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Spaargaren, G.; Vliet, B.J.M. van; 2000. Lifestyles, Consumption and the Environment : The Ecological Modernisation of Domestic Consumption. Environmental Politics 9 (2000) 1. - p. 50-77

Lifestyle, consumption and the environment 2

LIFESTYLES, CONSUMPTION AND THE ENVIRONMENT THE ECOLOGICAL MODERNISATION OF DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION

Gert Spaargaren and Bas van Vliet1

Abstract

In this paper, we aim at developing a conceptual model for studying the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption. We argue for a ‘contextual’ approach to consumption in which we study consumer-choices against the background of the cycles of production and consumption. The paper outlines the perspective of ‘system of provision’ next to the ‘horizontal’ approaches which have dominated the sociology of consumption so far. Seen from the perspective of citizen-consumers, systems of provision can be analysed with the terms ‘modes of provision’, ‘modes of access’ and ‘modes of use’ of goods and services. Citizen-consumers acquire and use goods and services in the context of reproducing consumption practices. Together, these practices constitute individual lifestyles. The focus of the study of consumption should be on the diverse ways in which people ‘mix’ utensils with externally provided services in order to meet certain standards of comfort, convenience and cleanliness. The results should fit consumers’ lifestyles and their internal domestic organisations. We conceive ecological modernisation of domestic consumption in terms of socio-technical innovations that are instrumental for actors to reduce environmental impacts attached to their lifestyles. These innovations are provided or made available to them by several public-private agencies on certain conditions of access and with some prerequisites for use. Environmental goals are not just external exigencies anymore, forced upon these agencies by governmental regulation. They are increasingly recognised as relevant business-targets having an ‘independent’ right of existence. With some examples of environmental innovations taken from the European and Dutch sectors of water and energy, we will illustrate that the role of citizen-consumers in the ecological modernisation process so far has been under-estimated. Public utilities have been able to neglect the role of consumers because they used to be monopolists in markets that were government controlled. However, privatisation and liberalisation tendencies in Europe also force actors in the water and energy systems to take into account the ways in which consumers fit or do not fit the innovations that utilities sell on the market as sustainable devices. By now, the need to take into account the ‘authority’ of the consumer is beginning to be recognised by some of the major players in these fields. Environmental sociologists can contribute to the understanding of ecological modernisation of domestic consumption by focusing on the involvement of citizen-consumers in two respects. First, the fit or mis-fits between lifestyles and socio-technical devices can clarify the individual involvement of citizen-consumers. Second, citizen-consumers may want to become involved in the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption by participating in the political process governing its main direction. It is argued that the existing forms of political participation no longer suffice in this respect. By pointing to some examples of these sub-political forms of participation, we illustrate the need to develop some appropriate forms of ‘sub-politics’ through which citizen-consumers can become engaged with the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption.

1. Introduction Environmental sociology has become a well-established sub-discipline within sociology. Over the last decade this discipline has grown into maturity: it has diversified regarding the contributing world regions, the research themes that are covered and the theoretical or conceptual models being discussed. The debate on globalisation helped to broaden the originally western or eurocentric outlook that came along with its mainly American and European origins in the seventies. The debate on constructivism versus realism made us aware of some of the complexities surrounding the role of science and technology in the present phase of modernity, referred to by many sociologists as ‘reflexive modernity’. The theory of Ecological Modernisation stimulated theoretical

1 Respectively Associate Professor and PhD researcher at the Chairgoup of Environmental Sociology and Social Methodology,

Wageningen Agricultural University. Hollandseweg 1 Wageningen 6706 KN The Netherlands. http://www.sls.wau.nl/swg/es

Gert Spaargaren and Bas van Vliet 3

discussion within environmental sociology and contributed to making the discipline more sensible for developments that are going on in the field of environmental policy-making. Consumption and consumer behaviour constitute an area of strategic importance for the further development of environmental sociology. Especially (green) politicians involved in environmental policy making ask for new approaches and instruments that are designed for gaining a better understanding of the behaviour of citizen-consumers. However, environmental sociology has not yet been able to offer new perspectives asked for by policy-makers, professionals and activists within environmental movements and organisations. Of course the (changing) opinions which people have on environmental matters have been registered from the early days on. Data are by now available on a world-wide basis. Indeed the quest for the determinants of environmental (un)friendly behaviours has by now resulted in an impressive body of research documents covering a variety of single issue-behaviours. Taken together they help to symbolically reproduce images of green lifestyles and sustainable patterns of consumption. Nevertheless, we would argue that the overall picture is closer to stagnation than progress. Public opinion polls were especially important in the early days of environmental policy making. They can have an agenda-setting function and can also legitimise new policies. Due to the general abundance of measurement organisations and technologies, however, the instrument of public opinion polls has been somewhat eroded. Besides, it has turned out that they are less adequate when it comes to formulating and especially implementing environmental policies. The search for determinants of environmental (un)friendly behaviours came close to a deception too. Except that ‘attitudes’ proved to be unreliable in predicting behaviour, the environmental impacts of what consumers actually do turned out to be very complex. When focusing on separate products or single-issue behaviours – as it has been the case in most studies of environmental behaviour – it is hard to measure the overall impacts to such an extent that they can serve the self-monitoring of their behaviour by citizen-consumers. So there is a need for new directions to be explored. One of the more promising routes in this respect is indicated by the emerging field of the sociology of consumption. We would argue that the present day stagnation in the approach to consumer-behaviour can be partly explained by the fact that environmental sociologists have not been able to keep up with the developments that have taken place in the wider disciplines of sociology and anthropology. This is especially true for the study of consumption.

Organisation of the argument

This paper aims to contribute to the further development of consumer studies within environmental sociology. We will start, in section 2, with an outline of some central themes and ideas that could help to establish the scope of the study of sustainable consumption. Among the themes to be considered we think there are some with special interest for environmental sociology. Firstly, there should be the recognition of the crucial and still growing importance of consumption for understanding the overall dynamics of present day societies. This recognition, we will argue, was somewhat delayed within environmental sociology because of the ‘productivist’ orientation of theory and research. So, secondly, there is the need to replace or at least complement the predominantly production-oriented approaches with a more consumption- or consumer-led orientation. For this reason we try to develop an actor-oriented perspective in which the issue of sustainable consumption links with the lifestyle choices as enhanced by citizen-consumers. Finally, the pursuit of more sustainable lifestyles does not happen in a social vacuum. Lifestyle choices have to be analysed in close connection to the systems involved in the reproduction of lifestyles. Having discussed these general themes, we provide in section 3 an illustration of the overall approach as suggested. We take the ‘greening’ of domestic consumption as our point of departure and explore some of the theoretical as well as empirical aspects that are connected to this issue. We will discuss domestic consumption as a specific ‘mode of consumption’ in which the (public and private) providers of water and energy services play an important role. In addition, we will argue that the work of Ruth Schwartz Cowan contains a methodology for studying the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption. Using some empirical examples that stem from Dutch environmental politics, we try to illustrate the need to take into consideration the role of citizen-consumers


in this respect. We will argue that consumer involvement should be analysed considering the consumer being included in the design and functioning of technical systems. Of special relevance are those technical systems that make up for the daily use of energy and water services of households. ‘Sustainable’ systems and organisational devices should ‘fit’ not only the time-space slots of households but also the life-styles of the citizen-consumers and the levels of comfort, convenience and cleanliness that come along with their lifestyle-choices. In section 4, we will analyse consumer involvement. Involvement refers to the taking part in the political process that determines the way environmental functions of households will be organised in the future. The nature of this political process has been changing. Some of the traditional channels have lost their attractiveness for citizen-consumers and others are gaining relevance. We conclude by arguing for the need to investigate the new forms of environmental sub-politics that can help to support the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption.

2. Towards a sociology of sustainable consumption: a contextual model for studying consump-tion2 The study of consumption and consumer behaviour has to a large extent been left to economists and (social) psychologists. For a long time, sociologists had regarded consumption and the consumer society as phenomena that mainly deserved sociological criticism. This critical attitude to consumption was shared by many environmental social scientists as well (Winward, 1994: 75). While the legacy of the Frankfurt School can perhaps partly explain for this attitude, this factor alone does not suffice to account for the lack of serious research in this area. We think a more important explanation can be found in the productivist orientation that dominated sociological theories for so many years. Work, factories, labour unions, the division of labour and the role of technology, these were the phenomena that kept sociologists occupied. When consumption was given any treatment at all, it was regarded mainly as a ‘derivative’ of production. The bias on production-related social issues is not restricted to academic circles. Also in the field of environmental politics the productivist approach to consumption has dominated. Frameworks for approaching the target-group of citizen-consumers are derived from the policy-frameworks that have been developed with institutional actors in the sphere of production. Production-oriented frameworks for policy making however, are not suited for approaching consumers. The target-group of consumers is much more heterogeneous and less professionalised when compared with target-groups in the sphere of production. One cannot conclude a covenant with consumers, for the simple reason that consumers do not participate in the neo-corporatist consultation circuits that have become prominent in Dutch – and to some extent European – environmental policy making (Liefferink and Mol, 1998; Lauber and Hofer, 1997). Moreover, consumer-groups are not familiar with the highly specialised, differentiated jargon developed by environmental professionals in government and business-cycles. Finally, many of the theoretical concepts and instruments developed in the context of industrial environmental management do not seem to apply to the everyday world of the citizen-consumer. It is highly unlikely, that a consumer-oriented approach can be generated within the existing frameworks of policy. Therefor, we need a new approach. Before going into that, we will briefly point the short comings of existing models.

Shortcomings of existing models of consumer-behaviour

The sociological model which could guide consumer-research in environmental sociology and serve as a basis for environmental policy making, should allow for a precise formulation of concepts of ‘environmental behaviour’ and ‘sustainable lifestyles’. We propose a model that is rooted in the structuration theory of Anthony Giddens and which can be given a more specific meaning for environmental sociology. The formal concepts of the structuration-theory will be connected to some of the substantive themes put forward by the theory of the ecological modernisation of production and consumption. This should prevent some of the problems that come along with using social-psychological models on environmental behaviour as well as economic models on consumer-behaviour. Social-psychological models are strong in stressing the importance of the values and 2 A more extended version of the argument presented in this section can be found in Spaargaren, 1997 (chapters 5 and 6).


believes human agents adhere to. They are however weak about the ways in which individual (motives for) action should be analytically connected to the ‘wider society’. In other words, they lack a proper scheme for analysing the interplay between ‘action’ and ‘structure’ or between ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ levels. Economic models are used on all the different analytical levels, but these models do not pay any real attention to the ‘motives’ or ‘reasons’ of citizen-consumers behind a certain pattern of behaviour. Within the economic theory of ‘revealed preferences’, everything that is judged an ‘irrational’ factor is excluded from the conceptual schemes. So the task of the sociological model must be to find a solution in which the main pitfalls of both models are prevented.

