Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T14:16:19.074Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

1 - Standing Out, Fitting In, and the Consumption of the World

Sustainable Consumption in a Status-Conscious World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2021

By
Paul Roscoe  and
Cindy Isenhour
Edited by
Paul Roscoe  and
Cindy Isenhour
Paul Roscoe
Affiliation:
University of Maine
Cindy Isenhour
Affiliation:
University of Maine
Get access

Summary

Status consumption is a major threat to environmental sustainability. In this volume, anthropologists and archaeologists explore the implications of status consumption for environmental sustainability across time and space as well as how the current destructive arc might be bent.

Keywords

Consumptionclimate changeenvironmental damageenvironmental sustainabilityinequalitystatus competition
Type
Chapter
Information
Consumption, Status, and Sustainability
Ecological and Anthropological Perspectives
 , pp. 1 - 30
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adorno, Theodor, and Horkheimer, Max 2000 The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In The Consumer Society Reader, Schor, Juliet B. and Holt, Douglas B., eds. Pp. 3–19. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Alexander, Richard D. 1987 The Biology of Moral Systems: Foundations of Human Behavior. Hawthorne, NY: de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Alfredsson, Eva, Bengtsson, Magnus, Brown, Halina Szejnwald et al. 2018 Why Achieving the Paris Agreement Requires Reduced Overall Consumption and Production. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 14(1):1–5.Google Scholar
Allee, W. C. 1952 Dominance and Hierarchy in Societies of Vertebrates. In Structure et Physiologie des Sociétés Animales. Grassé, P. P., ed. Pp. 157–182. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun, ed. 1986 The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bernhardt, Paul C. 1997 Influences of Serotonin and Testosterone in Aggression and Dominance: Convergence with Social Psychology. Current Directions in Psychological Science 6(2):44–48.Google Scholar
Bernstein, Irwin S. 1976 Dominance, Aggression and Reproduction in Primate Societies. Journal of Theoretical Biology 60(2):459–472.Google Scholar
Blanton, Richard E., and Fargher, Lane F. 2008 Collective Action in the Formation of Pre-Modern States. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Blanton, Richard E., and Fargher, Lane F. 2016 How Humans Cooperate: Confronting the Challenge of Collective Action. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Bliege Bird, Rebecca, and EricAlden, Smith 2005 Signaling Theory, Strategic Interaction, and Symbolic Capital. Current Anthropology 46(2):221–248.Google Scholar
Boehm, Christopher 1993 Egalitarian Behavior and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy. Current Anthropology 34(3):227–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boehm, Christopher 2001 Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Boone, James L. 1998 The Evolution of Magnanimity: When Is It Better to Give than to Receive? Human Nature 9(1):1–21.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre 1986 The Forms of Capital. In Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education, Richardson, John G., ed. Pp. 241–258. New York: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Bryant, Raymond, and Goodman, Michael K. 2004 Consuming Narratives: The Political Ecology of Alternative Consumption. Transcripts of the Institute for British Geographers 29:344–366.Google Scholar
Burgoon, Judee K., and Dunbar, Norah E. 2006 Nonverbal Expressions of Dominance and Power in Human Relationships. In The SAGE Handbook of Nonverbal Communication. Manusov, Valerie and Patterson, Miles L., eds. Pp. 279–298. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.Google Scholar
Bushman, Richard L. 1992 The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Butler, Jeffrey V. 2016 Inequality and Relative Ability Beliefs. The Economic Journal 126(593):907–948.Google Scholar
Carrier, James, and Heyman, Josiah 1997 Consumption and Political Economy. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 3(2):355–373.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carrier, James, and Miller, Daniel 1999 From Private Virtue to Public Vice. In Anthropological Theory Today, Moore, Henrietta L., ed. Pp. 24–47. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Carson, Cary 1994 The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand? In Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century, Carson, Cary, Hoffman, Ronald, and Albert, Peter J., eds. Pp. 483–697. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Cheng, Joey T., Tracy, Jessica L., Foulsham, Tom, Kingstone, Alan, and Henrich, Joseph 2013 Two Ways to the Top: Evidence That Dominance and Prestige Are Distinct Yet Viable Avenues to Social Rank and Influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104:103–125.Google Scholar
