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. 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. Urban farmers, D. 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. 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. Get A Copy. Hardcover , pages. More Details Other Editions Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about Plenitude , please sign up. This may be a good contribution to the 'degrowth' debate..
See 1 question about Plenitude…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Nov 26, Keith Akers rated it really liked it. Plenitude argues for an "ecological economics" which turns a lot of what we think about wealth upside down. I agree with many of her basic ideas, but a number of details left me uncomfortable.
Schor argues for a view of wealth or "plenitude" which values four things: time, "self-provisioning" self-reliance , "true materialism" conserving the environment on which the economy depends , and investments in relationships. Her basic insight is quite important: despite having a lot of "things," we ar Plenitude argues for an "ecological economics" which turns a lot of what we think about wealth upside down.
Her basic insight is quite important: despite having a lot of "things," we are facing planetary destruction in the form of climate change, species extinction, and depleting natural resources. Another factor which does show up on the balance sheets — knowledge — is arbitrarily limited by law relating to patents and copyrights.
Advanced technology, leisure, and deepened relationships with our neighbors and our communities will leave us better off than we are today. Schor discusses many environmental issues clearly of great relevance.
She discusses the limits to growth, ecological footprint, the failure of conventional economics, and the Jevons paradox which she calls the "rebound effect". She vigorously condemns "business as usual" economics.
If we learned to share more, we would not only strengthen community but also achieve environmental efficiencies. This is a valuable book well worth reading. She never discusses alternatives to the Gross Domestic Product GDP which ecological economists have proposed as means of measuring wealth. Ecological economists often attack the GDP. For example, if someone gets cancer, then it is good for the economy because it increases GDP. It provides employment for doctors, surgeons, and their medical staff.
Others talk about the "gross national happiness" or "genuine progress indicators," in which hailstorms and cancer are problems and not benefits. Even though all of this research supports her case, she never mentions it.
She seems to lose her stomach for the "limits to growth" thesis as the book progresses and the concept winds up somewhat vague.
Does "limits to growth" mean that our standard of living — by any measure — will decline, stabilize, or grow? Is it possible that intensive growth increases in efficiency, as opposed to increase in resource consumption would be so dramatic that GDP or the ISEW would still increase? All of this is left unclear. She seems to be willing to let the reader think that "green economic growth" is really possible, or at least that our standard of living will stabilize by some measure or other.
There is little or no discussion of policy changes or political and social issues that need to be resolved. For example, should we reform the monetary and banking system which many people argue is promoting economic growth? Will renewable energy leave us with a lower material standard of living? What about policies such as cap and trade to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to limit resource depletion?
What about a progressive income tax, or a "basic annual income" guarantee, to reduce the rampant inequality in the U. She does suggest that working fewer hours will mean that more people will have jobs albeit with fewer hours , but this "job sharing" idea is a very different from the basic annual income or the progressive income tax.
There is scarcely any mention at all of vegetarianism or of food issues more generally. By eating vegetarian or vegan, we dramatically lower our resource use and at the same time improve our nutritional status. But none of this is discussed. Two of her key points seem to cancel each other out.
Part of the idea of "plenitude" is "self-provisioning. She believes that we can quantify the economic costs of ecological destruction. This is not just a question of missing details or a vaguely stated thesis, but something which is actually wrong. To fully explain what is wrong here would probably require a separate essay, but here goes my quick explanation. The environment is not part of the human economy; the human economy is part of the environment.
What could be the harm of speaking of the economic value of the environment? The basic problem is one of circularity when you get down to quantifying things. If we speak of the true economic value of oil, for example, we would have to value its services in an economy which.
The true value of oil, in this analysis, will turn out to be worth, well, whatever it is worth. There are ways of trying to get around this paradox, say by calculating the worth of oil in other terms: natural gas or the number of horses that could provide an equivalent amount of power, for example.
Whenever you tried to "do the math" you get wrapped up in circularities. This can also lead to ludicrous conclusions. For example, what is the economic damage caused by climate change?
