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Juliet Schor Speaks on "New Consumerism" |
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John Joseph Moakley Award for Distinguished Public Service Presented to Thomas J. White |
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Interfaith Community Gathers at First Annual UMass Boston Prayer Breakfast |
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CM's Senior Executive Leadership Forum: Managing Exceptional Growth--The EMC Story |
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Research and Sponsored Programs Office Announces Quarterly Awards |
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Juliet Schor Speaks on "New Consumerism" as part of Earth Day Festivities |
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Earth Day activities continued at UMass Boston on April
20 in Wheatley Hall's Snowden Auditorium, where Harvard
faculty member and best-selling author Juliet Schor
presented a sobering lecture entitled "Consumption Patterns
and Environmental Degradation: Beyond Work and Spend." Schor
is an economist, a senior lecturer in women's studies at
Harvard, a '99 Guggenheim fellow, and the author of The
Overworked American and The Overspent American. Her
hour-long lecture focused on a movement over the past twenty
years toward greater use of luxury goods, specifically in
America.
The "keeping up with the Joneses" trend so well-known in the '50s has been warped into "keeping up with the jet-set crowd." What people perceive they need in order to exist in today's society has led to what Schor called "McMansions," in other words "the mass production of very large houses." While the square footage of homes is increasing, average family size is decreasing. There are fewer people living in bigger houses, creating much more consumer waste. Other forms of consumption have risen as well. Schor said that the estimated consumption in one week per American individual is equivalent to 300 shopping bags. That figure includes the often neglected resources (e.g., water and lumber) needed to create the goods that we consume.
Schor refers to this change in perception as a "new consumerism" or an "upscaling in people's sense of need." There are societal shifts that Schor links to this new consumerism, such as women moving into the workplace, an increase in television viewing, and