological
explanations focusing on different
aspects of everyday life. The three groups are
partly distinguished from each other by the inspiration
from different disciplines, but they also
tend to differ, as the economic explanations focus
relatively more on macro or systemic aspects,
while the socio-psychological explanations are
more micro oriented, and the historical and sociotechnological
explanations belong to a meso level.
Furthermore, the first two groups of explanations
attach more importance to abstract theoretical
aspects combined with more historically concrete
aspects, while the third group emphasises the historically
concrete. The paper assigns relatively
more space, for instance, to the anthropological
perspectives that can be expected to be less wellknown
to readers of Ecological Economics than
the discussion of relative prices.
Throughout the exposition two questions are
explored from different perspectives: (1) Why are
productivity increases transformed relatively more
into income increases instead of leisure in the
postwar years? Juliet Schor, who has studied the
American situation, puts it this way: ‘Since
1948...the level of productivity of the US worker
has more than doubled. In other words, we could
now produce our 1948 standard of living...in less
than half the time...We actually could have chosen
the four-hour day...In 1990, the average
American owns and consumes more than twice as
much as he or she did in 1948, but also has less
free time’ (1991, p. 2). In the US the work week
shortened slightly from 1950 to 1970, but lengthened
since then. In Germany and France as well
as in Scandinavia, the number of work hours has
declined, both due to a shorter work week and to
longer vacation leaves, but—using Denmark as
an example—the reduction for the individual has
been accompanied by an increase in the number
of work hours for the family as a whole because
of the increased participation of women in the
labour force. (2) Why is a relatively large part of
these income increases used for the consumption
of goods and services with a relatively high materials-intensity
instead of less materials-intensive
alternatives? Why does the composition of con-
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420404
sumption not change relatively more towards a
pattern of less materials-intensive consumption? In
countries with low material standards, it is not
surprising that productivity increases are transformed
into higher standards of living with high
materials-intensity, but it is not clear why this
trend should continue to be dominant. The discussion
of the different explanations to these questions
is concluded with some reflections on the political
implications of the analysis.
2. Economic explanations
2.1. Competition
As already mentioned, the basis of consumption
growth is the persistent productivity increase,
driven by competition that forces producers to
strive for cost reduction to stay competitive with
regard to price. The competition on costs and
prices is accompanied by other forms of competition
that stimulate consumption, as they are intended
to attract customers. These forms of
competition are extensively described as dynamic
forces behind consumption growth (Durning,
1992).
Producers try to be first with the newest, so new
products as well as new models and variants of old
ones are incessantly developed. Product innovation
has increasingly become even more important than
process innovation in the competitive struggle
(Dosi et al., 1988; Porter, 1990), and this stimulates
consumption in several ways. Products are often
replaced by new ones before they are worn out
(even though they are not designed for durability),
because they are not fashionable any more, or
because they cannot cope with the new demands
(cf. the rapid obsolescence of computers). Product
development also implies diversification and specialisation:
multi-purpose products are increasingly
replaced by specialised devices for very
specific purposes: for instance, different tools for
all the different tasks in the kitchen, and different
shoes for all the different kinds of sports, for
running, for walking, for different social occasions
etc. (Pantzar, 1992.) Finally, completely new products
are invented and thereby create new consumption
desires.
Whether the products are old or new, enormous
resources are spent on advertising them to consumers.
For four decades, advertising has been one
of the world’s fastest growing industries (Durning,
1992), and as Durning states: Even if commercials
‘fail to sell a particular product, they sell consumerism
itself by ceaselessly reiterating the idea
that there is a product to solve each of life’s
problems’. This impact of advertising is strongly
reinforced by the spread of commercial television
and by the commercialisation of public spaces
which means that consumers are permanently immersed
in encouragements to buy.
If consumers cannot afford to buy right now,
retailers compete to attract them by the provision
of credit facilities and hire-purchase arrangements.
In itself, the postponed payment does not increase
total consumption, but these institutional arrangements
help to trap the consumers, as they have to
keep up earnings to pay the instalments and keep
the goods.
Competition thus creates an environment that
pulls consumers by tempting offers to increase
consumption instead of choosing more leisure
time—a trend reinforced by the contribution of
product development to increasing the need for
material inputs in leisure activities. These pull
mechanisms are supplemented by the push mechanisms
dealt with in the next section.
2.2. Work and spend
Schor (1991, 1995) is one of the researchers who
have been puzzled by the choice of income increases
instead of leisure. She offers an explanation
that emphasises institutional structures of the
labour market. With special reference to the
United States and Japan, she suggests that the
postwar era has brought a cycle of work-andspend.
Employers set schedules and workers conform
to them, and when productivity rises,
employers pass the gains along in the form of
higher wages rather than reduced worktime. Workers
take the extra income and spend it, and they
become accustomed to the new level of spending.
The reasons the employers stick to the same schedules
or even increase worktime are institu-
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 405
tional and technical. First, the ‘hours-invariant’
component of labour costs is considerable and
has risen in the postwar period. This applies
especially to the US and Japan, while countries
with large public welfare sectors, as in Scandinavia,
have a lower share of hours-invariant
welfare spending borne by employers and tend
to have shorter hours. Second, additional hours
for salaried workers do not cost the employers
anything because the pay itself is hours-invariant.
In the US, salaried workers have significantly
longer hours than hourly workers because
of the employers’ requirements, and because
hours may be used as a signalling device to
identify loyal employees. Third, long hours are
important to maintain high capital utilisation,
especially in capital-intensive industries, and
when firms cannot use shift work or face a limited
supply of labour. The combination of these
factors creates powerful incentives for employers
to oppose working-hour reductions and thus
constitutes a driving force behind increased con-
sumption.