Sketch of a conceptual model derived from structuration theory

Within Giddens’ structuration theory the analysis of environmental behaviour focuses principally on the behavioural or social practices in which human agents participate. Individual behaviours and its underlying reasons, interests and motives are studied in the context of social practices situated in time and space and shared with others. Beliefs, norms and values regarding (environmentally friendly) action are therefore not assumed to exist in a ‘social vacuum’ – as they are in the social-psychological model – but in a context. They are analysed as the rules which ‘belong to’ a specific social practice that is shared with others. The (relative) ‘power’ of the actor to change the course of action is specific for a certain context too, depending on the resources that are implied in the reproduction of social practices. Within the structuration theory, rules and resources together constitute the structures that are involved in the reproduction of social practices. As was mentioned earlier, a formal theory does not indicate specific sets of social practices that researchers should focus on. This choice is left to the researcher in question. In view of our theme, namely sustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns, we have selected some social practices that are directly related to the consumption behaviour of households or primary communities. Figure 1 presents a basic ‘structurationist’ scheme in which domestic consumption is linked to structures that are involved in the reproduction of social practices. The social practices that are mentioned in Figure 1 are only included for the sake of illustration.


- Actor/agent - - - Human Action - - - Social Practices - - - - - - - - - Structures - - - - - - - - -

Washing and Cleaning

Gardening

Sport and leisure

Home making

Shopping

Figure 1: A conceptual model for studying consumption practices

Social Practices and the Micro-Macro Problem

Before going into the relationship between action and structure, we should introduce one of the core notions of the structuration theory: the concept of the ‘duality of structure’. By structure we mean sets of rules and resources as described before. The idea of duality of structure refers to the dual character of the rules and resources involved in the (re)production and transformation of social systems. Social systems are sets of social practices. On the one hand actors are ‘forced’ in their actions to draw on existing rules and resources. In such cases, structures are ‘media’ in the sense that they enable a human actor to act. On the other hand these structures are in turn confirmed and reinforced by the actors’ very actions. In this sense, structures are both media and outcomes of human action. A wide variety of examples can be used to illustrate the principle of the duality of structure. Giddens often uses the example of (speaking a) language. In our context, the example of participating in the traffic system, given by Van der Poel (1993) is illuminating. “Compare a single car journey with the existence of a ‘traffic system’ structured by traffic regulations, road system, signposting, vehicles, etc. Every time you go for a drive, you do so in accordance with the rules and resources of the traffic system (driving characteristics of the car, stopping at red lights, keeping to the correct side of the road). However, as you make use of the structure you confirm the (continued) existence of this structure, and thus of the traffic system” (Van der Poel, 1993: 128). The structuration theory has deliberately banned the concepts of micro-level and macro-level from the vocabulary it uses to analyse social reality. Throughout the years too many connotations became attached to these terms which might put researchers on the wrong track. Micro-processes have become associated with ‘subjectivity’ and ‘freedom of action’, whilst macro-processes are seen as ‘objective’, as ‘structures’ which restrain the freedom of action. To avoid the micro-macro terminology, the different lines of approach for research into social practices are referred to as ‘institutional analysis’ and ‘analysis of strategic conduct’, respectively. What is at issue here is the question of whether social practices are approached from the ‘right’ side of our scheme or the ‘left’ side, as shown in figure 1. In an institutional analysis of social practices the actors’ knowledge and skills are ‘bracketed out’ to focus on the institutions as recurrent reproduced rules and resources. In the traffic system example we would study the changes in automobiles under the influence of technological developments, the changes in traffic regulations, the developments in traffic infrastructure or the tuning of car mobility to other forms of mobility. In the analysis of strategic behaviour, the focus of research is on the left-hand side of our scheme. Here, the

Discursive and practical consciousness

Rules & Resources


characteristics of the interaction setting, the contexts of practices, are ‘bracketed out’. They are assumed to be a given point of departure for research. The focus turns to the actors’ use of structures, on the knowledge they use to monitor their actions and on the resources they can mobilise to do so. In our traffic example one would focus on the type of car a person selects, the purposes of car use after considering alternative means of transportation, or the observance of traffic regulations. In the following sections we will first discuss a number of concepts that play a role in the analysis of strategic (environmental) conduct of individuals. These concepts are likely to be used in the type of research termed ‘micro-studies’. Having introduced these formal concepts, they will be put to use in defining sustainable behaviour in some circumscribed respects. Having elaborated the left-side approach to social practices, we go on to discuss (environmental relevant) social practices using an institutional perspective. When approaching social practices from the right-side of the scheme in figure 1, the focus is on the ways in which social practices are embedded in broader socio-technical environments. We will use some of the terminology as developed in the sociology of consumption and the sociology of technology as these concepts may facilitate the institutional analysis of the ‘systems of provision’ that underpin consumer-behaviour.

Lifestyles and the role of individuals

The actions performed by actors, as suggested in figure 1, diverge into a large number of distinct social practices. But this diverging is not the same as falling apart or disintegrating altogether. The formal concept of ‘lifestyle’ refers to the specific form of integration caused by actors3. In their lifestyles, people bring about a – partial – integration of the variety of social practices which span their daily lives. Actors ‘bind’ their distinct (sets of) social practices into a reasonably ‘coherent’ unity. As a descriptive concept, ‘lifestyle’ has become synonymous with the classic concept of ‘behaviour pattern’ (Mommaas, 1993: 160). However, the lifestyle concept does not only refer to the formal process of integration of social practices but also to the ‘story’ which the actor tells about it. With each lifestyle there is a corresponding life story, in the sense that by creating this specific unity of practices the actor expresses who he or she is or wants to be. The lifestyle serves to express a person’s individual identity, a ‘narrative of the self’. Both these elements are indicated in Giddens’ definition of lifestyle: “A lifestyle can be defined as a more or less integrated set of practices which an individual embraces, not only because such practices fulfil utilitarian needs, but because they give material form to a particular narrative of self-identity” (Giddens, 1991: 81). Lifestyles refer to the degree of coherence to be found in people’s behaviour. The notions of integration and coherence are important because modes of action followed in one context may reasonably differ with those adopted in others. Giddens refers to this phenomenon in terms of different lifestyle segments or lifestyle sectors. “A lifestyle sector concerns a time-space ‘slice’ of an individual’s overall activities, within which a reasonably consistent and ordered set of practices is adopted and enacted” (Giddens, 1991: 83). If a person wants to maintain a certain level of credibility, both for herself and for others, then a certain degree of coherence in lifestyle and integration of actions in varying practices will become essential.

Sustainable lifestyles and the concept of environmental utilisation space

In order to say something about sustainable lifestyles, the formal concepts of Giddens’ structuration theory need to be connected to the notions of ecological modernisation theory. Until now, the theory of ecological modernisation was worked out mainly at the level of institutional analysis. The theory is built on the assumption that the past decades have seen the emergence of a transformation process induced by environmental demands. It

3 Mommaas has indicated that the term lifestyle or style of living is as old as sociology itself and was given a central place in the

works of Veblen, Weber and Simmel, in particular (Mommaas, 1993: 159-181). Giddens only began to use the lifestyle concept in his later works, as part of his structuration theory on the one hand and as a ‘hinge’ between the formal theory and his discus-sion of (late) modern society on the other. We will use the concept of lifestyle as it is used by Giddens in the context of his for-mal theory.


has led to new ‘rules of the game’ for the social organisation of production and consumption. Ecological modernisation on the one hand refers to a sociological theory which has chosen the long-term transformation of Western society as its object of analysis. Conceived as a ‘political programme’, on the other hand, it refers to the central perspectives and strategies of environmental policies of the Netherlands and other industrialised countries (Spaargaren and Mol, 1992; Weale, 1992; Hajer, 1995). The nucleus of the theory is the view that new environment-induced sets of rules and resources constitute independent criteria – besides cultural, economic or political criteria – to judge individual and institutional action. In the process of ecological modernisation, the criteria by which an assessment is made of what may count as an ecologically more rational mode of production, gain increasing independence vis-à-vis socio-economic, political or cultural criteria. An initial analysis of strategic conduct of citizen-consumers – aimed at producing criteria for ‘more ecologically rational ways of acting’ – can benefit from the lines of thought that have already been developed at institutional level. For example, the meaning of environmental management in the production sphere may be used in analogy of the sphere of consumption. Environmental control by citizen-consumers may than be defined as a conscious effort to achieve a reduction in the environmental impacts associated with specific lifestyle characteristics. This effort is based on the acknowledgement of a ‘flexible ceiling’ covering the total environmental impact of a lifestyle. The term ‘flexible ceiling’ requires some further explanation on at least two points: the notion of ‘conscious efforts’ and the idea of ‘environmental utilisation space’. To avoid misunderstandings, ‘a conscious effort’ does not mean that actors are constantly ‘on their toes’ at a discursive level, applying an environmental yardstick to every action. What we are talking about is a process of reflexive monitoring of behaviour by knowledgeable and capable actors. At the level of practical consciousness, they routinely ‘stay in touch’ with certain rules of the game, in our case a set of criteria for ecologically rational behaviour. Secondly, the idea of ‘environmental utilisation space’ or ‘flexible ceiling’ requires further elucidation. The idea that there are limits to the ‘sustenance base’ on which the social organisation of production and consumption rests, is combined with the notion of a flexible ceiling. The ceiling is set partly by technological and ecological criteria which refer to ‘the functional components of eco-systems that play a crucial role in the sustainability of social systems’. The other criteria are (more) open to political debate, such as ‘quality of life’ and ‘integrity of nature' (Opschoor and Van der Ploeg, 1990). Given this definition, the idea of environmental utilisation space can never be fully operationalised by means of one-dimensional technical-scientific concepts and analytical frameworks. This is true for the application of the idea in the sphere of production. It is equally valid, and perhaps even more so, for application in the analysis of more sustainable lifestyles and consumption patterns. In the practice of policy, however, the theoretically flexible concept is often used in a very limited way. The experiments conducted with the idea of all-encompassing ‘environmental ration cards’ for citizen-consumers reveal an empiricist reduction of the concept. This is not only unfeasible given our current knowledge, but politically undesirable as well. To our view, the value of the idea of environmental utilisation space lies in its expression of the ‘rationale’ behind a reduction in the environmental impacts within certain production organisations, consumption patterns or lifestyles. It is a characteristic feature of this rationale that it combines the idea of physical limits with the idea of actively making use of a certain amount of space. Contrary to a concept such as ‘limits to growth’, the idea of environmental utilisation space evokes the image of available space that can literally and legitimately be ‘made use’ of 4. The idea thus refers to the different ways in which environmental resources are being utilised (efficiently or inefficiently, prudently or recklessly) within some technological and some political limits. The pursuit of a more sustainable lifestyle implies that actors consider all the distinct lifestyle segments in the perspective described above. In doing so they create an ‘environmental profile’ of the different segments of their lifestyles. The efforts made regarding the greening of lifestyles may contribute to the level of integration or

