Article

‘Life-Stage Dissolution’, Young

23(3) 209–221
Infantilization and © 2015 Sage Publications and
YOUNG Editorial Group
SAGE Publications
Antisocial Consumption: sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1103308815584876
Implications for http://you.sagepub.com

De-responsibilization, Denial
and Environmental Harm

Avi Brisman1
Nigel South2

Abstract
Hayward (2012, 2013) asserts that the opposition between adolescence and adult-
hood is increasingly challenged as late-modern capitalist culture artificially extends
the former. Hayward introduces the concept of ‘life-stage dissolution’—and its
attendant bidirectional processes of ‘adultification’ and ‘infantilization’—to propose
that it is becoming difficult for young people to differentiate and disassociate them-
selves from the generation immediately ahead of them and vice versa. This article
makes a contribution to a ‘green cultural criminology’ (Brisman and South, 2013b,
2014) by extending Hayward’s argument to the realm of environmental harms and
concerns. It provides examples of ways in which ‘life-stage dissolution’ and the
resulting ‘generational mulch’ impede efforts towards environmental protection
that might take into account future generations, and it explores how such respon-
sibility is denied even while scientific awareness grows that over-consumption is
damaging the environment that future generations will inherit.

Keywords
adultification, environmental harm, green cultural criminology, infantilization, life-
stage dissolution, strategic ignorance

Introduction
This article engages with Hayward’s (2012, 2013) analysis of ‘life-stage dissolu-
tion’ and applies it to two additional concerns: first, intergenerational equity and
the responsibility of present generations to take into consideration how their acts,

1
School of Justice Studies, College of Justice and Safety, Eastern Kentucky University, USA.
2
Department of Sociology, University of Essex, UK.

Corresponding author:
Avi Brisman, School of Justice Studies, College of Justice and Safety, Eastern Kentucky University, USA.
Email: avi.brisman@eku.edu

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210 YOUNG 23(3)

omissions, behaviours and practices will affect the ecological environments of,
and for, future generations; and second, processes of ‘infantilization’, denial and
antisocial consumption.
Hayward’s assertion is that the opposition between adolescence and adulthood
is increasingly challenged as late-modern capitalist culture artificially extends the
former. The concept of ‘life-stage dissolution’—and its attendant and overlapping
bidirectional processes of ‘adultification’ and ‘infantilization’—proposes that it is
becoming difficult for young people to differentiate and disassociate themselves
from the generation immediately ahead of them and vice versa. Here, Hayward
(2012: 216, 2013: 541) draws on a wide range of examples to demonstrate the mar-
keting of adulthood (especially sexuality) to children and young people (such as, the
British retailer Primark’s marketing of padded bikini tops to seven-year-old girls)
and of ‘childish pleasures’ to adults. On the latter, Hayward (2012: 217) explains,

major advertising campaigns unashamedly align their products with childhood nostalgia,
while cartoon tropes are now a staple theme of adult campaigns, used to sell everything
from caffeinated energy drinks…to banking services.... Recent mobile phone network
commercials, for example, have utilised kites, crayons and giant ribbons (Orange—‘Good
things should never end’ campaign), teddy bears, nursery rhymes and toys (O2), singing
cherries (3-Mobile), cartwheels and tumbling (T-Mobile), a dollhouse and the ‘spin the
bottle’ game (Orange, Magic Numbers), and inflatable dolphins and balloon animals
(Orange, ‘Pay as you Go’). The trend is even more pronounced in contemporary Anglo-
American car advertising, where adults now happily purchase cars marketed to consumers
half their age.

The result of these processes, according to Hayward (2012: 216, 2013: 543), is a sort
of ‘generational mulch’ where shared and interchangeable cultural experiences are
now the norm.
In the earlier of his two articles, ‘Pantomime Justice: A Cultural Criminological
Analysis of “Life-Stage Dissolution”’ (2012), Hayward considers the significance of
‘intergenerational blurring’ for young people and adults engaged with the criminal
justice system and identifies three ways in which ‘life-stage dissolution’ is of interest.
First, Hayward (2012: 222) juxtaposes adult treatment of and for young offenders
alongside the rise of a ‘victim culture’ in which ‘individuals now actively perceive
themselves as being “at risk”’ and ‘in which the infantilised victim is ascendant’.
Hayward (2012: 223) argues that ‘politicians and policy-makers are now remould-
ing the relationship between individual and government through what one might
describe as the rise of the “therapeutic state”’—one in which the infantilized adult/
parent is replaced by the ‘trained professional’ of the state. Hayward (2012: 224)
then identifies two processes contributing to the demise of what he refers to as ‘hard
news’ and the rise of ‘an infantilised soft news’:

