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7
Transdisciplinary
Consumerism
Sue L. T. McGregor PhD
MSVU Halifax NS Canada
www.consultmcgregor.com
June 2013
SOCRAI Conference
Clark University, Worcester MA
Culture-Ideology of Consumerism (CIC)
“A mutually reinforcing integration of consumer culture and consumerist ideology” (Kozinets & Handelman, 2004, p. 691)
“A coherent set of practices, attitudes and values…that encourages ever-expanding consumption” (Sklair, 1994, p. 260)
CIC is perpetuated by corporate capitalists – capitalism needs the ideology of consumerism and a consumer culture in order to survive
CIC creates the hegemony of capitalistic consumerism, which needs to be disrupted on a global scale to make room for a new consumerism – transdisciplinary consumerism
The culture-ideology of consumerism:
Perpetuates the logic of the market (an exclusive logic that ignores life)
Assumes there is one level of reality – the physical, material level (materialism)
Draws on knowledge stemming from dualistic, linear, deterministic, reductionist and causal thinking
Perpetuates market-based values in a culture of consumption
Trans means working at the borders by crisscrossing back and forth (zigzag
lateral movement) and actually pushing, climbing over and/or moving beyond
borders (transcending): at the interface of disciplines and civil society
Exclusive and Inclusive Logics
TD Knowledge is:
Use transdisciplinarity to solve wicked problems caused by capitalistic consumerism – mitigate power of culture-ideology of consumerism
TAME PROBLEM
Complex and diffi cult but can be solved, with everyone agreeing on the solution
WICKED PROBLEM
Messy, vicious, aggressive social, political, economic and environmental messes; the more you do, the worse things get; yet, something has to be done