Emily Wilson, AlterNet. September 18, 2008. Rob Walker, author of a new book on consumer culture, explains how consumers embrace brands as part of their identities -- often without knowing it.
Michael Dudley, City States. July 1, 2008. Stores are overfilling with WALL-E merchandise that will soon clog our landfills. Yet this new Disney movie bills itself as pro-environment.
Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. May 24, 2008. Professor M. Gigi Durham discusses the corporate media's sexual objectification of girls and how to help young women fight regressive media messages.
Stan Cox, AlterNet. April 28, 2008. As long as an investing class makes all major environmental decisions, no new sources of energy will replace even one barrel or ton of fossil fuel.
Charles Shaw, AlterNet. April 11, 2008. The pattern of out-of-control consumption in the U.S. is not too different from the well-known behavioral patterns of substance abusers.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Barbaraehrenreich.com. March 12, 2008. We have been the world's designated shoppers, and, if we fall down on the job, we take the global economy with us.
John Miller, Dollars and Sense. February 8, 2008. The economic recovery underway since late 2001 is probably over. Too bad many Americans never got to experience it.
Stan Cox, AlterNet. November 30, 2007. Americans' out-of-control clothing shopping is causing an ecological plague, humanitarian nightmare and the need for some really, really big closets.
Bruce E. Levine, Chelsea Green Publishing. November 26, 2007. It would be a lot easier to address the increasing rate of depression among Americans if we weren't so afraid to admit that our consumer society makes us unhappy.
Lakshmi Chaudhry, TheNation.com. November 17, 2007. The crass commodification of Latina traditions and rites of passage is disintegrating the familial and communal relationships they are meant to celebrate.
Erin Wiegand, AlterNet. November 16, 2007. Concerned with toxic chemicals, more people are buying products with labels like "organic," "green," and "natural." But a consumerist response to environmental threats is not only inadequate, it is dangerous.
Astra Taylor, Adbusters. November 2, 2007. Americans keep making less and spending more. That lifestyle is contributing to supersized debt and the decline of progressive politics.
Helaine Olen, AlterNet. August 8, 2007. In spite of being racked with debt, Gen X parents are increasingly pouring their paychecks into luxury items for their children that seem frivolous to the point of ridiculousness.
Kelpie Wilson, TruthOut.org. August 3, 2007. If the Live Earth concerts are to continue, they ought to evolve to serve the transformation not just away from consumer society but toward a culture where we dance and sing and find our bling in things that are healthy for us and the planet.
Jeanine Plant, AlterNet. August 1, 2007. An interview with author Daniel Brook offers us answers on why so many progressives get roped into the corporate world.
Wendee Holtcamp, OnEarth Magazine. June 18, 2007. For a whole month, one writer practiced a kind of abstinence so she could better understand her own complicity in our throwaway culture. It wasn't easy.
Sean Gonsalves, AlterNet. April 30, 2007. It's annoying that whenever hip hop is criticized, the worst examples are held up for ridicule. Talking about pop gangsta rap as if it were synonymous with "black hip hop" is like talking about Kenny G as if he were representative of all jazz.
Shannon Rupp, The Tyee. October 25, 2006. With home-decorating TV shows and magazines multiplying by the minute, we need to start talking about more eco-friendly alternatives to Ikea and Pottery Barn.
