A List
9/11/06

LIBERAL VALUES IN AGE OF CONSUMERISM TOPIC FOR SLU TALK

CANTON - Juliet Schor, author of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner 2004), is the keynote speaker for the 2006 Hays and Margaret Crimmel Colloquium at St. Lawrence University. She will speak on Thursday, September 28, at 8 p.m. in Eben Holden, on the topic "Spending Nation: Can Liberal Values Survive in the Age of Consumerism?" The event is open to the public, free of charge.

Co-founder of the Center for the New American Dream and the Center for Popular Economics, Schor is also the author of The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer. She is co-editor of The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience; The Consumer Society Reader; and Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century.

Schor states, "The official ideology of consumer capitalism holds that more is always better, choice is a paramount value and we are who we are because of what we buy. But the consumer paradise also brings with it a host of troubling questions: Where did these products come from? What impact are they having on the environment? Are they worth the sacrifice of time and money required to procure them? The market thrives on creating a space of enchantment, fantasy, and disregard for consequences, where such questions do not arise. By contrast, liberalism, and particularly the liberal arts higher education, demands that we ask them. It is based on rationality, a critical, open stance and a passion for truth. Does consumerism undermine those goals? Can a truly liberal university also be a consumerist one?"

The Crimmel Colloquium was established at St. Lawrence in 1996 by Emeritus Professor of Philosophy Henry H. Crimmel, in memory of his parents. Its purpose is to bring to campus speakers to address issues of fundamental importance to the liberal arts college and to liberal education, especially those articulated and examined in Crimmel's 1993 book The Liberal Arts College and the Ideal of Liberal Education: The Case for Radical Reform. Crimmel retired and was named to emeritus status in 1999.

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More information: The Crimmel Colloquium

Juliet Schor's Web Site