Food practices as part of daily routines: A conceptual framework for analysing networks of practices

Current debates about the need to change daily practices to address sustainability or health issues often neglect to recognise that single practices like eating are embedded in daily routines and connected to a multitude of other practices that take place within networks. While connections, such as complexes, bundles or nexuses, are mentioned in extant literature, a clear definition of these categories and their operationalisation for empirical research is missing. This conceptual study aims to fill this gap by proposing an analytical framework for a network of practices that joins multiple authors' concepts and supports empirical analyses that aim to understand the complex intertwining of practices in daily life, as well as the challenges to changing them. Inspired by the concepts of 'zooming in and out' (Nicolini, 2012), we propose several explorative steps to support the operationalisation process. 'Zooming in' at practices aims for a deeper understanding of the performance within single practices, exploring their internal variations, including elements (i.e. material, meanings and competences), as well as spatial (i.e. in and outside), temporal (e.g. hours, days) and social (e.g. alone, with friends) dimensions. 'Zooming out' for connections between practices explores the various connections single practices have to other practices as complexes, bundles and nexuses, as well as the role of 'external' contexts influencing those dynamics. The framework's benefits are illustrated with examples that refer to the practice of eating and its interconnectedness with other food practices, with other daily practices and with external contexts, such as the surrounding food distribution systems. Our contribution is centred on how such an operationalisation may support the analysis of current and past networks of practices but also possible changes in daily practices in the future.

In different fields, such as energy use, nutrition or mobility, changes in daily routines towards more sustainable and/or healthier behaviours have been deemed (urgently) necessary. Along those lines, a significant amount of related information and public awareness campaigns have been distributed and communicated to consumers. However, as research has indicated, people are very resistant to changing their habits (Hoolohan et al., 2018). One possible reason is that the extent to which single behaviours are embedded in various daily routines has been underestimated. Several researchers have reported that it is difficult to change routines because single practices are interconnected in networks of practices (Hui, 2013; Paddock et al., 2017) and that few studies have

analysed these interconnections (Blue, 2017; Hui et al., 2017, pp. 52–67; Shove & Walker, 2010; Warde, 2005).

Although some research in the field of the sociology of food has investigated activities surrounding the preparation and consumption of food, the practice of eating itself has been not fully understood, mainly because eating represents an extremely personal and social act intrinsically linked to many other central daily life processes (Paddock, 2015; Warde, 1997). At first glance, singular practices like eating seem to stand alone; however, they are, in fact, both closely and loosely related to other social practices and are influenced by their surroundings in various ways (Hui, 2013; Paddock et al., 2017). Thus, an analytical challenge exists in food studies to approach and better describe eating as a topic as well as a scientific object, distinct from other food practices (e.

g. shopping, cooking) but also deeply connected to other daily routines (Blue, 2019; Pfeiffer et al., 2017; Twine, 2015; Warde, 2016).

In this sense researchers began to consider practices as 'a routinised type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one (another)' (Reckwitz, 2002, pp. 49–50) appropriate for analysis in order to better understand everyday routines. Therefore, exploring practices from a social practice theory (SPT) perspective aims to overcome deficiencies in current cultural and sociological analyses, such as traditional investigations of individuals and the social structures surrounding them (Hargreaves, 2011; Warde, 2016). According to the SPT, no practice operates in isolation from others (Schatzki, 2009), and a variety of terms have been applied to the (complex) dynamic of these interwoven practices and their relationships, such as bundles (Shove et al., 2012), system (Watson, 2012), ecologies (Kemmis et al., 2012), constellation (Schatzki, 2010) and network (Higgins et al., 2015) of practices. However, these studies do not clarify the differences between these terms, nor do they explain how to operationalise them for empirical research (Blue, 2019; Hui, 2016, pp. 52–67; Welch & Warde, 2015).

Focusing on the need to explore connections between practices, a heterogeneous network of relationships connecting multiple times, places and entities needs to be considered (Schäfer, 2017). We use the terminology network because practices resemble networks, both in terms of their internal structures (their elements are interconnected) and in relation to each other (their elements can be shared) (Higgins et al., 2015). Hui (2017, pp. 52–67) argued that investigations of individual practices and different types of connections between practices, including bundles, complexes or nets (Hui, 2017, p. 6), have been limited. This study endeavours to address this deficit and develop an analytical framework that can operationalise an analysis of single practices embedded in networks of daily routines.

