Readings and Articles
For this module, please:
- Read this article from National Geographic As Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers.
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Listen to "How Much Longer can we Overshoot" from American Public Media, Marketplace, as part of their American Consumed Series. Click the orange link on the left to "Listen to the Story." You only need to listen to this story, not the entire show (unless it interests you). Try to relate this discussion to "Earth as a System" and the concept of Carrying Capacity. The text of the story is below the "listen" link if you'd rather read it. Try to relate this to Earth as a System and our understanding of "Carrying Capacity."
- Revisit The Story of Stuff. Review the section on “Consumption” – click on the link on the top of the window that says “Consumption.”
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Review: Chapter 1, the five course concepts, specifically, Human Population Growth (Carrying Capacity), Sustainability, and Earth as a System (Environmental Unity).
Additional resources you may check out:
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Read the book: Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization by Steven Solomon. The book discusses how the need for water has shaped past civilizations and argues that water may become the world’s scarcest critical resource and the cause of 21st century conflicts.
- Read the recently released book: American Mania: When More is Not Enough. The book argues that we Americans are uniquely driven to be hyperconsumers, even though it's making us miserable.
- Read Are Americans Cheap or Charitable? and Who Gives and Who Doesn't, a 20/20 news report based on a lot of the statistics discussed in this module.
- Read Affluenza: the All Consuming Epidemic by John De Graaf. The book is available at IUPUI library and online book sellers. This book examines how the ties between consumerism, advertising, and American culture drive leads to increased debt, decreased levels of happiness and self fulfillment
- Read Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays by Leigh Eric Schmidt. This book is available at IUPUI library. Schmidt show us that commercial appropriations of these occasions are as religious in form as they were secular. The rituals of America's holiday bazaar that emerged in the nineteenth century offered a luxuriant merger of the holy and the profane--a heady blend of fashion and faith, merchandising and gift-giving, profits and sentiments, all celebrations of a devout consumption.
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Read Your
Money or Your Life by
Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin. Unlike most self help books, this is
not a book on how to be frugal. Instead, the book asks you to examine
money and how you use it in your life. It gives you exercises that
help you make connections between the money you spend and your satisfaction
with your life.
In case you are bored this weekend:
- Whatever you do, don’t go out and go shopping!