Reading 1:
Elizabeth Shove and Dale Southerton (2000), 'Defrosting the Freezer: From Novelty to Convenience', Journal of Material Culture, 5, 3, 2, pp. 301-319.
Elizabeth Shove and Dale Southerton (2000), 'Defrosting the Freezer: From Novelty to Convenience', Journal of Material Culture, 5, 3, 2, pp. 301-319.
Fridges and freezers account for 26% of energy used by all domestic appliances, following space heating and lighting in the league table of UK household energy consumption (DECADE, 1995). Moreover, 30 years ago only 3% of the UK population owned a freezer but by 1995, more than 96% of households had one or more, a rate of diffusion unrivalled by any other kitchen device (DECADE, 1997).
p. 302
Indeed, the question of how the freezer became normal might be answered by showing how its diffusion relates to such factors as the development of the frozen food industry1 or the relation- ship between this and changes in the division of domestic labour. Both sorts of correlation are possible. In Britain, female workforce participation increased from 58 per cent to 75 per cent between 1971 and 1997 (Social Trends, 2000) and analyses of household time budgets (Gershuny, 1992) suggest that the coordination and management of domestic labour is increasingly problematic.
p. 303
Introduction 60-70s
p. 302
Indeed, the question of how the freezer became normal might be answered by showing how its diffusion relates to such factors as the development of the frozen food industry1 or the relation- ship between this and changes in the division of domestic labour. Both sorts of correlation are possible. In Britain, female workforce participation increased from 58 per cent to 75 per cent between 1971 and 1997 (Social Trends, 2000) and analyses of household time budgets (Gershuny, 1992) suggest that the coordination and management of domestic labour is increasingly problematic.
p. 303
Introduction 60-70s
Despite the domestication of industrial technology through this ‘softer’ reference to home efficiency and family welfare, the domestic freezer got off to a relatively slow start. We suggest that this was due to an initially primitive construction of demand. To begin with, the only people who really stood to benefit were those confronting seasonal ‘problems’ of over production. The freezer was first marketed to the housewife who could freeze her home baking, her home-grown crops of fruit and vegetables, and perhaps her own pig. New skills had to be acquired for the mastery of freezing depended on (at this stage) the effective blanching of vegetables, the precise timing of freezing to preserve fruit in the best possible condition, appropriate packaging, labelling, and so on. Providing this knowledge was in place, the freezer’s purpose and novelty lay in its ‘ability to beat the seasons . . . to freeze summer fruits and eat them in the winter’ (Norwak, 1969). At this point in its history, the freezer required a substantial supply of suitable food, carefully and properly prepared by its owner.
p. 306
Establishment 70-80s
p. 306
Establishment 70-80s
Reducing cost, the potential for fast freezing and the introduction of the upright format are all important features, yet the really critical development was the rapid expansion of superstores and with them an extensive and reliable commercial infrastructure for frozen food. In Britain, the first self-service grocery stores were introduced in the 1950s but it was not until the late 1960s that large supermarkets were devel- oped on any scale. The first specialist frozen food store, ‘Iceland’, opened in 1970. By the early 1990s there were some 800 ‘Iceland stores’ (Iceland Corporate Relations Department, 2000), and many frozen food counters in supermarkets up and down the country.
p. 307
Reading 2:
p. 307
[H]aving a freezer means that you can take advantage of any bulk-buying special offers of perishable foods. Careful shopping, a beady eye and a freezer can certainly pay dividends. (Rennie, 1973: 7)
To sum up, adding a freezer to your domestic equipment will allow you to cater more economically and more flexibly; to control the output of your own energy in a way you never could before . . . cooking . . . can be done at times which suit you better. (Ellis, 1973: 5)
To sum up, adding a freezer to your domestic equipment will allow you to cater more economically and more flexibly; to control the output of your own energy in a way you never could before . . . cooking . . . can be done at times which suit you better. (Ellis, 1973: 5)
Economy means different things to different people, some are more short of time, like the working housewife, some are more short of effort, like the elderly and the handicapped, and it would seem that all of us are short of money in these days of ever-increasing prices. Is there anything the housewife can do to keep pace with the rising cost of living, the increasing pressure of daily life and the shortage of hours in the day? One answer to her problems is the HOME FREEZER. Imagine all the foods you walk around several shops to buy, all in your own kitchen, and at the most reason- able prices. (Hastrop, 1972: 1)
By now the benefits are overwhelming. So much so that freezers are presented as necessary rather than optional appliances for the modern household. In the extracts quoted here, there is nothing extravagant about the freezer or its contents. Freezer-dependant foods such as burgers, pizzas and ice cream have become normal, as have expectations of bulk buying and the experience of having a mini-supermarket within ‘your own kitchen’.
p. 308
p. 308
The freezer’s acceptance within the kitchen may also relate to the introduction of the microwave.11 Although first available on the domes- tic market in the late 1970s (McMeekin and Tomlinson, 1998), it was not until the early 1980s that microwave cookers found their way into British homes in any significant number. (See Figure 2.)
