{"id":581,"date":"2017-08-17T08:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeaftercarbon.net\/?p=581"},"modified":"2018-03-20T20:59:04","modified_gmt":"2018-03-21T00:59:04","slug":"consumers-as-virtuous-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/2017\/08\/consumers-as-virtuous-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"Consumers as Virtuous Citizens?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cOur lifestyles, and their social and environmental consequences, should be the subject of serious public debate and policy, not left as a matter simply of individual taste and purchasing power. . . . Such a debate has to be bold and envisage different lifestyles and the concomitant changes to housing, transport and culture. It will need more people to remember that, as consumers, they are citizens and not just customers.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>With these words, distinguished historian Frank Trentmann draws his magisterial 2017 book, <em>Empire of Things<\/em>, to a close. The book\u2019s subtitle, <em>How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First<\/em>, describes Trentmann\u2019s ambition, which has global scope. He uncovers the historical roots of our modern consumer society, starting in the 1600s, partly by mining an enormous amount of data from an amazing array of sources, and partly by recognizing what came <em>before <\/em>it. A big shift occurred when wealthy Europeans in cities turned away from an idea that had guided previous generations, Aristotle\u2019s praise for the use of private wealth as, Trentmann says, \u201ca sign of civic virtue and pride in a community governed and defended by like-minded brave, propertied citizens. . . . The admired life was that if the active citizen who increased the splendor and strength of his city by erecting monumental buildings, commanding an army and sponsoring communal feasts and public works. Large-scale consumption was safe\u2014and could be enjoyed\u2014when it occurred in the pursuit of such public ends.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Citizen-consumers. Consumers as virtuous citizens\u2014taking responsibility for the social and ecological consequences of their consumption. A fantasy, perhaps, but as Trentmann&#8217;s project shows, what we feel and think about consumption, and the ways we consume, have not been fixed. They evolved and will continue to evolve.<\/p>\n<span class=\"et_bloom_bottom_trigger\"><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cOur lifestyles, and their social and environmental consequences, should be the subject of serious public debate and policy, not left as a matter simply of individual taste and purchasing power. . . . Such a debate has to be bold and envisage different lifestyles and the concomitant changes to housing, transport and culture. It will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,15,29,26,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-cirulareconomy","category-consumption-reduction","category-urban-transformation","category-zero-waste"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":582,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581\/revisions\/582"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in4c.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}