Cheng, Joey T., Tracy, Jessica L., and Henrich, Joseph 2010 Pride, Personality, and the Evolutionary Foundations of Human Social Status. Evolution and Human Behavior 31:334–347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chivian, Eric, and Bernstein, Aaron, eds. 2008 Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cleveland, Mark, Laroche, Michel, Naghavi, Parastoo, and Shafia, Mohammad Ali 2017 Globalization, Culture, Consumer Dispositions, and Consumption: The Case of Iran. In The Customer Is NOT Always Right? Marketing Orientations in a Dynamic Business World. Campbell, Colin L., ed. P. 340. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International.Google Scholar
Cohan, William D. 2011 Why Is Enough Never Enough? Opinionator. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/why-is-enough-never-enough/, accessed March 7, 2019.Google Scholar
Copernicus 2020 September Brings Record-Breaking Warm Temperatures and Low Sea Ice. Copernicus Climate Change Service. https://climate.copernicus.eu/september-record-breaking-warm-temperatures-low-sea-ice, accessed October 10, 2020.Google Scholar
DeCelles, Katherine A., and Norton, Michael I. 2016 Physical and Situational Inequality on Airplanes Predicts Air Rage. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(20):5588–5591.Google Scholar
Díaz, Sandra, Settele, Josef, Brondízio, Eduardo S. et al. 2019 Pervasive Human-Driven Decline of Life on Earth Points to the Need for Transformative Change. Science 366 (6471):eaax3100.Google Scholar
Douglas, Mary 2004 The Consumers Revolt. In The Consumption Reader. David B. Clarke, Marcus A. Doel, and Kate M.L. Housiaux, eds. Pp. 144–149. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dumont, Louis 1977 From Mandeville to Marx: The Genesis and Triumph of Economic Ideology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Edsforth, Ronald 1987 Class Conflict and Cultural Consensus: The Making of a Mass Consumer Society in Flint, Michigan. London: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Firth, Raymond 1959 Economics of the New Zealand Maori. Wellington: R. E. Owen.Google Scholar
Frank, Robert H. 2016 Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fritz, Angela 2018 April Was Earth’s 400th Warmer-than-Normal Month in a Row. Washington Post, May 18. www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2018/05/18/april-was-earths-400th-warmer-than-normal-month-in-a-row/, accessed September 22, 2018.Google Scholar
Gell, Alfred 1988 Newcomers to the World of Goods: Consumption among the Muria Gond. In The Social Life of Things. Appadurai, Arjun, ed. Pp. 110–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gilpin, Robert 1981 War and Change in International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Goode, William J. 1978 The Celebration of Heroes: Prestige as a Social Control System. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Graeber, David 2011 Consumption. Current Anthropology 52(4):489–511.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halkier, Bente, Katz-Gerro, Tally, and Martens, Lydia 2011 Applying Practice Theory to the Study of Consumption: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations. Journal of Consumer Culture 11(1):3–13.Google Scholar
Hardy, Charlie L., and Van Vugt, Mark 2006 Nice Guys Finish First: The Competitive Altruism Hypothesis. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 32(10):1402–1413.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayden, Brian 1990 Nimrods, Piscators, Pluckers, and Planters: The Emergence of Food Production. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 9(1):31–69.Google Scholar
Henrich, Joseph, Chudek, Maciej, and Boyd, Robert 2015 The Big Man Mechanism: How Prestige Fosters Cooperation and Creates Prosocial Leaders. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 370(1683):20150013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, Joseph, and Gil-White, Francisco J. 2001 The Evolution of Prestige: Freely Conferred Deference as a Mechanism for Enhancing the Benefits of Cultural Transmission. Evolution and Human Behavior 22(3):165–196.Google Scholar
Holt, Douglas B. 1998 Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption? Journal of Consumer Research 25(1):1–25.Google Scholar
Humphery, Kim 2010 Excess: Anti-Consumerism in the West. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, Tim 2004 Towards a “Social Psychology” of Sustainable Consumption: A Cross Disciplinary Survey in Pursuit of the Sustainable Consumer. Working Paper 2004/1. Swindon, YK: Economic and Social Research Council Sustainable Technologies Programme.Google Scholar