Looking back at the 1970s, themes of efficiency dominate. The freezer is positioned and represented as a device which promises econ- omic efficiencies in terms of bulk buying and infrequent shopping, and efficiencies of household management and cooking. Its move into the home and its acceptance as a central rather than a peripheral appliance is in turn related to the rationalisation of space within the fitted kitchen. The freezer’s progress during these years was evidently aided by a surrounding frozen food infrastructure, and by a network of related technologies including the microwave and the proliferation of freezer- dependent food. Having become normal with these terms, the freezer seems to have adapted to new conditions and demands emerging from the 1980s onwards.
p. 310
Redefinition 80s onwards
p. 310
Redefinition 80s onwards
‘Frost free’ appliances include a de-humidifier and fan, they cost approximately £100 more than their non-frost-free equivalent, and are considerably less efficient to run. They are, however, more ‘convenient’ in that they never need defrosting and do not require regular de- and re-stocking. Discussing the benefits of frost-free models, a retailer homed in on themes of time and ‘hassle’:
Frost-free is now very popular because they [i.e. frost-free freezers] are so convenient, they not only save the time it takes to defrost, they also save the hassle. Defrosting is a major job which requires either eating the freezer down, which is a hassle in itself as you have no food stocks, or it means emptying the freezer and trying to defrost it as quickly as possible . . . Frost- free saves on all that and means you don’t have to worry.
p. 311
If the 1970s growth of superstore shopping opened the way for the freezer’s establishment, the development of convenience foods (Gofton, 1995) has altered its associated benefits and the practices it permits. While it would be dangerous to claim that the freezer has transformed our diet, it is plausible to suggest that it has played an important part in changing patterns of food provisioning, and that this role is both dependent on and constitutive of the food industry at large (Hewitt, 1993; Warde, 1999).
p. 313
Frost-free is now very popular because they [i.e. frost-free freezers] are so convenient, they not only save the time it takes to defrost, they also save the hassle. Defrosting is a major job which requires either eating the freezer down, which is a hassle in itself as you have no food stocks, or it means emptying the freezer and trying to defrost it as quickly as possible . . . Frost- free saves on all that and means you don’t have to worry.
p. 311
If the 1970s growth of superstore shopping opened the way for the freezer’s establishment, the development of convenience foods (Gofton, 1995) has altered its associated benefits and the practices it permits. While it would be dangerous to claim that the freezer has transformed our diet, it is plausible to suggest that it has played an important part in changing patterns of food provisioning, and that this role is both dependent on and constitutive of the food industry at large (Hewitt, 1993; Warde, 1999).
p. 313
Freezers provide the convenience of ready access, rapid preparation and the security of long-term storage. These time-related arguments represent an elaboration of earlier narratives rather than a total overhauling of anticipated benefit. As before, freezers still make it possible to take advantage of special offers and one-off price reductions, but now it is the time which counts. If the freezer is ‘necessary’, then it is so not because it is necessary to have frozen food, but because it has become increasingly important to manage time and domestic labour in ways that only freezers allow. That is the need to which freezing now represents a response.
p. 313
Being and Becoming Normal
p. 313
Being and Becoming Normal
In the first phase, freezers were essentially good for managing seasonal gluts of food; in the second their main purpose lay in the more efficient management of the household economy. Today, the freezer is perhaps best seen as a ‘time machine’: that is a device with which to manage the otherwise intolerable demands of scheduling, ordering and co-ordination (Warde, 1999).
p. 315
The freezers of today promise to help people cope with the compression and fragmentation of time. But in so doing they lock their users into certain practices and habits, at the same time requiring an extensive if routinely invisible supporting infrastructure. As well as depending on a reliable electricity supply, and accommodating kitchen designs, freezers presuppose a network of manufacturers, frozen-food producers, global transport systems and agricultural practices.
p. 315
p. 315
The freezers of today promise to help people cope with the compression and fragmentation of time. But in so doing they lock their users into certain practices and habits, at the same time requiring an extensive if routinely invisible supporting infrastructure. As well as depending on a reliable electricity supply, and accommodating kitchen designs, freezers presuppose a network of manufacturers, frozen-food producers, global transport systems and agricultural practices.
p. 315
Household appliances do not embody every aspect of social order, nor should we expect to discern the prospects for sustainable consumption in the details of their design. But, by opening up the ‘white box’ of the freezer we have been able to capture aspects of ordinary consumption which would otherwise have slipped the net. In particular, we have been able to follow the transformation of sociotechnical regimes and systems of consumption and practice from the perspective of one ever-changing device.
p. 316
___________________________________________
p. 316
___________________________________________
Johnson, Jim (1988) 'Mixing humans and non-humans together: the sociology of
a door-closer', Social Problems, 35(3), pp. 298-310.
