What future for collaborative consumption? A practice theoretical account

Collaborative consumption indicates the emergence and rapid spread of a new set of consumption practices. Originally praised as an antidote to an unsustainable market economy, there is growing concern that collaborative consumption increasingly follows a conventional market rationality of paymentsand profits, thereby undermining its initial social and ‘civil society’ aspects. This article investigates the future of collaborative consumption through case studies of the Peerby and MyWheels platforms, which represent new social practices of borrowing and renting. We use the sociological theories of Theodore Schatzki and Randall Collins to analyse the key factors that determine the present and future trajectories of these practices. We show how human agency and emotions in a dynamic between companies, practices, and practitioners are crucial in shaping the future of collaborative consumption. The findings suggest two diverging trajectories: one that sticks to the social aspects of connectingpeople through sharing things, and another that heads towards impersonal forms of collaborative consumption. The latter is primarily organized by companies, which introduce new rules (payments and insurances) and technologies (drones and autonomous vehicles) to make the shared use of things more fast, efficient, and profitable

Nature-positive futures : Food systems as a catalyser for change

The content of this Mansholt lecture came about through a wide science-policy consultation process. Existing ‘seeds of innovation’ in the biodiversity climate-food nexus were collected in a WUR-wide dialogue on 10th May 2022, which involved some 150 interdisciplinary experts. These seeds were collated into interventions for nature-positive futures, in an interdisciplinary workshop of WUR colleagues on 13th May 2022. They were further clustered into five entry points for nature-positive changes to the food system. The resulting entry points and interventions were discussed with several EU policy makers in another workshop in Brussels on 30th June 2022. We thank everyone involved in this process for their inpu