Keynote "Infrastructures as drivers of environmental consumption" with Prof. Dr. Cordula Kropp (University of Stuttgart)

Infrastructures can be a major lever in the socio-ecological transformation. They guide consumption practices, but also consumption-related perceptions, and their digitalization in particular is often praised as an enabler of sustainable consumption. In the lecture, Cordula Kropp will explore the connection between these long-lasting large-scale technological systems (Mayntz & Hughes 1988) and socially organized consumption practices (Cass et al. 2018). On this basis, existing approaches to strengthening sustainable consumption through digital networking and digitally supported coordination and participation tools will be discussed. The lecture invites us to think about infrastructure change in a more experimental and unconventional way. At the same time, it also highlights the limits of existing approaches. In terms of content, the focus will be on the so-called German energy and building transition.

Participation in the keynote is possible both in person and online via livestream (link at www.uni-kassel.de/go/agenda-verbraucherforschung)

The keynote will take place as part of the workshop "Digital consumer worlds, AI and self-determination as challenges for future-oriented consumer research" as part of the agenda process "Future-oriented consumer research". As part of this process, the content orientation of consumer science is to be reviewed and impulses for a future reorientation are to be given in the form of a final, collaboratively created white paper. The keynote will bridge the gap between the topic of the first workshop on "Consumption in the Anthropocene" and the workshop on digitalization at the ITeG in Kassel.