Book launch: Wie wollen wir leben?—Tim Jackson in conversation with Barbara Unmüßig
On 18 October 2021, Tim Jackson talks to Barbara Unmüßig, director of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, about the German edition of his latest book Post Growth—’Wie wollen wir leben?’ (Oekom, 2021). The book is not just a manifesto for system change, but an invitation to rekindle a deeper conversation about the nature of the human condition.
Circular Metabolism | Podcast
The Circular Metabolism podcast is hosted by Aristide Athanassiadis from Metabolism of Cities. In his podcast he interviews thinkers, researchers, policy makers and practitioners to better understand the metabolism of our cities and how to reduce their environmental impact in a socially just and context-specific way.
Wellbeing and Productivity: A Review of the Literature | Paper
This report reviews the relationships between the different aspects of wellbeing, productivity, and productivity growth. It is the culmination of a desk-based evidence review, survey, and a mapping workshop held with experts from backgrounds including psychology, sociology, economics, and design. The focus is on wellbeing and labour productivity.
The storied state of economics: Review of Robert Shiller’s Narrative Economics | By Tim Jackson
“Economists are tellers of stories and makers of poems,” wrote the economic historian Deidre McCloskey in 1990. It’s a curious observation for a profession that prides itself on hard-nosed, quantitative analysis and strives continually for predictive power. The Nobel-prizewinning economist Robert Shiller goes even further. His new book probes how social behaviour trumps statistics in determining the fate of economies—Tim Jackson weighs it up.
“I believed I understood the land” | Tim Jackson reading poem by Adam Horovitz
In July 2019, the RSA Food, Farming & Countryside Commission with CUSP director Tim Jackson as Commissioner and Chair of the Research Advisory Group have published their final report, calling for radical 10-year plan to transition to sustainable food system with more government support for healthy produce. The event opened with Tim's reading of a poem by Adam Horovitz, from the collection 'The Soil Never Sleeps'.
Living the Good Life on Instagram —An exploration of lay understandings of what it means to live well | Paper
While the consumerist approach to what living well can mean permeates traditional media, the extent to which it appears in people’s own depictions of the good life is unclear. Using multimodal discourse analysis, this article uses a sample of posts tagged #goodlife and variants collected on Instagram to explore which understandings of the good life can be found on the platform, and what their wider implications in the consumer society are.
Paradise Lost?—The iron cage of consumerism
Our systematic failure to address existential anxiety robs society of meaning and blinds us to the suffering of others; to persistent poverty; to the extinction of species; to the health of global ecosystems. With his think piece Angst essen Seele auf — Escaping the ‘iron cage’ of consumerism, Tim Jackson adds to an eclectic set of essays, published in honour of Wolfgang Sachs.
Broken promises—the engine of consumerism
Does consumerism thrive on our discontentment? Tim Jackson argues yes, the success of consumer society lies not in meeting our needs but in its spectacular ability to repeatedly disappoint us. This may seem dark, but from here we can understand why consumerism must eventually fall – and how to replace it.
The Mindful Consumer | Paper
This paper forms part of the exploration of the topic of consumption and wellbeing, in which earlier consultation and deliberation identified a key question of how societies might reduce or replace the role of consumption and consumerism in supporting human identity. Here, Alison Armstrong and Tim Jackson bring their cutting-edge research and deep experience in sustainable consumption to bear on the topic.
ESRC blog: The case for sustainable prosperity
:: Why did you pursue an academic career? :: I am an ‘accidental academic’, starting my professional life working on a voluntary (and then freelance) basis doing research for environmental organisations like Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, places where sustainability issues were being taken most seriously. At an international symposium in 1992, I met Professor Roland Clift, who later persuaded me to apply for a research fellowship at the University of Surrey. The rest, as they say, is academic history – although I still maintain strong links with civil society organisations and policymakers.
