166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 166
166
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
A Practice Theory Approach to
Sustainable Consumption
Research on sustainable consumption should not reduce its scope to single
behavioural acts such as purchasing products. There is a need for theoretical
approaches towards consumption which
consider its embedment in a range of
social contexts, people’s daily routines in
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
their households being such a context.
Practice theories, as is argued here,
facilitate such thorough contextualisation.
A Practice Theory Approach to Sustainable
Consumption
Consumption Is More than Singular Acts of
Item Acquisition
GAIA 23/S1 (2014): 166 –174
Abstract
Sustainable consumption is often reduced to consumer choices
or forms of product appropriation. Such a narrow focus on
individual acts neglects their role in reproducing social order and
only shows the top of the iceberg of consumption. In contrast,
reconstructing consumption as a part of social practices sheds
light on the fundament of the iceberg and shows how everyday
consumption patterns are embedded in socio-cultural and
socio-technical settings. A qualitative study on life course
transitions to parenthood is taken as an example to show
how changes in a household’s consumption patterns is
pre-structured by the social construction of parental practices.
The paper concludes with a call for a more reflexive,
collaborating and experimental policy approach towards
sustainable consumption.
Keywords
food consumption, life transitions, performance, social order,
social practices, sustainable consumption
Contact: Dr. Melanie Jaeger-Erben | Technische Universität Berlin |
Center for Technology and Society | Hardenbergstr. 16–18 |
10623 Berlin | Germany | Tel.: +49 30 31421016 | E-Mail:
[email protected]
Ursula Offenberger, M. A. | University of St. Gallen | Research
Institute of Organizational Psychology | St. Gallen | Switzerland |
E-Mail: [email protected]
©2014 M. Jaeger-Erben, U. Offenberger; licensee oekom verlag.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0),
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
Popular discourses on sustainable consumption often pick out
as central themes the growing market share of organic products,
the rapid spread of organic supermarkets or the increased willingness of consumers to buy energy efficient household devices, and
interpret these statistical facts as signs for general societal trends
towards sustainability (see, e. g., BMELV 2013, SevenOne Media
2009). Those accounts reveal an understanding of sustainable consumption as one of market diffusion and quantitative trends in
specific acts of consumption.
This could lead to the assumption that the market-based interaction between supply and demand are central drivers of sustainable consumption and the main focus of intervention should be
to encourage demand and make the supply of goods more transparent and accessible. We believe that data on the quantity of specific behaviours relevant to sustainability, such as the purchase of
certain products or the diffusion of specific types of infrastructures, can be useful for understanding general tendencies in consumption. Nevertheless, we do think that they only show the “top
of an iceberg” of everyday practices of consumption (cf. also Spurling et al. 2013). Similar to the conceptual suggestions developed
in the focal topic From Knowledge to Action – New Paths towards
Sustainable Consumption 1 (see Defila et al. 2014, in this issue), we
would like to offer a broader perspective on consumption. Particularly we would like to shed light on the fabric and fundament of
the iceberg. In our approach, consumption is embedded in social
practices and thereby seen as a part of the production and reproduction of social order. By social order we mean the fabric of society, “macrostructures” that make up social life, institutions, social norms and systems of provision, as well as “meso-structures”,
1 The focal topic was funded from 2008 through to 2013 by the German Federal
Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as part of its Social-ecological
Research Programme (SOEF). For more information see www.fona.de/en/9876.
doi: 10.14512/gaia.23.S1.4 | GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 167
such as social relations and networks. Macro- and meso-structures
are seen to exert an influence on the “micro level” of everyday life
that can be captured in terms of social practices. Therefore, the
structure and performance of social practices and not only specific consumer choices constitute the analytical core of our approach.
We will focus on two main aspects:
First, we argue that single consumption acts are merely the
visible parts of social practices evolving from and reproducing socially shared understandings of normal consumption behaviour.
For example, the daily shower has become normal in Western societies in the course of the 20 th century. A social practice perspective may analyse the socio-material transformation of hygiene
standards, of ideas on the body, of the distribution of household
technologies as well as the systems of provision (water supply, electrification) that have turned today’s cleanliness standards into
something that is considered normal (Shove 2003). Likewise, practices like buying organic food or recycling paper evolved in a mixture of ongoing social discourses on resource depletion and food
production as well as the (historical) evolution and diffusion of
know-how and material arrangements. These processes, embracing, among others things, long-term developments, histories of
ideas, and technological developments, are relevant to the structure and content of social practices as “entities” (cf. Shove et al.
