Dr Dale Southerton
Lecturer
Email: dale.southerton@manchester.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 161 275 0260
I joined the Morgan Centre and Sociology in 2006, and am also an affiliated staff member of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC). Previously I was a Research Fellow at the ESRC Centre for Research on Innovation and Competition (CRIC) – where I am now an Honorary Fellow), which I joined in 1999 having completed my PhD in Sociology at Lancaster University.
Research interests
My broad interests concern social change and its implications for the ordering of daily life. This leads to more specialised interests in consumption, time and space, identity, social networks (social capital); parents, children and domestic life; technological innovation; and sustainability. These are themes that run throughout recent research activities.
A recently completed project explored the diffusion of cultures of consumption using time diary and family expenditure surveys to examine how practices of consumption have changed in five countries (France, Netherlands, Norway, UK, USA) since the 1970s. Time is also a feature of ongoing research which is concerned with the temporal ordering of daily life. This project has paid particular attention to senses of ‘harriedness’ and the challenges of coordinating social practices and networks within daily life. I have also recently finished a project which also took consumption and time as its starting point. In this case domestic technologies and practices were the focus of inquiry.
Other research projects include: consumption and identity; the normalization of freezers; and the social worlds of caravanning.
I would welcome enquiries from students regarding PhD supervision in any of the above areas; and from researchers interested in finding out more about my work.
Books
Sustainable consumption: the implications of changing infrastructures of provision, Southerton, D, Chappells, H and Van Vliet, B (eds) (2004) London: Edward Elgar. Buy on Amazon [new window]
Journal articles
‘The changing practice of eating: evidence from UK time diaries, 1975 and 2000’, Cheng S-L, Olsen, W, Southerton D and Warde A (forthcoming) British Journal of Sociology, accepted September 2006.
‘Home extensions in the UK: space, time and practice’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Hand, M, Shove, E, and Southerton, D (forthcoming, accepted November 2005)
'Analysing the temporal organisation of daily life: Social constraints, practices and their allocation’, Southerton, D, Sociology, (2006) 40(3): 435-54. View article on publisher's website.
‘Explaining showering: A discussion of the material, conventional, and temporal dimensions of practice’, Hand, M, Shove, E and Southerton, D, Sociological Research Online (2005).
'"Pressed for Time" – the differential impacts of a "time squeeze’’', Southerton, D and Tomlinson, M Sociological Review, (2005), 53(2): 215-39. View article on publisher's website.
‘Bringing Children (and Parents) into the Sociology of Consumption: Towards a theoretical and empirical agenda’, Martens, L, Southerton, D and Scott, S, Special Issue on ‘Children’s Consumer Culture’ of Journal of Consumer Culture (edited by Dan Cook), (2004) vol 4 (2): 155-182. Publisher's copyright statement [new window].
'"Squeezing Time": Allocating practices, co-ordinating networks and scheduling society’, Southerton, D, Time and Society (2003) 12(1): 5-25. Publisher's copyright statement [new window].
'"Us" and "Them": Identification and class boundaries’, Southerton, D, Special Issue on ‘Monsters and Morals’ of Soundings: A journal of politics and culture (edited by Elizabeth Silva) (2002) issue 21: 133-147.
'Boundaries of "Us" and "Them": Class, mobility and identification in a new town’, Southerton, D, Sociology, (2002) 36(1): 171-193. Publisher's copyright statement [new window].
‘Consuming kitchens: taste, context and identity formation’, Southerton, D, Journal of Consumer Culture, (2001) 1(2):179-204. Publisher's copyright statement [new window].
‘The social worlds of caravaning: objects, scripts and practices’, Southerton, D, Shove, E, Warde, A and Deem, R, Sociological Research Online, (2001) 6(2).
‘Defrosting the Freezer: From novelty to convenience. A story of normalization’, Shove, E and Southerton, D Journal of Material Culture (2000) Vol 5, No 3. Translated into Czech for publication in Czech and Slovak social science journal Biograf. Publisher's copyright statement [new window].
Chapters in books
‘The temporal organisation of daily life: social constraints, composite practices and allocation’, Southerton, D, in M Pantzar and E Shove (eds), Manufacturing Leisure: Innovations in happiness, well-being and fun (2005) Helsinki: National Consumer Research Council, pp 78-100.
‘The changing organization of everyday life in UK: evidence from time use surveys 1975-2000’, Warde, A, Southerton, D, Olsen, W and Cheng, S, in M Pantzar and E Shove (eds) Manufacturing Leisure: Innovations in happiness, well-being and fun, Helsinki: National Consumer Research Council, pp 11-40.
‘The Limited Autonomy of the Consumer: Implications for Sustainable Consumption’, Southerton, D, Warde, A and Hand, M, in D Southerton, H Chappells, and B Van Vliet (eds) Sustainable consumption: the implications of changing infrastructures of provision, (2004) London: Edward Elgar, pp 32-48.
‘Introduction: consumption, infrastructures and environmental sustainability’, Southerton, D, Chappells, H and Van Vliet, B, in D Southerton, H Chappells, & B Van Vliet (eds) Sustainable consumption: the implications of changing infrastructures of provision, (2004) London: Edward Elgar, pp 1-14.
'Conclusions', Chappells, H, Van Vliet, B and Southerton, D, in D Southerton, H Chappells, and B Van Vliet (eds) Sustainable consumption: the implications of changing infrastructures of provision (2004) London: Edward Elgar, pp 144-150.
'Cultural capital, social networks and social contexts: cultural orientations toward spare time practices in a New Town’, Southerton, D, in C Phillipson, G Allan and D Morgan (eds) Social Networks and Social Exclusion: Sociological and Policy Issues, (2004) Hants: Ashgate, pp 97-116.
'Ordinary and Distinctive Kitchens; or a kitchen is a kitchen is a kitchen', Southerton, D in J Gronow and A Warde (eds), Ordinary Consumption, (2001) London: Harwood Press, pp. 159-178.