James, Aaron 2012 Assholes: A Theory. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Johnson, Ryan T., Burk, Joshua A., and Kirkpatrick, Lee A. 2007 Dominance and Prestige as Differential Predictors of Aggression and Testosterone Levels in Men. Evolution and Human Behavior 28(5):345–351.Google Scholar
Kelly, Robert L. 2013 The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers: The Foraging Spectrum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, Igor 1986 The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process. In The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Appadurai, Arjun, ed. Pp. 64–91. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraus, Michael W., and Keltner, Dacher 2009 Signs of Socioeconomic Status: A Thin-Slicing Approach. Psychological Science 20(1):99–106.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lee, Richard 1979 The Dobe !Kung. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Lehman, F. K. 1963 The Structure of Chin Society: A Tribal People of Burma Adapted to a Non-Western Civilization. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Macfarlan, Shane J., Remiker, Mark, and Quinlan, Robert 2012 Competitive Altruism Explains Labor Exchange Variation in a Dominican Community. Current Anthropology 53(1):118–124.Google Scholar
Marchetti, C. 1994 Anthropological Invariants in Travel Behavior. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 47(1):75–88.Google Scholar
Merriam-Webster 1984 Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel 2001 The Dialectics of Shopping. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Miller, Daniel 2008 The Comfort of Things. London: Polity.Google Scholar
Monbiot, George 2009 Stop Blaming the Poor. It’s the Wally Yachters Who Are Burning the Planet. The Guardian, September 28. www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/sep/28/population-growth-super-rich, accessed December 20, 2019.Google Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans 1960 Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Moser, Stephanie, and Kleinhückelkotten, Silke 2018 Good Intents, but Low Impacts: Diverging Importance of Motivational and Socioeconomic Determinants Explaining Pro-Environmental Behavior, Energy Use, and Carbon Footprint. Environment and Behavior 50(6):626–656.Google Scholar
Myers, Norman, and Kent, Jennifer 2003 New Consumers: The Influence of Affluence on the Environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 100(8):4963–4968.Google Scholar
NOAA 2018 State of the Climate: Global Climate Report for April 2018. Asheville, NC: National Centers for Environmental Information. www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201804, accessed September 22, 2018.Google Scholar
Nowak, Martin A., and Sigmund, Karl 2005 Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity. Nature 437(7063):1291–1298.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
OED 1981 The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Panchanathan, Karthik, and Boyd, Robert 2004 Indirect Reciprocity Can Stabilize Cooperation without the Second-Order Free Rider Problem. Nature 432(7016):499–502.Google Scholar
Payne, Keith 2018 The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Pettit, Nathan C., Yong, Kevyn, and Spataro, Sandra E. 2010 Holding Your Place: Reactions to the Prospect of Status Gains and Losses. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 46(2):396–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piff, P. K., Stancato, D. M., Cote, S., Mendoza-Denton, R., and Keltner, D. 2012 Higher Social Class Predicts Increased Unethical Behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(11):4086–4091.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Piketty, Thomas 2015 The Economics of Inequality. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press.Google Scholar
PPP 2013 Congress Less Popular than Cockroaches, Traffic Jams. Raleigh, NC: Public Policy Polling. www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/PPP_Release_Natl_010813_.pdf, accessed October 15, 2018.Google Scholar
Price, Michael E., and Van Vugt, Mark 2014 The Evolution of Leader-Follower Reciprocity: The Theory of Service-for-Prestige. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 8:363.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Riches, David 1984 Hunting, Herding and Potlatching: Towards a Sociological Account of Prestige. Man 19(2):234–251.Google Scholar
Ridgeway, Cecilia L. 2014 Why Status Matters for Inequality. American Sociological Review 79(1):1–16.Google Scholar
Rogelj, Joeri, Popp, Alexander, Calvin, Katherine V. et al. 2018 Scenarios towards Limiting Global Mean Temperature Increase below 1.5 °C. Nature Climate Change 8(4):325–332.Google Scholar
Roscoe, Paul 1995 In the Shadow of the Tambaran: Female Initiation among the Ndu of the Sepik Basin. In Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia. Lutkehaus, Nancy and Roscoe, Paul B., eds. Pp. 55–82. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Roscoe, Paul 2009 Social Signaling and the Organization of Small-Scale Society: The Case of Contact-Era New Guinea. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 16(2):69–116.Google Scholar
