Do we have too much stuff? Professor Graesch says yes

Professor Anthony Graesch on “The Agenda with Steve Paikin,” TVOntario’s flagship current affairs program.
Professor Anthony Graesch on “The Agenda with Steve Paikin,” TVOntario’s flagship current affairs program.

With the holidays over, many families are still in the process of taking down decorations, putting away gifts and trying to figure out what to do with all of this “stuff.”

“The United States has just 3 percent of the world’s children, but we consume 40 percent of the world’s toys,” said anthropology professor Anthony Graesch on a Thursday episode of “The Agenda with Steve Paikin,” TVOntario’s flagship current affairs program.

Watch the program.

Participating in a roundtable discussion – via satellite – Graesch said North American families are “struggling to deal with the sheer quantity of things that are in their homes.”

A professor at Connecticut College since 2010 who specializes in archaeological anthropology, Graesch was part of an ethnographic research team at UCLA that conducted an in-depth study of how people live with and among their things. He recently co-authored a book about the project, "Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century.”

Thursday’s discussion, “Too Much Stuff,” also featured Jill Pollack, host of HGTV Canada’s “Consumed;” Alan Middleton, assistant professor of marketing at York University’s Schulich School of Business; Andrea Bennett, associated editor at Adbusters; and Bruce Philp, author of “Consumer Republic.”

Graesch is also featured in "A Cluttered Life: Middle-Class Abundance," a UCTV (University of California Television) series based on “Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century.”



January 11, 2013