Other institutional and cultural features of the
labour market stimulate increased consumption
as well. For instance, salaries are often based on
seniority, and this contributes to the dependence
on continued improvements. Another example is
the tendency to relate career-making to full-time
employment and often to overtime. In many
cases, promotion is blocked for persons not doing
overtime work, and furthermore, overtime
can be a precondition for having access to the
more interesting tasks.3
2.3. Relati6e prices and sectoral shifts
Productivity increases are transformed into increased
income and spending, but why does the
increased spending to such a large extent take
the form of material consumption? Several factors
play a part, but in this economic section it
will be emphasised that the change in relative
prices has favoured material consumption. The
products that can be produced industrially persistently
fall in price compared with products
and services that cannot be provided industrially.
As long as the social costs of industrialisation
(such as environmental costs, social
marginalisation and isolation, occupational
health and safety problems etc.) are not paid for
by the producers, production costs can be reduced
by extending the division of labour and
by substituting capital for labour. Thus wages
can buy still more material products, and the
opportunity costs of repair work, personal care,
education etc. become still higher, measured in
the sacrifice of industrial products. Even if increasing
income implies that the consumer can
better afford to buy the relatively more expensive
labour-intensive products and services, the
substitution effects of the price changes tend to
be stronger, expressing that the opportunity
costs of labour-intensive products and services
are perceived to be too high.4
The change in relative prices also constitutes
part of the explanation for the development of
the so-called self-service economy (Gershuny,
1978). Instead of buying services like washing,
cleaning, repair and maintenance of houses and
flats etc., we invest in our own capital equipment
and produce the services ourselves. Industrial
production has reduced the price of
equipment like washing machines, televisions,
drilling machines and other tools, and when this
is combined with the rising prices of buying services,
self-service becomes attractive.
From an environmental point of view the selfservice
economy is inappropriate when the services
require expensive capital equipment (Hinterberger
et al., 1994). Individual ownership of this
3
The institutional factors promoting long hours meet with
counter-tendencies. As Christer Sanne (1995) has concluded on
the basis of several studies, many people want to choose
shorter hours. Several recent experiments with shorter hours in
Sweden demonstrate both economic advantages for the employers
and improvements of quality of life for the employees
(Olsson, 1997).
4
The shift in relative prices also contributes to answering
the question of why income is chosen at the expense of leisure,
as the opportunity cost of leisure is constantly increased.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420406
equipment entails the use of more resources
than an organised sharing would do, whether
the sharing is organised via market activities or
via networks in the civil society.
The trend towards self-service applies to some
types of services, but the general trend is that
activities are transferred from households to the
formal economy. This applies to products that
can be industrially produced, services that become
specialised, and services taken over by the
public sector. In a recent article, Cogoy (1995)
stresses that the expansion of market relations
into formerly non-market organised sectors of
social life can have significant environmental impacts.
These are not necessarily negative, but in
many cases they are, as Cogoy illustrates with a
few key examples, related to household energy
conservation and to private transportation. It is
crucial to the analysis that a given consumption
target can be attained by different technical
means (e.g. ‘comfortable dwelling’ can be attained
either by heating or by insulation) and
that these different solutions imply different social
organisations. The point is then that the
institutional setting and the vested interests in a
specific social organisation block the choice of
the most environmentally-friendly solution, and
sometimes even block the choice of the most
rational way to attain the consumption target
seen from the point of view of the consumer.5
This result can come about in diverse ways, so
Cogoy primarily intends to draw attention to
the environmental importance of the borderline
between market and non-market activities.
Also the borderline between the private and
public sectors is important from an environmental
point of view. Stated very broadly, the welfare
state has taken on tasks that were not
profitable for private enterprises, but important
for the functioning of society. Many of these
tasks have been difficult to industrialise and are
still relatively labour intensive and energy- and
materials-extensive. The continuous change in
relative prices has therefore entailed problems
for the public budgets with ensuing cuts, privatisation
etc. These trends tend to increase the materials-intensity
of consumption, as we are
inclined to have different priorities as private
consumers than we have as citizens. It seems to
be more acceptable to pay a high price for care
and environmental improvements, when such activities
are paid for via the tax system—and
some of them can only be paid for in this way.
3. Socio-psychological explanations
Productivity increases are transformed into
rising incomes which are spent on consumption
and especially material consumption. The section
above demonstrates the push and pull effects
of the economic system and some of the
related institutions. However, these increases
would never have been realised if we had not
been ready to increase consumption instead of
leisure. Of course, one can believe that increasing
consumption results from the manipulation
of consumers by the strong forces of capitalism,
the creation of false needs, and the effective seduction
through advertising. Explanations of
this kind are as old as the capitalist consumption
society itself, and they obviously have a
considerable element of truth, but they have increasingly
come under attack for being far too
simplistic and exaggerated (Spargaaren, 1997).
Therefore, it is necessary to look more closely at
the socio-psychological aspects of increasing
consumption.
3.1. Insatiable wants and en6y
The easy explanation of mainstream economics
is that human beings have insatiable
wants—and often this is referred to simply as a
fundamental part of human nature. In traditional
utility theory this is just an assumption
that does not need any explanation. When
explanations are put forward, they will typically
start by stating that goods are sources
of enjoyment because they fulfil physical
5
As it will appear from the following sections, consumption
targets are not always easy to define, so the apparently irrational
can be desired by the consumer.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 407
or spiritual needs. According to this point of view
it should be expected that people would feel better
the more they get. As this is obviously not the
case—for instance, some poor people by Western
standards do not regard themselves as poor, and
some rich people are far from satisfied—a supplementary
hypothesis is often added: a theory of
envy as a driving force behind demand. There are
many different versions of the theory of envy
advanced as critical correctives to the assumption
of insatiable wants (classical versions by Smith,
Veblen and Keynes and a more recent version by
Hirsch, 1976). The theories use concepts such as
relative needs, social emulation, positional goods,
conspicuous consumption and competitive display.
The idea is to distinguish between absolute
needs, which are felt independently of the situation
of others and which can be satisfied, and
relative needs, which are needs for feeling superior
in relation to others and which are, indeed,
insatiable.
The theory of envy is often combined with a
critical assessment of human beings: people
should not be so envious, it is really irrational, it
is not to their own good. This moral assessment is
the point of departure for the criticism that the
anthropologist Mary Douglas and the economist
Baron Isherwood (Douglas and Isherwood, 1980)
voice against the economic theories of consumption.
