ABSTRACT
We opened Challenging Consumption by making the case that while attention to matters of sustainable consumption had certainly gained momentum within academia, industry and diverse policy arenas, efforts to reconfigure the uneven and unsustainable patterns of global consumption faced considerable challenges. In particular, the danger of perpetuating, rather than questioning, established ways of thinking about and measuring (un)sustainable consumption was highlighted as a critical issue for sustainable consumption researchers and their audiences. In this, our concluding chapter, we briefly summarise key themes from the preceding chapters before setting out our thoughts on how to keep up the momentum and improve sustainable consumption research. Based on key outcomes from CONSENSUS, we make the case for future work that is much more cognisant of variations in (un)sustainable consumption practices across space and over time as well as the potential of diverse groups and organisations, including communities, social entrepreneurs and businesses, to research, interpret and shape these practices.
