I attended Juliet Schor's speech this afternoon entitled "Practicing Plenitude: Finding wealth in an era of scarcity." In thinking about the wonderful and entertaining presentation she gave there are two things that really stuck to me. The first is her view on employment and work. The series of slides showing the devastating effects the 2008 economic crash has had on employment in the United States was very powerful. I knew that unemployment had reach dangerously high levels and I know there is no escaping this tragedy; it has affected everyone. What I didn't know was in a matter of months the unemployment rate in some areas went from a manageable three percent to an astonishing ten percent or higher. Our country is facing a grave outlook and the capitalism we currently prescribe to doesn't seem to be address all of the problems involved in this kind of mass unemployment.
Schor brought up the fact that with the way our current capitalist society works, bringing all of the unemployed individuals back into the labor force means wreaking even more havoc on the environment. She gave the example of industrialization and mass urbanization of nations like India and China. Moving economically forward for these countries, and our own has meant in turn taking enormous steps away from environmental health. Economic growth has also always been measured by and equated with production and consumption of more goods. Schor stated that if we ever wanted to get the Earth and people healthy we have to move away from a system that seems to require environmental devastation in return for economic growth.
Which brings me to the second point made by Juliet Schor that stuck with me. Her concept of plenitude, and in my over simplification her idea of creating an alternative capitalism were very compelling arguments. As she established from the start of the talk, business as usual in our current capitalist system isn't getting us anywhere but in a world of hurt. Plenitude is an ideology that "directs us to the chance to be rich in things that matter to us most, and the wealth that is available in our relations with one another (Plenitude, 2)." This idea moves us away from the idea that mass productions and mass conspicuous consumption is the only way to more forward.
Much of the rhetoric used by Schor after her introduction of the term plenitude was very similar, if not the same, as the current "green" rhetoric. She spoke of urban/ community gardening, bicycle stations, urban chicken coops, the "diy" movement, sustainable building material choices, harnessing natural energy, etc. All of these activities not only reduce a person's carbon footprint but also bring about a systematic change in the way in which we see ourselves as producers and consumers. Schor argues the notion of diversification (do I have that term right) of labor tasks is no long relevant. Instead we need to work to create networks of self-sufficiency. On the last slide of her PowerPoint Schor had an illustration of what she hoped this movement towards plenitude would look like. (Now this is her simplification, not mine!) On the slide we saw the large corporations that currently control production globally, like Exxon, Wal-Mart, Shell and Toyota Motors, and on the other side Schor had images of vegetables, bicycles, knitted goods, etc. As the images progressed, what she hoped would happen is with the growth of alternative living and plenitude, there would be a decrease in the global production powers. The further out the graphic went the more interconnected the plenitude side became, forming the new form of capitalism.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed the approachable way in which she presented these often times difficult and heavily statistically laden topics. Well worth the hour and a half!
