Green Asia Ecocultures, Sustainable Lifestyles, and Ethical Consumption

Sustainability, lifestyle, and consumption in Asia 13
Tim Winter’s opening chapter on cooling and air-conditioning practices in
Asia offers a highly generative case study of the limits of narrow developmental
frameworks of modernity and urban lifestyles. Discussing the ways in which air
conditioning is becoming increasingly pervasive across Asia, he highlights the
pernicious effects of globalized discourses and technologies of “thermal comfort.”
While a number of Asian cities are attempting to develop local alternatives to energy-
intensive methods of cooling through innovations such as “tropical skyscrapers,” as
Winter points out, air-conditioned internal spaces are often positioned as refuges
from an external (ecological and social) environment increasingly ravaged by the
impact of climate change. The “solutions” to these issues have tended to be sought
in the domain of engineering or technological innovation rather than considering
how air conditioning has become naturalized as part of the rise of globalized middle-
class lifestyles. Building on alternative urban developmental models such as that of
“tropical modernism” and on the insights of social practice theory, Winter discusses
a range of sustainable cooling practices that have been prevalent historically across
the region and many of which persist to this day, from the Planter’s Chair of colonial
times to the use of hand fans, slatted furniture, or the habit of sitting on the floor.
Winter concludes that central to maintaining and/or reviving this low-carbon comfort
heritage is an emphasis on historical accounts of socio-material arrangements and
practices enabling the inhabitation of indoor spaces that are far less energy-intensive
than the air conditioning paradigm prevalent today.
The next four chapters examine environmentalism in the context of consumption
and market capitalism. In chapter 3, Devleena Ghosh and Amit Jain examine
the rise of “consumer-citizens” driven by ethical and sustainable concerns. As
they note, while research on green consumption and green marketing has tended
to associate ethical consumption with the Global North with the South largely
imagined as a site of production, the rise of the middle classes in South and East
Asia complicates this picture. Focusing on the vast consumer market of India, the
authors review consumer perceptions and preferences toward green marketing
practices/products. Discussing the ubiquity of greenwashing, the chapter argues
that the promotion of green marketing practices in a country such as India can
only hope to bring corporate and philanthropic goals together if all actors make
real and long-term commitments to social, ethical, and environmental objectives.
Scott Writer’s chapter focuses on a very specific market aimed at high-end
eco-consumers, naturally farmed tea in Taiwan. Based on ethnographic fieldwork
with small-scale tea producers who draw on “natural farming” or the “ecological
school” of tea cultivation, Writer’s essay explains the way in which the farmers
willingly submit to the vagaries of various “natural” forces and non-human
agents, such as flavor-enhancing insects, a process poetically captured by the
phrase “relying on heaven.” As Writer points out, the taste, quality, and also brand
status of the highly prized teas made through this process are intertwined not
only with the particular environment in which they were grown but also with the
specificity of the producer’s own embodied taste and practices. For tea makers
and consumers alike, then, the taste, experience, and value of different teas is
linked to a complex and unpredictable ecosystem of tea production.