In many ways, this 'gap' between the original constituency, whether a group of enthusiastic amateurs, engineers or inventors, and the future wider group of buyers is what marketing and advertising departments try to fill in by offering ready-made models of life-styles and cultural practices that new products and services can fit into. For instance, in order to export Nordic walking sticks (Shove and Pantzar 2005), the company producing them has, very concretely, to export and make meaningful a totally new practice of walking with two sticks. When exported to other countries from Finland, the practice is radically transformed and effectively become quite another practice.

One way out of this impasse is to notice that individuals engage in many practices and consequently belong to multiple communities at once. This insight is at the heart of methods like those of viral marketing. Since social networks overlap and extend beyond the margins of any one practice, they can be, and often are, important in generating what seem like chance encounters and unpredictable experiences. In our study of how Nordic Walking became established as a popular pastime we found that the practice spread by means of social contagion, moving between people who already knew each other as neighbours or as friends sharing other interests in common (Shove and Pantzar, 2005). This is not at all unusual. As with the diffusion of punk, new recruits were drawn into the scene through established networks.

Since the early 2000s, the practice turn in social sciences has influenced studies of everyday consumption (Shove, 2003; Shove and Pantzar, 2005; Warde, 2005, 2014). This has led to more attention being paid to how consumption unfolds while carrying out everyday chores, such as cooking, routines, like commuting, but also free-time activities, like Nordic walking. Parallel to this the practice turn has also influenced the study of markets (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2006, 2007). Studies have set out to explain how markets are made to work, as well as how different actions on markets, such as a consumer choosing a product, are configured through market practices. While these two streams—one focusing on consumption in everyday life and the other addressing how consumption is shaped through markets—developed parallel to each other, their shared theoretical roots, influenced by the practice turn, and their respective sociological approaches to consumption and economics allowed for different cross-fertilisations (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2022; Evans and Mylan, 2019; Shove and Araujo, 2010). Furthermore, it is increasingly argued that the two can strengthen each other to study what shapes consumption (Evans, 2020; Fuentes and Samsioe, 2020; Stigzelius, 2017).

Indeed, cooperation with Elizabeth Shove (a sociologist and an economist) implied a lot of time-consuming negotiation of interpretations of our different epistemic positions. For instance, we discussed a lot whether we should characterize our framework as a “model” (as economists do), an “approach” or a “theory,” or how to make sense of the mechanisms by which individual acts and practice complexes — relate to each other. When we operationalized our thoughts, we developed a kind of “precision choreography of everyday life.” “Picturing practices” was one of the ways through which we attempted to reach shared understandings. Many topics, such as the diffusion of digital photographing and floorball (Shove & Pantzar, 2007) or nordic walking (Pantzar & Shove, 2010a), temporal patterns of everyday life (Pantzar & Shove, 2010b) or fossilized practices (Shove & Pantzar, 2005) started from simple curiosity or occasionally even from jokes. For me, as a consumer researcher, just the idea of increasingly moving the focus from sayings (or artefacts) to doings and processes was definitely an essential step.

A core aspect of this understanding of social practice is a shift in focus from individuals and systems to practices as patterns of activity. Building on these insights while recognizing the heterogeneity of existing definitions, Welch and Warde (2015, p. 85) have suggested a minimal definition of social practice as “an organized, and recognizable, socially shared bundle of activities that involves the integration of a complex array of components: material, embodied, ideational and affective. Practices are sets of ‘doings and sayings’; they involve both ‘practical activity and its representations’ ( Warde 2005, p. 134 ).” Examples of social practices are driving, cooking, cycling, showering, and decision-making. While many studies have sought to better understand a single practice or multiple inter-locked practices, some have also focused on change over time, such as explaining the emergence of Nordic walking in Europe ( Shove and Pantzar, 2005 ) or the shift from bicycles to motorbikes in the streets of Hanoi ( Hansen, 2017 ).

Shove, E., Pantzar, M. and Watson, M. (2012) The dynamics of social practice: everyday life and how it changes. London: Sage.