4 Another considerable advantage of the term ‘environment utilization space’ is the fact that, contrary to the terms used in the limits-

to-growth debate, it refers to the interest of the environment as an ‘independent’ concern which cannot be reduced to economic cate-gories.


coherence of their lifestyles. In this process, an optimum distribution or ‘rate of exchange’ needs to be sought between the economic, ecological, cultural and social capital – to borrow some concepts introduced by Pierre Bourdieu – that the actor has at his or her disposal. The assessment of the optimum use of available environmental utilisation space may result in a process of creative book keeping and housekeeping. Actors try to achieve the most beneficial distribution between the different segments of their lifestyles. In an analogy to the sphere of production, ‘rational action’ is therefore no longer determined by economic criteria alone. The rationally calculating citizen will be just as keen on making an ‘environmental profit’ as she is on making an economic one. So far for the approach to social practices from the perspective of the left side of our scheme. Its central focus was on the ways in which environmental issues are taken on board by social actors in the pursuit of a certain lifestyle. A sociological analysis of the ‘greening’ of lifestyles and consumption patterns, is obliged to analyse it in close connection with environmental control that has emerged in companies, social organisations and the government. The actors’ latitude in reducing environmental impacts in certain segments of their lifestyles does not only depend on the rules and resources to which they have individual access. The possibilities for changing the course of one’s action also depend on the social distribution – at the level of society – of the rules and resources involved in a certain social practice. To complete our discussion of the model in figure 1, we now turn to analysing the ways in which lifestyle-choices are connected with relevant institutions of society.

The contextual analyses of consumer-behaviour

If lifestyle- and consumption issues are discussed within the sociology of consumption, there are at least two distinct ways in which these concepts can be loaded. We will argue that the two major branches within the discourse on lifestyles and consumption can be referred to as the horizontal ‘distinction perspective’ on the one hand and the vertical ‘system-of-provision-perspective’ on the other. From these two perspectives, especially the vertical perspective can serve well in a sociological analysis of consumption behaviour which stresses the importance of the interconnectedness of production and consumption. Production-consumption-cycles or systems of provision should however not be analysed from a top-down, productivist orientation but instead from a consumer-led orientation. We will shortly introduce the distinction perspective before we elaborate upon the system-of-provision-perspective.

The distinction-perspective

Perhaps because of the overriding influence of the work of Pierre Bourdieu, some authors almost exclusively relate lifestyle to the stylisation of daily life only. People seek to express their sense of style by a specific choice of (cultural) goods. Lifestyle-choices are a matter of (good or bad) taste, and especially the (lack of) understanding that people have of higher culture or art is regarded as decisive for their performance in the field of distinction. This approach to consumer behaviour is focused on aesthetics, fashion, identity, signs and the dream-world of the modern shopping centres. If concrete products are discussed, the central objective is to establish the ways in which they can bring about a specific form of “stylised awareness in matters of consumption” (Lury, 1996). Cecile Lury provides many interesting examples of this in her book on consumer culture. Although she states that the ‘art-culture-system’ can be regarded as an exemplary case for consumer culture in general, she also recognises that we are dealing only with a partial perspective on consumer behaviour. Elaborating upon the work of Bourdieu, Featherstone (1991) describes how the pre-occupation with tastes, styles and lifestyles particularly characterises the expanding social class of people who earn their living in the culture industry: such as advertising, the media and the film industry. He claims that “the new conception of lifestyle can best be understood in relation to the habitus of the new ‘petite bourgeoisie’ as an expanding class which seeks to preserve and legitimise its own particular dispositions and lifestyle. A class fraction most closely involved in symbolic reproduction” (Featherstone, 1991: 84). These groups set themselves up as the cultural intermediates that promote a general interest in style by ‘estheticising’ everyday products and commodities. Additionally they popularise and market commodities from the ‘higher culture’ to an increasing extent, thus make them available to larger groups of consumers.


The Bourdieu-inspired streams of thought in the sociology of consumption are important for environmental sociologists because they make us aware of the crucial importance of the social or symbolic dimension of consumption. People do not only buy certain products because these products can be used and ‘enjoyed’ when being ‘consumed’. People ‘use’ goods and services, according to Douglas and Isherwood (1979), to relate themselves to other people. To understand why things matter to people, we also have to look beyond the matter itself. The first interest of environmental sociologists is usually on the ecological characteristics of certain products and consumption styles. However, they must not fail to recognise the ways in which these ecological characteristics are always connected with subjective dimensions of the consumption process.

The ‘system-of-provision’- perspective

Having said this, we also support Fine and Leopold (1993) in their relativism regarding such views. The approaches emphasising only the symbolic function of products and services, fail to see that changes in consumer culture and consumer behaviour are largely caused by major changes in the organisation of production and consumption. Fine and Leopold argue that the ‘horizontal’ approach to the dynamics of consumption fails to consider the ‘history’ of the products, their context of origin, or their roots in the specific organisation of production and consumption. In their plea for a ‘vertical approach to consumption and consumer behaviour’ they are joined by Lee, Warde, Otnes and others. These authors can be said to represent the second major stream of thought within the sociology of consumption. The ‘system of provision perspective’ – as we call it – within the sociology of consumption represents a consumer-led perspective on the organisation of production and consumption cycles within modern-industrial societies. In this section, we will shortly introduce some of the concepts used by Lee, Fine & Leopold, Saunders and Warde. We will discuss the specific contribution of Otnes in section 3 as his focus is exclusively on household consumption.

Fordist and post-Fordist production and consumption patterns

The dependence of consumer choices and consumer behaviour on developments in the production sphere is a theme which is especially stressed by neo-Marxist authors. Consumers, they argue, are not free or autonomous at all in their choice for particular commodities or services. The social relationships in the production sphere determine to a large extent which products – within a particular context – are offered. Their main goal is to point out that consumers are relatively ‘powerless’ by stressing that consumption behaviour is determined by factors and relationships in the production sphere. However, the extent to which structural factors within the production sphere are considered to determine individual choices, differs from one author to another. The analysis offered by Lee (1993) shows us how the relative increase in the freedom of choice of today’s citizen-consumer is connected with the changing ‘orchestration’ of consumer demand. These changes are connected to the transition of a Fordist to a post-Fordist production process. According to Lee, up to the mid-seventies everyday life was ‘produced’ by State and Capital, as cars are produced in the production sphere. The consumption culture was as uniform and efficient as assembly lines in factories. The advertising world, the media, and the business world had the consumption culture firmly in their grasp. With the transition to a different production process, the nineteen-eighties saw a change. When flexibilisation, individualisation, human resources management and other trends changed production procedures, the consumption culture also became more flexible and fluid. Lee’s analysis describes how through the transition to a post-Fordist production system “the cultural dimensions of consumption and commodity relations could be adapted and stabilised according to the requirements of production” (Lee, 1993: 88, italics added). Lee questions whether changes in the daily life of citizen-consumers are ‘orchestrated’ from within the production sphere pointing at a new form of ‘post-Fordist regulation’. However this does not seem too relevant to us. His attempt to prove that actual changes did take place in the consumption culture and that these changes are reflected in the nature of commodities is more interesting for our purposes. Where the author considers cars, refrigerators, and terraced houses as typical commodities of a Fordist regime, he names VCR's, microwaves and amusement parks as the typical commodities of a post-Fordist era. Where the characteristics of Fordist commodities are described in terms like durable, standardised, functional and use-


oriented, post-Fordist commodities are characterised by their non-durable and customer-oriented nature and the stress on styling and design, among others. Even if we cannot fully agree with the framework of binary oppositions between Fordism and post-Fordism5, we support the notion that goods and services reflect the changes in the organisation of production. Moreover, at least in general terms and in Western societies, one may observe a fluid change towards more flexible production and consumption patterns. “(T)he key commodities of the 1980’s have been those goods that were best attuned to the freeing up of the previously static and relatively fixed spatial and temporal dimensions of social life” (Lee, 1993: 133). As everyday life becomes more ‘fluid’, commodities with flexible applications – for instance because they are smaller, require less time, or combine several functions in one product – will play a larger role.

The systems of provision

Apart from critique on the post-Fordist thesis underlying Lee’s analysis, there is also critique on the level of his analysis. According to Fine and Leopold (1993) it is hardly possible to do research into the changes in the nature and the composition of product and service packages on such a general level of analysis. The changes in, for instance, the food package sectors differ substantially from those in the clothing sector. Analyses from the perspective of consumption or from production level both seem insufficient. As a third starting point for researching the relations between production and consumption, Fine and Leopold therefore propose an interdisciplinary approach to consumption that pays attention to the ‘vertical’ relationships between consumption and production within different sectors. This approach “expects different commodities or groups of commodities to be distinctly structured by the chain or system of provision that unites a particular pattern of production with a particular pattern of consumption” (Fine and Leopold, 1993: 4). Empirical research to the changes that took place in products and their corresponding systems of provision, enables us to evade generalist theories which do not recognise the differences between separate clusters of commodities. After all, when describing processes of envy and distinction, it does not matter whether one chooses cars or earrings as an example. As a result of their bias towards generalist theories, existing consumption theories do not pay sufficient attention to differences in the way commodities are handled in for instance the traffic system, the food system, the energy system, or the housing system. The vertical approach to consumption, by studying the ‘systems of provision’, makes the “distinct set of imperatives governing different sets of commodities” visible6.

