Theories of practices: Agency, technology, and culture. Exploring the relevance of practice theories for the governance of sustainable consumption practices in the new world-order

Abstract Within the environmental social sciences, theories of practices are used by an increasing number of authors to analyze the greening of consumption in the new, global order of reflexive modernity. The use of practices as key methodological units for research and governance is suggested as a way to avoid the pitfalls of the individualist and systemic paradigms that dominated the field of sustainable consumption studies for some decades. With the help of practice theory, environmental governance can be renewed in three particular ways: First, the role and responsibilities (not) to be assigned to individual citizen-consumers in environmental change can be specified. Secondly, objects, technologies and infrastructures can be recognized for their crucial contribution to climate governance without lapsing into technological determinism. Third, the cultural framing of sustainability can be enriched by looking into the forms of excitement generated in shared practices of sustainable consumption. We conclude by discussing the need to investigate the globalization of practices from a post-national perspective in both science and policy.

[1]  E. Shove.  Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality , 2003 .

[2]  E. Heiskanen,et al.  Consumer participation in sustainable technology development , 2005 .

[3]  Pierre Bourdieu,et al.  Outline of a Theory of Practice , 2020, On Violence.

[4]  Elizabeth Shove,et al.  Infrastructures of Consumption: Environmental Innovation in the Utility Industries , 2005 .

[5]  E. Shove.  Efficiency and Consumption: Technology and Practice , 2004 .

[6]  D. Sonnenfeld,et al.  The Ecological Modernisation Reader , 2020 .

[7]  T. Schatzki.  Social Practices: A Wittgensteinian Approach to Human Activity and the Social , 1996 .

[8]  Maurie J. Cohen.  The Emergent Environmental Policy Discourse on Sustainable Consumption , 2001 .

[9]  Johan Schot,et al.  Towards New Forms of Participatory Technology Development , 2001, Technol. Anal. Strateg. Manag..

[10]  H. Staats,et al.  Effecting Durable Change , 2004 .

[11]  M. Douglas,et al.  The World of Goods , 2021 .

[12]  G. Spaargaren,et al.  Shopping for green food in globalizing supermarkets: sustainability at the consumption junction , 2007 .

[13]  Arthur P.J. Mol,et al.  From Additions and Withdrawals to Environmental Flows , 2005 .

[14]  G. T. Gardner,et al.  Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce US carbon emissions , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[15]  P. Bourdieu.  Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste* , 2018, Food and Culture.

[16]  Peter Oosterveer,et al.  Citizen-Consumers as Agents of Change in Globalizing Modernity: The Case of Sustainable Consumption , 2010 .

[17]  H. Anheier,et al.  Global civil society 2005/6 , 2006 .

[18]  Gail Davies,et al.  Nature performed: environment, culture and performance , 2006 .

[19]  Keith R. Brown.  Interaction Ritual Chains and the Mobilization of Conscientious Consumers , 2011 .

[20]  Johan Schot,et al.  The mediated design of products, consumption and consumers in the twentieth century , 2003 .

[21]  T. Schatzki.  The Site of the Social: A Philosophical Account of the Constitution of Social Life and Change , 2002 .

[22]  L. Middlemiss,et al.  Refraining Individual Responsibility for Sustainable Consumption: Lessons from Environmental Justice and Ecological Citizenship , 2010 .

[23]  C. Campbell.  Consuming Goods and the Good of Consuming , 1994, Consumption and Consumer Society.

[24]  G. Spaargaren,et al.  Greening Lifecycles and Lifestyles: Sociotechnical Innovations in Consumption and Production as Core Concerns of Ecological Modernisation Theory , 2007 .

[25]  Andreas Reckwitz.  The Status of the “Material” in Theories of Culture: From “Social Structure” to “Artefacts” , 2002 .

[26]  Simon Marvin,et al.  Urban Infrastructure in Transition: Networks, Buildings and Plans , 2000 .

[27]  Heather Chappells,et al.  Sustainable Consumption: the implications of changing infrastructures of provision , 2004 .

[28]  G. Spaargaren.  Sustainable Consumption: A Theoretical and Environmental Policy Perspective , 2003, The Ecological Modernisation Reader.

