The Habits of Consumption
Edited by
Alan Warde and Dale Southerton
Published by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies www.helsinki.fi/collegium/e-series
ISSN 1796-2986 ISBN 978-952-10-7989-4
VOLUME 12
The Habits of Consumption
Edited by Alan Warde and Dale Southerton
Contents
Introduction
Alan Warde & Dale Southerton
From Habits to Social Institutions: A Pragmatist Perspective Antti Gronow
Human Beings as Creatures of Habit Erkki Kilpinen
Embodied Culture as Procedure: Rethinking the Link Between Personal and Objective Culture
Omar Lizardo
Towards a Better Accounting of the Roles of Body, Things and Habits in Consumption
Hal Wilhite
Habits and Their Creatures Elizabeth Shove
Sustainable Consumption, Behaviour Change Policies and Theories of Practice
David Evans, Andrew McMeekin & Dale Southerton
The Importance of Timing for Breaking Commuters’ Car Driving Habits
John Thøgersen
Habits of Sustainable Citizenship: The Example of Political Consumerism
Michele Micheletti, Dietlind Stolle & Daniel Berlin List of Contributors
1 26 45 70
87
100 113
130
141
164
Acknowledgements
This volume has been made possible by the generosity of the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Helsinki, which has provided the resources to support a full- time visiting professorship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. From its resources it was possible to organise an international inter-disciplinary symposium,
‘Social Science and Sustainable Consumption’, held in April 2011. Scholars from several countries came to Helsinki to discuss the relationship between habits and consumption, in the light of issues of sustainability. The articles in this volume derive from that event. The papers presented at the Symposium were subsequently revised in the light of referees’ comments. We thank the referees for their efforts.
Special thanks go to the Erkko Foundation and to the organisers of the symposium at the Collegium, Maria Soukkio and Kirsi Reyes, for their enthusiasm and efficiency. Thanks also to Editor-in-Chief of COLLeGIUM Sari Kivistö and Editorial Coordinator Antti Sadinmaa.
The Symposium was also supported financially by a grant from the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) of the University of Manchester which permitted several additional scholars to attend the symposium. The SCI also earlier supported a series of seminars in Manchester ‘Alternative approaches to consumer behaviour’, convened by Dale Southerton, Alan Warde and Jo Mylan which reviewed the concept of habit as used in four different disciplines – Economics, Psychology, Sociology and Policy Studies. Those seminars provided the basis for the intellectual programme of the Helsinki Symposium and several participants attended events in both Manchester and Helsinki. Finally, many of the debates and discussions contained in this collection draw from the theoretical and conceptual challenges posited by the on-going empirical programme of research of the Sustainable Practices Research Group (ESRC, RES-597-25-0003), which has helped to provide the necessary intellectual framing for an edited collection of this type.