Taylor, Matthew 2018 Millennials Are Killing Capitalism. Wired, January 13. www.wired.co.uk/article/millennials-kill-materialism-matthew-taylor-experience-economy, accessed November 2, 2018.Google Scholar
von Rueden, Christopher, Gurven, Michael, and Kaplan, Hillard 2011 Why Do Men Seek Status? Fitness Payoffs to Dominance and Prestige. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 278(1715):2223–2232.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saad, Gad 2011 The Consuming Instinct: What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift Giving Reveal about Human Nature. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.Google Scholar
Schudson, M. 2007 Citizens, Consumers, and the Good Society. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 611(1):236–249.Google Scholar
Shove, Elizabeth 2003 Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality. Oxford, UK: Berg.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg 1957 Fashion. American Journal of Sociology 62(6):541–558.Google Scholar
Simmons, E. J. 1879 Ernest Struggles; or, The Comic Incidents and Anxious Moments in Connection with the Life of a Station Master by One Who Endured It. Reading, UK: Beecroft.Google Scholar
Smith, Eric Alden, and Bliege Bird, Rebecca L. 2000 Turtle Hunting and Tombstone Opening. Evolution and Human Behavior 21(4):245–261.Google Scholar
Spikins, Penny 2008 The Bashful and the Boastful. Journal of World Prehistory 21(3–4):173–193.Google Scholar
Sturman, Edward D., Dufford, Anna, Bremser, Jennifer, and Chantel, Christy 2016 Status Striving and Hypercompetitiveness as They Relate to Overconsumption and Climate Change. Ecopsychology 9(1):44–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomas, Chris D., Cameron, Alison, Green, Rhys E. et al. 2004 Extinction Risk from Climate Change. Nature 427 (6970):145–148.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt 2015 The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Urban, M. C. 2015 Accelerating Extinction Risk from Climate Change. Science 348(6234):571–573.Google Scholar
Veblen, Thorstein 1994 The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
Warde, Alan 2014 After Taste: Culture, Consumption and Theories of Practice. Journal of Consumer Culture 14(3):279–303.Google Scholar
Washington, Marvin, and Zajac, Edward J. 2005 Status Evolution and Competition: Theory and Evidence. Academy of Management Journal 48(2):282–296.Google Scholar
Wiessner, Polly 1996a Introduction: Food, Status, Culture, and Nature. In Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Schiefenhövel, Wolf and Wiessner, Polly, eds. Pp. 1–18. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Wiessner, Polly 1996b Leveling the Hunter: Constraints on the Status Quest in Foraging Societies. In Food and the Status Quest: An Interdisciplinary Perspective. Wulf, Schiefenhövel and Wiessner, Polly, eds. Pp. 171–191. Providence, RI: Berghahn Books.Google Scholar
Wilhite, Harold 2008 Consumption and the Transformation of Everyday Life: A View from South India. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Wilk, Richard 2004 Morals and Metaphors: The Meaning of Consumption. In Elusive Consumption. Ekström, Karin M. and Brembeck, Helene, eds. Pp. 11–26. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Wilk, Richard 2009 Consuming Ourselves to Death: The Anthropology of Consumer Culture and Climate Change. In Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions. Susan, Crate and Nuttall, Mark, eds. Pp. 265–276. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Wilk, Richard 2013 Real Belizean Food: Building Local Identity in the Transnational Carribean. In Food and Culture. Carole, Counihan and Esterik, Penny Van, eds. Pp. 376–393. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Wilk, Richard 2016 Is a Sustainable Consumer Culture Possible? In Anthropology and Climate Change: From Actions to Transformations. Susan, Crate and Nuttall, Mark, eds. Pp. 301–318. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Willer, Robb 2009 Groups Reward Individual Sacrifice: The Status Solution to the Collective Action Problem. American Sociological Review 74(1):23–43.Google Scholar
Woodburn, James 1982 Egalitarian Societies. Man (N.S.) 17:431–451.Google Scholar
Workman, Lance, and Reader, Will 2014 Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Worm, Boris, Lotze, Heike K., Jubinville, Isabelle, Wilcox, Chris, and Jambeck, Jenna 2017 Plastic as a Persistent Marine Pollutant. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 42(1):1–26.Google Scholar
Zahavi, Amotz 1975 Mate Selection – A Selection for a Handicap. Journal of Theoretical Biology 53(1):205–214.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×