Elizabeth Shove

• Lancaster University

Discussions of flexibility in organisations generally focus on labour relations, corporate agility, and long-term survival. In much of this writing, flexibility is conceptualised as a feature of organisations and their environments, of organisational strategy and form, and an outcome of characteristics that can be defined and measured. By contrast,...

In this article we argue that social practices, which consist of sayings and doings that extend across space and time, generate and sustain distinctive patterns of microbial interaction. In taking this approach, we position practice theory within and not outside the realm of contemporary biological processes, including processes that matter for hum...

We know that networked infrastructures enable forms of mobility, energy use, and flows of data, and we know that modern life depends on these arrangements. We also know that relations between infrastructures and social practices are recursive, extensive, and multiple. But what of the detail? How do infrastructures shape the many practices to which...

Nachhaltigkeit ist eines der gesellschaftlichen Transformationsprojekte unserer Zeit. Dennoch sind soziologische Analysen im Diskurs der damit verknüpften Grundfragen bislang wenig präsent. Die »Soziologie der Nachhaltigkeit« betrachtet daher konkrete Themen nachhaltiger Gesellschaftsentwicklung – Arbeit, Mobilität, Politik(en), Diskurse, Praktiken...

We know that patterns of domestic consumption are situated within broader systems of provision and that home appliances like the fridge freezer bridge between practices of cooking, shopping, and eating, on the one hand, and increasingly global systems of food production, distribution, and diet, on the other hand. In analyzing the uses of fridge fre...

The prevalence of obesity and related health problems has increased sharply in recent decades. Dominant medical, economic, psychological, and especially epidemiological accounts conceptualise these trends as outcomes of individuals’ lifestyles – whether freely chosen or determined by an array of obesogenic factors. As such, they rest on forms of me...

In urban studies and in energy policy there is much debate about the relationship between energy demand and the density of residential areas, measured in units such as those of population/ha or population/km2. A different approach is presented in this paper. Rather than evaluating the relative merits of compact or sprawling urban forms, the focus i...

It is now widely agreed that there is more to sustainable consumption than persuading individuals to make green their brand of choice. Instead, the focus is on how to understand the processes of change, particularly in relation to the transformation of inconspicuous habits. A dominant approach within sustainable consumption research suggests that c...

There is no abstract for this paper.

This note responds to John Urry\'s contribution and draws on my own presentation at the BSA Presidential Event on \'How to put \'Society\' into Climate Change\', held on 8th February 2010 at the British Library.

In this short and deliberately provocative paper I reflect on what seems to be a yawning gulf between the potential contribution of the social sciences and the typically restricted models and concepts of social change embedded in contemporary environmental policy in the UK, and in other countries too. As well as making a strong case for going beyon...

The literature on sociotechnical transitions and their governance tends to concentrate on the introduction of new technologies and systems of supply. In this paper we seek to extend the scope of debate, introducing aspects of practice theory as a means of also conceptualising the dynamics of demand. Rather than treating ‘human need’ or ‘societal fu...

Building on the work of those who have highlighted the role of consumers and lead users we focus on innovations not in products but in what people do. In developing a method of conceptualising the emergence and reproduction of practice we argue that innovation is not a one-off moment but a continuous on-going process. Specifically, we suggest that...

1. Introduction: Comfort in a Lower Carbon Society (Elizabeth Shove, Sociology, Lancaster University Heather Chappells, Geography, Lancaster University Loren Lutzenhiser, Urban Studies and Planning, Portland State University Bruce Hackett, Sociology, UC Davis) 2. Air-conditioning and the 'homogenization' of people and built environments (Stephen He...

Studies of ordinary (as distinct from spectacular) forms of consumption have generated new questions and new ways of thinking about mechanisms and processes of change and about the conceptual status of consumer goods. No longer exclusively framed as semiotic resources deployed in the expression and reproduction of identities and social relations, p...

Recruitment and Reproduction: The Careers and Carriers of Digital Photography and Floorball The claim that social practices have a relatively durable existence in space and time, and that their persistence depends upon their recurrent reproduction through necessarily localised performances is theoretically plausible, but what of the detail? How do...

