ABSTRACT
With globalisation, consumers (whether a dependent child, mother and homemaker, male or female worker, farmer, old-age pensioner) and end-of-chain buyers of goods made around the world must take on a new responsibility. They become ‘consom’actors’ (active consumers), as some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) put it. It may appear strange, after denouncing economism and development (Latouche, 2003), to see us ‘rehabilitate’ the consumer, even consumption, even if they are critical. Consumerism effectively participates fully in the growth society that is responsible for the social, intergenerational and ecological injustice that spans the globe. There is no growth in production without unlimited growth in consumption sparked by all possible means, especially by the systematic manipulation of the consumer. The growth society may effectively be defined as a society that is dominated by a growth economy and lets itself be swallowed up by the economy. Growth for the sake of growth, through consumption, thus becomes the primordial, if not the only, goal in life. Now, such a society is not sustainable, because it exceeds the planet’s carrying capacity and bumps up against the limits of the biosphere’s finiteness, never mind the intolerable injustice that it engenders. So, after denouncing the farce of the market democracy, I propose to underline the challenge of responsible consumption, to explore the limits of Fair Trade, and finally to look at the paradox of deliberate simplicity.
