Ecologic modernization as relationship between technological and social innovation: a hypothesis about ecologic consumption

This article deals with the relationship between social and technological innovations in the area of environmental protection. The theoretical question is whether some social innovations can be interpreted as innovative responses to former technological and economic innovations, especially to the deleterious effects of the latter. In other words, social innovation can be seen as having a corrective function in relation to those economic and technical processes which have yielded, over time, negative social outcomes. Green consumption, conceived as a form of consumption aimed at preventing the effects of environmental toxins on one’s body, can be seen as a innovative response to the problems of environmental health.