2012). However, such a perspective is incomplete without asking
how such structures become alive and how they endure.
Therefore, a second perspective is on social practices as “performances” (cf. Shove et al. 2012). Here, we ask how consumption
practices are appropriated, carried out, combined and bundled in
everyday life. Practices as entities pre-structure performance but
via performances they are adapted to available resources (e.g., time,
“Dijkstra met the subject of what would
become her longest-running series to date
while making portraits at a refugee centre
in Leiden (…). Five years old (…),
Almerisa arrived (…) from Bosnia (…)
just two weeks earlier.”
Artist’s Statement,
Almerisa, Asylumseekerscenter Leiden, March 14, 1994 © Rineke Dijkstra/Prix Pictet Ltd.
Rineke Dijkstra, 2014
GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174
167
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
>
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 168
168
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
social and financial capital), given everyday contexts and social as
well as personal demands. Recycling paper and buying organic
food require integrating acts such as using (and accommodating)
different garbage bins or taking the detour to the organic store.
And they require combining it with other practices such as driving a car in order to avoid time loss that has been incurred by the
detour. Furthermore, they depend on constant social negotiation
and cooperation within households. Paper recycling, for example,
would not work if not everybody in a household followed the same
procedures. Thus, although the evolution of practices as entities
explains their existence and character, the everyday performance
is crucial if these practices are to endure (cf. also Schatzki 1996).
Practices as entities and practices as performances address two
sides of one coin: while one asks for structural, long-term and enduring aspects, the other asks for their day-to-day reproduction
in the conduct of everyday life. Both sides co-constitute each other and can only be separated on the basis of analytical means. Both
sides are relevant to each act of consumption: in order to fully understand why a person acts in a certain way, one needs to ask firstly for the contexts and logics of everyday performance where momentarily visible and countable consumption acts are embedded
in and secondly for the elements stemming from social order that
form social practices and pre-structure performances. The focus
on specific acts such as the choice of organic products described
in the beginning bears the risk of neglecting this kind of embedment and believing that consumer choices are at the core of sustainable consumption.
In the following section we present the practice theory approach
to (sustainable) consumption before providing an empirical example that shows its applicability. The last section summarises
our main arguments and proposes some consequences for policy making in the field of sustainable consumption.
Contextualising Consumption with Practice
Theories
In recent years a growing number of publications have advocated
the utility of a practice theory approach in the study of consumption (Halkier et al. 2011, Warde 2005) and, in particular, of sustainable consumption (Shove et al. 2012, Brand 2010).
Here, consumption is studied as a part of social practices evolving in the dynamic interplay of agency and structure. Giddens’
(1984) structuration theory is often taken as a background. This
approach avoids a dualist notion of agency and structure and
conceptualises their relation as dynamic: societal structures (including infrastructures, systems of provision and the rules of
accessing and using them) form the conditions of actors’ performances. At the same time, the performance of actors renders social structures alive and reproduces them on a continuous basis
through everyday routines 2. Therefore structure and agency are
in a constant process of mutual structuration and constitution.
So far, there is no coherent practice theory paradigm but a number of approaches united by some common ideas. A core assump-
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
tion is that spatially, temporally and materially embedded social
practices are the basic analytical unit. They are seen as the “core
of the social” and are therefore superordinate to other aspects such
as identity and social structure (Schatzki 1996). Social practices
mediate between structures and actors; they reproduce social order and provide for comprehensiveness and normality. As introduced above, practices also appear as performances: Social practices are not mainly a hypertext of reality or a matter of cognition,
but first of all performances in everyday life. They are carried by
the activities of competent bodies in their interaction with other
bodies, artefacts and spaces and require their integration into the
conduct of everyday life as well as their application to available
resources and social contexts.
