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Journal of Consumer Culture

11(1) 3–13

! The Author(s) 2011

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Introduction

Applying practice theory

to the study of consumption:Theoretical andmethodologicalconsiderations

Bente Halkier Roskilde University, Denmark

Tally Katz-GerroUniversity of Haifa, Israel

Lydia MartensKeele University, UK

In the context of continuing debate in social theory and philosophy about the

structure-agency problematic, recent years have seen scholars (re)turn to this the-

oretical complexity through so-called theories of social practices.1 Practice theories

are a set of cultural and philosophical accounts that focus on the conditions sur-

rounding the practical carrying out of social life. It has roots in the philosophy of

Heidegger and Wittgenstein and social scientific roots in the work of early

Bourdieu, early Giddens, late Foucault and Butler.2 Their insights have recently

become fused in a composite philosophical ontology of practices developed by

Theodore Schatzki (1996, 2002) and colleagues (Schatzki et al., 2001). Together

with the useful theoretical mapping provided by Reckwitz (2002) – who sketches

practice theory as an ideal type, drawing out its peculiarities through a contrast

with theoretical narratives in the broader domain of ‘cultural theories’ – it could be

argued that practice theories have come to occupy salient theoretical space across

the social sciences and humanities. When Reckwitz (2002) drafted his overview, the

principles of these perspectives had already made inroads in ‘science studies, gender

studies and organizational studies’ (p. 257). In recent years, this has spread to

include anthropology, cultural studies, design studies, environment and

Corresponding author:

Bente Halkier, Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies, Roskilde University,

box 260, DK – 4000 Roskilde, Denmark

Email: [email protected]

at University of Haifa Library on October 31, 2011 joc.sagepub.comDownloaded from

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sustainability research, geography, health, history, marketing and consumer behav-

iour, media, social policy and sociology.

Alan Warde’s article Consumption and Theories of Practice, published in the

Journal of Consumer Culture in 2005, may be regarded as the first ‘programmatic’piece offering an examination of the potential of practice theoretical perspectives

for analyses of consumption. One of the inspirations leading up to the development

of this article were ongoing discussions, in the Consumption Research Network of

the European Sociological Association (the ESA network), about shortcomings of

existing foci and theoretical approaches in social and cultural analysis of consump-

tion. During the 1990s, consumption research had come to focus almost entirely on

an analysis of the symbolic meanings of consumption, connected especially with

identity formation and with substantial remaining interest in markets and the con-

figuration of exchange relations. Setting up an agenda for the sociology of con-sumption in a special issue of Sociology, Warde had argued as early as 1990 that

salient social scientific questions of ‘consumption’ moved beyond the market place,

to consider the social organization of alternative modes for providing goods and

services, and because there was a need to examine facets of consumption other than

purchase – important here were the uses and enjoyment of goods, services and

resources. Such broadening out of consumption sociology made sense to members

of the ESA consumption network partly because of their ongoing interest in mun-

dane and routine aspects of consumption. Research on food and eating was a

salient example of this (e.g. Fu ¨ rst et al., 1991; Holm and Kildevang, 1996;Warde and Martens, 2000). Publication of the edited collection Ordinary

Consumption in 2001 by Gronow and Warde tells the story of the concerted efforts

made in the late 1990s to develop theoretical insights in which routine and the

mundane stood central. As reiterated some time later:

Ordinary consumption is best understood in terms of concepts like habit, routine,

constraint, and so on and can be summed up as a recognition of the conventional

nature of consumption. (Randles and Warde, 2006: 226)

Absent in this work, however, was any reference to ‘practice theory’ as such,

though many of the theorists recognised as contributing towards this theoretical

vision are listed in the book’s bibliography.

