ABSTRACT
Living well within limits has emerged as the core global challenge of our time. The central driver behind this development is overconsumption by the global consumer class. Yet, dynamics such as the attitude-implementation gap and the rebound effect have meant that both technological efficiency gains and policy efforts to improve consumer awareness have yet to achieve absolute reductions in resource use. Moreover, structural forces, including business and economic models based on mass consumption, tight connections between money and politics, the social embeddedness of consumption, and challenges associated with collective action, highlight fundamental limits to an individualisation of responsibility for the sustainability of consumption. In contrast to efforts to improve consumption at the margins, some scholars have engaged with the limits Western societies have to face in terms of their economic activities and lifestyles in a more direct and fundamental way. This chapter depicts a number of such approaches to then focus in on consumption corridors as a particularly pertinent one. It delineates the concept, discusses typical trepidations associated with the notion of limits, and reflects on pathways towards consumption corridors and supportive structural changes. The chapter concludes by drawing linkages to ongoing research and normative debates.
