2019
- Keynote speaker: International Conference on Enhancing Consumer Awareness: Prospects for Enhancing Consumer Rights Protection in Traditional and Digital Markets, June 16-18, University of Economics in Katowice, Poland.
- Keynote speaker: SCORAI workshop on Business Opportunities in Advancing Sustainable Lifestyles in Greater Boston. May 16th, Center for Sustainable Enterprise and Regional Competitiveness, UMass Boston, College of Management.
2018
Co-convener of a mini-Workshop on Time Use Competence, Work-time Reduction, Sufficiency and Well-being
Modern consumer societies are characterized by an ever increasing variety and quantity of consumer goods and services. However, despite rising levels of material prosperity, individual well-being is not developing comparably. Affluence in consumer goods is accompanied by a scarcity in disposable time for many – and by a degradation of the natural environment. Instead of using productivity progress to increase individual time wealth, it has been used to produce and sell more material goods and services. Growing disparities in wealth and income magnify the effects of marketing and advertising to exploit human tendency to use material goods to signal status, distinction, individuality and a place in a social order. This workshop seeks to clarify the potential roles of decreased work-time and income inequality in reducing consumption. It also examines the rebound effects produced by more “free” time time through work-time reduction and time-savings technologies.
Presenters: Prof. Ulf Schrader, Technical University of Berlin, Division of Economic Education and Sustainable Consumption. Time Rebound, Time Wealth and Sustainable Consumption.
Prof. Juliet Schor, Department of Sociology, Boston College, Working Hours and Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United States 2007-2013.
Andrew Jorgenson, Department of Sociology and the Environmental Studies Program, Boston College Income Inequality and Carbon Emissions in the United States: A State-level Analysis, 1997–2012.
Halina Szejnwald Brown, Discussant
2017
Co-convener of Winter/Spring Mini-Colloquium Series on Post-work/Post-consumer Futures The colloquium is co-sponsored by SCORAI and Tellus Institute delves into issues at the interface of digital automation, technological unemployment, worktime reduction, consumption, and lifestyle innovation. Speakers in the series: Peter Frase, Editor at Jacobin magazine and author of Four Futures: Life After Capitalism; Anders Hayden, Associate Professor of Political Science, Dalhousie University and author of Sharing the Work, Sparing the Planet: Work Time, Consumption, and Ecology and When Green Growth is Not Enough: Climate Change, Ecological Modernization, and Sufficiency; Amitai Etzioni, University Professor and Professor of International Affairs and Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies, George Washington University.
2016
Co-convener, SCORAI-Europe-sponsored workshop on Sustainable Consumption and Social Justice in a Constrained World, Budapest, Hungary, August 29-30.
Co-organizer, Second International SCORAI Conference “Transitions Beyond a Consumer Society” University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA, June 15-17.
2015
Chair, Culminating Workshop of the SCORAI Colloquium Series on Consumption and Social Change, Boston, MA, USA, 8-9 October
2014
Chair, SCORAI Colloquium Series on Consumption and Social Change, Boston, MA, USA, April 2014-April 2015
Co-chair, Workshop on the Role of Cities in Advancing Sustainable Consumption [convened by the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative, the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, and the City of Eugene (Oregon)], Eugene, OR, USA, 29 October 30 November 1.
2013
Chair, The Future of Consumerism and Well-Being in a World of Ecological Constraints (First Conference of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative), Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA, 12-14 June
2012
Co-convener, Sustainable Consumption during Times of Crisis (First Trans-Atlantic Workshop of the Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative, Bregenz, Austria, 1 May
2011
Co-convener, Socio-technical Transitions, Social Practices, and the New Economics: Meeting the Challenges of a Constrained World, Mountain Lakes House, Princeton, NJ, USA, 14-16 April
2009
Chair, Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI), Inaugural SCORAI Workshop: Individual Consumption and Systemic Societal Transformation, Clark University, Worcester, MA, USA, 15-17 October
2008
Co-Chair, Workshop Global Reporting Initiative as change agent in Brazil. Sao Paulo, July 2008.