Although we are primarily interested in following the lives of elements, not of practices as such, a brief account of how Nordic Walking (a form of walking involving the use of two specially designed poles to increase the intensity of the exercise) emerged in Finland provides some insight into the ways in which meanings like those of infirmity and well-being 'travel' and evolve. For Nordic Walking to take hold on any scale, walking with 'sticks' had to be disassociated from meanings of frailty and somehow connected to concepts of vitality and wellbeing. This required a process of de- and re-classification: old connotations had to be shaken off and new connections made. In an effort to make this happen, manufacturers and others with an interest in establishing the practice sought to position it with reference to two established narratives,

Since any one practitioner has limited first-hand experience of how a practice is reproduced by others, it is nearly always the case that elements of meaning are quite literally mediated. In Finland, representations and pictures of Nordic Walking in the press and on TV proved crucial in making key associations, for example, depicting Nordic Walkers in natural rather than urban settings, and illustrating other relevant features like the age and clothing of those involved. Infrastructures of mass communication are now such that there is virtually no limit to the settings through which such images might circulate. The catch is that while the media has a vital role in disseminating ideas, pictures and texts,

© Elizabeth Shove, Mika Pantzar & Matt Watson 2012

ELIZABETH SHOVE, MIKA PANTZAR & MATT WATSON

If practices are composed of materials, meanings and competences, histories of practice need to take note of the conjunction of all three elements at once . In this they differ from conventional histories of the development and diffusion of cars, many of which focus on technical and organizational innovations in manufacturing and on Ford's contribution in particular

elements (materials, meanings, competences). Practices-as-entities are constituted through such integrations (Chapter 2). Practices change when new elements are introduced or when existing elements are combined in new ways. Elements of meaning, materiality and competence are themselves outcomes of practice. Although they are generated and changed through moments of enactment, elements – being part of several practices at once – have somewhat independent lives of their own (Chapter 3). If practices are to survive they need to capture and retain practitioners willing and able to do this integrating and therefore willing and able to keep them alive (Chapter 4). Relations between practices take different forms – some collaborative, some competitive, some weak, some strong. Whatever form they take, such relations matter for the trajectories of the elements and individual practices of which composite bundles and complexes of practice are made (Chapter 5). Finally, the connections involved, between elements and practices and between one practice and another, are maintained and reproduced through intersecting circuits of reproduction that have dynamic qualities of their own (Chapter 6).

In Chapter 2 we argued that practices like driving develop as links between defining elements are made and broken. In so far as this is true, the potential for practices to spread and take hold depends, at least in part, on the ready availability of requisite elements. If we are to understand how practices are distributed within and between societies, we need to think about how materials, meanings and forms of competence circulate and persist. This requires a shift of emphasis. Whereas Chapter 2 concentrated on connections between elements, this chapter discusses what one might think of as generic features or ‘elemental’ characteristics. In proceeding as if these could be somehow separated out, and in suggesting that materials, meanings and competences travel and endure in distinctly different ways, we seem to go against the grain of the previous chapter, in which we made much of the point that elements constitute each other and change through processes of integration . This is no accident. By moving between analytic frames, some chapters prioritizing links and connections, others concentrating on elements, practitioners or forms of feedback, we examine the dynamics of practice from different angles. At the same time, we try to keep sight of the interdependencies involved.

Practice theory focuses on actions per se . Practice theory is another powerful theoretical framework widely applied, also in consumption studies (Schatzki, 1996; Reckwitz, 2002; Shove and Pantzar, 2005; Shove et al. , 2012; Warde, 2005). Reckwitz (2002, pp. 249) defines practices as a "routinized type of behavior"; as a block or pattern that consists of interdependencies between diverse elements including "forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, "things" and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge" (Shove et al. , 2012, pp. 6–7). Shove et al. (2012) suggest a scheme based on three main elements of practices: materials, meanings and competences. Materials encompass objects, infrastructure, tools, hardware and the body itself (Shove et al. , 2012, p. 23). For this research, among the most important part of the materials is, for instance, the availability of infrastructure for thrifting and recycling or tools for repairing and upcycling clothing. Meanings is a term that represents the social and symbolic significance of participation in practices (Shove et al. , 2012, p. 23). For this study, this means justifications that young consumers give for why and how they follow clothing consumption practices. Competences are multiple forms of understanding and practical knowledgeability (Shove et al. , 2012, p. 23). Competencies would mean knowledge and awareness about sustainable fashion. When the elements combine, the practice is born or, in terms of practice theory, the practice recruits a practitioner. Then, the practices are reproduced in everyday life. A practice can fall apart if a needed element or a link between the elements are missing.

Shove et al. (2012) offer an alternative framework for describing a practice. They argue that practices are constituted by three different elements, that is, materials, competences and meanings. Materials refer to the different "things, technologies, tangible physical entities, and the stuff of which objects are made", competences include "skill, know-how and technique" and lastly, meanings include "include symbolic meanings, ideas and aspirations" (Shove et al., 2012: 14). These different elements then need to be linked together by the practice carrier to perform the practice.

