TY - JOUR

T1 - Conceptualising connections

T2 - energy demand, infrastructures and social practices

AU - Shove, Elizabeth

AU - Watson, Matt

AU - Spurling, Nicola

PY - 2015/8/1

Y1 - 2015/8/1

N2 - Problems of climate change present new challenges for social theory. In this paper we focus on the task of understanding and analysing car dependence, using this as a case through which to introduce and explore what we take to be central but underdeveloped questions about how infrastructures and complexes of social practice connect across space and time. In taking this approach we work with the proposition that forms of energy consumption, including those associated with automobility, are usefully understood as outcomes of interconnected patterns of social practices, including working, shopping, visiting friends and family, going to school and so forth. We also acknowledge that social practices are partly constituted by, and always embedded in material arrangements. Linking these two features together we suggest that forms of car-dependence emerge through the intersection of infrastructural arrangements that are integral to the conduct of many practices at once. We consequently explore the significance of professional – and not only ‘ordinary’ – practices, especially those of planners and designers who are involved in reconfiguring infrastructures of different scales, and in the practice dynamics that follow.

AB - Problems of climate change present new challenges for social theory. In this paper we focus on the task of understanding and analysing car dependence, using this as a case through which to introduce and explore what we take to be central but underdeveloped questions about how infrastructures and complexes of social practice connect across space and time. In taking this approach we work with the proposition that forms of energy consumption, including those associated with automobility, are usefully understood as outcomes of interconnected patterns of social practices, including working, shopping, visiting friends and family, going to school and so forth. We also acknowledge that social practices are partly constituted by, and always embedded in material arrangements. Linking these two features together we suggest that forms of car-dependence emerge through the intersection of infrastructural arrangements that are integral to the conduct of many practices at once. We consequently explore the significance of professional – and not only ‘ordinary’ – practices, especially those of planners and designers who are involved in reconfiguring infrastructures of different scales, and in the practice dynamics that follow.

KW - car dependence

KW - climate change

KW - infrastructures

KW - social practice

U2 - 10.1177/1368431015579964

DO - 10.1177/1368431015579964

M3 - Journal article

VL - 18

SP - 274

EP - 287

JO - European Journal of Social Theory

JF - European Journal of Social Theory

SN - 1368-4310

IS - 3

ER -