Sustainable Consumption – Three Paradoxes

Abstract

Sustainable consumption is a field in transition, with limited agreement around organizing questions, key definitions, overarching frameworks and fundamental disciplinary traditions. The resulting dissonance complicates the collaboration and cumulative generation of knowledge typical of effec tive research communities. This dissonance emerges from the papers in this special issue of GAIA, which together illustrate three paradoxes that characterize the field: the primacy of the individual consumer, the counterproductive search for definitions, and limited theorizing about social change and a consequent retreat from power. Concerted struggle with these paradoxes can illuminate new approaches to defining and advancing the field, including those outlined in this essay.