REVIEWS
Book Reviews
Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What
We Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker.
New York: Random House, 2008, 291 pp., ISBN
9781400063918, $25.00.
Some readers of this journal with an interest in
consumption may be familiar with the journalist
Naomi Klein (2000) and her widely read exposé
from a decade ago on the manifold changes that
were taking place at the time in the world of
consumer marketing. Her book No Logo (Klein
2000) usefully highlighted a raft of innovations at
the intersection of brand management and youth
culture. Klein also indirectly put her finger on
the utmost contemporary economic challenge—
how to induce consumers to take on board ever
larger volumes of goods so as to keep the wheels
of commerce in a profitable spin.
Rob Walker’s new book is, in many respects,
the sequel to Klein’s account. Buying In moves
beyond now familiar marketing strategies such as
the deployment of product placements in major
media, the mobilization of “cool hunters,” and
the recruitment of “buzz agents.” According to
Walker’s fascinating reporting (he also writes the
weekly “Consumed” column for the New York
Times Magazine), the industry has begun to push
in recent years into new, edgier territory and to
practice what he terms “murketing” (a neologism
that blends murky and marketing) to sell all vari-
ety of merchandise, from soda water to headache
pills.
This new rhetorical coinage is prompted by
the need to draw attention to increasingly col-
laborative and interactive relationships between
product promoters and consumers. To be sure,
we have come a long way from the days when
commercial persuasion was predicated on regal-
ing largely passive audiences with both the real
and the imagined attributes of particular goods.

c 2010 by Yale University
DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00210.x
Volume 14, Number 1
166 Journal of Industrial Ecology
The extent to which our lives are cluttered with
enticing come-ons of every kind is a sure sign
that four-color magazine spreads, 60-second tele-
vision spots, and sprawling billboards have not
completely lost their place. At this point in time,
however, the ubiquity of these communicative
modes is more the result of habituated routines
than of demonstrated effectiveness.
Part of the reason for the declining pull of cus-
tomary advertisements, at least according to the
business press and some academic commentators,
is that we live in the age of the newly empow-
ered consumer, who playfully fashions his or her
identities out of a seemingly limitless palette of
cultural resources. This generalized critique fur-
ther portrays contemporary shoppers as irascible,
unpredictable, and capable of making otherwise
powerful titans cower in their corner offices.
Rather than wade directly into these obvi-
ously polemical waters, Walker explains how
many of the marketing innovations that Klein
(2000) chronicled have now been superseded by
a new generation of practices that forge iterative
cultural dialogues—even partnerships—between
producers and consumers. Prominent examples
of this form of communication include cultish
“products” such as Hello Kitty images and Live-
strong bracelets. More purposeful are the activ-
ities of various “cultural creatives” who have
devised intriguing (some might claim bizarre)
ways to cunningly project a promotional signal
through the noisy, media-saturated jumble. Pep-
pered throughout the book are transfixing vi-
gnettes outlining the activities of arguably key
figures in the murketing vanguard. We learn, for
example, about a peculiar design duo called An-
drew Andrew (the repetition in nomenclature is
deliberate), a product customizer who works un-
der the appellation Dapper Dan, a frenetic fash-
ion mogul named Dov Charney (the force be-
hind the company American Apparel), a lawyer
cum lifestyle-fashion designer who goes by the
moniker Bobby Hundreds, and a Warholesque
scenester dubbed A-Ron who has fantastically
sought to “brand” his own life.
www.blackwellpublishing.com/jie

Startling though it may seem, stalwart man-
ufacturers, savvy upstarts, and deep-pocketed
brand reinventors are now building on seemingly
accidental fads and cultural entrepreneurialism to
sell their wares with hardly a hint of overt sales-
manship. The aim is to create ironic spectacles
and to cleverly and furtively situate them within
the welter of everyday life.
Toyota, for instance, introduced its line of
Scion cars by surreptitiously parking the vehi-
cles in proximity to mildly rebellious urban fes-
tivals as part of its strategy to wrap the brand in
a hazy antiestablishment aura. The cagey com-
pany that produces Red Bull, a popular “energy”
drink, has dispensed with the seemingly timeless
practice of sponsoring talented athletes and pro-
fessional sports teams and instead owns its own
American soccer team, which plays under the
same name as the beverage. Such juxtaposition
makes it difficult, nay impossible, to distinguish
the product from the advertisement. The folks
behind Pabst Blue Ribbon (or PBR, as it is more
generally known these days) stealthily collabo-
rate with street-hardened skateboarders to cul-
tivate a hue of blue-collar solidarity around a
brand of beer that was once closely associated
with working men in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In
actual fact, the original factory on the shores of
Lake Michigan has long been shuttered, and PBR
is produced these days (pay no mind to the nostal-
gic markings on the label) by a “virtual brewer” in
Texas. In other words, unbeknownst to its faith-
ful consumers, PBR is a “phony brand” owned by
a marketing shell that relies on outsourced pro-
duction.
Is there any way out of this murketing house
of mirrors? Like Klein (2000) before him, Walker
tries to offer a glimmer of hope. No Logo fervently
celebrated the antiglobalization movement as a
sign of growing defiance of the branded culture
purveyed by the likes of Nike, McDonald’s, and
The Gap. An unfortunate consequence of the
present era is that Walker is forced to cast about
much further and more creatively to find any
notable resistance. In what will seem a curious
turn to most readers, the final pages of the book
are given over to a discussion of the upsurge of
popular zeal for “crafting.” As he explains, this
enthusiasm grew out of a collection of amateur-
produced magazines (so-called “zines”) devoted
REVIEWS
to homemade crafts, and the “movement” is now
most visibly embodied by heavily trafficked Web
sites such as GetCrafty.com and Etsy.com.
Walker admits that his argument is a reach,
but he interprets this interest in do-it-yourself
activities as a beacon of quiet revolution against
the seemingly endless flow of cheap, soulless mer-
chandise at Wal-Mart. He points out, however,
that some crafters, like business owners every-
where, find themselves in ethically messy co-
nundrums. For example, Buying In describes how
some particularly successful crafters end up re-
cruiting itinerant day laborers to keep up with
demand or develop their own promotional cam-
paigns to give a push to slow-moving inventory.
In summary, Walker offers a fair and even-
handed contextual analysis of how product
promotionalism is becoming increasingly insepa-
rable from alternative and mainstream cultures.
Although his depictions of murketing are likely to
be unsettling to readers with a critical disposition
toward the marketing industry, what is surpris-
ing is that these forms of commercial persuasion
seem to be encountering few obstacles. Such cir-
cumstances are perhaps a worrisome indication of
how deeply consumerism has penetrated contem-
porary culture. Buying In delivers an important re-
minder to industrial ecologists and others about
the need to be attentive to consumer culture and
the role that it plays in driving the consumption
of energy and materials in contemporary society.
Maurie J. Cohen
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark, New Jersey
Reference
Klein, N. 2000. No logo: Taking aim at the brand bullies.
New York: Knopf.
  
Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, by
Martin Lindstrom. New York: Doubleday, 2008,
256 pp., ISBN 9780385523882, $24.95.
Martin Lindstrom is a compelling storyteller.
His latest book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About
Reviews 167
 REVIEWS
Why We Buy, is a fascinating account of a 3-year,
$7 million journey around the world into thou-
sands of consumers’ brains to investigate funda-
mental marketing questions: How powerful are
brand logos? What effect do warning labels, such
as those found on a package of cigarettes, have?
Does sex sell? Does subliminal advertising work,
and is it still taking place today? Do the world’s
big religions and successful brands have anything
in common? Lindstrom answers these questions
through his skill at weaving together personal
stories and detailed research results.
Lindstrom is a global branding expert who
claims to be on a plane 300 days in a year. His ex-
pertise places him in a strong position to advise
businesses on effective branding and marketing
about the importance of knowing how consumers
think and what compels them to select one
particular product or brand over another—their
“buyology”—to build better brands. The prob-
lem is that traditional market research, which
uses both quantitative and qualitative methods
of investigation, such as focus groups and opin-
ion polls, is simply not delivering. To support
this conclusion, Lindstrom lists a few numbers:
$12 billion was spent on market research in the
United States in 2007, and another $117 billion
was spent on packaging, advertising, and other
forms of marketing. In spite of these huge invest-
ments, 80% of products launched in the United
States fail before hitting the shelves or shortly af-
ter. In Japan, the failure rate reaches a staggering
97%.
Neuromarketing is a fairly new field, one
made possible by the emergence of recent brain-
scanning technologies, such as functional mag-
netic resonance imaging (fMRI). This equipment
is opening the door to a whole new dimension of
marketing research and is helping to reveal the
“thoughts, feelings, motivations, needs, and de-
sires of consumers” (6). The fMRI is the key tool
that Lindstrom deploys in his brain research, a
device that registers fluctuations in oxygen levels
in different parts of the brain that are stimulated
or are in use.
The findings of this research are revealing—
and often surprising, if not entirely counterintu-
itive in many instances. One of the most pro-
found revelations has to do with smoking and
the effectiveness of health warnings on packages
168 Journal of Industrial Ecology
of cigarettes. At the London-based Centre for
NeuroImaging Sciences, Lindstrom and a team
of neuroscientists set out to conduct brain scans
on numerous patients (all smokers to varying de-
grees) over a 1.5-month period to determine the
influence of warning labels on individuals’ de-
sire to smoke. The respondents were first asked
to complete a questionnaire asking whether they
thought warning labels had an effect on them
and whether that effect resulted in a reduction
of smoking. Most of the smokers indicated that
warning labels did lead them to curb their smok-
ing. The fMRI results, however, showed other-
wise:
Warning labels on the sides, fronts, and backs
of cigarette packs had no effect on suppress-
ing the smokers’ cravings at all. Zero. In other
words, all those gruesome photographs, gov-
ernment regulations, billions of dollars some
123 countries had invested in nonsmoking
campaigns, all amounted, at the end of a day,
to, well, a big waste of money (14).
In fact, the research revealed that when the
warning labels were flashed in front of smokers’
eyes, they actually craved cigarettes. Their nu-
cleus accumbens—or the brain’s craving spot—
lit up; it was stimulated and wanted to get its fix,
despite the clear intent of the label to discourage
smoking.
As Lindstrom documents his diverse experi-
ments, other intriguing results emerge and keep
the reader fully engaged in the buyology adven-
ture. In Chapter 6, he explores the link between
religion and brands; he begins by describing the
results of his “nun study,” in which he performed
brain scans on 15 nuns from the Carmelite order
to examine their neural activity when they expe-
rienced the sensation of being close to God. By
the end of the chapter, the reader discovers that
the part of the brain that is associated with reli-
gious feelings and spiritual experiences (the cau-
date nucleus)—the one that produces a sensation
of joy and serenity—is the same that registers ac-
tivity when people view images associated with
strong brands, such as Ferrari and Harley David-
son. One reason for the outcome, Lindstrom ex-
plains, is that “like religion, successful companies
and successful brands have a clear, and very pow-
erful, sense of mission” (113); indeed, numerous

parallels exist between successful brands and re-
ligion, including storytelling, rituals, and a sense
of grandeur.
Other sections of Buyology are equally fasci-
nating, including Chapter 2, on the efficacy (or,
rather, lack thereof) of product placements in
television shows and movies, and Chapter 3, on
mirror neurons, the imitation factor that compels
people to emulate others, including for their con-
sumption choices. Chapter 8 explores the power
of textures, aromas, fragrances, and tastes, which
can act as strong catalysts to win a consumer’s
mind—or kill a brand. Last but not least, Chap-
ter 10 reviews the ability of sex to sell (the answer
is “not always,” but controversy seems to be con-
sistent with selling a product).
Both conventional wisdom and orthodox so-
cial scientific thinking like to depict humans
as rational beings. Indeed, the very foundation
of the neoclassical economic theory that guides
most of the world’s economies and institutions
is built on the premise that people make ratio-
nal choices and maximize their own utility on
the basis of available information. Buyology dis-
pels these deep-seated and widely held assump-
tions about human nature and paints a different
picture of humans by exposing our behavior as
something controlled by the whims and vagaries
of our unconscious mind.
Emmanuel Prinet
Executive Director, One Earth Initiative
Society, Vancouver, Canada
  
