Questions about the future, and futurelessness, have attracted wide-ranging attention in recent years. Our article explores what Sociology offers. We reflect on the apparent contradiction that the ...future was bracketed off from the discipline in its early history, yet also offers rich theoretical, methodological and empirical resources for futures research. We demonstrate this through an analysis of the contributions to this Special Issue, each of which draws on explicitly Sociological theories and methods to consider futures in a range of fields. Finally, we explore further developments necessary for a Sociology of the Future. We argue that Sociology can and should be more directly involved in claiming what futures might be, should be and in materialising these claims. This means moving beyond Sociology – as a distinct set of resources – towards expansive engagement with other future-making actors. This may challenge and change Sociology but may also be key to its future.
Sociological contributions to debates surrounding sustainable consumption have presented strong critiques of methodological individualism and technological determinism. Drawing from a range of ...sociological insights from the fields of consumption, everyday life and science and technology studies, these critiques emphasize the recursivity between (a) everyday performances and object use, and (b) how those performances are socially ordered. Empirical studies have, however, been criticized as being descriptive of micro-level phenomena to the exclusion of explanations of processes of reproduction or change. Developing a methodological approach that examines sequences of activities this article explores different forms of coordination (activity, inter-personal and material) that condition the temporal and material flows of laundry practices. Doing so produces an analysis that de-centres technologies and individual performances, allowing for the identification of mechanisms that order the practice of laundry at the personal, household and societal levels. These are: social relations; cultural conventions; domestic materiality; and institutionalized temporal rhythms. In conclusion, we suggest that addressing such mechanisms offers fruitful avenues for fostering more sustainable consumption, compared to dominant approaches that are founded within ‘deficit models’ of action.
•Article provides a critical discussion and appraisal of Sustainable Consumption and Production research.•Three Sustainable Consumption and Production positions are distinguished (reformist, ...revolutionary, reconfiguration).•The positions are critically discussed along several analytical dimensions.•We suggest that the reconfiguration position is most productive for Sustainable Consumption and Production research.
This conceptual review article provides a critical appraisal of Sustainable Consumption and Production research, which is currently framed by two generic positions. First, the ‘reformist’ position, which focuses on firms pursuing green eco-innovations and consumers buying eco-efficient products, represents the political and academic orthodoxy. Second, the ‘revolutionary’ position, which is a radical critique of the mainstream, advocates the abolishment of capitalism, materialism, and consumerism, and promotes values such as frugality, sufficiency, and localism. We find this dichotomous debate problematic, because it is intellectually stifling and politically conservative (in its outcomes). To move beyond this dichotomy, we propose a third position, ‘reconfiguration’, which focuses on transitions in socio-technical systems and daily life practices and accommodates new conceptual frameworks. For each of the three positions, we discuss: (1) the scale and type of change, (2) views on consumption and production in exemplary approaches, (3) underlying theoretical, epistemological and normative orientations, (4) policy implications, and (5) critical appraisal. The conclusion compares the three positions, provides arguments for the fruitfulness of the reconfiguration-position and offers four critical reflections about future Sustainable Consumption and Production research agendas.
Consumption emissions-reduction measures based on an individualized model of consumption, marginal lifestyle changes, and technological innovation alone cannot meet the ambitions of the 2015 Paris ...Agreement to hold global temperature increases below 2 °C. Radical shifts in the societal organization of consumption and production are urgently required to address the scale of the global challenge. Policy for sustainable consumption must be understood in the context of the urgent need for demand-side emissions reductions to reach critical medium-term targets by 2030. Global sustainability policy has remained chiefly focused on technological innovation. Where consumption is recognized, policy approaches have been dominated by 'behavior-change' initiatives that frame the challenge as one of individual choices, usually in the context of markets. Social scientific approaches, by contrast, argue that consumption should be understood as instituted and embedded in wider systems - social, cultural, economic, and material. Escalating levels of environmental impact result from the bundle of goods and services taken for granted as necessities of everyday life by the growing global consumer class. Furthermore, sustainable consumption is fundamentally an issue of inequality. More equitable distribution of consumption-based emissions within and between societies is critical within the context of absolute emission reductions. The policies should address the social organization of consumption and the dynamic trajectories through which sociotechnical change takes place (the coevolution of technical systems and social practices). 'Policy integration' regarding sustainable consumption that embraces reflexive governance and radical experimentation engaging with sociotechnical trajectories is critical to meet the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement.
