The social and cultural meanings of cleanliness and comfort have evolved over time, generally in ways that demand more resources (Shove 2003). The temperatures that feel comfortable indoors, and the actions people take and the equipment they use to remain comfortable, are matters of cultural expectations and social norms, but the equipment and infrastructures in homes recursively reinforces expectations about how people should feel indoors and what steps they ought to take to feel that way. And ironically, as new supposedly time-saving domestic technologies emerge, cleaning practices and the demand for cleanliness have changed in ways that demand more unwaged time rather than less (Cowan 1983). Changes in infrastructures and technologies, like central heating and in-home washing machines, make these evolutions in cultural expectations possible, and even recursively reinforce the normalcy of these expectations. So while cleanliness and comfort involve mundane habits that are easily taken for granted, my informants have made changes to conventional ways of getting things done to make their practices more sustainable. In some cases, these changes take more unwaged time (as Cowan 1983 documents) but in other cases these changes—intriguingly—result in less unwaged time devoted to mundane household practices.

Cleanliness

Shove (2003, 10) says that demand escalators don't run backwards, but the ways that my informants have changed their showering, laundry, and household cleaning habits provide concrete examples of very real demanddecreasing changes in practices and accompanying changes in the meaning of cleanliness. Some of these changes involve taking additional unwaged time to perform cleaning activities in more labor-intensive ways that avoid the use of energy or “chemicals,” or purchasing special cleaning products, but other changes involve simply reducing the frequency of cleaning, thus actually reducing the amount of unwaged work involved.

Showering

The history of personal hygiene in the United States by Bushman and Bushman (1988) reveals that the meaning and practices associated with personal cleanliness have changed substantially since the 18th century, when even affluent Americans might never bathe, cleaning themselves instead with an occasional sponge bath—a wet cloth and no soap. The accompanying infrastructure—a washbasin—was still a fairly rare item to find in U.S. homes, and bathtubs were completely absent. By 1900, bathing practices had changed such that most Americans bathed fairly regularly, though still far less than we do today, as bodily cleanliness began to take on new social and moral meanings.

None of my informants grew up exactly the same way that they live now, so many of them had to spend considerable amounts of time and effort to learn about sustainability and new sustainable ways of getting things done in everyday life. They talk to friends and family members, they read books and websites, and they learn on the job as part of their waged work to gain practical know-how and to acquire information that helps them make more environmental choices. These efforts might be called “human capital acquisition” in the jargon of neoclassical economics—investments in productivity-enhancing skills that involved a trade-off to acquire. In other words, my informants’ research represents time—and in some cases, also money—that could have been used for some other purpose but that was dedicated to gaining skills and knowledge. Or, these efforts might be seen as gaining “competence” in theories of social practice—“which encompasses skill, know-how, and technique” (Shove, Pantzar, & Watson 2012, 14). And these efforts to acquire know-how that is useful for bringing everyday life into alignment with pro-environmental values can be thought of as one component of the unwaged work that takes place in these eco-conscious households—an input into the household production process.

In the time since these interviews were conducted, the concept of “doing one's own research” became associated during the COVID-19 pandemic with skeptics organizing anti-mask rallies, refusing vaccines, and taking unproven treatments or preventatives such as medications formulated for livestock. The phrase now appears with the word “research” in quotation marks in internet memes, such as “2021: I did my own ‘research’ “ engraved on a gravestone, or “You keep using this word ‘research.’ I don't think it means what you think it means,” featuring a photo of Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya from the 1987 movie The Princess Bride. Today, “doing one's own research” is a position that is contrasted unfavorably by critics of these conspiracy theorists with scientists who do “real” research.

Many of my informants do not see “science” as neutral, and they do not trust the government, scientists, or the medical establishment to produce research or recommendations that promote environmental preservation or the safety of their families.

In this chapter, I will present a version of the Marxist-feminist theoretical framework that I originally outlined in my 2019 article in the journal Science & Society. This chapter is admittedly dry and somewhat out of step with the rest of the book. If you are less theoretically oriented and more interested in the description of mundane practices I promised you in the Introduction, you can feel free to skip this chapter without missing too much. However, for theoretically oriented readers interested in the debates in Marxist-feminism or household production, this chapter is for you.

I initially developed this model based on what I learned from my ecoconscious informants during the ethnographic interviews I conducted in the spring of 2017. While it is somewhat a cliché that parents of young children are tired, I was nonetheless struck by just how exhausted my informants were. Even the most affluent among them, who had substantial extended family and/or paid assistance with everyday household tasks, were struggling to cope. And even the low-income single mothers in my sample told me that they most needed more time rather than more money. I realized that these households were making substitutions of time for money in producing a version of everyday life that felt more in line with their environmental values. Not only that, but they were taking on additional time-consuming tasks, such as recycling sorting, in order to avoid or “undo” environmental damage from other sites, scales, and sectors. At the same time, my informants were generally deeply dissatisfied with what they perceived to be the overall ineffectiveness of these interventions—no matter how many time-consuming changes they made to their everyday practices, it felt like a drop in the bucket. The environment is still being destroyed, and many of my informants were acutely aware of their complicit role in this destruction despite their best efforts.

