Consumption and Theories of Practice

“Building on Giddens, Bourdieu, Schatzki and others, early practice theory studies on sustainable consumption emerged as offshoots from ecological modernization theory (Spaargaren, 2003), the sociology of consumption (Warde, 2005) and science and technology studies (Shove, 2003).”

“Although adaptation, improvisation or experimentation can disrupt the reproduction of practices and lead to change (Warde, 2005; Kaljonen et al., 2019), the norms maintained by practices can make the diffusion of some disruptive innovations more difficult (Laakso, 2019; Kaljonen et al., 2020).”

“It follows that any effort to ground critique in empathetic understandings of environmentally problematic consumption must still acknowledge the capacity for ‘consumers’ to ‘adapt, improvise and experiment’ (Warde 2005: 141), and so consume less.”

“These five tenets of practice theory highlight how practices can guide social life and consumption (Warde 2005) and form the basis of our inquiry into consumer resistance to sustainability interventions in several key ways.”

“2004; Spaargaren and van Vliet 2000; Warde 2005).”

“The concept of “social” is the nexus of practices that are continuously formed and transformed by human activities [13,125].”

“Starting from the idea that practices are interrelated, and therefore should be seen as a system and not as a set of individual units [12], researchers identified some dimensions, generally related to one another, useful to understand whether and how much Italian consumers are interested in the issue of sustainability…”

“As such, interpreting life as constituted of practices (Warde, 2005), and each practice as a combination of elements, shifts the focus of consumer study away from single moments of individual rational decision making (Mylan, 2015).”

“In fact, almost all these papers refer to the Social Practice Theory/Approach (SPT/SPA) (e.g. Shove 2003; Southerton et al. 2004; Warde 2005).”

“In the following two sections I discuss a particular kind of teleoaffective formation: large scale configurations of discourse and practice which span and link the practices of cultural production and intermediation in the field of commercial communications (advertising, marketing, public relations etcetera) on the on…”

“Consumption patterns are the result of the intersection of multiple practices in one individual (Warde, 2005) and changing such patterns can only happen if the elements of the practice are (re) configured or new practices are adopted.”

“As a social ontology for understanding everyday life, practices are seen as being made up of inter-related elements, whether ‘materials, competencies and meanings’ for Shove and Pantzar [8], or ‘understandings, engagement and procedures’ ifor Warde [9].”

“Theories of practices (or social practice theory) help us to understand how the things we do, and the way we go about doing them, impact on energy and electricity use [9].”

“…hand, evolution can result from micro-improvisations in the use of objects, efforts toward improvement, and the co-occurrence of various practices (Warde 2005); on the other hand, change can originate from the modification of the socio-technical systems themselves, by adding, removing, or…”

“Warde (2005) underlines that practice approaches are very heterogeneous, and Shove, Pantzar and Watson (2012, 6) argue that the practice turn is “a diffuse movement, the shape and extent of which remains to be seen”.”

“They are dynamic by virtue of their own internal logic of operation, as people in myriad situations adapt, improvise and experiment’ (Warde, 2005, p. 141) with the available resources and also due to the different uses and technologies attributed to them.”

“Practice theories have proven useful to study the often observed path dependence and stickiness of consumption practices [16–19].”

“They are the central source of ‘desire, knowledge and judgement’ (Warde, 2005, p. 145).”

“We note that both the centrality of crisp consumption in these spaces and practices, and the requirement for noise to be minimised has less to do with individual consumer preferences than it does the collective organisation of everyday life (cf. Warde, 2005; Greene, 2018).”

“…and Geels 2012), yet SPT is even more eager to question stability by emphasizing that practices are not static, but rather “ internally differentiated on many dimensions ” and the performance of practice is slightly different each time, making practices dynamic and adaptable (Warde 2005, 138).”

“…individual choices, attitudes, preferences and motivations and encourages a greater understanding of everyday consumption habits and practices (Warde, 2005; Welch and Warde, 2015; Huddart Kennedy, 2020), would suggest that the mixedmotivations of minimalists, varying between individual…”

“The study of Gojard et al. (2021) uses a theoretical framework of practices for consumption, introduced by Warde (2005), which is grounded in practice theory.”

“That is, that the act of consuming is not, in itself, a discrete point, but rather a ‘ moment in almost every practice ’ (Warde 2005, 137).”

“…elements can be interpreted as nexuses of both doings and sayings (Schatzki 1996), using SPT to analyze tourist shopping needs to take routines and bodily actions, such as the use of mobile technology in this study, into the front stage to balance what tourists say with what they do (Warde 2005).”