The first process is the uncurbed rapidity of (crime) news gathering, which has resulted
in a situation whereby the news cycle now moves faster than the news. Consequently,
anything longer than a soundbite/meme is dismissed by tech-savvy audiences raised on
digital instantaneity as a ponderous intrusion into their world of self-centred information
gathering.... This, of course, contributes to the second process: the erosion of complexity
and the dumbing down of debate…the distilling down of broadcast news to black-and-
white issues stripped of all nuance and subtlety.

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Brisman and South 211

Finally, Hayward (2012: 226) contends that

[c]onsumerism as a cultural ethos [is] propagating new emotional states, feelings and
desires that are contributing to both the depreciation of mature adulthood (and the roles and
responsibilities typically associated with that stage of people’s lives), and importantly the
adultification of very young teenagers (in terms of lifestyle choices and activities involving
sexual activity/drugs/criminality etc.) that previously were the preserve of young adults.

In terms of their implications for both youth crime and criminal justice responses,
Hayward (2012: 226) maintains that this ‘depreciation of mature adulthood’ and
‘adultification of very young teenagers’ raises ‘aetiological concerns about young
people making adult decisions (or inversely, young adults acting like children)’.
Admittedly—and as Carey (2010) cautions—‘[t]rying to pin down the character
of a generation is a controversial and, some say, presumptuous exercise’. Thus, there
is some risk to relying too heavily on generational portraits or on representations of
the merging landscapes between generations, whether in Hayward’s discussion or in
major surveys (as noted below). But if we keep Carey’s caveat in mind—if we treat
such images and surveys as snapshots—then we can extend Hayward’s line of thinking
and consider the application of the concepts of ‘infantilization’, ‘adultification’ and
‘life-stage dissolution’ to a number of environmental concerns.
Elsewhere, we have outlined the idea of a green cultural criminology (Brisman
and South, 2013b, 2014; see also Brisman 2015; Brisman et al., 2014), which seeks
to bring together green criminology and cultural criminology, and to identify points
of overlap. This article develops this perspective by drawing upon and extending
Hayward’s argument. To pursue this extension, the article first outlines the links
between environmental sustainability and intergenerational equity, both of which
are threatened by processes associated with infantilization and adultification
that reduce feelings of responsibility and future orientation among adults. This
de-responsibilization is then explored in terms of an accompanying denial of the
seriousness of the environmental challenges of our times (Klein, 2014) and the
growth of various forms of ‘antisocial consumption’, including expressions of ‘eco-
consumerism’ that simply extend the repertoire of consumption practices.

‘Life-Stage Dissolution’ and Intergenerational (In)Equity,

(In)Justice and (Ir)Responsibility
The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (the ‘Stockholm
Conference’) was convened by the UN General Assembly ‘to serve as a practical
means to encourage and provide guidelines for action by Governments and interna-
tional organizations designed to protect and improve the human environment’
(Brisman, 2011b: 1039). Among other things, the Stockholm Conference generated
the 1972 Stockholm Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human
Environment (the ‘Stockholm Declaration’), Principle 1 of which provides: ‘Man
has a fundamental right to freedom, equality and adequate conditions of life, in
an environment of a quality that permits a life of dignity and well-being, and he
bears a solemn responsibility to protect and improve the environment for present and
future generations’ (see South, 2010: 239–40; White, 2013: 45).