Having been trained somewhat paradoxically in both Marxist-feminist and neoclassical theories of household production in graduate school, I was able to draw on these seemingly contradictory frameworks to help me explain what I uncovered in my interviews. As I will explain, other existing theoretical frameworks would point to more reformist or redistributionoriented solutions to the problems and concerns of my informants.

On the grid

Partway through my interview with Heather—a nurse, doula, lactation consultant, multilevel marketing essential oils saleswoman, and White mother of three young children—she excused herself for a moment to check on the placenta that she was processing in an electric fruit dehydrator. Dehydrating, grinding up, and then encapsulating placentas into pill form for easier postpartum ingestion is just one of Heather's many side hustles related to natural living. By this point in my interviews with ecologically conscious parents in and around Portland, Oregon, in the Northwestern United States, I had learned to maintain a neutral demeanor when confronted with unusual practices and comments that made me feel uncomfortable or with which I disagreed. But the essential oil diffuser gently misting the air in Heather's immaculately clean home took on a different meaning knowing that a human placenta was cooking in the next room. I felt immediately queasy, but I did my best to act like this was the most normal thing in the world. Great, no problem. I channeled the neutral “brisk nurse” affect I was taught to use as an interviewer for a lesbian health study years earlier but had mostly refrained from using in this study in favor of the warmer affect I hoped would generate good rapport with my eco-conscious informants. As soon as I got back into my car after the interview, I pulled out my phone and googled: “is eating placenta cannibalism?”

Heather told me, “My husband tells me that I can't do it all, and I understand that, but we can make little steps and those will all be helpful. Anything we can make and be away from consumerism and capitalism.” In contrast to her own difficult childhood, Heather has deliberately arranged her life to devote as much time as possible to her children, and she works hard to protect her children from harm. She has been breastfeeding continuously for the past seven years, nursing each of her older children until they were at least four years old. During our interview, she was breastfeeding and bargaining with her youngest child—a two-year-old—to please eat her lunch instead of nursing more. Heather researches health choices for her family extensively, and she is very skeptical of conventional medicine and cleaning products, both of which she generally avoids.

Conflicts due to differences in preferences, priorities, and the social meanings associated with mundane practices within households are the premise of countless television sitcoms—between parents and their adult children in Absolutely Fabulous, Frasier, and Steptoe and Son; between parents and their children in The Simpsons, Family Ties, Out of this World, and King of the Hill; between spouses in Bewitched, I Love Lucy, Dharma & Greg, and Keeping up Appearances; between nonrelated adults living together, as in Mr. Belvedere, The Nanny, Who's the Boss, Father Ted, and Perfect Strangers. In each of these cases, these differences are exploited for comedic effect. In the 1963 Steptoe and Son episode “The Bath,” the more fastidious and forward-looking adult son Harold explains to his rag-and-bone-man father Albert—who seems trapped in the late 19th century—that their current arrangement of bathing infrequently in a metal basin in the front room is no longer acceptable: “A lot of people don't live like that anymore … Those days is gone. It's a social stigma these days. You might as well have a horse sitting in the armchair and be done with it.” Harold interprets his father's bathing practices as acts of “extreme dirtiness”—a meaning not shared by Albert.

Each of the households I spoke with for this book have their own unique combinations of environmental priorities, resources, and constraints—described in detail in Chapters 3 and 4—and conflict often arises both within and across households when these differences clash and compromise proves difficult. Chasms between the social meaning of practices can be too large to cross, particularly for these household members who are outside the “mainstream” and for whom the environmental stakes of mundane practices feel high. My informants often laughed—sometimes nervously—when they revealed these conflicts to me. While these sorts of interpersonal conflicts were generally conveyed in a lighthearted and affectionate manner, these differences are a real source of tension and stress, and at times have the potential to harm household members’ physical or emotional well-being.

Interpersonal conflict in households where priorities and the social meaning of practices clash is relatable—this is perhaps why these culture clashes and fish-out-of-water household scenarios are such persistent themes in television sitcoms.

The 23 households I met with over the course of the spring in 2017 were more different from each other than I initially expected. I had assumed that sustainability in Portland, Oregon, would be a largely liberal White upper-middle-class phenomenon, and that the practices would primarily serve as conspicuous forms of class distinction and display. However, the informants and households I spoke with represented more diversity than I anticipated—in personal backgrounds, household configurations, socioeconomic status, political leanings, education, race and ethnicity, and the gender of the householders.

Despite these differences, the adults in these households share a common, sincerely held desire to do the right thing for their children, households, communities, and planet. My informants try to make decisions for their households and balance their sustainability priorities with constrained resources, which often involves fairly major interventions into conventional ways of getting things done in order to bring their everyday practices into alignment with their values. I learned that there is not a single “sustainability,” with households engaging in sustainability practices to varying degrees of intensity along a green spectrum. Rather, sustainability represents a broad set of values and beliefs for these Portland households, with sustainability practices influenced by the unique combinations of priorities, resources, and constraints in each household.

