The Pursuit of Things

There is a very interesting piece by Sam Leith in the Times Literary Supplement, as he reviews books with different perspectives on the pursuit of luxury. Frank Trentmann's Empire of Things is an historical account of consumerism from the fifteenth- to the twenty-first century. David Cloutier's The Vice of Luxury presents a theological attack on rampant consumerism. Noel Thompson's Social Opulence and Private Restraint attacks consumerism from the point of view of a socialist political economy.

There is an obvious link between waste consumption, pollution, and misuse of human and material resources. As Trentmann notes in a passage quoted in the article:

In the world’s oceans today, some 18,000 pieces of plastic are swimming on the surface of every square kilometre of water. On International Coastal Clean-Up Day in 2011, 600,000 volunteers scoured 20,000 miles of coastline for rubbish. By the end of the day, they had collected almost 10 million pounds in weight. Their haul included 250,000 items of clothing, a million pieces of food packaging and several hundred TV sets, mobile phones and bicycles. That year the United States alone produced 210 million tons of municipal waste – enough to fill a convoy of garbage trucks and circle the equator nine times.

For the full text of the article, please see http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/a....