Social Practice Theory Research Articles

Community wellbeing in the built environment: towards a relational building assessment

ABSTRACT Community Wellbeing (CW) in the built environment is acknowledged as being ‘greater than the sum of its parts’, a process that emerges when residents negotiate understandings of community within shared spaces. However, methods of evaluation have not caught up. In practice, evaluation methods and frameworks measure CW as an aggregate of individual wellbeing, and operate as a ‘pick and mix’ of dimensions and indicators. Such an approach fails to capture the resident experience as it emerges from (and is shaped by) the local community context. To bridge the gap between theory and practice, we advance participatory mixed methods to integrate CW theory with current building performance assessment methods in support of the development of a novel, evidence-based tool. The first section covers the shift from an aggregate to relational conceptual framework, employing a social practice theory lens to acknowledge how CW emerges from individual and collective interactions. We then situate CW within current building performance assessment methods by reviewing seven CW frameworks. Finally, we recommend improvements to CW assessment based on our own research, including participatory methods, local community engagement, and Photovoice.

Ethical consumption: why should we understand it as a social practice within a multilevel framework?

This article discusses the importance of a multilevel and intertwined understanding of ethical consumption given its conjunction with other social practices. Although the literature on ethical consumption is vast, the role of sociotechnical regimes including technological and cultural elements, infrastructure, market and regulation has been mainly overlooked in this literature. This may be so because ethical consumption practices that refer to other-oriented consumption practices are mainly considered in the view of the motivations and preferences of individual consumers. Due to the insufficiency of individualistic approaches to explain stimulators and inhibitors of ethical consumption, there might be other components in society to lead (un)ethical consumption decisions. Therefore, to avoid an oversimplified view of ethical consumption, this paper contributes with a theoretical discussion on combining social practice theory (SPT) with a multi-level perspective (MLP). Although the SPT is a very well-structured framework in consumption studies, the necessity of a combined approach concerns the often-insufficient attention paid to structural prerequisites of various consumption forms in social practice theories. By understanding ethical consumption practices according to a multi-level framework, the paper emphasizes the importance of structural factors at macro- and mesolevels. It also contributes attention to how ethical consumption grows due to dialectical processes between levels, showing that niche practices can, at the same time, both challenge and depend on existing regimes.

THE ELEMENTS OF MAKING: A SOCIAL PRACTICE PERSPECTIVE FOR EVERYDAY CREATORS

In contrast to behavioural approaches that attempt to explain creativity, social practice theories commonly emphasize aspects of the material world that shape and reproduce how people engage with them. How might social practice theory clarify how making affects millions of hobbyist creators – and what makes making matter to them? This article examines the theoretical work tying creativity to social practice. It then reports on a project in which small groups of everyday creators in the United Kingdom (n = 95) gathered in workshops to discuss their experiences and opinions regarding the materials, meanings, and competences of making. A model-making research method instigated peer discussion revealing both individual and shared accounts of practice. The data indicated that participants, regardless of practice, experienced creating as an ongoing performance providing many benefits that promote personal and societal transformation. With our graphic iteration of the elements of making, we assert that the meanings these makers attached to their various do-it-yourself practices were underscored by the materials they worked with and the competences they built in creating.

Systems of social practice and automation in an energy efficient home

The development of residential automation and energy management systems have aimed to achieve energy reduction within the home. These systems have been developed to compliment human behaviour and potentially impart change in the way people consume energy. The development of energy efficient buildings has been considered a sustainable approach to better manage or optimise energy consumption and generation within a building however, multiple studies have demonstrated some limitations to these buildings and systems. The advancement of the home system of practice using the basis of Social Practice Theory has demonstrated a new focus for the design methodology of these systems. The home system of practice outlines the routines and repetitive nature of individual lifestyles, and these routines result in the temporal characteristic of energy consumption. This study monitored an Australian home that consisted of renewable energy systems, smart technology and automated systems designed to reduce the use of grid electricity. The aim was to understand the performance of the automation systems and interaction with the occupants and their routines. The paper discusses the effectiveness of incorporating social theories and the home system of practice into the design of energy efficient buildings and energy management systems. The methodology utilised machine learning techniques to identify patterns in energy consumption data and related these patterns to the routines and lifestyles of the home occupants. These patterns aimed to describe why the automation system incorporated into the study home did not operate as intended and how design changes can increase effectiveness and performance.

