Putting emotions to work: challenging the normativity of practices through research methods

Emotions are ubiquitous, yet they are also incredibly varied. They might flare up in an instant to disappear in the next, or they might grow deeper over time; they can be experienced individually or collectively; and they can be accepted in society as more positive or negative. In this chapter, based on a social practice approach, we see emotions as playing a role in how consumption practices are performed in the home. Emotions relate to the normativity in practices: meanings around how a practice ought or should be performed involve emotions. As such, research on and with emotions can tell us something about how practices might be stabilised and maintained over time, or how they might come to change. We see emotions as opportunities for change, as they can represent “cracks in the wall” of normativity, understood as the state of being as things ought or should be (Sahakian & Bertho 2018). We posit that many of our everyday practices are performed in ways that involve emotions that are implicit and non-articulated, around mundane activities that take place in the home, but which are significant when it comes to their environmental impacts. In this contribution, we start by taking a closer look at the various ways in which emotions have been apprehended in social theory, and more specifically in relation to social practice theory. We then give three examples of how emotions have been put to work in “sustainable consumption” research projects. We close with reflections on the potential of emotions for grappling with social change processes.