Marlyne Sahakian

University of Geneva | UNIGE · Department of Sociology

Scientific evidence highlights the pivotal role for structural change in pursuit of the sustainability transformation. A particular challenge for research on structural aspects of sustainable consumption and lifestyles, however, is the assessment of their impact. Especially quantifying the impact of structural change remains a serious problem. Whil...

How can people imagine ways of achieving desirable energy futures in cities, oriented towards sufficiency? Building on the notion of sufficiency understood as avoiding demand while meeting human needs, this paper discusses the results of seven participatory workshops (n = 154 participants) held in Switzerland where new imaginaries around the future...

Waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly. While biodegradable waste remains predominant, it is rarely treated separately by municipal solid waste management systems, thus foregoing the possibility to reduce the volume going to landfills or dumpsites. This paper discusses the unique case of the small city of Dschang, Cameroon, wh...

Waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is increasing rapidly. While biodegradable waste remains predominant, it is rarely treated separately by municipal solid waste management systems, thus foregoing the possibility to reduce the volume going to landfills or dumpsites. This paper discusses the unique case of the small city of Dschang, Cameroon, wh...

Organic waste is both a refuse and a resource. Focusing on household waste in a city in Western Switzerland, this study examines the practices of waste segregation in relation to the city’s (organic) waste management system. Based on qualitative research with diverse households and experts in waste management, we use social practice theory to discu...

This book is a comprehensive guide on how to teach sustainable consumption in higher education. Teaching and Learning Sustainable Consumption: A Guidebook systematizes the themes, objectives, and theories that characterize sustainable consumption as an educational field. The first part of the book discusses approaches to teaching and learning sust...

Answering the call in this special issue to spatialise degrowth studies beyond the Global North, this paper examines practices of ‘park-making’ in Chennai and Metro Manila as a potential degrowth pathway. Parks in the coastal mega cities of Metro Manila and Chennai can be seen as relics of a colonial era, and spaces coherent with capitalist, growth...

Semi-confinement measures around the COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions in everyday lives, in particular when it comes to reconfiguring habitual and routinized ways of doing things—a central theme in a social practice approach to understanding consumption. This contribution considers the weekly journal entries of 95 students in an undergraduate c...

The notion of societal boundaries aims to enhance the debate on planetary boundaries. The focus is on capitalist societies as a heuristic for discussing the expansionary dynamics, power relations, and lock-ins of modern societies that impel highly unsustainable societal relations with nature. While formulating societal boundaries implies a controve...

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. The article starts by highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of planetary boundaries from a social science perspective. It is argued that the growth imperative of capitalist economies, as well as other particular characterist...

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in everyday lives through restrictions that resulted in lockdown practices in the home, whereby practices were reassessed, changed, renewed, or newly established. Based on a qualitative study of lockdown practices following the first wave of the pandemic in two European cities with high living standards, Osl...

Participatory grocery stores as counter-cultural? Between social inclusion and alternatives to mass consumption In participatory grocery stores, consumers participate in decision-making processes and everyday practical tasks. These stores question dominant models and offer opportunities to experiment with alternatives. Yet, these projects oftentime...

While green public spaces have been studied in relation to biodiversity and climate change, and in relation to health and social inclusion, there is a need to further understand how they relate to a broader understanding of human wellbeing. Evidence suggests that public spaces play an important role with a view to happiness and mental health, but f...

Can the voluntary reduction of working hours as a sufficiency practice promote more environmentally sustainable forms of consumption along with human well-being? In this exploratory study conducted at the end of 2018 in Western Switzerland, we use the social practices and systems of provision approaches and a definition of well-being based on human...

The increasing sense of urgency to transition to sustainable modes of consumption and production requires an understanding of social problem framings and processes of change. We examine how two conceptual frameworks, the Multi-level Perspective (MLP), a socio-technical transition theory, and Social Practice Approaches (SPA), contribute to understan...

Sustainable agrifood systems are critical to averting climate-driven social and ecological disasters, overcoming the growth paradigm and redefining the interactions of humanity and nature in the twenty-first century. This Perspective describes an agenda and examples for comprehensive agrifood system redesign according to principles of sufficiency,...