Understanding Food Waste Produced by University Students: A Social Practice Approach

We use social practice theory to explore food waste produced by university students living in shared apartments. We use qualitative techniques including observation, fridge ethnography, garbology and interviews. The most important factors that led to food waste among university students were a lack of organisation related to the practices of meal planning and shopping, where students did not make lists, plan meals or conduct a food inventory before shopping. Observation of meal preparation revealed that students were unlikely to correctly sort food waste from other sorts of waste, as they did not always have appropriate bins to enable food waste separation. Thus, food waste was not properly disposed of (e.g., composted). Fridge ethnography revealed that both fresh food and leftovers were left or lost in the fridge until no longer edible. Finally, garbology analysis confirmed that a considerable amount of avoidable foods, such as fresh foods and leftovers, were wasted by students and not properly disposed of in curbside composting bins.

Transmethodological mo(ve)ments

This article presents the authors’ collaboration with a former gang leader, referred to as X, as part of a research project exploring identity transformation and mo(ve)ments beyond gang engagement. The project is based on a transmethodological approach that involves different embodied researcher positionalities, theoretical engagements, and a merging of diverse research fields. The exploration of the different movements and changes in X’s life is based on, what we call a transmethodological mo(ve)ment ethnography, exploring mo(ve)ments of transformation of identity, engagement and community in the everyday life of X, who is striving to become a good, practicing Muslim. This approach makes it possible to go into depth with key moments of change in a subject’s life and pursue them from different theoretical perspectives by integrating and transgressing concepts, analytical gazes and positionalities. To analyze and understand the former gang leader’s life and process of transformation, we utilize poststructuralist and decolonial theory and integrate these approaches with those of social practice theory and critical psychology. In this article, we examine how we as researchers can transverse different theoretical and embodied positionings, analyzing transmethodology as closely linked to the positioning of the researcher, and ultimately pointing towards an emancipatory form of research practice.

Energy housekeeping: intersections of gender, domestic labour and technologies

Emerging energy technologies and tools aim to enhance peoples’ understanding and control over household energy. Yet, important questions are emerging about precisely whose understanding and control such technologies benefit, and how increasingly commonplace tools may shape the gendered division of domestic labour. This article explores how smart energy technologies, and in particular energy feedback, may reproduce or further entrench the unequal distribution of household labour between men and women. Theories of social practice are used to frame ethnographic research (semi-structured interviews, card game prompts and home tours) conducted with 24 Australian households using solar photovoltaics and batteries. Evidence is provided of men interpreting energy feedback for other household members, policing other householders’ energy-using practices and more broadly orchestrating patterns of energy consumption. Building on the concept of ‘digital housekeeping’, which refers to the gendered way in which domestic technologies are used and maintained, the paper suggests these practices constitute gendered forms of ‘energy housekeeping’. The energy housekeeping concept provides a means of understanding how emerging energy technologies and tools intersect with issues of gender and domestic labour. <em><strong>Practice relevance</strong></em> It is well established that domestic labour is largely performed by women. Research also shows that the use of smart technologies and energy feedback are gendered. Evidence from Australian households with solar photovoltaics and batteries shows that energy feedback and associated technologies may reinforce gender asymmetries in the home and enable men to control the domestic labour undertaken by others in the home. These outcomes are undesirable, even if they advance sector aims of aligning domestic energy consumption with patterns of renewable generation. Current energy management and feedback approaches need to engage with and be tailored for a wider, more diverse group of domestic energy users. This will better reflect the different ways that people engage with and think about energy.