A particularly influential contribution, especially in anthropological approaches to practice, is the work of Elisabeth Shove, Mika Pantzar and Matt Watson (2012) in which the authors offer a deliberately compact three-component framework for analysing practices: practice as entity. Shove and colleagues define a practice element frame consisting of meanings, materials, and competencies. “Meanings” refer to the ideas, aspirations, shared understandings and related values that give practice its purpose and make it intelligible for practitioners and guide how practices are performed. “Materials” refer to objects involved and used in practice, necessary technologies and infrastructure through which practices are enacted. It also refers to bodies and physicality. “Competencies” are the skills (across cognitive and physical realms) and practical knowledge necessary for participation in a practice, including understanding how to use objects, follow rules, and navigate social norms.

elements (materials, meanings, competences). Practices-as-entities are constituted through such integrations (Chapter 2). Practices change when new elements are introduced or when existing elements are combined in new ways. Elements of meaning, materiality and competence are themselves outcomes of practice. Although they are generated and changed through moments of enactment, elements – being part of several practices at once – have somewhat independent lives of their own (Chapter 3). If practices are to survive they need to capture and retain practitioners willing and able to do this integrating and therefore willing and able to keep them alive (Chapter 4). Relations between practices take different forms – some collaborative, some competitive, some weak, some strong. Whatever form they take, such relations matter for the trajectories of the elements and individual practices of which composite bundles and complexes of practice are made (Chapter 5). Finally, the connections involved, between elements and practices and between one practice and another, are maintained and reproduced through intersecting circuits of reproduction that have dynamic qualities of their own (Chapter 6).

Although we have discussed them separately, competence, material and meaning are often so closely related that if one element should travel alone (abstracted and packed in isolation), it is likely to remain dormant until joined by others capable of bringing it into the frame of a living practice. This observation reminds us that relevant elements need to co-exist if practices are to extend or endure. Having commented on how elements travel, we now turn to the ways in which they emerge, disappear and persist.

Shove et al. (2012) offer an alternative framework for describing a practice. They argue that practices are constituted by three different elements, that is, materials, competences and meanings. Materials refer to the different "things, technologies, tangible physical entities, and the stuff of which objects are made", competences include "skill, know-how and technique" and lastly, meanings include "include symbolic meanings, ideas and aspirations" (Shove et al., 2012: 14). These different elements then need to be linked together by the practice carrier to perform the practice.

Practices as entities are thus founded or made up of three elements: materials, competences, and meanings; such elements are dynamically interconnected by qualified practitioners, through regular and repetitive performance, thus constituting the practice (Shove & Pantzar, 2005; Hargreaves, 2011; Shove et al., 2012; Spurling et al., 2013). Inspired by the viewpoints of Schatzki (2002, 2012) and Reckwitz (2002), Shove et al. (2012) proposed a sociotechnical approach for understanding the essential elements of practice and how they relate to each other. In this perspective, both human agents, that is, individuals, made up of bodies and minds (Schatzki, 2001), as non-humans (objects/artifacts), are indispensable requirements for the practice (Reckwitz, 2002; Spaargaren & Oosterveer, 2010). The human body itself is considered a material element, and the mind a component of meaning (Shove et al., 2012; Süßbauer & Schäfer, 2019). Next, Figure 1 details the three elements that make up the practice.

to see how the learning of the 'acquired' skills can be distinguished from the formation of the 'innate' device (this point is argued at greater length in Chapter Twenty-one). However there is no reason to suppose that anything like a 'technology acquisition device' exists at all. Rather, the learning of technical skills appears to depend on what might be called 'technology acquisition support systems' (Wynn 1994: 153). These systems, as Wynn argues, are not even partly innate. They are rather systems of apprenticeship , constituted by the relationships between more and less experienced practitioners in hands-on contexts of activity. And it is on the reproduction of these relationships, not on genetic replication – or the transmission of some analogous code of cultural instructions – that the continuity of a technical tradition depends.

In Chapter 4, 'Recruitment, defection and reproduction', we wrote about how practices maintain and lose their grip and how people become variously faithful and committed carriers. If practices are to survive they have to secure and maintain resources and practitioners willing and able to keep them alive. The question we now face is how policy makers influence these dynamics. There are various threads to follow: How are patterns of access and participation structured by policy? How do specific initiatives in climate change policy intersect with the careers of practices and practitioners? How does policy making shape networks and relationships through which practices are reproduced and carried?

