Growing Ourselves to Death? Economic and Ecological Crises, the Growth of Waste, and the Role of the Media and Cultural Industries

Abstract

Since the financial crash of 2008, large sectors of capitalist economies have been enveloped by a crisis that is typically represented by media discourses in purely economic and financial terms. However, the crisis is also ecological. Yet, while media discourses frequently embrace and propose small-scale environmental remedies, it is rarely pointed out that such calls stand at odds with the consumer capitalist system under which the media industries operate. Adopting a ‘business as usual’ approach to consumption, the media industries encourage the public to shop their way out of recession, despite crippling austerity measures that have been imposed on them. This is in the face of an unprecedented ecological crisis which is now largely accepted as due to anthropogenic factors. In light of this ecological crisis, continued growth-based economic paradigms are increasingly deemed unsustainable. Yet frequently, media discourse uncritically takes growth and waste as two aspects of an unchanging and necessary paradigm. Against this backdrop of economic and ecological crises this paper draws on a set of critical cross-disciplinary literature from Harvey's political economy, to Foster and Moore's political ecology to Baran and Sweezy on waste, through to Adorno, Bourdieu and Garnham, to identify and engage with the strategic role of the media. It outlines crisis theories of economy and ecology, moving on to discuss crucial, if neglected aspects of the role of the media and cultural industries with respect to these crises. This paper advances the view that the role of the media in construction of norms with respect to consumption practices and waste is of significance and arguably needs to be incorporated into crisis theory of both economy and ecology.