The modes of provision

The vertical approach to consumption takes into account the different systems of provision of goods and services. Some of those systems are very stable and predictable, while others are highly dynamic and unstable. One can argue, as Fine and Leopold seem to do, that this is something to be settled in empirical research. For instance the purchase of a gallon of gas may be compared to that of an insurance arrangement. The gallon is bought at a highway petrol station owned by one of the few multinationals left in this field. This will turn out to be a lot more predictable and stable than getting into an insurance-arrangement. After all, you eventually pick the latter from

5 Sayer and Walker (1992) convincingly express the view of many critics on the post-Fordism thesis. The main objection to the

idea of post-Fordism is that industrial change cannot that easily be forced into the framework of binary opposition found in the theory. Although the framework seems attractive to work with, the notion that the future is presented as the opposite to the past should worry every social scientist. Moreover, “(e)ven if we are willing to accept the binairy framework as an abstraction, the problem arises that the uncertainty about post-Fordism is not compensated for by any certainty about Fordism” (Sayer and Walker, 1992: 194).

6 Fine and Leopold correctly criticize the generalist character of many consumption theories. However, the authors do not succeed in proposing a solution to this problem on a theoretical level, because they take refuge in empirical research that does not go be-yond illustrating that differences between the food and the clothing sector do exist. They fail to draw conclusions from these em-pirically established differences that would also apply to other systems of provision. As a consequence, there is not much differ-ence between their study and ‘normal’ sector studies.


the blurred market of social security that came to replace the fixed and well-ordered arrangements the state provided in former days. One may also argue however, that this kind of diversity can be better approached by introducing some further theoretical concepts that could bring some order to the empirical chaos. That is what Alan Warde and others aimed at in their contribution to the sociology of consumption. Warde has positioned himself in a debate among British sociologists who – against the background of the waves of privatisation caused by the Thatcher government – put forward within the sociology of consumption some of the issues of urban sociology. The organisation of ‘collective consumption’ and its relation with social inequalities was now restated with the ‘privatised’ versus the ‘socialised’ mode of consumption with a ‘consumer cleavage’ as a result. Especially the contribution of Pete Saunders triggered much discussion, because he counterposed the two modes of consumption in a rather specific way. The privatised mode was identified with freedom of choice, high quality of products and services and enhanced autonomy from the side of the consumer. The socialised mode on the other hand came to represent lack of choice, poor quality and bureaucratic (over)regulation. This dichotomy was given still more analytical weight by attaching a historical perspective to it. After a long period of market provision, there had been that period after World War 2 in which the state, through a great number of rules and regulations, tried to orchestrate and regulate the consumption volume. That was to be coined afterwards as the ‘socialised mode of consumption’. Towards the end of the seventies and especially in the eighties this organisational form of collective consumption had to give up its predominant position in favour of the so-called ‘privatised mode of consumption’. Citizen-consumers satisfy their consumption needs through goods and services obtained on the market. The socialised mode of consumption will prove to have been a transitional stage: “a period when the state performed a ‘holding operation’ in order to cover people’s basic consumption needs until such time as they were able to reclaim responsibility for providing for these needs themselves” (Saunders, 1987: 316, italics added). An increase in the standard of living, among other things, resulted in a ‘culture shift’ in industrialised society, with the result that “most people prefer to buy a car rather than to rely on public transport, to buy a house rather than to rent from the local authority, and so on” (ibid.: 316). Not all citizen-consumers have been able to take part in this culture shift. This has resulted in a consumption gap between a reasonably prosperous majority which is able to satisfy its needs on the market, and a poor minority that remains dependent on the provisions of a decaying welfare state. New class differences are drawn up along the dividing line between owners and non-owners of the ‘key means of consumption’. “The majority satisfies most of its consumption requirements through private purchase (subsidised where possible by the state through income transfers, discounts, tax relief or whatever), while the majority is cast adrift on the waterlogged raft of what remains of the welfare state” (Saunders, 1987: 318). This metaphor of the welfare state illustrates the process – or rather the downward spiral – resulting from the development that more and more relatively well to-do people opt for private solutions. This development will weaken the public support of state provisions to an increasing extent. In Saunders’ view there is no way back. The privatised mode of consumption will increasingly penetrate those fields that so far have been under state control. Education, health service, social security will have to be brought in line with the mechanisms of the market. Saunders’ motto is: opt for the market where possible and as soon as possible. He presents his theory as a variant to Gorz’ thesis on the dual society. Eventually a society will emerge where, along with the heterogeneous sphere of production an autonomous sphere will be created in which free consumers will determine their fortunes through private consumption. The role of the state in the organisation of consumption will be restricted to direct income transfer to socially weak groups; to allow them access to a free, autonomous choice to that miracle of autonomy and self-determination we know as the ‘free market’. As will be clear even from the language used in this debate, we are dealing here with a highly politicised discussion with initially little room for nuance. Alan Warde can be credited for his endeavours to break through the dichotomy and make room for an analytically more fine-tuned analysis of the different modes of consumption. First, Warde criticises Saunders because his analysis of consumption starts from a too unambiguous distinction between the market mode and the mode of state-provision. Saunders especially makes a caricature of the way the


state supplies goods and services. Writing about the market context, he does not spend a single word on the social determinants of consumption behaviour, the market power of producers, or the negative effects of the ‘ideology of consumerism’. He simply starts from the premise that “market choices give meaning to individuals’ life through consumption” (Warde, 1990: 231). When, on the other hand, the subject changes to public services, the stress is on dependency, lack of options, inferior quality and obligation. Saunders considers state-provision some kind of ‘rest category’ in comparison with the market supply of goods and services. According to Warde, working with these two prototypical forms of consumption would rather lead to a distorted image of reality than contribute to acquiring more insight into it. To a large extent, the model is derived from the handling of one kind of product, namely the house. Private ownership of a house is supposed to be one of the indicators for the existence of a consumption gap, the dividing line between the new social classes within the consumption culture. Attempts were made to show by way of empirical research that these new dividing lines would also express themselves in the preference for particular political parties (Dunleavy, 1980; Saunders and Harris, 1990). The superiority of the privatised mode is arguable even in the housing sphere (Kemeny, 1980). One should realise that what is investigated here is indeed an important, yet single consumption good. Private house ownership cannot function as a model for the way the multiform package of goods and services is handled. When commodities other than houses are at issue, the linking of ‘ownership’ and ‘control’ and the relation to ‘quality’ becomes less unambiguous. Wardes’ second major objection to the model put forward by Saunders is, that it distinguishes only two major forms of consumption. Moreover it passes over consumption in a household context as well as the handling of consumption goods in the ‘informal’ economy of neighbourhood and family networks. Finally, equating consumption with only the purchase of goods, in line with the model of products that are sold across the counter, is also disputable. Consumption is more than the purchase of goods. There are many different ways of supplying products, maintaining products, and disposing of products. If these stages in the production-consumption cycle are also included in the analysis, a bi-polar model like that of Saunders proves to be an inadmissible simplification of the consumption process. In various articles, Warde therefore developed a number of alternative multi-dimensional models that do more justice to the complex character of the consumption process (Warde, 1990; 1992; 1994). Using the example of the food-chain, he illustrates that production-consumption cycles within this system of provision allow for mixed forms of modes of consumption, accompanied by different modes of access as well as different modes of ‘use’ or ‘enjoyment’. In the next section, we will explore the road sketched by Alan Warde into more detail, with household-consumption as our main example. As it will be shown there, we think the ‘system-of-provision’-perspective could benefit from some of the insights that stem from the sociology of technology. Within this sociology of technology a specific conceptual language was developed to analyse the dynamics of systems of provision as well as the complex interrelations between ‘people’ and ‘technologies’ in the different systems of provision. Summarising our main argument so far we tried to show that: � A consumer-led perspective on the organisation of production and consumption has to replace or at least

complement the mainly productivist approaches which dominated (environmental) sociology over the last decades.

� Taking a consumer-perspective on the organisation of production and consumption organisation does not mean that one should opt for either a micro- or a macro-perspective. Adopting one of the main arguments from structuration-theory, we developed a model for studying consumption-practices that gives methodological form to the idea of the duality of structure.

� Within the analyses of strategic conduct – the left-side approach in figure 1 – the focus is on the ways in which citizen-consumers strive for more sustainable lifestyles. In integrating the different sectors and segments of their lifestyle, they use criteria of ecological rational consumption. Within the ‘green narratives of the self’, the recognition of the idea of a flexible ceiling plays an important role.

� Within the institutional analysis of sustainable consumption practices – the right-side approach in figure 1 – the focus is on the rules and resources that are involved in the reproduction of more sustainable lifestyles.


These rules and resources can be analysed with different ‘systems of provision’ and the corresponding modes of access and use or enjoyment from the side of citizen-consumers that come along with them.

3. Putting the model at work: the greening of household related consumption “On a superficial level, the industrialisation of the home appears to have been composed of millions of individual decisions freely made by householders: the Jones's down the block decided to junk their washtub an buy a washing machine, and the Smiths around the corner fired the maid and bought a vacuum cleaner. But the matter is not as simple as that. The Jones's washing machine would not have done them a bit of good if the town fathers had not decided to create a municipal water system several years earlier, and if the local gas and electric company had not got around to running wires and pipes into the neighbourhood”. (Cowan, 1983: 13-14)

Having outlined in the previous section the general approach to the study of consumption-practices, in this section we try to provide some illustrations of the way in which our model can be put to work. With the model, we will analyse the greening of domestic consumption in some highly industrialised (consumer)societies in Western Europe. We thereby follow a two step procedure. First, we elaborate upon the general model presented in section 2 and make some conceptual adjustments to make the model suitable for the study of domestic consumption. We will argue that the works of Cowan and Otnes can be used to detail the role played by systems of provision in the shaping of domestic consumption. However, these authors are less strong in analysing the processes inside the households. Especially the ways in which consumption choices are connected to domestic time-slots and domestic cultural notions are underexposed. To have a better look inside this black box, one can benefit from the works of Douglas and Isherwood on the one hand and Shove and Warde on the other. When taken together and reformulated in certain respects, the ideas and definitions provided by these authors can be used in studying the greening of domestic consumption at the empirical level. The next step of our procedure is to look into some empirical examples to test and further refine our conceptual model. It will turn out that systems of provision nowadays provide opportunities for domestic agents to take on board products, technologies and courses of action that can be used in the ‘greening’ of lifestyles and domestic consumption. The crucial factors determining success or failure of ‘greener’ domestic technologies and lifestyles can to a large extend be said to operate on the interface between households and the systems of provision. New concepts should be developed to analyse the ‘fit’ or ‘mis-fit’ of households and surrounding systems of provision. In analysing the mutual influences of human actors and technological systems, environmental sociologists should not be prejudiced by using only structuralist / determinist or voluntarist / actor-oriented concepts and notions. Both points of view are relevant here. It is up to the empirical researcher to define the actual influences that are exerted and the concrete shape that lifestyles and consumption-patterns take. Environmental sociologists can make benificial use of a structurationist model for analysing the interplay of lifestyle choices and technological trajectories. In doing so, they can offer a model for studying domestic consumption which does not suffer from the shortcomings of both socio-psychological and economic models.