More prosaically, the above discussion reminds us that the careers of practitioners and practices are intimately connected on a daily basis. Although this connection is theoretically convincing, it is inherently difficult to describe. If we are to write about actual and potential carriers we need to proceed as if the practices we discuss are stable, or at least stable enough for us to tell whether someone is involved in them or not. This is so even when the purpose of the discussion is to demonstrate the transformative effects of recruitment and defection. As in other chapters, we try to catch sight of these intersecting tracks by turning back and forth between the lives of practitioners and those of the practices they carry. This method allows us to 'talk about social relations in which persons and practices change, re-produce, and transform each other' (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 68). With this as our ambition, we start with a discussion of first encounters between emerging and existing practices and potential carriers.

Although practical understanding and teleoaffective structures are prescribed by the practice, they are inscribed and embodied in their carriers and their activities. Thus, a practice-theoretical endeavour has to draw on multiple sources to collect empirical material that represents the organization of a practice. In the simplest terms, this means studying what practitioners do, what they say, and what they say they do (Reckwitz 2002; Warde 2005). A qualitative approach is particularly suitable for this endeavour (Halkier and Jensen 2011; Halkier, Katz-Gerro, and Martens 2011).

Beyond recruitment, for a practice to survive, practitioners need to reproduce it; they need to "build a career" within the practice which happens through processes of learning and sharing (Shove et al., 2012a). By performing the practices, practitioners "advance" in their careers and change roles, from outsiders, to novices, to experts or "full practitioners," which also reveals high levels of commitment to the practice. Exchanges between different types of carriers allow the practice to abide. Practices disappear because they fail to recruit and retain practitioners or because they need to make space for radical innovations that replace them like cycling and the car. Moral and ideological changes that require new practices to emerge as the old ones become inadmissible also drive practices to extinction. Finally, a temporal dimension is also relevant as some practices are relevant during specific moments in life and others will always be present.

So far we have commented on the routes through which individuals become committed carriers. Let us now switch perspective and ask what these processes mean for the careers of the practices themselves. At any one moment, 'a practice' consists of a composite patchwork of variously skilled, variously committed performances enacted and reproduced by beginners and by old-hands alike. Patterns of career development are, in combination, relevant for the trajectory of the practice as a whole. This is so in that newcomers and those with more experience inevitably reproduce somewhat different variants.

More prosaically, the above discussion reminds us that the careers of practitioners and practices are intimately connected on a daily basis. Although this connection is theoretically convincing, it is inherently difficult to describe. If we are to write about actual and potential carriers we need to proceed as if the practices we discuss are stable, or at least stable enough for us to tell whether someone is involved in them or not. This is so even when the purpose of the discussion is to demonstrate the transformative effects of recruitment and defection. As in other chapters, we try to catch sight of these intersecting tracks by turning back and forth between the lives of practitioners and those of the practices they carry. This method allows us to 'talk about social relations in which persons and practices change, re-produce, and transform each other' (Lave and Wenger, 1991: 68). With this as our ambition, we start with a discussion of first encounters between emerging and existing practices and potential carriers.

Individuals become carriers of practices in the sense that they perform practice, but also beyond. One may be a carrier of gardening, even when one is not in the garden performing gardening. Rather than ascribing knowledge, mental activities, understanding, language, bodily movements, and routines to a particular individual, these elements belong to the practice; they are collectively shared properties rather than properties of the individual. As Warde (2005) notes, it is the practice that guides not only behaviour, but also desires and emotions. Yet, the individual subject acts as the performer of a practice and uses conventions and standards inscribed in the practice to guide the performance of the practice. Thus, practices appear quite powerful, equipping individuals with culturally shared blueprints of routinized behaviour and ways of thinking as well as understandings.

In this way, it becomes less important to consider the practitioner as such, but rather focus on the 'what' and 'how'. The individual subject retains certain discretion over her actions and activities, but at the same draws guidance and direction from the template of the practice in which he/she engages. Thus, a practice-theoretical perspective treats individuals as 'carriers' of practice: "The single individual—as a bodily and mental agent—then acts as the 'carrier' ( Träger ) of a practice (...) Thus, she or he is not only a carrier of patterns of bodily behaviour, but also of certain routinized ways of understanding, knowing how and desiring. These conventionalized 'mental' activities of understanding, knowing how and desiring are necessary elements and qualities of a practice in which the single individual participates, not qualities of the individual" (Reckwitz 2002, 249–250).

