INTERVIEW #119 JACOB ÖSTBERG

Name: Jacob Östberg

Occupation: Professor of Marketing at Stockholm University, researcher, consultant, speaker and author

Based in: Stockholm

Instagram: @jacobostberg

Website: at Stockholm University

LinkedIN: Jacob Östberg

Photo: Milad Abedi

Hi Jacob, welcome to A Sustainable Closet. Can you tell us about yourself and the work you do as a professor?

I conduct research and teach about consumer culture, i.e. how our contemporary lives are shaped by the omnipresence of the market. When doing research you always have to focus on some small aspect of the greater picture. In my case I have, for example, focused a lot on the role that brands play in contemporary consumer culture, focusing on issues such as people tattooing brand symbols onto their bodies. What does that say about the role that brands have come to play today? 

When teaching you to get a chance to paint a much broader picture, which in my case entails trying to sensitize students to the importance of consumption for us today and how that forms a particular type of society. At Stockholm University I meet a lot of students and many of them will end up in fairly powerful positions in both the private and the public sectors once they graduate. If I can make at least some of them aware of the problems with our contemporary consumer culture I believe that can make quite a difference in the end.

You have chosen to specialise in consumption, why is that the case?

Because it is such a basic building block of our contemporary culture, it is largely ignored at an intellectual level because each and every act of consumption seems so small and insignificant. It is my firm belief that we will understand neither the human condition nor the makeup of society today without proper attention to the role that consumption plays for all of us, all the time, in virtually all places. 

What is the normal reaction people have when you tell them your field of work?

At the beginning of my career, people were quite sceptical. I believe many of them thought that I was studying shopping or some other activity that they deemed too silly to focus attention on. Gradually it seems like there has been an increased awareness of the role that consumption plays in contemporary society, and I have probably become much better at explaining what I do, so today I am met more with interest than scepticism.

Photo: Andreas von Gegerfeldt

Despite many of us know that high consumption might not be good for the planet, it seems like we still do it anyway? We know we should avoid fast fashion, eating meat and flying too much but still, we do. Do you agree with this picture and if that is so, why is it so hard for us to change our way of consuming?

Many times when these issues are brought to the fore people will ask “why are we so irrational, doing all these things despite knowing that we shouldn’t?” In sustainability circles there is sometimes talk about how there is an “attitude-behaviour-gap”, which means that people have the right attitudes – I shall not catch a plane and go to Paris for the weekend – but they behave in certain ways that run counter to the attitudes – oh, I got such a good deal that I will go just this one time. The fantasy is that at some point this gap between attitudes and behaviours will be eliminated.

The problem with this is that we are not irrational. To say that is just really sloppy theorising. Instead, we must focus on understanding what kind of logic are at play that makes it seems rational to do all these things despite knowing that we perhaps shouldn’t. In that spirit, I like to use the term humanistic rationality. In a contemporary consumer culture, consumption is what structures social life. If we take that away people have a really hard time relating to both themselves and to others. That’s why it is perhaps humanistically rational to do all these things that we know we shouldn’t. 

Then, of course, we cannot keep doing them so things will have to change. But that change needs to start by understanding why we keep doing these things despite better knowledge. 

What is your own personal interest in clothes and fashion?

I’m chiefly interested in it from a social science perspective, in how we use clothes and fashion to communicate meaning towards ourselves and others. I used to have more of personal interest, in the sense that I tried to “keep up” and “look smart” but I have gradually realized that no matter how hard I try I just look like a regular middle-aged, cis-gender, heterosexual man, that kind of blends into the background. Neither my interest nor my skills seem to be strong enough to change that, so I surrendered and accepted my faith.

What would be your recommendations, not to consumers, but to those who seek to inspire, change or even promote more sustainable options, what should they think about in their communication? In other words, how do we truly "win people over" from your perspective as a scientist?

I firmly believe that the general population’s lack of changes towards more sustainable options is not because of a lack of information. Many of us know all too well that we engage in behaviours that are thoroughly unsustainable but nevertheless keep doing them. Being told once more that what we do is not viable and being informed what we should do instead won’t do much good. 

If we truly want change the only sure way is to regulate, e.g. by no longer allowing people to catch a plane between Stockholm and Gothenburg, so that everyone will be forced to take the train. A somewhat softer way is nudging people towards more sustainable choices, e.g. by having the standard hamburger at McDonald’s being the vegetarian option, so that people wanting meat need to make an active, and preferably more expensive, choice. The last, and least coercive, option in “winning people over” is to provide more positive examples of what a sustainable life could look like, instead of chiefly portraying it as a life where people have to give various things up.