The goals of sustainable development are rarely simply and clearly defined, but more often—although to varying degrees—ambivalent, difficult to agree and hard to specify. This paper reflects on the inherent ambivalence of sustainability as a normative objective of steering and governance. It draws, in particular, on Bauman's account of the complex...

This paper begins with two observations: that UK homes appear to have accumulated increasing numbers of domestic technologies, yet new houses are smaller, on average, than those built before 1980. The spatial pressures placed on homes that result from the accumulation of technologies are explored by drawing upon forty household interviews which enq...

Design researchers and practitioners are increasingly interested in how designed artefacts shape and are shaped by the contexts in which they are used. Despite a long if selective history of theoretical engagement between design and social science, there has yet to be an effective exchange of ideas on this subject in particular. In this article, we...

In the UK, the majority of households have a freezer and by most criteria it would be fair to say that home freezing and frozen food provisioning reached sociotechnical ‘closure’ some 20 years ago or more. Detailed examination of how people actually live with freezers suggests, by contrast, that associated consumption practices and processes are va...

"The critique of the inanities and injustices of present society, however obvious they may be, is disqualified by a simple reminder that remaking society by design may only make it worse than it was. Alternative ends are invalidated on the strength of the proved ineffectuality of means" (Bauman 1991; 269) Green (2006) is not alone in contending tha...

How do common household items such as basic plastic house wares or high-tech digital cameras transform our daily lives? The Design of Everyday Life considers this question in detail, from the design of products through to their use in the home. Drawing on interviews with consumers themselves, the authors look at how everyday objects, ranging from s...

Our intention in the paper has been to explore a new approach to the science of energy demand: one which adequately accounts for the actors, institutions and networks which contribute to change; which re-envisions the object of inquiry as the services which energy provides; and which is equipped to understand change. This new approach would not obv...

Much of the literature on social exclusion ignores its ‘spatial’ or ‘mobility’ related aspects. This paper seeks to rectify this by examining the mobile processes and infrastructures of travel and transport that engender and reinforce social exclusion in contemporary societies. To the extent to which this issue is addressed, it is mainly organized...

This article considers the increasing popularity of showering in the UK. We use this case as a means of exploring some of the dimensions and dynamics of everyday practice. Drawing upon a range of documentary evidence, we begin by sketching three possible explanations for the current constitution of showering as a private, increasingly resource-inte...

The idea that artifacts are acquired and used in the course of accomplishing social practices has important implications for theories of consumption and innovation. From this point of view, it is not enough to show that goods are symbolically and materially positioned, mediated and filtered through existing cultures and conventions. Twisting the pr...

DIY is an analytically complex phenomenon. It can simultaneously figure as leisure and work, and as consumption (of materials and tools) and production (of changes to the home). Analysis of the technology and practice of DIY allows us to engage with significant, but relatively unexplored themes that are nonetheless important for theorising consumpt...

Vast quantities of energy are consumed in heating and cooling to provide what are now regarded as acceptable standards of thermal comfort. In the UK as in a number of other countries, there is a real danger that responses in anticipation of global warming and climate change - including growing reliance on air-conditioning - will increase energy dem...

It has long been recognized that users and consumers actively appropriate new products and technologies and assimilate them into existing regimes and frames of reference. Much less has been written about how these frames evolve or about how processes of integration and appropriation are sustained and transformed. In this article we analyze "the kit...

At first sight, digital photography- which involves taking and sometimes also manipulating, storing, viewing and displaying digital images- and floorball, an indoor sport in which players equipped with light-weight sticks try to hit a small ball into the opposing team's goal, have barely anything in common. One is an essentially solitary activ...

Many commentators analyse green consumption as if it were an expression of individual environmental commitment. Such approaches suppose that the adoption of more sustainable ways of life depends upon the diffusion of "green" beliefs and actions through society. In this article, the author explores the idea that patterns of resource consumption (esp...

It is often supposed that greater user involvement will result in more sustainable, more socially inclusive designs and technologies. I take issue with this proposition on the grounds that it fails to acknowledge the prior structuring of users' expectations or the socio-technical regimes and landscapes in which specific innovations take root. In de...