“A practice as a performance, on the other hand, is “the carrying out of practices” that people regularly participate in (Warde 2005, 134).”

“There are two ways to inspect social practices: practice-as-entity and practice-as-performance (Røpke, 2009; Shove et al., 2012; Warde, 2005).”

“Ethnomethodology is sometimes referred to as one of the classic roots of practice theories (Warde, 2005).”

“For example, energy can be used for cooking (including in the workplace), or commuting to work, or conducting meetings, all of which are examples of social practices [107,146].”

“…the ‘practice approach’ of consumption is an approach that ‘stresses the routine, ordinary, collective, conventional nature’ of consumption and views practices to be ‘internally differentiated such that persons in different situations do the same activity differently’ (Warde, 2005: 146).”

“In undertaking these daily practices, people also acquire skills and competencies (Warde, 2005), which further embed their consumption activities.”

“Practice theory is situated between individualist and holistic theoretical perspectives (Warde 2005).”

“Drawn from sociology, social practice theory offers insight into the nature and dynamics of systems change from a social rather than technology-dominant perspective (e.g. Schatzki 1996; Reckwitz 2002; Warde 2005).”

“Based on the idea that practices, not individuals, are inherently linked to resource consumption (R ø pke, 2009; Spurling et al., 2013; Warde, 2005), a promising way to study the use and reduction of single-use plastic (SUP) is to examine the collective symbolic framework of actions that either…”

“They investigate the social relations between producers and consumers, embedded in infrastructures (Hargreaves et al., 2013; Reckwitz, 2002; Shove & Walker, 2010; Southerton et al., 2004; Spaargaren & Van Vliet, 2000; Warde, 2005).”

“…of actor/structure, mind/body, and social/ material, and have gained significant ground in research on sustainable consumption (GramHanssen, 2011; Warde, 2005), grassroots innovation (Hargreaves et al., 2013; Hoffman and Loeber, 2016), collective action (Welch and Yates, 2018), and governance…”

“However, the conceptualization of practices includes use of artefacts (Warde, 2005), and Shove and Pantzar (2005) assert that products only have value when integrated into practices.”

“…in Figure 1 indicates that the present study views the systemic nature of value cocreation within and across heterogeneous actor-networks at sport events (center of Figure 1) from a practice theory perspective (for reviews of practice theory, see Reckwitz, 2002; Schatzki, 1996; Warde, 2005).”

“Practices are sets of ‘doings and sayings’ that involve both practical activity and its representations (Warde 2005, p. 134).”

“Social life is made of social practices, and most people carry out a large number of practices in their everyday lives (Warde, 2005).”

“In addition, carriers have different levels of commitment, and therefore fl uctuating contributions when it comes to reproducing, developing and/or abandoning practices (Warde, 2005).”

“…considered, individual, rational choices, but rather bundles of interlinked practices: a mix of routinised and conscious decisions on how to arrange our everyday life, within the given social and physical environment (Reckwitz, 2002; Warde, 2005; Shove et al., 2012; Spaargaren et al., 2016).”

“2015; Warde 2005, 2014), a theoretical approach that sheds new light on how brand purpose can make a real impact on people’s lives by transforming their practices.”

“Within this approach, energy is not used for its own sake, but is part of accomplishing practices, like keeping warm and cool, which people value as aspects of their everyday life (Warde, 2005).”

“Practices involve a temporally unfolding and spatially discrete link of behaviours that include practical activities, performances, and representations or talk (Warde, 2005).”

“Consumption can also be seen as the appropriation of goods and services, spaces and ambiances (Warde 2005), or even a form of collective action and political activism.”

“Practices nevertheless contain the “seeds of constant change” as people who carry them “adapt, improvise and experiment” (Warde, 2005, p. 141).”

“More recently, theories of practice have gained momentum (following Warde, 2005) to influence contemporary developments in consumption studies.”

“How social change might be understood in relation to everyday practices is a growing body of literature, which recognizes that practices contain the “seeds of constant change” (Warde 2005).”

“Consumers are understood as ‘practitioners’, who perform practices in order to make sense of their world and their consumption behavior (Warde, 2005).”

“Finally, what people eat, when and how is governed by a range of psychological, emotional, cultural and sociological factors that further distinguish food from non-food systems (Warde, 2005).”

“ket systems achieve sufficient regularity to be recognized as markets through routinization (Schau et al., 2009; Shove & Pantzar, 2005; Warde, 2005), institutionalization (Dolbec & Fischer, 2015; Humphreys, 2010; Scaraboto & Fischer, 2013; Slimane et al.”

“Competences refer to the skills, knowledge, and capabilities needed to perform practices [52].”