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Alan Warde - SCI Professorial Research Fellow
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Alan Warde is Professorial Research Fellow of the SCI. Since 1999 he has been a Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at The University of Manchester. His previous position was Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. His current research interests include: sociology of consumption, food, theories of practice, sociology of culture, and the analysis of sustainable consumption. In the past he has also conducted research on politics, social movements, cities, domestic divisions of labour, economic restructuring and the social structure of Britain. He came to Manchester to work partly in the Sociology Department, partly to serve as Co-Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC). Research projects in CRIC focused on developing theories of consumption, with particular emphasis on food, and on economic sociology.
Thereafter, he became one of the group at the University of Manchester who designed the programme of research for the SCI. He was initially Theme Leader for a research programme on consumer behaviour. Currently he is involved in two projects at SCI. One is the interdisciplinary 'Flagship' - project of Theme 1 which examines change in food purchasing patterns in Britain, in relation to environmental considerations. The other is a study of single person households and their environmental footprint, comparing France and Britain. He was also the Principal Applicant for the grant which funds the ESRC Sustainable Practices Research Group.
Recent publications include: Culture, Class, Distinction, - a substantial empirical study of cultural taste in the UK - (with Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Silva, Modesto Gayo-Cal and David Wright), 2009; Cultural Analysis and the Legacy of Bourdieu: settling accounts and developing alternatives (a collection of essays jointly edited with Elizabeth Silva, 2010); and Consumption, a four volume collection of classic and influential papers in the Sage Benchmarks in Culture and Society Series, published in August 2010.
In the year 2010-11 he is the Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland. The Professorship is awarded on the basis of an international competition for scholars in humanities and the social sciences. His project is called 'Consumption and sustainability: towards a social scientific understanding'. It is premised on the proposition that consumer behaviour will have to change rapidly and on a massive scale if there is to be any chance of approaching current international goals with respect to mitigation of climate change. A significant part of the research is seeking to understand how consumer habits change. Investigations involve the specific application of the perspectives of practice theory to the central issues of sustainable consumption. Work is primarily theoretical and conceptual, using secondary sources.
Read Professor Warde's lecture abstract The Challenge of Making Consumption Sustainable, University of Helsinki, October 2010.