Knowledge Agora



Similar Articles

Title Re-Introducing Consumption to the 'Circular Economy': A Sociotechnical Analysis of Domestic Food Provisioning
ID_Doc 2822
Authors Mylan, J; Holmes, H; Paddock, J
Title Re-Introducing Consumption to the 'Circular Economy': A Sociotechnical Analysis of Domestic Food Provisioning
Year 2016
Published Sustainability, 8, 8
Abstract The paper makes two contributions to the advancement of the 'circular economy' as a blueprint for a more sustainable society. The first is to highlight the importance of understanding the dynamics of consumption and waste in the domestic sphere. The second is to illustrate two ways in which using insights from socio-technical literature on sustainable consumption, in combination with the sociology of food, could contribute to redressing this shortfall. This includes understanding why people use or consume particular goods or services, and how this might be altered; and what drives the production of waste and the adoption of strategies for its reduction by consumers. We mobilise insights from a socio-technical perspective on consumption, which highlights the importance of everyday interactions between routine activities, mundane technologies and cultural meanings in (re) producing patterns of consumption. These insights are illustrated with reference to domestic food provisioning, using empirical data generated through twenty semi-structured interviews with consumers in relation to meat consumption and thriftiness. Two suggestions for the development of the 'circular economy' to better take account of consumption within the domestic sphere are made. The first is a shift from imagining consumers as 'users' of particular products or services, to conceptualisation as 'doers' of everyday activities. The second is a broadening of the principle of 'eco-effectiveness' to take account for the social value of consumption.
PDF

Similar Articles

ID Score Article
312 Hobson, K; Holmes, H; Welch, D; Wheeler, K; Wieser, H Consumption Work in the circular economy: A research agenda(2021)
3194 Agarwal, A; Srivastava, S; Gupta, A; Singh, G Food wastage and consumerism in circular economy: a review and research directions(2024)British Food Journal, 126, 6
1528 Lehtokunnas, T; Mattila, M; Närvänen, E; Mesiranta, N Towards a circular economy in food consumption: Food waste reduction practices as ethical work(2022)Journal Of Consumer Culture, 22, 1
1917 Greene, M; Hobson, K; Jaeger-Erben, M Bringing the circular economy home - Insights from socio-technical perspectives on everyday consumption(2024)
2190 Fassio, F; Tecco, N Circular Economy for Food: A Systemic Interpretation of 40 Case Histories in the Food System in Their Relationships with SDGs(2019)Systems, 7, 3
965 Ouro-Salim, O; Guarnieri, P Circular economy of food waste: A literature review(2023)Environmental Quality Management, 32, 2
16403 Lehtokunnas, T; Pyyhtinen, O Food, excess, wastage and waste: An ethnography of the practices of framing food products in the Finnish retail sector(2022)
2239 Suski, P; Palzkill, A; Speck, M Sufficiency in social practices: An underestimated potential for the transformation to a circular economy(2023)
27134 Quirk, S; Gibson, C; Cook, N More-than-transactional circular economies: the café-urban farm nexus and emergent regional food waste circuits(2024)Local Environment, 29.0, 6
4506 Lehtokunnas, T The circular economy futures in the making: Transformativity and object ontologies in food waste practices in Finnish households, supermarkets and biogas plants(2023)
Scroll