Dear Colleagues,
Apologies for intruding into your Inbox, and for cross-postings. RIFS, the Research Institute for Sustainability <https://www.rifs-potsdam.de/en> , based in Potsdam, is hosting a conference from 3 - 5 December 2025 <https://www.rifs-potsdam.de/en/events/tough-conversations-tough-times> on “Tough Conversations in Tough Times.” One strand of the meetings will focus on consumption, especially on notions of sustainable consumption, sufficiency, and consumption corridors as they connect to issues of social justice and environmental degradation. Public conversation about how much is enough, the limitations of green growth, and the links between happiness, security and limits has always been difficult, though perhaps never so much as now, during this current moment of political upheaval and economic instability. How might scholars, practitioners, and advocates of sustainable consumption and linked concepts productively navigate these challenging times, in support of human and non-human flourishing? The conference will feature roundtables, panels, and informal conversations on several “tough conversations,” including a panel on “strategic springboards for consumption corridors,” which I am organizing. I’ve attached a description of the panel to this email and reprint it below. I’m on the hunt for potential participants. If this is something that interests you, or if you know of someone who might be interested, please drop me a note off-list. Much appreciated, and many thanks, Michael Michael F MANIATES Forthcoming: <https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-living-green-myth--9781509527465> The Living-Green Myth: The Promise and Limits of Lifestyle Environmentalism, Polity Press, 2025 Now available open access: Consumption Corridors: Living a Good Life Within Sustainable Limits, Routledge, 2021 Yale-NUS College, Singapore | Professor of Social Sciences, Environmental Studies | Inaugural Head of Environmental Studies (2013 – 2022, 2024) | Distinguished Teaching Award - 2021 | Convener, gep-ed (Environmental Studies Section, International Studies Association) | Web: <http://michaelmaniates.com> http://michaelmaniates.com | Senior Visiting Professor of Environmental Studies, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, 2011 – 2013 | Professor of Environmental Science and Political Science, Allegheny College, Meadville, PA, 1993 – 2013 | BS (University of California), MA, PhD (Energy and Resources, University of California) | Most people are eagerly groping for some medium, some way in which they can bridge the gap between their morals and their practices. --Saul Alinsky For the RIFS Conference “Tough Conversations in Tough Times” 3 - 5 December 2025 Michael Maniates [email protected] Strategic Springboards for Consumption Corridors Consumption corridors, which Fuchs et al. (2021) describe as “a space between minimum consumption standards that provide every individual with the ability to live a good life, and maximum consumption standards that keep individuals from consuming in quantities or ways that hurt others’ chances to do the same,” are a necessary and contentious component of any path to a better future. Necessary because of the social, ethical, and ecological violence arising from deeply asymmetrical and continuously expanding levels of consumption. And contentious because of resistance by vested interests that benefit from an economic logic of expansion and appropriation, supported by powerful narratives about the imperatives of growth and the efficacy of technological innovation. Efforts to overcome political and social opposition to consumption corridors will need to be strategically incremental, focusing on places and ways in which small wins and shrewd policy sequencing (e.g. Meckling et al. 2017) create positive feedback loops of expanding political support and policy implementation, echoing Levin et al.’s 2012 model of “applied forward reasoning.” No preliminary reconnaissance of these possible “places and ways” – where elements of consumption corridors are already supported, accepted, or pursued – yet exists in the scientific literature. This panel is conceived as a first step toward remedying this deficiency. Consumption corridors as currently theorized do not yet exist. But their precursors do, in the form of existing or emerging norms, participatory governance practices, specific consumption-focused policies and practices, larger institutional forms, and the like. Identifying these precursors, understanding their evolution and operation, and strategizing about appropriate interventions (research, advocacy, organizing, storytelling, etc.) to escalate their salience and power could produce potent springboards for robust corridors while dodging unnecessary political struggle. Fuchs, D., Sahakian, M., Gumbert, T., Di Giulio, A., Maniates, M., Lorek, S., & Graf, A. (2021). Consumption corridors: Living a good life within sustainable limits. Routledge Levin, K., Cashore, B., Bernstein, S., & Auld, G. (2012). Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change. Policy sciences, 45(2), 123-152. Meckling, J., Sterner, T., & Wagner, G. (2017). Policy sequencing toward decarbonization. Nature Energy, 2(12), 918-922. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "gep-ed" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/gep-ed/01b601dbe0e5%24cc7bce40%2465736ac0%24%40gmail.com.
RIFS - StrategicSpringboards.pdf
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