The Cultural Dimension of Sustainable Consumption Practices

New Economics, Socio-technical Transitions
and Social Practices

Edited by

Maurie J. Cohen

New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA

Halina Szejnwald Brown

Clark University, USA

Philip J. Vergragt

Tellus Institute, Clark University, USA

ADVANCES IN ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS

Edward Elgar

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

Series Editor: Jeroen C.J.M. van den Bergh, ICREA Professor, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain and Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Founding Editor: Robert Costanza, Gund Professor of Ecological Economics and Director, Gund Institute for Ecological Economics, University of Vermont, USA

This important series makes a significant contribution to the development of the principles and practices of ecological economics, a field which has expanded dramatically in recent years. The series provides an invaluable forum for the publication of high quality work and shows how ecological economic analysis can make a contribution to understanding and resolving important problems.

The main emphasis of the series is on the development and application of new original ideas in ecological economics. International in its approach, it includes some of the best theoretical and empirical work in the field with contributions to fundamental principles, rigorous evaluations of existing concepts, historical surveys and future visions. It seeks to address some of the most important theoretical questions and gives policy solutions for the ecological problems confronting the global village as we move into the twenty-first century.

Titles in the series include:

Conflict, Cooperation and Institutions in International Water Management

An Economic Analysis

Ines Dombrowsky

Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development

Selected Essays of Herman Daly

Herman E. Daly

Sustainable Welfare in the Asia-Pacific

Studies Using the Genuine Progress Indicator

Edited by Philip Lawn and Matthew Clarke

Managing without Growth

Slower by Design, Not Disaster

Peter A. Victor

Carbon Sinks and Climate Change

Forests in the Fight Against Global Warming

Colin A.G. Hunt

Macroeconomics and the Environment

Essays on Green Accounting

Salah El Serafy

Innovations in Sustainable Consumption

New Economics, Socio-technical Transitions and Social Practices

Maurie J. Cohen, Halina Szejnwald Brown and Philip J. Vergragt

n, and Everyday Life:
143–54.
Communication Theory: An
Introduction, CA: Sage.
Ecology on public under-
communication across
(6), 743–61.

Gert Spaargaren¹

Environmental social scientists have long been concerned with how to conceptualize ‘environmental behaviors’ and ‘environmental awareness and norms.’ From a scientific viewpoint, the question relates to how people in their everyday lives become engaged with issues such as climate change, water scarcity, biodiversity, waste generation and renewable energy. In other words, how do ordinary people get to grips with environmental issues and how do they perceive, comprehend, evaluate and manage the connections that their personal lifestyles and routine consumption practices have in terms of global environmental change (Cohen and Murphy, 2001; Southerton et al., 2004; Jackson, 2006)? From a policy perspective, there is the need to develop a better understanding of everyday consumption practices since how we dwell in our houses, drive our cars and participate in leisure activities are significant when it comes to achieving substantial reductions in overall carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and other environmental improvements (Dietz et al., 2009).

In many European countries, the policy debate on behavior change and sustainable consumption continues to be dominated by social psychologists and economists working primarily from an individualist standpoint (see the chapter by Bente Halkier in this volume). Theories of practice make possible a nonindividualist understanding of environmental behaviors while opening up new approaches for global environmental governance. When (re)conceptualized along the lines of practice theories, new issues are exposed and give rise to innovative questions and strategies for social science research. First, recasting the agency-structure dualism enables routine practices to be seen as new cornerstones with which to build environmental governance arrangements. Second, making conceptual room for the co-structuring role of objects, technologies and

infrastructures in the reproduction of social practices makes it possible to analyze the crucial role of technology in environmental change without lapsing into technological determinism. Finally, when approached from the perspective of practice theories, the role of perception, norms and personal commitments to environmental change can be handled in a non-individualist way while simultaneously making room for cultural analysis of the activities of citizen-consumers as positive, energizing commitments.

Consideration of the cultural dimension of practices is especially relevant as a way to transcend dominant frames on sustainable consumption, particularly in terms of how they are used in the formulation of environmental policies. Frames that emphasize the risk-inducing, negative side of unsustainable consumption (Dauvergne, 2008) tend to neglect the encouraging, enabling and motivating functions of new, green actions connected to participation in more sustainable consumption practices. The final section summarizes the main ingredients for a practice-based research agenda on sustainable consumption.

Since the 1970s, two approaches have been dominant for studying and organizing research on the social dimensions of environment and climate change: the individualist paradigm and the systemic (or structural) paradigm. As Table 11.1 indicates, each of these archetypes is configured around its own theoretical assumptions and preferred policy strategies.

