Institutional material arrangements: an approach for identifying the conditions for the transition to sustainable consumption

Within theories of practice, there is a tradition for conceptualising how practices unfold within material arrangements. Furthermore, consumer studies informed by theories of practice include a growing body of work which focuses on how supplier and professional practices shape everyday practices which involve consumption. With this foundation in practice theory, the article combines existing understandings of stabilisation of practices into a shorthand concept which we call institutional material arrangements (IMAs). The aim is to underline how practices unfold within materiality and processes of institutionalisation, which are the result of previous practices in their fields, and furthermore, to suggest an appropriate shorthand for analysing bundles of practices at the scale of the field of practice. Having described the IMA concept, the article exemplifies its usefulness for sustainable transitions related to the consumption in the practice fields of mobility, housing and food. It does so through three elements of IMAs and their interrelatedness to show how they influence consumption and production practices. Then, with Denmark as a case example, the article focuses on the three fields of consumption and their relation to sustainable transitions. The conclusion summarises the potential analytical usefulness of the IMA concept and suggests how it may be further developed.