The New Economics of Sustainable Consumption:
Seeds of Change, by Gill Seyfang and edited by
David Elliot. New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2009, 240 pp., ISBN 9780230525337, $74.95.
Sustainable consumption has been moving
into the clearing created by industrial ecology.
From the outset, industrial ecology has focused
largely on the production side of the economic
infrastructure. Since the conflation of sustain-
able production and consumption at the 1992 Rio
Earth Summit, this subject has been slowly enter-
ing the ambit of industrial ecology. This special
REVIEWS
issue is evidence of the movement in this direc-
tion.
Seyfang’s book is a valuable contribution to
the understanding of the term sustainable con-
sumption. The book unashamedly presents sus-
tainable consumption as a radical agenda, juxta-
posing two dichotomous visions: new economics
sustainable consumption versus mainstream sus-
tainable consumption. After an introduction that
elaborates the book’s structure and intentions,
Seyfang presents the meanings of these two op-
posing visions in two separate chapters, then, in
the next chapter, lays down a set of general princi-
ples for innovation. The following three chapters
present case studies of innovations in food, hous-
ing, and currencies, respectively. The book closes
with a wrap-up and discussion of the challenges
facing innovation in sustainable consumption.
Seyfang’s book focuses on the United King-
dom, but the basic ideas are applicable in any
consumer-based economy. The new economics
program is supported by the UK-based New Eco-
nomics Foundation (NEF), founded in 1986 as
an alternative to the principles espoused by the
G7 at its 1984 summit.
The familiar, mainstream route is essentially
one of eco-efficiency or greening, based on in-
cremental improvements in resource efficiency,
and it enables continued growth. Economic in-
stitutions and infrastructure retain their exist-
ing liberal market characteristics. Increase in
“green” demand shifts production and thereby in-
troduces innovations in products and processes.
Consumers “change color” but remain individ-
ualistic and sovereign. Progress is measured by
traditional measures, and consumption serves as
a proxy for well-being.
The book’s critique of mainstream sustainable
consumption is drawn from the literature and an
analysis of the effectiveness of current policies in
the United Kingdom and Europe. Already famil-
iar to scholars working in the area, it is presented
clearly enough to be accessible for others. Sey-
fang identifies a series of failures that created the
current unsustainable mess: pricing, information,
self-regulation, measurement, enfranchisement,
and equity failures. Enfranchisement failures re-
flect the lack of power of “ecological citizens”
(people actively seeking sustainability) to express
their concerns through the market mechanism,
Reviews 169
 REVIEWS
where their votes (transactions) are swamped by
dominant patterns of consumption. Equity fail-
ure relates to the imbalance in the power of the
ecological citizens relative to large, global institu-
tions in which individual purchasing actions are
embedded.
The new economics model introduces alterna-
tives to each of the items in the above paragraph.
Part of the book’s richness lies in the nature of
the critique and its normative alternative. Sus-
tainable consumption is not couched primarily in
quantitative terms. The key rests in distinctive
new institutions and infrastructure. Consumers
become ecological citizens acting within commu-
nities of place, practice, and interest. Innovation
is driven by collective action far beyond the ac-
tion of price signals. Progress is to be measured
by new indexes in which well-being is not wholly
tied to consumption.
The book’s main themes are social and hu-
manistic; Seyfang argues for a new understanding
of wealth, a richer conception of work, new uses
of money, and the integration of ethics back into
economic life. Reduction of ecological footprint
is only one of five main criteria used to assess the
performance and potential of each of the cases.
The others (reasonably self-explanatory) are
• localization,
• community-building,
• collective action, and
• construction of new infrastructures of pro-
vision.
The results of the evaluations of the cases are
summarized in clear and helpful tables.
Space limitations prevent a discussion of all
three case chapters. I found the chapter about
local currencies the most interesting. Three ini-
tiatives are discussed: local exchange trading
schemes (LETS), time banks, and Nu Spaarpas,
a system of green reward currency piloted in the
Netherlands. LETS is a “locally-based skill swap
scheme, [with] aims to rebuild local economies”
(157). Members use a local currency for transac-
tions, and individuals match “wants” and “offers”
by consulting a directory and then making direct
arrangements.
Time banks are a variation on the above
scheme, except that the unit of currency is time.
170 Journal of Industrial Ecology
One hour of work equals one credit, no matter
what services have been provided. Those who
volunteer their time receive credits for their ac-
tions, which they can use later. The types of
services (e.g., helping senior citizens, watching
pets, simply befriending the lonely) reflect the
absence of community and family connections,
which have become lost as social structures have
eroded over the years. This scheme expands the
idea of work, explicitly valuing typically unpriced
labor, which is unaccounted for in mainstream
economics. Time banking produces no revenues,
so it depends on government or some form of phil-
anthropic support to provide infrastructure. UK
policy has supported time banks as an alternative
to address unmet social needs and cuts in govern-
ment programs and as a general way to “improve
public engagement with civil life” (150).
Nu Spaarpas awards points for participation
in local and environmental activities. Citizens
earn points for recycling, using public transit,
and shopping locally at designated green mer-
chants. Earned points can be used for cinema tick-
ets, transit pass discounts, discounts at selected
merchants, or can be donated to charity. Points
are administered through an electronic tracking
system.
Each one of these systems scores differently
against the five criteria. Nu Spaarpas does best
on reducing ecological footprint. Time banking
scores highest on collective action. LETS has the
strongest localization impact.
The book’s concluding chapter evaluates the
potential for growth and embedding of the three
types of new economics innovation into the
mainstream. Four pathways are detailed: replicat-
ing, upscaling, and shifting the mainstream con-
text, either by moving the mainstream to look
more like the innovative niche or vice versa. Ev-
ery combination of path and type (food, hous-
ing, currency) has significant barriers to becom-
ing the new mainstream. The lack of enabling
policies and programs is, perhaps, the most sig-
nificant barrier. This factor illuminates the em-
phasis on collective action. All the programs, al-
though a few have spread, are still only niches in
the monolith of the mainstream economy. The
arguments and conclusions of the book form a
congruent and comprehensive picture of what is
needed to reverse the consequences of bigness,

commodification, and globalization. Scholars will
find the critique helpful. For planners and policy
makers as well as entrepreneurs looking to start
programs along the general framework of the new
economics, this work is an excellent primer and
practical handbook. For those in the industrial
ecology community interested in joining the dis-
cussion of sustainable consumption, the book is
an excellent starter.
John R. Ehrenfeld
Lexington, Massachusetts
  
Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infan-
tilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole, by
Benjamin Barber. New York: Norton, 2007, 406
pp., ISBN 9780393330892, $16.95. Paperback.
Plenty of data show that Americans consume
more per capita than any other nation. Why they
do so is less understood. Benjamin Barber’s Con-
sumed addresses this question, arguing that in
the United States, hyperconsumption is an out-
come of the market’s historical development. The
U.S. economy, he states, depends today largely
on selling products that satisfy wants shaped by
desires premised in instinct, as opposed to meet-
ing needs identified rationally by the intellect.
Products that provide qualities of now, fast, sweet,
easy, simple, and fun respond to the impulsive
side of human motivation, associated with child-
hood. Aggressive marketing to kids cultivates a
taste for such products, simultaneously exploit-
ing the young and encouraging a deep-rooted im-
maturity that pervades through adulthood. The
consequences are dangerous for the psychologi-
cal and political health of the affluent, both in
the United States and globally. Americans, at
the vanguard of this uneasily comfortable mi-
nority, exist in a state of perpetual dissatisfac-
tion, eating and shopping at increasing rates to
fill voids that correspond to neither hunger nor
necessity. Spheres of life not organized around
products erode, and with them a citizenship that
seeks the public good.
How can products be so powerful? Barber
draws from Max Weber’s classic book The Protes-
REVIEWS
tant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism to describe the
development of market-based production (We-
ber [1905] 2002). Weber’s insight was that this
system flourished in the first two centuries of
American history because a particular cultural
form, Calvinist Protestantism, happened to en-
courage an ethic favorable to emerging industri-
alism. A way of life that emphasized hard work,
frugality, and, most of all, reinvestment of cap-
ital coincided with and reinforced deeply held
notions about the relationship between people
and their creator. In this period, products were
what we would call today “generic,” unbranded,
and meant to satisfy basic needs. Their manufac-
ture enabled the accumulation of wealth needed
to construct infrastructure and institutions that
would be crucial to American economic success
in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But the de-
mands met in this phase of economic history were
finite. As people with money stocked up on what
they required, the question of how to continue to
sell called out for an answer.
This answer, says Barber, would be predicated
on the application of social meaning to prod-
ucts, such that what Susan Strasser and colleagues
(1988) have called “getting and spending” took
on increasing importance as a way to have fun,
solve problems, and explore identity. The dis-
tancing of products from strict usefulness and
their grafting onto “ways of life” have, as mar-
ket economies must, grown at ever increasing
rates. Today, not so much products but cultural
concepts are marketed; love, creativity, and pur-
pose are branded. The tendency to commodify is
hard to resist because, Barber says, it is “ubiq-
uitous, omnipresent, addictive, self-replicating,
and omnilegitimate (engaging in active self-
rationalization and self-justification, eroding the
moral bases for resisting)” (222). There are few
spheres of activity into which some degree of mar-
ketization does not now penetrate.
The tragedy of this, for Barber, is not primar-
ily that kids lose their innocence early as they
are drawn into shopping instead of playing or
that adults shop as play instead of thinking, cre-
ating, or helping others. Totalized marketization
has hobbled the development of true citizenship
in affluent societies, and this leaves little hope
that the pressing needs of the majority of the
world’s population, who are not affluent, will be
Reviews 171
 REVIEWS
met. Here Barber connects cultural infantilism to
the notion that market mechanisms and protec-
tion of personal liberty together constitute the
only legitimate and effective basis for democracy.
This widely held view, which has thrived in the
United States since President Ronald Reagan’s
tenure in the 1980s, had its roots in the Enlight-
enment’s contestation of overt tyranny, when as-
sertion of individual rights really did free people.
Later in history, this same emphasis on personal
freedom worked well to contain unionism and
populism, making economic heroes of the “dare-
devils, speculators, and adventurers” (55) who
pushed the American frontier. Over time, per-
sonal liberty came to mean not just freedom from
bodily oppression but freedom to take, own, and
use up. This development was crucial to Ameri-
can economic growth yet came erroneously, says
Barber, to define democracy.
With today’s dominant marketing strategy or-
ganized around selling the ephemeral and the un-
necessary, the majority of people who lack the
basic necessities of life are not considered “con-
sumers.” How to turn this around is the moral
point of Barber’s book: If the affluent can disen-
gage from childish consumption and turn their
energy and money toward the cultivation of the
public good, they will not just grow up, they will
establish a framework for democracy that corre-
sponds to today’s urgency for human emancipa-
tion from want. Essential to this change is the de-
velopment of transnational forms of democratic
participation among the affluent and the poor.
The market is now global, but structures of cit-
izenship remain stuck at the national or local
scale, when they exist at all.
There are, of course, implications for material
sustainability in Barber’s argument as well. If we
make and buy more of what we need and less
of what we desire without need, we will reduce
the overall profligacy of our utilization of natural
resources, possibly drawing citizens closer to the
real conditions of production on local or regional
scales. Achievement of this shift, argues Barber,
will moreover entail strong, international regula-
tory structures, a proposition that will make free
marketeers, as well as green capitalists, cringe:
“The state has a legitimate monopoly on force
and is able to enforce its laws” (297), he writes,
and enforcement of responsible practice, through
172 Journal of Industrial Ecology
sticks far more than carrots, is what Barber ar-
gues is needed to contain, cleanse, and redirect
markets in healthy directions.
Barber’s book is important. It bravely critiques
the relation of markets to politics in an era when
many progressives seek to use markets to pro-
mote the public good, particularly in the area
of sustainable consumption. Barber is at his best
when trying to describe the maddening contra-
dictions of “a society without villains or conspir-
ators, composed of good-willed but self-seeking
individuals,” that produces “a radically commer-
cial culture which many of those same individ-
uals despise and for which no one is directly
responsible even though more than a few may
be said to contribute to its making (129). So-
cial systems that construct themselves are tough
to describe, as are tendencies of individuals and
groups to work against their own fundamental
interests. As a result, Consumed is not a pleasant
read, and Barber’s energetically dismal prose style
is, at times, exhausting. As with many excellent
critiques, his vision of what is to be done is frus-
tratingly underdeveloped. As the book ends, he
writes,
Today, under the hyperconsumerist condi-
tions we have examined here, the civic call-
ing will feel to many people like a va-
cant phrase, global citizenship like a utopian
dream. I do not have a formula for their real-
ization. (359)
Perhaps Barber will turn his astute scholarship to
this task in his next work. In the meantime, Con-
sumed remains a valuable, passionate, and, most
of all, truly mature contribution to our consider-
ation of the social, ecological, and psychological
unsustainability of American consumption.
Samantha MacBride
New York University
New York, New York
References
Strasser, S., C. McGovern, and M. Judt, eds. 1998.
Getting and spending: European and American con-
sumer societies in the twentieth century. New York:
Cambridge University Press.

Weber, M. [1905] 2002. The Protestant ethic and the
spirit of capitalism. Edited, translated, and with an
introduction by P. Baehr and G.C. Wells. New
York: Penguin Books.
  
Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for
Transforming Our Consumer Culture, by John R.
Ehrenfeld. New Haven: Yale University Press,
ISBN 9780300137491, $28.00.
John Ehrenfeld’s book starts with a fascinating
tale of how people find direction by just listening
to their gut feelings. During a workshop Ehrenfeld
attended, the participants took turns facing the
group to announce what “possibility” each would
be on leaving the program. When Ehrenfeld’s
turn came, he had no idea what to say. But
when I turned up and faced the group I heard
myself saying: “I am the possibility that hu-
man and other life will flourish on the Planet
forever.” Like the rest, I proudly wore my un-
expected utterance as my name tag for the
rest of the day. (xviii)
Now, years of deliberation later, this im-
promptu utterance has become the essence of
Ehrenfeld’s most recent book. He starts with an
essentially philosophical deliberation on what
sustainability implies. Using some basic causal
loops from system dynamics, he argues that re-
ductionist approaches that focus merely on sus-
tainability problems usually provide quick fixes
that leave the fundamental root causes of unsus-
tainability untouched. For Ehrenfeld, “Factor 4”
or “Factor X” approaches merely slow down hu-
mankind’s unsustainable trajectory; they do not
touch the essence of the problem.
With this assertion, Ehrenfeld moves away
from the mass-flow-based analytical approaches
and related technical solutions that industrial
ecologists seem to have made the core of their
scientific discipline. Building on the work of Hei-
degger, Maturana, Max Neeff, Maslow, and oth-
ers, Ehrenfeld guides the reader to what he sees as
the essence of sustainability: nothing more and
nothing less than rediscovering the purpose of
human life on earth and providing the appro-
REVIEWS
priate conditions for this purpose. Ehrenfeld ar-
gues that the rationality and role of technology
as it has developed since the Enlightenment and
the Industrial Revolution have led to a situation
in which technology and the provision of stuff
have become the prime sources of human satis-
faction. Mankind has moved from a “being” mode
of life to a “having” mode of life. A worldview
has developed that sees everything—including
human life itself—through a utilitarian lens. Hu-
man needs are met largely through commoditized
consumption, which, in turn, is influenced by
powerful social forces, such as advertising and
peer pressure. The result is that humans live
poor, commoditized lives, in which they make
choices constrained heavily by external factors.
Worse, because the pseudo-satisfiers provided by
consumerism fail to deliver “authentic lives,” an
addictive consumerist call for more stuff is cre-
ated that only reinforces the unsustainable pat-
terns of consumption and production in modern
economies. Utilitarian quests for personal happi-
ness have led to a narcissistic and individualistic
culture, in which humans are incapable of taking
care of other concerns that Ehrenfeld sees as be-
ing as basic as the self: taking care of others, and
taking care of the world. For Ehrenfeld, a truly
sustainable world should provide conditions for
authentic ways of being—in short, flourishing.
The fullness of the revealed world and its
possibilities for Being depend on the mode
[of living]. Authentic living means a life less
directed by the cultural “other” (the societal
structure) and more directed through freer
choice by the self. With authenticity modern
humans can possibly break free from the grip
that technology has upon them, at least long
enough to begin caring for themselves, other
humans, and the world of nature. (121)
I am quite enthusiastic about these parts of
Ehrenfeld’s book. He makes a daring, well-
researched, and convincing case that the sustain-
ability agenda cannot focus on the material part
of the equation alone but must encompass the
wider questions about what is the purpose of life.
Writers such as Fritz Schumacher and Ivan Il-
lich made this point in the 1970s. Virtually all
major religions on earth offer profound and of-
ten millennia-old thoughts on this question too,
Reviews 173
 REVIEWS
a fact that remains undiscussed in the book—
it may be that Ehrenfeld deliberately wanted to
avoid the religious aspect in his work. The lack
of reference to the work of Nobel prize winner
Amartya Sen is, however, surprising. Particularly
with books such as Development as Freedom (Sen
1999) and his “capability approach,” Sen has
provided many insights that could give impor-
tant support to Ehrenfeld’s ideas. Furthermore,
Ehrenfeld may highlight the negative side of the
consumer economy a bit too much. Sixty years
ago, life was probably much more dominated by
external factors than it is now. Work was usually
monotonous, and 50- or 60-hour work weeks were
the norm rather than the exception, which left
people just limited time “off duty.” Religion could
sometimes pervade social life unpleasantly. Life
and social contacts were confined to the village,
island, or valley where one lived.
This is, however, not my main problem with
the book. In the last chapters, Ehrenfeld offers a
vision of how a change to a more sustainable soci-
ety can be made. Referring to Gidden’s structura-
tion theory, Ehrenfeld argues that the structures
of signification (beliefs), legitimation (norms),
and domination (power) are fairly stable and,
because they structure agency, are not the most
suitable leverage points for change. In Ehrenfeld’s
view, technology is much more fluid and hence
should be used as the leverage point. Through
new designs, products should be developed that
question users about existing contextual scripts,
the seeds for broader structural and behavioral
change. Designing new institutions, implement-
ing adaptive governance, and highlighting the
special role of business complete the change man-
agement model suggested in the book.
I found this part of the book rather disappoint-
ing. It misses the lessons of decades of research
into social construction of technology and system
innovations. Ehrenfeld does not analyze funda-
mentally which forces drive the reproduction of
technologies and institutions. This can leave the
reader with the simplistic impression that such
technologies can be “designed at will.” Nothing
is further from the truth. Redesigned technologies
and institutions that fit with existing structures
(beliefs, norms, and power structures) are likely
to be much more successful than those that go
against the existing structures. Sure, introducing
174 Journal of Industrial Ecology
a dual-flush toilet will work—it is not a nuisance
to use, and after decades of messages about water
shortages, public norms have become sensitive to
water saving. But how about that car that after
each trip makes you feel guilty by stating with a
sweet voice how much carbon dioxide you emit-
ted, so that you might use it more consciously?
No car manufacturer is going to be so suicidal at
this stage. We need a few more Al Gore movies
and Robert Stern reports before public opinion
will accept this as a positive norm.
Arnold Tukker
TNO
Delft, The Netherlands
Reference
Illich, I. 1978. Toward a history of needs. New York:
Pantheon.
Schumacher, E.F. 1973. Small is beautiful. New York:
Harper and Row.
Sen, A. 1999. Development as freedom. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
  
Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, by Ellen
Ruppel Shell. New York: Penguin, 2009, 296 pp.,
ISBN 9781594202155, $25.95.
In her book Cheap: The High Cost of Discount
Culture, Ellen Ruppel Shell, an American jour-
nalism professor, highlights a very timely and im-
portant topic. This volume has strong potential
to reach a broad audience, but I personally think
that for industrial ecologists and other scientists,
it is also useful to pay attention to this discussion.
Why are all sorts of products so cheap? Why are
we so disposed to look for the “good deal”?
Ruppel Shell argues that Americans—and
most of her observations hold for Europeans as
well—have developed something of a mania for
getting a good deal. Seeking out low prices has
become an end in itself. Low prices are, after
all, democratic. Everyone has the right to ev-
eryday luxuries. People are more focused on the
good deal than on the object at the heart of that
deal. The author has a name for this culture:
cheap.