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Twenty years later, the United Nations Conference on Environment and

Development (UNCED) (also known as the ‘Earth Summit’ or the ‘Rio Conference’)
was held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992. The Rio Conference produced the Rio
Declaration on Environment and Development, which consists of 27 principles
intended to guide future sustainable development around the world (see Brisman,
2011a: 960–61; Hall, 2013: 68, 2015: 122 for a discussion). Principle 3, The Right
to Development, reflects the spirit of Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration: ‘The
right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and
environmental needs of present and future generations’.
The ideas reflected in Principle 1 of the Stockholm Declaration and Principle 3 of
the Rio Declaration predate their expression in these nonbinding international legal
documents (see Hiskes, 2008; Schneeberger, 2011; Thornton and Tromans, 1999).
Since then, many scholars working across various disciplines have attempted to
articulate these principles in their own terms. Heckenberg (2009: 14) explains that
‘[t]he principle of intergenerational equity asserts that future generations have the
right to environments that are the equal in terms of quality and amenity to that of
the present generation’ (see also White, 2013: 31; White and Heckenberg, 2014:
41). For Kofele-Kale (2006: 324), intergenerational equity means ‘justice between
generations’ that derives from a partnership between the living, the dead and the
unborn, entailing ‘a duty on mankind to pass onto succeeding generations a planet
at least as healthy as the one it inherited so that each generation will be able to enjoy
its fruits’. Even more comprehensively, Wyatt (2013: 81) stresses that the obligation
of intergenerational justice—‘of leaving not just a sustainable environment, but a
healthy flourishing one, extends beyond the next human generations, but also to the
generations of non-human animals, plants, fungi, etc. that come after us’ (see also
Takemura, 2010: 216; Wyatt, 2013: 170). According to Weiss (2008: 616, 618), the
basic concept of intergenerational equity underpins ‘three principles’:

The first, comparable options, means conserving the diversity of the natural resource base
so that future generations can use it to satisfy their own values. The second principle, com-
parable quality, means ensuring the quality of the environment on balance is comparable
between generations. The third..., comparable access, means non-discriminatory access
among generations to the Earth and its resources.

What we wish to suggest is that the ‘life-stage dissolution’ and resulting ‘genera-
tional mulch’ that Hayward describes impede efforts towards environmental protec-
tion that might take into account future generations—that the bidirectional processes
of ‘adultification’ and ‘infantilization’ inhibit and frustrate attempts to ensure inter-
generational equity. We make two arguments in support of this proposition.
First, we suggest that the increased marketing of ‘childish pleasures’ (Hayward,
2012: 216, 2013: 541) to and for adults fosters a ‘forever young’ philosophy (Danesi,
2003: ix) and a growth in—and desire for—instantly obsolete objects (Brisman and
South, 2013a, 2014; Ferrell, 2013; Hayward, 2012, 2013). As Hayward (2012: 216,
quoting Barber, 2007: 7) explains, marketers and merchandisers are consciously and
deliberately ‘hoping to rekindle in grown-ups the tastes and habits of children so that
they can sell globally the...consumer goods for which there is no discernible “need
market” other than the one created by capitalism’s own frantic imperative to sell’.

