Encounters with the Arch-Consumers
Abstract
10.1177/1086026603256301REVIEW ORGANIZATION & ENVIRONMENT / December 2003Rands / ARCH-Consumers Book Review Essay ENCOUNTERS WITH THE ARCH-CONSUMERS GORDON P. RANDS Western Illinois University John de Graaf, David Wann, and Thomas H. Naylor. Affluenza: The All- Consuming Epidemic. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001. Thomas Princen, Michael Maniates, and Ken Conca (Eds.). Confronting Con- sumption. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. In 1997, public awareness of consumption expanded with the airing on PBS of Affluenza! (de Graaf & Boe, 1997), which highlighted the negative impacts of con- sumption on the environment, as well as its social, psychological, and economic impacts on children, families, and communities. A year later, PBS aired Escape from Affluenza (de Graaf & Boe, 1998), which focused on the voluntary simplicity movement (VSM) as one potential"cure" for the "disease"of affluenza. Since then, numerous popular and academic books and articles have explored various issues related to high consumption in the United States. Two recent additions to this literature are Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epi- demic and Confronting Consumption. The two books address many of the same specific phenomena, cite many of the same sources, and are dedicated to the same individual (the late environmental scientist and activist Donella Meadows1). But the audience,