Social practices can further be studied and described as entities by reconstructing their elements and the linking between elements. A social practice is described as a meaningful, temporally and spatially bound nexus of know-how, social meanings and
materials (cf. Shove et al. 2012). Know-how refers to the practical
knowledge of, for example, cooking: which activities (such as cutting up vegetables, boiling water) need to be done with what kind
of movements and in which order. Social meanings are the corner stones of people’s motivations: They allow people to make
sense out of their practical actions by referring to the aim of the
practice (e. g., to cook a healthy meal and to eat and live healthily)
and by connecting its different elements to each other. They further connect practices to the social world by embedding a single
activity into a meaningful context (e. g., healthy cooking as a part
of socio-cultural understandings of a healthy and socially acceptable life). They also include rules of relevant do’s and don’t’s (e.g.,
not to use too much salt or to keep the temperature low to preserve
vitamins). Material and spatial elements of practices, for example,
products and equipment (such as electric devices, organic food,
special pots), and appropriate places (such as kitchens or markets
and organic stores) are particularly important in the context of consumption studies. The material aspects of a practice connect what
people do to the layout and design of places and technical systems
and to systems of provision. The material arrangements and their
usage are particularly relevant when researching the ecological
sustainability of consumption.
To sum up: social practices are socially preformed and individually performed. The linking of elements of practices is socially
constructed; for example, socially shared understandings of what
constitutes a healthy diet are formed through socio-cultural discourses. Therefore, in order to understand how social practices
as entities evolve, it is crucial to study the trajectories of their elements and the way in which different elements have become
linked (Shove et al. 2012). At the same time we have to consider
2 Routines are understood as regularly observable re-enactments of similar
doings and sayings in similar settings, which do not need to be exact
replications but only share some core elements which form part of social
practices as entities. In contrast to the psychological concept of habits
(e. g., Stern 2000), routines are not understood as an individual trait but
as a part of social order that is socially shared (cf. also Shove 2012).
doi: 10.14512/gaia.23.S1.4 | GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 169
how practices are integrated into and performed in everyday life.
Here, practices become part of people’s experiential knowledge,
which accumulates personally and culturally.
In the following we will focus on the appropriation of new social practices of consumption and their performance in everyday
lives within families by referring to an empirical study. Nevertheless, we will highlight the pre-structuring effects of social order.
We argue that the process of how practices as entities pre-structure performances and how observable acts of consumption are
embedded in social practices as performances can be studied thoroughly in phases of biographical transition. In these phases people need to change current practices since they are not sufficient
or practicable anymore. Hence, people are challenged to appropriate new practices and integrate them in their everyday life. In the
project Life Events as Windows of Opportunity for a Change towards
Sustainable Consumption Patterns (funded as part of the focal topic Sustainable Consumption; cf. also Schäfer and Jaeger-Erben 2012),
life course transitions were regarded as such windows of opportunity. Practice theories formed the conceptual frame for a qualitative, explorative study of changes in consumption patterns in
the context of life events. The example shows the role of social
practices in life transition phases and the relation between biographical change, socially pre-structured practices and everyday
consumption patterns.
Another example, which cannot be considered in detail here,
is given by Offenberger and Nentwich (2013): they investigated
domestic heat consumption and gender from a practice theory
perspective. The study shows that the practice of “home making” is central for an understanding of heat consumption decisions in owner-occupier households.
“(…) each photograph shows
how Almerisa’s appearance changes
with her adjustment to Dutch culture.
From a shy (…) girl she grows up
to be a young Western woman
who wears the right branded clothes
and fashionable make-up.”
Artist’s Statement,
Almerisa, Leidschendam, April 13, 2002 © Rineke Dijkstra/Prix Pictet Ltd.
Rineke Dijkstra, 2014
GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174
169
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
>
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 170
170
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
Changes in Consumption Practices
The objective of the project was to discover if, how and why people change their everyday consumption in life course transitions
and to link those observations to opportunities for enhancing or
reinforcing changes towards more sustainable practices. The definition of sustainable consumption was based on an empirically grounded comparison of different everyday consumption practices in terms of the extent to which they are environmentally and
socially harmful. Based on this, in the fields of mobility, energy
use and food consumption, a list was drawn up of ecologically unsustainable practices (e. g., everyday car driving, consuming conventional meat) on the one hand and more sustainable practices
(e. g., walking, consuming organic meat) on the other. The analysis focused on these practices as well as practices that parents perceived as being particularly sustainable. A qualitative study was
undertaken, based among other things on home visits and interviews with parents (23 mothers and fathers in total) who had undergone a life course transition constituted by the arrival of their
first child in the preceding year. The following section briefly provides some main results (for a thorough presentation see JaegerErben 2010). Generally the qualitative study applied an understanding, inductive and reconstructive approach informed by
Grounded Theory (Strauss and Corbin 1996).
