Abstract
There is an urgent need to change everyday practices in less resource-intensive directions. However, present practices unfold within existing material infrastructures and social institutions established during times of fossil fuel abundance. While acknowledging that a transition to sufficiency will require material and institutional transformations, it is also evident that major changes in material arrangements can be highly resource demanding. Thus, the adoption of less resource-intensive everyday practices must take place within present material arrangements that are modified with the least possible material use. This paper explores theoretically the possible pathways for sufficiency-based everyday practices within existing, slightly modified materialities. It develops the concept of ‘reprogramming’, i.e. to promote sufficiency through performing practices in different ways within existing or slightly modified material arrangements, and it explores how changes in institutional arrangements further can promote such resource-light practices. Based on discussions of sufficiency, practice theories and social metabolism, the concept of reprogramming is exemplified through empirical findings, particularly focusing on mobility practices in young adults (n = 31). Possible reprogramming strategies are presented that promote sufficiency-based practices within existing resource-intensive materialities and institutions.
Policy relevance
The concept of ‘reprogramming’ is proposed as a policy tool for promoting a sustainable transition towards a less resource-intensive society. Rapid changes are needed, but rebuilding cities, including completely new infrastructures, is too time and resource demanding. Therefore, thinking about how everyday practices can change within existing material arrangements is necessary. Rather than asking individuals to adopt new ‘lifestyles’ voluntarily, the question should be how, with minimal changes in the ‘hardware’ of cities and infrastructures, can collective changes of everyday practices in the direction of sufficiency be facilitated. The policy question then becomes: How to make the smallest changes with the largest impact? The paper takes mobility as an example, but the strategy of reprogramming can be related to other areas as well.