On 26th and 27th January SPRG researchers from the University of Essex hosted their SPRG colleagues and others at a workshop on "Articulating Political Economy and Changes in Everyday Practices of Consumption". As well as members of the SPRG projects, academics attended from Essex, Manchester, Lancaster, Sussex, Copenhagen, Oslo, and Paris.

Mark Harvey, Principal Investigator for the SPRG project ‘'Water Consumption and Markets" and Director of the Centre for Research in Economic Sociology and Innovation at Essex and SPRG Director Dale Southerton welcomed participants. Mark called on the workshop to explore ideas on practices, infrastructure, systems of provision and regulation, to address issues of scale and move forward the ideas developing across the SPRG projects that had been so productively engaged with at the Autumn Away Days in October .

Frank Trentmann, recently appointed Professor of History and Social Sciences at the Sustainable Consumption Institute, University of Manchester and Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, initiated the workshop with a paper providing a historical perspective on current debates about the dynamics between sustainability, practices and political economy. Frank explored lessons from the dynamics of conflicts over water supply in Victorian Britain. Along with feats of engineering and new infrastructures came transformations in daily practices, conflict over the politics of provision and new movements articulated around the water consumer. The droughts of the 1890s revealed controversies over "appropriate consumption" and "irresponsible waste" that resonate with today's sustainability debates.

Mark Harvey followed, addressing historical and contemporary political economies of water: the urbanisation of London from the seventeenth century onwards and contemporary Delhi, a city of 18 million where only 10% have access to piped water. Mark explored the dynamics in which scales are formed - historically, politically and spatially. Discussion revisited SPRG debates around the identification of general patterns and ontology - is the economic a differentiated realm?

For the rest of the day papers from researchers external to the SPRG engaged the workshop.

Olivier Coutard Director of Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires Sociétés (LATTS), Université Paris-Est, addressed the question of how do infrastructures condition and constrain practice of consumption? Using studies of everyday practices involving the use of water, energy or telecommunications Coutard emphasised the complex dynamics of co-evolution of socio-technical infrastructures and practices. Steering changes in consumption through infrastructural change cannot ignore this complexity.

Unni Kjærnes, from the National Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO), Oslo, explored how "consumer choice" is a contested terrain, in the context of sustainability issues around meat consumption. While "consumer choice" pervades contemporary discourse we know its standard articulation offers little purchase for behaviour change. Empirical examples from across Europe demonstrate that the consumer's role is articulated differently in national political contexts.

Miriam Glucksman and Katy Wheeler from the University of Essex addressed the issue of "consumption work" through the example of differing infrastructures and practices of recycling in Sweden and the UK. Recycling involves the unpaid work of individuals post-consumption. "Consumption work" challenges traditional notions of the division of labour, highlighting the relation of paid and unpaid work.

Day Two saw Frank Geels of the Science and Technology Policy Research centre, University of Sussex, present a new model to conceptualize how 'issues' develop over time through struggles between social movements, public opinion, consumers, policy, and industry. Two historical case studies on the US car industry and its responses to air pollution and safety illustrated the dynamics of why and when industry implements substantial innovation to address issues of social concern.

Throughout the workshop participants had recorded key questions that had arisen. These were collated and in the final session formed the basis for discussion. Non-SPRG participants were interested to unpack some of the key debates that have been taking place within the research programme over the nature of practices and systems of provision. Paramount were questions of: whether the economic, cultural and social represent differentiated domains; how to conceptualise phenomena at different scales - from everyday practices, to institutions and economies; and of how and when it is legitimate to generalise explanation; and finally, of how the re-framing afforded by the perspective of practice affords a productive engagement with purposeful interventions for transformations towards sustainability.