What is ‘business as usual’? Towards a theory of cumulative sociomaterial change

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay focuses on the commonly used term ‘business as usual’ and theorizes the change it entails. Business as usual refers to the continuation ad infinitum of established social practices, the current socio-material structures, whatever they might be. Yet, business as usual also entails change. It refers to a general type of social change; cumulative socio-material change inherently linked to the reproduction of established practices. Cumulative change should be seen as distinct from both evolutionary and revolutionary types of change. Uneventfully unfolding cumulative processes have significant impacts on our societies and their ‘built’ and ‘natural’ environments. They are typically non-disruptive, but they ordinarily exhibit nonlinearities and sometimes disruptions. Transforming business-as-usual changes from an ordinary ‘state of affairs’ to pressing political-economic problems may be see as general and global grand challenge that requires transformative agency targeting apex social practices, such as neoliberalism, that define the framework of action for most life-worlds.