Reumo
Contemporary societies face encompassing challenges toward sustainable development, which include the role of national states in regulating the spheres of the globalized production and trade as well as the role of individuals in making choices and living their lives in hyper-consumerist contexts. The current guises of sustainable development have intricate relations with the market, in such a manner that the need for changes towards sustainability-oriented practices is more and more attributed to the patterns of production and consumption (Roy and Singh, 2017; Tukker et al., 2008).
Social innovations for sustainable consumption (SISC) have been increasing worldwide on the political and research agenda, and it seems to be common sense that the associated initiatives and projects, like sharing communities, housing or energy cooperatives or initiatives, which address natural resources’ saving and waste reduction, can make a valuable contribution to sustainable development (Boyko et al., 2017; Martin, 2016). SISC can play an essential role in alleviating consequences of high-income differences and unemployment rates as well as an inadequate social security system and public services, acting as “gap fillers” for specific issues (Schäfer et al., 2019). However, there is a danger of the initiatives to become overstrained by these tasks, which ought to be dealt with on a national scale and a variety of far-reaching political measures (Jaeger-Erben et al. 2015; Howaldt et al. 2016).
Some SISC strive to improve living conditions of societal groups that are affected by the social-ecological consequences of the current unsustainable modes of production and consumption (unfair global value chains, health risks because of toxic waste/ polluted cities, no access to the affordable transport, healthy food, etc.). Others try to establish alternatives to features or elements of the resource-intensive lifestyles of (mainly) middle-classes (Schäfer et al. 2019). While it seems somewhat plausible that those SISC, which are addressing middle-classes, can be established as business models with services that are paid for (e.g., rent a bike, car-sharing, co-working spaces), this is more difficult for those that are addressing socially deprived groups (Martin, 2016).
SISC are challenging current ways of production and consumption (Jaeger-Erben et al., 2015), and they hold the potential to contribute to environmental and social alternatives. However, it is questionable if (and to what extent) some of them contribute to all dimensions of sustainable development if their primary focus is on “greening” market-based social acting. That is especially the case for SISC, which closely relate to some lifestyles, notorious for externalizing their demand for working force and resource use – the so-called imperial modes of living (IML) (Brand and Wissen, 2017; 2018).
In this paper, we critically examine the role of the middle class in promoting social innovations for sustainable consumption (SISC). We propose a theoretical framework that explores how the middle class, despite their resource-intensive consumption patterns, can play a dual role in fostering sustainable consumption. On one hand, their higher consumption levels may pose challenges to sustainability due to greater resource use and environmental impact. On the other hand, the middle class is well-positioned to initiate and sustain social innovations through their economic capacity and ideological commitment to sustainability. By developing this theoretical proposition, we aim to deepen the understanding of how middle-class behaviors and values intersect with sustainable development goals, highlighting both the potential and the limitations of this demographic in driving meaningful change.