It follows that trade-offs between needs are possible. To take an example, if it is true that bulimia results from affective frustration, or insufficient recognition of a person’s identity, then it should be possible to reduce the bulimics’ consumption of food by better satisfying their need for affectivity and identity. More generally, the “Needs-Satisfiers” imply that it must possible to consider some “downsizing” of material consumption without a decline in overall well-being.
In working out his theory, Max-Neef’s objective was helping grassroots groups to build their own conception of (human) development. It was not primarily meant to analyze consumption patterns or lifestyles as such, notwithstanding its use as such by several scholars (Jackson and Mark 1999, Stagl and O’Hara 2001, Jackson, Jager and Stagl 2004). However, as a tool for sociological analysis of lifestyles and consumption patterns it is not without weakness. More precisely:
• Some needs are clearly stated at a too general level. In order to be helpful in consumption analysis, some of them (like subsistence for example), should be further disaggregated;
• The whole list itself is disputable. For example, it could be argued that protection or security is not a separate need as such but a condition or a dimension of the satisfaction of other needs. In other words, what would matter is security in the accessibility of satisfiers not protection as such. The same could be said of freedom. Freedom in the choice of satisfiers could be considered a transversal dimension of need satisfaction, as in Sen’s theory of capabilities-functionings.
• The weakest aspect of Max-Neefs need-satisfiers model for analyzing consumption is probably its definition and use of the four existential categories of needs (being, having, doing, interacting). For instance, it is unclear if it refers to needs as such or to satisfiers.
This is why Max-Neefs’s theory should be taken as a starting point in need of modifications and, if possible, improvements. In particular, it will be necessary to develop the classification of satisfiers in order to take account of different sorts of acquisition and appropriation models. It should, notably, make the distinction between marketable and not marketable satisfiers, individually owned or collectively shared ones, etc.
Our objective with T1.1 is to end up with “needs - attributes” matrices able to characterize the consumption patterns of different historical, cultural and sociological lifestyles in a satisfactory way. That means that it should be sensitive enough to make the differences between consumption patterns apparent without sacrificing too much in terms of simplicity and workability. This matrix should define a space of possibilities in the following domains:
• Relationships between needs and consumption clusters (housing, clothing, food, culture, communication, entertainment, etc.): what needs are at stake in each of them?
• Relationships between consumption clusters and satisfiers: what kind of satisfiers (marketable or not, individual or collective, etc.) is privileged for which need, which clusters?
• Relationships between satisfiers and consumption clusters.
As a first test for the “needs-satisfiers attributes” framework, we will see if it can account for the changes in lifestyles and consumption patterns in societies and history. The main historical and anthropological accounts of the diversity and evolution of consumption patterns (Campbell 1987, Douglas and Isherwood 1979, Fine, B. and E. Leopold 1993, Wilkinson 1973, etc.) will be reviewed in an attempt to reformulate them in our “Needs-Satisfiers Attributes” matrix. If we succeed in doing so, we will be more confident in the fruitfulness of the framework for designing scenarios for the future.