Habits, routines and temporalities of consumption Dale Southerton Sustainable Practices Research Group, Sustainable Consumption Institute Sociology Manchester University A collaboration between: The University of Manchester Edinburgh University Essex University Lancaster University With associated fellowships at: Cardiff University Salford University Queens University Belfast Leeds University Funded by ESRC, DEFRA and the Scottish Government

Consumer Behaviour and Sustainability It is widely accepted that contemporary forms, and volumes, of consumption in advanced capitalist societies are a principal source of human-induced climate change. No surprise that changing consumer behaviour has become a prominent narrative in policy and academic debates surrounding sustainability. The ‘portfolio model of action’ underpins the dominant ontological position within such debates. This model suggests that: ‘individuals carry a relatively stable and pre-existing set of beliefs and desires from context to context. Given the situation, they select from this portfolio “those elements that seem relevant and [use] them to decide on a course of action”.’ (Whitford, 2002: 325)

The value-action gap The value – action gap is often presented as being the consequence of habits and routines, variables that complicate rational responses to policy initiatives. E.g. nudge: the brain has two systems - one which is uncontrolled, unconscious and fast; the other reflective, controlled, deliberative and slow. Thaler and Sunstein (2008) = much behaviour is governed by automatic and intuitive mental processes (the second system), and can be described as habitual. Habitual action is reduced to little more than automated responses to contextual stimuli and a deficiency of ‘portfolio models’ of action. However, the terms habit and routine are often conflated. Taken together they generically capture the performance of everyday actions that appear to exhibit, in various combinations, shared cultural conventions, recurrent and non-reflexive behaviour.

The organisation of this paper Three conceptual moves: (1)Consumption as appropriation within the course of performing practices – 3 variants of habitual action (dispositions, procedures, sequences) (2)Temporalities and practices – practices are shaped by, and shape, temporalities through 3 mechanisms (competition for participants time; the temporal demands of practices; temporal rhythms) (3)Temporalities as one mechanism that configures habitual and routine forms of action. To reach the following conclusion: Habitual and routine actions are configured in many ways, but temporalities are critical to their ordering and coordination. To change the patterns of consumption that underpin everyday life requires greater attention to the temporalities of habits and routines.

Move 1 Consumption: from acquisition to appropriation Warde (2010): three fundamental dimensions of consumption which broadly correspond with different phases of intellectual scrutiny: –acquisition; –appreciation; –appropriation. Appropriation - analytical attention shifts away from conspicuous and highly symbolic forms of consumption toward accounts of inconspicuous, ordinary and mundane forms of everyday consumption.

Theories of Practice (TP) TP are very diverse, but one common feature is to take practices as the fundamental unit of social analysis. Key distinction between practices as entities and as performances: –Practices as entities are generally treated as configurations of recognizable, intelligible and describable elements which comprise their conditions of existence (although there is no common agreement on what these ‘elements’ are). –Practices are also performed. The relationship between practices and performances is recursive: practices configure performances, and practices are reproduced and stabilized, adapted and innovated through performances. Practices as stable entities are reproduced through faithful performances that are often described as habitual and routine, and it is these faithful performances of practices that need to change if patterns of consumption are to shift in more sustainable directions.

Habits Swartz (2002) outlined the key characteristics of habits as: –predictability and regularity of particular actions (routine?); –a unifying force of action within and across socio-cultural groups; –collectively derived actions; –a conservative force; –conditioned by institutions. Camic (1986: 1044), in his classic essay on habit, settled on the following definition: “a more or less self-actuating disposition or tendency to engage in a previously adopted or acquired form of action”.

Conceptual slippage Usage of the terms habit and routines seems to slip between three observations: 1.many everyday actions are performed with a high degree of recurrence, periodicity and a degree of predictability; 2.much action appears to be performed without reflexive deliberation; 3.many such actions are culturally shared whether across whole societies or social groups = mostly associated with approaches that present habits and routines as remnants of past reflexive deliberations that re-occur as necessary mental short-cuts for navigating the complexities of daily life. Non-reflexive and recurrent actions as ‘auto-pilot’. 2 = automaticity triggered by external environmental stimuli 3 = mostly associated with cultural sociology – about how people learn and acquire dispositions and understand procedures (or rules) for the appropriate performance of practices.

Conceptual variants of the terms habit and routine: To overcome this conceptual slippage, Warde and Southerton (2012: 20) suggest a conceptual framework that presents three forms of action that are generically captured by the terms habits and routines: –Dispositions: ‘a propensity or tendency to act in a particular manner when suitable circumstances arise. Dispositions can provide an impetus to action both in situations which do not necessarily occur very frequently and, by virtue of transposition, in situations not previously encountered’. –Procedures: ‘previously learned and ready to hand, waiting to be drawn upon when appropriate circumstances present themselves’. –Sequences of activity: ‘guided by social signals or by equipment which more or less orchestrate’ the performance of practices.

Implicating temporalities in accounts of habits and routines Temporalities (e.g. duration, periodicity, tempo, sequence & synchronization), feature in each of these conceptual variants of the term habit and routines, e.g.: –dispositions (to perform a practice fast or slow, devote time to it, …), –procedures (temporal rules of competent performance – not over- staying one’s welcome), –or sequence (the temporal ordering of actions). Raises the questions: –What is the relationship between practices and temporalities? –To what extent might temporalities reproduce practices as stable entities? –What role might temporalities play in shaping habitual and routine forms of action?

