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To explore the essential elements of a ‘green art of living’: an enjoyable, elegant, graceful and simultaneously low impact lifestyle.

The theoretical analysis is based on a critical reading and literature study of the texts of various prominent ecological utopian thinkers in the history of political philosophy.

In an ecologically sustainable society first priority must be given to re-examination of the proper ‘ecological limits’ of the current lifestyles and ‘arts of living’ in the Western world. The exact form or shape that people give to their lives is less important than their overall commitment to live within the ecological boundaries set by our earth.

A green, ecologically responsible society cannot do without a certain degree of moderation, self-restraint and simpler and less consumption-oriented lifestyles. However, in this chapter it is shown that such a society will not lead to impoverishment and austerity. An ecological society founded on voluntary simplicity will not be frugal or poor, but creates ample opportunities for its citizens to lead attractive, pleasurable, fulfilling and high-quality lives.

In the 1970s and 1980s, studies of the unpaid household and family labor of upper-class women linked this labor to class reproduction. In recent years, however, the topic of class has dropped out of analyses of unpaid labor, and such labor has been ignored in recent studies of elites. In this chapter, drawing primarily on 18 in-depth interviews with wealthy New York stay-at-home mothers, we look at what elite women’s unpaid labor consists of, highlighting previously untheorized consumption and lifestyle work; ask what it reproduces; and analyze how women themselves interpret and represent it. In the current historical moment, elite women face not only the cultural expectation that they will work for pay, but also the prominence of meritocracy as a mechanism of class legitimation in a diversified upper class. In this context, we argue, elite women’s unpaid labor serves to reproduce “meritocratic” dispositions of children rather than closed, homogenous elite communities, as identified in previous studies. Our respondents struggle to frame their activities as legitimate and productive work. In doing so, they not only resist longstanding stereotypes of “ladies who lunch” but also seek to justify and normalize their own class privileges, thus reproducing the same hegemonic discourses of work and worth that stigmatize their unpaid work.

To compare France and Germany, we will take a new approach to the discussion on lifestyles and social stratification. Instead of anchoring our definition of social stratification in predefined concepts, such as social class and status, we will empirically explore the latent patterns of social stratification and lifestyles. Our strategy allows us to investigate whether social stratification is best measured by one, two, or more dimensions; and then to map the associated patterns of lifestyles onto this/these dimension(s).

As indicators of social stratification, we use education, household income, and occupational status; and to measure lifestyles, we use data from two surveys on lifestyles and cultural consumption (Media og kulturforbruksundersøkelsen 2004, Norway; and module Pratiques culturelles et sportives, Enquête Permanente sur les Conditions de Vie 2003, France). We limit our analysis to occupationally active respondents, 20–64 years of age.

We would expect our findings to differ somewhat between the two countries; but given that social stratification is a pervasive element of all modern societies, we would also expect to find common empirical patterns that may be of relevance to the way we conceptualize lifestyles and social stratification.

Behind the source of environmental problems lie many factors. If we do not wish to ruin the world for future generations after making our own world uninhabitable by abusing the resources, we need to think and question many issues starting from our philosophy of science to our ways of consumption and from alternative technologies to the madness of the consumer society. The economic model applied today is the linear economy model which was developed after the industrial revolution. This model is based on the production and consumption process, which is entirely based on the take–make–dispose understanding in industry, agriculture and trade. The first priority in this cycle is the industry rather than the environment. However, the population is expected to increase gradually in half a century that will cause lack of food and shelter problems in every sense. As an alternative to linear economy, circular economy is defined as an economic approach that the value of products, materials and resources are kept as long as possible in the economy whereas the amount of waste is the lowest. The concept of circular economy is based on a transition to restorative industrial economy, renewable energy, reducing the use of toxic chemicals meanwhile avoiding waste. In this context, the consumer movement consisted of individuals who have high awareness and consciousness of the environment, reshapes consumption decisions and correspondingly initiatives are created. Adopting an understanding called lifestyle of health and sustainability, the consumers prioritize by making their consumptions sustainable, protecting green marketing practices and the ecological system for future generations.