They share the fundamental assumption of
economics that human beings act rationally.
When economists tend to make critical assessments
of consumers’ motives as irrational, it is
because economic theory has a very simplified and
primitive conception of human beings and, therefore,
cannot explain the rationality of human
behaviour. Such an explanation is provided by the
anthropological theory presented by Douglas and
Isherwood, as it provides a much richer idea of
social meaning than mere individual competitiveness
and explicitly deals with the question: Why
do people want goods? A more elaborate answer
to this question is central to the issue of this
paper, so the position of Douglas and Isherwood
will be summarised in some detail—also because
it is relatively close to economics. As my concern
is different from that of the authors (who study
the meaning of poverty), and as the arguments
have to be very condensed, I have felt free to
structure the presentation in my own way.
3.2. Goods as means for making sense
Douglas and Isherwood apply a perspective
where human beings are understood in their social
context.6
It is not meaningful to abstract the
individual from social life, and the analysis must
always start by understanding the whole before
attending to the individuals. As members of a
society, human beings have a fundamental need to
relate to other people, and their relations should
be the starting point for analysing consumption.
To this general perspective Douglas and Isherwood
add two more specific assumptions regarding
societies and human beings. First, societies
can differ very much from each other, but they
are always hierarchially structured (this assumption
is not made very explicit, but as far as I can
see, it is crucial to the analysis). People are divided
into different classes or groups, and consumption
plays an important role in constituting
these groups. Second, social life depends on the
existence of a certain consensual basis, that is, a
kind of agreement about meanings that are stable
at least for a little while. When human beings take
part in social life, they have a fundamental need
to understand the world in which they have to
act: they must make sense of their environment.
The cognitive construction of the social universe
proceeds by seeing differences, drawing lines, discriminating,
and in this way the temporal dimension
is demarcated, space is divided, persons and
events are classified. Rituals are used as a means
to establish meanings in a social context.
Goods enter this scene as ritual adjuncts. They
play a very important role as a means for making
the world understandable. Goods are used as
markers for discrimination: for instance, food is
used for discriminating between morning and
evening, between everyday life and celebrations,
6
This perspective is closely in keeping with the institutional
current related to ecological economics (Norgaard, 1994;
Gowdy, 1994; O’Hara, 1995, 1996 etc.), but the contribution
of Douglas and Isherwood is emphasised here because their
discussion very specifically deals with consumption.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420408
between different kinds of celebrations and so on.
As goods are used as markers and classifiers, they
make visible and stabilise the categories of culture—they,
so to say, constitute the visible part of
culture as the tip of the iceberg which is the whole
of the social processes. In cognitive anthropological
theory, goods constitute an information system,
they are carriers of meaning. This function is
not easy to see, as long as one focuses on the
physical properties of the goods and the needs
that these goods can satisfy. To see the working
of the information system, it is necessary first to
abstract from common sense observations and the
knowledge of the use of the goods. Of course,
many goods satisfy needs, but they are even more
important because they help us to think and
understand. They have the capacity to make
sense, not as individual goods, but in the relationships
between them.
Culture is always in a process of change, and
goods are recruited for ever new projects of classification.
Consumption is thus an active process,
where social categories are continuously redefined.
Goods are consumed and eventually demolished,
but simultaneously the stream of goods
leaves a cultural structure, a way of thinking. The
process of redefinition can only take place when
consumers meet. They invite each other to take
part in consumption rituals, and these function as
grade events, where assessments are established
and changed.
How does a rational consumer act? Here the
assumption of a hierarchial society must be recalled.
Ultimately, consumption is about power,
as Douglas and Isherwood put it. In a hierarchial
society, it is important to attain and maintain a
high position. A person’s success in this matter
depends on his ability to understand the social
universe, to keep up to date with changes and,
best of all, to be in a position to influence strongly
the development of new meanings. To be in power
over meaning, a person must attend many consumption
rituals, so he must have many social
contacts and be able to afford the necessary reciprocity
related to the rituals. To be a person
whose judgement will be relied on, he has to
develop a natural mastery of consumption. This is
done by increasing one’s knowledge of consumption
in several fields and by integrating this
knowledge into a synthesis. There are increasing
returns to scale of consumption, so the synthesis
becomes easier to achieve when the scale is
increased.7
In this social universe it is perfectly rational to
increase one’s scale of consumption, as it facilitates
the development of a natural mastery. The
reciprocity and the need to be mobile to attend
many rituals also stimulate the scale. Furthermore,
it is vital to have the time to take part in
the most important events. A person only has the
time, if he is not bound by heavy periodicity
constraints related to high-frequency work. When
technological change provides goods that can relieve
periodicity constraints, these goods can be
expected to be candidates for developing from
today’s luxuries into tomorrow’s necessities. The
same goes for other scale-facilitating goods that
have the capability to increase personal availability.
Also this trend stimulates the demand for
goods.
In this account of social life, human rationality
is related to the striving to attain a high position
in a hierarchial society, and increasing consumption
is an important aspect of this process. To
make the account credible it must be argued that
this rationality is somehow related to the quality
of life experienced by the individual. Douglas and
Isherwood do not discuss this question directly,
but three arguments can be extracted. First, one’s
ability to achieve and maintain a position can be
decisive for one’s chances to achieve fundamental
human aims such as having a love relationship
and having children. Second, the physical use of
goods is obviously a source of enjoyment. Third,
it is an even greater pleasure than the mere use of
goods to take part in the sharing of names, that
is, to discuss the subjects that one has invested so
much time and money to learn about. Typically,
the process of increasing the scale of consumption
will thus be experienced as a source of enjoyment
for the individual.