To this end, we use the analytical lens of 'zooming in' and 'zooming out' inspired by Nicolini (2012, 2009a, 2009b) to explore 'how practices themselves intersect, compete and potentially clash with one another' (Scheurenbrand et al., 2018, p. 2). In this context, we 'zoom in', looking at practices (their internal variations), and 'zoom out', looking for connections between practices and the 'external' context influencing those dynamics. First, we clarify the distinctions between multiple types of connections mentioned in the extant literature, which are currently not defined in a clear and homogenous way. We then propose a framework for future analyses that can be applied for various purposes and practices in multiple fields. To demonstrate the benefits of its use, we emphasise eating and food practices as an example for discussing these relations.

Our research makes the following two contributions to the literature: a) proposes clearer definitions of categories such as complexes, bundles and nexuses, enabling the operationalisation of these concepts for empirical analyses; and b) proposes a framework that enables an analysis of how different practices are interconnected and how these interrelations can facilitate or impede changes in practices. The framework is especially relevant for researchers interested in analysing existing practices or in describing changes in practices either in the form of an ex post analysis or as an ex ante identification of challenges for necessary changes postulated, such as those proposed to address sustainability and health issues.

Our conceptual paper begins with an overview of the conceptual background of practices and of the analytical lens of 'zooming in and out' from an SPT perspective (Section 2). In the subsequent section we introduce the dimensions of the proposed analytical framework, starting with 'zooming in' on internal variations within single practices (both elements and dimensions – spatial, temporal and social), followed by 'zooming out' to trace connections between different practices (complex, bundles and nexuses). A further dimension considers the influence of the external context arrangements surrounding the analysed networks of practices. In Section 4 we combine the presented dimensions in a framework for the analysis of networks of practices and draw on the possibilities for empirical application. The paper ends with reflections

on contributions and recommendation for further studies.

The SPT is not a unified and homogeneous theory (Schatzki, 2002), although most existing practice-theory approaches attempt, to some extent, to find a balance between structure and agency. The SPT focuses on the analysis of social practices, understood as a nexus of 'doings' and 'sayings' bound by collective understandings, procedures and engagements (Schatzki, 2002; Warde, 2005, p. 134) with a focus on habits and routines (Southerton et al., 2012). In contrast with traditional behavioural models, practices are considered at the heart of social analysis (Reckwitz, 2002), while individuals are 'the carriers or hosts of a practice' (Shove et al., 2012, p. 7) who learn, reproduce and enact practices throughout repeated experiences, resulting in habituated, unintentional actions rather than consciously driven processes (Hargreaves, 2011; Shove et al., 2012). Therefore, the analysis focuses on forms of social practices that entail recognisable activity performed on a daily basis, such as eating, driving, washing, shopping or playing soccer.

A useful analytical distinction of social practices is that they can be understood both as performances and as entities (Schatzki, 1996, 2002; Shove et al., 2012; Warde, 2005). A practice-as-an-entity exists as a 'pattern' beyond different moments of enactment (Shove & Pantzar, 2007). It refers to socially shared taste and meanings, knowledge and skill, material and infrastructure, and as performance, to observable behaviour (Spurling et al., 2013). Practices as entities have a history and a trajectory or path of development, but at the same time, they are only reproduced, maintained or changed through their performance (Shove et al., 2012). For example, cooking-as-an-entity exists as a recognisable conjunction of elements that can be discussed, drawing upon a set of established culinary procedures. Cooking also exists as performance through the immediacy of 'doing' a dish (Warde, 2016).

Another category of practices exists that can be defined as 'dispersed' and 'integrative' practices. To examine this category, we follow Schatzki's (2002) approach. Dispersed practices are typically rule free and do not require the presence of other activities, as they retain essentially the same shape within multiple sectors of social life. Coordination around these practices is informal since there is an absence of teleaffective structure to perform them. They represent an unformulated nexus of shared understandings. Examples of this type of practice are 'describing, ordering, questioning, reporting, and examining' (Schatzki, 2002, p. 88). A different activity is carried out by integrative practices, which are considered 'the more complex practices found in and constitutive of particular domains of social life' (Schatzki, 1996, p. 98). They are organised in time and space and influenced by broader social and cultural contexts (including institutional arrangements) that regulate norms and conventions (Holm et al., 2016; Schatzki, 2010, 1996). Unlike their dispersed counterparts, integrative practices are not constituted solely, or even primarily, by shared understandings. They are generally of more interest to sociologists (Schatzki, 2002, 1996). Examples include teaching, showering, parenting, farming, eating and cooking, among others.

