Policy-making in relation to sustainable development is usually at the national (or, in relation to climate change, the global) level, yet the consumption it seeks to modify takes place at the household level. If households all ‘made ends meet’ in the same way then the much-relied upon notion of per capita consumption would be valid and we could rely on ‘top-down’ modelling to guide policy. Cultural Theory, however, predicts that there are five socially viable ways of making ends meet, and that all of them will be found (in varying proportions) within any nation. This prediction has been tested on a sample of 220 British households and shown to be well supported. Top-down modelling, it is argued, has to give way to a constructive interplay between the reflexive policy-maker and a plurally responsive citizenry.
[1]
R. Putnam.
Tuning In, Tuning Out: The Strange Disappearance of Social Capital in America
,
1995,
PS: Political Science & Politics.
[2]
M. V. Asselt,et al.
Uncertainty in perspective
,
1996
.
[3]
Security and Solidarity: an anti-reductionist framework for thinking about the relationship between us and the rest of nature
,
1997
.
[4]
M. Thompson.
The New World Disorder: Is Environmental Security the Cure?
,
1998
.
[5]
P. Ehrlich,et al.
IMPACT OF POPULATION GROWTH
,
1971,
Science.
[6]
M. Douglas,et al.
The World of Goods
,
2021
.
[7]
Michael Thompson,et al.
Rubbish Theory: The Creation and Destruction of Value
,
1979
.
[8]
M. Thompson.
Cultural Theory and integrated assessment
,
1997
.