1st Edition
Consumption Corridors Living a Good Life within Sustainable Limits
1. Living Well Within Limits
2. Our Vision: The Good Life
But what is a good life?
Focusing on needs
Slipping through our fingers
Can we be responsible for a good life for others?
3. Consumption Corridors as a Vehicle to Pursue the Good Life
The idea
Limits are already out there
What kind of processes are needed?
Getting started and building momentum
4. What’s Stopping Us?
Limits to the salvation potential of technological innovation
Limits to efficiency and markets as solutions
Limits to consumer sovereignty and responsibility
No limits to freedom in democratic societies?
Shedding myths in pursuit of social change
5. Visionary Change: Corridors as a Pathway to the Good Life
Annex 1: Needs
Annex 2: Indicators of Quality of Life
Annex 3: Estimates of upper and lower sustainable limits in floor space
Biography
Doris Fuchs is Chair of International Relations and Sustainable Development at the University of Münster, Germany.
Marlyne Sahakian is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Tobias Gumbert is a Lecturer at the Institute of Political Science, University of Münster, Germany.
Antonietta Di Giulio is a Senior Researcher at the University of Basel, Switzerland.
Michael Maniates is Professor of Social Science (Environmental Studies) at Yale-NUS College, Singapore.
Sylvia Lorek is Chair of the Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Germany, and Adjunct Professor in Consumer Economics at the University of Helsinki, Finland.
Antonia Graf is a Junior Professor of Global Environmental Governance at the University of Münster, Germany.
"This lively, reader-friendly book sets out the case for ‘consumption corridors’ – a novel route to enjoyable but sustainable lives for all of us in the rich world of the 2020s. It makes a compelling – almost obvious – case, clarifies the obstacles, and sketches a practical vision to propel us on the journey to ‘living well within limits’."
Ian Gough, Visiting Professor in CASE and Associate of GRI, London School of Economics, UK
"This book masterfully explains why sustainable limits, in the form of consumption corridors, are a central concept for addressing fundamental issues of justice and power, and to imagine workable pathways to a better future. Too often sustainability remains apolitical and vague: sustainable consumption corridors bring research into the reality we all need to transform."
Julia K. Steinberger, Professor of Societal Challenges of Climate Change, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
"Dominant understandings of sustainability over the past three decades have maintained a resolute fixation on efficiency improvements and individualized strategies of social change. These conceptions have also fetishized technological breakthroughs and underplayed the existence of biophysical limits. By placing sufficiency at the center of transformation, the notion of consumption corridors opens credible and equitable windows of opportunity for system innovation that can meaningfully engage all global citizens."
Maurie J. Cohen, Professor of Sustainability Studies, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