Coming back to our “iceberg metaphor” (see figure), we will
first show the top of the iceberg: what changes were visible “on
the outside”? The second part will dive to its fundament, investigating its fabric and revealing why changes happened and why
they look as they do. Here, we refer to the evolution of social practices as entities and their performance within everyday lives. The
iceberg metaphor has already been used in a similar way by the
British Sustainable Practices Research Group (SPRG) (cf. Spurling
et al. 2013, p. 21). The difference to our presentation is that they
describe the performance of social practices as observable behaviour whereas we would say that not all parts of the performance
are visible or observable at first sight. In the following, we will focus on a few illustrative examples of changes in consumption patterns (more examples can be found in Schäfer and Jaeger-Erben
2012).
The Top of the Iceberg:
What Has Changed in Everyday (Sustainable) Consumption?
We will first refer to the more or less factual changes in everyday
consumption patterns. Due to the small sample size and the fact
that the parents who were interviewed could not be randomly selected, the following results cannot be seen as representative in
a quantitative sense. Nevertheless, some changes were reported
much more often than others so that we regard them as important for life course transitions around having the first child. Although we considered all main areas of consumption (food, mobility, energy), the issue of nutrition and the purchase of baby
goods and products was most prevalent in all interviews.
One of the most common changes was parents starting to buy
organic food at all or more frequently. This change was indepen-
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
dent of socio-demographic background and attitudes towards the
environment and organic production. Some of the interviewees
bought organic products for the first time in their lives and for
their child only. Others started to buy more organic food for the
entire family.
Another very common change concerned the everyday organisation of food consumption. Almost all parents reported that
everyday meals became much more structured and thoroughly
organised. Main aspects were the regular meals of the baby, particularly after parents started with “solid” food and the homemaking of baby porridges. We observed that the question of how and
when to cook baby porridge with what kind of ingredients was of
considerable importance to interviewees.
In connection to the changes around the consumption of food,
a majority of parents also reported changes in the use of equipment: for producing and storing baby food, special devices such
as hand blenders and freezers were bought. Furthermore, the majority of interviewees acquired a variety of products made for babies, such as special furniture, toys and other equipment (baby
bouncer, baby carrier). And, in order to fit in extra trips to markets
or organic stores, parents often changed the way they would get
from one place to another (e. g., by making detours when on foot
or making more use of the car).
Coming closer to the fundament of the iceberg, we will give an
understanding of the reasons for change as well as connections
between observed changes in the following.
The Fundament and Fabric of the Iceberg:
Why Did Everyday (Sustainable) Consumption Change?
The reconstructive analysis of interviews revealed that changes
in the organisation and character of everyday consumption can
mainly be understood by the appropriation of new social practices. The appropriation of new practices tends to already start before the life event and can be described as follows:
The life event “having a baby” is a kind of “social framing”,
marking specific social fields that suddenly become relevant for
new parents or parents-to-be. Relevant social fields can be systems
of provision of baby food, health and family politics, or less tangible fields of social construction like discourses on motherhood
and “good baby care” in modern societies.These fields, historically evolved and linked in a specific way, form part of practices as
entities. Parents enter these new social fields by the appropriation
of practices that are relevant inside these fields. As mentioned
above this process mostly starts well before the life event actually
happens. First-time parents start to prepare for parenthood months
before the birth of their child: they accumulate devices, furniture,
clothes, a (bigger) car as well as knowledge concerning nutrition,
clothing, child development and upbringing; they rearrange their
house or move, and they participate in workshops. Parents-to-be
become more attentive to information concerning the new demands, their meanings and how to fulfil them (e. g., to prepare
baby food from scratch since it is healthier, and to freeze it since
it is more hygienic) and their everyday life changes in anticipation
of the event. Their cognitive and material preparation activities
doi: 10.14512/gaia.23.S1.4 | GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 171
FIGURE: The “iceberg” of consumption:
Single consumption acts like choices of products
form the top of the iceberg. They are part of the
everyday performance of social practices. Most
part of the performance, such as the know-how
(to choose and buy products or to use infrastructures appropriately), the reproduction of
social meaning and material arrangements
(e. g., the systems of provision enabling the
supply with consumption goods) first become
visible when reconstructed as parts of the
appropriation and adaptation work within the
conduct of everyday life. Performances in turn
are pre-structured by social practices as entities.