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Brisman and South 213

This process or trend redirects or reemphasizes adult attention inward (or shortens
their gaze), making them less future oriented—less able or disposed to plan ahead,
plot long-term consequences of their behaviour, invest in the future and delay gratifi-
cation (Carmi and Arnon, 2014)—less willing to contemplate their intergenerational
responsibilities at precisely the time when this is needed.
In other words, we argue that the ‘infantilization’ that Hayward describes makes
adults far more present oriented—far less willing to address what we perceive to be
‘un-situated’ (environmental) risks—and far more inclined to engage in some but not
all areas of risk taking (Barrett, 2013: 163), as evidenced by and at a time in which
societies and economies are manufacturing risks, to borrow from Giddens (1999: 4),
and creating new (environmental) hazards. Simultaneously, our growing preference
for ‘infantilised soft news’ (Hayward 2012: 224) makes us dismissive of science and
scientific experts (see, e.g., Achenbach, 2015; Gad, 2013) and this has dismal impli-
cations for our willingness to respond to the challenge of climate change.
While our first argument is that processes of ‘infantilization’, as they affect
adults, increase the risks and threats for future generations, our second contention
is that processes of ‘adultification’, as they affect young people, erode (actual)
adult feelings of intergenerational responsibility and undercut efforts to bring
about intergenerational equity. Consider, for example, What’s the Big Idea?, the
seventh book in the Ivy and Bean children’s book series written by Annie Barrows
and illustrated by Sophie Blackall. In this particular story, Ivy and Bean, two seven-
year-old schoolchildren, learn about global warming in a class presentation by a
group of 10-year-olds. More specifically, they see a picture of a worried-looking
polar bear, learn that everywhere in the world ‘is going to look like [the Gobi
Desert] because of global warming’ and that ‘global warming is a total disaster and
it’s all our fault’ (2010: 21).
It turns out that Ivy and Bean are not the only seven-year-olds worried about
global warming; the rest of their class is also troubled. Their teacher, however,
tells them that science is ‘the solution’ to stopping global warming and suggests
that they come up with ideas to ‘fight global warming’ to present at their school’s
science fair. In the ensuing chapters of the book, Ivy and Bean continue to exhibit
adult-like consternation about global warming and experiment with different ways
to address it. Although some of their ideas and those of their classmates are fan-
tastical, as would befit seven-year-olds, others (such as using mirrors to reflect
incoming solar radiation), are being considered by proponents of geoengineering
(see Hulme, 2014: 8). Meanwhile, the adults are depicted as buffoons or impatient
troglodytes. In the end, Ivy and Bean decide that if they ‘[taught] grown-ups to be
happy in nature’, they (the adults) would love nature and care about it and global
warming and ‘wouldn’t drive stinky cars’. Ivy and Bean’s final project involves
leading their parents and other adults outside the building where the science fair
is being held into the cool night air—being careful, all the while, not to scare the
adults because, as Ivy reminds Bean, ‘[t]hey [grown-ups] don’t like surprises’—
where they encourage the adults to lie down quietly on the grass and look up at the
stars. Initially, the adults express some reluctance and annoyance, but ultimately
wind up enjoying the experience. Ivy and Bean commend themselves for teaching
their parents and other adults to care about global warming, but still rue the fact that
they did not find ‘the one big solution’.

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While there is something slightly endearing about Ivy and Bean’s earnestness,
in light of our discussion above about ‘life-stage dissolution’, Barrows’ child–adult
role reversal is not nearly as outlandish as the author may have intended. Indeed,
What’s the Big Idea? is not particularly unusual in and across various media for
its infantilizing and adultifying tropes and for its emphasis on the role of young
people in environmental protection (see Brisman, 2013). In fact, the book falls right
in line with a disturbing pattern in children’s literature of individualizing environ-
mental degradation (e.g., attributing global warming only to personal transportation
choices) and excluding any reference to the role of corporate entities or the state—a
practice that rehearses the neoliberal logic that it is the duty, responsibility, and prov-
ince of individuals (if there is a ‘duty’ or ‘responsibility’ at all) to protect and pre-
serve nature—the natural environment—our planet and its ecosystems (Brisman,
2013: 276; see generally Carlson, 2012: 1118, 1119).
Admittedly, it is important to (continue to) empower children and teach them
how to be engaged citizens so that they will be able to participate in environ-
mentally beneficial decision-making processes and act in ecologically responsible
ways. But the ‘adultification’ of Ivy and Bean and similar characters comes per-
versely close to placing the onus on youth and absolving adults of responsibility
for the future of the biosphere—of asking the next generation to instruct the present
generation about how to consider and act in the interest of future generations. Such
processes of ‘adultification’ discharge adults of their intergenerational responsibil-
ity, while working in tandem with processes of infantilization (described earlier)
to augment the risks and threats that jeopardise the existence and quality of life for
future generations. This is not the whole story, however.
The ascendance and acceptability of individualization and the denial of respon-
sibility (also discussed earlier) are underpinned by broader antisocial consumption
behaviours and selective beliefs, which contribute to the production of the ‘infan-
tilized consumer’ and the ‘everyday ecocide’ of unsustainable patterns and volumes
of consumption (see Agnew, 2013). Our immersion in processes of consumption is
not a simple cognitive or behavioural process, though. It demands effort to maintain
a point of view about what is socially desirable and undesirable. In the next section,
we turn to our ability to happily mislead ourselves.

