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How much note do designers take of users′ needs in designing buildings? Users apparently are treated as just that, reactive in their use of whatever is provided for them. What is lacking in the minds of designers is an appreciation of the proactive stance of users from the sociological viewpoint vis‐à‐vis their relationship with the buildings in which they work. Post‐occupancy evaluations which have traditionally embraced the reactive should now take more cognisance of the proactive aspect of the people/buildings relationship and rescue the occupants from the zombie‐like state to which they have been condemned.

How to change consumption patterns remains one of the most wicked global sustainability challenges, and it is increasingly acknowledged that such wicked problems require interdisciplinary solutions. In this chapter, we ask what can be learnt from contrasting two approaches to sustainable consumption that only to a very limited extent interact. First, psychological approaches to consumption have been immensely influential concerning individual behavioural change, particularly through their theorisations of ‘nudge’ and ‘choice architecture’. Second, social practice theories (SPTs) have obtained a dominant position in sociocultural approaches to consumption, focusing on how bodily, social and material elements combine into taken-for-granted daily routines that make up shared patterns of (unsustainable) social life. Interestingly, despite the theoretical approaches' different ontologies and analytical loci, nudge theory and practice theories seem to end up in surprisingly similar recommendations for facilitating sustainable change. In this chapter, we explore the differences and similarities of two theoretical bodies that rarely interact, with the aim to explore the room for breaking out of disciplinary silos and investigate potentials for cross-field pollination. We use the empirical case of continuity and change in meat consumption, but the dynamics discussed are arguably relevant for all fields of consumption. We demonstrate that while cross-pollination between nudge and practice theories could potentially increase political attention as well as be used to deliver more precise and tailored interventions, the diverging ontological underpinnings of these directions of thought significantly reduce the potential for further co-development.

This chapter introduces the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Cultural Value Project and the ensuing legacy work. It suggests that this work has resulted in the re-positioning of the field of enquiry into cultural value by shifting attention away from policy constructs and towards lived experiences; away from measuring the outcomes of cultural participation and towards understanding the process of engagement. The challenge still remaining is to develop an empirically grounded pragmatist account of cultural value as a form of practice – a situated interface of agents, actions and structures taking place in an institutionalised and materially circumscribed environment. Reconceiving cultural value in these terms will have profound methodological implications, not least the challenge of finding methodologies appropriate to its analysis within the realm of historically and geographically variable relations and structures. It is, however, a challenge worth taking. The proposed shift, it is suggested, will provide a way of addressing some long-standing ‘problems’ arising in relation to cultural value: the separation of conditions and consciousness; the overemphasis on the cognitive at the cost of the bodily; the separation between ‘the best and the brightest’ and the ‘everyday’ conceptions of culture. The proposed approach may also drive the refinement of flat(ter)-ontology methodologies which neither succumb to methodological individualism nor overemphasise methodological structuralism.

The purpose of this paper is to further develop the conceptualization of music consumption in the digital age by examining how contemporary music listening is interweaved with other practices, how it shapes those practices and how it is in turn shaped by them.

The paper draws on extensive, qualitative interviews with 15 Swedish music consumers. During the course of these interviews, specific situations of everyday music listening were discussed in detail.

Drawing on practice theory and more specifically the concepts of dispersed and integrative practices, the authors identify and explore a mode of music listening that they term soundtracking, which involves choosing and listening to music mainly to accompany other everyday practices.

As soundtracking grows in importance, music is increasingly consumed as an affective-practical resource. Its significance is then not derived from its ability to demarcate difference and construct consumer identities but from its capacity to evoke emotions and moods than enable and enrich a set of everyday practices.

When music is consumed as part of soundtracking, issues such as the audio quality of music or ownership of material music media become less important, while aspects such as mobility, accessibility and the adaptability of music increase in importance. This has important implications for how and what music should be produced and marketed.

This paper offers an alternative view of contemporary music consumption compared to previous research, which has considered music listening primarily as an integrative practice on which the practitioner is fully focussed. The paper also contributes to practice theory by offering an empirically based understanding of a dispersed practice, showing that such practices are neither without shape nor necessarily very simple in their structure.

This paper aims to use the results of a synthesis of six social science fellowships to explore how alternative framings of the climate justice debate can support fairer climate policies.

The original fellowships drew on sociology, economics, geography, psychology and international relations. Cross-cutting themes of rights, risks and responsibilities were identified following a series of workshops. Results of these workshops were discussed in a number of policy fora. Analysis of the feedback from that fora is used to propose the case for a rights, risks and responsibilities approach to building a more accessible climate justice debate.

Existing climate policy unjustly displaces a) responsibility for emission reductions, b) risks from climate impacts and c) loss of rights. Foundational questions of acceptable risk have been ignored and a just climate policy requires procedurally just ways of revisiting this first-order question.

The contribution a rights, risks and responsibilities framework can bring to a process of educating for climate stewardship is at this stage theoretical. It is only through trialling a rights, risks and responsibilities approach to climate justice debates with the relevant stakeholders that its true potential can be assessed.

Policy actors expressed strong resistance to the idea of overhauling current decision-making processes and policy frameworks. However, moving forward from this point with a more nuanced and tactical understanding of the dialectical relationship between rights, risks and responsibilities has the potential to improve those processes.

Educating for climate stewardship will be more effective if it adopts an approach which seeks a co-production of knowledge. Beginning with the foundational question of what counts as an acceptable level of climate risk offers an inclusive entry point into the debate.

Reveals limits to public engagement with climate policy generated by a ‘justice’ framing.

The purpose of this paper is to present a novel qualitative activity focus group (AFG) method for studying consumption practices. This participatory method, which is inspired by practice-theoretical thinking, combines focus group discussions with activities that represent the practices at the centre of the research.

The application of the AFG method is demonstrated with an empirical study of the transition to plant-based food consumption practices in Finland, involving four group sessions of 13 participants.

The findings from the empirical application of the AFG method illustrate that its key strength is the ability to foster fruitful and natural discussions on routine consumption practices that connect with discursive and practical dimensions and thus generate multidimensional data in resource-efficient ways.

The AFG method extends the methodological approaches in practice theory–oriented research, responding to the call for creative, real-life-reflecting methods that are able to grasp the discursive and embodied dimensions of practices. The method is proposed to be particularly suitable for research on mundane consumption practices.

By tracing something of my history in becoming a marketing professor and conducting research, I hope to demonstrate that if I can flourish without compromising my ideals or losing my enthusiasm for research, so can anyone.

I attempt to show my trajectory, emphasizing the little turns along the way that have sent me in certain directions. I also discuss several of my most cited articles and discuss how they emerged.

I emphasize reading broadly, working with interesting co-authors, learning from my students and breaking free of narrow disciplinary boundaries as ways that have helped to stimulate and inspire me. The implicit message here is to take a chance and dare to do something different from what seems to be the mainstream.

There is certainly no single way to pursue a successful career. But I hope that by showing how I happened to get to where I am, I may give support and encouragement to those who may feel they are outside the academic mainstream in marketing or that their ideas don’t quite jell with those of colleagues.

The story and opinions here are mine alone. Together with others’ biographies and autobiographies (Shaw and Wilkinson, 2011), hopefully the reader can find a range of possibilities.