7
There is decreasing marginal utility of the consumption of
a specific good, but not of consumption as such in this
perspective.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 409
In this perspective it is very intelligible that
industrialisation has found an easy outlet for the
mass production of goods. The scale of consumption
activities has increased enormously, and consumers
have become busier: ‘Industrialisation has
complicated the life for the consumer. Regarding
material goods there are, indeed, more of many
things. But to keep up with the exchange of
marking services necessary to happiness and necessary
to a coherent, intelligible culture, he has to
run harder to keep in the same place. Industrial
growth means nothing more or less than extending
the scale of operations’.
In my opinion, Douglas and Isherwood offer a
much better and more persuasive account of human
behaviour in relation to consumption than
that of traditional economic theories. It is strong
with regard to thinking of human beings as fundamentally
social and with regard to emphasising
their need to understand their social environment
via an information system. However, this specific
anthropological perspective also has much in
common with economics. Even if it realises the
social character of human beings, it is still a very
abstract theoretical construction based on extensive
reductions. The focus on rationality inside the
framework of a hierarchial society gives the theory
a deterministic touch. Drawing conclusions
on this basis would entail the risk of committing
the fallacy of misplaced concreteness as is wellknown
from critical perspectives on neoclassical
economics (Daly and Cobb, 1989).
In relation to the issue of growth in consumption,
it is on the one hand very relevant to use the
theory of Douglas and Isherwood to stress that it
will not be easy to dismantle consumer society. It
is fundamentally necessary and legitimate for human
beings to make their environment understandable,
and goods are integral parts of this
process. On the other hand, it is too deterministic
to use the theory to argue that there is no voluntary
escape from the never-ending consumption
spiral. First, the passage cited above on the consequences
of industrialisation indicates a possible
contradiction between following the logic of the
hierarchial system and experiencing quality of life.
When the scale of consumption increases, business
may seriously threaten the personal enjoyment.
This possibility is reflected in the movement
for voluntary simplicity: some would probably be
willing to give up the stress related to increasing
consumption, if they could find ways to achieve
the essential social contacts without it (Sachs,
1995). Second, human beings have more varied
facets than the ones emphasised in the theory. We
have the ability to reflect on and to see through
some of the mechanisms influencing behaviour,
which gives us the chance of liberating ourselves
from these mechanisms—human beings are not
just mechanistic agents of a structural determinism.
Furthermore, human beings also have an
ethical capability. In the account of Douglas and
Isherwood, human beings are conceived of as
social, but they are just as unpleasant pursuers of
their own interests as they are in economics. They
apply exclusion strategies, set up entry barriers to
others etc. If it is taken into account that human
beings are also ethical, a less deterministic perspective
may arise.
3.3. Justification
Before leaving the more abstract discussion of
why human beings have been willing to demand
the enormous amount of goods that industrialisation
has made available, one more perspective will
be outlined briefly. Neither the person in economics,
greedy and (irrationally) occupied with impressing
others, nor the person in the presented
version of anthropology, rationally occupied with
securing his social position, is very attractive, and
I wonder whether these ‘images’ are realistic, even
as legitimate theoretical abstractions. The sociologist
Campbell (1990) presents an interesting alternative—or
at least a supplement. He criticises the
mono-motive approach of Th. Veblen and others,
because they presume motives instead of investigating
them. He argues that interpretations of
conduct are externally imputed and largely unsubstantiated
by any evidence concerning what the
people themselves actually think they are doing.
Campbell rejects the widespread view that the
conduct of individuals can be understood as primarily
a self-interested attempt to manipulate or
impress others. He suggests that human conduct—to
the extent that it is conscious and
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420410
willed—is perceived by the individuals as ethical
and moral. In other words, it is important for the
individual to be able to justify his actions for
himself. The individual strives to create from his
personhood a character possessing some ideal
qualities. Even if he thinks that he possesses these
ideal qualities, he will from time to time need
reassurance that this is in fact the case. This
reassurance takes the form of conduct—he confirms
the ideal self-image by actions. Justification
is thus an integral part of action; it cuts across the
specific reasons for actions and is not in practice
fully separable from the direct motivations. If the
character ideals prevailing in a particular period
imply a behaviour involving high consumption,
such consumption will be justified.
From a somewhat different perspective, the importance
of justification is supported by a crosscultural
study on materialism carried out by Ger
and Belk (1996a,b). They view materialism as a
culturally agreed upon understanding of a mode
of consumption and look into what materialism
means in different cultures (American, West European,
Turkish and Romanian). They find systematic
cultural differences in the meanings of
materialism, but all the cultures share in the condemnation
of materialism. Interestingly, however,
virtually all those studied combine their critical
assessment of materialism with having a high level
of consumption aspirations themselves. While
they regard materialism as bad consumption, they
see their own consumption as good. One’s own
consumption can be justified and legitimized in
various ways, from the need to have control over
life to the interest in being concerned with others.
3.4. Late-modernity and indi6idualisation
The perspective of justification constitutes a
good link between the more general explanations
of why consumers so willingly have increased
consumption in pace with the possibilities, and
the explanations referring to specific historical
circumstances taken up in this section. Individuals
are formed by historically specific conditions, and
we might have developed new features that
sharpen our appetite for consumption considerably.
It is a widely held view that this in fact is the
case. Consumption has acquired a new and very
important role in relation to the formation of
self-identity under the conditions of late-modern
society. The latest phase of industrial capitalism
has been characterised in many ways and dated
somewhat differently, but most contemporary sociologists
agree that two main tendencies have
dominated social change (Halkier, 1998). One
trend is an intensified process of individualisation:
the individual is increasingly set free from traditional
social bonds. Individuals are no longer tied
very closely to social roles and cultural norms
related to class, gender, locality and religion. The
other trend is a process of formalisation and
institutionalisation. The directly visible social relationships
are increasingly being replaced by abstract
and large-scale social structures and
mechanisms through which we are integrated in
complex and worldwide networks. In relation to
consumption, the second trend manifests itself in
the supply of goods from all over the world and
in the different possibilities for individuals to get
access to these goods, possibilities that are dependent
upon the abstract mechanisms of the world
economy.
