‘Almost Everything in the House Now Is Plastic’: Foregrounding Plastic Materiality in Household Routines and Practices

Abstract

The impact of materials in disrupting routines and practices has recently become significant in scholarship and policymaking. This has motivated alternative social theories such as practice theory to look beyond the traditional human behavioural approaches into how objects exert their materiality in achieving daily activities. While there is a substantial theoretical body of work on materiality in practice theory, this study focuses on plastic and asks how plastic facilitates the reproduction of practices in households. To foreground plastic materiality, this study makes use of the data collected in the case studies of low-income households in a suburb in Lagos, Nigeria through a mixed-methods approach, including interviews, household tours, and directed photography. The data analysis combines inductive and deductive approaches to facilitate an iterative process of identifying and refining themes related to the research aim. As a ubiquitous material, plastic facilitates the performance of household practices related to hygiene, comfortability, storage, food, and child-rearing, among others. By interacting with other practice elements, plastic actively materialises household routines through its corporality or physical features, functionality, and spatiotemporal quality. The implication of these dimensions in enabling or disrupting household routines is further discussed. The findings present important lessons for advancing the corporal and relational dimensions of materiality in social theory and implementing sustainability policies.

Understanding sustainable consumption experiences among the new middle class in an emerging market: A social cognitive approach

“…Furthermore, the plastics are constantly present (and presented to them) in consumers' imposed physical environment, such as at shops, vendors, and markets, as the only material available, which reinforces to consumers that the materials are normal, common, and unavoidable. These findings echo those of Shittu (2023), who stresses that emerging market consumers attribute their plastics use to the materials being both ubiquitous and effectively multifunctional for their needs. These elements make plastic materials both normal and indispensable across consumers' daily life routines in emerging markets.…”

“…Conventional non-SCBs in plastics then are enabled by the behaviours' descriptive and injunctive social normativity (Cialdini et al, 1990;Goldstein et al, 2008;Reno, Cialdini, & Kallgren, 1993;White & Simpson, 2013;White et al, 2019), which indicates to participants that single-use plastics usage is what is commonly done and normal (descriptive norm) and is also what is expected by others (injunctive norm). The constant availability of the single-use plastics further encourages their continued use, highlighting the ubiquity of plastics in the physical environment in emerging markets (Shittu, 2023).…”

Risky plastics and the limits to consumer responsibilization

“…Plastics are "fundamental to the functioning of modern supermarkets" (Nielsen et al, 2019, p. 8). Essential to the logistic and transportation of goods, plastics also live in household objects used for ordering such as Tupperware, laundry baskets, picnic coolers, luggage, food wrapping, and so on (Meikle, 1997;Shittu, 2021). Colored plastics, "characterized by high impact resistance, resistance to abrasion, and the action of hot and detergent materials" and "inexpensive, lightweight and easy to carry," are some of the most popular materials used to create boxes, wardrobes and other furniture that help organize children's bedrooms (Antonenko et al, 2021).…”

“…Since the 1960s, when plastic litter was identified in marine systems, plastics have turned into complex social and environmental problems (Evans et al, 2020;Hawkins, 2020;Nielsen et al, 2020;Shittu, 2021;Smith and Brisman, 2021;Hardesty et al, 2022;Shipton and Dauvergne, 2022;Wagner, 2022).…”