Habits of affluence: unfeeling, enactivism and the ecological crisis of capitalism
Mind & Society August 14, 2024 Jan Slaby 12 citations
Habits common in affluent societies both sustain and conceal an unsustainable status quo. Enactivism, a philosophical approach emphasizing embodied and embedded cognition, can help identify and critically examine these habits and the environments that foster them. This analysis is situated within a critical theory of the unfelt, which describes how social collectives systematically produce gaps in emotional concern. The lack of proportionate affective and practical responses to the ecological crisis exemplifies this. The article draws on the concept of the imperial mode of living to develop a fuller picture of habits of affluence, then discusses two dimensions of these habits to advance a politically engaged version of enactivism.