It seems, therefore, that Reckwitz’s (2002) mapping exercise was pivotal for the

task of visualizing the opportunities offered by this theoretical spectrum. We sug-

gest that there are two salient reasons for this. On the one hand, Reckwitz placed

the routinized character of practice at the forefront of his commentary – the con-

cept appears at just about every turn in his description of practices and their central

position as the location of the social. This is for instance evident in the now much

cited ‘definition’ of practices provided by Reckwitz:

A ‘practice’ . . . is a routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements,

interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities,

4 Journal of Consumer Culture 11(1)




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‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding,

know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge. (Reckwitz, 2002: 249)

This also points to the second reason. Presumably because he drew the work of Bourdieu and Latour into his ideal type, Reckwitz was able to acknowledge the

centrality of ‘things and their use’ in this definition. In his ontology of practices,

developed in 1996, Schatzki had ‘side-tracked’ objects as outcomes of practices,

and this posed a problem for those who were interested in the social and cultural

manifestations of consumption, in which the use and enjoyment of objects, services

and resources was so central. Arguing that a practice ‘necessarily depends on the

existence and specific interconnectedness of these elements, and which cannot be

reduced to any one of these single elements’ (2002: 250), Reckwitz made it clear

that objects and their use were central to the performance, and thus the reproduc-tion of practices in mundane everyday life. Finally, it may be observed that the

concerted examination of the potential of practice theoretical perspectives in con-

sumption research developed through discussions and debate at the Centre for

Innovation and Competition (Manchester University), of which Warde was a co-

director, and which hosted a series of cross-disciplinary workshops on mundane

consumption. These discussions included scholars, like Halkier, Pantzar, Ropke,

Shove and Southerton, who have subsequently become advocates, appliers and

discussants of practice theoretical perspectives in consumption research.

It is the view of the guest editors that it is especially in relation to the empiricalusefulness of practice theory in consumption analyses that new contributions will

be of special interest to the readers of the Journal of Consumer Culture. Before we

introduce the individual articles, we will locate this aim in developments that have

taken place since the publication of Warde’s Consumption and Theories of Practice

in 2005. Of interest is that this article is the most frequently cited article in the

journal, serving as a point of reference in commentaries that straddle the social

sciences and humanities. As illustrated by Antonacopoulou (2008), this includes the

domain of organization studies, where practice theory was applied prior to its

inclusion in debate on consumption. Possibly the most vigorous application of

practice theoretical repertoires citing Warde’s article may be found in the interstices

between technologies, utilities, resource consumption and the problematic of sus-

tainability. In the UK, this work has without doubt been led by Elizabeth Shove

and colleagues (Hand et al., 2007; Shove et al., 2008) and extended through col-

laborations with other European scholars. With Mika Pantzar, Shove has devel-

oped a series of papers (Shove 2004) that explore questions regarding change and

continuity in practices and their associated objects/resources. Some of their work

has a clear environmental/sustainability focus (e.g. 2004, 2010). Scholars elsewhere

have engaged with the same problematic, including Gram-Hanssen (2010) and

Røpke (2009) (Denmark), Spaargaren (2000) (Netherlands), and Bartiaux (2007)(Belgium). Of interest in this work and those of some others is the policy-driven

question of the connection between knowledge and practice, or, what is commonly

known as the instigation of behavioural change (see also Colls and Evans, 2008;

Halkier et al. 5




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Halkier, 2010; Nye and Hargreaves, 2010; Sulkunen, 2009). Related work may be

found in human geography, where Clarke, Barnett and colleagues (e.g. Barnett

et al., 2005, 2008; Clarke et al., 2007, 2008) have theorized ethical and political

consumerism through a Foucauldian perspective, dovetailing at the same time withsome more general ideas derived from ‘practice theory’. Other human geographers

have focused on disposal and waste practices (Bulkeley and Gregson, 2009;

Gregson et al., 2007a,b) and trust relations in food retailing settings (Evert and

Jackson, 2009). Finally, in marketing and consumer behaviour, practice theory is

investigated for its promises in relation to the theorization of markets and market

practices (Araujo et al., 2008), green consumers (Connolly and Prothero, 2008),

value creation (Schau et al., 2009), resource theory (Arnould, 2008), and the pop-

ularization of veil wearing (Sandikci and Ger, 2009), amongst others, showing

interesting initiatives linking diverse preoccupations in consumer research withpractice theoretical input.

We note that only some of this work engages with practice theory in a primary

way, and that only some of those which do, offer work grounded in empirical

reflection. This includes most of the articles that have appeared in the journal

since 2005, citing Warde’s article (including Connolly and Prothero, 2008;

Dwyer, 2009; Laughey, 2010; Trentmann, 2009). Similarly, there has been little

reflection on the methodological implications of adopting a practice theoretical

perspective in research. As such, by offering a set of articles which do just that,

this special issue follows in the footsteps of Reckwitz’s (2002: 259) parting com-ments: ‘Practice theory should develop more philosophical perseverance and at the

same time not give up its embeddedness in empirical social and cultural analysis.

