Pathways to more resource-intensive consumption through convenient bundles and complexes of food, mobility and housing practices

Abstract

In contemporary society, it is widely acknowledged that current patterns of consumption are fundamentally unsustainable because a large percentage of emissions comes from consumption related to food, mobility and housing practices. However, current debates and existing research on the need to change daily practices to address climate change tend to focus on single consumption activities, thereby paying too little attention to how practices are embedded in daily routines connected to a multitude of other practices. Instead of considering consumption activities related to food, mobility and housing as separate from one another, we examined how they connect and overlap with each other in the everyday lives of young Danes and what implications this might have for the ability to transition to less resource-intensive consumption. We do so through an analysis of data from interviews, mobilities mapping and photo diaries with 20 households, for a total of 30 young Danes (age 25–35) who are in the process of moving to new housing. With an outset in theories of practice, the article shows how the relations between the householders’ routines concerning food, mobility and housing become interwoven and embedded in bundles and complexes of practices characterised by conveniencisation. We argue that the conveniencisation in the case of bundles and complexes among food, mobility and housing practices create pathways towards more resource-intensive consumption as an implication due to the ‘stickiness’ of co-dependence in complexes and even looser interdependence in the bundling of food, mobility and housing practices in everyday lives.