The trend of individualisation has a profound
indirect impact on the demand for consumer
goods. The release from bonds and social constraints
implies that a person’s identity is no
longer given by his membership in a community
and by his social roles. With the historical decline
of traditional ties, individuality emerges as a
problem. The identity of a person becomes a
project, as he now feels much more responsible
for his own life and self-identity. In the process of
constructing and sustaining a self-identity, consumption
plays an important role. People use
goods as one of the means to define themselves, as
goods transmit messages to others. To some extent
the project of the self is thus translated into a
project of possessing desired goods. The maintainance
of the self-identity is a never-ending process,
so it entails a persistent and strong
psychological impulse to consume.
The social theorists Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt
Bauman and Ulrich Beck (referred to here
on the basis of Warde, 1994) emphasise the double
character of this process seen from the per-
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 411
spective of the individual. On the one hand, it
feels good to be free from social fetters and
oppression, and consumption is a source of joy
because it builds up self-identity. On the other
hand, it feels very stressful and frustrating to be
responsible for one’s own life, and consumption is
a source of anxiety and uncertainty, because the
handling of choice is so critical. When individuals
integrate themselves into society through their
consumer behaviour, a wrong choice can be selfdestructive.
Warde (1994) is critical of this account
of the double character of individualisation
and consumption. He agrees that the pursuit of
self-identity is an important aspect of consumption,
but he doubts that it is the paramount goal.
Warde finds that the model of the consumer as a
displaced and disembedded person is somewhat
exaggerated. Consumers are not so individualistic,
and their choices are supported by their social
contexts and many different channels of guidance.
The consumers for whom the choice is very decisive
are typically highly informed, and for others
personal consumption is not very risky at all.
No doubt, individualisation has left human beings
with an intensified need for confirmation of
the self, a trend that is confirmed by many theorists
of social psychology (Læssøe, 1992, 1995). It
seems obvious that material consumption plays a
part in identity-formation and that consumption
is stimulated by the changes of individual psychology
that are typical for the period. Whether these
changes are also sources of frustration is perhaps
less obvious, and it is less important in explaining
consumption. However, the question is vital in
relation to the discussion of possible changes
ahead, as it might be easier to gain acceptance for
consumption-reducing measures, if frustrations
are widespread.
The stimulation of consumption due to the
process of maintaining self-identity is an indirect
consequence of individualisation. But individualisation
has also influenced the choice of consumer
goods in a more direct way. The process of the
decline of traditional ties has been reflected in a
process of changing values, as it has become an
important value to be individually free and independent.
Thus the history of the period after the
industrial revolution has also been the history of
increasing interpersonal independence. In this century
we have seen old people becoming independent
of their relatives, women becoming
independent of their husbands, and young people
becoming independent of their parents. Of course,
independence does not mean independence of social
relations as such. The reduced dependence on
close relatives has co-developed with increased
dependence on worldwide networks, but the feeling
of personal independence is much stronger.
The increased independence has far-reaching
effects on material consumption. When old people
get their own homes instead of living with their
children, when young people get their own flats at
an early age, and when divorces result in more
single and single parent families, the number of
households multiplies (van Diepen, 1995). This
trend entails an enormous increase in the demand
for housing and all the related kinds of equipment.
Much of our income increase has thus been
transformed into personal independence.
Also within households the individualistic trend
has been effective. The different members of the
family increasingly get their own rooms where
they can withdraw and engage in their hobbies or
work, and each child often has its own room at an
early age. Furthermore, family members do not
want to have their freedom of choice restricted by
the activities of other family members, so increasingly
a household has more than one television,
tape-recorder/CD-player, car etc.8
The different accounts of consumption as being
instrumental to different aims such as confirmation
of the self and interpersonal independence
have caused theoretical reactions. Sometimes the
instrumental accounts leave the impression that
consumption is a kind of hard work and not an
end in itself. Thus, for instance, Warde (1996) has
found it necessary to emphasise that people typically
enjoy consumption for a wide variety of
reasons. Consumption will often involve emo-
8
The quest for independence is also one of the factors
behind the previously mentioned trend towards the self-service
economy. Households could have organised sharing systems,
and such collective solutions do exist in blocks of flats, but the
trend has clearly been that households prefer to have their
own washing machines, drills etc.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420412
tional aspects—the driving forces behind consumption
are probably all the driving forces behind
human behaviour, or in other words, most
human behaviour has a consumption aspect. We
consume from love and hate, from care and personal
enjoyment, from the desire to strengthen
social relations and the desire to withdraw, from
the wish to play and explore and from the wish to
relax.9
4. Historical and socio-technological explanations
While there is a tendency to emphasise macro
aspects in the economic explanations and micro
aspects in the socio-psychological ones, the historical
and socio-technological explanations tend to
emphasise the meso level. They also tend to take
a step further towards a more concrete level by
focusing on the historical transformation of the
patterns of everyday life.
4.1. The dream and the family
The story of the growth in consumption is not
only a story about the impact of a number of
general forces, it is also a story of the realisation
of dreams both at the individual and the political
level. These dreams emanate from both the problems
and the qualities related to the living conditions
prevailing in the early industrial society.
In a Danish context, the story has been summarised
by the cultural researcher Nørregaard
Frandsen (1994), who emphasises that the way the
new economic possibilities were used was greatly
influenced by the imprint of the society we came
from. Nørregaard Frandsen dates the old society
to the period from 1880 to 1960. The 1880s saw
the transformation of Danish agriculture and the
establishment of the co-operative movement
(dairies, slaughterhouses) as well as the take-off of
industrialisation. In the 1950s more than half the
population still lived in the countryside either as
farmers or in small towns economically related to
agriculture. The old society had a stable pattern
of life. The positive side of this was the feeling of
security related to living in bound social communities
based on family and neighbourhood, close
to the preconditions of existence and in direct
contact with nature. The negative side was the
hardship that had to be endured, especially by
those low in the hierarchy, children, women and
men without property: physical strain, worries,
violence, corporal punishment, social branding,
frugality. Industry was mainly localised in the
cities, where most of the workers lived in small,
dark and damp flats. After the Second World
War, the housing shortage was acute: it was
difficult to get a flat when founding a family and
nearly impossible to get one without marrying.
