Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement

CHAPTER SIX New Tools and Old: Transformation and Reproduction in the Voluntary Simplicity Movement

CHAPTER SIX
New Tools and Old: Transformation and Reproduction in the Voluntary Simplicity Movement This chapter summarizes the findings in earlier chapters and extends the analysis to explore the “highest meanings” (Touraine 1981, 1983) of the voluntary simplicity cultural movement in terms of its possibilities and transformative capacity. I draw on the sociological analysis of the movement to point to avenues through which its emancipatory capacity may be extended. Many in the voluntary simplicity movement believe that it can transform the culture and society of the United States. Andrews expressed her belief in the transformative capacity of the movement at a voluntary simplicity conference in the following way: “The nice thing about voluntary simplicity is we look so benign, we look so harmless. You know, somebody said we’re the Trojan horse of change. We’ll just sneak right in and they won’t notice it! So they think, all those sweet people gathering to talk about simplifying their life, and then suddenly, we’ll burst out and transform everything!” (Escape From Affluenza, 1998). Are simple livers correct? Will they infiltrate the mainstream and produce dramatic change? What kind of transformation is made possible through the voluntary simplicity movement? Participation in voluntary simplicity does involve a shift away from consumerist values toward lower levels of consumption and more 165 166 Buying Time and Getting By environmentally conscious ways of consuming. The alternative culture of voluntary simplicity elevates creative work, drawing production back into the household and community, doing volunteer work, and spending time relating to people. Simple livers say they buy time for themselves through reducing consumerist spending. If you buy less, you can work less for a wage. This allows a higher level of control over how time is spent. But the most significant change is in the meanings these activities hold for simple livers. Simple livers believe their practices are also buying time for the planet. Each cut in consumption an affluent Westerner makes is viewed as helping a little. Even in the early stages of research, I was ambivalent about some of the ideas presented in the literature on the voluntary simplicity movement. I was and am sympathetic with many of the goals espoused, but I was uncomfortable with the seemingly apolitical perspectives found in some of it. I found some of the prescriptions trivial, for instance the focus on organizing “stuff” in your home and getting rid of clutter. It was only after I participated in the movement and ended up getting rid of “stuff,” organizing the things I kept, and consciously limiting the things I acquired that I came to understand the value of such practices for simple livers and for myself.1 Becoming conscious of consumption is personally empowering for those of us who have resources that allow us at some level to participate in consumerist culture without reflecting on it. In the United States this includes many working-class people and most middle-income people as well as the wealthy. Beyond that any amount of consumption reduction is at least that much less registered market demand. I’m not fooling myself by thinking that the shifts in my consumption2 over the process of doing this research will prevent the environmental problems that I believe are present due to a complex set of interrelated human practices and the beliefs that support them. Factors central to environmental pressures include overpopulation which, if it is mentioned in voluntary simplicity texts, is glossed over (gender, sexuality, and production, reproduction , and consumption are all linked into this global problem), and contemporary market capitalism aimed at growth and profit for capital itself. Simple livers face a huge dilemma, one anyone in the United States seeking to resist the ways production and consumption are organized in the dominant economy and culture faces if they want to live their daily lives in opposition to the negative aspects of dominant patterns. The problem is how to get by economically and socially and at the same time participate as little as possible in reproducing the dominant economic relations and culture. 167 New Tools and Old Voluntary simplicity represents a potentially important transformation in the worldviews and identities of well-educated, Western, white people in the face of their emergent understanding of global environmental limits, inequalities of access to resources, and limitations of the satisfactions hyperconsumerism can deliver. Focusing on their own roles in creating the...