Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Evaluating Sustainable Everyday Life

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Media, Sustainability and Everyday Life

  • 1605 Accesses

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of sustainability, outlining the differences between sustainable development and more radical understandings of sustainability. It also highlights the discursive and networked basis of sustainability. The chapter defines everyday life, explaining how it is a temporal, spatial, and mediated phenomenon. The concept of lifestyle is explained as both an important feature of modern consumer life and also more broadly as a strategy in reflexive identity formation. An overview of the merits and deficiencies of ethical consumption practices is provided. The chapter also examines the way that sustainable everyday life can be a marker of high cultural capital and expressive of a particular ecological habitus.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 109.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 139.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Allon, Fiona. 2016. “The Household as Infrastructure: The Politics and Porosity of Dwelling in a Time of Environmental Emergency.” In The Greening of Everyday Life: Challenging Practices, Imagining Possibilities, edited by John M. Meyer and Jens M. Kersten. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Banerjee, Subhabrata Bobby. 2003. “Who Sustains Whose Development? Sustainable Development and the Reinvention of Nature.” Organization Studies 24 (1): 143–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barnett, Clive, Paul Cloke, Nick Clarke, and Alice Malpass. 2005. “Consuming Ethics: Articulating the Subjects and Spaces of Ethical Consumption.” Antipode 37 (1): 23–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barry, John. 1996. “Sustainability, Political Judgement and Citizenship: Connecting Green Politics and Democracy.” In Democracy and Green Political Thought: Sustainability, Rights and Citizenship, edited by Brian Doherty and Marius de Geus, 115–131. London: Routledge.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Bauman, Zygmunt. 2007. Consuming Life. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich. 1995. Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Beck, Ulrich, and Elizabeth Beck-Gernsheim. 2002. Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences. Translated by P. Camiller. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Binkley, Sam, and Jo Littler. 2011. “Introduction: Cultural Studies and Anti-consumerism: A Critical Encounter.” In Cultural Studies and Anti-consumerism: A Critical Encounter, edited by Sam Binkley and Jo Littler, 1–12. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990, The Logic of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. “Habitus.” In Habitus: A Sense of Place, edited by Jean Hillier and Emma Rooksby, 27–36. Aldershot: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brundtland, Gro Harlem. 1987. Our Common Future: The World Commission on Environment and Development. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callon, Michel. 1986. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” In Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? edited by John Law, 196–233. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Callon, Michel, and Bruno Latour. 1981. “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do So.” In Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward and Integration of Micro- and Macro-Sociologies, edited by K. Knorr-Cetina and A. V. Cicourel, 277–303. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carfagna, Lindsey B., Emilie A. Dubois, Connon Fitzmaurice, Monique Y. Ouimette, Juliet B. Schor, and Margaret Willis. 2014. “An Emerging Eco-Habitus: The Reconfiguration of High Cultural Capital Practices Among Ethical Consumers.” Journal of Consumer Culture 14 (2): 158–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cavagnaro, Elena, and George Curiel. 2012. The Three Levels of Sustainability. Sheffield: Greenleaf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chaney, David. 1996. Lifestyles. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Commoner, Barry. 1971. The Closing Circle: Confronting the Environmental Crisis. London: Jonathan Cape.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cullens, Chris. 1999. “Gimme Shelter: At Home with the Millennium.” Differences 11 (2): 204–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • de Certeau, Michel. (1984). The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by S. Rendall. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • DEFRA. 2008. A Framework for Pro-environmental Behaviours. London: Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dryzek, John S. 1997. The Politics of the Earth: Environmental Discourses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Featherstone, Mike. 1991. Consumer Culture and Postmodernism. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Felski, Rita. 1999 [2000]. “The Invention of Everyday Life.” New Formations 39: 15–31.

    Google Scholar 

  • Felski, Rita. 2002. “Introduction.” New Literary History 33: 607–622.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Forno, Francesca, and Paolo R. Graziano. 2014. “Sustainable Community Movement Organisations.” Journal of Consumer Culture 14 (2): 139–157.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaard, Greta. 2015. “Ecofeminism and Climate Change.” Women’s Studies International Forum 49: 20–33.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gibson, Chris, Lesley Head, Nick Gill, and Gordon Waitt. 2010. “Climate Change and Household Dynamics: Beyond Consumption, Unbounding Sustainability.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (1): 3–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodman, Michael K. 2004. “Reading Fair Trade: Political Ecological Imaginary and the Moral Economy of Fair Trade Foods.” Political Geography 23: 891–915.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gunderson, Lance H., and C. S. Holling, eds. 2002. Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Human and Natural Systems. Washington, DC: Island Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guthman, Julie. 2003. “Fast Food/Organic Food: Reflexive Tastes and the Making of ‘Yuppie Chow’.” Social and Cultural Geography 4 (1): 45–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guthman, Julie. 2008. “Neoliberalism and the Making of Food Politics in California.” Geoforum 39: 1171–1183.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haenfler, Ross, Brett Johnson, and Ellis Jones. 2012. “Lifestyle Movements: Exploring the Intersection of Lifestyle and Social Movements.” Social Movement Studies 11 (1): 1–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haluza-DeLay, Randolph. 2008. “A Theory of Practice for Social Movements: Environmentalism and Ecological Habitus.” Mobilization 13 (2): 205–218.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hardisty, Paul E. 2010. Environmental and Economic Sustainability. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Highmore, Ben. 2002. Everyday Life and Cultural Theory: An Introduction. London: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Holt, Douglas. 1997. “Distinction in America? Recovering Bourdieu’s Theory of Taste from Its Critics.” Poetics 25: 93–120.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Holt, Douglas. 1998. “Does Culture Capital Structure American Consumption?” Journal of Consumer Research 25: 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Humphery, Kim. 2010. Excess: Anti-consumerism in the West. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Humphery, Kim. 2011. “The Simple and the Good: Ethical Consumption as Anti-consumerism.” In Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction, edited by Tania Lewis and Emily Potter, 40–53. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, Josée, Michelle Szabo, and Alexandra Rodney. 2011. “Good Food, Good People: Understanding the Cultural Repertoire of Ethical Eating.” Journal of Consumer Culture 11 (3): 293–318.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lane, Ruth, and Andrew Gorman-Murray, eds. 2011. Material Geographies of Household Sustainability. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, Bruno. 1993. We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy. Translated by Catherine Porter. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Law, John. 2003. Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity. www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Law-Notes-on-ANT.pdf.

