This paper questions some common assumptions about consumption that have been part of the discussion of sustainable consumption. First, it queries the term ″consumption″ itself, arguing that the term has been used with such imprecision that it obscuresessential issues relating to the differences between goods and services, stocks, andflows. Second, it addresses the idea that the historical development of consumer culture can be ″reversed,″ suggesting that the past can never be a good model for a sustainable future. Instead, we need to better understand the social and psychological adjustmentsof people in the present who are voluntarily and involuntarily lowering their standardsof living. Finally, the paper addresses units and levels of analysis, questioning work thatis based on a world of individual consumers faced with abstract social and economic forces.
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