In this talk I take seriously the proposition that patterns of consumption are usefully understood as outcomes of social practice, and that environmental sustainability depends upon transitions in what people take to be normal and ordinary ways of life. I argue that representations of individual environmental 'behaviour' in policy and in popular discourse have the unintended consequence of diverting attention away from the task of understanding how resource intensive patterns of heating, cooling and washing evolve. I then consider alternative ways of conceptualising changing habits in the bathroom and the garden, and discuss practical interventions designed to modify conventions of comfort, clothing, and ordinary mobility. These examples raise further questions about how governments and other actors configure environmentally significant systems and infrastructures of consumption and demand.

Professor Elizabeth Shove (Lancaster University) was invited to Swinburne under the Board of Research Visiting Professor Grant Scheme, and this lecture was presented as part of the PVC(R) Visiting Professor Lecture Series.