Beyond recruitment, for a practice to survive, practitioners need to reproduce it; they need to "build a career" within the practice which happens through processes of learning and sharing (Shove et al., 2012a). By performing the practices, practitioners "advance" in their careers and change roles, from outsiders, to novices, to experts or "full practitioners," which also reveals high levels of commitment to the practice. Exchanges between different types of carriers allow the practice to abide. Practices disappear because they fail to recruit and retain practitioners or because they need to make space for radical innovations that replace them like cycling and the car. Moral and ideological changes that require new practices to emerge as the old ones become inadmissible also drive practices to extinction. Finally, a temporal dimension is also relevant as some practices are relevant during specific moments in life and others will always be present.

1. How is freecycling — as a bundle of practices coordinated at Brīvbode — organised and sustained, and how do its constitutive materials, meanings, and competencies travel between practices at the site?

These observations suggest that when links are broken, and when forms of driving evolve, materials, meanings and forms of competence disappear in characteristically different ways: vanishing with little or no trace, remaining dormant or taking on a new lease of life within and as part of other practices.

In Chapter 3, 'The life of elements', we seek answers to these questions. In order to do so we proceed as if elements can be separated out and somehow detached from the practices of which they are a part. This methodological strategy allows us to explore the properties and characteristics of the three types of elements about which we write. In showing how materials, meanings and competences endure and travel, we provide a means of understanding how practices are sustained between moments and sites of enactment. We consider the role of transportation in shaping the geographical range of technologies (such as cast-iron stoves) and of practices associated with them. We then discuss forms of codification, abstraction and reversal, all of which are important for how competences travel and for how knowledge is transmitted from one cohort of practitioners to another. Meanings do not diffuse in quite the same way. In thinking about the processes involved we show how concepts of 'freshness' have been successively attached to the air, to the

So far we have argued that forms of competence travel in ways that materials do not. Know-how is not typically moved by lorry or ship. Instead, relevant processes include those of abstraction, reversal, lateral migration and cross-practice creep. Second, and again in contrast to material objects that have a single physical location even when dormant, elements of knowledge can be contained for a time in virtual and actual reservoirs, depots and memories, persisting in this form between and beyond moments of practical enactment. Third, elements of know-how are typically modified, reconfigured and adapted as they move from one situation or person to another and as they circulate between practices. Finally, it seems that competences can only be transferred effectively in

In writing about time we wrote about how practices endure between periods and moments of performance. In response we pointed to the ongoing persistence of elements and of populations willing to integrate these elements in more-or-less consistent combinations in the future. The question we now face is how practices 'travel', whether by edging into adjacent territory or by jumping from one spot to another. In Chapter 3, we concluded that what looks like the diffusion of practices-as-entities is better understood as a consequence of their re-enactment in multiple sites. In short, practices do not literally travel, but elements certainly do. The potential for re-enactment across the world consequently depends on the availability of requisite elements. As we have seen, materials, meanings and forms of competence circulate in characteristically different ways. Whilst some are unscathed by these journeys, others are typically transformed in the process of translation/transportation. For the moment, though, the main point is that the diffusion of practices depends on the distribution of elements and on who has access to them.

This is a tricky course to steer, but as mentioned in Chapter 2, elements do seem to travel in ways that practices do not. As structured and situated arrangements, practices are always in the process of formation, re-formation and de-formation. By contrast, elements are comparatively stable and are, as such, capable of circulating between places and enduring over time. We are consequently surrounded by things that have outlived the practices of which they were once a vital part (Shove and Pantzar, 2006). Abandoned biscuit presses, outdated computer equipment and tools for tasks no longer undertaken are obvious examples, but understandings, meanings and types of expertise are also discarded as practices evolve. Changing systems of provision have clearly undermined the importance of knowing how to darn socks, maintain a car or bake fancy biscuits at home. But as some of these examples demonstrate, seemingly defunct skills are occasionally resurrected: in some circles baking is a newly popular thing to do. At the same time, the meaning of home baking as a daily duty has probably changed for good. As hinted at here and discussed in greater detail at the end of this chapter, elements seem to 'last' in different ways.

In the previous section we suggested that meanings 'travel' as practices are grouped, re-grouped and categorized in different ways. When viewed from a temporal perspective, the idea that meanings are formed through multiple associations is a source of frailty and of strength. Take the concept of thrift. Not so long ago, practices that tapped into and sustained the category of thrift might include darning socks at home. Darning is now so rare that this link has broken. Faced with this minor set-back, notions of thrift have not diminished or lost their grip: instead they have moved on, becoming an important element of a range of other practices. As Gregson (2007) explains, being thrifty is now more likely to find expression in methods and styles of disposal and divestment than in repair. By implication, meanings move, mutate and take each other's place but are never preserved intact.