[29]  G. Brundtland,et al.  Our common future , 1987 .

[30]  Andreas Reckwitz.  Toward a Theory of Social Practices , 2002 .

[31]  Tim Jackson,et al.  The Earthscan Reader in Sustainable Consumption , 2006 .

[32]  F. Geels.  Technological Transitions And System Innovations: A Co-evolutionary And Socio-technical Analysis , 2005 .

[33]  B. Latour.  Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory , 2005 .

[34]  E. Shove,et al.  Caution! Transitions Ahead: Politics, Practice, and Sustainable Transition Management , 2007 .

[35]  U. Beck.  WORLD AT RISK , 2008 .

[36]  D. Horton.  Green Distinctions: The Performance of Identity among Environmental Activists 1 , 2003 .

[37]  Trevor Pinch,et al.  How users matter : The co-construction of users and technologies , 2003 .

[38]  R. Collins,et al.  The Discovery of Society , 1973 .

[39]  Nicky Gregson,et al.  Moving things along: the conduits and practices of divestment in consumption , 2007 .

[40]  E. Shove,et al.  Time, Consumption and Everyday Life , 2009 .

[41]  J. Grin,et al.  Transitions to Sustainable Development: New Directions in the Study of Long Term Transformative Change , 2010 .

[42]  K. Knorr-Cetina,et al.  Advances in social theory and methodology : toward an integration of micro- and macro-sociologies , 1981 .

[43]  Amitai Etzioni.  Voluntary Simplicity: Characterization, Select Psychological Implications, and Societal Consequences , 2004 .

[44]  F. Geels,et al.  Typology of sociotechnical transition pathways , 2007 .

[45]  Gene Bazan.  Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth , 1997 .

[46]  E. Goffman.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life , 1959 .

[47]  Saskia Sassen,et al.  Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages , 2006 .

[48]  Kersty Hobson,et al.  Competing Discourses of Sustainable Consumption: Does the 'Rationalisation of Lifestyles' Make Sense? , 2002 .

[49]  P. Newell.  Climate for Change? Civil Society and the Politics of Global Warming , 2006 .

[50]  Arthur P.J. Mol,et al.  Greening global consumption: Redefining politics and authority , 2008 .

[51]  Ronald Hitzler,et al.  Literaturbesprechung zu: Beck, Ulrich: Risikogesellschaft: auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne. Frankfurt: Suhrkarnp 1986 , 1988 .

[52]  Roberta Sassatelli,et al.  Consumer Culture: History, Theory And Politics , 2007 .

[53]  M. Douglas,et al.  Risk and Culture , 1983 .

[54]  Charles F. Cortese.  Conflicting Uses of the River: Anticipated Threats to the Resource , 2003 .

[55]  Silvia Rief.  Outlines of a Critical Sociology of Consumption: Beyond Moralism and Celebration , 2008 .

[56]  R. Collins,et al.  Interaction Ritual Chains , 2004 .

[57]  C. Campbell.  THE SOCIOLOGY OF CONSUMPTION , 2005 .

[58]  Saskia Sassen,et al.  Territory, Authority, Rights , 2008 .

[59]  Minna Halme,et al.  Sustainability challenges and solutions at the base of the pyramid : business, technology and the poor , 2008 .

[60]  M. Jänicke,et al.  Governing environmental flows , 2005 .

[61]  Maurie J. Cohen,et al.  Exploring sustainable consumption : environmental policy and the social sciences , 2001 .

[62]  Ben Fine,et al.  The world of consumption , 1994 .

[63]  A. Giddens.  The Constitution of Society , 1985 .

[64]  Dan Charles,et al.  Renewables Test IQ of the Grid , 2009, Science.

[65]  U. Beck.  Risikogesellschaft auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne , 1986 .

[66]  Richard Wilk,et al.  The Edge of Agency: Routines, Habits and Volition , 2009 .

[67]  John Thøgersen,et al.  Spillover processes in the development of a sustainable consumption pattern , 1999 .

[68]  A. Mol,et al.  Governing environmental flows : global challenges to social theory , 2006 .