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Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to focus on the material conditions of peoples' daily lives by investigating changes in the self-perceived necessities of ten technology- and leisure-related consumer goods and services between 1999 and 2009. The authors also look at the socio-demographic predictors of the perceptions and the development of the ownership of the goods under investigation.Design/methodology/approach– The data are derived from surveys "Finland – Consumption and way of life" 1999 (N=2,417), 2004 (N=3,574), and 2009 (N=1,202). The statistical analysis methods include ANOVA and descriptive statistics. Also official statistics are used.Findings– Many technological goods, in particular, have become necessities for most people, and the ownership rates have increased notably. Age, type of household, place of residence and gender affected the necessity of most items. Income affected the necessity of expensive goods and services.Practical implications– The ways goods become social decencies does not always follow economic rationalities or are explained by conventional socio-economic determinants. The meaning of life course stage and related daily practices are probably more important than is usually recognized in social studies. Particularly many ICT goods become socially perceived necessities soon after their emergence, which changes the perceptions of adequate living standards, affecting thus the definition of "basic needs" and related social policy.Originality/value– The perceptions of necessities and other measures of living standards have been mainly looked at from the viewpoint of poverty and income. This study explains the perceived necessity of goods and services by several socio-demographic variables.

The need for wider action against environmental problems such as climate change has brought the debate about the role of citizen to the political, practical, and scientific domains. Environmental citizenship provides a useful tool to conceptualize the relation between citizenship and the environment. However, there exists considerable variation in the ways environmental citizenship is understood regarding both the aspect of citizenship and the relationship to the environment. In this article, we review the literature on environmental citizenship and investigate the evolution of the concept. The article is based on a literature search with an emphasis on geographical research. The concept of environmental citizenship has moved relatively far from the Ancient Greek or Marshallian conceptualizations of citizenship as rights and responsibilities bearing membership of a nation state. Environmental citizenship literature has been influenced by the relational approach to space, focus on citizenship as acts and processes rather than a status and the broad spectrum of post-human thinking. However, conceptual clarification between different approaches to environmental citizenship is needed especially in relation to post-human approaches. Geographical thinking can provide fruitful ways to develop the understanding of environmental citizenship towards a more inclusive, less individualized, globally responsible, and plural citizenship. ; peerReviewed

The need for wider action against environmental problems such as climate change has brought the debate about the role of citizen to the political, practical, and scientific domains. Environmental citizenship provides a useful tool to conceptualize the relation between citizenship and the environment. However, there exists considerable variation in the ways environmental citizenship is understood regarding both the aspect of citizenship and the relationship to the environment. In this article, we review the literature on environmental citizenship and investigate the evolution of the concept. The article is based on a literature search with an emphasis on geographical research. The concept of environmental citizenship has moved relatively far from the Ancient Greek or Marshallian conceptualizations of citizenship as rights and responsibilities bearing membership of a nation state. Environmental citizenship literature has been influenced by the relational approach to space, focus on citizenship as acts and processes rather than a status and the broad spectrum of post-human thinking. However, conceptual clarification between different approaches to environmental citizenship is needed especially in relation to post-human approaches. Geographical thinking can provide fruitful ways to develop the understanding of environmental citizenship towards a more inclusive, less individualized, globally responsible, and plural citizenship.

Tensions between the well-being of present humans, future humans, and nonhuman nature manifest in social protests and political and academic debates over the future of Earth. The increasing consumption of natural resources no longer increases, let alone equalises, human well-being, but has led to the current ecological crisis and harms both human and nonhuman well-being. While the crisis has been acknowledged, the existing conceptual frameworks are in some respects ill-equipped to address the crisis in a way that would link the resolving of the crisis with the pivotal aim of promoting equal well-being. The shortcomings of the existing concepts in this respect relate to anthropocentric normative orientation, methodological individualism that disregards process dynamics and precludes integrating the considerations of human and nonhuman well-being, and the lack of multiscalar considerations of well-being. This work derives and proposes the concept of planetary well-being to address the aforementioned conceptual issues, to recognise the moral considerability of both human and nonhuman well-being, and to promote transdisciplinary, cross-cultural discourse for addressing the crisis and for promoting societal and cultural transformation. Conceptually, planetary well-being shifts focus on well-being from individuals to processes, Earth system and ecosystem processes, that underlie all well-being. Planetary well-being is a state where the integrity of Earth system and ecosystem processes remains unimpaired to a degree that species and populations can persist to the future and organisms have the opportunity to achieve well-being. After grounding and introducing planetary well-being, this work shortly discusses how the concept can be operationalised and reflects upon its potential as a bridging concept between different worldviews. ; peerReviewed