Breakthrough innovations are again high on the agenda of management research. Because of the uncertainties faced, they require specific management approaches, both at firm and at project level. The SOCROBUST methodology addresses the latter aspect. Two central results of the sociology of innovation have been mobilised. The most critical one lies in...

This project concerns the management of especially risky and uncertain forms of innovation. More precisely, it concentrates on architectural or radical innovations which by their nature challenge existing technological conventions, regulatory frameworks, and established relations between consumers and producers. Public and private sector managers o...

This chapter summarizes the control and flow of water consumptions, where spatial dimensions parallel different temporal dimensions, in which sustainability discourses are employed. The domain of human choice and consumption is heavily contested, and “eco-tourism,” however rhetorical, is a convenient label on which to hang contrary messages. Practi...

This paper is about the part which objects play in scripting the practices and strategies of their users. Goffman uses the concept of script to make sense of the conventional ordering of social interaction and the definition and maintenance of social worlds. As adopted by Latour (1992), Akrich (1992) and others, the term describes the ways in which...

This article examines the 'normalization' of the British freezer. It defines three phases in this process: an initial period oriented around the utility of preserving home produce; a second stage marked by the development of a frozen food infrastructure and the establishment of the freezer as a part of the efficient domestic economy; and a third su...

The UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has placed considerable emphasis on the users of the research it supports. Researchers have in turn pointed to the potential uses of the work they do as a means of demonstrating relevance. However, to date, researchers and research funders have succumbed to the temptation of constructing and then b...

An overview is given on how the focus on individual behavior has limited the role of social science in contributing to an understanding of demand. A new approach is introduced which recasts the demand for energy, and the things which use energy, as a social demand, dependent not just on prices and degree of consumer awareness, but also on social no...

Although an intrinsic part of our everyday routines, the dustbin's role as a mediator of changing waste practices has rarely been considered. As bins become reconfigured as environmental technologies for contemporary recycling programmes, is argued that they provide a revealing indicator of new waste relationships in society. These emerging relatio...

Comparison of the organization and management of government funded energy efficiency research and development in the United States and the United Kingdom reveals a number of common features as well as some important differences. The UK pattern is one of centralized agenda-setting and competition in which rival research contractors bid for small, pr...

Having shown how much energy might be saved through the use of economically worthwhile measures and technologies, researchers and policy makers then find themselves trying to close the gap between current practice and recognised technical potential. The ensuing process of technology transfer is often seen as a process of overcoming ‘non technical b...

Over the past 15 years or so the sociology of consumption has made real progress in identifying and dissecting a series of mechanisms which maintain and expand demand for goods and services. However, few sociologists of consumption have taken account of the environmental impact of practices they describe. In addressing the question 'why do people c...

This paper summarises two years of efforts among a cross-disciplinary group of senior researchers to bring social and cultural perspectives to modelling of household energy consumption. The work has been organised by the Center for Energy Studies of the University of Geneva. The researchers represent both the physical and social sciences, several i...

How much note do designers take of users' needs in designing buildings? Users apparently are treated as just that, reactive in their use of whatever is provided for them. What is lacking in the minds of designers is an appreciation of the proactive stance of users from the sociological viewpoint vis-à-vis their relationship with the buildings in wh...

The seemingly relentless pursuit of novelty is central to consumer society. In explaining how and why needs and wants develop as they do, theories of consumption tend to focus on the cultural and symbolic at the expense of the practical and the material. Meanwhile, scholars from science and technology studies have demonstrated that artifacts freque...

The American consultancy firm, IDEO, has been remarkably successful in promoting and publicising what it pitches as a novel approach to design. In the words of its director, 'we think of products in terms of verbs, not nouns: not cell-phones but cell-phoning' (Kelley and Littman 2001: 46). By implication, 'Individual technologies add value only to...

In the proposal for the Environment and Human Behaviour programme our attention was drawn to specific question: how to avoid future responses to global warming, including the increased uptake of air-conditioning, which promise to exacerbate rather than mitigate CO 2 emissions (Ekins, 2002). Addressing this question requires engagement with a divers...