In writing about time we wrote about how practices endure between periods and moments of performance. In response we pointed to the ongoing persistence of elements and of populations willing to integrate these elements in more-or-less consistent combinations in the future. The question we now face is how practices 'travel', whether by edging into adjacent territory or by jumping from one spot to another. In Chapter 3, we concluded that what looks like the diffusion of practices-as-entities is better understood as a consequence of their re-enactment in multiple sites. In short, practices do not literally travel, but elements certainly do. The potential for re-enactment across the world consequently depends on the availability of requisite elements. As we have seen, materials, meanings and forms of competence circulate in characteristically different ways. Whilst some are unscathed by these journeys, others are typically transformed in the process of translation/transportation. For the moment, though, the main point is that the diffusion of practices depends on the distribution of elements and on who has access to them.

Looking back at the processes involved we can identify similarities as well as differences in how elements travel. One striking feature is that movements of all forms routinely involve what we might think of as moments of packing and unpacking. This is quite literally the case for materials, and is metaphorically so for elements of meaning and competence. Codification and abstraction, both forms of preparation, are often required. On arrival, the capacity to unpack – that is, to appropriate and decode – is correspondingly crucial and equally transformative. This is important in that processes of packing and unpacking are both defined and configured by local relations, histories and conditions. When in transit, and in so far as such a concept makes sense, elements might be momentarily free of such bonds, but there is no such independent life for elements that are embedded in practice.

Although we have discussed them separately, competence, material and meaning are often so closely related that if one element should travel alone (abstracted and packed in isolation), it is likely to remain dormant until joined by others capable of bringing it into the frame of a living practice. This observation reminds us that relevant elements need to co-exist if practices are to extend or endure. Having commented on how elements travel, we now turn to the ways in which they emerge, disappear and persist.

In writing about time we wrote about how practices endure between periods and moments of performance. In response we pointed to the ongoing persistence of elements and of populations willing to integrate these elements in more-or-less consistent combinations in the future. The question we now face is how practices 'travel', whether by edging into adjacent territory or by jumping from one spot to another. In Chapter 3, we concluded that what looks like the diffusion of practices-as-entities is better understood as a consequence of their re-enactment in multiple sites. In short, practices do not literally travel, but elements certainly do. The potential for re-enactment across the world consequently depends on the availability of requisite elements. As we have seen, materials, meanings and forms of competence circulate in characteristically different ways. Whilst some are unscathed by these journeys, others are typically transformed in the process of translation/transportation. For the moment, though, the main point is that the diffusion of practices depends on the distribution of elements and on who has access to them.

This is a tricky course to steer, but as mentioned in Chapter 2, elements do seem to travel in ways that practices do not. As structured and situated arrangements, practices are always in the process of formation, re-formation and de-formation. By contrast, elements are comparatively stable and are, as such, capable of circulating between places and enduring over time. We are consequently surrounded by things that have outlived the practices of which they were once a vital part (Shove and Pantzar, 2006). Abandoned biscuit presses, outdated computer equipment and tools for tasks no longer undertaken are obvious examples, but understandings, meanings and types of expertise are also discarded as practices evolve. Changing systems of provision have clearly undermined the importance of knowing how to darn socks, maintain a car or bake fancy biscuits at home. But as some of these examples demonstrate, seemingly defunct skills are occasionally resurrected: in some circles baking is a newly popular thing to do. At the same time, the meaning of home baking as a daily duty has probably changed for good. As hinted at here and discussed in greater detail at the end of this chapter, elements seem to 'last' in different ways.

This distinction between elements – which can and do travel – and practices, viewed as necessarily localized, necessarily situated instances of integration (which do not travel) is useful in making sense of the roles consumers, producers and governments play in the reproduction and diffusion of different ways of life (Shove and Pantzar, 2005: 62). We return to this topic in Chapter 8, ‘Promoting transitions in practice’, but for the time being, it is enough to notice that institutions involved in developing or circulating the elements of which practices are made rarely control the manner in which they are combined.

