Law in Contemporary Society

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AmandaHungerford-SecondPaper 13 - 13 Apr 2008 - Main.AmandaHungerford
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Conspicuous Consumption and the Environmental Movement

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  • But work isn't leisure. To be seen working isn't going to catch on, for precisely the reasons Veblen gave. You've sensitively understood one of his subsidiary points while utterly mangling his central thesis.
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    • I was trying to suggest not that the environmental movement stress a different kind of work, but an activity more along the lines of sports (not work, and a conspicuously useless activity). I think my example of washing things by hand was a poor one which confused the issue, but I still think working in community gardens can be likened to sports. It's not really all that useful (you can't produce enough food to feed yourself in a community garden in which you labor for a couple of hours after work every day). Does the fact that something is produced still make it too useful? Can anyone think of an example of an environmental activity that is straight up leisure?
 Changing the focus from conspicuous consumption of goods to conspicuous consumption of time may not seem like a large change, but even seemingly small changes in the structure can have far-reaching effects (88). And, granted, hordes of people working in community gardens likely won't, on its own, eliminate global warming any more than hordes of people buying organic produce will. But in order to save the environment, the change in behavior away from consumptions of goods is a necessary one. At the very least, conspicuous leisure is a pretty good start.

*I don't mean to imply that conspicuous leisure ever left popular consciousness, but rather that it has taken a backseat to other forms of conspicuous consumption.


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Revision 12r12 - 12 Apr 2008 - 19:18:10 - EbenMoglen
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