Halina Szejnwald Brown - Böcker

Challenging views prevalent among Western and Polish scholars, this book explains Poland's surprising success in developing effective environmental and occupational regulatory systems while achieving remarkable socioeconomic growth, despite the toxic legacy of the Communist era. It offers rich insights into the questions of how one can achieve both economic growth and improved environmental and safety protection, and of the extent to which regulatory systems can be transferred across national and cultural boundaries. The authors develop a theoretical framework for assessing regulatory success, then use it to analyze Poland's recent experience. Grounded in five case studies of recently privatized firms, the analysis also presents a new survey of privately owned firms, extensive policy and data analysis, and interviews with key policy leaders, entrepreneurs, and intellectuals.The book points to case-specific decision making and information richness as key dimensions of an effective regulatory system and considers in depth the extent to which information richness is culturally dependent, and hence its portability as a policy tool. Addressing regulatory issues that are specific to both the United States and the international development community, the book makes a significant contribution to advancing the theoretical and conceptual frameworks used to explain the success, or lack of success, of regulatory systems.

Consumer society is an unquestionably complex social construct. However, after decades of unremitting dominance there are signs emerging that it is starting to falter, both as a coherent and durable system of social organization and as a strategy for societal advancement. Debates concerning how we can transition beyond present energy- and materials-intensive consumer society are beginning to gain greater salience.Social Change and the Coming of Post-Consumer Society aims to develop more complete appreciation of the relevant processes of social change and to identify effective interventions that could enable a transition to supersede consumer society. Bringing together leading interdisciplinary experts on social change, the book identifies and analyzes several ongoing small- and modest-scale social experiments. Possibilities for macro-scale change from the interlinked perspectives of culture, economics, finance, and governance are then explored. These contributions expose the systemic problems that are emblematic of the current condition of consumer society, specifically the unsustainability of prevailing consumption practices and lifestyles and the persistence of inequalities. These observations are summarized and extended in the final chapter of the book.This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable consumption, sustainability transitions, environmental sociology, and sustainable development.

Brown and her colleagues offer an unprecedented analysis of how multinational corporations and developing countries manage, in the face of differing values, to relate as each proceeds in the interest of particular development objectives. Through three case studies involving Du Pont Agrichemical, Occidental Chemical, and Xerox and the countries of India and Thailand, the authors illustrate how the differing values of the host country and the corporation influence decisions. It offers valuable insights into the anatomy of decision-making in a highly sensitive and increasingly scrutinized segment of contemporary business.This is a particularly timely examination of multinational enterprises, of the impact of corporate cultures, sustainable development, hazard management and environmental issues seen in relationship to developing countries' values, needs, and objectives.

Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles: a Language for our Common Future curates a shared vocabulary of concepts that enables a society-wide conversation about sustainable consumption and lifestyles, the future of consumer society, and ways to transcend it.Since the United Nations (UN) Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the global environmental and social consequences of mass consumption have been well documented, yet progress is slow. Overconsumption and extractive practices continue to drive ecological overshoot. Set against this backdrop, each of the 87 essays in this book imparts a meaning to a concept, highlights its history, and offers different perspectives, interpretations, and applications for social change. The two premises of this book are that we need to transition to a society in which the well-being and dignity of people are achieved with a much smaller footprint and that technological solutions are inadequate for the challenge. Policies and actions are greatly lagging behind the growing understanding of the system of production-consumption because social change is often slow, and sustainable consumption does not have a clear political champion. The book addresses tensions that also interfere with progress, such as science versus politics, economic winners versus losers, traditions versus an uncertain future, and present needs versus future costs.This innovative volume is an important resource for students, scholars, policymakers, grassroots activists, and agents of change interested in sustainable consumption and sustainable living more broadly.

Vocabulary for Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles: a Language for our Common Future curates a shared vocabulary of concepts that enables a society-wide conversation about sustainable consumption and lifestyles, the future of consumer society, and ways to transcend it.Since the United Nations (UN) Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the global environmental and social consequences of mass consumption have been well documented, yet progress is slow. Overconsumption and extractive practices continue to drive ecological overshoot. Set against this backdrop, each of the 87 essays in this book imparts a meaning to a concept, highlights its history, and offers different perspectives, interpretations, and applications for social change. The two premises of this book are that we need to transition to a society in which the well-being and dignity of people are achieved with a much smaller footprint and that technological solutions are inadequate for the challenge. Policies and actions are greatly lagging behind the growing understanding of the system of production-consumption because social change is often slow, and sustainable consumption does not have a clear political champion. The book addresses tensions that also interfere with progress, such as science versus politics, economic winners versus losers, traditions versus an uncertain future, and present needs versus future costs.This innovative volume is an important resource for students, scholars, policymakers, grassroots activists, and agents of change interested in sustainable consumption and sustainable living more broadly.

Consumer society is an unquestionably complex social construct. However, after decades of unremitting dominance there are signs emerging that it is starting to falter, both as a coherent and durable system of social organization and as a strategy for societal advancement. Debates concerning how we can transition beyond present energy- and materials-intensive consumer society are beginning to gain greater salience.Social Change and the Coming of Post-Consumer Society aims to develop more complete appreciation of the relevant processes of social change and to identify effective interventions that could enable a transition to supersede consumer society. Bringing together leading interdisciplinary experts on social change, the book identifies and analyzes several ongoing small- and modest-scale social experiments. Possibilities for macro-scale change from the interlinked perspectives of culture, economics, finance, and governance are then explored. These contributions expose the systemic problems that are emblematic of the current condition of consumer society, specifically the unsustainability of prevailing consumption practices and lifestyles and the persistence of inequalities. These observations are summarized and extended in the final chapter of the book.This volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of sustainable consumption, sustainability transitions, environmental sociology, and sustainable development.

This timely volume recognizes that traditional policy approaches to reduce human impacts on the environment through technological change - for example, emphasizing resource efficiency and the development of renewable energy sources - are insufficient to meet the most pressing sustainability challenges of the twenty-first century. Instead, the editors and contributors argue that we must fundamentally reconfigure our lifestyles and social institutions if we are to make the transition toward a truly sustainable future.These expert contributions pinpoint specific areas in which innovation will be required. These include economic policies, socio-technical systems of production and consumption, and dominant social practices. Drawing on these and other diverse areas of scholarship, this fascinating book highlights new conceptual frameworks for achieving the twin sustainability goals of decreased resource use and enhanced individual and societal well-being.Students, professors and policymakers in ecological economics, innovation studies, environmental policy and many other related fields will find much of interest in this pathbreaking volume.Contributors: M.M. Bell, H.S. Brown, M.J. Cohen, B. Halkier, J.M. Harris, D.J. Hess, S. Hielscher, R. Kemp, E. Kennedy, H. Krahn, N.T. Krogman, S.M. McCauley, I. Røpke, G. Seyfang, A. Smith, G. Spaargaren, J.C. Stephens, J. Stutz, E. Ubert, H. van Lente, P.J. Vergragt