For many consumers, price has become both
a business and a human obsession. Why is this
so? To answer this question, Ruppel Shell dis-
cusses the work of numerous experts: neurologists,
evolutionary biologists, psychologists, behav-
ioral psychologists, cognitive scientists, market-
ing professionals, mathematicians, economists,
sociologists, historians, moral philosophers, po-
litical economists, and nutritionists. She takes
the reader through a fascinating retrospec-
tive of the founding fathers—John Wanamaker,
Henry Ford, Frank Woolworth, Eugene Ferkauf,
William Levitt, Ingvar Kamprad, and others—
who developed manufacturing and retailing mod-
els predicated on high volume and low price.
Their successes were due to the deployment of
effective merchandising techniques and seduc-
tive pricing methods as well as the design of effi-
cient delivery systems, discount stores, and outlet
malls. In writing her book, the author travelled
extensively in the United States as well as to
Sweden (for a field trip to IKEA) and to China to
learn about the dramatic consequences of cheap.
Ruppel Shell reminds us that discounting has
not always been popular and widely accepted.
The American Dream—and I would also say
the European Dream—implies a desire for what
money can buy, and in recent years the range
of desirous items has grown faster than house-
hold incomes. Affordability has become an im-
portant part of the agenda in both politics and
business. Consumer spending has escalated and
become an expression of citizenship. According
to economic doctrines of the 1930s, consumption
would move nations into prosperity, and institu-
tions were developed to socialize people into this
way of thinking. Periodic crises of overproduction
could be managed through the manipulation of
consumption. For Americans (and others), con-
sumption ceased to be a privilege and became a
right, even a patriotic duty. And if consumption
is to be regarded in such terms, products have to
be affordable. Social equality meant access not to
the means of production, but rather to a grow-
ing range of consumer goods. Consumption also
became a form of leisure and tourism. Why are
outlet malls always situated in remote locations?
Ruppel Shell argues that this is a tactical decision.
Trips to outlets demand an investment of time,
deliberation, and energy beyond what we invest
REVIEWS
in most other spare-time activities. We have to
work to get there. And, once there, we are mo-
tivated to buy in excess to justify the expensive
journey.
The title of the book hints at the author’s
critical view of this hegemonic culture. Readers
will not be surprised to learn that Wal-Mart is a
key target, but more ethically minded retailers,
such as IKEA, are also portrayed as fundamen-
tally hypocritical and unsustainable. What is the
true cost of cheap? The fact that low prices in af-
fluent nations are linked to sweatshop conditions
and enormous environmental destruction in de-
veloping countries is not news, but Ruppel Shell
provides clear illustrations of the global linkages.
One chapter has the witty title “Cheap Eats,” but
it is not so amusing to learn that people starve in
Sudan because Americans and Europeans want
inexpensive food.
In an earlier time, most household consump-
tion was based on domestic production, but today
goods are regularly manufactured in China, of-
tentimes by migrant workers who are completely
deprived of rights and humane treatment. When
people assembled their own products—Ford’s
Model T is a prominent example—they were
more knowledgeable about the circumstances of
production. It is more common today for their
grandchildren to be employed in service occu-
pations and consequently to know increasingly
little about what it means to be a producer of
physical goods.
The book also argues that cheap induces us
to develop a taste for low quality. Cheap food
tastes better because it is what we have learned
to enjoy. Cheap products lack durability, and we
do not expect them to hold up. Because we do
not anticipate robust performance, we become
careless. For many consumers, products are black
boxes. We know only how they should func-
tion and have lost the capacity to repair them.
And because low price signals low quality, we ex-
pect less and take less care of the products we
buy.
The journalistic style of this book makes for
eclectic reading. Although the author provides
numerous explanations for our discount culture,
she does not offer much in the way of synthetic
analysis. The reader is left to his or her own de-
vices to create fusion out of the treatment. Most
Reviews 175
 REVIEWS
of the relevant factors are there: globalization,
capitalism, retail power, clever and powerful men,
seductive marketing and pricing techniques, and
psychological and neurological dispositions. Al-
though the breadth of Ruppel Shell’s reporting is
impressive, I would have appreciated more inter-
pretative integration.
There is nothing more subjective than price,
the author claims, with reference to a long list
of earlier thinkers on the matter. Yet one is left
to wonder whether the trend is only toward dis-
counting. Do all consumers in all circumstances
really want and demand cheap? Perhaps Ruppel
Shell could have done more to place the issue
of low price in a wider social context by drawing
on work in the sociology of consumption that re-
lates price to social status and fashion. She also
fails to consider the potential of countermove-
ments of cheap. I am thinking here of growing
interest in fair trade products and Slow Food
as well as policy discussions around sustainable
consumption, green branding, and eco-labeling.
The book is overly focused on what it attempts
to problematize—price and discounting—and it
fails to consider countervailing trends that en-
tail searches by consumers for more leisure time,
quality goods, and less materialistic values.
Nonetheless, Ruppel Shell’s preoccupation
with low price, the history of this retailing prac-
tice, and what it does to us and the earth is ex-
tremely significant. I was, however, initially dis-
appointed with the book’s final chapter, “The
Perfect Price.” It seemed to me that the author
does not show much imagination about what
to do about our conundrum. She implies that
the route out of our hegemonic discount culture
passes through the aisles of another retailer: the
Wegmans chain of high-end supermarkets that
operates in the mid-Atlantic region of the United
States. (As a Scandinavian, I am not personally
familiar with Wegmans but am able to relate to it
because similar retailers exist in the Nordic coun-
tries.) The promotion of such a recommendation,
after nearly 300 pages critiquing contemporary
practices, struck me at first as terribly inconsis-
tent. On second thought, however, I found that
her suggestion provided a certain source of relief.
Ruppel Shell looks here for pragmatic interven-
tions rather than for abstract solutions. She is
focused on the concrete microscene of everyday
176 Journal of Industrial Ecology
consumption. We will need to shop one way or
another in the future. There is indeed a role to
be played and responsibility to be assumed by all
actors in the system. The question is how they
should act. I do not delude myself by thinking
that it is possible to establish the “perfect price,”
but, to be honest, I do not think Ruppel Shell
thinks so either. But maybe it is possible to con-
ceive of a new culture that understands the ex-
ternal costs of cheap. The book ends on a hope-
ful note: “As individuals and as a nation we can
turn our attention to what matters, secure in the
knowledge that what matters has never been and
will never be cheap” (232).
Magnus Boström
Södertörn University
Huddinge, Sweden
  
Shopping Our Way to Safety: How We Changed
From Protecting the Environment to Protecting Our-
selves, by Andrew Szasz. Minneapolis, MN: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 2009, 323 pp., ISBN
9780816635092, $18.95, paperback.
While reading Andrew Szasz’s Shopping Our
Way To Safety: How We Changed From Protecting
the Environment to Protecting Ourselves, I found
myself thinking about Todd Haynes’s 1995 film,
Safe. The heroine is an American housewife over-
whelmed by exposure to, in essence, contempo-
rary life itself; her efforts to escape the toxins of
modernity become more and more extreme, and
the films’ harrowing conclusion finds her sealed
in a kind of hermetic igloo. Szasz detects what
amounts to similar behavior rippling out across
American consumer culture. In the popular press,
the apparent trend among some shoppers to buy
eco-friendly home-cleaning products, or organic
milk, or whatever, is treated as cheery news of
awareness and, implicitly, positive change. Szasz
sees things quite differently. “A person who, say,
drinks bottled water or uses natural deodorant or
buys only clothing made of natural fiber is not
trying to change anything,” he writes. “All they
are doing is trying to barricade themselves, indi-
vidually, from toxic threat” (4).

Szasz has a label for this behavior: inverted
quarantine. Instead of sealing off the sick, we
imagine that we can seal in our healthy selves. As-
sessing this strategy, he concludes that not only is
it futile, it’s dangerous. To reach that conclusion,
Szasz is methodical. Possibly he’s a bit too method-
ical, as he spends almost 100 pages on analogous
examples of his inverted quarantine notion, with
chapters on the U.S. bomb-shelter craze of the
1950s and on suburbanization—individualistic
responses to complex, system-based problems
(nuclear war and the various ailments of inner
cities).
When he gets to today’s existential risks and
how 21st-century citizens respond to them by way
of shopping decisions, he first examines whether
each threat (from water, from the food sup-
ply, from the air we breathe and the clothes
we wear) is real. By and large, his answer is
yes. There are a few reassuring moments—Szasz
doesn’t think synthetic fabrics are actually all
that threatening. Conversely, I was startled to
read that a hot shower is; it causes one to in-
hale trihalomethanes, which “have been linked
to” (161) forms of cancer. He also cites research
finding “a cocktail mix of chemicals” (101) in um-
bilical cords tested after the birth of even healthy
babies. Even when the data don’t show potential
harm, Szasz notes often throughout the book that
they seldom rule it out. (Szasz describes “the typ-
ical trajectory of regulatory standards” (137) like
so: “As scientific understanding improves, earlier
standards prove to have been too lax, and the ex-
posure level deemed to be safe has to be lowered”
[137]).
But enough bad news—let’s get to the worse
news. It turns out that very few of the market-
place responses to potential environmental harm
offered by global consumer culture are all that
effective. Plus, slugging a bottle of the purest wa-
ter has no impact on the many other ways we
indirectly encounter the nonbottled water sup-
ply: through plant and animal agriculture, indus-
try, and so on. The same goes for water filters,
which may reduce exposure to contaminants but
don’t eliminate it. As Szasz puts it, “Water pol-
lution is inscribed on our way of life” (109). And
that’s just one category. Dabbling in the inverted-
quarantine marketplace, as most shoppers surely
do, has little effect. And the time, effort, and
money involved in implementing “the full pro-
REVIEWS
gram” (173) of the inverted-quarantine lifestyle
would be immense—even if all the stuff worked
as promised.
What shoppers are buying, then, isn’t really
protection, it’s a pleasing illusion of safety. And
thus the real threat: complacency. We’re con-
cerned enough to buy bottled water but not
concerned enough to follow, or demand, a com-
prehensive political and policy program that
would truly address the very real problems we
face. What Szasz is, of course, arguing for is more
systematic solutions—tougher standards, stricter
regulations, better rules, basically. Although he
certainly doesn’t come across as standing in op-
position to the broad notion of sustainable con-
sumption, he’s making a deeper point that shifts
in policy and resource management—presumably
carried out on a global scale—are what will really
matter.
Returning to the theme of the early chapter
recounting that curious era in which something
like half of Americans claimed to be at least con-
sidering building a bomb shelter (which, on some
level, could have been construed as a provoca-
tion that might have increased the odds of an
atomic war), Szasz notes that citizens eventu-
ally wised up and stopped. But this isn’t really
very inspiring. Surely many of those citizens were
concerned about the possibility of nuclear war,
but what most actually did about it was precisely
nothing. Perhaps relevant political leaders were
wise; perhaps everybody just got lucky. Mean-
while, attitudes toward government as a problem-
solving institution have, to put it mildly, deteri-
orated in recent decades, and it is precisely the
marketplace that many, in countries around the
world, have chosen to trust instead. Szasz makes
a great case that shopping for safety is a mistake,
but he doesn’t offer much in the way of hopeful
and convincing counterpossibilities for the typi-
cal consumer’s ability to demand or influence the
global policy initiatives he would prefer. I wonder
whether his readers might conclude that, really,
the problems are far beyond their ability to affect,
let alone solve. And thus, we scurry back to our
hermetic igloos, hoping we’ll get lucky again.
Rob Walker
New York, New York
  