Households and the systems of provision

In her impressive (and awarded) study on the industrialisation of American households, Ruth Schwartz Cowan has convincingly illustrated that one cannot treat domestic consumption in isolation from the sphere of industrial production. Changes in the way we cook, dress and care are directly connected to changes in the food-system, the clothing-system and the health-care-system. And although some of the major ‘women’s’ tasks were indeed lifted out their domestic context and transmitted to industrial sectors of society, Cowan shows that we are not dealing with a one-way process. Where the gas, electricity and water-systems are involved, some of the ‘old’ chores (drawing the water) were replaced by new ones (cleaning the bathtub). In the case of the transport-system, Cowan


showed that women gradually replaced the transport-services that used to be conducted by the butcher’s boy, the baker’s man, the doctor and the barber. Because she observed similar processes in other sectors as well, Cowan concluded that the industrialisation process eventually implied ‘more work for mothers’. The methodology adopted by Cowan seems to offer a promising perspective also when studying domestic social practices from a sustainability point of view. Firstly, she takes a medium to long range time-perspective. It enables us to think through alternatives to the present technological systems that seem to have a ‘fixed’ character when viewed only from a short term perspective. Examples are the centralised water and energy networks that were build up during the last century in most European countries. Secondly, Cowan lays great stress on the interconnectedness of so called ‘internal’ and ‘external’ processes. She cross-cuts the divisions between the sphere of production and the sphere of consumption. Working with a strict division between these spheres, the meaning of concepts like ‘work’ or ‘industry’ tend to be biased because they are thought to be rooted primarily in the sphere of production. Thirdly, Cowan theoretically emphasises and empirically illustrates the very intricate connections between so-called ‘technical’ and ‘social’ aspects of domestic social practices. Finally, Cowan makes us aware of the fact that in the development of socio-technological systems some roads are indeed taken and some others are not. Technological systems and devices sometimes ‘fail’, not necessarily because they are technically spoken inferior but because diverging interests of companies, trade unions and households tend to steer technological development.

Clarifying the actor-structure relation in Cowan’s sociology of technology

On one point the methodology of Cowan is less outspoken in character. Although she devotes much of her work to the relative power of institutional actors vis-à-vis the individual households, the interplay between actors and structure is not elaborated in any detail at the conceptual level. On some points in the book – like in the citation above – she discusses the power of the institutional actors deciding upon the technological infrastructure which determines future courses of domestic consumption. In other places however Cowan argues that “virtually every communal or co-operative housekeeping experiment failed because the single family home and the private ownership of tools are social institutions that act to preserve and enhance the privacy and autonomy of families” (Cowan, 1983: 149). Within this view, technical arrangements are regarded as the deliberate result of billions of individual decisions that are aimed at enhancing privacy and autonomy of American citizens. Cowans’ perspective fits very well in the approach developed in the field of the sociology of technology (Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, 1987). With this tradition she shares both some of its innovative and stimulating insights and some of its shortcomings as well. The strong elements pertain firstly to the fact that ‘technological systems’ are treated as inherently social in character, consisting as they do of both people and things. Furthermore, the notions of technological trajectories, paradigms, networks and regimes, that are used to analyse the development of socio-technical systems over time, give due weight to the dynamics of technological development in general and different systems of provision in particular. Finally, especially the system-approach to technology pays close attention to the interrelation between individual elements or entities (artefacts, skills, natural phenomena and also individuals) on the one hand and the system as a whole on the other. The shortcomings of the sociology of technology approach seem to apply especially to the system-approach within this tradition. It pertains mainly to the lack of concepts that could describe the role of human agency in the development of technological systems. Quiet a few words are spent on the culture of the technological system, its ‘style’ and the way in which the cultural matrix ‘guides’ technological development. But the role of human agency is not dealt with as something which could add to explaining the dynamics of systems of provision. The contribution of Cowan is one of the very few examples within this tradition that at least recognises the need to study technological networks also from a consumer-perspective. Cowan uses the word ‘consumption junction’ to refer to the need to study systems of provision also from a consumer point of view. The consumption junction “is the place and the time at which the consumer makes choices between competing technologies, and try to ascertain how the network may have looked when viewed from the inside out, which elements stood out as being more important, more determinative of choices, than the others, and which path seemed wise to pursue and which too


dangerous to contemplate” (Cowan, 1987: 263). This is the best one can get from the sociology of technology when it comes to conceptualising human agency and its role in technological development. To take the analysis one step further, we have to deal with questions about the ways in which consumer-choices on different technological systems are connected to consumers’ lifestyle-choices and issues of identity. We should recognise the importance of the relationship between ‘inside’ factors (such as the internal time-space organisation and ‘cultural style’ of the household) and ‘outside’ factors (the external systems of provisions like the electric or power networks).

The duality of structure in reproducing systems of provision

As we have argued more extensively in section 2, a fruitful way of conceptualising the interplay between agency and structure can be found in the work Anthony Giddens. The Norwegian sociologist Per Otnes applied some of the basic concepts of structuration theory to the practice of household-related consumption. The core concept of the ‘duality of structure’ is given proper expression in Otnes’ phrase that domestic consumption can be summarised as a process of ‘serving of and being served by collective socio-material systems’. Every time we tap some water or switch on the lights, we are making use of the services that are provided by expert systems. At the very same moment we contribute to their ongoing reproduction. These expert-systems constitute what Otnes calls ‘the public underpinnings of private life’. Without the proper functioning of these expert-systems our daily life would be very difficult to maintain (Otnes, 1988). The collective socio-material systems are a special case of systems of provisions. They are special because they imply ‘material infrastructures’ to be an essential element of the systems of provision. Once the citizen-consumer has been ‘connected’ to the water works, the sewage system or the electricity grid, the consumer has become a ‘captive’ consumer. Captive consumers cannot just shift from one to another system without loosing resources (money, knowledge, skills) that have been invested in the present networks. These so called ‘sunk cost’ prevent citizen-consumers from moving freely between different systems of provision, provided that there would be more than one option available.

De- and reroutinization

Although we ‘know’ about our dependency in general sense, we use water and energy in a very routine way. We are not consciously aware of the fact that behind the taps and the power-points there are very advanced and extensive expert-systems. We are only made aware of the character of the interrelationship when confronted with some event which (temporarily) breaks down our routines. This can be an interruption of the guaranteed supply of water and energy or a removal or home-improvement project which we decide upon ourselves. In all these cases the taken-for-granted character is replaced by a serious questioning of the existing modes of organising the social practices that constitute our daily actions. These interruptions of daily routines make us (temporarily) alert and very sensitive to consider alternative modes of organising our consumption practices. When going through periods of de- and re-routinisation, we become aware of the level and the nature of what Giddens calls our ‘discursive penetration’ of the collective socio-material systems. This awareness can pertain for example to the skills that are needed to appropriately serve the systems, or to the power-relations that are involved in the reproduction of the system. The discursive awareness might also be directed to the environmental impacts that characterise the present make-up of the system.

Collective socio-material systems and their relationship with domestic routines and lifestyles

Studying domestic consumption from a perspective as sketched above has relevance for environmental sociologists for at least one particular reason. Collective socio-material systems that we serve and are being served by, represent to a considerable extent the ‘sustenance base’ of our daily domestic routines. They are ‘material’ systems not only in the sense of being technical systems, technologies, infrastructures, apparatuses, tubes and gadgets. On a more fundamental level they represent the material- and energy-flows which form the physical substratum to our domestic lives. They are involved in the organisation of our intercourse with the


environment. So when people are striving for more sustainable lifestyles and patterns of domestic consumption, the possibilities (not) offered by collective socio-material systems are of strategic importance. Domestic agents would only accept more sustainable devices in the field of energy and water provided that the devices fit into the overall organisation of the household and the composition of the lifestyles of its members. The main question in these cases is whether there is fit or mis-fit of ‘green’ alternatives in these respects. However, the experts who are involved in the development and diffusion of new technological devices, often leave this question unanswered. Even worse so, the question does not come to the minds of engineers at all. Due to the strong division between technology studies and attitude-behaviour studies, performance in academic circles has been hampered by the same imperfection. To answer the question, we have to dive into the black box of household consumption itself.

The dynamics of domestic consumption

One may wonder why people accept new technologies, or buy certain products or types of equipment. Douglas and Isherwood (1979) suggest as a working hypothesis that they do this to increase their ‘personal availability’. This offers a more promising starting point than theories explaining purchasing behaviour from the wish to satisfy needs or the urge to show off, or similar motives. Products are employed to achieve a reorganisation or ration-alisation of the household. The products help consumers to set themselves free to carry out other tasks or engage in other activities. To the anthropologist Douglas, the desire to liberate oneself from household tasks is strongly linked to the necessity to be available for activities that increase the status of actors. Status may be obtained from an increase in social capital like visiting friends, organising a big party, and so forth. This specific application of the motive behind the increase of ‘personal availability’ is less important to our goal than the working hypothesis itself7. An important characteristic of household labour is that it consists for a large part of periodically recurring activities or jobs that cannot be put off. Douglas and Isherwood illustrate these ‘periodicity constraints’ of households by means of two types of activities, without further differentiating these two types analytically. On the one hand there are the household routines that are better known as ‘chores’: making the beds, cooking the everyday meals, cleaning the bathroom, doing the shopping. On the other hand there are activities relating to child care and upbringing: breast-feeding, taking the children to school, the daily care of an elderly parent living in your home, walking the dog. These are activities that each has to be performed according to a fixed pattern in time; as partly complementary activities, they result together in a more or less constraining ‘pattern of periodicities of household processes’. With the periodicity of household labour Douglas and Isherwood introduce two further assumptions. First, constraints are held to differ with social class or status groups, according to the principle that “the higher the status, the less periodicity constraints; the lower the status, the greater periodicity constraints”. Secondly, they are directly linked to the division of roles between men and women. “(T)he most general account of the division of labour between the sexes that fits everywhere would be based on the periodicity of women’s work” (Douglas and Isherwood, 1979: 120). High-frequency tasks limit the action radius of people – in this case mostly women – in their efforts to arrive at a greater ‘personal availability’. As a consequence women will try to get burdened with as few of these tasks as possible. Douglas and Isherwood are rather positive in their formulation when they observe that “anyone with influence and status would be a fool to get encumbered with a high-frequency responsibility” (p. 120). People will try to hive off these tasks to third parties (baby-sitter, domestic help, window cleaner, etc.) and try to reduce the claim on personal time by ‘rationalising’ the labour involved, through the application of technology. People make use of commodities and servicesError! Bookmark not defined. Error! Bookmark not defined.Error! Bookmark not defined.to free themselves from the most demanding tasks that belong to their