In Chapter 3, 'The life of elements', we seek answers to these questions. In order to do so we proceed as if elements can be separated out and somehow detached from the practices of which they are a part. This methodological strategy allows us to explore the properties and characteristics of the three types of elements about which we write. In showing how materials, meanings and competences endure and travel, we provide a means of understanding how practices are sustained between moments and sites of enactment. We consider the role of transportation in shaping the geographical range of technologies (such as cast-iron stoves) and of practices associated with them. We then discuss forms of codification, abstraction and reversal, all of which are important for how competences travel and for how knowledge is transmitted from one cohort of practitioners to another. Meanings do not diffuse in quite the same way. In thinking about the processes involved we show how concepts of 'freshness' have been successively attached to the air, to the

So far we have argued that forms of competence travel in ways that materials do not. Know-how is not typically moved by lorry or ship. Instead, relevant processes include those of abstraction, reversal, lateral migration and cross-practice creep. Second, and again in contrast to material objects that have a single physical location even when dormant, elements of knowledge can be contained for a time in virtual and actual reservoirs, depots and memories, persisting in this form between and beyond moments of practical enactment. Third, elements of know-how are typically modified, reconfigured and adapted as they move from one situation or person to another and as they circulate between practices. Finally, it seems that competences can only be transferred effectively in

The argument developed here builds upon an understanding of practice as a 'type of behaving and understanding that appears at different locales and at different points of time and is carried out by different body/minds' (Reckwitz 2002: 250). As Schatzki puts it, a practice is 'a temporally unfolding and spatially dispersed nexus of doings and sayings' (1996: 89). In this sense, practices exist as provisional but recognizable entities composed of also recognizable conventions, images and meanings; materials and forms of competence. At the same time, if they are to exist at all, practices require active reproduction and performance. In other words, people have to do them. More than that, it is through these doings that the contours of individual practices are defined, reproduced and constituted. Since people engage in many practices (during a day, a year or a lifetime), any discussion of the temporal texture of daily life has to take account of how practices intersect in time and in space. There are various ways in which one might approach this topic.

but that the practice is instantiated in situ , in a developing production that contingently establishes the recognizability of an incomplete instance of its performance.

Importantly, practices are "homegrown" (Shove and Pantzar, 2005, p. 43), which means that although their elements may circulate in any context, they are glued together in a particular way. Its way is shaped by previously existing and related practices. As a consequence, practices are rooted in a particular context.

elaborates upon these points by noting that the doings and sayings of practices are anchored at a range of paths and places (2010b: 59) that enrol past, present and future through 'acting toward an end from what motivates' (2010b: 37). Limited work has been done thus far to explore the implications of these insights for not only individual practices but also for the project of conceptualising interconnections between practices.

can be filled out by a multitude of single and often unique actions' (Reckwitz, 2002b: 250), each time it is performed, different elements are brought together. Close empirical consideration of such processes has highlighted that the same set of activities can never be enacted in exactly the same way, making even 'routine' practices the site of ongoing reproduction and change (see discussion below). Empirical studies have also considered how variations emerge through the circulation of practices to new countries (Shove and Pantzar, 2005a; Wang and Shove, 2008). The ensuing discussion of variation within practices consequently focuses on how even a recognisably patterned activity can be internally varied.

Brīvbode is best understood not as the site of a single practice but as a nexus where several practices are held in working relation. Throughout the thesis I have argued, following Schatzki (2002, 2017) and Shove, Pantzar and Watson (2012), that what happens in Brīvbode is not the performance of a stabilised practice of "freecycling" but the situated coordination of household divestment, wardrobe management, repair, craft, sorting, sociality, sufficiency, volunteering, and resale at a single small site. Freecycling, as I have used the term, names the bundle rather than a settled practice entity. This framing lets the analysis follow what actually happens — the partial overlap, exchange, and friction between recognisable practices — without forcing them into a coherence they do not have. It also makes Brīvbode legible as one of Hobson's (2016) generative spaces: a setting whose generativity comes precisely from the proximity and recombinability of multiple practices, not from any one of them having been redesigned.

It may be initially more difficult to grasp how to understand knowing without reifying knowledge. Dynamic accounts of language have helpful precedents in Davidson and Brandom; Foucault likewise familiarized a dynamics of power (even if the significance of a dynamic conception has not always been adequately appreciated in either case). Yet Wartenburg's discussion of dynamic power alignments offers a useful analogue to a dynamic conception of knowing. 11 Power is only effective in enabling or constraining action through dynamic alignments that bring one action to bear upon another. Knowing is likewise only informative through dynamic alignments that enable one thing (a statement, a model, an image, a skillful performance, and so on) to be about another. Philosophers of science nowadays emphasize the importance of 'background knowledge' in establishing inferential relations between hypotheses and evidence, but that concept is too homogeneous and static. Knowing is mediated not just by a 'background' of assertional commitments, but also by models, skills, instruments, standardized materials and phenomena, and situated interactions among knowers, in short, by practices . Moreover, a dynamic account of language as discursive practices obliterates any clear distinction between the representational content of knowledge, and its material or social construction or implementation.

