Paper short abstract:

This paper utilizes a ‘reading for difference’ approach across food, mobility and housing in DK. It advocates for a community economies lens to reshape consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future, urging further research on spatial proximity, long-term relations, and co-ownership.

Paper long abstract:

The ongoing climate crisis requires rapid reduction in carbon emissions, calling for not just ‘greener’ and more efficient modes of production and renewable energy, but also a wide-ranging transformation of our lifestyles and current consumption-production relationships. Especially affluent countries with high consumption emissions are facing the need for systemic change. Through the case of Denmark, this paper explores on the one hand dominant, and on the other alternative, consumption-production relationships across the three areas with the highest carbon emissions: food, mobility and housing. It does so by mapping different actors and stakeholders in the Danish landscape of production and provision and analyzing focus group material representing a total of 50 professional organizations from food, mobility and housing. By adopting Gibson-Graham’s approach of ‘reading for difference’, the paper explores more-than-capitalist economic activities, commodity exchanges and forms of ownership at play in organizations’ strive towards sustainable production. As such, the paper draws attention to the field of community economies as a lens to reframe consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future. The paper contributes to the body of community economies research by identifying three central dimensions in which alternative actors differ from mainstream organizations in consumption-production relationships across food, mobility and housing: 1) spatial dimensions; 2) temporal dimensions; and 3) social dimensions. Highlighting these, the paper calls for further research and attention to spatial proximity, long term relating and co-ownership in reframing consumption-production relationships for a sustainable future.