Elements of practices represent the basic link within and between practices as entities, and it is through the association and combinations of a variety of elements and repeated performances that practice entities evolve over time (Shove et al., 2015; Shove & Pantzar, 2007; Warde, 2005). Although the SPT identifies no single typology to refer to the elements that compose practices, theorists have applied a variety of terms to such classifications. For Schatzki (2002), these elements encompass practical understanding, rules and teleaffective structures. Warde (2005) used the terms understandings, procedures, engagements and items of consumption, while Shove and Pantzar (2005) referred to competences (skills), meanings/conventions (images) and products/material artefacts (stuff). Other slightly different typologies of practice elements exist as well (cf. Gram-Hanssen, 2011; Reckwitz,

2002; Røpke, 2009).

Due to the complexity of the subject, it is essential to emphasise that methodological challenges in using the SPT exist, as many researchers previously have recognised and addressed (Halkier & Jensen, 2011; Nicolini, 2012). Nicolini's (2012) article, titled 'Practice theory, work and organisation: An introduction', mainly contributes to this issue by developing a theory-led methodological package for investigating social life and revealing processes and entrenchment scales. The method comprises two movements: 'zooming in on the accomplishments of practices' and 'zooming out to discern their relationships in space and time' (Nicolini, 2012, p. 219). However, a methodological challenge presents itself to integrate 'zooming in' on the details of (multi-)situated practices and 'zooming out' to see the connections into a single methodological guideline.

The method suggests that a multiplicity of relations be considered surrounding social practices. We follow Schatzki's (1996, 2002) ontology that establishes a 'strong' version of practice theory in which both social order and individuality result from practices. In this sense, more important than making the distinction between micro- and macro-approaches to investigate social practices is to understand that 'large' or 'small' phenomena are made of the same components, of connected practices and arrangements (Schatzki, 2011). The analysis needs to consider that activities never occur in isolation and that practices are always immersed in a thick texture of interconnections (Nicolini, 2012). However, Nicolini did not operationalise his ideas systematically for empirical analysis, which is the main contribution of this paper.

In order to understand social practices from the SPT perspective, social life must be recognised as comprising a multi-dimensionality of relations and connections, and an open theoretical and methodological eclecticism is recommended in order to adequately approach them (Nicolini, 2009a, 2009b, 2012; Blue, 2019; Halkier & Jensen, 2011). One challenge associated with this is identifying an appropriate starting point and perspective (Nicolini, 2012).

Thus, we consider that we should analyse the performance of practices by 'zooming in' on their 'sayings and doings' (Nicolini, 2009b, p. 1400), referring to the 'observable behaviour, which represents just the tip of the iceberg in understanding practices' (Spurling et al., 2013, p. 8). To capture insights into practices-as-performance, we consider that they are marked by continuous internal variations (Hui, 2017, pp. 52–67), since 'rarely, if ever, is there simply one way to carry out the practice, or one sole manner of performance that will be acceptable' (Warde, 2016, p. 55). We also adapt the idea of 'zooming out' (Nicolini, 2012) with focus on the relationships of practices to look for connections between them across time and space, as well to explore the role of external arrangements influencing those relations. Dependent on the research question and selected practice for the study, different foci can be established. Therefore, each proposed step of our framework does not need to be carried out in the same depth.

We use the term network of practices to investigate the different dynamics that occur within and between a set of interconnected practices. In addition, although any relatively self-contained activity can be treated analytically in social studies (Warde, 2016, p. 60), we investigate integrative rather than dispersive practices due to the subjective nature of dispersive procedures, mainly based on the abilities to question, recognise and respond to a stimulus (e.g. answering) (Schatzki, 2002; Warde, 2016). Integrative practices, nevertheless, present a challenge, since each performance presupposes competences in at least several others, posing the analytic problem of how to identify and isolate the phenomenon under analysis and define its boundaries (Warde, 2016). As such, we clarify that practices are the central epistemic object in this analysis (Nicolini, 2009a; 2009b, 2012), and the 'carriers' are at their intersection (Reckwitz, 2002; Warde, 2005). In this sense, we use the

simple rule of following the practice in which the carrier is engaged, starting with one small unit of analysis, then tracing its relations wherever it leads, appears and/or produces notable effects on others (Nicolini, 2012). In this study we chose to analyse general eating practices, considering them routinised patterns of food-related behaviour that link specific materials, skills and meanings (Shove et al., 2012).