Then, in future the hitherto loose network of praxeological thinking might yield

some interesting surprises.’

The authors invited to contribute to the special issue have all presented articles

at meetings of the Consumption Research Network of the ESA in the recent years;

a forum that has provided a setting for ongoing discussions on the development

and application of practice theory. Their work, as it is presented here, promises to

move debate forwards by showing applications of practice theory to diverse empir-

ical terrains, by making suggestions for methodological consequences in using

practice theory and by fusing practice theoretical perspectives with other theoret-

ical inputs. The applications of practice theory presented in this volume extend

from the most mundane aspects of everyday life (e.g. cooking), to structured activ-

ities in institutional settings (workplace environmental behaviour), with attention

given to both momentary actions and long term pursuits. The main common

thread that links the articles is that individuals are seen as practitioners engaged

in the practice of everyday life. The authors view the material environment –

objects, tools, devices and apparatus – and the implicit and explicit practical

knowledge stored in them, as central in the process of creating interaction, conti-nuity and reality.

The article by Paolo Maggaudda, ‘Dematerialization, technology and listening

experience in musical consumption practices’ is an example of the application of





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practice theory to the field of cultural consumption, with an empirical qualitative

study on changes in musical consumption in Italy that accompany the growing

digitalization of music. The specific practice theoretical discussion taken up in the

article is the debate about the role of materiality in relation to practices andthe question whether music consumption practices have indeed been dematerialized

following the digitalization of music. In analysis of the adoption of new music

listening technologies, this article shows how digitalization of music does not

necessarily mean dematerialization of music listening habits. Materiality does

not disappear but is rather articulated in new ways. Although digital music

files, which replaced the material albums (cassettes, vinyl, CDs), have eliminated

the tangible part of music consumption, it seems that objects such as iPods

and their accessories have significant social roles, produce social meanings and

maintain a crucial place in mediating what people do, feel and love when listeningto music.

The article ‘Cooking with Bimby in a moment of recruitment’ by Monica

Truninger advances a suggestion for combining practice theory with conventions

theory to allow a more comprehensive understanding of personalized technology

appropriation, moral engagements with technology and technology alliances.

Building on a qualitative study of Portuguese consumers’ ways of becoming

users of a particular kitchen appliance – the Thermomix – in their cooking prac-

tices, this article argues that the combination with conventions theory promises to

overcome some of the weaknesses of practice theory in empirically operationalizingpractices. The article especially highlights the importance of specifying conceptu-

alizations of scope and scale of practices, different types of agency of practitioners

and trajectories of practices. The conclusion is that the theoretical framework that

combines practice theory with conventions theory offers a new emphasis on issues

such as the sequencing of tasks, the tension between instituted and personalized

practices, and the linkage between images, objects and competences.

Kirsten Gram-Hanssen’s article ‘Understanding change and continuity in resi-

dential energy consumption’ delves into the question of change in everyday life

habits, and offers conceptual clarifications of the concept of practice itself and how

practices are organized. Based on three case studies on household energy consump-

tion in Denmark, Gram-Hanssen deals with two discussions in using a practice

theoretical approach for consumption research that focuses on the relation between

stability and change. The first discussion is the question of how processes of rou-

tinization and reflexivity are related and played out in consumption practices,

where she concludes that changes in practices can come both from engagement

and conscious reflection, but also from naturalizing new habits into routines. The

second discussion is about the conceptualization of practices, the relations to other

intersecting practices, the possible varying performances of a practice and the

developments of new practices. Here the suggestion is to recognise that a majorityof mundane consumer practices are not delimited but highly integrated with each

other, so the connections between and across different practices and their technol-

ogies are important to include in empirical analysis.

