ABSTRACT
The question of how people might foster a more sustainable future requires us to better understand why efforts to promote such possibilities have so far been anaemic. This demands that we grapple with strategic considerations about how social change is best achieved. In an effort to do so here, I distinguish between two familiar diagnoses: the first that points to the everyday concerns of the masses of people in affluent, postindustrial societies of the Global North as a key obstacle to needed social change and a second that suggest that these everyday concerns might instead – or also – present opportunities for such change. By drawing from several different scholarly tributaries – including scholarship on environmental justice and social reproduction, on practice theory, and on new materialism – critics can boldly challenge the status quo while deeply respecting the values and concerns of those these seek to engage.
