Assistant Professor of Political Economy Dean Snyder coauthored a piece of public scholarship, “The Green New Deal and the Politics of Consumption,” recently published by the online magazine Jacobin, a leading voice of the American left, offering socialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.
In the article, Snyder and Matt Guardino (associate professor of Political Science at Providence College) draw on the history of the US consumer movement. They outline how a new politics of consumption can take on the environmentally wasteful and socially destructive consumption practices accompanying the e-commerce revolution and commercialization of the internet.
The authors state, “In fighting for a Green New Deal we can’t just focus on clean power and innovative ways to decarbonize our society and world. We also need to rethink what and how much we consume — without falling prey to left arguments that amount to austerity.”
