REGULATING COMSUMPATGENIC SYSTEMS An Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia Workshop JULY 30–31 2018 Drawing Room, University House Australian National University 1 Convenors Sharon Friel, Director, Professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU Valerie Braithwaite, Professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU Ashley Schram, Research Fellow, School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU Acknowledgements We would like to thank the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University for the funding to make this workshop possible. We acknowledge and celebrate the First Australians on whose traditional lands we meet, and pay our respect to the elders of the Ngunnawal people past, present and emerging. We would also like to thank Ryan Wong, Sharni Goldman, and Deborah Cleland for their contributions to this event. “What do you get the man who has everything? Might I suggest a gravestone enscribed with the words: so what?” ~ Banksy 2 Agenda DAY 1 07:00 – 09:00 Out of town attendees Continental Breakfast @ Fellows Cafe and Bar at University House Welcome, workshop aims, and participant introductions 09:00 – 10:00 (Drawing Room, University House) Session 1: What are the consumptagenic challenges for society? Chair: Ashley Schram 10:00 – 11:00 Speaker: Sharon Friel (20 mins) Discussants: Fran Baum (10 mins) and Rebecca Colvin (10mins) Group Discussion (20 mins) 11:00 – 11:30 MORNING TEA Session 2: Psychosocial theories of consumption and regulatory responses Chair: Sharon Friel 11:30 – 12:30 Speakers: Valerie Braithwaite (15 mins) and Jolanda Jetten (15 mins) Discussants: Annet Hoek (5 mins) and Anthea Roberts (5 mins) Group Discussion (20 mins) Session 3: Political theories of consumption and regulatory responses Chair: Belinda Townsend 12:30 – 13:30 Speakers: Susan Sell (15 mins) and Wesley Widmaier (15 mins) Discussants: John Braithwaite (5 mins) and Christian Downie (5 mins) Group Discussion (20 mins) 13:30 – 14:30 LUNCH 3 Session 4: Economic and market theories of consumption and regulatory responses Chair: Anthea Roberts 14:30 – 15:30 Speakers: Michal Carrington (15 mins) and Richard Denniss (15 mins) Discussants: Jon Altman (5 mins) and Peter Miller (5 mins) Group Discussion (20 mins) Session 5: Case studies in regulating consumption for health Chair: Valerie Braithwaite 15:30 – 16:30 Speakers: Peter Miller (15 mins) and Ashley Schram (15 mins) Discussants: Steven Allender (5 mins) and Paula O’Brien (5 mins) Group Discussion (20 mins) RW 16:30 – 16:45 Reflections from Day 1 and Closing Remarks 18:30 – 20:30 Dinner @ Parlour (New Acton Precinct, Canberra) 4 Agenda DAY 2 Out of town attendees 07:00 – 09:00 Continental Breakfast @ Fellows Cafe and Bar at University House Session 6: Case studies in regulating consumption for climate change Chair: Susan Sell 09:00 – 10:00 Speakers: Christian Downie (15 mins) and Christine Parker (15 mins) Discussants: Patrick Harris (5 mins) and Mark Howden (5 mins) Group Discussion (20 mins) Session 7: Case studies in regulating consumption for equity Chair: Rebecca Colvin 10:00 – 11:00 Speakers: Jon Altman (15 mins) and Fran Baum (15 mins) Discussants: Steven Allender (5 mins) and Belinda Townsend (5 mins) Group Discussion (20 mins) 11:00 – 11:30 MORNING TEA Session 8: Big picture regulatory ideas for consumption Chair: Sharon Friel 11:30 – 13:00 Speaker: John Braithwaite (30 mins) Respondents: Fiona Haines (10 mins), Anthea Roberts (10 mins) Group Discussion (30 mins) 13:00 – 14:00 LUNCH Session 9: Transforming consumptagenic systems and 14:00 – 16:00 societies 16:00 – 16:15 Reflections from Day 2 and Closing Remarks 5 Participant List Steven Allender (Deakin University) Jon Altman (Deakin University) Fran Baum (Flinders University) John Braithwaite (Australian National University) Valerie Braithwaite (Australian National University) Michal Carrington (University of Melbourne) Rebecca Colvin (Australian National University) Richard Denniss (The Australia Institute) Christian Downie (Australian National University) Sharon Friel (Australian National University) Fiona Haines (University of Melbourne) Patrick Harris (University of Sydney) Annet Hoek (Monash University) Jolanda Jetten (University of Queensland) Peter Miller (Deakin University) Paula O'Brien (University of Melbourne) Christine Parker (University of Melbourne) Anthea Roberts (Australian National University) Ashley Schram (Australian National University) Susan Sell (Australian National University) Belinda Townsend (Australian National University) Wesley Widmaier (Australian National University) 6 STEVEN ALLENDER Dr Steven Allender is Professor of Public Health and founding Director of