Interrogating Alterity by Fuller Duncan; Jonas Andrew E. G.;

Author:Fuller, Duncan; Jonas, Andrew E. G.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2016-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

Growth of the VS ‘movement’

While it is difficult to estimate the scale of simple living as a ‘movement’ it is apparent that VS has taken significant hold in the US public imagination. An estimated one in four American adults are making the effort to simplify their lives through various forms of downshifting, reduced consumption or modified modes of remote or compressed working (Elgin 2000). Moreover, some 12 million American adults hold quite extreme New Age values which are typically associated with spiritual development through ‘un-consumption’ (Brown 1997; Huneke 2005). In the UK there is less enthusiasm for VS as a ‘movement’, beyond simply shopping less and/or more responsibly. This difference is evident in the greater proliferation of ‘simplicity circles’ (support groups) and self-help simple-living texts in the US. It is also evident in the way that some of the qualities of life VS seeks to realise (such as more time for leisure, shared family meals and restricted shop opening hours) are less of an issue in Western European societies (Etzioni 1998a, 627). Yet, if any country in Europe risks losing these qualities it is arguably the UK where it is a moot point whether the treadmill of long working hours and harriedness are any less an issue than they are in the US (Jarvis 2002; 2005a; Southerton 2003).

Notwithstanding the largely private nature of simple living there is a clearly discernable, if ‘diffuse’, social movement of VS which is quite distinct from historic background traits of frugality. Indeed, VS assumes a high degree of voluntarism (clearly identified in its name) which excludes would-be simplifiers from more disadvantaged settings. Craig-Lees and Hill (2002), for instance, differentiate between the motivation and outcome for VS households and those for whom reduced consumption is a matter of necessary cost-cutting.

Key to understanding the significance of VS as a diffuse social movement is recognition that it coincides with a more general and profound transformation of political engagement. Put simply, we can differentiate between ‘old style’ instrumental political movements (active engagement around trade unions and the strong content of manifestos and tracts) with a ‘new politics’ of consumer citizenship, of passive commitment both to cosmopolitanism and ‘good causes’ (Wynne and O’Connor 1998, 850). Contrasts can be made, for instance, between the private voluntarism behind ‘consumer-power’ and the public agitation of ‘people-power’, witnessed in response to Vietnam and Greenham Common in the 1970s and early 1980s. VS reflects a new generation of ‘virtual’ social movements whereby older socially mediated links have been eroded and lost to more fluid ‘states’ (through use of the internet as well as the dismantling of collective affiliations) (Chandler 2003). In this respect it is important to note that VS and consumer based expressions of ‘alterity’ are far less threatening to capitalism, and certainly less equitable, than previous modes of radical collective affiliation or direct action. It begs the question whether any form of opposition to the status quo which works with the grain of consumption practice (the logic of which is to boost capital

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