7 In our view, the wish or necessity for a more intensive participation of women in the labour process is an equally important mo-

tive. In addition, the increase of ‘obligations’ or activities in the fields of leisure, recreation and tourism may be mentioned as a determining factor.


specific consumption scale. Error! Bookmark not defined.For this reason, ‘scale-facilitating goods’ form the key to understanding when we are looking for the relationship between technology and household consumption. The essential point in the analysis of Douglas and Isherwood is that actors, in their efforts to attain a higher personal availability, are trying to free themselves from ‘hError! Bookmark not defined.igh-frequency-low-esteem’ tasks. To put it more general: it is about the freeing of domestic agents from fixed time-space slots in everyday life. Agents will not accept technologies that make their domestic routines more ‘rigid’ in terms of pre-given schedules. They will instead actively strive for those technological and organisational devices that give them greater flexibility in performing domestic tasks. One should remember this when studying more sustainable goods and services offered to domestic consumers. For example the idea of ‘pooling’ of equipment and resources as an environmentally more beneficial alternative to fully privatised goods and services, may contradict this idea of flexible time-space structures.

The chreseology of consumption

The perspective given above is superior to most of the models used by neo-classical economists because they take into account not ‘isolated choices for isolated products’ but sets of goods and services. They try to connect them with specific drives or motives from the side of domestic consumers. In fact this is also what Per Otnes and Elizabeth Shove have been arguing for. They propose to develop what can be referred to as the chreseology of domestic consumption. As we interpret this call, Otnes argues for a sociology of domestic consumption which relates specific clusters of products and services to specific modes of provision in the context of specific spatial settings of domestic social practices. Examples of these settings are the kitchen, the bathroom, the hobby-room, or the garden. These are the special contexts in which actors make use of cooking and gardening tools that can only (be made to) perform properly when connected to collective socio-material systems. The chreseology of consumption should provide detailed descriptions of the daily routines of domestic consumption. This can enlarge our knowledge about the various ways in which people relate to technologies, households relate to expert-systems and the ‘private’ relates to the ‘public’. Writing in the sociology of technology tradition, Otnes does not investigate in any detail the distinct motives and interests of human agents as to answer the question why they are performing these consumption practices. Of course, in their modern, rationalised and stylised kitchen people combine cooking utensils with energy and water to produce a meal. But this obvious fact does not help to provide us any insights into the taste for food that comes along with their lifestyles and the cooking-culture which these specific domestic agents represent. Elizabeth Shove, among others, put the cultural aspects of domestic consumption at the centre of analyses (Shove, 1997; Shove and Southerton, 1998). She specified them with standards of Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience (CCC) to which people adhere and subscribe. Domestic consumption practices should be analysed not only as a mixture of objects and infrastructures but also as routines that make people meet the standards that they think of as ‘normal’ or ‘minimal required’ or ‘common’. These CCC-standards should be achieved in a positive way. To meet these standards, Shove proposed to categorise the rules and resources as infrastructures (the plumbing system for instance), objects (commodities) and conventions, uses and practices. Figure 2 represents the perspective as proposed by Shove (1997).

Comfort Cleanliness Convenience

Infrastructures

Objects

Conventions, uses and practices


Figure 2: CCC standards met by infrastructures, objects and conventions, uses and practices (from Shove, 1997)

Shoves’ analysis is different from the one offered by Douglas and Isherwood. She does not treat the ‘rationalisation’ of domestic consumption primarily as a process of ‘doing away’ with as many chores as possible. Shove discussed the buying and selling of freezers, fridges, bath-tubes, kitchens and heating systems in terms of the level of comfort, cleanliness and convenience that these technologies promise to bring to the household, provided that they are properly connected to the systems of provision that support them. On the one hand, these CCC-standards are an expression of the specific lifestyles of people. In that sense they are a highly individual, privatised affair. But the number of showers one takes in a week depends not only on the (filthy) job one occupies or the amount of sporting activities one is engaged in. It is also to a large extent determined by the standards of cleanliness one is accustomed to. These standards are not that private and individual as they seem to be. They are shared with many others and ‘learned’ in the course of one’s life. It is especially the anthropology of consumption that made us aware of the variation that exists both across time and across different cultures when it comes to CCC- standards. Hal Wilhite (1997) for example was able to show how cultural standards concerning ‘lighting’ the home differ considerably in Japan and Norway or the United States, resulting in different patterns of domestic energy-consumption. We could summarise our argument in this section on domestic consumption by presenting a more detailed version of the model that we presented in section 2. Figure 3 again presents our scheme, but now in approaching domestic consumption practices from a perspective of systems of provision – specified as collective socio-material systems – as well as from a lifestyle-perspective. It summarises all additional approaches we presented above. Actor/agent - - Human Action - - - - - - - Social Practices - - - - - - - - - - Structures - - - -

Washing and Cleaning

Gardening

Heating

Home making

Bathing

modes of use/enjoyment modes of access modes of provision CONSUMPTION -------------------------- PRODUCTION ----------------------------------- CYCLES

Figure 3: A detailed model of domestic consumption related to collective socio-material systems

C S O Y L S L. T S E O M C of O P M R A O T V E I R S I I A O L N

Rules & Resources

Comfort Cleanliness Convenience

L I F E S T Y L E


This model again does not tell us where to look for more sustainable lifestyles and patterns of domestic consumption. Empirical research should decide upon whether a certain course of action, a specific mode of use or a certain CCC-level is environmentally beneficial or not. One the one hand, human actors – aiming at a reduction of the environmental impacts of their lifestyles – are to a certain extent dependent on the environmental innovations made available to them through the systems of provision. On the other hand, companies, public utility sectors and governmental agencies involved in the development of more sustainable goods and services are dependent on human actors. They have to recognise environmental innovations as relevant ‘tools’ which fit their lifestyles and their internal domestic organisation as well as their specific CCC-levels. We will now turn to some developments that have taken place in utility sectors and domestic consumption that substantiate the formal models discussed so far.

The greening of domestic consumption: some empirical illustrations

To anticipate already on what could be the result of the ecological modernisation of the home, we may modify the passage of Schwartz Cowan at the beginning of section 3 as follows:

“On a superficial level, the ecological modernisation of the home appears to have been composed of millions of individual decisions freely made by environmentally conscious households: the Jones’s down the block are considering a solar energy roof and the Smiths around the corner did away with their car and their dish-washing machine. But the matter is not as simple as that. The Jones’ and Smiths’ individual choices would not have done them a bit good if the town fathers had not decided to execute sustainable building programs and call-a-car projects several years earlier, and if the electricity and water companies had not got around to connecting local PV-systems to the central grid and running household-water pipes into the neighbourhood”

Of course, a study as Cowan has done could only proof whether this is fiction or reality. But it can only be assessed in 50 years from now. Here we will try to ground our claim that the process of ecological modernisation is emerging in Western societies. A process that is not only taking place in the more obvious industrial sectors like chemistry or agriculture, but also in domestic consumption and utility sectors. We will empirically illustrate what the scheme presented in figure 3 may offer us as a tool of analysis. We start with the right side of the scheme (representing the systems of provision) by summarising the dynamics in some major public utility sectors. Going from right to left, we will illustrate the shifting modes of provision, access and use in the field of electricity and drinking water provision. Using examples of environmental innovations in these sectors we will draw up some preliminary conclusions on the current state of the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption.

Dynamics within the systems of provision

As a result of a growing neo-liberal political climate in the Netherlands and Europe, an extensive societal debate has emerged on the privatisation of state-owned utility companies and liberalisation of formerly monopoly markets. This is true for the energy sector, the waste management sector and, lately, the drinking water sector. In all sectors one can observe a changing climate from public modes of provision to private, informal and mixed modes of provision. These shifts especially affect relations between utilities and citizen-consumers as well as the way utilities and citizen-consumers deal with sustainability. Not surprisingly, part of the societal debate is on whether these services should remain ‘public’ as they provide basic needs to citizen-consumers. Another part of the discussion has to do with the changes in responsibilities for accomplishing the goals that are set out in environmental policy. Over the years environmental policy in the Netherlands has, broadly spoken, altered from a command-and-control steering to a more consensus-built target group approach. It implicates that the sectors directly or indirectly contributing to environmental problems are also made responsible for drawing up and implementing policies to solve these problems. Depending on the characteristics of the sectors, this has been done by putting in place neo-


corporatist steering mechanisms, chain management, covenants and voluntary agreements with different sectors of trade and industry. Utility sectors are also treated as specific target groups in environmental policy making. The water sector, for instance, is made responsible for the reliable supply of healthy drinking water for all inhabitants, but is also main executive body in implementing water saving measures. Electricity companies are the government’s main partner in policies to reduce electricity demand of consumers and industries. The current shifts in the modes of provision of utility sectors, are therefor also expected to change utilities’ role in executing environmental policy. The dynamism in the utility sectors as mentioned has already led to several technological and environmental innovations within these sectors. Many of those play an important role in reproducing the new image of public utilities as being modern, business-like, client-oriented and – above all – ‘green’ service organisations8. By environmental innovations we mean those new technologies and organisational changes within the system of provision that are sold to the public as environmentally friendly. Changes in the organisation of production, distribution or consumption of the services offered are connected to the different modes of provision, access and use of these services. With our theoretical outline given in previous sections, we may now be able to discuss these innovations, especially in terms of the roles that citizen-consumers are allowed to play. A European Union research project9 enabled us to make an inventory of utility related innovations in the Netherlands. Here we will present some of our examples in the field of electricity and drinking water.

