"I'm not greedy but I like a lot": attitudes to consumption in an oversized teacup
Ramoutsaki, Helen (2023) "I'm not greedy but I like a lot": attitudes to consumption in an oversized teacup. In: [Presented at the James Cook University Research for Ethical Development 2023 Symposium]. From: James Cook University Research for Ethical Development 2023 Symposium: A Broken Promise? The 2030 Agenda’s commitment to Leave No One Behind, 27-29 September 2023, Cairns, QLD, Australia.
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Abstract
Human values and behaviour at both individual and societal levels can influence the success of goals for global sustainable development. This creative practice-embedded presentation addresses self-interested overconsumption in relatively affluent societies, such as Britain, the United States and Australia. Such excessive consumption challenges attempts to achieve balanced, equitable economies and sustainable lives within the more-than-human world. Kate Raworth’s alternative Doughnut Economics model makes explicit the overshoot into environmental degradation and the shortfall in relation to the twelve social priorities of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (2017). However, Schokkaert’s critique of the model acknowledges that while individuals can act altruistically, we cannot ignore the “self-interested free riders” and the state as “an instrument of the powerful and rich to exploit the poor” (2019, p. 130). The normalisation of exploitative excessive consumption is evident in material culture. The chance find of an oversized vintage teacup made in England, inscribed with the motto, “I’m not greedy but I like a lot”, led me into a creative and historical investigation of how the meme has been applied to corrupt councillors, over-taxing politicians, invading national leaders and to the enjoyment of home comforts in the form of a good cup of tea or cocoa. Taking the teacup and other oversized vessels with their accompanying slogans as materialised metaphors of excess consumption and unequal power relations demonstrates relative advantage, disadvantage and attitudes to the concept of greed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, compared and contrasted with contemporaneous attitudes. My grandmother alter-ego, MC Nannarchy, expresses her findings in her idiosyncratic spoken-word rapping style with a satirical message in her role as the Minister for the Economy and Gastronomy, delivered over her very capacious evening cup of cocoa.
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