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non-peer-reviewed ; The aim of this paper is to extend and articulate an understanding of reduction and limits to consumption as a pathway for achieving resource use within planetary limits. We inquire about leverage points to limit consumption. Our units of analysis are initiatives based on practices of alternative consumption. The context for the study is Norway, an affluent society, and the examples are from the city of Trondheim. We enquire with the research question "which aspects of these initiatives could be leverage points for the establishment of consumption limits in everyday life?" We frame alternative consumption as consumption that refrains from mainstream and normalized forms of product acquisition, use, and discarding. Consequently, we frame limiting consumption as a political project that could help in avoiding unnecessary production and waste, which requires changes in the interlinking between materials, meanings and competences. We analyze 11 examples from the data available and propose three leverage points. 1) Technical knowledge and skills—social learning. 2) Motivation—environment, money savings, and community. 3) Social acceptance—transgression. These are three aspects that could aid in bringing about change across multiple social practices. We link these three aspects to the meanings and competences and to the appropriation of production. Autonomy in defining consumption limits could result from a reappropriation of production as part of participation in social practices.

"Efforts to create greener urban spaces have historically taken many forms, often disorganized and undisciplined. Recently, however, the push towards greener cities has evolved into a more cohesive movement. Drawing from multidisciplinary case studies, Urban Natures examines the possibilities of an ethical lively multi-species city with the understanding that humanity's relationship to nature is politically constructed. Covering a wide range of sectors, cities, and urban spaces, as well as topics ranging from edible cities to issues of power, and more-than-human methodologies, this volume pushes our imagination of a green urban future"--

A circular economy (CE) aims at decoupling value creation from waste generation and resource use by radically transforming production and consumption systems. Recent reviews on the topic of the circular economy have indicated that cultural barriers are a significant factor hindering the diffusion of so-called 'circular' business models, particularly the lack of consumer—or user—acceptance. However, none of them has provided an overview of the existing literature addressing such issues that can help academics and practitioners better understand consumption considerations when addressing the circular economy. Motivated by these observations, this paper presents the results of a literature review that summarises and discusses insights from 111 articles in terms of the problem area, theoretical approaches, methods, and tools that have been used to collect and analyse data, the main issues, and identified research gaps. The results show that most of the existing scientific work on the circular economy and circular solutions addressing consumption has focussed on identifying factors that drive or hinder the consumption of circular solutions. A smaller but expanding set of articles has focussed on offering insights into the nature, meaning, and dynamics of consumption in the context of the circular economy. According to this set of articles, consumption in the circular economy is anonymous, connected, political, uncertain, and based on multiple values, not only utility. A smaller set of papers has explored the integration of user and consumer perspectives into design processes. Although these contributions are relevant, opportunities for further research are still open, particularly regarding socio-material and cultural aspects of consumption in the context of the circular economy, and the role of digitalisation. In addition, more work could be done regarding strategies to foster not only acceptance but also the adoption and diffusion of the circular economy. Based on the findings of this literature review, some ideas for a research agenda on the issue of consumption in the circular economy are outlined. ; publishedVersion ; © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

This track sought to contribute to design's potential to shift, redirect and transform power relations to achieve sustainability. We sought to direct attention to the political potential in and politics of transition design with a focus on the many ways that power flows through the systems in which design operates. Our intention was to address, directly, the commentary from the DRS2018 track on Designing for Transitions, which noted that authors had tended to "stay on the safe and perhaps conventional side" of the subject. Instead, we hoped that the papers in this track would address "'politicised issues such as migration, decoloniality, the politics of climate change mitigation… and other complex and controversial problems" (Boehnert et al. 2018) that must be considered in planning and implementation of ongoing sustainability transitions. The politics of design transitions remains marginal in design research. With our call, we hoped to receive contributions that problematised design's current roles and conceptualised new roles for design in the context of sustainability transitions to attend to issues related to how power is and should be dealt with. ; publishedVersion ; This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialShare Alike 4.0 International License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

The transition to a circular economy (CE) remains an anticipated future with alternative pathways for its fulfillment. Most research on CE is normative about technological approaches and interpretations for production and sustainable development. However, critical reviews of CE help understand that CE's emergence is constrained to current dominant goals. As a set of imagined futures, the visions of CE are produced and shared in discursive practices. We hypothesize that the existence of alternative discourses about CE originates from alignment with or divergence from current dominant goals. Green growth holds the dominant position as a goal in the European discourse about CE. In this study, we present an empirical case of an emerging CE in the region of Trøndelag in Norway. This case uses qualitative data collected through interviews with informants in the public and private sectors (profit and non-profit organizations). The analysis of these interviews involved the use of a discourse coalition framework as a method. We identified three discourse coalitions: 1) Waste as resources: a vision of better product design and waste sorting technologies making recycling more efficient. 2) Sharing economy: a vision of industrial symbiosis, and new business models for local commercial offerings in sharing, reuse, repair of products. 3) Reduction of individual consumption: a vision of individual changes in lifestyle, coupled with local services and skill acquisition/transfer for reuse and repair. The first two operate in alignment with the political goal of green growth. The third one diverges by questioning it and setting focus on individual consumption reduction. We found discursive competition in CE when the focus is on the goal underlying its enactment. From this finding, we raise the question of which kinds of technological implementation and political challenges would come from shifting CE's policy goal to reducing individual consumption. To illustrate an alternative CE that emerges from consumption reduction, we discuss its implications based on the insights from our empirical case. The main contribution of the article is to provide evidence and an example of an emerging aspect that can be integrated more prominently in CE and that requires a stance that is not based on economic growth. ; publishedVersion ; © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)