Sustainability: Issues of Scale, Care and Consumption
| Author | Deirdre Shaw,Andreas Chatzidakis |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12292 |
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
British Journal of Management, Vol. 29, 299–315 (2018)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12292
Sustainability: Issues of Scale, Care
and Consumption
Andreas Chatzidakis and Deirdre Shaw1
School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham TW20 0EX, UK and 1Adam Smith
Business School, University of Glasgow, Gilbert Scott Building, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Corresponding author email: andreas.chatzidakis@rhul.ac.uk
This paper investigates how consumers interested in sustainability are aected by con-
flicts in caring and scale. Contrasting previous emphasis relating scale to production,the
paper illustrates how scale influences consumption and social reproduction,including con-
sumers’ more concrete preoccupations with caring about and for themselves, significant
others and, not least, the planet. The paper makes threecontrib utions to the nascent man-
agement literature in this field. First, it illustrates how scalar logics at urban through to
global levels influence seemingly micro-social routine consumption decisions. Second, it
develops an approach that emphasizes the scale-sensitivity of consumer decision-making
around sustainability and the conflicts inherent in caring. Third, it addresses critiques of
current studies preoccupied with processes of production rather than social reproduction
and illustrates the critical role that consumption playsin the social construction of scales.
Based on these findings, we argue that policy promoting sustainability may be misplaced
in that it does not suciently acknowledge how people’sconsumption and caring decisions
are nested in relational and spatial contexts.
Introduction
Sustainability is a critical issue in management,
having serious implications for the competitive-
ness and survival of organizations (e.g. Akhtar
et al., 2018; Lubin and Esty, 2010) and, ultimately,
the survival of human and non-human life. A
principal challenge to sustainability is overcon-
sumption (e.g. Carley and Spapens, 2017; Gao
and Tian, 2016; Rijsberman, 2017); what Pretty
et al. (2007) describe as ‘the consumption tread-
mill’. Some work has started to explore the po-
tential of care in guiding a more sustained shift in
consumption that will address individual, commu-
nity and environmental needs (e.g. Shaw, McMas-
ter and Newhom, 2016; Shaw et al., 2017; Sheth,
Sethia and Srinivas, 2011). Such a shift has trans-
formative potential across the multiple identities
The authors would like to thank Dr Matthew Allen for
his assistance during data collection and Mr Joe Hearty
for his help with the diagrams.
and contexts of the consumer, both locally and
globally. Current research, however, has largely fo-
cused on the level of the individual (e.g. Black and
Cherrier, 2010; Shaw, McMaster and Newhom,
2016), with some, but less, attention to familial
relations (Heath et al., 2016).
Related scholarship on scale has tended to focus
on capital accumulation and production, while
neglecting social reproduction and consumption
(e.g. Marston, 2000). Sustainability is understood,
experienced and shaped by social contexts at
the level of the individual, home, urban and
wider national and global society. Thus, social
reproduction and consumption are critical to
the positioning of care in sustainability. Under-
standing ‘who cares’ requires an understanding of
diering political and sociocultural constructions
and interpretations of care. Care in sustainable
consumption choices may be subject to conflict-
ing care relations across multiple levels (Shaw
et al., 2017). Such conflicts have the potential to
be transformative and can change the role and
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2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
300 A. Chatzidakis and D. Shaw
significance of specific scales, assert the signifi-
cance of others and have the potential to generate
new scales with an impact on power relations
across multiple stakeholders (Swyngedouw, 1997).
Drawing on 22 in-depth interviews with con-
sumers, we illustrate how ordinary consumption1
can be understood as a realm with conflicting
landscapes of care or ‘caringscapes’ (Milligan and
Wiles, 2010; Popke, 2006; Smith, 1998) that are
both constituted by and constitutive of their scalar
context. In doing so, our contribution is threefold.
First, we illustrate how the seemingly micro-social
scale of ordinary sustainable consumption is
fundamentally intertwined with scalar logics func-
tioning at domestic, urban, national and global
levels. Second, we corroborate a more nuanced,
scale-sensitive approach to consumer agency and
sustainable action that recognizes both the struc-
tural constraints of ordinary consumption and
its capacity to contribute towards, and transform,
sustainability initiatives beyond the scale of the
home and domesticity. Third, we elaborate on the
social construction of scales within the realm of
consumption.
The following section outlines the relation-
ships between sustainability, care and scale. Sub-
sequently, the paper details our methods and
reports and discusses our findings, identifying dis-
tinctive scalar levels.We then conclude and outline
managerial implications.
Sustainability, care and scale
While sustainability is a contested concept
(Dobson, 1996), it is popularly defined in terms
of balancing economic, social and environmental
impacts (Elkington, 1997) with a view to meeting
the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their
needs (World Commission on Environment and
Development, 1987). With environmental prob-
lems, such as global warming, now dangerously
close to agreed upper limits, climate change is one
of the most serious threats to our lives (McKie,
2016). Established evidence points to the role of
1By employing the term ‘ordinary consumption’, we re-
fer to the more taken-for-granted and mundane, as op-
posed to the ‘more spectacular and visual aspects of con-
temporary consumer behaviour’ thatare often associated
with postmodernism consumption (following Gronow
and Warde, 2001: 3).
human activity in depleting natural resources and
causing environmental harm, creating long-term
and irreversible eects (Abraham, 2016). Despite
the political and cultural complexity, much of the
popular discourse on sustainability and climate
change positions responsibility at the level of
individual consumers charged with making more
sustainable lifestyle choices (Jones, 2010).
Accordingly, significant research eort has gone
into seeking to explain the gap between stated so-
cial and environmental concerns and behaviour
(e.g. Caruana, Carrington and Chatzidakis, 2016).
Similarly, research has sought to profile con-
cerned consumers (e.g. Peattie, 2001; Straughan
and Roberts, 1999), to identify the values salient
to positive environmental actions (e.g. de Groot,
Schubert and Thøgersen, 2016; Sangroya and
Nayak, 2017) which can be utilized in consumer
awareness-raising campaigns (e.g. Morrison and
Beer, 2017) and the uptake of more sustainable
market alternatives (e.g. Fuentes and Fuentes,
2017; Haucke,2017; Spendrup, Hunter and Isgren,
2016). Implicit is that the impetus for change lies
very much with the individual consumer. This can
be challenged, as it assumes sovereign consumers
and ignores the structural environmentthat can of-
ten constrain sustainable behaviours (e.g. Carring-
ton, Zwick and Neville, 2016) and which arguably
facilitates the failure of public policy to adequately
address the environmental crisis (Black, Shaw and
Trebeck,2016). This includes well-documented ex-
amples of ‘greenwashing’ (e.g. Lane, 2016; Lyon
and Montgomery, 2013; Nurse, 2016) which act
as further barriers to positive action through con-
sumer confusion and a breakdown in trust (e.g.
Chen and Chang, 2013).
Despite this, consumers do have a central role
and overconsumption is still cited as the greatest
challenge to sustainability (Pretty et al., 2007). Sig-
nificant emphasis has been placed on the need to
redirect consumer behaviour as a critical response
to the environmental challenge (e.g. Carlisle and
Hanlon, 2007; Schor, 2005; Sheth, Sethia and
Srinivas, 2011; Soron, 2010). Brown (2009: 266),
in proposing ‘what you and I can do’, highlights
the importance of individual agency, suggesting
that consumers should not underestimate what
they can achieve at individual, political and global
scales.This highlights the need to understand more
deeply consumers and their activities not as sep-
arate, atomized and outright ‘individualist’ (e.g.
Miller, 2012), but in relation to the multiple scales
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