The take-off of economic growth came in the late
fifties, and the following years brought a fundamental
restructuring of society. The period from
the middle of the fifties to the middle of the
seventies became a period of migrations. It has
been estimated that every Dane moved on average
four times during these twenty years (Nørregaard
Frandsen, 1994). The migrations consisted of two
movements: one was the exodus from farming,
and the other, much greater one, was the migration
from the old town centres to the suburban
areas. Industry, too, spread from the town centres
throughout the country. 750 000 housing units
were built (the population at the beginning of the
period was 4.5 million people), some of them flats,
but most were single-family houses with gardens.
Through this enormous building activity many
people tried to realise a dream—a dream
combining a critical and a visionary aspect. The
critical aspect was a revolt against the frugality,
the closeness and feeling of being locked in, the
social branding and the poor standard of health
in the old society. The visionary aspect was the
wish for light, air and privacy for the family close
to nature, so a small garden around the house had
a very high priority.10
As a result, a new form of
urban lifestyle spread throughout the country,
and the old differences between the lifestyles of
city and countryside were partly dissolved. No
9
Consumption activities as well as the act of buying can
also turn into an addiction. This aspect is dealt with in an
article by Claxton (1994).
10
Politically, the vision was supported by tax benefits related
to investments in housing.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 413
doubt, this dream was a strong driving force
behind the growth in consumption.11
The ethnologist Lo¨fgren (1990) points out that
home-making became a very important activity
and thus a central part of consumption in the
twentieth century. The background was that the
home emerged as a family project that unites wife,
husband and children. Lo¨fgren goes over the different
phases that home-making in Sweden has
gone through during the twentieth century: first,
the phase of home-making as a moral and sacred
activity, second, the modernisation related to
functionalism and the scientific approach to house
work, and third, the phase of creativity stressing
informality and the fun of consumption. The
many changes of form through these phases can
leave the impression that lifestyles are very flexible
and susceptible to influence from marketing and
fashion. But, on the contrary, Lo¨fgren emphasises
that behind these vagaries of fashion there is a
marked cultural stability on a more fundamental
level. When people invest so much time, money
and creativity in home-making, it cannot be explained
by market manipulation. It is much more
important that home-making is a family project
and that it has become very closely related to
identity formation.
Related to the dream is a conception of the
ideal family—an ideal that contains a duality: on
the one hand the idea of a warm closeness and on
the other hand the idea of each person’s inviolable
sovereignty and individuality (Nørregaard Frandsen,
1994). This ideal, combined with the tendency
for all members of the family to focus on their
own achievements, has introduced a central contradiction
in modern family life (Dencik, 1996).
Taken to its extreme, the individualisation trend
tends to dissolve family life, but at the same time
the family is more important than ever as a place
of refuge for the individual in this period of
cultural ‘setting-free’ and lack of a stable framework,
traditions, role models etc. To keep the
family intact and alive under these conditions
requires conscious efforts, and these efforts will
often imply a stimulus to consumption.
4.2. The paradox of time-sa6ing
The dream of light, air and privacy and the
continuous process of home-making contribute
considerably to consumption growth. When a
closer look is taken at the way lives are lived in
practice inside the framework of the dream, further
inducements to consumption are uncovered.
These are, first of all, related to the busyness and
lack of time that seems to characterise everyday
life in modern societies and to the related paradox
of time-saving. Generally formulated, busyness
motivates the acquisition of labour-saving equipment,
but the result tends to be that the technical
improvements are converted not into reduced
labour for a specific task but rather into increased
consumption or improved quality—and the busyness
remains. The phenomenon is thus a parallel
to the tendency to realise productivity increases in
the form of increased material consumption.
The phenomenon is well-known from the
spread of the car. The car enables the owner to
reduce the time needed for travelling, but it also
opens up the possibilities of taking jobs further
away from home, buying from shops that are not
local, and taking part in new or more leisure
activities. When car ownership became widespread,
it turned into a condition in economic and
political planning decisions, and the conditions of
everyday life were changed in ways that made car
ownership almost compulsory or at least made life
rather inconvenient for people without access to a
car. Instead of reducing the time needed for travelling,
the car thus contributed to a dramatic
increase in the distances travelled. This development
has even been formulated as a ‘law’ of the
constant use of time for travelling, called ‘Zahavi’s
law’ or ‘Hupke’s constant’ (Tengstro¨m,
1991; Cronberg, 1987).
Within households, the same phenomenon is
known, e.g. from washing machines. These could
really reduce labour time for washing, but instead
11
The growth of consumption during this period of change
is an illustrative historical example of one of the findings in the
study of more recent examples by Ger and Belk (1996a,b):
people in dynamically changing countries are relatively more
materialistic. Dynamic changes give the possibility of social
mobility and spur social comparisons of every kind, and they
are accompanied by a confusion in norms and an increase in
the value of novelty.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420414
of saving time we wash much more than previously:
we have many more clothes, we use different
materials that need more washing and
have to be washed separately, and our ideas of
clean clothes have changed (Andersen, 1985;
Cronberg, 1987). Just as the individual choice of
more transport in the case of the car turned
into an outside force via economic and political
changes, the individual choice of more clean
clothes gradually changed into an outside force
via the establishment of new social norms. If we
want to be employed and to have social contacts,
it is not enough to wash our clothes to
the standards that were common 50 years ago.
This paradox, that the constant introduction
of labour-saving devices has not been accompanied
by a decrease in labour time for housework,
has been studied in much detail and in a
long historical perspective by Schwartz Cowan
(1983). As the title of her book ‘More Work for
Mother’ illustrates, she was first of all puzzled
by the strange phenomenon that American
housewives in the 1970s could still feel exhausted
and overburdened in spite of all the
technical devices for housework and the takeover
of many former household tasks by industry.
The story behind this phenomenon is very
complex and goes back to the beginning of the
19th century, but the following intends only to
summarise briefly the main explanations in general
terms.
