Overview

Possibly the most central idea in neoclassical economics can be summed up in a single line from Kevin Costner's 1995 flop of a post-apocalyptic film about life after the melting of the polar ice caps: “Nothing's free in Waterworld.” Or from a popular introductory economics textbook, describing the concept of opportunity costs: “To get one thing that we like, we usually have to give up another thing that we like. Making decisions requires trading off one goal against another” (Mankiw 2012, 4). Trade-offs may be what neoclassical economics is all about, but this hinges on a concept of scarcity, popularized in anglophone economics by Lionel Robbins (2007 [1932], 15), so tradeoffs must be understood in context. The economy, society, and cultures in which we live influence decisions that neoclassical economists often model as made freely by identical autonomous individuals. Rather, the organization of capitalist society compels some activities and constrains others.

In Chapter 2 of this book, I discussed my Marxist-feminist model of household production in which households, capitalist firms, and the state are linked to one another via their production processes. According to this model, households can get things done in everyday life using varying proportions of inputs—commodities purchased with money from waged work, goods and services from the state, and time in the form of unwaged work—but in doing so are complicit in the reproduction of capitalist society. In Chapters 3 and 4, I described the ways my informants get things done in everyday life via mundane practices, prioritizing the things that are important to them, making use of the resources available to them, and subject to the factors that constrain them. The sustainability priorities of my informants include community well-being, the health of individual family members, nature, technology, and waste avoidance. Their resources include money, time, and know-how. My informants feel constrained in their choices by social and cultural norms, as well as a lack of accurate information about sustainability practices. This combination of priorities, resources, and constraints were different in every household. However, one striking universal complaint across all of my interviews was about a lack of time, as pro-environmental practices tend to take more time than money.