Gender inequality: Curious Practices

The purpose of this study was to examine how female leaders reflect on a type of curiosity practice considering: a) the role of the asking of questions; and b) how women draw from the asking of questions in contexts of gender inequality. To accomplish this goal, we drew from social practice theory and a typology of questions. With this framework, we analyzed 31 interviews of women leaders from emerging markets across the world. Our analysis shows that female leaders’ reflections regarding the asking of questions, a type of curiosity practice, is instrumental to accessing and using human capital, as well as financial, relational, and symbolic resources. We discuss the implications of these findings in the light of current curiosity theorizing and leadership development.

Shaping Physical Activity through Facilitating Student Agency in Secondary Schools in the Netherlands.

Schools can enable students’ capability for lifelong physical activity (PA) by providing a physical, social and pedagogical context fostering students’ agency. This entails allowing them to develop their autonomy and ability to shape PAs according to what they value. This paper explores whether, and, if so, how, school practices provide the conditions for developing and employing PA-related student agency. We followed a multiple case study design, partnering with six secondary schools in the Netherlands. We based our qualitative content analysis on the schools’ policy documents and transcripts of interviews and focus groups with school management, teaching staff and supporting sports professionals. First, we analysed the space provided for PA-related student agency using the whole-of-school framework. Next, we used a social practice theory perspective to understand how each school practice allows for student agency. Results suggest that schools offer sufficient and varied PA opportunities but have not embedded deliberation with students on their meaningfulness and transfer to other contexts in their practices. We conclude that for schools to promote lifelong PA for students, there is a need for a pedagogical approach involving students’ perspectives, participation and reflections, enabling them to transfer PAs to other (future) life settings.

Street food environmental sustainability in a urbanizing global south: A social practice perspective

Selling and buying street food is an every-day practice for millions of urban poor living in cities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These practices are embedded in social routines (e.g., for producing food to consuming it and disposing waste) that are dependent on and influence the environmental performance of urban food systems as agents make use of resources (e.g., soil, water, energy, ingredients, etc.). A social science theory being increasingly applied to food systems and sustainability transformations, social practice theory focuses attention on the cultural, institutional, and physical embeddedness of social routines that characterize street food systems. It allows identifying barriers and lock-ins as well as opportunities to de-routinize unsustainable practices and help visualize the linkages and opportunities to nudge the routinization of sustainable practices. Through three examples of social practices in street food systems of the global south, we illustrate those linkages and propose a research agenda to step up the use of these perspective in promoting the contribution of urban street food system to sustainability.

Shockingly cold and electricity-dependent in a rich context: Energy poor households in Norway

Norway remains an understudied context for energy poverty. Resting on semi-structured interviews with 17 households located in two general areas around the wider Oslo region, the article draws on Bourdieu's concepts of social fields and capitals, as well as more recent social practice theory. We use this to explore what makes Norwegian households vulnerable to energy poverty, their coping strategies, and implications for health and wellbeing. With its particular reliance on electricity as household energy carrier, general high income-levels, and being at the forefront of the energy transition, the case of Norway generates insights useful for understanding energy poverty implications of decarbonisation. We show that households that are heavily dependent on electricity, have unstable incomes, and live in energy-inefficient rental housing are especially vulnerable. The most marginalised households are typically headed by unemployed persons of working age; dependent on parental assistance to live ‘normal’ lives, and they often struggle with stigmatisation and shame. Lack of access to economic and social capital influences their energy practices and vulnerability in several social fields, also beyond direct living conditions. With increasing electrification of sectors like heating, transport and industry, findings from Norway are relevant to energy-poverty scholarship on electricity dependency and decarbonisation.