Growing attention is being paid to imaginaries of energy futures that originate from actors at subnational levels who engage directly with energy transitions, and how these imaginaries compare with national imaginaries. We focus on collectives (e.g., cooperatives, energy utilities or public administrations) that engage with solar PV in Switzerland,...

Decades of techno-economic energy policymaking and research have meant evidence from the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH)—including critical reflections on what changing a society’s relation to energy (efficiency) even means—have been underutilised. In particular, (i) the SSH have too often been sidelined and/or narrowly pigeonholed by policyma...

The COVID-19 pandemic that first swept across the world in 2020 led to disruptions in habits and routines—central themes in social practice approaches to consumption. Teaching was also disrupted: the move to online classes forced the development of new modalities of teaching and learning. As a result, a group of social science instructors in a “sus...

While learning competencies in education for sustainable development are increasingly recognized as important, few empirical studies consider competencies delivered at a program level. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how a program evaluation can be approached through a participatory approach, and what this means for learning competencie...

As a salutogenic concept, “consumption corridors” aims to support what is necessary for sustainable wellbeing to be achieved in relation to the Earth system, with a deep consideration for justice and equity. Living in consumption corridors is a representation of everyday life whereby people live within limits, so that all people–now and in the futu...

In this paper, we perform a literature review on the current state of knowledge about homeowners in the context of the adoption of renewable heating systems. Despite a considerable number of studies about homeowners, homeowner–installer interactions, and ways to improve the effectiveness of renewable heating programs, based on homeowner knowledge,...

The planetary boundaries concept has profoundly changed the vocabulary and representation of global environmental issues. We bring a critical social science perspective to this framework through the notion of societal boundaries and aim to provide a more nuanced understanding of the social nature of thresholds. We start by highlighting the strength...

Geneva prides itself on being an international city, home to the United Nations and international organizations. The airport plays an important role in this image, tied to a quest for hypermobility in an increasingly globalized society. Yet, mobility accounts for close to one quarter of the territory’s carbon emissions, with flights responsible for...

In this article, we examine a change initiative designed to involve households in testing ways to transform two everyday practices ‒ heating and doing laundry. The research design included an examination of the challenges of changing practices either in a setting that fosters collective engagement or with individual households. Two different types...

Living in an ecovillage requires that people reinvent everyday practices. It involves new forms of production, consumption, social organization, and subjective constitution, aiming toward the nor-mative goal of achieving greater "sustainability." Based on ethno-graphic research in Western Switzerland, this paper focuses on uncovering the nexus of p...

Living in an ecovillage requires that people reinvent everyday practices. It involves new forms of production, consumption, social organization, and subjective constitution, aiming toward the nor-mative goal of achieving greater "sustainability." Based on ethno-graphic research in Western Switzerland, this paper focuses on uncovering the nexus of p...

Transitioning to cleaner modes of electricity production requires a major uptake of renewable technologies, including solar photovoltaic (PV). However, the uptake has been spatially uneven within countries and requires more exploration. We analyse the spatial pattern of solar PV growth in Switzerland (76′587 PV projects) by quantifying the features...

Leisure practices have implications for belonging. In Metro Manila, a rapidly urbanizing metropolis, leisure is becoming increasingly associated with the most ubiquitous hyper-conditioned environments: privately owned shopping malls. By decontextualizing the built environment from its natural and cultural settings, these malls present a challenge t...

Consumption Corridors: Living a Good Life within Sustainable Limits explores how to enhance peoples’ chances to live a good life in a world of ecological and social limits. Rejecting familiar recitations of problems of ecological decline and planetary boundaries, this compact book instead offers a spirited explication of what everyone desires: a g...

ENERGISE is the first large-scale European effort to reduce household energy use through a change initiative that adopted a ‘living lab’ approach informed by social practice theory. Two challenges were introduced to 306 households in eight countries: to lower indoor temperatures and to reduce laundry cycles. This contribution demonstrates the usefu...