Halkier et al. 7




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‘Practice-ing behaviour change’ by Tom Hargreaves continues on the theme of

practice change through a qualitative study of pro-environmental consumption

change. One of the aims of the article is to develop a more sophisticated under-

standing of practical social change than found in attitude and value approaches inthe field of behaviour change. However, Hargreaves’ article moves the focus away

from the consumption in everyday life towards job-related consumption routines

and explores the challenges of these for environmental campaigns. On the basis of

an analysis of the details of the processes in a pro-environmental initiative at a

workplace, he concludes that practice theory offers a more holistic approach where

campaigns for behaviour change can be seen as interventions in the organization of

multiple intersecting social practices, rather than communications with the motives

and values of individual consumers. Hargreaves, however, also suggests that prac-

tice theoretical approaches to consumption changes need to focus on a broaderarena of multiple intersecting practices instead of focusing on single practices.

Furthermore, the necessity of conceptualizing socialization and social interaction

in practice theory is stressed.

Bente Halkier and Iben Jensen’s article, ‘Methodological challenges in using

practice theory in consumption research’ picks up on the methodological side of

the potential usefulness of practice theoretical approaches for consumption studies.

The authors argue that practice theory enables a conceptualization of consumption

as processes of practical and social accomplishment and an empirical focus on ways

of consuming, rather than to focus on, for example, individual consumer choice.The possible methodological implications and difficulties from operationalizing this

version of practice theory are discussed on the basis of empirical examples from

a Danish qualitative study of handling nutritionally contested food consumption

among Pakistani Danes. Halkier and Jensen contend that two important implica-

tions is first to see all types of qualitative data as enactments (social action), and

second, to enable construction of analytical generalizations that are not based on

methodological individualism. However, they also conclude that there are opera-

tional difficulties, and that more analytical translation between applied practice

theoretical concepts and operative methodological procedures are necessary.

One of the interesting features of a collection of articles that demonstrates the

application of practice theoretical perspectives in different settings, and for the

purpose of exploring different social questions, is the variety of data collection

methods that the authors employed. Magaudda conducted in depth interviews;

Truninger conducted participant observations, a filmed observation and interviews;

Halkier and Jensen used individual, family and group in-depth interviews, auto-

photography and participant observation; Hargreaves used intensive participant

observation in meetings and events, a series of voluntary internships, and 38 inter-

views; and Gram-Hanssen used historical case studies, interviews and documenta-

tion of households’ ICT behaviour. This adds credibility to the aggregateknowledge created here and enriches future research and debates on the strengths

and weaknesses of the marriage between practice theory and various

methodologies.





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Pulling all these contributions together, we wish to highlight some of the theo-

retical advances that they offer. First, the papers illustrate different aspects of

change in social behaviour, showing (not for the first time, see Shove’s work, e.g.

Shove 2004) that practice theory is not only useful for studying stability in practices(Schatzki, 2002) but also for gaining insight into how social change occurs.

Magaudda proposes the term ‘circuit of practice’ – a heuristic device to map

routes of transformation linking objects, meanings and doing – to emphasize the

way practices are created, stabilized and transformed. This term depicts the way

changes in the digitalization of music consumption affect meanings and ways of

doings. While practice theory tends to emphasize the way individuals embrace and

stabilize existing practices, the term circuit of practice is specifically useful for

understanding how individuals change practices when transforming or abandoning

patterns of activity. For example, the introduction of a new object such as the iPodproduces new values (meanings), which in turn evolve into new habits, which pro-

duce yet new meanings (Magaudda). Gram-Hanssen also studies the role of new

technology in introducing change in consumer practices, and the way transforma-

tion in one practice affects other practices as well. She maintains that we should

consider changes in the different elements holding practices together, for example,

through innovations in the socio-technical network or evolutions in knowledge.

Halkier and Jensen propose to look at the directive for healthier lifestyle patterns in

Danish culture not through the effectiveness of public health information cam-

paigns in changing cooking practices among ethnic minorities (Pakistani Danes),but rather through considering how food is embedded in the social practices and

relations of everyday life. Hargreaves challenges existing approaches to behaviour

change, such as the theory of planned behaviour, and suggests that practice theory

can be more useful in studying pro-environmental behavioural transformation.

While the theory of planned behaviour works on the basis of methodological indi-

vidualism, Hargreaves maintains that we should understand how behaviour change

is embedded in social relations and social processes. Behaviour change is analyzed

as a result of intervention in the organization of social practices, and thus it is cap-

tured as conditioned by the intersecting of multiple social processes. Truninger

also touches upon behaviour change, in focusing on a moment of recruitment

of new practitioners. She studies the way potential users of the Thermomix

(also known as Bimby) are instructed to adopt new cooking practices and

change old habits. This particular example is drawn from the realm of marketing

strategies and as such demonstrates the dialogue between economic, social

and cultural market forces on the one hand and domestic conventions on the

other hand.

