Dan Welch | The University of Manchester (original) (raw)

Papers by Dan Welch

Handbook of Research on Sustainable Consumption

Journal of Consumer Culture

Drawing on empirical research, including interviews with 38 key informants, this article examines... more Drawing on empirical research, including interviews with 38 key informants, this article examines how the challenge of food waste reduction has come to be framed, interpreted and responded to in the United Kingdom, focusing on household food waste and the interface between supermarkets and households. We identify a ‘discourse coalition’ arising from collective actors central to the issue that has achieved discursive hegemony over the framing of food waste as a problem. We analyse this discourse coalition – its core storylines, actors and practices – and the conditions that have enabled its emergence. Critical accounts of sustainable consumption commonly note the ‘responsibilisation of the consumer’: or the reduction of systemic issues to the individualised, behavioural choices of the ‘sovereign consumer’. We find, by contrast, that the ‘responsibilised consumer’ is by no means the discourse coalition’s dominant framing of the problem of household food waste. Instead, its dominant fr...

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour

The essay sketches some lines of enquiry into how ‘everyday futures’ are imagined in discourse ar... more The essay sketches some lines of enquiry into how ‘everyday futures’ are imagined in discourse around ‘the Circular Economy’. The Circular Economy is offered as a model for a significantly more environmentally sustainable economy, an alternative to the current “linear economy” of “make, use, dispose” (WRAP, n.d.). The discourse has grown in prominence in recent years, with the EU recently reframing its policy commitments to sustainable production and consumption in terms of the Circular Economy (EC 2015). We examine examples from the national contexts of Estonia, Italy and the United Kingdom, and the EU level, to explore how everyday life and consumption are imagined in the future of the Circular Economy. We offer some initial sketches, drawing on practice theory (e.g. Schatzki, 2002) and conventions theory or ‘pragmatic sociology’ (e.g. Boltanki and Thévenot, 2006; Thévenot, 2001) and suggest further theoretical articulations to be pursued through the empirical area. Introduction T...

Journal of Consumer Culture

This article considers the potential of a novel practice theoretical concept – teleoaffective for... more This article considers the potential of a novel practice theoretical concept – teleoaffective formation – for the study of consumption. The concept builds on Schatzki’s social ontology of practice. Teleoaffective formations are configurations across multiple practices that enjoin those practices to common ends, ordering their affective engagements and offering general understandings through which participants make sense of the projects they pursue. This article argues that the approach affords consideration of large-scale configurations of practice and discourse and, therefore, enables re-engagement, from a practice theory perspective, with an earlier generation of concerns with consumer culture – including issues of cultural intermediation, consumption norms and the motivational structures of consumption. The distinctive features of the approach are illustrated through three successive teleoaffective formations that link the field of commercial communications (advertising, marketin...

Journal of Cleaner Production

Cultural Sociology

This short article introduces the Special Issue ‘Renewing Theories of Practice and Reappraising t... more This short article introduces the Special Issue ‘Renewing Theories of Practice and Reappraising the Cultural’. We first discuss the ‘practice turn’ in the sociology of consumption. We introduce three lacunae that advocates have identified in contemporary theories of practice that animate the contributions of the Special Issue: around the theorisation of culture, economy and the reflexive individual. We go on to discuss the place of culture in the ‘practice turn’, and its relations to cultural sociology. We then appraise some recent attempts at resolution. Lastly, we summarise the individual contributions to the Special Issue.

Cultural Sociology

The article triangulates Schatzki’s practice theory (2002) and Thévenot’s (2001) ‘regimes of enga... more The article triangulates Schatzki’s practice theory (2002) and Thévenot’s (2001) ‘regimes of engagement’ with the nascent field of ‘social futures’ or future-oriented cultural sociology (e.g. Coleman and Tutton 2017; Mische 2009). We present a reading of Thévenot’s regimes of engagement that is ontologically compatible with Schatzki’s account of social practices and argue that practices are more or less enmeshed in distinct regimes of engagement. We aver that while people engage reality through distinct regimes of engagement they do so, to follow Schatzki, primarily in the context of social practices. We then articulate this account with Giuliana Mandich’s (2019) work on the different modes of engagement with the future, or forms of reflexive projectivity, that are expressed through Thévenot’s regimes: that of practical anticipation for the regime of the familiar; of probability for the regime of the plan; of possibility for the regime of justification; and of discovery for the regi...

Handbook of Research on Sustainable Consumption

Journal of Consumer Culture

Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour

Journal of Consumer Culture

Journal of Cleaner Production

Cultural Sociology

The paper reviews recent practice theoretical approaches to emotion and affect and assesses their... more The paper reviews recent practice theoretical approaches to emotion and affect and assesses their potential contribution to the sociology of consumption. How emotion is implicated in the “motivational structure of consumption” (Campbell, 1994) has been a foundational concern of consumption scholarship. Illouz (2009) has called for “vigorously injecting the notion of emotion into the sociology of consumption” (p. 377). However, emotion and affect are highly contested notions in social and behavioural science (Harre and Parrott, 1996). Since the millennium, the burgeoning attention of social and cultural theorists to emotion and affect has led some to characterise this as an “affective turn” (Greco and Stenner, 2008; Harding and Pribham, 2009). And in recent years, a growing body of work has developed practice theoretical accounts of emotion and affect: in sociology (Reckwitz 2012, 2017; Weenink and Spaargaren, 2016); history (Scheer, 2012); social psychology (Wetherell, 2012, 2013, 2014); and human geography (Simonsen, 2007). Practice theory accounts of emotion offer a critique of, and alternative to, influential “non-representational” theories of “affect” (e.g. Anderson, 2010; Massumi, 2002; Thrift, 2004) that posit affect as inarticulable, pre-discursive and pre-social (see Barnett, 2008; Leys, 2011; Wetherell, 2014). Despite the ‘practice turn’ in the sociology of consumption, and with one or two exceptions (e.g. Rafferty, 2011; Sahakian, Bertho and Erkman, 2016), consumption scholarship drawing on practice theory has largely yet to engage with this theoretically allied field. Drawing insights from these approaches, the paper goes on to unpack the potential for the sociology of consumption of Schatzki’s (2002, 2010) concept of “teleoaffectivity”—which articulates how motivation towards goals (teleology) and emotion (affect) are mutually implicated in practices and larger social formations.

This paper examines a novel form of cultural intermediary (Bourdieu, 1984)—the sustainability com... more This paper examines a novel form of cultural intermediary (Bourdieu, 1984)—the sustainability communications practitioner—and the performative role these practitioners play in instantiating ‘the sustainable consumer’. The paper draws upon research into the commercial field of sustainability communications in the UK, conducted through participant observation, key-informant interviews and secondary data analysis. Rather than making a strong case for the instantiation of this figure of ‘the sustainable consumer’ in the social world, the paper explores attempts to enact it on the part of practitioners. The paper addresses three areas. Firstly, the paper introduces the commercial field of sustainability communications in the UK, its discursive and normative dynamics, and the multiple “orders of worth” (Stark, 2009; Boltanski and Thevenot, 2006) it embodies. Secondly, I identify four ideal type modes of instantiation of ‘the sustainable consumer’ enacted within the commercial field. Thirdly, I address the issue of cultural intermediation. In current consumption scholarship there is a pervasive acceptance of the power of cultural intermediaries, but relatively limited attention paid to the empirical processes whereby that alleged power is enacted, or to the conceptualisation of that power. The paper offers an account of the cultural intermediation of sustainable consumption through the lens of contemporary practice theory (Warde, 2014; Schatzki, 2002).

In debates relating to climate change, public health and trade justice, consumers are positioned ... more In debates relating to climate change, public health and trade justice, consumers are positioned both as part of the problem and as part of the solution. This paper focuses on the ways in which ‘the citizen-consumer’ features in contemporary responses to the challenges of food waste reduction. In doing so, it takes a cue from perspectives on the ‘responsibilization’ of the consumer (Barnett et al. 2011) and those which posit that citizenly action is being reconfigured through new
repertoires of consumption (Clarke et al. 2007). Drawing on archival research, secondary data sources and key-informant interviews with retailers, policy makers and third sector organizations, our analysis does several things. First, it attends to the processes through which food waste has emerged as an issue that requires governing. Second, it maps the organizations and institutions that have framed food waste as a problem and possibility of consumer behaviour. Third, it explores
the ways in which campaigners have utilized the figure of ‘the consumer’ to exert pressure on food retailers. Finally, it examines retailers’ understandings of consumption, and how these are informing their efforts to reduce food waste. To conclude, we reflect on the implications of our empirical domain (food waste) and our substantive focus (retailers) for theories (Rose, 1999, Trentmann, 2006, Lury, 2011) that stress that ‘the consumer’ is a shifting subject position, and one that is constructed and mobilized by various actors for a variety of political ends.

In recent years, concerns about the origins and consequences of food waste have risen to prominen... more In recent years, concerns about the origins and consequences of food waste have risen to prominence in the realms of food policy, cultural politics and environmental debate. Food waste ¬– at least in the Global North ¬– is typically positioned as an ‘end of pipe’ issue (Alexander et al, 2013) with households and public systems of waste management assuming responsibility for its reduction. This paper focuses on the current vogue for major food retailers to develop strategies that purport to help consumers in reducing the amount of food that they waste. Drawing on archival research, secondary data sources and key-informant interviews with retailers, policy makers and third sector organizations, our analysis explores the ways in which the challenge of food waste reduction is being framed, interpreted and responded to by a variety of actors. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which retailers are approaching the task of changing consumer behaviour, and how these align with – or depart from – insights that derive from the sociology of consumption (Evans, 2014). Attention is also paid to the interface of retailers and food redistribution channels, inviting a focus on the role of technologies and markets in configuring processes of de- and re-commodification. To conclude, we reflect on the implications of our analysis for thinking about transitions towards sustainability in food systems (Spaargaren, et al., 2012), and the specific role of retailers in the intermediation of sustainable production and consumption.

Ethical consumption and sustainable consumption are often considered to be synonymous. I suggest ... more Ethical consumption and sustainable consumption are often considered to be synonymous. I suggest they are better understood as distinct phenomena. The importance of this distinction is in challenging the assumption that sustainable consumption can be achieved by scaling up ethical consumption: if everyone was an ethical consumer, consumption would be sustainable. Firstly, the role of the consumer in both ethical consumption and sustainable consumption needs to be problematised. Secondly, we need to acknowledge that that ethical consumption tells us very little about the challenges of sustainable consumption. Lastly, we need a more appropriate way of understanding sustainable consumption – I suggest this is provided by a practice theoretical approach to consumption.