In this article, we explore the possibilities for a transformation toward more sustainable energy usage by engaging with mundane activities, such as doing the laundry. Across European households, laundry practices rely on social norms and material arrangements, which makes these practices rather “sticky” and resistant to change. Through the lens of...

Green public spaces support human health and harbor biodiversity, but does visiting the park improve human wellbeing? We draw on interviews with 40 respondents in 3 Chennai parks to examine how green public spaces serve as inclusive areas for synergistic need satisfaction. Through qualitative interviews, we studied wellbeing by uncovering social pr...

Using six priority themes, the "White Paper on Sustainability Research" outlines Switzerland's most urgent research needs in order to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The priority themes were developed by 30 experts from science and practice on the basis of a broad-based dialogue with over 100 stakeholders from science, business, administ...

Aunque con origen y preocupación inicial diferentes, la Economía Social y Solidaria (ESS) y la Economía Circular (EC) pueden complementarse para transformar el modelo de desarrollo actual. La EC teóricamente ayudaría a contemplar objetivos biofísicos de sostenibilidad ecológica y de reducción y cierre de ciclos de materiales; la ESS priorizaría las...

The first Swiss national dietary survey (MenuCH) was used to screen disease burdens and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) of Swiss diets (vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, slimming), with a focus on gender and education level. The Health Nutritional Index (HENI), a novel disease burden-based nutritional index built on the Global Burden of Disease studie...

This article demonstrates how a cultural reading of consumption that focuses on the meaning and materiality of domestic indoor microclimates can contribute to conceptual developments in the field of practice theory that refocus attention on cultural patterns, including prevailing norms and prescriptions regarding indoor temperature and thermal comf...

Households have a role to play in the so-called ‘energy turn’ in Switzerland, a policy framework that calls for more efficient energy usage. Against this backdrop, this article critically analyses the mechanisms and running of a programme aimed at improving energy usage among low-income households in western Switzerland, bringing together both envi...

The COVID-19 pandemic is having devastating effects on vulnerable communities around the world but we are also seeing glimpses of hope, where societies are working to “build back better” by ensuring basic needs and protecting our natural environment. In this briefing paper, we outline a set of ten principles for “building back better” toward a well...

In the last decade, a new strand of energy and climate research emerged that links quantitative models and socio-technical transitions theories or frameworks. Linking the two enables capturing the co-evolution of society, technology, the economy and the environment. We systematically review this literature (N = 44) and describe the papers' trends,...

The significance of green public spaces is well documented in relation to social inclusiveness, human health, and biodiversity, yet how green public spaces achieve what Gough (2017) has termed ‘sustainable wellbeing’ is less understood. This contribution presents preliminary results from a study of green public spaces in four mega-cities of South a...

This chapter engages with the existing literature on urban agriculture and with concrete case studies to examine current challenges and ways forward for the sustainability assessment of urban agriculture. The chapter identifies current conceptualizations of urban agriculture, and sustainability assessment methods, and discusses them in the light of...

Meat consumption has become a contentious issue among the Swiss population. The emotional character of the debates surrounding the necessity for a change of habits, namely a reduction in consumption and a shift in the kind of meat we eat, reveals its particular place in our societies: as a symbolic food with roots in our affective economies, as inv...

Providing nutritious, safe and affordable food for all in a sustainable manner is one of the greatest challenges the world faces today, particularly in the context of Asia – where 515 million people are estimated to be undernourished, with the highest rates of food insecurity in Central and Southern Asia (FAO, IFAD, UNICEF et al., 2018). Yet an est...

Sustainability, far from being an objectively defined concept, is underpinned by assumptions, discursive elements, values and paradigms, many of which are implicit and even contradictory. These need to be identified and debated so that we can develop a shared vision of a sustainable future and a strategy for achieving it. The scientific community c...

With electricity-using appliances as the starting point, we seek to uncover the normative authority in the performance of practices among households in Western Switzerland. Through complementary methods, we explore normativity in practices that involve communicating and entertaining, cleaning and tidying up, and storing food and preparing meals. Co...

https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:123019

This contribution proposes to address a central question in social science approaches to household energy studies: "how do conventions around energy services evolve, how do they alter over time, and how can they be changed once they are cement-ed?" (Sovacool 2014: 19). Drawing from a social practice theoretical framework, we posit that energy usage...

