CHALLENGING CONSUMERISM: TOWARD LIVING WELL SUSTAINABLY
The 3rd Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI) workshop took place from March 8-10, 2012 at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
To view the FINAL REPORT of the workshop please click here: SCORAI report 9 & 10 March 2012_FINAL.pdf.
To view the AGENDA or download the papers and powerpoint presentations: https://scorai2012.wordpress.com/agenda/
To see the list of PARTICIPANTS: https://scorai2012.wordpress.com/participants/
Linking researchers and practitioners, the theme was:
Challenging consumerism: toward living well sustainably
This workshop had three objectives:
(1) To deepen the knowledge base of how systemic changes toward a more sustainable society can take place;
(2) To assemble the empirical findings from local practices in sustainable well-being that are being demonstrated in localities across North America and internationally;
(3) To examine the above findings through the lenses of critical theory, policy making, business strategy, technology assessment, sustainability education, and others, with an eye toward identifying those that have potential for mainstreaming and promoting systemic change.
Questions being addressed include:
- Is there evidence that long-lived examples of alternatives actually reduce material throughput per capita?
- What has been accomplished so far in terms of consumption, lifestyles changes and institutional and political shifts? If not much, why not? If a lot, why are they not going viral?
- What are the barriers and opportunities to build on these initiatives, create synergies, and diffuse to mainstream practices, policies and institutions?
- What new conceptual understandings are emerging from the accumulating experience?
- How can these emerging understandings inform theory development, policy debate and foster systemic change?
Invited practitioners and researchers engaged in work that speaks to these issues participated in the two-day workshop (agenda; participants). Researchers presented their papers on day one (see the call for proposals from November 2011).
With thanks to the conference partners for their generous financial and in kind support.
scorai2012.wordpress.com 