Juliet Schor on the politics of consumption

Juliet Schor's E. F. Schumacher Lecture from New Economics Institute on Vimeo.


Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. The video above is a lecture she delivered at the Thirty-First Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, New York City, November 5th, 2011.

Here is a summary of one of her ideas:

"2. Quality of life rather than quantity of stuff. Twenty-five years ago quality-of-life indicators began moving in an opposite direction from our measures of income, or Gross Domestic Product, a striking divergence from historic trends. Moreover, the accumulating evidence on well-being, at least its subjective measures (and to some extent objective measures, such as health), suggests that above the poverty line, income is relatively unimportant in affecting well-being. This may be because what people care about is relative, not absolute income. Or it may be because increases in output undermine precisely those factors which do yield welfare. Here I have in mind the growing worktime requirements of the market economy, and the concomitant decline in family, leisure, and community time; the adverse impacts of growth on the natural environment; and the potential link between growth and social capital".

More here.