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2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. Introduction and Background to the SoP Approach

Authors : Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

Published in: A Guide to the Systems of Provision Approach

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Across the social sciences academics have long grappled with the question of what drives consumption. This relates not just to shopping habits but also to how basic needs such as housing and education are met to understand who gets what, how and why. The systems of provision (SoP) approach emerged in the 1990s in response to a perceived failing in the siloed social sciences to assess adequately the drivers of consumption. The approach proposes an interdisciplinary framing with consumption deemed to be inextricably linked vertically to processes of production as well as (horizontally) to wider contexts. This chapter traces the trajectory of the approach from early studies on the drivers of consumption norms for consumer durables, through analyses of food consumption to more recent applications in social policy and the grander issues of neoliberalism and financialization. The chapter shows that the approach has evolved to cover not just commodity production but also alternative, including public, production and consumption systems. And this adaptability and progress in part explains its durability over the past three decades.

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next chapter The SoP Approach: Theoretical Background and Empirical Practice
Footnotes
1
For a spirited attempt to keep the thesis alive as prosumption in the digital age, a generation later than it was first put forward, see Ritzer and Jurgenson (2010).
 
2
Not surprisingly, by sharp contrast with other disciplines and topics, the concept of financialization, although highly prominent in heterodoxy, has been notably absent from mainstream economics where it is most needed but ill fits (Dymski (2015) and Mader, Mertens & van der Zwan (2020)). Inevitably, again in contrast to other disciplines, this means the relationship between financialization as such and consumption has also been absent.
 
3
Whatever the merits of doing so, and with deep-rooted traditions, much literature tends to revolve around consumer sovereignty or manipulation, false and real needs, and so on.
 
4
Significantly, the SoP study of consumption was gendered from the outset, given its concern for the impact of consumer durables on female labour market participation. See below.
 
5
For the empirical work on consumer durables, see Fine, Foster, Simister & Wright (1992a, b, c, d, e; 1993), Fine and Simister (1995) and Fine (1983).
 
6
See Fine (1992, 1995, 1998b). On durables themselves, see references in the previous footnote.
 
7
See also Fine and Leopold (1990).
 
8
See also Fine (2016, 2017b).
 
9
‘Financialization, Economy, Society and Sustainable Development’ see fessud.​eu.
 
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Metadata
Title
Introduction and Background to the SoP Approach
Authors
Kate Bayliss
Ben Fine
Copyright Year
2020
Book
A Guide to the Systems of Provision Approach

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-54142-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-54143-9

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54143-9_1