Going Green: The Process of Lifestyle Change

This article draws on 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews of three groups of people who restrict their consumption in various ways: voluntary simplifiers, religious environmentalists, and green home owners. I identify common patterns in the emergence of green lifestyles across all groups. Green p...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological forum (Randolph, N.J.) N.J.), 2012-03, Vol.27 (1), p.94-116
Main Author: Lorenzen, Janet A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Action theory
Consumption
Decisions
Ecological sustainability
Ecology
Environment
Environmental conservation
Environmental problems
Environmental sociology
Environmentalism
Environmentally sensitive products
green
Human ecology and demography
Interviews
Life styles
Lifestyle
Narratives
Natural resources
policy
Pragmatism
Renewable energy
Sociology
Sociology of Culture
sustainable
Sustainable agriculture
Sustainable technology
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This article draws on 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews of three groups of people who restrict their consumption in various ways: voluntary simplifiers, religious environmentalists, and green home owners. I identify common patterns in the emergence of green lifestyles across all groups. Green practices are not isolated decisions or actions, but components in an ongoing project. As a result, green lifestyles are often experienced as both a work in progress and a provisionally coherent life narrative. Furthermore, I explore bricolage, the cobbling together of resources at hand by nonexperts, as a mechanism for lifestyle change and expand the concept to include environmental practices and themes. I adopt a pragmatist perspective to understand lifestyle change as a deliberate process undertaken in response to a problem left under addressed by current policies and practices. This article also weighs in on the debate in the sociology of culture over how culture influences action.
ISSN:0884-8971
1573-7861
DOI:10.1111/j.1573-7861.2011.01303.x