When policies are proposed to promote more sustainable consumption behaviors, the individualist paradigm tends to be invoked as the framework for organizing concrete programs of action (Jackson, 2005; DEFRA, 2008). The so-called model of the four Es – enable, engage, encourage and exemplify – is used to summarize and specify the mix of instruments for changing consumer practices (Jackson, 2006; DEFRA, 2008).² For example, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) deploy the individualist model when working with the emerging business of 'foot-printing' individuals while appealing to the moral responsibility of citizen-consumers to bring their consumption behaviors within the biophysical limits set by ecologists and other natural scientists (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996; Hobson, 2002; Middlemiss, 2010).

Among the main achievements of the four Es is a significant increase in public environmental awareness that has become manifest in recent decades. However, the primary consequence of this development is that attentiveness has proved to be a weak precursor of pro-environmental

behaviors. Most people do not live up to the promises that they make in the surveys. Because of inadequate outcomes, policy makers in countries such as the Netherlands have quite modest expectations of the improvements that can accrue from national information campaigns and other strategies premised on the individualist paradigm (Beckers et al., 2000).

Partly because of disappointing experiences with the individualist model, policy makers in Europe have resorted in recent years to assumptions and strategies associated with the systemic paradigm. In the systemic paradigm, individuals no longer really matter. The focus is primarily on institutional actors: companies, branch organizations, municipalities, labor unions and NGOs. While working with producers and other experts involved in the greening of consumption, initiatives can best be organized, so it is thought, more or less 'behind the backs' of ordinary citizen-consumers. The basic assumption about behavior change is that new activities and purchasing preferences can and will be effectively enforced on citizen-consumers sooner or later. Citizen-consumers will have no choice but to conduct themselves in a sustainable manner once the required technologies, infrastructures and products are put into place as the result of strict regulations. In short, 'fit and forget' becomes the slogan with which to achieve sustainable consumption (Van Vliet et al., 2005).

Now people, of course, do not just develop ideas and ways of doing things 'from within' and all by themselves. Their thinking and doing are co-shaped by others and by the objects and situational factors that form

an integral part of the contexts of their behaviors. When restricting themselves to strategies only from the individualist paradigm, policy makers are being sociologically naïve and disregarding the profound influences that wider chains of interaction have on systems of provision, prefiguring and co-evolving the range of choices available to individual citizen-consumers. As a result, far too much responsibility for change is put on the shoulders of citizen-consumers themselves.

A critique of the systemic paradigm highlights the converse problem. When resorting to institutionalized producer-led initiatives organized around new technologies and infrastructures, policy makers are failing to acknowledge the crucial role of human agents. In this top-down, structuralist approach, citizen-consumers are hardly offered possibilities to participate in and to democratically control processes integral to their own lives. As studies on failed technological innovations convincingly demonstrate (Schot, 2001; Heiskanen et al., 2005), it is a difficult challenge to realize the environmental benefits of eco-designed products when they are conceived and implemented without reference to the user practices that they help to constitute.

Because of these criticisms, there is a need for a balanced approach that pays attention to aspects of both agency and structure, that makes room for joining both bottom-up and top-down dynamics of change and that recognizes the mutual influencing and co-shaping of human actors and technologies. Practice-based approaches, as developed by sociologists since the 1970s, can provide this more balanced approach (Shove, 2003, 2006; Spaargaren, 2003; Southerton et al., 2004). The sections that follow discuss the practice paradigm from both theoretical and governance perspectives and point to how conceptual innovations with respect to agency, technology and culture can contribute to renewal of the policy agenda for encouraging more sustainable consumption.

At the time that social theorists Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1979) and Anthony Giddens (1984) advanced their respective theories of practice, the main emphasis was on overcoming the agency-structure dualism (Knorr-Cetina and Cicourel, 1981). By introducing concepts such as practice, habitus and field (Bourdieu) and reformulating the notions of agency, system and structure (Giddens), both scholars tried to contribute conceptually to a synthesis between structuralist and interpretative schools of thinking in the social sciences.

What is generally regarded to be the lasting value of their work is the understanding of social life as a series of recursive practices carried out by knowledgeable and capable agents who draw on sets of virtual rules and resources connected to situated social practices. Agents reproduce practices within designated fields of social life by using specific sets of rules and resources that are constitutive of those practices. Because of the emphasis on practices as 'shared behavioral routines,' the individual is no longer in the center of the analysis. Practices instead of individuals become the most important units of analysis. It is practices that 'produce' and co-constitute individuals and their values, knowledge and capabilities, and not the other way around (Collins, 2004).

Looking 'beyond the individual,' however, does not imply reverting to the systemic, structuralist perspective that tends to discount – or at times forget altogether – agency and subjectivity. Both Giddens and Bourdieu made convincing cases about the need to investigate and organize changes in practices in direct connection with 'agency performed,' 'powers enacted' and 'interests pursued' by human agents. Practice theories go beyond individuals, but emphasize the fact that human subjectivity is at the heart of processes of structuration, reproduction and (also) environmental change.