Niche Sociality: Approaching Adversity in Everyday Life

How should sociologists understand the everyday lives of those living in adversity, coping with the experience of structural violence? In this article, focusing on the urban experience, we suggest a perspective on ‘everyday life’ that can encompass corporeal, mental, relational and social dimensions, which we term ‘niche sociality’. First, we use Gibson’s niches and affordances to enrich the post-representationalist understanding of human beings as embodied/cultural/environmentally embedded organisms. Second, we enrich Gibson’s niches and affordances with theories for ‘small-scale’ sociality drawn from social practice theory and interaction ritual chains. Third, we illustrate the productivity of these ideas throughout the article, by grounding our conceptual work in empirical examples that analyse the everyday lives and mental life of migrant workers in Shanghai. Niche sociality, we argue, is a way of framing the experience of the everyday, a perspective that could – perhaps should – provoke novel ecosocial studies of adversity.

Practices in transitions: Review, reflections, and research directions for a Practice Innovation System PIS approach

Social Practice Theories (SPT) can contribute to transition studies by deepening our understanding of the key social mechanisms and dynamics underpinning transitions in everyday life and the role of agency and collective action in processes of social change. Several studies have applied SPTs with concepts from transition studies, and these connections merit attention. The review presented here shows five ways how SPT are applied in studies of system change in transition studies by (i) considering change and continuity in practice elements, niches and regimes, (ii) connecting consumption and production, (iii) going beyond user practices, (iv) mapping diffusions of innovations in daily life and (v) examining policy implications and interventions. Reflecting on this, I argue that the studies in the review show promises of using SPT for transition studies to study system change by linking consumption and production, normality and novelty, stability and instability, micro and macro change, social and technical change, and flat and hierarchal levels. Based on this and a discussion of the need for a practice paradigm of local actions in the MLP, I propose concretising the connections between SPTs, MLP and innovation systems approaches to form a Practice Innovation System framework for future research directions.

High-Definition Archaeology, Small-Scale Narratives, and Monetary Practice in Medieval Scandinavian Urbanization

High-definition archaeology is an efficient tool to study medieval urban economic practices. Medieval economy has been synthesized in ‘grand narratives’ which obscure the regional and local variations of economic practice. Through examples from two medieval towns in Norway and Sweden the article aims to show regional diversity in monetary practices as an alternative narrative to the grand narratives that leave a dominant impression of the past as a linear and homogenous development. The article shows the complexity and dendritic development in early medieval monetary practice by using high-resolution data and elements from Social Practice Theory. High-resolution data is required to establish ‘dense chronologies’, which are of importance when reconstructing events and processes embedded in the archaeological contexts, as well as reconstructing norms and concepts of social behaviour embedded in events and processes.

Practice-based social marketing to improve well-being for people with intellectual disabilities

ABSTRACT Psychosocial theories that are often used to inform health promotion interventions for groups with reduced agency are not successful in bringing desirable changes. Critical social marketing provides avenues to disrupt mainstream individualistic approaches, which have been found unsuitable for vulnerable populations due to personal and systemic obstacles that prevent them to change behaviours and adopt healthier lifestyles. Adopting a critical social marketing lens, this conceptual paper explores how social practice theory can help to reimagine social marketing as a tool to reclaim agency, to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable populations, particularly people with disabilities. To demonstrate this practice-based social marketing approach, we used the example of physical activity for people with intellectual disabilities (PwID). Therefore, the paper has theoretical implications, contributing to the critical social marketing literature, and practical implications. It provides examples of how practice-based social marketing can be applied to increase physical activity and agency for PwID who reside in group homes.