They are part of social order and can be analysed
as historically evolved and particularly linked
elements of a particular practice. Practices as
performances and as entities can only be
separated by analytical means, which is
depicted by the dashed line.
construct the framework for changes that are observable later. But
it was a question of the experiences they made with their preparations in everyday life performances after the life event that defined what changes really happened (cf. the next section on the
vitality of the iceberg).
In all transition phases, but particularly during experimentation with and everyday life adaptation of new practices, we considered how practices were pre-structured and transmitted. We
learned that the relevant elements of practices are not transmitted in bits and pieces, but that instead they are communicated and
appropriated as bundles: for instance, the performance of “preparing baby food from scratch” required new parents to follow a certain procedure (purchase of fresh vegetables, cook them gently,
mash or blend them, maybe freeze them in portions), which again
was based on specific knowledge, material and the design of spaces. If parents wanted to prepare baby food themselves, they had
to accept all implications and, for example, purchase new items.
At the same time, parents became a target group for promoters
of baby and child products and for institutional offerings of information and advice. By the appropriation and performance of practices parents take over social roles that are connected to specific
social fields and specialised systems of provision. They buy, consume and believe in the promise of hygiene or health benefit of
certain activities, products or surroundings. At the same time, social practices act as guidance in a new unsettled situation. They
give practical help with “what to do” and social guidance of “how
to be” and “where to belong to”. An entire set of practices can be
associated with parenting, allowing parents to show that they are
and be recognised parents. Hence, parenting is made possible by
a linkage of different elements of practices, which forms practices
as entities. Consumption activities play a crucial role in this kind
of identity work and can be seen as the materialising part of the
transition process. The purchase and processing of organic food,
for example, carries the message that a parent is aware of the baby’s health needs and knows that organic food is more natural
and less contaminated.
GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174 | doi: 10.14512/gaia.23.S1.4
171
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
Thus, the practical actions of everyday
life form the place where social order and
meaning are reproduced. The next section
focuses on the integration of new practices in existing patterns of action, thereby revealing the relation of stability and change
in the performance of everyday life.
The Vitality of the Iceberg:
How Were New Practices Integrated in
Everyday Life?
In the preceding section we have described
how changes in consumption are pre-structured by practices as socially constructed
entities. This section concentrates on practices as performances and the way in which
they were integrated into and performed
in everyday lives. Analysing consumptionrelated changes in the conduct of everyday life of new parents, we
discovered two main patterns of change:
Firstly we found changes in the logic of conduct of everyday
life that were followed by changes in everyday consumption. A
crucial aspect was the compatibility of paths, activities and material and social settings with babies (their needs and demands). It
influenced, for example, the use of means of transport, devices
or spaces of consumption. For instance, almost half of the interviewed parents used their car less often, because car driving for
them turned out to be too incompatible with babies. But there were
another quarter of parents who expressly purchased a car or used
it more often since they thought exactly the opposite. Nevertheless, all parents preferred to walk if possible. Thus the “logic of baby compatibility” as a new (more or less invisible) element of everyday social practices forms observable aspects like the purchase of
a car or the choice of a specific means of transport.
Secondly there were changes in social meanings directly connected to consumption practices, such as a growing significance
of health or naturalness of products. These had an impact on the
planning of everyday life. For instance, preparing baby food from
scratch required thorough planning and demanded a considerable
amount of time out of a parent’s everyday life as well as presence
at home and in the kitchen. Times for preparation, (de)freezing
and feeding needed to be integrated in the course of everyday life
as well as shopping trips to markets and organic stores while handling a baby. Furthermore, the availability and functioning of devices needed to be secured and the cooperation between family
members.
Thus, by deciding and preparing for the homemaking of baby
food before the life event, parents-to-be anticipate changes in everyday consumption and the conduct of everyday life in general
after the life event – mostly without being fully aware of the implications of their decisions. An example of this ignorance of implications reported by many parents is that far too much “stuff”
was accumulated in anticipation of the baby and this was rarely
used afterwards.