Shifting modes of provision, access and use in the field of energy

Most of the electricity in the Netherlands is generated by four electricity generating corporations from different, mainly fossil resources. The generated electricity is sold to several regional distributing companies and then distributed to households. Apart from selling electricity, the latter companies are also responsible for accomplishing the national policy goals of energy saving and sustainable energy use. So, since the first oil crisis in 1973, electricity companies and gas companies have advertised and advised in energy saving measures to consumers and companies. They have also subsidised energy saving investments. This is not so much surprising as energy companies were predominantly owned and regulated by the state. Nowadays, the electricity sector is the front runner in processes of liberalisation and privatisation. The process of liberalisation is stipulated by the European Union (EU) competition policy, supported by EU policy on energy matters, which aims at an internal energy market for the whole EU community. One of the implications is that foreign electricity companies may enter the Dutch electricity market and competition will be introduced on the national electrical grid. During the era of the public mode of electricity provision, energy-saving measures have been stipulated by the central government and executed by distributing companies. Selling electricity to customers while at the same time telling them to save energy was of course a somewhat dualistic task to accomplish. It was however accepted because it came along with a protected monopoly status. In the new era of privatisation and liberalisataion, the environmental discourse regarding sustainable energy use is a bit different. There is less emphasis put on only savings. Instead customers are asked to make a shift to some more sustainable energy lifestyles by making use of renewable energy. Advice on energy saving is now considered to be a new service, a so-called ‘niche’ in the market. In the public mode of provision the roles of local government, utility company and consumers were fixed and clear; the technological systems were uniform and product choice was limited. Soon, however, the organisation of the production, distribution and consumption, the roles of different actors as well as the product range will be mixed up and diversified. Products and services serving the same end (like cooking the meal, lighting, cooling or heating the house) are made available to consumers in different forms, with different modes of access and use. It

8 Electricity companies conceive themselves as ‘your partner in energy saving’ and water companies nowadays call themselves

‘environmental companies’. 9 The project DOMUS is funded by the European Commission (DG XII). Objects of study are the systems of provision of energy,

water and waste services in the Netherlands, England and Sweden.


is even possible that the technical infrastructure might not change at all, while the product changes, as is the case with the provision of ‘green’ electricity. Green electricity is electricity generated out of renewable resources. Consumers may decide to pay the utility company an extra charge. In exchange they get the guarantee that this money will be used to invest in ‘green’ electricity generation, such as solar energy devices and windmills. The major change for consumers lies in the diversification of modes of access. Until now, there has been a choice between day and – lower priced – night electricity, now there is also a higher priced ‘green’ variant. Sometimes, environmental innovations still leave citizen-consumers as ‘captive consumers’ just as before, with even fewer choices and modes of use. This is the case when combined heat-power systems are put in place in a residential area to cover both heating and electricity needs. The system competes with the piped gas system which is in the Netherlands commonly used for heating and cooking purposes. The consequence for consumers here is a limitation in the choice of resources for cooking and heating. In other cases however, both the technical infrastructures as well as the way consumers function within it change considerably, like in the case of Photo Voltaic (PV) energy applications. PV panels can be put on the roofs of houses to generate electricity out of day-light. The cases of PV applications in the built environment may well illustrate that sustainable energy options with the same technological characteristics greatly differ in the way they are organisationally embedded in the system of provision. These differences relate to the power balances in the energy sector, the changing role of governments vis-à-vis utilities and an overall emerging client-oriented approach. Houses of a newly built residential area in Amsterdam are covered with PV panels that are owned and installed by the regional electricity distributing company. The generated electricity is directly transported to the central electricity grid and there are no connections between the PV panels and the households beneath them. In fact, what is installed here may be called an additional electricity plant in a quite peculiar setting. In Amersfoort, new built houses are also covered with the same PV panels. As in Amsterdam, initiator of the project is a regional electricity distributing company, which is also responsible for maintenance and repair. However, the generated electricity is used in the houses underneath. The utility company is experimenting with different combinations of modes of access to the sustainable energy source. As PV panels are becoming popular and production of PV panels is increasing, nowadays one can buy PV panels piece by piece on the market. Consumers just install them on the roof en put the connecting plug into the power point of the electricity grid. As a result, the electricity meter will turn backwards as long as solar electricity is produced. Although the basic technology is the same in all three cases, we can observe different modes of provision, access and use. The modes of provision range from public to private to domestic provision. The domestic mode of provision (self-installed PV panels) is not quiet supported by utility companies, unless they are suppliers of the frames and involved in service and maintenance. The range of possible modes of access in these cases show many differences with the mode of access to the conventional electricity system. The latter is based upon uniform delivery through the central grid and timely payments. In the case of PV applications in Amsterdam, residents will be owner or tenant of a house except for the roof, as this is owned and maintained by the utility company. Other possible modes of access are the leasing or full ownership of PV frames, as is being experimented in Amersfoort. In the case of full ownership of PV panels by residents, all generated electricity will be bought by the utility for the same price as they provide electricity for. In case of ownership by the utility, residents get a fee for the use of their roofs and 20% of generated solar energy will be paid back to them (REMU, 1998). The three cases of PV application also considerably differ in their modes of use. A self-installed PV frame with a plug is the simplest way to put renewable energy resources in place. The advantage of a utility company putting


PV frames on the roof is that a larger scale of application is possible. Moreover, one does not need to look after it. The way households are connected to the PV generating capacity can to a large extent determine the possibilities to individually monitor and monetarise renewable energy consumption. If one only considers technological features of PV applications, these do not seem to severely affect standards of comfort, cleanliness and convenience. However, reviewing the different modes of provision, access and use may help us to assess the way actors make use of the systems and the way they match or redefine their CCC-standards. We might expect for instance, that citizen-consumers who are able to monitor and monetarize conventional and solar electricity consumption, also become aware of their standards and possibly redefine them. Reviewing innovations not just on technological grounds, but also on grounds of their modes of provision, access and use, is especially relevant in case of innovations that are meant to preserve the environment. The main prejudices about environmentally sound innovations are that they are inferior to ‘high-tech’, reduce comfort and increase household efforts. The challenge now is to innovate technology and apply such modes of provision, access and use as to keep up the standards of cleanliness, comfort and convenience as much as possible. In the case of PV panels, the examples showed us that there are many possibilities to do so. In our next case, that of household water provision, we will see how much the CCC-standards are of influence in the application.

Shifting modes of provision and environmental innovations in drinking water supply

After a start as private businesses, regional companies responsible for drinking water supply in the Netherlands have been (mainly) publicly owned since the beginning of this century. Water companies and its representative bodies are appointed by the government to provide a reliable supply of healthy drinking water to all households in the Netherlands. Until now, they have pretty much succeeded in doing so. Although the Netherlands seems to have water in abundance, it is becoming increasingly scarce as a source for drinking water. Production of drinking water out of surface water is an energy, space and chemicals consuming process. Ground water basins, on the other hand, are becoming increasingly polluted by nitrates due to intensive cattle breeding. Moreover, the use of ground water is more and more restricted because of desiccation of natural reserves due to water winning, among other reasons. Water saving, thus, is a measure which should be and indeed is a part of Dutch environmental policy. Similar to the electricity distribution sector, the main bodies executing and promoting water saving measures are the water companies themselves. But for quiet some time these companies were not very eager to combine the selling of water with the education of consumers in water saving behaviour (Van Vliet, 1995). Since 1997, when the Ministry of Economic Affairs published a study on liberalisation of the Dutch drinking water market, the issue is debated throughout the sector. Ironically enough, the current water companies are among the main opponents to liberalisation. Also on the environmental playing field, consensus is still lacking on the role and tasks of water companies in reducing the desiccation of natural reserves. However, while some water companies still played down the necessity of water saving measures, other water companies have seriously been attempting to reduce consumer demand and are now providing different qualities of water for different uses. Quiet similar to the developments as described in the electricity sector, environmental innovations of the water sector seem to go hand in hand with diversification. A catch in the eye in this respect are the recent experiments of water companies that are aimed at the provision of ‘household water’. Household water is water that is to be used for toilet flushing, washing and gardening; practices which obviously do not need a drinking water quality. It is made out of surface water from the direct neighbourhood of the area of application. Household water is treated up to a level that is not harmful in case of incidental consumption. A second plumbing system parallel to that of drinking water distributes household water to the households. Proper use of the system may reduce drinking water consumption up to nearly 50%10.

10 In the Netherlands, the average water consumption per person per day is 135 liters. The use of toilet and washing machine to-

gether make up for 64.5 liters per person per day (VEWIN, 1998)


There is an environmental rationale in providing different water qualities for different uses. After all, both environmentally as well as economically, it makes no sense to use highly purified water for flushing toilets. Household water systems thereby compete with systems that apply rain water for toilet flushing and washing clothes, and ‘grey water’ systems applying locally treated domestic waste water for similar purposes. The main difference lies in its modes of provision: household water is water provided by the water company, whereas rain water and ‘grey water’ are locally generated or produced. Modes of provision, access and use differ considerably among these applications, but here we will emphasise the consequences of household water systems for the standards of comfort, cleanliness and convenience. The Dutch law on water works (Waterleidingwet) issues high standards for safety and healthiness of drinking water. Citizen-consumers have always been assured of the highest water quality standards for all purposes. As a consequence, the most debated issue in the case of household water provision is not its costs, nor even its environmental relevance, but the safety of the system and the health risks taken. Especially the out-door tap – used for gardening and car-washing but also for filling the child’s rubber paddling pool in summer – is a main point of discussion. Second best is the question whether the laundry will be as bright and clean as before if household water is used. These issues indicate that standards of cleanliness, comfort and convenience are highly relevant to consider when planning such experiments, especially of course in the field of water. The household water experiments may be an example to learn from other emerging experiments with water, such as local waste water treatment by reed-beds, rain water applications, composting toilets and the like. These are all illustrations of changes designed at the right side of our scheme (systems of provision) with sometimes not fully recognised or unexpected changes at the left side (citizen-consumers and their standards of comfort, cleanliness and convenience).