Travelling Plastics: Exploring River Cruise Companies’ Practices and Policies for the Environmental Protection of the Rhine

Since 2013, romantic Rhine cruises gained immense popularity in Europe. However, these tourism activities also involve the generation of large amounts of waste. As rivers contribute significantly to the plastic waste influx in the marine environment, it is essential that river cruise companies cope with plastics in an environmentally-safe way. In this contribution, we try to overcome knowledge gaps regarding both the plastic practices of river cruise companies and the policies on cruise tourism and environmental pollution. We adopt a multiple-case study approach and use the Social Practice Theory to analyse the companies’ practices and challenges. Furthermore, we combine this with the analytical approaches of the Policy Arrangements and Synoptic Governance to explore the policies for environmental protection and tourism. The results show that, overall, river cruise companies have an eco-friendly approach to plastic waste management. However, dealing with plastics in the freshwater environment is not sufficiently rooted in the above policies: river cruise companies face important omissions in policies and facilities, resulting in plastic emissions in the river. Following the results, we formulate recommendations to support sustainable waste management routines onboard and to improve waste reception facilities onshore to protect the aquatic environment.

Technology social practices by Millennials and Gen Z at airport departure terminals

Airports play a vital link in tourism mobilities in a competitive environment to satisfy passengers and increase non-aeronautical revenues. Drawing on the Social Practice Theory this paper seeks to explore the multi-layered use of technology by young adult travellers at departure terminals in airports. Guided by constructivist paradigm, seven focus group interviews over two time periods with 52 travellers were conducted that revealed differences in meanings, competencies and structures associated with process and discretionary technologies at airports. By focusing on practices rather than understanding individual behaviour the research reveals meanings associated with technology practices by young adults at airports, an alignment by young adults with process technologies and gaps with discretionary technologies at airports. Practically, this research provides airport management with a useful lens to increase satisfaction and revenues by re-imagining discretionary technologies in similar ways to process technologies at airport departure terminals.

Alfredian military reform: the materialization of ideology and the social practice of garrisoning

King Alfred could not coerce his elites into implementing his ambitious military reforms. Instead, he had to persuade them to participate. Ideology can induce action, but how did an ideology focused on Christian wisdom motivate military reform? Different theoretical frameworks can help to identify promising new lines of enquiry. Assemblage theory illuminates the materialization of ideology in the burhs, the instantiation of relationships of power in the landscape. Social practice theory elucidates the consolidation of ideology through the social practice of garrisoning the burhs. These theories offer a fresh perspective on the subtle connection between Alfredian ideology and military reform.

Reorganising grocery shopping practices – the case of elderly consumers

ABSTRACT This paper aims to deepen the understanding of elderly consumers’ grocery shopping practices during Covid-19. Drawing on the shopping-as-practice approach within social practice theory, we show how the practices unfold as the pandemic evolves and the situation of the elderly change, which implies new possibilities and limitations in grocery shopping. Qualitative telephone interviews with elderly consumers were conducted in 2020 and followed up during 2021. By analysing the elderly’s grocery shopping as a social practice, we show how different modes of shopping practices (in-store, online and assisted shopping), came about, how they were reconfigured, and what made them work smoothly or not during the corona pandemic. We also show how the grocery shopping practices, and the modes involved were situated and synchronised in everyday life. The paper also discusses the implication for retailers.

Att utveckla undervisningen i förskola på vetenskaplig grund och beprövad erfarenhet: Förskollärares professionella lärande i ett aktionsforskningsprojekt

The Swedish preschool has undergone some radical education policy changes during recent years, all of which have affected teachers’ work. The focus of this article is on the changes relating to the demand for research-based education and how the concept of teaching has been introduced in preschool. The aim of this article was to study preschool-teachers’ professional learning in relation to research-based education within an action research project which focused a new conversation method with the children. The theoretical framework of the study was based on social learning theory and communities of practice. The empirical data consists of collegial conversations and written documents produced in the action research project. The results show that the preschool-teachers in a mutual agreement persistently examined and negotiated conversation methods so that they could be adapted to their view of teaching, their professional self, and children and children’s participation and learning. Through a common repertoire of scientific tools and social learning processes, they reflected each other’s teaching in an open, trustful, and appreciative collaboration, and together, they critically reviewed and problematized their earlier experiences and their teaching in relation to research.