Buying Time and Getting By: The Voluntary Simplicity Movement

CHAPTER THREE Getting a Life: Constructing a Moral Identity in the Voluntary Simplicity Movement

CHAPTER THREE
Getting a Life: Constructing a Moral Identity in the Voluntary Simplicity Movement People in the voluntary simplicity movement are engaged in a struggle to define themselves as worthwhile and good people. Resisting participation in conspicuous consumption enables them to feel they are living in keeping with their ecological and social values. Some also reduce their participation in waged work so they will have more time to pursue community and creative activities they consider worthwhile, and have a more fulfilling and pleasurable lifestyle. Simple livers frequently refer to this process as “getting a life” (Blix and Heitmiller 1997). Shifts in consumption practices aimed at reducing environmental deterioration serve as a key tool used to give tangible evidence that simple livers are no longer like other middle-class, Western “consumer zombies” or status-seeking careerists whose lifestyles are judged by those in voluntary simplicity to be responsible for the current environmental crisis and at the root of many social problems. In one way the process of “getting a life” in the voluntary simplicity movement can be understood as identity work aimed at remaking the self as a moral identity while simultaneously resisting the rationalization process (Weber [1904] 1958) and the forces of McDonaldization that increasingly characterize contemporary society globally (Ritzer 2000). 53 54 Buying Time and Getting By Voluntary Simplicity Moral Identities The voluntary simplicity moral identity involves both caring about the environment and others and caring for oneself. Simple livers are quick to say it is not about self-denial but about self-fulfillment. They reshape meanings based on their identities as middle-class, white, Westerners from their relative positions of power at the intersections of the categories of class, gender, and race/ethnicity in such a way that they clarify the qualities and practices of a good person who looks like them and construct those qualities and practices so they are achievable for themselves. I use Schwalbe’s definition of “identity work”: “By identity work I mean anything we do, alone or with others, to establish, change, or lay claim to meanings as particular kinds of persons. As individuals, we must do some kind of identity work in every encounter. We do this when we give signs through dress, speech, demeanor, posture—that tell others who and what we are, how we are likely to behave, and how we expect to be treated. We do it also when we reflect on the meanings of our identities and try to reshape those meanings. This can be done alone, in thought or writing. Most identity work is interactive, however, since it is by engaging with others that we create and affirm the meanings that matter” (1996, 105). How people in voluntary simplicity are biographically located within the matrix of existing social hierarchies is important because their relative power and the sense of oppression they experience as a result of their location shape what they are struggling for and against, the ideology they develop, the practices they advocate, and the type of moral identity they construct. The type of identity work done by women and men to achieve a voluntary simplicity moral identity varies because of their differing locations of relative power and the aspects of contemporary culture that they reject with the support of voluntary simplicity ideology. Their material interests also influence the voluntary simplicity ideas they generate. Voluntary simplicity moral identity construction is in part shaped by shifts in cultural, social, and economic relations in the global economy that produce discomfort and insecurity for some simple livers but which also give them relative advantages in terms of access to resources. As the economy becomes increasingly competitive and streamlined, downsizing and efficiency measures become the norm. Many workers experience disillusionment and a sense of insecurity relative to waged work. This came up in many of the interviews I conducted with 55 Getting a Life simple livers. Even those who had not lost jobs voiced similar ideas about the job market in general. So in one way voluntary simplicity can be understood as a response to shifts in the economy and job market that make middle-class simple livers less secure economically and increase work-related demands upon them. Simple livers consider themselves middle class because of relatively high educational levels and their sense of personal agency. Most had not always been middle class in terms of family of origin. Most...