Sustainable Consumption Institute

Abstract

Recently, economists and environmental scientists have problematised households, showing that their reducing size in average number of inhabitants has implications for environmental sustainability due to losses in economies of scale. Findings suggest that resources are shared better when people cohabit. This article analyses this common domestic consumption, drawing on literature about households, sharing and sustainable consumption. It is argued that multiple-person households apportion the resources involved in supplying practices through three modes of sharing: successive sharing, simultaneous sharing and shared/divided work. These are underpinned and enabled by standard material arrangements of households, in which a minimum of certain goods and services are available to residents regardless of number. Exemplifying the perspective, I examine recent survey data relating to meals and domestic laundry, two sociologically significant and resource-intensive spheres of domestic activity, paying attention to differences across one-person and multiple-person households. Modes of sharing, it is argued, also surfeit the domestic sphere, with market, state and household infrastructures playing contextually variable roles in provisioning goods and services among populations.

Link to full article