Organising the subjects of responsible consumption: Analysing the locus of responsibility for transitions in the UK food sector (2007-2021)

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

• Food consumption in the UK has been subject to continued intervention to improve health and sustainability outcomes. • Responsible consumption is an organisational field in which the relationships between actor groups are mediated by the real and discursive figure of ‘the consumer’. • Responsibilisation is a dynamic process that involves reconfiguration over time. • The shifting locus of responsibility can be linked to multi-level transitions in food practices. • Timing and sequencing explain how ‘consumer-facing’ interventions contribute to sustainability transitions. This paper considers the phenomenon of responsible consumption, which we approach as an organisational field. In doing so, we contribute analytic guidance for the study of both consumption and responsibility in sustainability transitions. Our analysis draws on three qualitative longitudinal case studies of ostensibly ‘consumer-facing’ policies and initiatives for healthy and sustainable food: carbon labelling, food waste campaigning, and sugar taxation. In each case we explore the mechanisms by which ‘consumers' are responsibilised and trace the effects of these over time. We demonstrate that responsibilisation is a dynamic and ongoing process that cannot be reduced to the unidirectional transfer of responsibilities from organisations to individuals. We also link shifts in the relationships between, and responsibilities of, different actor groups to tangible changes in the configuration of food consumption practices. Taken together, we argue that the enactment of responsible consumption is not contingent on the success of efforts to responsibilise individual consumers. To conclude, we consider the implications of our analysis for theoretical and practical understandings of sustainability transitions.