Mike and Mina have two large cars that they use for long daily drives from their suburban home to their various obligations. For Mina, whose Middle Eastern extended family lives nearby, the primary focus in the sustainability realm is the health of herself and her family members. For this reason, she makes her own natural deodorant, gives her children alternative remedies like elderberry syrup, and prepares elaborate home-cooked vegetarian meals with organic ingredients she buys during her frequent trips to far-flung grocery stores. As a stay-at-home mother, she sees her unpaid time as her major contribution to the household. David and Dayna, on the other hand, are both White professionals who work in downtown Portland. They own only one car and commute to their daily obligations almost exclusively by bicycle, including dropping their infant child off at daycare. They have governmentsubsidized solar panels and energy-efficiency devices in their home, but they eat a lot of frozen convenience foods and takeout meals since becoming parents.

Over the course of this project, childhood memories of the 1992 animated film FernGully: The Last Rainforest kept popping into my head. In this movie, a young fairy apprentice uses the magic of the “web of life” to save the Australian rainforest from an evil anthropomorphic oil spill bent on destruction. I remember so clearly being nine years old and deeply frustrated with powerful grown-ups’ inability or unwillingness to tackle the environmental devastation that weighed so heavily on my mind. I wasn't clear on what was causing the destruction of the planet—greed, ignorance, big corporations, and an evil anthropomorphic oil spill probably all seemed like plausible explanations. I could eat Rainforest Crisp cereal, put milk jugs filled with rocks in our toilet tanks, and write letters to the president, but at the end of the day I felt totally powerless and deeply angry. Adults were always telling me to “do the right thing”—so why were they allowing the planet to be destroyed? I felt like the flying fox and vivisection victim Batty, attempting to warn others about impending dangers and just getting ignored. I wished I had magical powers like FernGully's fairy Crysta so I, too, could save the earth.

My informants also grew up in the era of corporate oil spills, chemical disasters, acid rain, ozone depletion, deforestation, and, somewhat paradoxically, an increasing sense of personal responsibility for the natural environment. The iconic 1970 Earth Day poster by Walt Kelly featuring a cartoon opossum Pogo surrounded by trash broadcasts a stark message: “We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us.” My informants learned about recycling and litter in primary school from a guy dressed up in a trash heap costume, they diligently cut up their plastic six-pack rings to save wildlife, and they were bombarded with messages from promotional campaigns like Iron Eyes Cody's famous plea as he paddles his canoe through factory effluent and a discarded fast-food meal is hurled at his feet out of a moving vehicle: “People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It.”

While the “Crying Indian” ad is one of the most successful U.S. public service announcements of all time (Andersen 2013, 404), less well known is the background story of this ad campaign.

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.

The rise of inflation rates around the world has rekindled debate over alternative monetary systems. What options do we have for better money? The gold standard is an alternative with a long history, while Bitcoin is a new contender. Would a decentralized gold standard or Bitcoin standard outperform the current system of fiat money issued by a government central bank? Unlike accounts of the gold standard or of Bitcoin that are one-sided works of advocacy, and unlike accounts of fiat money that are published by central banks, Better Money: Gold, Fiat, or Bitcoin? provides a nuanced and hype-free discussion. Written by a pioneering economist in the study of alternative monetary institutions, it explains how gold, fiat, and Bitcoin standards differ in terms of their supply mechanisms. Drawing insights from monetary theory and comparative history, it evaluates the three standards on their relative merits. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of money or in proposals for fundamentally reforming our monetary system.

This chapter focuses on academic models of collective choice. It discusses voting models and models of social choice to show that the link between instrumental preferences and collective choice outcomes is broken once one recognizes that the political preferences of citizens and voters are expressive, so do not represent the outcomes they most prefer. The models themselves are not wrong, in that they describe the way that expressed preferences are aggregated to make collective decisions. But the interpretation of the models often is mistaken. There is no clear relationship between outcomes of collective decision-making processes and the outcomes that would be preferred by those whose preferences are being aggregated.

Chapter 5. Bitcoin emerged in 2009 from a community of libertarian cryptographers who sought an alternative payment system free from fiat inflation and from government payment surveillance and censorship. Today it provides an alternative payment rail that circumvents central banks. Bitcoin serves as a medium of exchange in some transactions, but not yet as a commonly accepted medium of exchange. The Bitcoin source code keeps the number of Bitcoin in circulation growing, at an ever-slowing rate, along a programmed quantity path. Basic monetary theory shows that this supply mechanism has pros and cons: It avoids money supply shocks, but it rules out any supply response to variations in demand, making the purchasing power of Bitcoin more volatile than that of gold or (relatively well-managed) fiat, which limits the attractiveness of holding Bitcoin as a medium of exchange. The costs of the Bitcoin industry are borne by its users, not by third parties, to the same extent as those of any energy-using private industry. The non-zero chance of its serving as a future global money means that Bitcoin has a fundamental value. It does not inherently rest on an unsustainable chain-letter or “bigger fool” process.