A Practice Theory Approach to Sustainable Consumption

Sustainable consumption is often reduced to consumer choices or forms of product appropriation. Such a narrow focus on individual acts neglects their role in reproducing social order and only shows the top of the iceberg of consumption. In contrast, reconstructing consumption as a part of social practices sheds light on the fundament of the iceberg and shows how everyday consumption patterns are embedded in socio-cultural and socio-technical settings. A qualitative study on life course transitions to parenthood is taken as an example to show how changes in a household's consumption patterns is pre-structured by the social construction of parental practices. The paper concludes with a call for a more reflexive, collaborating and experimental policy approach towards sustainable consumption.