Unlocking potential with the best learning and research solutions

Look Inside Consumption, Status, and Sustainability

Consumption, Status, and Sustainability
Ecological and Anthropological Perspectives

Part of New Directions in Sustainability and Society

Editors:
Paul Roscoe, University of Maine
Cindy Isenhour, University of Maine

Paul Roscoe, Cindy Isenhour, Brian Hayden, Will G. Russell, Michelle Hegmon, Gary M. Feinman, Kaori O'Connor, Staša Babić, Alf Hornborg, Sophorntavy Vorng, Richard Wilk, Manisha Anantharaman

View all contributors

Date Published: August 2021
availability: Available
format: Hardback
isbn: 9781108836043

Rate & review

Hardback

Add to wishlist

Other available formats:
eBook

Looking for an inspection copy?

This title is not currently available on inspection

Description

Contents

Resources

Courses

About the Authors

This volume addresses current concerns about the climate and environmental sustainability by exploring one of the key drivers of contemporary environmental problems: the role of status competition in generating what we consume, and what we throw away, to the detriment of the planet. Across time and space, humans have pursued social status in many different ways - through ritual purity, singing or dancing, child-bearing, bodily deformation, even headhunting. In many of the world's most consumptive societies, however, consumption has become closely tied to how individuals build and communicate status. Given this tight link, people will be reluctant to reduce consumption levels – and environmental impact -- and forego their ability to communicate or improve their social standing. Drawing on cross-cultural and archaeological evidence, this book asks how a stronger understanding of the links between status and consumption across time, space, and culture might bend the curve towards a more sustainable future.
- Looks across culture, geography, and time to examine the widely variable ways that humans pursue status and the particular relationship between status and consumption
- Identifies a wide range of variables that mediate the relationship between status and consumption (e.g. religion, ethnicity, population size, economic form, the distribution of power, division of labor)
- Points to the central importance of attending to societal structures and cultural difference for both understanding and reimagining the links between consumption and status
Read more
Reviews & endorsements
'A strongly diachronic collection, the pieces within this book form a comprehensive examination of status and consumption. Suitable for those conducting research in the fields of anthropology, sociology, geography, archaeology, or any environmentally oriented social science ... Recommended.' J. Asselin, Choice Connect

Customer reviews

Not yet reviewed
Be the first to review

Log in to review

Review was not posted due to profanity
×

, create a review

(If you're not , sign out)

Please enter the right captcha value

Please enter a star rating.

Your review must be a minimum of 12 words.

How do you rate this item?

Reviews must contain at least 12 words about the product.

×

Product details
- Date Published: August 2021
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9781108836043
- length: 300 pages
- dimensions: 235 x 159 x 22 mm
- weight: 0.64kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
1. Standing out, fitting in, and the consumption of the world: sustainable consumption in a status-conscious world Paul Roscoe and Cindy Isenhour
Part I. Status Competition and Hierarchy in Human Societies:
2. 'Status' pursuits in the past, and the condition we are in Brian Hayden
3. Conflict management, status competition and consumption Paul Roscoe
Part II. Variability in Status Consumption:
4. Status competition in the ancient past? Tracing antecedence in the Mimbres region of the US southwest Will G. Russell and Michelle Hegmon
5. Leadership, the funding of power, and sustainability in the Prehispanic Mesoamerican world Gary M. Feinman
Part III. Continuity and Discontinuity:
6. The never-ending feast redux: food, status competition, and the anthropology of overconsumption Kaori O'Connor
7. The status of archaeological knowledge in the study of status: notes on classical Greece Staša Babić
8. Signs of power and the power of signs: semiotics, materiality, and the political economy of status and consumption Alf Hornborg
9. Status, consumption, and intersectionality in sustainability research Sophorntavy Vorng
Part IV. Bending the Curve:
10. The higher monkey climb: shame as a tool in seeking a sustainable world Richard Wilk
11. Ecological routes to social status and urban inclusion: theorizing citizenship through waste work Manisha Anantharaman
12. Making the market work: socially embedded economies, the climate, and consumption Cindy Isenhour
13. Conclusion: changes in status, consumption and sustainability Cindy Isenhour and Paul Roscoe.
Look Inside
Editors
Paul Roscoe, University of Maine
Paul Roscoe is a social anthropologist specializing in the anthropology of small-scale societies and modeling the human dimensions of climate-change. He co-edited three books and has published regularly in leading anthropology and archaeology journals. He won the 1993 Curl Essay Prize (Royal Anthropological Institute) and is the 2016 Distinguished Maine Professor.
Cindy Isenhour, University of Maine
Cindy Isenhour is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Maine. Shespecializes in environmental policy and sustainable systems of consumption-production. She co-edited two books, Sustainability in the Global City: Myth and Practice (2015) and Power and Politics in Sustainable Consumption Research (2019) with research support from the National Science Foundation, Wenner-Gren Foundation and the Environmental Research and Education Foundation.
Contributors
Paul Roscoe, Cindy Isenhour, Brian Hayden, Will G. Russell, Michelle Hegmon, Gary M. Feinman, Kaori O'Connor, Staša Babić, Alf Hornborg, Sophorntavy Vorng, Richard Wilk, Manisha Anantharaman