Some years ago, a study concluded that the effect of climate change on the U. To see why this is ludicrous, imagine that climate change were so serious that it completely wiped out all agriculture, but left the rest of the economy intact. The truth of the matter is that we have to decide what kind of world we want to live in.
For example, it might be, 5 billion people living on a "European" standard of living, or it might be 1 billion people on a vegan diet. But whatever we come up with, we then have to shape our economy — the accounting system that we use to decide how well individuals and society are doing — on the basis of this vision. The whole idea of "cap and trade" is based on this insight. Yes, the version of cap and trade in Congress a couple of years ago was so ludicrous that it was not even worth debating, but the basic idea is sound.
We set limits on the amount of carbon, methane, etc. And strictly enforce it. We set limits on the amount of soil erosion, groundwater depletion, and so forth, which is tolerable in the long run, and then ration out the ability to till the soil or use groundwater. Schor has done a good job of describing some of the aspects of this future life — a vision I share, by the way.
However, circumstances also demand radical new social and political policies, which will leave not a single aspect of human life on the planet nor a single individual untouched.
Someone needs to be talking about these policies and about what kind of planet, in the end, we want to live on and how and whether we can get there.
View all 6 comments. Dec 21, Malcolm rated it really liked it Shelves: political-economy , marxism-and-the-left. One of our current major problems on the Left is that we, for the most part, have a poor grasp of economics, partly because economic debates have become excessively econometric so get bogged down in arcane number crunching, partly because we spent many years in struggles based around identity and cultural politics, partly because economics as a field of work has been overtaken by not just neoclassical economics but by neoliberal economics.
As a result, someone like Juliet Schor is all too rare i One of our current major problems on the Left is that we, for the most part, have a poor grasp of economics, partly because economic debates have become excessively econometric so get bogged down in arcane number crunching, partly because we spent many years in struggles based around identity and cultural politics, partly because economics as a field of work has been overtaken by not just neoclassical economics but by neoliberal economics.
As a result, someone like Juliet Schor is all too rare in debates and whose interventions are therefore always worthwhile, even when I disagree. Schor is a social democratic economist whose work draws on Keynesian, Marxist and other unpopular sources of concepts but who has at the centre of her analyses critiques of finance capital and fictitious capital.
In her previous work she has looked at the moral pressure to work increasingly long hours, the dangers of and pressures leading to excessive consumption and the marketization and commercialisation of childhood. In this book she cuts to the chase to explore sustainability economics and in doing so draws on key elements of the other three popular-audience titles.
So much of what I see about sustainability economics seems to rely on one of two options: either a technological fix or a back to nature, hairshirted restraint.
One is a science fantasy option where all of a sudden we discover a new piece of technology that solves all our problems dammit, where did I leave those dilithium crystals? Neither is feasible, and then neither are many of the slight retooling of capitalism proposals. In short, she has built a clearly argued and rigorous case for downshifting: working less, making more, knowing more about where our stuff comes from while having less of it and restoring investments in communities, so in a sense sharing more.
This, she argues, is the only viable alternative to business as usual BAU economics. The argument is conventionally structured. Two chapters set up the problem — a consumer boom in the post-war era that has taken us close ecological destruction, backed up by a return to and reanalysis of the argument that there are limits to growth. She then shifts tone to focus on the four principles of plenitude: 1. Along with this optimistic outlook she takes the discussion beyond the common approach to focus on technology and resources and the limit and solution, to a focus on knowledge.
Throughout, she draws on mainstream as well as critical economic and sociological evidence, using the orthodox against itself. It is easy for us to sneer, suspecting that this is little more than a Whole Earth Catalogue for the 21st century, but without the pictures.
Across The Netherlands a series of small community shop front centres run repair services for local communities, for free — local residents with skills give a few hours a week each to repair home appliances, equipment and so forth. In other places, entire communities have taken on these kinds of ideas — in Chiapas in southern Mexico the Zapatistas went to war against the Mexican state to secure their autonomy and run their lives on similar ideas. A recent book by Dan Hancock, The Village Against the World , is turning out to be a very popular study of a collective village in Andalusia.
