for SSCP KAN's Workshop in Annapolis, 2017

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Thinking about Social Change,
Halina Szejnwald Brown
Presentation at FutureEarth KAN Workshop, Annapolis, May 3, 2017
National economies in the growing number of countries – and by extension, social and political
peace – are profoundly dependent on private consumption and on growth. Therefore, those of us
who see reduced consumption as a necessary element of ecologically sustainable future, are
essentially asking for a major social change: a different economy, change in key institutions, a
culture and social practices in which consumerism would play a significantly diminished role,
the production sector focused more on delivering services and public goods and less on
consumer goods, and application of technological innovations in the service of less, rather than
more, consumption. That is a very big challenge.
Short of some major societal ruptures this process would most likely be, at least initially,
incremental. That means a variety of small-scale initiatives in the policy, business, and non-profit
and civil society realms. If such initiatives are to become real agents of change they all have to
have a directionality, so that the social and technical learnings thus produced will converge in a
consistent and powerful way. That necessitates that the proponents of such initiatives must
intentionally and thoughtfully keep in mind the broader context in which their projects operate.
Below I highlight 4 elements of this broader context that need to be kept in mind.
We need to think about macroeconomics. In the current economy national wealth as measured
by GDP is largely created through private consumption (70% in US, 60% in Germany). The
price we pay for that is (1) ecologically unsustainable demand for energy and materials, and (2)
lack of attention to the equity dimensions of this economic activity vis-a-vis the actual social
needs and well-being. In politics it matters less how the GDP is created and who benefits from it
than the fact that it is created at all. But our current and future societal needs demand an
economy that puts a priority on public investment and social spending: on healthcare, childcare,
education, less industrialized food production system, renewable technologies, and others.
Therefore, when considering specific policies and campaigns toward reducing consumption we
need to ask the following questions: Does it contribute to the necessary shift toward an economy
less dependent on consumption? Does it contribute to the necessary shift toward an economy that
reflects the current social needs: more public investment and social spending?
We need to account for the power of ideology, which is of course connected with the
preceding point. The neoliberal ideology delegated the job of improving the well-being of people
to the free market. In Karl Polanyi’s words, it facilitated the disembedding the economy from
society. The price we pay for it is the growing inequalities in income, wealth, access to services,
and in opportunities.
A case in point is the current interest in livable “smart” cities: walkable, dense, rich in amenities,
with public transportation, discouraging sprawl, economically thriving, and attractive to the so-

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called ‘creative classes’. In principle, this is ecologically and economically desirable. But leaving
the development of cities entirely to the market creates huge inequities. The very people who
kept these cities going during the years of neglect are being priced out of them.
We need to support these low and moderate income city inhabitants not only because it is fair
and just to do so but also because it is they, owing to their income, who have low ecological
footprint. (Here, I draw on the very well established absolute correlation between income and
ecological footprint). The solution is not, of course, to abandon the idea of livable cities but to
balance the market forces with investments in public amenities and alternative forms of housing
ownership, such as cooperatives and others. An example I like to give is Penn South
development in the Manhattan section of New York City. This is high-rise community of 8000
thousand people on low and moderate income in the midst of great wealth and high housing
prices. It was developed during the John Kennedy’s presidency by a labor unions for its
members. The labor union is gone but Penn South continues to thrive partly owing to the
continuing ideological commitment to social good, tax subsidies from the City, the fiscal model
of limited equity non-profit cooperative, and the democratic participatory governing structure.
Penn South is a truly sustainable community with a small footprint and low consumption,
serving the people who would otherwise be pushed out of the City. Activating such
developments requires challenging the neoliberal ideology. Beyond that, it is entirely within the
realm of possibilities.
We need to look at post-consumerism through the cultural lens. Cultural anthropologist
Cindy Isenhour, one of the contributors to our book, has taught me that culture evolves together
with the underlying economic structures and institutions in a particular historical and geographic
context. Take for example the cultural change that accompanied the rapid shift in the US, in the
years following the WW II, from cities to suburbs. This shift took place in no more than a single
generation, and had profound impacts on household consumption of goods and services and the
ecological footprint of an American family. More to the point, it created a host of new social
practices and new values and beliefs: the understandings of what good life is in a free,
democratic, and prosperous society.
What drove this cultural change? Largely, it was the need to find new civilian markets for the
enormously productive war-time industrial complex and to find employment for the returning
war veterans, in combination with the availability of cheap land and the particularly American
emphasis on autonomy and individualism. Through the cooperation of the government
(infrastructure, guaranteed interest-free loans, free education) and labor unions preoccupied with
increasing wages, and through the genius of the production and marketing industry, a whole new
cultural understanding of good life emerged, grounded in consumerism and anchored in the
sprawling and ecologically impactful suburbs and exurbs. And with it, a physical infrastructure, a
whole industry of housing construction and home decoration, and institutions – the mortgage
market, investment banking, financial speculations -- that perpetuate this cultural understanding
and which create huge barriers to change.