This is where the age-old choice, so well analysed by Mumford (1966), is offered to you: either to discipline the people or to substitute for the unreliable people another delegated human character whose only function is to open and close the door. This is called a groom or a porter (from the French word for door) or a gatekeeper, or a janitor, or a concierge, or a turnkey, or a gaoler. The advantage is that you now have to discipline only one human and may safely leave the others to their erratic behaviour. No matter who these others are and where they come from, the groom will always take care of the door. A nonhuman (the hinges) plus a human (the groom) have solved the hole-wall dilemma.
p. 300
It is at this point that you have this relatively new choice: either to discipline the people or to substitute for the unreliable humans a delegated nonhuman character whose only function is to open and close the door. This is called a door-closer or a "groom." The advantage is that you now have to discipline only one nonhuman and may safely leave the others (bell boys included) to their erratic behaviour. No matter who they are and where they come from polite or rude, quick or slow, friends or foes-the nonhuman groom will always take care of the door in any weather and at any time of the day. A nonhuman (hinges) plus another nonhuman (groom) have solved the hole-wall dilemma.
p. 301
As Akrich notes, 'prescription' is the moral and ethical dimension of mechanisms. In spite of the constant weeping of moralists, no human is as relentlessly moral as a machine, especially if it is (she is, he is, they are) as "user-friendly" as my computer.
p. 301
p. 300
It is at this point that you have this relatively new choice: either to discipline the people or to substitute for the unreliable humans a delegated nonhuman character whose only function is to open and close the door. This is called a door-closer or a "groom." The advantage is that you now have to discipline only one nonhuman and may safely leave the others (bell boys included) to their erratic behaviour. No matter who they are and where they come from polite or rude, quick or slow, friends or foes-the nonhuman groom will always take care of the door in any weather and at any time of the day. A nonhuman (hinges) plus another nonhuman (groom) have solved the hole-wall dilemma.
p. 301
As Akrich notes, 'prescription' is the moral and ethical dimension of mechanisms. In spite of the constant weeping of moralists, no human is as relentlessly moral as a machine, especially if it is (she is, he is, they are) as "user-friendly" as my computer.
p. 301
As a technologist. I could claim that, provided you put aside maintenance and the few sectors of the population that are discriminated against, the groom does its job welL closing the door behind you constantly. firmly. and slowly. It shows in its humble way how three rows of delegated nonhuman actants (hinges, springs, and hydraulic pistons) replace. 90 percent of the time, either an undisciplined bell-boy who is never there when needed or. for the general public, the program instructions that have to do with remembering-to-close-the-door-when-it is-cold. The hinge plus the groom is the technologist's dream of efficient action. at least it was until the sad day when I saw the note posted on Walla Walla Sociology Department's door with which I started this article: "the groom is on strike." So not only have we been able to delegate the act of clOSing the door from the human to the nonhuman, we have also been able to delegate the little rat's lack of discipline (and maybe the union that goes with it).
p. 302
p. 302
The label "inhuman" applied to techniques simply overlooks translation mechanisms and the many choices that exist for figuring or de-figuring, personifying or abstracting, em bodying or disembodying actors.
p. 303
Humans are not necessarily figurative; for instance, you are not allowed to take the highway policeman as an individual chum. He/she is the representative of authority, and if he/she is really dumb, he/she will reject any individualising efforts from you, like smiles, jokes, bribes, or fits of anger. He/she will fully play the administrative machinery.
p. 306
why did the little (automatic) rat go on strike? The answer to this is the same as for the question earlier of why few people show up in Walla Walla. It is not because a piece of behaviour is prescribed by an inscription that the predeter mined characters will show up on time and do the job expected of them. This is true of humans, but it is truer of non-humans. In this case, the hydraulic piston did its job, but not the spring that collaborated with it. Any of the words above may be used to describe a set-up at any level and not only at the simple one I chose for the sake of clarity. It does not have to be limited to the case where a human deals with a series of nonhuman delegates; it can also be true of relations among nonhumans. In other words, when we get into a more complicated lash-up than the groom, we do not have to stop doing sociology; we go on studying "role expectation," behaviour, social relations. The non-figurative character of the actors should not intimidate us.