Living Unquestioning Lives

In his essay, ‘Culture is Ordinary’, Williams (1958/1989: 3) observes that ‘The
making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its
growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience,
contact, and discovery.... The growing society is there, yet it is also made and
remade in every individual mind’. Here, Williams describes how we can all sub-
scribe to and live within what, elsewhere, he outlines as ‘the pressures and limits
of what can ultimately be seen as a specific economic, political, and cultural sys-
tem’ such that, for most of us, this represents ‘the pressures and limits of simple
experience and common sense’ (1977: 110). Although Williams does not elaborate
further in this particular way, his writing suggests that we can all experience and
share common ‘sense’ or understandings, while at the same time, that there is the
potential to ‘remake’ these understandings ‘in every individual mind’. For our

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Brisman and South 215

purposes here, what is interesting is the question of why we accept so much about
consumer culture and its infantilizing and environmentally harmful effects with-
out challenge or change in behaviour. Why, even in the face of evidence that there
may be doubt about ‘all being well’, do we fail, demur or refuse to ‘remake’ our
understanding and consider that, in fact, all is not well? How do we live with a
degree of awareness yet take shelter in ignorance?
McGoey (2012: 557) notes how various social scientists have explored the human
capacity for being selective in the use of knowledge to justify decisions taken and
how Mary Douglas (1986: 76) had used the term ‘structural amnesia’ to describe
how ‘certain things always need to be forgotten for any cognitive system to work’.
This was an insight echoed in Cohen’s (2001) study of ‘states of denial’—his term
for the methods and defences individuals employ to avoid acknowledging things that
feel psychologically or culturally impossible to discuss or do anything about. This
condition applies equally in the case of having awareness of environmental threats,
harms and crimes but where we prefer to have no further knowledge or hope to avoid
being asked to take action. In some cases, this behaviour may reflect what Knorr
Cetina (1999) calls ‘negative knowledge’, which McGoey (2012: 558) describes
as ‘an awareness of the things we have no incentive or interest in knowing about
further’. Alternatively and perhaps more suggestively, McGoey (2012: 553) uses the
term ‘strategic ignorance’, which she introduces as the proposition that ‘ignorance’
can be seen as ‘a productive asset, helping individuals and institutions to command
resources, deny liability in the aftermath of crises [or other problems], and to assert
expertise in the face of unpredictable outcomes’. The challenge of climate change
provides an example of this tendency toward the adoption of ‘strategic ignorance’.
Some accept its significance but call for more resources to aid understanding and
response; some deny responsibility or even the existence of climate change; and
some claim to offer technologies and advice that will change behaviours in ways that
help to moderate the problem.
Norgaard’s (2006: 347) study of a community in Norway illustrates the process
and dilemma very well:

Existing research emphasizes lack of information as a limiting factor for failed public
response [to climate change]. This explanation cannot account for the significant population
who know about and express concern for global warming. Ethnographic and interview data
from a rural Norwegian community indicate that nonresponse is at least partially a matter of
socially organized denial. Because Norwegian economic prosperity is tied to oil production,
collectively ignoring climate change maintains Norwegian economic interests.

Such denial exists despite the increasing evidence that shows numerous negative
outcomes of climate change appearing on the horizon (e.g., IPCC, 2013, 2014)
including social—or rather antisocial—problems (Agnew, 2012a, 2012b). The adop-
tion of an unwillingness to take seriously climate change, or other potential threats
to the environment, to our consumer lifestyles, or to the world our children will
inherit, provides examples of how ‘we’ (societies and individuals) employ ‘selective
knowledge in justifying decisions in social life’ (McGoey, 2012: 557). This results in
what Douglas (1986) calls ‘structural amnesia’, as required ‘for any cognitive sys-
tem to work’, at least on its current ‘business as usual’ basis. The following two
sections continue this discussion.

