Developing apollonian and dionysian trust in environmental consumer schemes

This paper raises some fundamental issues about information and knowledge authorities as a basis for citizen-consumers to change their purchases, use, and (sub)-political involvement as implied in the notion of green, political citizen-consumers. By examining challenges to success of in reaching reduced, consumption-based harm to environment and health through (A) celebrities, (B) social marketing, and (C) community-based programmes, this paper develops the distinction between two types of trust of citizen-consumers, a distinction that need to be taken into account in consumer-oriented projects surrounding health and environment: The first type, which is arguably already taken into (extensive) account is what I label Apollonian trust, the trust in the validity, soundness, logic and cognitive quality of the schemes. Still, when informing the social sciences of consumption by evolutionary theory of human motivations it stands very clear that Apollonian trust is rarely sufficient in order to motivate citizen-consumers to modify their lifestyles. Influenced by evolutionary theory, I therefore coin the concept of Dionysian trust, to denote people's trust (subconscious or conscious) that their modified lifestyles will meet their social motivation, the motivation that changes in routines will somehow benefit their social position, which I argue is much more deeply rooted in us than both materialist and ecological values are or may ever become. In addition discussing implications for further consumer campaigns and schemes oriented towards reduced harm to health and environment through consumption, the paper tries to make sense of consumption by raising the wider scientific issue. This issue concerns the importance of allowing 'Darwin-free' but rich social scientific perspectives on consumption be thoroughly influenced by lessons from evolutionary theory on human nature, and vice versa, while at the same time avoiding deep contradictions and incommensurability of the perspectives.