Competing Discourses of Sustainable Consumption: Does the 'Rationalisation of Lifestyles' Make Sense?

TLDR

Sustainable consumption is a central goal of sustainable development, promoted in high‑income countries to reduce household environmental impacts, and is framed within an efficiency‑focused rationalisation discourse that links the environment, state, and individual. The study examines how this rationalisation discourse influences and is received by ordinary citizens. The authors test this by conducting interviews with participants of the UK Action at Home sustainable lifestyle programme. The analysis shows that interviewees prioritize social justice over sustainable lifestyles, that rationalisation appeals have little cultural meaning and alienate individuals, and that the rationalisation of lifestyles fails to address pressing social concerns, making it largely meaningless.

Abstract

Sustainable consumption is a key concept in the sustainable development paradigm, which calls for individuals in high-incomes countries to consider, and take action on, the environmental impacts of their household consumption practices. Within recent international policy framings, sustainable consumption is part of an efficiency-focussed rationalisation discourse, representing distinct theories of the environment, the state and the individual. This paper considers how this discourse resonates and impacts upon the very citizens it has been constructed to affect. 'Alternate' discourses of sustainable consumption and critical social science research suggests that politically dominant approaches mean little to members of the public. This suggestion is tested here through interviews with participants of a sustainable lifestyle programme in the UK called Action at Home. This analysis argues that social justice, not sustainable lifestyles, has the most resonance with interviewees. As a result, not only do calls for rationalisation carry little cultural meaning, they also actively alienate individuals from the project of sustainable consumption. This is because the idea of rationalising lifestyles appears actively to ignore, and is unable to address, individual's pressing social concerns. Hence, the rationalisation of lifestyles makes little (common) sense.