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Antisocial Consumption
This ‘structural amnesia’ also supports a cognitive system that is unquestioning of
antisocial consumption as reflected in the promotion of, and obsession with, the
individualized and infantilized consumer who is given permission to think only
about ‘me’ and to do so ‘now’. This is a significant orientation not only in terms of
internally focused lifestyle choices and personal preoccupations but also more
broadly and socially in terms of the deterioration of political engagement and citi-
zenship. In an analysis of social surveys carried out in recent years, Ball and Clarke
(2013), write about ‘Generation self’ and ask ‘what do young people really care
about?’—noting that ‘A rising generation that finds college expensive, work hard
to come by and buying a home an impossible dream is responding to its plight, not
by imagining any collective fightback, but by plotting individual escape’. And the
means, or at least dreams, of ‘individual escape’ are on sale everywhere. This is
antisocial in its repackaging and selling of narcissism, infantilization and
irresponsibility.
Here, we return to Hayward’s (2012) analysis of the commercial culture that
underpins infantilization, which is producing consumers who may be sophis-
ticated in their reading of the symbols conveyed by products yet immature in
understanding what lies behind and beneath these symbols. The context is a
world of hyper-consumption and ‘[c]onsumerism as a cultural ethos propagat-
ing new emotional states, feelings and desires’ (Hayward, 2012: 227; see also
Brisman and South, 2013b, 2014) that changes and renders shallow our ability
to grasp the problems we are creating for ourselves. As McAllister (2008: 194;
reviewing Barber, 2007) observes, ‘The narrowing of differences between chil-
dren and adults in modern culture is not a new argument. Meyrowitz (1985) in
No Sense of Place argued that in modern culture, children are becoming more
adult-like and adults are becoming more child-like’. But this represents more
than just life-stage dissolution. In the context of hyper-consumerism, the disrup-
tion of normative expectations about age-appropriate behaviour, mature choices
and constraint in consumption is enabled by the granting of certain kinds of
‘freedom’ and ‘permission’.
To explain where such freedom and permission comes from, Baudrillard
(1968/2001: 16) draws on the work of Dr Ernest Dichter, the Freudian-influenced
motivational researcher who transformed consumer advertising in the 1950s and
1960s. Baudrillard points out how consumer culture promotes and gives us certain
‘freedoms’—freedom to be rational or irrational and what he calls ‘conceded
freedoms’: allowing consumers ‘to be children without being ashamed of it’; being
‘free to project one’s desires onto produced goods’; and being ‘free to regress and
be irrational, and thus adapt to a certain social organization of production’. Dichter
(1960: 31) was clear that people—consumers—need permission to pursue desire and
this amounts to a strategy of self-constructed ignorance: ‘You would be amazed’, he
wrote, ‘to find how often we mislead ourselves, regardless of how smart we think
we are, when we attempt to explain why we are behaving the way we do’. Many
consumers certainly aim to behave in smart, sensible, ethical and responsible ways.
As discussed in the next section, however, both individualism and infantilization can
distort beliefs and actions.

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Brisman and South 217

Green Consumerism, Inverted Quarantine and Individualism

Even where consumers aim to be ‘responsible and aware’, for example, buying ethi-
cally sourced and marketed bottled water, such ‘green consumerism’ may reflect
benign motives but cannot avoid the prevailing commercial manipulation of
feeling—consumption that makes people ‘feel good’ has an immediate head start in
establishing the desirability of the product (see generally Brisman, 2009; Brisman
and South, 2014). The notion of eco-consumerism is, of course, not ‘bad’ behaviour
but nor is it necessarily what we would like it to be. Instead, it can actually support
strategically rationalized beliefs that we are ‘doing our bit’ to help the environment
(and/or the poor, starving, thirsty and others in need) and it diverts what could be
collective grievance and protest into personal introspection and behaviours (Hayward,
2012: 10; Lasch, 1979: 43) that find resolution in the publicly accessible and con-
stantly promoted therapy of consumption. This is not a new or unique observation.
Others who have explored the phenomenon of ‘green consumerism’ acknowledge its
limitations. Dauvergne and Lister (2010: 146), for example, argue that ‘eco-labeling
and green shopping do have value’. As they explain, ‘[e]co-consumerism can be an
effective voluntary policy instrument to spur environmental improvements. Yet
overestimating its potential on its own to produce global change can leave consum-
ers overconfident in the power of their eco-purchases, thereby releasing pressure on
governments and corporations for more fundamental changes in the industrial use,
marketing, and valuation of the world’s natural resources’.
Aspects of our individualized and infantilized consumption are also antisocial
in the way they enact forms of privatized ‘quarantine’. The contradictions of con-
sumption mean we engage in risky behaviours, such as, using cars and planes for
transportation, taking intoxicants, climbing mountains and so on, yet seek to diminish
risk in other parts of our life. This latter behaviour reflects what Szasz (2007) calls
the phenomenon of ‘inverted quarantine’, the means by which we barricade ourselves
against toxic threats by just buying certain ‘green’ products, such as bottled water,
organic vegetables, ‘nontoxic’ household detergents and so forth. In this sense, the
classic notion of ‘quarantine’ that is based on the understanding that the ‘overall, col-
lective environment is basically healthy’ is inverted. As Szasz (2007: 5) explains, from
this point of view, ‘The whole environment is toxic, illness-inducing. The threat is not
discrete.... Danger is everywhere. How are healthy individuals to protect themselves?
They can do so only by isolating themselves from their disease-inducing surround-
ings, by erecting some sort of barrier or enclosure and withdrawing behind or inside
it. Hence the term inverted quarantine’. In effect—in terms of the ideas introduced
earlier—green consumerism and inverted quarantine, rely on and support ‘negative
knowledge’ and ‘strategic ignorance’—and perversely can be antisocial.
Let us look at one further example of how social and private orientations are
reflected in particular trends in consumption. As with our caveat about the danger
of overgeneralization about a generation, this example is simply intended to be sug-
gestive but it does represent trends based on studies and data that, as observed by
Ball and Clarke (2013), and described in Putnam’s (2011) Bowling Alone, show
that ‘younger Americans are less inclined to join social clubs or get involved with
community barbecues’, with a 2013 survey recording ‘a rise in living and eating
alone that is especially concentrated among the young’.