the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University, a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention. Steve leads (CIA) a NHMRC Partnership grant targeting childhood obesity and co‐leads (CID) an NHMRC Australian Centre for Research Excellence in Obesity Policy Research and Food Systems. Steve receives lead investigator funding from bodies including the US National Institutes of Health, National Health and Medical Research Council, the Australian Heart Foundation, VicHealth, the Western Alliance and the European Union. Steve has recently completed a jointly funded National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC)/ Australian Heart Foundation Career Development Fellowship. Steve has an ongoing programme of research on solving complex problems with a focus on the burden of chronic disease and obesity prevention. Recent work has seen a particular interest in the emerging burden of chronic disease in developed and developing countries and the possibilities for using complex systems approaches for community based intervention. What research are you currently engaged in that you think is relevant to regulating consumption in the context of health, the environment, or social equity? Multiple large trials of building capacity to apply systems thinking for community based interventions to prevent obesity. Heritage for health – building capacity in indigenous communities to use systems thinking to address longer term causes of chronic disease. Multiple other trials of systems thinking for various problems – mental health, suicide prevention, drug and alcohol misuse, health services prevention. What areas of investigation do you think should be on a research agenda for regulating consumption moving forward? Industry is the big one – reconfiguring the role of industry to be a positive. Empowerment of key people to understand and lead effective responses from within and without system(s). 7 JON ALTMAN Jon Altman is an economic anthropologist (more the latter than the former) who used to head the centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University. He is currently employed at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, Melbourne and affiliated as an emeritus professor of ANU at RegNet. Much of Jon’s research focuses on development alterity via forms of economic hybridity especially for Indigenous peoples who look to deploy the lands and natural resources they own for food sovereignty purposes. Some of his recent research has examined regulatory regimes that look to impose late capitalist modes of economy on Indigenous Australians in remote Australia in the name of ‘improvement’; and the disastrous recent consequences of such regimes in deepening poverty, dependence and inequality. What research are you currently engaged in that you think is relevant to regulating consumption in the context of health, the environment, or social equity? In my research I look at consumption holistically as closely inter‐linked with production and distribution/exchange. I also do not differentiate between the market and non‐market/customary. I am interested in how particular forms of electronic imposed regulation are directing remote living Indigenous Australians who are highly welfare dependent to spend their meagre financial resources on expensive foodstuffs in licenced stores, while other forms of regulation are limiting their opportunities to invest in equipment that will give them access to far healthier foods from the bush. I have recently published a book chapter on this transformative project that is reducing postcolonial possibilities in very remote Arnhem Land that I attach for any interested workshop participant. These regulations that aim to transform Indigenous subjectivity to that of model/imagined neoliberal citizens is ethnicist, unhealthy and bad for the environmental condition of the land. What areas of investigation do you think should be on a research agenda for regulating consumption moving forward? There are two undeniable observations that can be made about many Indigenous people in remote Australia: they are in bad physical shape and their labour is grossly underutilised. People need much more information about the western foods that they consume, but they also consume cheap, fatty, sugary and carbohydrate rich foods for a diversity of reasons, some cultural, some linked to deep poverty. Much regulatory effort is locking people into forms of consumption that are deadly instead of empowering people to deploy their surplus labour for healthier lifeways inclusive of renewable forms of energy and standard recycling options that the loss of the cheap China option notwithstanding are unavailable in remote places. Instead of punitive forms of regulating consumption