Rethinking Consumption in Late Modernity: Throwaway Society vs Eco-Village

Abstract

For these people, in one of the many eco-villages springing up around the world, ‘consumerism’ no longer has the meaning it has for many others on our weary planet. For the most part they consume what they grow and make themselves, trade resources instead of money and some use waste as an energy source. For others, living the conventional western capitalist life, the bumper sticker ‘I owe, I owe, I owe, it’s off to work I go’ isn’t funny. The paper explores how an eco-village could be utilised by mainstream society as a small example of what larger society could model itself upon.