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 REVIEWS
Prosperity Without Growth: The Transition to a
Sustainable Economy, by Tim Jackson, London:
Earthscan, 2009, ISBN 9781844078943, $22.50.
It takes a bit of courage to pretend that, 35
years after the publication of “Limits to Growth”
and the pioneering work on the “steady-state
economy,” one could add something to what gi-
ants such as Donella and Dennis Meadows and
Herman Daly have already written. Tim Jack-
son has succeeded in this challenge, however.
Based on a report that he wrote in his capacity
as economics commissioner for the UK Sustain-
able Development Commission, his latest book
provides truly fresh insight into the complexities
surrounding renewed interest in the “degrowth”
debate.
In the first three chapters, “Prosperity Lost,”
“The Age of Irresponsibility,” and “Redefining
Prosperity,” Jackson does what many other au-
thors have done before him—namely, he shows
the problems associated with current modes of
economic development. He reiterates familiar ac-
counts of resource depletion, dangerous climate
change, and ecosystems degradation. The finan-
cial crisis has demonstrated that humanity has
not even been able to create a sustainable eco-
nomic system. And success in terms of prosperity
is limited and continues to be measured entirely
in the narrow metric of economic utility. This
strategy has led to consumerism and material-
ism that—as Jackson puts it, in terms borrowed
from the work of Nobel laureate Amartya Sen—
does not necessarily lead to more “capabilities
for flourishing” (37). The sobering conclusion
is that our economic system is highly unstable
without growth and only survives by generating
ecological and financial debts. It does not de-
liver what truly matters: enhanced capacity to
enable the vast majority of people on earth to
flourish.
In the next four chapters, however, the nov-
elty and subtlety of Jackson’s thinking come into
their own. Departing from the standard practices
of many of the commentators who have walked
this trail before him, Jackson poses the question
of why—despite the obvious failures described
in his first three chapters—the seemingly un-
stoppable machinery of growth remains in place.
Chapter 4, “The Dilemma of Growth,” untangles
178 Journal of Industrial Ecology
an initial catch-22: Perpetual growth is an erratic
(and probably elusive) objective for the reasons
already indicated, but degrowth is unstable, too,
and, at least under present conditions, leads to ris-
ing unemployment, failing competitiveness, and
spiraling recession. It is hence not surprising that
policy makers place their bets on the apparent
win−win approach offered by the promise of de-
coupling material and energy use from economic
growth.
But in Chapter 5, Jackson demonstrates that
this is just a myth. The challenge of meeting the
carbon-reduction target of 80% set by the Inter-
governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
combined with both the diffusion of affluent
lifestyles for all and continuous economic growth,
implies that decoupling by a factor of more than
100 is required. Such circumstances must, as
a matter of fact, entail fundamental economic
restructuring.
Chapter 6 explains that the existing structure
has a perverse economic and social logic. The pur-
suit of profit stimulates newer, better, or cheaper
products and services through a continual process
of innovation and “creative destruction.” The
consumer side of the system has coevolved to ful-
fill a complementary role, ready to absorb all this
novelty. The “empty self” is stimulated to embark
on status-seeking and an individualistic lifestyle,
using material goods as proxies for dreams and as-
pirations. Chapter 7, titled a “Green New Deal,”
may be a step in realizing structural change, but
what is described is, in essence, an updated notion
of Keynesianism that holds danger for becoming
overly focused on “kick starting” the growth en-
gine anew.
In Chapters 8 and 9, Jackson indicates that
changing the underlying structure is predicated
on two things. We first need to develop a
“macroeconomics for sustainability”: an eco-
nomic model that does not depend on growth
to provide stability and values ecological invest-
ment in a more appropriate way. We also need
to overhaul the social logic that currently drives
consumerism. Jackson argues that it is necessary
to stimulate structures that foster an alternative
hedonism, based on intrinsic values such as self-
acceptance, affiliation, and sense of belonging.
The economy needs to be geared to provide ca-
pabilities for “flourishing within limits.”

