Juliet Schor: Harvard and Boston academic, economist on permaculture, transition, cooperatives etc, what she calls Plenitude

In Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, economist and bestselling author Juliet B. Schor offers a groundbreaking intellectual statement about the economics and sociology of ecological decline, suggesting a radical change in how we think about consumer goods, value, and ways to live.

Humans are degrading the planet far faster than they are regenerating it. As we travel along this shutdown path, food, energy, transport and consumer goods are becoming increasingly expensive. The economic downturn that has accompanied the ecological crisis has led to another type of scarcity: incomes, jobs, and credit are also in short supply. Our usual way back to growth — a debt-financed consumer boom — is no longer an option our households, or planet, can afford.

Responding to our current moment, Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead it’s an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living, individuals and the country as a whole can actually be better off and more economically secure.

And as Schor observes, Plenitude is already emerging. In pockets around the country and the world, people are busy creating lifestyles that offer a way out of the work and spend cycle. These pioneers’ lives are scarce in conventional consumer goods and rich in the newly abundant resources of time, information, creativity and community. Urban farmers, D.I.Y renovators, Craig’s List users, cob builders — all are spreading their risk and establishing novel sources of income and outlets for procuring consumer goods. Taken together, these trends represent a movement away from the conventional market and offer a way toward an efficient, rewarding life in an era of high prices and traditional resource scarcity.

Based on recent developments in economic theory, social analysis, and ecological design, as well as evidence from the cutting edge people and places putting these ideas into practice, Plenitude is a road map for the next two decades. In encouraging us to value our gifts — nature, community, intelligence, and time — Schor offers the opportunity to participate in creating a world of wealth and well-being.

Juliet Schor: Plenitude from toddboyle on Vimeo.

Juliet Schor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Juliet Schor is a Professor of sociology at Boston College. She studies trends in working time and leisure, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women’s issues and economic justice. She received her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University and her Ph.D in economics from the University of Massachusetts. Before joining Boston College, she taught at Harvard University for 17 years, in the Department of Economics and the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies. In 2006 she was awarded the Leontief Prize by the Global Development and Environment Institute. She has two children who currently reside in Newton with her, Krishna and Sulakshana. She authored:

• Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child
• The New Consumer Culture
• The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure [1993]
• The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer [1999]
• Do Americans Shop too Much?
• Plentitude [2010]

She co-edited:

• The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience
• The Consumer Society Reader
• Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century

External links

• Boston College faculty listing
• The Overworked American, excerpt
• Transcript of interview with Time.com about The Overspent American, May, 1998