Luxury, Consumer Culture and the Problem of Sustainability

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Featherstone, Mike. 2025. Luxury, Consumer Culture and the Problem of Sustainability. In: Andrea Groppel-Klein and Ludger Heidbrink, eds. Ambivalenzen des Luxuskonsums: Zwishen Faszination, Dekadenz und Nachhaltigkeit. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft. ISBN 9783756030422 [Book Section] (In Press)

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For the greater part of history, luxuries were regarded as dangerous and corruptive and therefore frequently regulated. With the rise of mass consumer culture, it is often suggested there has been a ‘democratization of luxuries’ through the shopping, entertainment and leisure industries, with images of luxuries everywhere. Yet luxury goods and experiences also carry a high price tag and sense of exclusiveness, with super-rich luxury lifestyles and conspicuous consumption highly visible models in the media. Consumer culture is now central to the global economy, providing 60–70% of the GDP of leading nation-states. But there are accumulating problems: overtourism, overconsumption and unsustainability. The planetary consequences of consumption are clear now that the extraction of natural resources has reached a key tipping point. In this context, can luxuries become sustainable? How viable are the strategies offered by the luxury sector and are there alternatives to government regulation? Alternatively, are there ways in which consumers can change their lifestyles to go beyond overconsumption and over-luxury? Historically, there are examples of ways of harnessing the immaterial luxury experience, and a number of these will be discussed.

History suggests that for the vast majority of people, the reality of everyday life has often been one of austerity and frugality with little guarantee that the necessities to sustain life will be available. Religions frequently emphasize the suffering encountered in this world and the need to follow disciplined everyday routines that could deliver salvation in the afterlife. Consequently, luxuries have often been regarded as dangerous and corruptive, as we find in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, the powerful in the upper orders—emperors, kings, aristocrats, nobility and courtiers—were allowed to consume luxuries, whereas ordinary people’s consumption was often regulated by sumptuary laws and confined to ‘little luxuries’. With the rise of global trade, followed by industrial production and mass consumption, the market for luxuries expanded. Now consumer culture is central to the global economy, yet we have been made aware of the planetary consequences of overconsumption through the visibility have been made aware of the planetary consequences of overconsumption through the visibility of global warming, pollution and the destruction of life forms. Luxuries have become prominent in consumer culture, and the central question has become whether it is possible to not only create more sustainable luxuries, but to develop less hedonistic consumer lifestyles.

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