End : 22 May 2026 à 12:00
We are pleased to invite you to a seminar « Abundance and dependence, extraction and restriction. A conversation on consumption as a political issue » with avec Elizabeth Shove and Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier on consumption and its political implications in the current context.
It will take place at the École des Mines de Paris on Friday May 22 from 9:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. To attend, please register here.
This seminar is organized by the Interdisciplinary Institute for Innovation (i3) and the project “Politiques de la sobriété énergétique” (SOBREPOL, an ADEME-ENPC project).
It is organized by Claire Le Renard (ENPC-LATTS / Projet SOBREPOL), Jeremy Bouillet (EDF R&D / Projet SOBREPOL), Catherine Grandclément (EDF R&D / i3-CRG), Alexandre Mallard (i3-CSI).
Abundance and dependence, extraction and restriction. A conversation on consumption as a political issue with Elizabeth Shove and Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier
The context of the war in Iran is once again shining a spotlight on Western countries’ energy dependencies, even as the debates on sufficiency launched four years ago at the start of the war in Ukraine appear to have had only limited impact on consumption patterns. These complex effects of resource supply tensions on consumption are also illustrated by other recent events, beyond energy issues per se. For instance the spectre of fertiliser shortages linked to the disruption of international trade is reinforcing growing long-term concerns about food sovereignty in a country like France, which used to see itself as a major agricultural nation. The North-South inequalities underpinning the consumption of a whole range of products (coffee, palm oil, soya, but also carbon offsetting, etc.) can be ignored less and less as the political underpinnings of the construction of transnational supply chains become visible. To what extent do these phenomena challenge the contemporary analysis of the link between consumption and the markets that sustain it?
Taking stock of the renewed focus on tensions within resource supply chains and their effects on consumption, the seminar aims to foster dialogue between two academic strands concerned with the connections between the worlds of production and everyday consumption, and their political implications: the theory of practices and the social study of markets.
Practice theory and the sociology of markets share a common commitment to the empirical grounding of their work and the importance accorded to materiality, moving away from the symmetrical programmatic monoliths of structures versus the individual. Much work within the theory of practices has focused on sustainable consumption and has shown how the very nature of practices—far more than individual choices, their synchronisation and their interconnections—explains levels of consumption of water, energy and digital services, for example, and creates collective dependencies that are highly resistant to attempts at change. The concept of ‘demand’ (for energy, water, materials, land, etc.), often invoked by public policymakers and industry, has, from this perspective, been the subject of in-depth examination, revealing that it is an ‘outcome’ of social practices rather than a starting point (Rinkinen, Shove and Marsden, 2020). ‘Demand’ has also been of interest to market sociology, which, through numerous case studies, has highlighted the circular relationship it maintains with supply. Viewed from this perspective and situated within the context of an economy based on mass consumption, green consumption appears, at first glance, to be ineffective in addressing environmental challenges (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2022). Research on political consumption, and ‘contested’ or ‘concerned’ markets, has shown how consumption is embedded in collective dynamics, conflicts and negotiations that extend beyond the mere completion of transactions, and conversely, how these can sometimes also serve as instruments of governance.
This seminar invites an open discussion on these issues. We will invite two specialists, Elizabeth Shove and Sophie Dubuisson-Quellier, to share their views before opening the floor for comments and discussion.
Dubuisson-Quellier, Sophie. 2022. « How does affluent consumption come to consumers? A research agenda for exploring the foundations and lock-ins of affluent consumption ». Consumption and Society 1 (1) : 31 50. https://doi.org/10.1332/UHIW3894.
Rinkinen, Jenny, Elizabeth Shove, et Greg Marsden. 2020. Conceptualising Demand: A Distinctive Approach to Consumption and Practice. London : Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003029113.
