Some habits are like old friends. I stroke and tug on my beard unconsciously when I am preoccupied or absorbed in a film. I know some people find that driving is relaxing because the habits and routines occupy enough of their mind to free their imagination, but driving does not work for me. The shower is where I can put my body on automatic: the soaping and lathering and wiping and drying create a bubble of inattention which works a kind of magic on my creative imagination. The ideas for this chapter emerged in the shower while my body was ‘on automatic’. The rhythm of manual labour, digging in the garden, chopping weeds with a machete, has a similar meditative quality, far different from the ‘flow’ of total absorption in a task or meditation where the inner voice of consciousness is stilled and absorbed in the moment (Csíkszentmihályi 1996).
I do not doubt that others experience routine and habit very differently. In particular, many people report feeling less control and feel more at the mercy of the patterns of their lives. Yet in my research on food tastes and preferences I have not run into anyone who did not report at least a few instances where they were able to ‘learn’ to like something, to make something new into a taken-for-granted part of their daily life. Though most people seem much less aware of the process, most can also find an instance where they abandoned a habit and ‘moved on’ to something else.
An Analytical Approach
In an earlier paper I tried to develop a terminology for the way people turn desires into needs, making the things they want into essential aspects of their daily life, and then basic needs, requirements and expectations (Wilk 2001). Elizabeth Shove (2003) takes up a similar project in her investigation of the origin of daily bathing as a bodily practice in the UK, once a dangerous folly, then a luxury, and finally a necessity (see also Highmore 2004).
In my analytical approach, I divided the process of absorbing a new form of consumption into daily life into two parts: cultivation and naturalization. Cultivation refers to the processes which bring unconscious habits and routines forward into consciousness, reflection and discourse. To use Bourdieu’s terminology (1977), cultivation brings things out of the habitus and into the realm of praxis. Cultivation can be active or passive, because we can actively initiate new routines, or we can have changes forced upon us. Conflicts between routines, for example, may push them forward because we have to figure out what gets priority.
Because so much of consumer society is a fine balancing act between fitting in and standing out, most people are exquisitely sensitive to the possibility that some of their personal routines or habits may be inadequate or offensive to others. ‘Alarms’ can easily be tripped that lead us reflexively to examine our grooming, eating, our dressing, walking, driving or other daily routines and habits to see if they have faltered, slacked or fallen out of fashion. We all need many moments when we pause to assess, ‘Did we forget something today?’ ‘Did we fail to complete some routine?’
The Edge of Agency
149