>
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 172
172
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
Both patterns of change indicate that the appropriation and
performance of social practices in everyday life cannot be understood as a process of merely copying socially pre-structured and
linked entities. Instead, they are adopted and adjusted to fit into
personal and household contexts and situations. Moreover, they
are bundled into networks of everyday practices where they appear
together or successively with other practices. In this way, social
practices are constantly adjusted and varied by performance and
can be changing over time.
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
reactions to events such as food crises, political health campaigns
or environmental damage.Furthermore, a practice theory approach
broaches the issue of know-how and practical knowledge as another crucial element of social practices, illuminating what actors
have to acquire in order to make use of material settings and to
express social meanings. Practical knowledge does not only consist of knowledge or information but also of physical abilities of
using services and devices. How and where is practical knowledge
formed? Does it support or impede sustainable use of devices?
Practice theory sheds light on the fabric and fundament of the iceberg of consumption.
Conclusions for Studying Sustainable
Consumption
In the beginning we have suggested to consider singular consumption acts as merely the top of an iceberg of consumption,
and we have shown how practice theories help to analytically capture the fabric and fundament of the iceberg.We have introduced
the idea of social practices as entities and as performances in order to grasp simultaneously the more structural and agency-related aspects of behaviour. Such a perspective makes it easier to
study the reciprocal relation between social order and a person’s
or a household’s conduct of everyday (consumptive) life, and it can
explain changes in consumption behaviour. People tend not to
consciously choose their acts, but are usually socialised into certain forms of behaviour through life events such as parenthood.
We would also like to stress that a reconstruction of specific consumptive behaviours as a part of social practices (as entities and
performances) can help the understanding of (un)sustainable practices. For instance, it relates consumer behaviour to the layout of
systems of provision or the working of societal institutions and
their part in the social construction of meaningful behaviour. Reconstructing the social pre-structuration of any kind of individual behaviour leaves behind notions of environmental attitudes
(Shove 2010) that have shown limited explanatory value for understanding ecologically relevant routines and how they change
(cf., e.g., Klöckner and Verplanken 2012). As a consequence, individuals are no longer fully made responsible for a “resistance
to change” towards sustainable consumption, since their actions
are recognised in their value to reproduce a given social order. A
practice theory approach reveals the social construction of linkages between know-how, social meanings and materials in consumption practices and can, for example, explain why organic food
is seen as more healthy, secure and environment-friendly for children than industrially processed food, or why travelling in a car
is perceived as more secure for babies than public transport. Investigating these linkages reveals public discourses and societal
Asking how the elements of (un)sustainable practices mentioned (or those that are assumed to be sustainable or not) evolved
and how they got linked also reveal the actors of the construction
of meaning (e. g., companies’ marketing departments, peer networks, professional experts, or the education system) as well as
those who arrange respective material settings:
The study mentioned above revealed that some practices or
linkages between products or services, meanings and know-how
are co-constructed by the baby supply industry. Web sites devoted to new parents, for instance, reproduce those linkages by communicating practices around baby nutrition and care as relevant
for the baby’s healthy and secure upbringing. And they strategically link their “advice” to their respective products and provide
information of where to obtain and how to use it. Web forums in
which new parents could discuss issues of parenting were often
connected to these services. That means that the companies also
provide social settings that are relevant to parents. In this way they
participate in the social mediation of practices. They probably also strengthen the relation between parents and the company and
give the impression that their advice and information is mainly
for the benefit of parents and not of the company’s economic success. This helps to understand why many parents bought too
much “stuff”, as we have reported above: by using informational
material as well as participating in social networks that both are
orchestrated by the baby supply industry, they adopt a connection
between needs – or meanings – such as providing a stimulating
environment with gadgets and toys for learning and motion. But
often they experienced later on that almost everything in a household can be stimulating for babies.
Thus, the sustainability effects of practices – for example, the
more or less unsustainable accumulation of unnecessary products – are preformed much earlier than in the actual production
and consumption practices. Therefore, it should be reflected how
sustainability strategies can better connect to socio-cultural processes where the practice elements and the linkages between elements are formed.
doi: 10.14512/gaia.23.S1.4 | GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 173
Conclusions for the Reinforcement of
Sustainable Consumption
We argue for a comprehensive view on (sustainable) consumption in future sustainability policies that would reflect the prestructuration of consumption by social order as it is, for example,
inscribed in economy and markets. Crucial elements would be
inter- and cross-departmental collaboration where, for example,
stakeholders from family, environmental, food and economy politics develop common perspectives and strategies that are not primarily aimed at changing consumer behaviour but at changing
dominant discourses or systems of provision recognised as unsustainable. Sustainability interventions informed by practice theories would take account of the performance of consumption in
everyday life and the pragmatic rationalities it builds upon.
