Towards a less resource-intensive everyday life? Exploring relations between food, mobility, and housing practices

This dissertation delves into the urgent need for a shift towards less resource-intensive consumption patterns in light of the escalating climate crisis. Recognizing the substantial role that household consumption plays in global emissions, particularly resource-intensive practices related to food, mobility, and housing, this dissertation investigates how relations between food, mobility, and housing practices create implications for change towards less resource-intensive consumption in everyday life. Grounded in a longitudinal qualitative study of 20 households made up of 31 young adults, this dissertation draws on theories of practice. The inquiry is unpacked through four research articles and each article addresses a sub-question related to how food, mobility, and housing relate and interrelate in everyday life. Article 1 delves into the dynamic relations between routinization and reflexivity in changing and reproducing consumption practices. Identifying three analytical tools for exploring relations between routinization and reflexivity, the analysis goes on to compare food, mobility, and housing across all three themes to explore tendencies for reproduction and potentials for change towards less resource-intensive consumption. Article 2 examines the flexibility of household practices related to food, mobility, and housing during the 2022 energy crisis. The analysis suggests that social and material conditions influence the flexibility for less resource-intensive practice performances, offering insights into the dynamics of stability and change within everyday practices under circumstances of disruption. Article 3 explores how food, mobility, and housing practices interrelate and how these interrelations create path dependencies towards more resource-intensive consumption. The analysis finds that food, mobility, and housing become interwoven and embedded in interrelations characterized by conveniencisation, creating pathways towards more resource-intensive consumption. Article 4 assesses how connections between practices related to food and mobility change during a transition to new housing and the implications this has for change towards less resource-intensive consumption. In summary, this dissertation advances our understanding of sustainable consumption by highlighting the complexities of changing related and interrelated consumption practices. It challenges conventional approaches to reducing household emissions, offering a comprehensive framework for fostering less resource-intensive practices through the relations between daily practices.