Sustainability raises uncomfortable questions about altruism for anthropologists. Notions of altruism are difficult for all disciplines and especially a culturally relative anthropology. Environmentalism quickly gets into a debate about what is fair, what is enough and what is too much; what is a ‘want’ and what is a ‘need’? Debates around what is fair, what is necessary and what is a luxury takes place in households in the UK everyday, sometimes for reasons of cost, but also for moral reasons. The development of practice theory in anthropology has been influential in showing the importance of households in making decisions, a key part of how people work towards sustainable living. The negotiation of household consumption is part of the daily practice of establishing social relations, identity and power. Power imbalances have also characterised international environmental summits as political leaders point out the difference in the nature of “survival emissions” from the South, and “luxury emissions” from the North. Anthropologists have traditionally argued such categorisation as well as against any universal definition of standards of living yet environmentalism would seem to necessitate a widespread agreement about how to slow consumption and lower expectations.
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