Much housework has been taken over by industry,
and many tasks have become less timeconsuming
by the introduction of technical
devices. However, a separate task can be rationalised
in one way or the other without decreasing
the burden of work for the housewife.
Whether the burden is eased depends on a number
of factors—which are in practice integrated,
but separated here for analytical purposes. First,
there is a division of labour in relation to
housework, and the task that is eliminated or
rationalised might be one that is done by others
than the housewife. In the early days of industrialisation,
men, women and children all did a
large part of their work at home, and the first
tasks to be industrialised were to a large extent
those done by men and children. At a later
stage, a related process took place, when some
of the tasks done by servants in the relatively
rich (but not truly wealthy) families were rationalised
and gradually taken over by the
housewives, for instance with the availability of
the washing machine. Second, a given task is
always linked to other tasks, and when it is rationalised,
other tasks in the chain might expand
and new related tasks might occur. For instance,
the cast-iron stove, unlike fireplaces, had to be
cleaned at the end of each day and to be polished
regularly, and when taps replaced pumps,
the job of ‘producing’ water was replaced by the
job of ‘producing’ clean toilets, bathtubs and
sinks. Third, the introduction of technical
devices was often accompanied by an increase in
the amount and variety of services produced.
The stove entailed the end of one-pot cooking
or, rather, one-dish meals. The diet became
more varied, while the time spent in preparing
foodstuffs was increased, and the cooking chores
became more complex. Fourth, while many
tasks were taken over by industry and public
services, other tasks moved in the opposite direction,
one of the most important being transport.
Before 1920 shopping and transporting
took up very little time, but since then transport
services have exploded. Fifth, a symbolic aspect
was added to the combination of the factors
above. For instance, white yeast bread became
one of the first symbols of status in the industrial
period, because it required both cash to
buy the flour and time to do the kneading and
to attend to the details of the process.
Even in the postwar period the spread of
affluence and the availability of amenities were
not accompanied by an increase in leisure, as
the factors mentioned were still active (Schwartz
Cowan, 1983). For the relatively rich the
amount of work increased, because the help
from servants was diminished, while the relatively
poor experienced an increase in productivity.
Housework thus became much more
homogeneous across social groups. Women entered
the labour market in large numbers, because
they wanted to acquire the labour-saving
devices and household amenities, and simultaneously,
the productivity increase in housework
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 415
made it possible to manage. But women were
left with an even greater workload due to the
double burden of housework and outside employment.
Thus the spiral of busyness and the
acquisition of labour-saving devices is kept going.
Through this process we have achieved very
luxurious standards, and this also raises the
question for Schwartz Cowan, why we do not
break the spiral and give a higher priority to
leisure. She finds part of the answer at the symbolic
level. For instance, she observes a ‘backward
search for femininity’: ‘People who believe
that family solidarity can be bolstered by handdipped
chocolates and hand-grown string beans
are bound to spend a lot of time dipping chocolates
and growing string beans’. She also emphasises
that the memory of poverty is enshrined in
the habits of our housework. Some unwritten
rules generate more housework than really necessary,
when, for instance, even small dirty spots
are associated with poverty and loss of control.
From the point of view of quality of life,
Schwartz Cowan ends up calling for a neutralisation
of ‘both the sexual connotation of washing
machines and vacuum cleaners and the
senseless tyranny of spotless shirts and immaculate
floors’.
Schwartz Cowan’s reflections regarding the
symbolic level and the legacy of former poverty
can be supplemented by the phenomenon that
our way of thinking co-develops with the
changes of everyday life. One of the characteristic
features of the thinking related to everyday
life is the focus upon performance and effectiveness.
This is reflected in the endeavour to save
time by using labour-saving equipment and by
planning and organising activities as effectively
as possible. A means-ends rationality slips into
everyday life, as many activities tend to get the
character of means instead of ends in themselves.
The aim seems to be to take part in a
great variety of leisure activities and to have
many experiences. Via the exciting experiences
we ‘fulfil ourselves’, and when this goal is combined
with the individualistic trend, including
the ambitions we have on behalf of our children
as well, we add to the busyness of family life.
The combination of individualisation, busyness
and effectiveness is a strong cocktail contributing
to the growth in consumption.
4.3. The socio-technical framework of e6eryday
life
As it appears from the two sections above,
consumption practices are always embedded in a
socio-technical framework. The relationship between
this framework and the consumption
practices is dialectical: on the one hand the actual
consumption practices are formed by the
framework, and on the other hand the framework
is changed over time by the practices.
Sometimes single products stand out as important
agents of change in relation to everyday
life. Probably the product with the greatest capacity
for independently influencing consumption
patterns was the car, which by virtue of its
strong symbolic radiation of freedom became a
‘must’ (Sachs, 1992). Another product with pervasive
effects for everyday life was the television
that influenced the time structure and the way
families are together. But these commodities—as
well as other ones—do not have their impact as
single products, but as components of sociotechnological
systems. In the beginning they are
introduced as single commodities, but gradually
they are integrated in systems of related commodities,
infrastructure, social practices and institutions.
Such systems gain their own
momentum and bring with them lock-in effects
as well as ‘technological paradigms’ in consump-
tion.
In Schwartz Cowan’s historical analysis of the
changes in everyday life, the dialectical relationship
is highlighted, because she also includes the
technological and social innovations that did not
succeed. She concludes that even women chose
to reside in single-family dwellings, own their
own household tools and do their own housework,
even if other—commercial, co-operative
or communal—solutions could have eased the
burden of work. When given choices, most
Americans still opt for privacy and autonomy
over technical efficiency and community interest.
Through a long historical process of successes
and failures for different innovations, the tech-
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420416
nological systems that now constitute the framework
of housework were established, and they
were established in a form that is not subject to
easy change. As Schwartz Cowan puts it, ‘the
individual household, the individual ownership of
tools, and the allocation of housework to women
had, almost literally, been cast in the stainless steel,
the copper, and the aluminium out of which those
systems were composed’. The socio-technical systems
thus imply an inertia that makes it more
difficult to change women’s everyday life.