p. 308
Machines are lieutenants; they hold the places and the roles delegated to them, but this way of shifting is very different from other types (Latour, I988b).
p. 309
If, in our societies, there are thousands of such lieutenants to which we have delegated competences, it means that what defines our social relations is, for the most part, prescribed back to us by nonhumans. Knowledge, morality, craft, force, sociability are not properties of humans but of humans accompanied by their retinue of delegated characters. Since each of those delegates ties together part of our social world, it means that studying social relations without the nonhumans is impossible (Latour, 1988a) or adapted only to complex primate societies like those of baboons (Strum and Latour, 1987). One of the tasks of sociology is to do for the masses of nonhumans that make up our modern societies what it did so well for the masses of ordinary and despised humans that make up our society. To the people and ordi nary folks should now be added the lively, fascinating, and honourable ordinary mechanism. If the concepts, habits, and preferred fields of sociologists have to be modified a bit to accommodate these new masses, it is a ssmall price to pay.
p. 311
_________________________________________
Reading 3:
p. 303
Humans are not necessarily figurative; for instance, you are not allowed to take the highway policeman as an individual chum. He/she is the representative of authority, and if he/she is really dumb, he/she will reject any individualising efforts from you, like smiles, jokes, bribes, or fits of anger. He/she will fully play the administrative machinery.
p. 306
why did the little (automatic) rat go on strike? The answer to this is the same as for the question earlier of why few people show up in Walla Walla. It is not because a piece of behaviour is prescribed by an inscription that the predeter mined characters will show up on time and do the job expected of them. This is true of humans, but it is truer of non-humans. In this case, the hydraulic piston did its job, but not the spring that collaborated with it. Any of the words above may be used to describe a set-up at any level and not only at the simple one I chose for the sake of clarity. It does not have to be limited to the case where a human deals with a series of nonhuman delegates; it can also be true of relations among nonhumans. In other words, when we get into a more complicated lash-up than the groom, we do not have to stop doing sociology; we go on studying "role expectation," behaviour, social relations. The non-figurative character of the actors should not intimidate us.
p. 308
Machines are lieutenants; they hold the places and the roles delegated to them, but this way of shifting is very different from other types (Latour, I988b).
p. 309
If, in our societies, there are thousands of such lieutenants to which we have delegated competences, it means that what defines our social relations is, for the most part, prescribed back to us by nonhumans. Knowledge, morality, craft, force, sociability are not properties of humans but of humans accompanied by their retinue of delegated characters. Since each of those delegates ties together part of our social world, it means that studying social relations without the nonhumans is impossible (Latour, 1988a) or adapted only to complex primate societies like those of baboons (Strum and Latour, 1987). One of the tasks of sociology is to do for the masses of nonhumans that make up our modern societies what it did so well for the masses of ordinary and despised humans that make up our society. To the people and ordi nary folks should now be added the lively, fascinating, and honourable ordinary mechanism. If the concepts, habits, and preferred fields of sociologists have to be modified a bit to accommodate these new masses, it is a ssmall price to pay.
p. 311
_________________________________________
Reading 3:
Zalewski, J, (2015) Consumer revolution in People’s Poland: Technologies in Everyday
Life and the negotiation between custom and fashion (1945-1980) in Journal of
Consumer Culture, 0(0), pp. 1-19
The adoption of innovations was associated with a wider process of withdrawing from the natural economy to develop the state market, enhancing the participation of households in the money economy and increasing expenditures on industrial goods, or an economic consumer revolution (McKendrick et al., 1982).
p. 2
In sociological terms, the consumer revolution can be understood as a generalised shift in socially organised patterns of consumption away from regulation by interdiction or sumptuary law over particular social categories and towards fashion governing consumption through social emulation (Appadurai, 1996). In this broad sense, the consumer revolution occurred in different periods for different sections of Western societies, reaching a level of mass consumption at the beginning of the 20th century in the United States (Aldridge, 2003) and after the Second World War in Western Europe (De Grazia, 2005).
p. 2
The adoption of innovations was associated with a wider process of withdrawing from the natural economy to develop the state market, enhancing the participation of households in the money economy and increasing expenditures on industrial goods, or an economic consumer revolution (McKendrick et al., 1982).
p. 2
In sociological terms, the consumer revolution can be understood as a generalised shift in socially organised patterns of consumption away from regulation by interdiction or sumptuary law over particular social categories and towards fashion governing consumption through social emulation (Appadurai, 1996). In this broad sense, the consumer revolution occurred in different periods for different sections of Western societies, reaching a level of mass consumption at the beginning of the 20th century in the United States (Aldridge, 2003) and after the Second World War in Western Europe (De Grazia, 2005).
p. 2
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