Social structures and economic conduct: Interpreting variations in household energy consumption |
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Authors: | Bruce Hackett Loren Lutzenhiser |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Sociology, University of California, 95616 Davis, California;(2) Departments of Sociology and Rural Sociology, Washington State University, 99164-4020 Pullman, Washington |
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Abstract: | The consumption of natural resources is rapidly emerging as a major social problem, and social efforts to control this consumption are guided in part by research that tries to specify the meaning of resources to consumers. This paper compares a sociological perspective with the more widespread economic model of consumption, using data from study of billing systems, sociocultural status, and household energy use in a California apartment complex. The research suggests that the role of marginal price in ordering consumption can be interpreted as a contingent feature of the socially structured relationship between consumption and social status. It also suggests that the utility of a technology is a secondary and emergent product of its use, a fact obscured by the conventional analytic separation of supply and demand or means and ends. |
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Keywords: | energy consumption economics social status technology |
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