Value Shifts and Social Activism

Cluster IV brings together value shifts, education, social norms, and collective action to enable sustainable consumption and lifestyles. It opens by reframing prosperity and happiness beyond materialism in 50 Alternative Hedonism and 51 Well-being versus Income, then examines how meaning and ethics shape choices through 52 Spiritual Consumption and 53 Values and Consumption.   Social value systems from the Global South—54 Buen Vivir and Buenos Convivires and 55 Ubuntu—emphasize  sufficiency, justice, and relational wellbeing, while 56 Education for Sustainable Consumption builds the knowledge, skills, and motivators for acting on these values.

The centrality of 57 Social Norms for value shifts and social activism and 58 Consumer-Citizen underscore how shared expectations and civic roles steer everyday practices, agency, and policy engagement. Building on this, the cluster highlights individuals’ multiple roles and collective action that translate values into organized pressure and community-led experimentation as consumer-citizens and as activists: in 59 Social Movements, 60 Subvertising, 61 Boycott and Buycott, 62 Green Parenting, and 63 Grassroots Innovation, 64 Prosumerism and 65 Alternative Consumer Cooperatives, which blur producer–consumer boundaries and cultivate democratic, low-impact provisioning features the continuum of production and consumption. This becomes especially tangible in food, where 66 Community Supported Agriculture, 67 Fair Trade, 68 Food Sovereignty, and 69 Eco-Communities demonstrate place-based systems that emphasize equity and ecological limits in everyday life.

Navigate to the sidebar on the left side of the screen to select a chapter.