The main aim of this article has been to develop a sociological account of the involvement of (groups of) citizen-consumers in global environmental change in such a way that one-side individualist or determinist approaches are avoided. The practice approaches, as developed in sociology since the 1970s, offer a fruitful starting point for such an effort because they combine a focus on agency and subjectivity with the recognition that structures are inherent to practices. While sharing a recognition of the co-determination of practices by meaning, intentions, bodies, objects, and technologies, authors within the school of practice theory assign different analytical weight to agency and subjectivity when accounting for change in socio-technical systems, regimes, and practices. Agency is particularly under pressure when the globalization of social and technical relations, in the context of the emerging network society, is discussed. Is it still possible to assign analytical weight to agency at the “site of the social” [68], now that the scapes and networks underpinning our daily lives are increasingly organized within the space of flows, at global levels of scale? We tried to cope with these issues in two ways. First, we developed a typology of citizen-consumer involvement with global environmental change in general, drawing together insights from different bodies of sociological, sociopsychological, and political science literature. Second, we explored the applicability of ideal-type roles of citizen-consumers as agents of change when analyzing the greening of consumption practices under the conditions of globalizing modernity. We asked ourselves, “How can commitments of citizen-consumers, with changes in everyday life consumption routines, be connected to the ‘wider influences of globalization’?” We suggested specifying this general question by looking at the different modes of globalizing provision that are connected to situated consumption practices. In the state mode of provision, ecological citizenship is suggested as the prime analytical perspective from which to explore the ways in which (organized groups of) citizen consumers deal with globalizing provisioning and its consequences for the local/situated consumption practices that such provisioning helps constitute. In a similar vein, political consumerism is offered as the appropriate starting point for discussing the commitments and the potential for consumer power and control when dealing with forms of market provision in the context of globalizing markets. Finally, the concept of life-politics, as introduced by Giddens, is offered as providing the most generalized account of the ways in which citizen-consumers, as moral agents operating in the sphere of civil society, contribute to the discourse on sustainable development, referring to modes of provisioning and access which are primarily—but not exclusively—within the sphere of domestic provision.

As noted above, theories of practice have already addressed several forms of variation, even if these have not always been articulated as characteristics of variation per se . In order to summarise briefly what this work has revealed, this section identifies three different forms: variation as a basic feature, variation as meaningfully constructed and variation in the constituent elements of a performance.

the question of how we can represent large-scale phenomena from a practice-based perspective. The two strategies are complementary in that they operationalise the textile metaphors often used to conceptualise large phenomena from a practice perspective. They do so by holding fast to the ideas that practices are always manifest in empirically accessible social sites of activity (as this is how they perpetuate themselves) and that explaining how practices form constellations and wider configurations does not require presupposing the existence of mysterious superordinate entities. Trans-situated practices are connected through other practices such as those of visiting, writing and circulating artefacts; writing blogs to proselytise on the internet, etc. We can thus understand the global, using the same approach we use to examine the local.

but that the practice is instantiated in situ , in a developing production that contingently establishes the recognizability of an incomplete instance of its performance.

A second aspect of variation within practices concerns the limits of their intelligibility. Variations not only emerge through performance, but are also made sense of through shared meanings, understandings and goals. As a result, practitioners

The dimension of variation best addressed in previous work has been that between different performances of one practice. Since a practice is ‘a pattern which

situated performances. Performances therefore can be understood only if we take into account the nexus in which they come into being. What happens here and now and why (the conditions of possibility of any scene of action) is inextricably linked to what is happening in another 'here and now' or what has happened in another 'here and now' in the past (and sometimes in the future). The study of large-scale phenomena from a methodological connected situationalism position is predisposed towards a rhizomatic sensitivity. A rhizomatic sensitivity sees associations of practices as a living connection of performances; it offers an image of how practices grow, expand and conquer new territory; it suggests that to study how large phenomena emerge from and transpire through connections between practices, we should always start from a 'here and now' and follow connections (Nicolini, 2009); and finally it offers a model for representing the gamut of connections in action. As we will see below, depending on the sensitivity of the researcher, this can take the form of an overview – so that large phenomena appear as textures, nexuses, meshes or assemblages of practices – although this is not inevitable and other options to praxeologise large phenomena are also available.

Variations in the nexus of practices can thus be identified through reference to shared spatio-temporal characteristics. Although objective features – such as clock time – are often used in this role, there is room for exploring how other aspects of spatio-temporality (shared rhythms, paths, sites, etc.) could be mobilised in analysing variation.