We find a second collective theoretical advancement in the excellent illustrations

provided by the articles of the subtle dance between practices as individual perfor-

mances and practices as embedded in a cultural structure. In addition to analyzingthe continuous adoption and reproduction of practices in particular cultural con-

texts, the articles show how culture and social structure may constitute a site of

resistance and challenge. Put differently, practices are reproduced through

Halkier et al. 9




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imitation but they may also involve adjustment, interpretation and alteration. The

particular contribution of practice theories to consumer culture studies seems to be

the way in which it helps us focus on the performative processes of social life, which

by necessity involve consumption activities, while not diminishing the importanceof either the cultural conditioning of consumption, or the consumption of

practitioners.

Halkier and Jensen show how cultural differences were not considered in state

attempts to contest cooking and eating practices among ethnic minorities in

Denmark. Their research demonstrates the interplay between the culturally-

biased perceptions of proper food practices, taste preferences and nutritional

knowledge, and the initiative to regulate nutritional practices. Truninger argues

that cooking practices should be analyzed within the structural organization and

constraints posed by routines and other practices. These include, for example,socio-technical systems, social arrangements of time coordination and normative

expectations of appropriate cooking. Magaudda too acknowledges the role played

by specific musical cultures in shaping the emergence of various music media and

technologies. Specific subcultures mould the way new music listening practices

emerge. Gram-Hanssen discusses the way systems of technology co-develop with

social structures to form the context in which individuals interact with, appropriate

and domesticate technologies in everyday life. Thus, she emphasizes the contextual

significance of economic development, urban expansion and the introduction of

large integrated technologies such as electricity. Hargreaves focuses on the in situcultural conditioning of consumption by analysing the practical social destiny of a

behaviour change initiative in a workplace, and he discusses the importance of

social interaction and power in the processes of dealing with such change initiatives

across a range of collectively organized practices.

Other themes that offer broader thinking about how practice theoretical per-

spectives may be interwoven with questions and considerations on consumption

practices include the role and place of technology in practices and the obvious

connection with policy questions and intervention initiatives. To be sure, the

reader will gain insights other than those sketched by us here. Nevertheless, it is

our hope that this special issue will open up and help develop, if only in a small

way, future debate on how analysis of consumption may benefit from the analytical

clarities offered by practice theories, whilst similarly scrutinizing and clarifying the

challenges involved in doing so.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Alan Warde for his support and advice during the initial

stages of the development of this special issue. We also thank the members of the

European Sociological Association Research Network on Consumption for providingan ongoing intellectual and collegial environment during our annual conferences.

All the articles in this issue were born and raised in these conferences. Finally, we wish

to thank Doug Holt and Amanda Cowan for sharing the work involved in turning this

issue around.





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Notes

1. We are here opting for the plural expression – i.e. practice theories and theories of social

practices, following Reckwitz 2002, and in acknowledgement of the fact that there is not

one such theory, but that these are multiple.2. Reckwitz extends this list to include Garfinkel and Latour, and notes Taylor and Schatzki

as social philosophers (2002: 243–4).

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Bente Halkier is associate professor in the Department of Communication,

Business and Information Technologies, Roskilde University, Denmark. Her

research interests are within the sociology of consumption and user-oriented com-

munication research. She is the author of the recently published book Consumption

Challenged. Food in Medialised Everyday Lives, Ashgate, 2010.

Tally Katz-Gerro is a senior lecturer in Sociology at the University of Haifa, Israel.

Her work focuses on comparative culture consumption research, gender differences

in cultural consumption, cultural omnivorousness, material consumption, and

environmental concern and behaviour. For more information on her research

please see http://soc.haifa.ac.il/tkatz

Lydia Martens is senior lecturer in Sociology at Keele University, UnitedKingdom. She is interested in the ways in which consumption and domestic life

intermingle, and is currently looking at how the senses inform the experience of,

and consumption around, different practices (parenting, leisure and kitchen clean-

ing) and how this may be investigated.

Halkier et al. 13

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