Consumption is often discussed as a matter of
choice, but choices are bounded by the socio-technical
framework. Otnes (1988a,b) has described
how everyday life is framed by a number of
collective socio-material systems. By a collective
socio-material system he means a system that is a
subset of the material built environment, that is
fairly generally accessible, and that somehow connects
its actors. In the course of the day we meet
these systems when we carry out our routines: the
electric power system, the sewage system, the mail
system, the system of broadcasters and listeners,
the school system, the road system etc. Much
consumption consists of being served by, and
serving, these systems. It is obvious that we are
served by the systems, but Otnes emphasises that
we simultaneously serve the systems, because they
are dependent on competent and knowledgeable
use and maintenance. As we interact with these
systems, they have a powerful influence on our
daily routines—not least because we often have
only the choice between using the collective system
or doing without the type of service they provide.
Much of our consumption is thus dependent on
systems that appear as conditions of everyday life.
Having been established, the systems tend to have
their own momentum supported by the decisionmakers
directly taking care of the systems. From
an environmental point of view, it is worth emphasising
that the socio-technical systems constitute
an important part of the ever increasing standards
of living. As a contrast to the consumption that we
consciously choose, for instance, to symbolise our
status, Shove and Warde (1997) have very aptly
characterised the creeping standards of living,
which we are not really aware of, as the realm of
inconspicuous consumption.
5. Political implications
The overview of the dynamics behind consumption
growth in the North is meant to inform the
discussion on the possible ways to curb this
growth. Basically, the growth can be checked by
eroding its fundamental conditions through
changed patterns of trade implying reduced transfers
from the South and through the establishment
of mechanisms to ensure the payment of the
social and environmental costs related to growth.
However, this can only be a long-term ambition
that has to be preceded by a great variety of
measures and by popular support of the idea of
curbing consumption. To this end, a broader understanding
of the dynamics of willingness to
consume can hopefully be useful.
The wide-ranging answers to the question regarding
the driving forces behind consumption
growth has taken us far around—even if many
important contributions to the field have not been
included (reviews of a wide variety of studies can
be found in Miller (1995), Edgell et al. (1996),
Keat et al. (1994)). To a large extent, the different
explanations can be said to complement rather
than contradict each other, especially when each
explanation is understood as a contribution to a
varied picture rather than an absolute or dominant
explanation. An overview of the different
explanations is given in Fig. 1.
The account of the driving forces behind the
willingness to consume tends to be quite overwhelming:
growth in consumption seems to be a
very well-founded and understandable trend. On
the one hand, I find this observation important
for avoiding too much moralizing on over-consumption.
Consumption makes sense to people, it
concerns very important aspects of life, and much
consumption has the character of welcomed gradual
improvements of standards that arise more or
less automatically from the social conditions. On
the other hand, the growth also meets with counter-tendencies,
and the trend is not unquestioned.
At the individual level, many people experience
the busy life as burdensome, and the values related
to individualisation are accompanied by
contradicting needs and ambivalences. At the collective
level, both the environmental and the so-
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420 417
Fig. 1. Overview of explanations.
cial costs of growth contribute to placing the need
for changing lifestyles on the agenda.
A voluntary curtailment of consumption in the
rich countries is, however, first of all an ethical
issue. If and when we come so far that we are
ready to face this challenge individually and politically,
what can then be done? The main conclusion
of the analysis in this paper is that a
curtailment of consumption will require a broad
variety of measures and initiatives and will involve
many different actors. When the different
driving forces are examined with reference to
ways in which they can be curbed, some insights
are much easier to operationalise than others.
Among the suggestions that immediately come to
mind are those related mostly to the economic
field:
“ Carry through an ecological tax reform to
change relative prices.
“ Tax and/or restrict advertising. Restrict commercial
television.
“ Establish public spaces that are not commercial.
Restrict the establishment of malls and the
opening hours of the shops.
I. Røpke / Ecological Economics 28 (1999) 399–420418
“ Place limitations on credit and hire-purchase
systems.
“ Remove obstacles to shorter hours to break the
work-and-spend cycle.
“ Stimulate public consumption at the expense of
private consumption. Support further development
of democratic decision-making, so more
decisions can be taken as citizens and less as
consumers.
Many other suggestions are much more tentative
and/or have a longer time perspective, and some
have more the character of questions. Related
mainly to the socio-psychological group of explanations
are suggestions such as:
“ Reduce social differences to curb the pressures
of hierarchy. Stimulate the understanding that
everybody should take part in the high-frequency
tasks.
“ Look for social markers and classifiers that can
visualize culture in a less material way.
“ Seek ways of confirming the self through environmentally
motivated activities.
Finally, the suggestions related to everyday life
can comprise:
“ Curb the momentum of socio-technical systems
towards ever-increasing standards.
“ Invent occasions of social contact with a low
material input.
“ Invent collective solutions that do not interfere
too much with privacy.
“ Increase the awareness of the dreams that have
already been fulfilled and of the standards of
luxury that we have attained.
“ Look for ways to cope with the central contradiction
of modern family life by using more
time and less material inputs.
“ Increase awareness of the legacy of values and
understanding that stimulate consumption, as
awareness makes it easier to go beyond them.
These suggestions are far from a master plan, but
it is probably a condition of life that master plans
cannot be laid out. We have to acknowledge the
limits of our understanding of the social processes
and, therefore, also the restricted possibilities of
social engineering. As we, however, have to do
something to meet the challenge, experiments
along the suggested guidelines as well as further
thinking are invited.
Acknowledgements
This paper has benefitted from discussions with
and comments on different parts from a number
of people. I would like to thank Jeppe Læssøe,
Michael Jacobs, Karl Steininger, Mario Cogoy,
Susse Georg, Gu¨liz Ger, Hal Wilhite and Alan
Warde for their interest and suggestions. I am
also grateful to the referees who have encouraged
a tightening and clarification of the arguments.
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