期刊名称：Collegium : Studies across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences
印刷版ISSN：1796-2986
出版年度：2012
卷号：12
出版社：Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
摘要：Much of the consumption that matters for environmental sustainability is habitual,
recurrent and ordinary. Like it or not, strategies designed to steer behaviour in proenvironmental
directions have to grapple with this habitual aspect. Most attempts
to do so treat habit as an obstacle to change, and as a type of behaviour that is
automatic, frequent and set within a stable context. In analyses like these habits are
behaviours that people pick up, have and occasionally lose. In this paper I explore
the relevance and value of turning this topic around and of approaching it from the
habit¡¯s point of view. If we persist with this way of thinking, and if we assume that
rather than acquiring habits we are acquired by them, familiar questions appear in
a very different light and new ones arise. How do habits locate suitable carriers?
How do habits, viewed as practices that require recurrent, consistent reproduction,
relate to other less demanding pursuits? How is the rhythm of society defined by
the sum total of habits? Can policy makers do anything to help sustainable habits
capture large swathes of the population and edge other more damaging habits
out of the way? In this paper I push such questions to the limit. From the vantage
point afforded by this thought experiment I comment on the policy implications of
conventional and practice-centric methods of conceptualising habit.