Let us shift here to consider the role of environmental governance, which is about attempts to steer the reproduction of practices, systems and networks from the standpoint of sustainable development. Practices come in all kinds of different types. There are the routine consumption practices of everyday life, as well as practices that are part of the reproduction of markets, politics and civil society. Practices associated with corporate social responsibility can be the focus of environmental governance in much the same way as practices of consumption. Furthermore, practices can be situated at all segments or nodes of production-consumption chains and networks. When the focus is on the ecological modernization of practices, such as mining, processing, warehousing, transporting, retailing and distributing, this is known in the literature as 'upstream' processes and dynamics as enacted by providers of (green) products, services and infrastructures. In contrast, when attention is devoted to practices of buying, storing, consuming, (re)using and recycling as enacted by citizen-consumers as the end-users of (green) products and services, this is referred to as 'downstream' processes and dynamics (Spaargaren and van Koppen, 2009). In the discussion that follows, the downstream practices of consumption will be used to illustrate the relevance of a practice approach for environmental governance.

In principle, a virtually unlimited number of downstream consumption practices are relevant for environmental governance. Three criteria seem to be especially relevant for the selection of specific sets of practices that

are central to the environmental governance of consumption. First, the focus should be on practices that have relevance from a citizen-consumer's (or practitioner's) point of view. This means the practices should be situated in everyday life and governed to a significant degree by life-world rationalities. They should moreover be recognizable to citizen-consumers, a condition that implies lay people have unconditional opportunities to gain first-hand knowledge about these practices.³ For example, when studying 'shopping for food in a supermarket' it is presupposed that almost all citizen-consumers possess first-hand knowledge about the rules and resources implied in the practice.

Second, the consumption practices should be relevant for environmental governance. This caveat does not mean that only practices with large ecological impacts are selected, since practices with high eco-innovative potential can still be important. Also 'new,' not yet common or mainstream practices could nonetheless be of strategic interest to policy makers. Within the environmental sciences, the biophysical impacts of consumption practices, such as dwelling in a home or driving a car, are by now well understood in technical terms.

Finally, to prevent the fragmentation and 'horizontalization' of consumption policies (Fine and Leopold, 1993), researchers and policy makers should focus on clusters or sets of consumption practices situated within a limited number of 'domains' spanning everyday life. Within one domain – or field, as Bourdieu would have it – practices are reproduced under the influence of a shared 'regime' (Geels, 2005) since they are connected to similar chains and networks that contribute to the provisioning of the practices. Because of these shared subsets of rules and resources, practices within one domain can be said to be embedded in the specific, as well as historical, dynamics of this particular domain (Warde, 2004). When speaking of food, the sustainability criteria and frames demonstrate specific, customary elements tied to the consumption of food (for example, freshness, land use, animal welfare), but when compared to the domain of housing, a different set of criteria (for example, CO₂ emissions, water use) would become relevant.

To provide an impression of the sets and domains that are relevant for the governance of sustainable consumption, Table 11.2 displays several practices for six different domains. This selection is partly based on the CONTRAST research project that explored transitions toward sustainable consumption practices in the Netherlands (Spaargaren et al., 2007). This work demonstrated that the dynamics of environmental change are significantly different across consumption domains and varying levels of improvement have thus far been realized. The domains of 'housing' and 'food' have experienced the greatest degree of ecological modernization,

while 'leisure and tourism' and 'clothing and personal care' lag behind. The 'mobility' domain occupies a middle position (Verbeek, 2010). Interestingly, the consumption domains in Table 11.2 are similar to the main categories used by Global Action Plan (GAP) (Staats et al., 2004) and are consistent with the international policy agenda for sustainable consumption and production (SCP) as it has developed since 2002 around the so-called Marrakech Process (Spaargaren and Cohen, 2009). Accordingly, when studying the greening of global consumption, some practices will be more relevant than others and will depend on the particular geographical region under investigation. It also warrants keeping in mind that the influence of national policies on consumption domains will vary. For example, state power in the domain of housing will generally be greater than in the domain of food or clothing.

Key questions for social scientists interested in the governance of sustainable consumption are related to the factors and dynamics of transitioning to future social practices with substantially lower ecological impacts. The challenge is to substantially reduce the ecological footprints of practices instead of only focusing on the footprints of individuals. This shift is realizable by, on the one hand, introducing more sustainable objects, products and technologies into the practices and, on the other hand, integrating into the practices new green images, norms and ideas. Stated differently, the ecological modernization of practices refers to incorporating and anchoring into practices novel 'ways of doing and saying' that are important for monitoring, assessing, valuing and improving the environmental performance of the practice. The technological and cultural dimensions of innovating consumption practices are respectively considered in the next two sections.