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218 YOUNG 23(3)

In McWilliams’ (2009: 1) discussion of US data concerning the drinking of beer

versus drinking bottled water, she writes:

The news is dreadful: According to the Census, since 2006 [Americans] have been living
in a republic where, for the first time in [its]...history..., [they] drink more bottled water
than...beer. Why is this important? It’s important because beer is a socially oriented bever-
age, and bottled water is a privately oriented one....

She argues,

There’s a reason that beer commercials tend to include lots of people hanging out in a room
together, and bottled water commercials tend to include lone individuals climbing things
and running around by themselves, usually on a beach at sunrise—even though they are
not being chased.

McWilliams contends that this means something about individuals and society
because

Drinking bottled water emanates from essentially private or individual concerns. It’s pretty
straightforward, actually: you drink bottled water precisely because you do not want to
drink common water; you literally do not want to sip from the public trough. The ascen-
dance of bottled water in America is yet another signal of the ascendance of a culture that
is individually oriented, almost pathologically obsessive about bodily health, and suspi-
cious of the public sphere.

Conclusion: Intergenerational Inequity and the

Infantilization of Adult Responsibility
According to Weiss (2008: 616), ‘all generations are partners caring for and using
the Earth. Every generation needs to pass the Earth and our natural and cultural
resources on in at least as good condition as we received them’. Unfortunately, we
also seem to be ethically infantilized. As Barnett (1999: 164) points out: ‘The major-
ity does not appear convinced that we need to limit environmental destruction to
preserve the world for our children or grandchildren, let alone the seventh genera-
tion’. We seem, then, to be engaging in ‘intergenerational inequity’, to use Preston’s
(2011: 143) term, passing the burden of remediating contaminated land and restoring
ecological communities to future generations. Meanwhile, we are experiencing a
trend in which the place of the child in late modernity is one of growing importance
‘as a symbol of nostalgia’ (Piper, 2008: 19), reflecting ‘a longing for times past, not
“futurity”’ (Jenks, 1996: 106–07).
The effect of the bidirectional processes of ‘adultification’ and ‘infantilization’
make it difficult for young people to differentiate and disassociate themselves from
the generation immediately ahead of them and vice versa. But in the mix of the
resulting ‘generational mulch’, children are encouraged to take responsibility for the
environment, young adults express anomic disregard for commitment to the com-
munity (local and global) and older adults are exhorted to be playful and carefree
consumers. All of this impedes efforts that might be made towards environmental
protection that should take into account future generations.

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Brisman and South 219

Just like Ivy and Bean, we are disappointed that we can offer no ‘big solution’ to
these challenges. We are all—by definition—selective in the choices we make and,
as discussed in this article, we are encouraged to make some choices over others.
This does not mean that we cannot make better choices, based on higher regard for
the environment and for the principle of intergenerational equity but, at present, we
seem to be persuaded by a culture of uncertainty and immaturity that such matters
are not really worth contemplating.

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Authors’ bio-sketch

Avi Brisman (MFA, JD, PhD) is an Assistant Professor in the School of Justice
Studies at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, KY (USA).

Nigel South (PhD) is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of

Essex, UK.

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