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This example shows that it is fruitless to call for “change in values” as we often hear. Rather, we
need to think about cultural change in tandem with a transformation in these fundamental
societal structures.
We need to think about ways to unleash the potential of technologic innovations. When
innovations in information technology gave rise to the so-called sharing economy, for a brief
period there was an intense interest in these new economic forms as potential social change
agents. The optimists hoped for a change in the culture of consumption and social relations, from
an emphasis on individualism and private consumption to more solidaristic and communal
forms. The hope was also for less material consumption. But, as Juliet Schor’s research has
shown, the power of free market ideology and incumbent institutions is such that these new
business models have quickly become reoriented into “platform-capitalism’ rather than “sharing
economy”, even among the proponents of social change (Uber, AirB&B). But the more socially-
oriented variants have not disappeared: Cooperatively owned car sharing services, tool libraries,
Makers’ Spaces are established niche activities, and bike sharing programs have been fabulously
successful world-wide. The point here is that new technologies can we channeled into the
service for social change but this needs to be a deliberate effort. It requires a simultaneous
harnessing of market forces and public policies and resources. Essentially, it requires a
recognition of the potential of emerging technological innovations to facilitate societal
objectives. The socio-technical transition framework is useful for conceptualizing these
processes. I will not delve any deeper into this topics today but would like to invite you to think
about the potential of self-driving cars to make suburban garages obsolete, to upend the
insurance industry, to facilitate retrofitting suburbia, and to change the culture of cars and
sprawl.
*******
Going back to Small Scale Initiatives. The world is abuzz with small scale innovations in the
key types of provisioning systems (food, housing, mobility, leisure). These are inspiring
initiatives, some even leading to lower ecological impacts or less consumerism. But to a sober
observer it is clear that these initiatives, by themselves, do not have the power to affect major
social change. The question is often asked: ‘how to scale up or replicate’ these experiments. But
I think that it would be more appropriate to ask: “How to take advantage of the larger scale
social, political or technological processes and changes to enable them to grow and challenge the
incumbent systems? How to create the conditions under which the social and technical learning
that emerges from these small scale experiments alter the mainstream?”
I argued in my opening remarks that small scale initiatives need to be given a direction by
designing them in the context of four frames I described. But that is not enough. We also need to
recognize and take advantage of windows of opportunity. Here, I draw on the work of prominent
sociologist Erik Olin Wright who argues in favor of nurturing novel modes of social organization
in the fractures of the dominant system. While not threatening the incumbent institutions and
power relations, these may provide the ground work for future more radical social
transformations by providing the vision, social and technical learning, and building social
capital. Emily Huddard-Kennedy, one of the contributors in our book, provides an instructive

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example in the “eat-local” movement in Canada. The movement has traditionally been
determinedly non-political. But its leadership increasingly recognizes that it creates great
inequities (the $4 tomato) and is limited in its growth capacity. To overcome these impediments
the ‘eat-local’ movement must confront the powerful incumbent system of food production,
including the design of government subsidies and the economics of food production, distribution
and retail. These leaders are ready to reframe the eat-local movement as a political agent and,
given an opportunity, to link with other challengers of the dominant food system, such as the
public health, social justice and environmental communities.
In short, I am talking about deliberate harmonized and consistent framing of small scale
initiatives as potential change agents, given a window of opportunity. What can provide such
windows of opportunity? The list can be long. Below I identify some possibilities.
It could be a social movements against, for example, the growing unemployment and
underemployment and the need it creates to turn toward the caring and educational sector for
economic opportunities. To draw again on Karl Polanyi, this would be a second movement
emerging in response to the excesses of the first movement, namely, the free market.
Or it could come from a challenge to the industrial food production system from the public
health sector fighting against obesity and diabetes, or from an acute public health disaster, such
as another mad-cow disease outbreak, or from the environmental advocates concerned about the
dangers of pesticides and other food production’s externalities.
Or it may come from protests from professionally-minded millennials who are interested in
urban life but are priced out of the gentrifying cities.
Or it could come from the economic interests which see financial opportunities in retrofitting the
failing deep suburbs in the US or in bringing economic life into the declining post-industrial
cities.
Or it could come from technological innovations, such as self-driving cars, which might make
suburban garages obsolete, facilitate the re-examination of land-use policies, and address the
frustrations arising from choking traffic.
Final observation. The opportunities on which the small scale initiatives might thrive and grow
are in the domain of social policies, not generally understood as directly relevant to reducing
consumption. That means that the sustainable consumption researchers and activists must form
alliances with social change advocates in other domains such as, for example, the New Economy
Coalition, Solidarity Economy, the Public Health community, the Livable Cities community, and
others.