Given that our study is explorative, theoretical in character with
no specific aim at intervention strategies or policy measures, we
have confined ourselves to some first ideas and more general suggestions. Focusing on the interest-led providers of information
in the baby supply industry, may be one promising strategy. One
could also develop policies that demand the disclosure of sources
of information to the audience, which may prevent hidden agendas or, at least, make them more transparent. Furthermore, the
process of appropriation of practices could be considered more
thoroughly by politics oriented towards changing social practices.
One could collaborate with or support those intermediaries that
have gained the trust of parents but are in a more neutral position.
In cooperation with intermediaries such as paediatricians or midwifes, strategies could be developed that raise parents’ awareness
of hidden advertisements and that help them to develop needs
“Taken as a whole, Almerisa documents
the transition in a girl’s life,
not only showing her adjustment
to a new culture, but also the way
she tries to find herself by
experimenting with different modes
of outward appearance.”
Artist’s Statement,
Almerisa, Asylumseekerscenter Leiden, June 19, 2008 © Rineke Dijkstra/Prix Pictet Ltd.
Rineke Dijkstra, 2014
GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174
173
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
>
166_174_JaegerErben_Offenberger 17.07.14 14:35 Seite 174
174
RESEARCH | VIEWPOINTS
based on their own experience of living with a baby. Both aspects,
the encouragement of reflection as well as the adoption of a more
experimental or experiential approach, underline that parents
require not only specific know-how of baby care, but also superordinate or meta-skills. Nevertheless, a focus on knowledge and
(meta-)skills is only a tiny element in social practice-oriented politics. Generally, social practice-oriented politics would prefer an
integrative approach, where concerted strategies on different anchor points would be planned, considering the making and breaking of linkages between different elements of social practices and
the multi-local and multi-layered production of social order and
social change. An integrative approach requires a cross-sectional
collaboration with different actors, such as stakeholders in baby
supply industry, institutional providers of know-how in child care
and the target groups themselves. Such collaboration could develop standards for the provision of information for parents and the
placement of products in social networks.
These considerations call for a general change in conventional or established policy practices, similar to what Beck et al.(1994)
and Giddens (2009) formulate in their writings on politics in times
of reflexive and globalising modernity, or as Spaargaren and Oosterveer (2010) describe as “politics of lifestyle change”. Similar to
the suggestions of these authors, social practice-oriented politics
would adopt a more reflexive, collaborating and experimental approach. It would be more oriented towards social arenas such as
families/households or neighbourhoods where topics like education, everyday consumption, child care and finances are inseparably intermingled and where the established layout of well-defined political departments becomes obsolete. This new type of
politics would allow for cross-departmental, cross-sectional and
transdisciplinary collaboration, tolerating or even encouraging
deliberative, open-ended processes that encourage spaces of experimentation (e. g., living labs, action research).
Melanie Jaeger-Erben, Ursula Offenberger
In: Environmental psychology: An introduction. Edited by L. Steg, A. van
den Berg, J. I. M. de Groot. Oxford, UK: BPS Blackwell. 197–209.
Offenberger, U., J. Nentwich. 2013. Home heating, technology and gender:
A qualitative analysis. In: Sustainable energy consumption in residential
buildings. Edited by K. Rennings, B. Brohmann, J. Nentwich, J. Schleich,
T. Traber, R. Wüstenhagen. Heidelberg: Physica. 191–211.
Schäfer, M., M. Jaeger-Erben. 2012. Life events as windows of opportunity
for changing towards sustainable consumption pattern? The change in
everyday routines in life course transitions. In: The nature of sustainable
consumption and how to achieve it: Results from the focal topic “From Knowledge to Action – New Paths towards Sustainable Consumption”. Edited by
R. Defila, A. Di Giulio, R. Kaufmann-Hayoz. Munich: oekom. 195–210.
Schatzki, T. 1996. Social practices: A Wittgensteinian approach to human activity
and the social. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
SevenOne Media. 2009. TrendReport Grün. Unterföhring: SevenOne Media.
www.sevenonemedia.de/c/document_library/get_file?uuid=f8463101aa0f-4c23-b1e7-95e1d91a7b83&groupId=10143 (accessed January 30, 2014).
