New Directions and Virtues in Sustainable Materialist Movements

After extensive examination of the specifically political motivations of sustainable materialist movements, this chapter focuses on what is new and unique about these movements, and what differentiates them from past notions of environmentalism and ethical or political consumerism. We discuss three key unique properties or strategies of the movements: that they are explicitly focused on collective action, engage a specific notion of systems-based and material sustainability, and embody a prefigurative politics or practice that is based in everyday material needs. Sustainable materialist movements also illustrate a set of key values or virtues, including humility, critical pluralism, and a political boldness that pushes beyond classic and limited notions of political action.

Environmental and Social Justice in Sustainable Materialist Movements

Many of the movements we examine define themselves, in part and in name, as movements for social and environmental justice. We explore what activists and organizations actually mean by justice. Unlike other movements for environmental justice, equity is rarely an explicit concern. We find three key areas of justice articulated by movement activists: the crucial nature of political and material participation, the importance of responding to power, and, in particular, the necessity to address basic capabilities and everyday needs. All of these are articulated at both individual and community levels, with the functioning of communities, and social attachments to that community, central to conceptions of justice.

From Postmaterialism to Sustainable Materialism

We begin the analysis with a discussion of why movement actors shift from more classic political action and policy development into the development of sustainable materialist practices. There is a clear frustration and disillusionment with both contemporary material life on the one hand, and liberal pluralism and capital on the other. The postmaterialist approach to environmental movements is inadequate in a number of ways, as the movements we explore illustrate a clear frustration and disillusionment with both contemporary material life on the one hand, and liberal pluralism and capital on the other. We introduce and discuss a range of other approaches to material action, including lifestyle politics, political consumerism, sustainable consumption, and postcapitalist frameworks, but also lay out their limitations in fully encompassing and explaining sustainable materialist movements.

An Introduction to Sustainable Materialism

Here we introduce the types of food system, community energy, and sustainable fashion movements we will examine in this work, in particular those activists and organizations dedicated to reworking the flows of materials through environments, bodies, and communities. We lay out our reasoning for a focus on activism around everyday life and collective material practices, and detail the participatory methodology of the study. We also lay out the motivations we have found articulated by activists in these movements, including concerns about traditional political processes, justice, power, and sustainability, and describe how we use those as the frameworks for analysis we will apply in the following chapters.

Conclusion

We conclude with a discussion of the potential of the sustainable material movements we examine in local food systems, community energy, and sustainable fashion. The focus is on the breadth and diversity of the influence of such movements—from small-scale and local impacts on political engagement and environmental sustainability, to the economic empowerment of local businesses and its impact on economic insecurity, to larger issues of systemic change in production and consumption systems. We discuss both the actual potential, as well as the real critiques and limitations, of sustainable materialist action. And we end with a return to the value of positing possibilities, alternative practices, and prefigurative politics in social movements.

Sustainability and the Politics of Materialist Action

Sustainable materialist movements have a very particular, and vital, understanding of the meaning and practice of sustainability. Activists are actively trying to replace a politics of separation with one of immersion and flow, a politics of the domination of nature with one that recognizes human beings as animals in embedded material relationships with ecosystems and the non-human realm. A key focus is the importance of ethically informed material action that embodies such sustainable practice. One core argument is that sustainable materialist action offers a substantive response to the misplaced critiques of the ‘apolitical’ or ‘post-political’ nature of such materialist-focused environmental and social movements.

Material Practice and Resistance to Power

This chapter examines how critiques of, and resistance to, conventional power structures are a key element of sustainable materialist practice. In particular, we show how sustainable materialist practice goes beyond simple resistance to include both the creation of counterflows of power connected to the circulation of material goods, and a collective and systemic consciousness that sees the creation of new sustainable mega-circulations as its ultimate goal. The ideal is to physically embody, practice, and replicate a real alternative flow, a separate and dynamic food, energy, or fashion system in everyday life. Such an understanding of practice as both resistance and rebuilding of power illustrates how these movements are both innovative and highly political.