The terms habit and routine have come to be used with increasing frequency in debates about ‘behaviour’ change and sustainable consumption, where dominant approaches, dubbed as ‘portfolio models of ...action’ by their critics, employ these terms to capture human deficiencies in the translation of pro-environmental values into corresponding actions (the ‘value–action’ gap). Alternative approaches present habits and routines as the observable performances of stable practices. Informed by these approaches, this article makes three ‘conceptual moves’ in order to demonstrate the need for empirical attention to the temporal conditioning of everyday practices. First, it is argued that conceptual usages of the terms ‘habit’ and ‘routine’ are often imprecise and used generically to capture many different aspects of human action. A threefold conceptual framework comprising of ‘dispositions’, ‘procedures’ and ‘sequences’ is proposed as a preliminary step in dealing with this problem. Second, it is suggested that generic uses of the terms ‘habit’ and ‘routine’ imply multiple forms of temporality. Again, as a conceptual sorting exercise, three categories of temporality pertinent to understanding the performance of practices are examined: time as a resource; the temporal demands of practices; and temporal rhythms. Third, the relationships between the conceptual variants of habitual and routine actions and temporalities of practices are examined through reference to empirical research. In conclusion, it is argued that reducing habits and routines to generic descriptions of behaviour within portfolio models of action is inadequate for developing understandings of the reproduction of everyday practices. Rather, empirical and conceptual attention to the relationships between practices, temporalities and different forms of action are required if the challenge of fostering more sustainable ways of life is to be met.
In this paper we summarise some of our recent work on consumer behaviour, drawing on recent developments in behavioural economics, particularly linked to sociology as much as psychology, in which ...consumers are embedded in a social context, so their behaviour is shaped by their interactions with other consumers. For the purpose of this paper we also allow consumption to cause environmental damage. Analysing the social context of consumption naturally lends itself to the use of game theoretic tools. We shall be concerned with two ways in which social interactions affect consumer preferences and behaviour:
socially-embedded
preferences, where the behaviour of other consumers affect an individual’s preferences and hence consumption (we consider two examples: conspicuous consumption and consumption norms) and
socially-directed preferences
where people display altruistic behaviour. Our aim is to show that building links between sociological and behavioural economic approaches to the study of consumer behaviour can lead to significant and surprising implications for conventional economic analysis and policy prescriptions, especially with respect to environmental policy.
There is a tension in time studies between measuring and accounting for the changing distribution of units of time across social activities, and explaining temporal experiences. By analysing in-depth ...interviews with 27 people, this article employs a theory of practice to explore the relationship between respondents' 'non-work' practices and five dimensions of time. It hypothesizes that practices which demand a fixed location within daily schedules anchor temporal organization, around which are sequenced sets of interrelated practices. A third category of practices fills the gaps that emerge within temporal sequences. The most significant socio-demographic constraints (gender, age, life-course and education) that shaped how respondents engaged and experienced practices in relation to the five dimensions of time are then considered. It is argued that the relationship between different types of social practices, five dimensions of time and sociodemographic constraints presents a conceptual framework for the systematic analysis of differential temporal experiences.
Social practice theory (SPT) represents a growing body of research that takes the ‘doings and sayings’ (social practices) of everyday life as its core unit of enquiry. Time use surveys (TUS) ...represent a substantial source of micro‐data regarding how activities are performed across the 24‐h day. Given their apparent complementarities, we ask why TUS have not been utilised more extensively within SPT‐inspired research. We advance two contentions: (1) ontological tensions obscure the relevance of TUS data in addressing core SPT research questions, and (2) SPT concepts do not readily translate for application in TUS analysis. In response, we operationalise Schatzki's (2019) concepts of activity events and chains to explore types and forms of temporal activity connection. Using TUS data we examine three activity events: sleeping, reading, and eating. Two types of temporal activity connection (sequence and synchronisation) are identified, together with four forms of connectivity (degrees of uniformity/diversity, sequential directionality, time‐varying connections, and symmetrical/asymmetrical relationships). While practices cannot be reduced to activity connections, we argue that this analytical approach offers a systematic basis for examining the ways in which activities combine to underpin the organisation of social practices. Further analysis to compare activity connections across practices, between different groups of practitioners, and over time would offer a valuable resource to empirically examine claims regarding core processes of societal change. We further contend that SPT approaches offer insights for time use research by providing a framework capable of recognising that activities are dynamic and variable rather than homogeneous and stable categories.
This article examines the significance of final consumption processes for understandings of prospective transitions towards more sustainable societies. It argues that most existing conceptualisations ...either place too much emphasis on technology or on 'consumer behaviour', ignoring the deeply intertwined relationships between the two. After briefly reviewing recent contributions to the technology-oriented multi-level perspective (MLP) and to social scientific explanations of 'behavioural change', we outline a practice-based approach to understanding final consumption and sustainability. Practice-based approaches reveal processes of reproduction (stasis) and change in forms of consumption, which we argue present conceptual insights into sustainability transitions. By examining the tensions and crossovers between the MLP and practice-based approaches to consumption, three specific forms of interaction are identified for further conceptual and empirical exploration: the social relations of consumption; co-dependent changes in production and consumption; and, technologies, practices and consumption.
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