Shove, E. 2003. Comfort, cleanliness and convenience: The social organization of
normality. New York: Berg.
Shove, E. 2010. Beyond the ABC: Climate change policy and theories of
social change. Environment and Planning A 42/6: 1273–1285.
Shove, E. 2012. Habits and their creatures. In: The habits of consumption.
Edited by A. Warde, D. Southerton. Collegium 12. Helsinki: Helsinki
Collegium for Advanced Studies. 100–112.
Shove, E., M. Pantzar, M. Watson. 2012. The dynamics of social practice.
London: Sage.
Spaargaren, G., P. Oosterveer. 2010. Citizen-consumers as agents of change
in globalizing modernity: The case of sustainable consumption.
Sustainability 2/7: 1887–1908.
Spurling, N., A. McMeekin, E. Shove, D. Southerton, D. Welch. 2013.
Interventions in practice: Reframing policy approaches to consumer behaviour.
Sustainable Practices Research Group Report. www.sprg.ac.uk/uploads/
sprg-report-sept-2013.pdf (accessed June 13, 2014).
Stern, P. 2000. Toward a coherent theory of environmentally significant
behavior. Journal of Social Issues 56/3: 407– 424.
Strauss, A., J. Corbin. 1996. Grounded Theory – Grundlagen qualitativer
Sozialforschung. Weinheim: Beltz.
Warde, A. 2005. Consumption and theories of practice. Journal of Consumer
Culture 5/2: 131–153.
Submitted February 2, 2014; revised version
accepted May 23, 2014.
References
Beck, U., A. Giddens, S. Lash. 1994. Reflective moderniziation. Cambridge, UK:
Polity.
BMELV (Bundesministerium für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Verbraucherschutz). 2013. Ökobarometer 2013. www.bmel.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/
Ernaehrung/Oekobarometer_2013.pdf (accessed January 30, 2014).
Brand, K.-W. 2010. Social practices and sustainable consumption: Benefits
and limitations of a new theoretical approach. In: Environmental sociology:
European perspectives and interdisciplinary challenges. Edited by M. Gross,
H. Heinrichs. Dordrecht: Springer. 217–235.
Defila, R., A. Di Giulio, R. Kaufmann-Hayoz. 2014. Sustainable consumption –
an unwieldy object of research. GAIA 23/S1: 148–157.
Giddens, A. 1984. The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration.
Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Giddens, A. 2009. The politics of climate change. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
Halkier, B., T. Katz-Gerro, L. Martens. 2011. Applying practice theory to the
study of consumption: Theoretical and methodological considerations.
Journal of Consumer Culture 11/1: 3–13.
Jaeger-Erben, M. 2010. Zwischen Routine, Reflektion und Transformation –
die Veränderung von alltäglichem Konsum durch Lebensereignisse und die
Rolle von Nachhaltigkeit. PhD diss., Technische Universität Berlin.
Klöckner, C., B. Verplanken. 2012. Yesterday’s habits preventing change for
tomorrow? The influence of automaticity on environmental behaviour.
Melanie Jaeger-Erben
Born 1977 in Kassel, Germany. Studies in psychology and
sociology in Göttingen, Germany, and Uppsala, Sweden.
2010 PhD in sociology at Technische Universität Berlin,
Germany. Since 2004 researcher in projects on
sustainable consumption; since 2013 assistant for
the German Advisory Council on Global Change at Otto von Guericke
University Magdeburg, Germany. Research interests: transformation
of routines, social innovation, practice theories.
Ursula Offenberger
Born 1980 in Birmingham, United Kingdom.
2008 Master’s degree in sociology, University of Tübingen,
Germany. Doctoral thesis (University of Tübingen) on
domestic heat consumption as a practice of home-making.
Since 2008 research assistant at the University of
St. Gallen, Switzerland, in projects on energy consumption and gender
equality in entrepreneurial universities. Research interests: science and
technology studies (STS), gender, qualitative research.
doi: 10.14512/gaia.23.S1.4 | GAIA 23/S1(2014): 166 –174