Will it work? This is one of those books that inspires and deserves our attention in our everyday life as well as in our more rigorous efforts to build new ways of being and doing. Apr 15, Leigh rated it really liked it Shelves: nonfiction , second-project. This is so hard to rate. It basically tries to be three books in one: an economics monograph that exposes the fallacies and dangers of neoliberal trade-off economics; a lifestyle guide that advocates for improving our lives by changing how we consume, produce, and otherwise interact with the market and the environment; and an environmentalist argument for the free circulation of knowledge.
These are all critically important projects, with life-and-death stakes; but the unfocused format means tha This is so hard to rate. These are all critically important projects, with life-and-death stakes; but the unfocused format means that each section gets the short shrift, and it really decreases the impact that this book could have had. Schor exposes how insanely ideological the mainstream schools of economics are at a fundamental, methodological level. The tendency in economics to over-simplify, to create models that leave out obvious variables, and to flatly ignore counter-evidence, all in blind loyalty to market ideology, is astounding.
No other academic discipline could do such sloppy work and call it scientific. Schor demonstrates what should be obvious--that the economic cost of preventing or ameliorating climate change are negligible compared to the cost of climate change itself; nevertheless, we continue to make Earth-killing decisions based on flawed and extremely short-term economic thinking. The second part of the book is focused more on lifestyle considerations: the takeaway is that living sustainably by re-thinking consumption and shifting toward self-sufficiency will improve not only the environment but also our own happiness.
It's a good thing I was already convinced of this, because this book is not all that persuasive. But the concept of "plenitude" is so vague and encompasses such a wide range of practices that it ends up losing all meaning by the end; this book needed to spend more time establishing and defending this term in order to make it rhetorically effective. Schor also spends whole paragraphs and pages listing and explaining green initiatives that exist: Freecycle!
Tiny Houses! Passive heat! Community gardens! Which feels kind of facile. The final chapter is on the free circulation of information and explains how knowledge exchange is absolutely critical for the future of the planet.
This was new for me, and feels revolutionary; I've always been against intellectual property, but sometimes I have trouble articulating why, and this chapter turned on all kinds of lightbulbs. Our planet can't survive unless the knowledge developed by tech firms, pharmacological companies, energy researchers, etc becomes accessible for learners and makers at all levels; another argument for libraries!
And piracy, tbh. I do recommend this book because the economic analysis at the beginning, and the intellectual property argument at the end, are both innovative, new, and crazy important. The lifestyle section falters in execution, but is still a good introduction to important ideas; to get a full picture you'd need to supplement with other sources -- my favorites are Movement Matters: Essays on Movement Science, Movement Ecology, and the Nature of Movement by Katy Bowman, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery, and any and everything written by Mr.
In short hah! Jan 06, MaryJo rated it really liked it. This book was initially published in under the title Plenitiude. Schorr has a degree in economics from U-Mass Amherst, and currently teaches sociology at Boston College.
I first became aware of her when she published The Overworked American in She writes about work and leisure, consumption and sustainability. This book, written for a popular audience, addresses those topics.
The data she presents here, by and large, are not new, but she brings together a lot of information in service This book was initially published in under the title Plenitiude. The data she presents here, by and large, are not new, but she brings together a lot of information in service of an argument for thinking more sustainably about how we live.
I picked the book up at the ASA in August, and stated reading it this fall. She makes a lot of helpful comparisons between the US and other countries. I love all th studies she cites; for example the one on p , where she is talking about how the pace of life speeds up as income goes up. The study compares walking speeds in the 31 cities across the world. One could quibble, but i find it an imaginative way to measure a phenomenon I have myself experienced. I like to think that there are people out there who are already making the changes we want to see.