Move 2 Temporalities and practices. Shove et al. (2012) = experiences of time are experiences of practices; the passing of time, tempos, repetition, recollection of past times and anticipation or imaginations of the future are mediated by the practices through which that time is experienced. Beyond this broad observation a parsimonious categorization of the relationship between temporalities and practices can be presented through three themes: –time as a resource; –practices as configuring temporalities; –and temporal rhythms.

Time as a resource That time is a resource, much like money, used or spent in relation to different practices is an uncontroversial observation. Treating time as a finite, objective, resource and analysing it in zero-sum terms has produced some critical understandings of consumption and social change (e.g. Schor, 1992 & 1998). Shove (2012) argues that practices (as entities) need to colonize time slots in order to taken on habitual and routine forms. In this respect, not only do practices compete for time but also for temporal locations with the day, week, month, and so on. Practices compete for the time of practitioners – and the most successful practices are those that colonize the resource of time such that their performance (at particular times) become habitual and routine.

The Temporal demands of practices Practices produce their own temporal demands based upon the degree to which they require coordination (or synchronisation) with other people or practices. Practices also demand certain durations, tempos, sequences and frequencies of performance: practices place demands on temporalities (in addition to competing with other practices for time). The organization of everyday practices and the capacity for those practices to become ‘habitual and routine’ depends on the temporal demands that those practices place on its practitioners. The temporal demands of different kinds of practice have the effect of ordering the temporal rhythms of everyday life.

Temporal rhythms But, temporalities are not entirely responsive to the demands of practices. Many collective temporal rhythms coordinate and order the way that practices are performed – e.g. working times, school times, eating times, shopping times, and so on…

If habitual and routine forms of action are the observable performances of stable practices (as entities), then the three thematic categories that highlight the recursive relationship between practices and temporalities (Move 2) are likely to play an important role in framing and holding in place those actions. In other words: how might the temporalities of practices relate to the three variant forms of action (dispositions, procedures and sequences) highlighted in ‘Move 1’? Move 3.Connecting Temporalities of practices to habitual forms of action

Temporalities and dispositions Two ways of conceptualising the relationship between the temporalities of practices and dispositions: 1.Consider how dispositions affect the allocation of practices within time. E.g. the professional middle classes devote more time to practices such as eating out and reading books (Gronow & Southerton); differential dispositions towards the maintenance of clear boundaries between working time and home-life (Brannen). 2.How dispositions affect the performance of practices. E.g. Gershuny’s ‘badge of honour’ suggests that the middle class perform some practices at a higher tempo and intensity; Lamont’s self-actualization of practice performance leading to greater temporal commitments (duration, frequency, synchronisation). Actions derived from dispositions shape the temporal performances of practices that appear ‘habitual’.

Temporalities and procedures Zerubavel (1981): temporal regularities provide a blueprint (or temporal map) for procedural performances of practices. Four principles: –Rigid sequential structures –Expected durations –Standardized temporal locations –Uniform rates of recurrence Such temporal regularities produce: “a reliable repertoire of what is expected, likely, or unlikely to take place within certain temporal boundaries… [and]… adds a strong touch of predictability to the world around us” (Zerubavel, 1981: 12). Temporalities guide, or provide the rules, that underpin many procedural forms of action.

Temporalities and sequences Sequences of action both produce and are held stable by temporal rhythms. Technologies, infrastructures and institutions script sequences of action (e.g. Latour’s oversized keyfobs, Shove’s laundry systems, and Skinner’s account of the school-run). Sequences of actions that appear habitual and routine are conditioned by the socio-technical ordering of practices.

Conclusions (i) Habits and routines are not human deficiencies of the portfolio model of action. Need to be careful not to conflate different forms of action under the generic banner of these terms. If the terms are to be used then they reflect/describe the reproduction of stable practices: habits and routines are the observable patterns of action that result from the reproductive performances of stable practices as entities

Conclusions (conceptual moves 1 & 2) Conceptual clarification is required to differentiate between different forms of action that are generically described as habitual and routine actions (conceptual MOVE 1 in this account). Distinguishing between: –dispositions (orientations toward practices), –procedures (the rules for competent performance), and –sequences (the scripting or ordering of actions) represents a useful starting, but not an end, point of such conceptual work. The next step is to examine how these forms of action are shaped and reproduced. It is suggested that temporalities represent one feature of daily life that can shed light on this question by considering time as a resource, the temporal demands of practices, and temporal rhythms (conceptual MOVE 2 in this account).

Conclusions (conceptual move 3) The third conceptual move argued that the three variant forms of habitual action together with the three thematic relationships between temporalities and practices highlighted mechanisms through which temporalities shape different forms of action: –dispositions shape how social groups allocate practices in time, and the temporal demands placed on the performance of practices. –The performance of many practices follow procedures – and such procedures are framed by temporal regularities that guide such performances. –Finally, the temporal sequencing of actions coordinate and order practices.

Final Conclusions To return to the opening problem: the value – action gap strongly suggests no clear translation between values/attitudes and actions/ behaviour. Recognising that habits and routines are terms that cover ‘different’ modes of action and that those modes of action are shaped by a range of ‘mechanisms’ is a first step. I have argued (as a second step) that temporalities are one critical mechanism that shapes, and are shaped by, different forms of action. It follows, that if we want to shift human actions in more sustainable directions we need to focus on different forms of action, and pay closer attention to mechanisms such as temporalities. Schor’s & Gershuny’s accounts of working hours, and accounts that focus on changing the temporal coordination of practices are just two examples of approaches that seek to do just that. More progressive approaches would seek to target the temporal organization and coordination of practices, and the dispositions, procedures and sequences of action that underpin those practices.