In the final three chapters, Jackson offers his
own picture of how the envisioned changes could
be stimulated. Government has a key role here,
but he is quick to highlight the role of “[t]he
conflicted state” (166).
As long as . . . stability depends on growth . . .
there will inevitably be a tendency for gov-
ernment to support social structures that re-
inforce materialistic, novelty seeking individ-
ualism. Because that’s what it takes to keep
the economy afloat. (169)
Jackson’s proposed transition program is com-
posed of three elements that deal sequentially
with the deep and subtle lock-ins that he iden-
tifies in the book. First, we must come to ap-
preciate ecological limits. Second, we must fix
the economic model—by developing an ecolog-
ical macroeconomics; investing in jobs, assets,
and infrastructures; increasing financial and fis-
cal prudence; and getting rid of gross domestic
product (GDP) as a measure of success. These
moves could create the freedom for government
to maneuver and for others to deal with the third
and final task: changing the social logic of con-
sumerism. Specific objectives could include im-
plementing work-time policies, tackling systemic
inequalities, and measuring capabilities for flour-
ishing. Only under such circumstances could we
dismantle the damaging culture of consumerism.
Jackson’s volume has many parallels with John
Ehrenfeld’s (2008) recent book, Sustainability by
Design, reviewed elsewhere in this issue. Both
treatments stress the bankruptcy of materialis-
tic, individualistic, and status-seeking lifestyles as
means to fill the “empty self.” Both authors argue
that the economy should provide “capabilities
for flourishing.” But—also in comparison with
other books—Jackson’s analysis is truly unique
in meticulously disentangling the interdependen-
cies between the economic logic of production,
the social logic of consumption, and the conflict-
ing position of the state that keeps the unsustain-
able machinery of growth moving. Jackson also
provides an original perspective that identifies
leverage points for change that hold the prospect
of eventual effectiveness. I have not encountered
such a bright and insightful analysis since the
path-breaking work of the Donella and Dennis
Meadows and Herman Daly.
REVIEWS
Does this mean that I am satisfied in ev-
ery respect? I, of course, have some questions
that remain unanswered. First, Jackson implicitly
suggests that conspicuous, material, and status-
seeking consumption is the source of all iniquity.
But the average consumer (including relatively
well-off people, e.g., myself) generally spend ap-
proximately 80% of their income on “ordinary
consumption”: mortgages, insurance, energy, au-
tomobile expenses (after all, a car is a necessity
in most places in the world), school fees, and so
forth. So is there really such massive room to re-
duce consumption without pain, as Jackson sug-
gests? Second, I wonder whether Jackson has un-
derestimated the systemic forces that stand in the
way of the changes that he calls for. Can nation-
states or even economic blocks such as the Euro-
pean Union embark on his degrowth program
without suffering declines in their global eco-
nomic competitiveness? Even after the massive
banking crisis of 2008, we see that politicians are
unable to agree on something so seemingly simple
as a global cap on bankers’ bonuses. Such issues,
however, constitute points for further elaboration
in the splendid overall program that Jackson has
proposed in his book.
Arnold Tukker
TNO
Delft, the Netherlands
References
Daly, H. E. 1992. Steady state economics. Second edition
with new essays. London, UK: Earthscan.
Ehrenfeld, J. 2008. Sustainability by design: A subversive
strategy for transforming our consumer culture. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Meadows, D. H., D. L. Meadows, J. Randers, and
W. W. Behrens, III. 1972. The limits to growth.
New York: Universe Books.
  
System Innovation for Sustainability 1: Perspec-
tives on Radical Changes to Sustainable Consump-
tion and Production, edited by Arnold Tukker,
Martin Charter, Carlo Vezzoli, Eivind Stø and
Maj Munch Andersen. Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf,
2008, 480 pp., ISBN 9781906093037, £50.00.
This book is an important contribution to
the growing body of knowledge about sustainable
Reviews 179
 REVIEWS
consumption and production. It is the first pub-
lication to emerge in a series from the European
Union−funded SCORE! project, one of the most
successful attempts to build a network of aca-
demics and practitioners in the field. The first
phase of SCORE! focused on disciplinary ap-
proaches, and this book consists of papers pre-
sented and discussed at the launch meeting in
Copenhagen in 2006. SCORE!’s second phase
focused on three consumption domains: trans-
portation, housing, and nutrition. Each of these
domains will be covered in a separate book;
the first, on transportation, has just appeared
(Geerken and Borup 2009).
Sustainability is an elusive concept, but it
gains focus when it is structured along the
production−consumption axis. After all, we are
all consumers, and by consuming we influence the
supply chain. The book approaches this issue from
the disciplinary angles of business, design, and
consumer and public-policy studies, under the
umbrella of a systemic change concept. The busi-
ness perspective focuses on “greening the busi-
ness,” including the supply chain, eco-marketing,
and efforts to get green products on retail shelves.
Rolf Wüstenhagen and Jasper Boehnke present
alternative business models for energy, and Pe-
ter Wells does so for the automotive industry.
Marcus Wagner discusses innovation and the
Porter hypothesis, and Frank-Martin Belz con-
tributes a very interesting chapter on sustainable
marketing.
The design perspective focuses on designing
sustainable products, services, and systems, in-
cluding a lot of creativity and stakeholder in-
volvement. Ursula Tischner writes about social
sustainability and radical change and offers results
from a sustainable office project. François Jégou
describes the Emerging Demand for Sustainable
Solutions (EMUDE) project, which looked, to-
gether with stakeholders, to innovative solutions
for daily problems. Chris Ryan describes eco-
innovative cities in Australia, and Benny Leong
discusses the question of whether a radical sys-
temic shift toward sustainability is possible in
China. The answer is that there are glimmers
of hope and that the next 15 years will be crucial.
In the section on consumer perspectives, Gerd
Scholl focuses on product-service systems and on
the symbolic meaning conveyed by consumption
180 Journal of Industrial Ecology
and embedded in lifestyles and in everyday life.
Dario Padovan uses the well-established notion
of social capital to describe lifestyles and con-
sumption patterns in the Italian city of Padova,
and Irmgard Schultz and Immanuel Stieß address
the same issues through a social−ecological ap-
proach. Lifestyle differences are important for un-
derstanding different consumption patterns, as il-
lustrated in a chapter by Edina Vadovics, from
Hungary.
The section of the book devoted to policy
perspectives focuses on technological innova-
tion (especially system innovations and transi-
tion management) and the innovation system
approach. Matthias Weber, Klaus Kubeczo, and
Harald Rohracher write about system innova-
tions in innovation systems, and René Kemp de-
scribes transition management and policies in the
Netherlands. The chapter by Oksana Mont and
Tareq Emtirah describes product-service systems
in the context of systemic changes.
Each of these four parts consists of individual
studies and an overarching review chapter writ-
ten by the theme’s editors that reflects on the
drivers, the state of the art, the opportunities, the
models of change, and the limitations. A final
chapter, authored by Arnold Tukker, summarizes
the entire book and offers guidance to change
processes and keys to success.
This highly structured approach offers a
great deal in terms of presenting cutting-edge
research, conceptualizations from various per-
spectives, strategies for change, and policy de-
velopment. The book even offers perspectives
from diverse countries, such as Hungary and
China.
The question remains, however, how far the
notion conveyed by the subtitle (Perspectives on
Radical Changes) has been pushed. To effectively
tackle climate change, countries need to make
deep reductions in both greenhouse gas emissions
and global poverty, and the necessary transfor-
mations will entail radical changes. This book,
however, offers a rather incremental approach
that does not critique the prevailing economic
growth paradigm or the widespread notion of
consumer sovereignty. There is little consider-
ation of life satisfaction and well-being, and the
book does not examine the deeper driving forces
of boundless consumption. Institutional change
 REVIEWS

and deep learning receive little attention. The SCORE! but with a different approach, it tackles
policy perspectives of change toward more sus- some of the same issues.
tainable systems of consumption and produc-
tion are somewhat underdeveloped. Social move-
Philip J. Vergragt
ments are hardly described.
Tellus Institute
Nevertheless, this edited collection offers an
Boston, MA
excellent state of the art in sustainable consump-
tion and production research. It is an emerging
interdisciplinary field of study, and much more
remains to be done. The book inspires and calls Reference
for a great deal more action and research. Indeed, Geerken, T. and M. Borup, eds. 2009. System innovation
one offspring is already established—the North for sustainability 2: Case studies in sustainable con-
American SCORAI network just convened its sumption and production—mobility. Sheffield, UK:
first workshop (www.scorai.org). Motivated by Greenleaf.

Reviews 181
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