At times, however, she seems a little over optimistic. I also would have liked have seen a better discussion of the knowledge commons. Like many of the things whose existence Schorr celebrates, we don't get much sense of who uses it and for what, and what might inhibit the rest of us from using it more. Aug 09, Paulo O'Brien rated it really liked it. I got to interview the author of this book on my Pathways radio show which is podcast at Divination.
There is just no way that five percent of the worl I got to interview the author of this book on my Pathways radio show which is podcast at Divination. Plus, two billion Chinese and Indians want to be over-consumers like us. Even if we reduce our own consumption fat chance , the overall consumption is bound to grow with BUA. This is a huge problem because the planet cannot sustain higher levels of over-consumption, not to mention possibly violent competition for energy resources!
What can we do? What can YOU do? In addition to letting go of BUA thinking — i. Dec 16, Joseph rated it really liked it. The key concepts in Plenitude are: a new allocation of time, reduced hours of market work b self provisioning c true materialism, low cost, low ecological impact but high satisfaction consumer life d enhanced relationships i. I also find the following concepts interesting that are being discussed in The key concepts in Plenitude are: a new allocation of time, reduced hours of market work b self provisioning c true materialism, low cost, low ecological impact but high satisfaction consumer life d enhanced relationships i.
Or at least it gets the stakeholders to start thinking about this matter. Precisely because the book is arguing against mainstream economics, at times, I find the arguments however soundly hard to swallow.
I agree on the devastating ecological impact and a genuine concern that we need to do something about it, but I am still unsure if Plenitude itself can resolve the problems. Nevertheless, new allocation of time i. I can summarize as 1. Everyone is bad, 2. Americans are especially bad, 3. There are lots of ways to be good. For instance, the author suggests one option is nationalizing patents deemed by the government as important in I can summarize as 1.
For instance, the author suggests one option is nationalizing patents deemed by the government as important in solving these growth related problems. This is a long book as is, defining total solutions would have made it an encyclopedia. Jan 12, Gayle rated it liked it. Very interesting. I think she makes some good points but it seems very idealistic to me.
She concedes that working fewer hours is not a viable strategy for low-income families or poor countries. She advocates open source information -- I agree it is great, but somehow the people doing research and coming up with ideas have to get paid.
They can't work for free forever. She doesn't really discuss how that will happen. I agree that the economic model of "grow or die" is unsustainable. Worth readin Very interesting. Worth reading. Dec 05, Morgan Siem rated it really liked it Shelves: to-live-by.
It is also growing because it repairs our fractured lives, heals our souls, and can make us truly wealthy in ways that have little to do with money and consumption.
And as it does, it begins to build, step by step, a better way of human being. In the process, it promises to restore the bounty and beauty of our miraculous p "These, then, are the individual principles of plenitude: work and spend less, create and connect more.
In the process, it promises to restore the bounty and beauty of our miraculous planet and all its inhabitants. We should settle for nothing less. Jan 09, Amanda rated it really liked it. I am not sure how people who are not already on board with the idea of minimizing, and constantly struggling with their impacts on the deteriorating environment would feel about this book.
But because I am all about minimizing and have terrible guilt about my ecological footprint I loved this book. I found it inspiring and informative, but rooted in economic theory and facts so it actually felt useful.
Aug 10, Phil Sykora rated it really liked it. In addition to, and perhaps more important than, the question of whether we are better or worse off in a quantitative sense - the issue to which the literature is addressed - we will discover that we are different. We will have brought our way of living into alignment with what most of us care about most, promoting health and well-being for humans, other species, and the planet. That means it's possible to buy gently used, even high-end apparel for less than rice, beans, or other basic foodstuffs.
In historical perspective, this is almost unfathomable. I took a star off for two reasons: 1. Schor spends a lot of time talking about "things that people are doing," and that's the extent to which she goes into detail about it. For example, she writes, "more and more of us are acting at the local level, getting carbon commitments from mayors and state governments, fighting for the right to keep chickens or hang laundry on a clothesline, and teaching others how to garden, can, and preserve.
Who are these people? Where are they? Where's the evidence that they're happier than I am? Not everyone with shorter work hours also owns chicken coops.
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