Things in motion, things in practices: How mobile practice networks facilitate the travel and use of leisure objects

Abstract

While complex spatialities and mobilities underlie patterns of contemporary consumption, many of their dynamics remain unexplored. Authors have taken up Warde’s suggestion that consumption is a moment within social practices, yet the implications of multi-sited performances and travel for this consumption have not been fully considered. This article therefore focuses upon the objects within practices, adopting Appadurai’s strategy of following things-in-motion in order to highlight how the travel of objects opens up opportunities for their use. Qualitative research is used to follow the things of two leisure practices, patchwork quilting and bird watching, illustrating how they involve both multi-sited performances and instances of consumption on-the-move. In order to discuss the changing sets of objects that enthusiasts make use of, the article proposes the concept of ‘mobile practice networks’, which recognizes how temporary coalitions of objects and people actualize the portability of things. Whereas Latour’s immutable mobiles maintain their links after travel, mobile practice networks are made to be broken, with their stability existing only during travel. Mobile practice networks are enacted as temporary accomplishments: as moments within the circulation of objects, when objects gain additional materials to facilitate their mobility. Following things-in-motion highlights the cycles of use and disuse, mobility and immobility within consumption, and demonstrates that the appropriation of objects is inseparable from the work of moving materials around.