Incomegetting and Environmental Degradation

Abstract

Drawing on Alfred Schütz’s thought, as well as on a number of modern pragmatists and practice theorists, we theorize incomegetting—referring to practices of getting income, typically salaried work—as the paramount structurer of everyday life and, therefore, also the chief mediator of the human–nature metabolism. Even though the pragmatics of everyday life as an aggregate underlie the bulk of environmental impacts, these insidious impacts impose little immediate influence on everyday life, in particular in the urban Global North. In other words, the pragmatic dimension of everyday activities—principally, work—that takes place within a vastly complex and globally interlinked productive world system, has most often no immediate connection to the “natural” environment. While parts of the populations are directly dependent in terms of livelihoods on the “natural” environment, these populations are typically pushed to the margins of the global productive system. The understanding formulated in this essay suggests that in environmental social sciences there is a reason to shift the epicenter of the analysis from consumption to everyday life, to the varied practices of incomegetting. Against the backdrop of this paper, universal basic income schemes ought to have radical impacts on the way we relate also to the “natural” environment and such schemes necessitate understanding the essence of money in our contemporary realities.

Is There Empirical Evidence on How the Implementation of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) Affects Labour Supply? A Systematic Review

“…Another group of theories that would support these assessments are the Motivation Crowding Theory, the consumption theory of external positioning (Conspicuous Consumption from Thorstein Veblen in 1899) and, perhaps the most developed, the Prospect Theory [5,132]. All of them differentiate between "good jobs" with intrinsic motivation and "bad jobs" without intrinsic motivation (see also [93]).…”

“…Furthermore, it does not take into account other determining factors that could be influencing the decision to participate or not in the labour market, such as the possibility of having nurseries or other care services, or the finding that these decisions depend on other factors and motivations, in addition to financial motivation. Here, neither the effects on geographical displacement nor the environment [93] are considered.…”

Kotimaisen tiedelehden tekemisen kestämättömät reunaehdot – vai sittenkin: omaehtoista toisin tekemistä?

“…Raha näyttäytyy konkreettisena ja talouden lakeja seuraavana, vaikka ne itse asiassa riippuvat yleisistä uskomuksista (Mellor 2019). Rahasta on tullut edellytys hyvälle elämälle, niin sanottu arjen rakenteellistaja, ja se otetaan yleisesti annettuna (Ollinaho & Arponen 2020). Raha ei kuitenkaan ole mikään absoluuttinen arvon mitta ja nykyjärjestelmässä sitä voidaan nyhjäistä tyhjästä: velkaa myöntäessään pankit luovat uutta rahaa (Werner 2014).…”

Stop chasing unicorns of climate inaction: Annulling the value–action gap, introducing persons

“…None of these motives are considered with reference to "perceived effectiveness," as Wynes et al (2020) also stated, but their weighting is in no way random or faulty either. The motives are concerned with participating in social and structural concerns such as "income getting," as Ollinaho and Arponen (2020) argued, but these considerations are also much more personal than just structurally determined.…”