Since practices demonstrate a familiar combination of routines and context, eating practices might include many components, such as food, time, location, social setting, mental processes and physical conditions (Jastran et al., 2009), but for analytical proposes, we focus mainly on four: their elements, location, timing and companions. This choice is based on Warde's position that eating occasions vary 'from the permutation and juxtaposition of time, place and company' and that specific social and cultural meaning is attached to its performance (2016, p. 77). We start by suggesting five steps as part of our proposed analytical framework.

The insights presented in Section 3 are brought together in a conceptual framework that supports empirical research on practices as being embedded in networks of daily routines. Our framework differentiates a ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’ perspective (Nicolini, 2012; 2009a; 2009b). From analysis of single practices to multiple practices, widening the lens to trace further connections and relations, we recommend beginning with a single practice (such as eating) as the smallest unit and gradually reconstructing connections on different levels, as described in Table 1. The depth to which each step is carried out depends on the research question and the aim of the study.

This paper’s main scope was to propose how to approach relations and connections within and between practices in a more systematic way for empirical analyses. From our knowledge, the analytical framework proposed is the first attempt to operationalise the diverse concepts from the SPT literature for empirical analyses of networks of practices. The existing literature deals with these relations without addressing the different levels of connections in a systematic way and without distinguishing them by using clear definitions. In contrast to the methodological approach of Higginson et al. (2015), who recommend a quantitative network analysis, we present a qualitative analytical framework that allows for a step-by-step reconstruction of connections that encompass complexes, bundles, nexuses and the context of practices, applying a ‘zoom in’ and ‘zoom out’ perspective.

As an example, we used the eating case and related food practices to illustrate how they can be understood as part of a broader network of interrelated practices. The originality of this paper was to combine the ‘zooming in’ and ‘zooming out’ perspective to investigate how single practices, from an SPT perspective, are linked to others, forming what we called networks of practices, and how those practices are connected to even broader ‘external’ context-arrangements. Starting by zooming in, we discussed that single practices (eating) show internal variations, including elements, spatial-temporal and social aspects, as well as how they are connected to other practices and further ‘external’ arrangements (zooming out perspective).

From a theoretical perspective, this framework can support social scientist researchers in obtaining better insight into how different social practices are interconnected and shape each other. Secondly, it contributes to an understanding of how practices are subject to both internal adaptations and adjustments due to changes in adjacent and sometimes rather distant practices. As a practical contribution, the developed framework can be used to analyse existing networks of practices by

A conceptual framework for the analysis of a network of practices.

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reconstructing the connections on different levels systematically. Furthermore, it can be applied to analyse changes in practices that have taken place in the past or for estimating the challenges and consequences of making changes that are claimed to be necessary, for instance, based on sustainability or health arguments, to certain practices. Applying the framework for different empirical analyses will show that its potential and usefulness are not restricted to the context of food.

As a limitation of this study, we recognise that due to this paper's theoretical nature, empirical analysis is needed to demonstrate its possible benefits and necessary adjustments. In addition, the five-step framework will have to be applied depending on the respective research question and practice selected. Our intention in providing this framework is to stimulate a debate about how social practices and their connections can be analysed in a more systematic way. We assume that the framework is not limited to eating and food practices: the same zooming in and out methodological approach can be used to recognise and understand other practices (e.g. energy, mobility). Only by applying it for different purposes in a broad range of empirical research will it be possible to draw conclusions for developing it further.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

We thank DAAD and CAPES for funding this research and more specifically the Brazilian program PROBAL supporting this project.

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2020.104978.

The authors guarantee that this an original manuscript and theoretical paper and due to its nature, independent ethics committee to evaluate this research does not apply in this particular case. The author reaffirm that this paper is not under review or submitted to any other journal until this present day.

This work was supported by DAAD and CAPES, within the realising project: Research interventions towards sustainable consumption, cooperation between Brazil and Germany (n° 88881.144171/2017-01 PROBAL).

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