Ecological Modernisation of domestic consumption

With the cases mentioned above, we have tried to illustrate the growing variation in modes of provision of utility services as a consequence of both liberalising markets and environmental requirements. Until now, main innovations and variations can be observed at the level of districts (such as district heating competing with piped gas systems, household water systems) and utilities (appliance of solar or wind power, alternative sources for drinking water). However, noteworthy is the development of innovations at smaller scale. Newly developed ‘micro-heat-power systems’ can replace all energy systems in house and de-link households from the central grid. Individual rain water systems can replace up to 50% of drinking water use. Theoretically, greater diversification and smaller systems that are applicable at household level offer greater possibilities of social distinction. Especially with the more visible systems – like PV panels on the roof – people could ‘show off’ their lifestyle the way they also do with gardens and cars. So just as in other industrial sectors and in agriculture, ecological modernisation seems to take its path through public utility sectors. But ecological modernisation in utility sectors can be distinguished from that of other sectors for at least one aspect: its relation with domestic consumers. Domestic consumers are more directly affected by the ecological modernisation of utilities than by that of other industries. This alone should justify a special emphasis on consumer involvement. However, classical ways of thinking in the public utility sectors are rather persistent. Unlike what utility marketing departments wants consumers to believe through advertisements and web-sites on the Internet, most utility companies still have a monopoly and treat their customers as captive consumers. The authority of the consumer – so much emphasised in these advertisements – should become a bit more reality than fiction. Consumer preferences concerning the greening of lifestyles should be the starting point of environmental innovation rather than existing or invented technologies. Citizen-consumers expect innovations that acknowledge their own standards of cleanliness, comfort and convenience. They prefer to have insight in the way sustainable energy and water consumption may affect the modes of provision, access and use. The theory of ecological modernisation can provide us the key notions, as given in previous sections, for a more consumer oriented analysis of utility related environmental innovations. As is the starting point in industry as well, monetarisation and monitoring of substance flows may function as instruments for citizen-consumers to


reduce environmental impacts of their lifestyles. They will want to do so without lowering their CCC-levels and without fixing the time-space organisation of their households. In the examples presented in this section, most attention is given to utilities’ neglect of these considerations. Positive examples are of course also available: some environmental innovations could lead to higher standards of comfort, cleanliness and convenience, or to possibilities of social distinction (‘keeping to the Joneses’). These and other cases could well illustrate the measure of consumer involvement in the ecological modernisation of utility sectors. We hope to have made clear that the sociology of technology and environmental sociology could give us the appropriate tools to do so.

4. Consumer involvement as life-politics: ecological modernisation and political modernisation ‘The consumer attitude refers the whole of life to the market: it orients every desire and each effort in the search for a tool or an expertise one can buy’ (Bauman, 1990, 204)

In his rather pessimistic account of present-day consumer-culture and the impact of technology in our daily lives, Zygmunt Bauman emphasises that the introduction of domestic technologies is linked with individualisation in such a way that social problems are reduced to individual affairs. This is the case when an environmental problem as local noise is dealt with by applying double glazing or when people try to escape from poor public transport by buying a private car. These strategies for dealing with social and environmental problems are inadequate as they only provide a solution on the level of individuals or individual households. They ignore that some social problems can only be dealt with effectively on the level of the community or wider society. Especially environmental sociologists would be the first to agree with Bauman on this. They know that some environmental problems are key examples of social issues that require the active involvement of state-agencies at different levels, from the local up to the global level. When discussing the issue of consumer involvement in the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption, we have also primarily focused on the level of individual actors and individual households. Domestic social practices are not a purely individual affair. They are shared with other actors and sustained by systems of provision. We nevertheless argued for a consumer-led approach to production and consumption and stressed the need to include in the analysis of socio-technical change the actors’ motives to accept technological innovations offered to them by systems of provision. So consumer involvement has been conceived of as the ways in which human agents are involved in the reproduction of the technological systems serving their households. Because we have focused on the fits and mis-fits between ‘individual’ lifestyles and ‘internal’ domestic (CCC-)norms on the one hand, and ‘collective’, ‘external’ socio-technical systems on the other, we have only discussed consumer involvement on the level of individual households. However, the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption is not only a matter of individual life-choices. It is also a political affair and it should therefor not be left only to the experts involved in the provision of (sustainable) domestic goods and services. These kinds of processes affect – as Cowan was able to show – the minutiae of our daily lives in a very profound way. Hence it is all the more important that domestic consumers take up their role as citizen by participating in the process of political decision making which accompanies the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption. Having said this, we need to develop new forms of political participation to get people involved in the decision-making concerning the ways in which the intercourse with the environment is dealt with in daily life. The ‘old politics’, as Ullrich Beck and others have convincingly argued, no longer do (Beck, Giddens and Lash, 1994). Especially in the area of environmental policy making there has been a shift away from the state to the market. In those areas where the state still continues to fulfil a central role, one witnesses a redirection of formerly centralised, dirigistic governance into a form of horizontal, decentralised and participative policy-making. New forms of ‘sub-politics’ emerge that are not organised similar to classical, parliamentary politics and highly professionalised political parties. We are in need of ‘non-institutional’ forms of political decision making. Non--


institutional or sub-politics allow people to become involved in political affairs without having to go through all the official procedures and (lasting) obligations attached to policy-making in the era of ‘emancipatory politics’ (Giddens, 1994). Emancipatory politics have given way to new forms of ‘life-politics’ in which ‘individual’ life-style-choices are connected by human actors to political issues and developments on the national and global level of society. A much cited example to illustrate the direct and intricate connections between personal- and global political agendas, is the case of the Brent Spar. The proposed dumping of this Shell oil producing platform was prevented by a rather ‘unco-ordinated’ or spontaneous actions. Not only Greenpeace International was involved but also numerous car drivers passing Shell gas-stations and some ministers declaring in public to sympathise with the boycott. The ‘official’ governments involved (in the Netherlands and the UK as the two home countries of the multinational Shell) were paralysed during the short period of decision-making, resulting in Shell resorting to the public pressures. The Brent Spar is an exceptional case of sub-politics. However, the idea of environmental politics as something which is happening (also) outside the traditional political institutions, is becoming widespread and accepted (Hogenboom, Mol & Spaargaren, forthcoming). We will conclude this paper by discussing some examples of consumer-involvement which could be labelled as forms of ‘sub-politics’ related to the ecological modernisation of domestic consumption. We believe they are illustrative for the need of domestic consumers to find new ways to ‘green’ up their lifestyles, while being aware of the shortcomings of conventional forms of involvement. In many places in Europe, groups of people who are unsatisfied with the standard design of new housing projects have tried to influence the way their future houses are built. Some of these efforts were quiet successful. We will focus here on the housing projects in which environment was a major motive for the common effort. In conventional housing projects, consumers only seldom have any influence in the design of their house. Hence it is even more difficult to decide upon the utility networks that will be provided as this is usually done far in ad-vance of the first building activities. Yet, in some places in the Netherlands (Arnhem, Utrecht, Zutphen, among others), groups of consumers succeeded in materialising (some of) their wishes (Janssen et al., 1994; Van Vliet, 1997). They have set up an association and have spent some years in negotiating with city councils, housing cor-porations and utilities for a housing project that meets the environmental criteria on which the association was grounded. It has resulted in housing projects with devices such as small-scale wastewater treatment, rain water collection and application, solar energy applications and the use of sustainable building materials. For utilities and city councils these projects function as an experiment for future large-scale application of some of the technolo-gies. Besides, they give them a ‘green’ public image. The associations mainly consist of the well educated, con-cerned and environmentally conscious people. There is no institutionalised or recognised way of lobbying for your own ‘green’ project. Yet, these kinds of sub-political efforts are emerging and city councils, housing corpo-rations and utilities seem increasingly willing to recognise them and acknowledge their wishes to some extent. Another example of sub-political efforts by citizen-consumers to ‘green’ domestic consumption patterns is that of Eco-teams. Eco-teams are groups of around 10 households or household-members organised on block- street- or neighbourhood level (Harland et al., 1993). The idea for this world-wide campaign focusing on the grass root level (organised by the Global Action Plan) was strongly influenced and triggered by the severe criticism on the meagre results of environmental policy making. Moreover the conviction had emerged that individual households are (also) important contributors to environmental problems. Members of Eco-teams meet on a regular basis to discuss the results of their monitoring of environmentally relevant inputs to their households. The monitoring is not restricted to the use of water, energy and waste-facilities but also includes the buying of equipment to perform certain domestic tasks. The groups – consisting in theory of members of all social classes – exchange and discuss experiences they have with all kinds of environmentally sound devices. These range from water-saving shower-heads to self-build composting or water sanitation facilities. The theory on domestic consumption suggests that the members of the Eco-team perform a chreseology of consumption to further the ecological modernisation of their lifestyles. As it turns out in practice however, these groups (are made to) focus almost entirely on innova-tions and saving-devices that can be performed ‘after the meter’: within the households themselves. Only rarely


the activities of eco-teams are extended in a way that they include performances of actors and institutions operat-ing ‘before the meter’. As a result from our analysis above, one could argue that Eco-team activities should be di-rected also to experts and agencies within the systems of provision. Overall, the latter ‘deliver’ the environmen-tally relevant inputs to consumers in a circumscribed way and under certain conditions of access and use. If asso-ciations of citizen-consumers would succeed in connecting (green) initiatives and ideas on the hind-side of the meter with activities and goals at the front side of the meter, one could expect promising new forms of sub-politics to arise. Perhaps one of those new forms could be reshaping of some of the old initiatives deployed by companies and utility sectors in the early days of the industrialisation of the households. In the Netherlands for example, there has been a time that energy companies – competing for housewives as new customers of gas or electricity – installed their equipment in specially build kitchens. Groups of housewives were invited to learn about the benefits of cooking with gas or electricity or whatever services they wanted to sell. The Dutch VEV (Vrouwen Elektriciteits Vereeniging: Women’s Association for Electricity) for example, actively tried to contrib-ute to the diffusion of electric cooking in the thirties. They promoted electric cooking as being the modern, ra-tional way of doing it (Van Overbeeke, 1998). These groups did not survive over the years and neither can they be regarded as a form of sub-politics avant la lettre. Their aim was just selling gas or electricity and not the em-powerment of consumers or the organising of feed-back on the services delivered by utility sectors. However, the examples discussed here do point to the different ways in which environmental policy making can be conceived of with non-institutional politics. Groups of citizen-consumers start to negotiate with actors and in-stitutions within the various systems of provision that underpin their private lives. One does not need to adhere to all the (moralising?) ideas on ‘communitarianism’ (Clarke, 1996: 81) – as an alternative for the old static politics of the left and the new, liberalising policies of the right – to recognise that these forms of sub-politics can develop into a mobilising focus for collective action to further the ecological modernisation of our daily lives. References: BAUMAN, Z. (1990), Going about the Business of Life. In: Thinking Sociologically. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 195-213. BECK, U., GIDDENS, A. & S. LASH (1994), Reflexive Modernization; Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the moden Social Order.

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