Mette Hove Jacobsen defended her PhD thesis “Sustainable consumption and the significance of social relation – Four articles on similarities and differences in consumption practices” on the 18 September 2017.

In the thesis, Mette Hove Jacobsen investigated the importance of social relations in order to produce and reproduce sustainable consumption practices. In the first paper, Mette identifies four distinct subgroups with similar patterns of possession of household appliances, which for example distinguish between ‘updated’ and ‘outdated’ consumers of electrical appliances. In the second paper, Mette explores the social differentiation of laundering by identifying three ideal typical ways of laundering according to frequency of laundering at different temperatures. In the third paper, Mette (together with co-author Anders Rhiger Hansen) investigates the importance of parent-child relations according to heat consumption practices. The paper shows a significant correlation between the heat consumption patterns of adults and their parents. The fourth and last paper of Mette’s PhD thesis consist of a theoretical discussion on the (re)introduction of embodied practical understandings to the sociology of sustainable consumption. Thus, this paper create a theoretical ground for investigating the importance of social relations on sustainable consumption practices. The papers have all been under review in acknowledged journals, and the first paper is published in Journal of Consumer Culture.   

If you want to read more about Mette and her work visit this link http://vbn.aau.dk/da/persons/mette-hove-jacobsen(a841b6d2-ec75-4c73-8be1-056476f95f30).html