  • Law, John. 2009. “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics.” In Social Theory, edited by Bryan Turner, 141–158. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 1984. Everyday Life in the Modern World. Translated by Sacha Rabinovitch. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 1987. “The Everyday and Everydayness.” Yale French Studies 73: 7–11.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lefebvre, Henri. 1988. “Towards a Leftist Cultural Politics.” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 75–88. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Littler, Jo. 2011. “What’s Wrong with Ethical Consumption?” In Ethical Consumption: A Critical Introduction, edited by Tania Lewis and Emily Potter, 27–39. Oxford: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macnaghten, Phil. 2006. “Environment and Risk.” In Beyond the Risk Society: Critical Reflections on Risk and Human Security, edited by G. Mythen and S. Walklate, 132–146. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Macnaghten, Phil, and John Urry. 1998. Contested Natures. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mentz, Steve. 2012. “After Sustainability.” PMLA 127 (3): 586–592.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Daniel. 1987. Material Culture and Mass Consumption. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miller, Daniel. 1995. Acknowledging Consumption. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Milne, Markus J., Kate Kearins, and Sarah Walton. 2006. “Creating Adventures in Wonderland: The Journey Metaphor and Environmental Sustainability.” Organization 13 (6): 801–839.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Morse, Stephen. 2010. Sustainability: A Biological Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Morton, Timothy. 2010. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Murdoch, Jonathan. 1998. “The Spaces of Actor-Network Theory.” Geoforum 29 (4): 357–374.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Murdoch, Jonathan. 2006. Post-structuralist Geography. London: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Naess, Arne. 1973. “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement: A Summary.” Inquiry 16: 95–100.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neumayer, Eric. 2010. Weak Versus Strong Sustainability: Exploring the Limits of Two Opposing Paradigms, 3rd edn. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Parkins, Wendy. 2016. “Silkworms and Shipwrecks: Sustainability in Dombey and Son.” Victorian Literature and Culture 44: 455–471.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parkins, Wendy, and Geoffrey Craig. 2006. Slow Living. Oxford: Berg.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Parkins, Wendy, and Geoffrey Craig. 2009. “Culture and the Politics of Alternative Food Networks.” Food, Culture & Society 12 (1): 77–103.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peters, Michael Derek, Philip Sinclair, and Shane Fudge. 2012. “The Potential for Community Groups to Promote Sustainable Living.” The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences 6 (8): 35–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reid, Louise, Philip Sutton, and Colin Hunter. 2010. “Theorizing the Meso Level: The Household as a Crucible of Pro-environmental Behaviour.” Progress in Human Geography 34: 309–327.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sobel, Michael E. 1981. Lifestyle and Social Structure: Concepts, Definitions, Analyses. New York: Academic Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spaargarten, Gert, and Bas Van Vliet. 2000. “Lifestyles, Consumption and the Environment: The Ecological Modernization of Domestic Consumption.” Environmental Politics 9 (1): 50–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thiele, Leslie Paul. 2011. Indra’s Net and the Midas Touch: Living Sustainably in a Connected World. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Thiele, Leslie Paul. 2016. Sustainability. Cambridge: Polity.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thøgersen, John. 2005. “How May Consumer Policy Empower Consumers for Sustainable Lifestyles?” Journal of Consumer Policy 28: 143–178.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • United Nations. 2019. Sustainable Development Goals. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/.

  • United Nations Development Programme. 2011. Human Development Report 2011. Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All. http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr_2011_en_summary.pdf.

  • Wainwright, Joel. 2005. “Politics of Nature: A Review of Three Recent Works by Bruno Latour.” Capitalism Nature Socialism 16 (1): 115–122.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Waitt, Gordon, Peter Caputi, Chris Gibson, Carol Farbotko, Lesley Head, Nick Gill, and Elyse Stanes. 2012. “Sustainable Household Capability: Which Households Are Doing the Work of Environmental Sustainability?” Australian Geographer 43 (1): 51–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whatmore, Sarah, and Lorraine Thorne. 1997. “Nourishing Networks: Alternative Geographies of Food.” In Globalizing Food, edited by David Goodman and Michael J. Watts, 287–304. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood, Gillen D’Arcy. 2011. “What Is Sustainability Studies?” American Literary History 24 (1): 1–15.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Young, Iris Marion. 1997. “House and Home: Feminist Variations on a Theme.” In Intersecting Voices: Dilemmas of Gender, Political Philosophy and Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand

    Geoffrey Craig

Authors
  1. Geoffrey Craig
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Geoffrey Craig .

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Craig, G. (2019). Evaluating Sustainable Everyday Life. In: Media, Sustainability and Everyday Life. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53469-9_1

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation