Reading Group: 6 May 2014

A group of ten DEMANDers discussed Habits, routines and temporalities of consumption: From individual behaviours to the reproduction of everyday practices by Dale Southerton (Time & Society 2013 22: 335-355). The article was not an easy read for us as it presented a rather complex categorization of temporalities of practice through concepts of dispositions, procedures and sequences. The paper still gave us food for thought for thinking about energy demand through a more multifaceted understanding of temporalities.  We discussed a number of issues, for example the commitment to routines and how they vary, how sequences produce recurrent actions, and the aspect of intensity in carrying out routines. The institutionally constructed  ‘crazy hour’ in Australia was discussed as an example where dispositions are drawn together. We would have liked to learn more about how the different categories really related to each other,  and we were left wondering whether the concept of disposition was at the risk of proposing an individualistic perception of social difference. All in all, the paper set out some important topics to take forward in thinking about the temporal dynamics of practices.