This paper studies how ordinary people in Switzerland represent and engage with environmental issues in daily practices. Bringing together conceptual developments in cultural sociology and social practice theory, the paper argues that cultural repertoires strongly shape how representations and forms of engagement play out. It identifies two main re...

The concept of sufficiency – reducing energy uses beyond technical efficiency – is far-reaching and requires a reflection on human needs, energy services, urban structures, social norms, and the role of policies to support the shift towards lower-energy societies. In recent years, a growing body of literature has been published on energy sufficienc...

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the Swiss 2050 Energy Strategy aims to promote energy efficiency, renewable energy (RE) sources, and nuclear power phase-out. Against that backdrop, this chapter provides a brief overview of the socio-material dynamics of household energy use in Switzerland, highlighting the role of regional energy pro...

This chapter considers the similarities and differences between ten European countries in relation to meso-level considerations when it comes to household energy usage. We uncover the governing frameworks and policies related to energy usage, then examine socio-demographic characteristics including housing tenure and location. Next, we consider the...

Based on a study of fifty initiatives aimed at reducing energy usage among Swiss households, we uncover what representations of change and forms of engagement are put forward by these initiatives, and the related policy implications. Two ideal-types emerge from our analysis: first, the dominant worldview of change as based on governing behaviour to...

This chapter explores the underpinning dimensions of energy-using practices among an affluent social group in Geneva, or households who self-identify as being part of the expatriate population. We demonstrate how people can be locked into certain consumption practices by their physical possessions, a form of material lock-in, but also by social sta...

This paper takes as a starting point "food consumption prescriptions", or guidelines on what and how one should eat when it comes to "healthy and sustainable diets". Through qualitative research in Switzerland, involving discourse analysis, observations, in-depth interviews, and focus groups, we set out to uncover the more dominant prescriptions pu...

Social norms have an important role to play in relation to how practices play out, involving shared understandings and expectations around what should or ought to be. Few studies consider emotions from a social practice perspective in relation to energy studies, however. From a socio-anthropological perspective, we set out to uncover how studying e...

Food consumption patterns and practices are undergoing changes in the mega-cities of South and Southeast Asia. Based on a qualitative, comparative case study, this article examines food consumption practices among middle-class households in Bangalore and Metro Manila. We demonstrate how taste preferences, shaped by and shaping food consumption prac...

Sustainable consumption (SC) is a growing area of research, practice and policy-making that has been gaining momentum in teaching programs among higher education institutions. Understanding how, in what way, and what we consume, in relation to environmental integrity and intra/inter-generational equity, is a complex question, all the more so when t...

This is the ultimate source for anyone who wants a comprehensive view of how the sharing economy began and how it may fundamentally change capitalism across the globe. The Rise of the Sharing Economy: Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities of Collaborative Consumption examines the business phenomenon of the sharing economy, giving readers a tho...

In light of the environmental consequences of linear production and consumption processes, the circular economy (CE) is gaining momentum as a concept and practice, promoting closed material cycles by focusing on multiple strategies from material recycling to product reuse, as well as rethinking production and consumption chains toward increased res...

Through the lens of social practice theories, we consider the emergence of organic food in the Philippines and relate this to sustainable food production and consumption. In particular, we analyse the various practices of groups engaged in “organic” food production and consumption in the capital region, Metro Manila—in a country that has a vibrant...

Food consumption patterns and practices are rapidly changing in Asia and the Pacific, and nowhere are these changes more striking than in urban areas. This book brings together scholars from anthropology, sociology, environmental studies, tourism, architecture and development studies to provide a comprehensive examination of food consumption trends...

A flyer to summarize workshop findings at the pre-Degrowth SCORAI workshop.

Public and private food consumption is responsible for significant environmental impacts, resulting in numerous studies that highlight the problem and reveal its magnitude at global and national scales. Drawing on a high level of data aggregation and focussing on individual choices and attitudes, current accounts stop short of grappling with the un...