2 x Almedalen
At the Swedish Mecka of “politics-meets-PR-meets-rosé wine-mingeling” forum, namely Almedalen, I will this year be part of two panels. The first one is about sustainability at SPPs event Tuesday the 30’Th of June with Sarah McPhee (CEO, SPP), Charlotte Petri Gornitzka (President, SIDA), Casten Almqvist (VD, TV4-Group), Eva Hamilton (Board Pro) and Scandinavia’s swaggiest moderator Henrik Schyffert (critical comedian, producer, TV personality etc). So that’s got to be simultaneously interesting, serious and fun which is a great combination. My introduction will be about the 1) consumer movements as they are right now (political consumption; from boycott to buycott), 2) their critical dimensions (access/owning, market/state, temporary/permanent, anonymous/personal, climate urgency/climate skepticism, political/apolitical, neocommunity/individualism, flexibility/inconvenience) and 3) the challenges in consumer culture from policy makers’ point of view (increase symbolic and economic value).
The other event is car2go’s exciting panel on Wednesday the 1’st of July on about the future for urban transport and mobility. In the larger consumer cultural transformation towards immaterialism–or in other words from stuff (products) to experience (services)–what does the future bear in terms of sustainability and consumer engagement in relation to the collective change of preference in terms of ownership? Is it just a question of access vs owning? Or is it again more a question of what one sees as important to own? Namely; the story of accessing and sharing as symbol for being the New Citizen Consumer. The possibility for the consumer to mediate a compelling story about this, and thereby own the symbol of being a planet-conscious yet urban “accesser” rather than resource-wasting product owner, is one of the most critical dimensions in future consumer culture.
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