Abstract

In climate expertise, reduced consumption appears as a major lever of ecological transition. Following numerous social sciences studies, the paper suggests that ecological transition could not rest on the shoulders of consumers alone. It highlights that the political economy of affluent consumption results from interdependencies between public policies, corporate business models and consumer practices. Taking an economic sociological and Foucauldian perspective, the paper develops a research agenda to explore how affluent consumption has been institutionalized in consumerist societies. Highly resource intensive affluent consumption is structural in both economic public policies and business models of companies and is therefore constantly organised and governed. Not imposed on individuals by force or manipulation, the government of consumption is based on technologies of power that shape and orient consumers’ conduct, by activating and playing on the dispositions they have acquired through market socialisation.