The performativity of sustainability: making a conduit a marketing device

Abstract

This paper examines how a conduit, as a ‘working infrastructure’ with material and social qualities, shapes and connects the business and practices of sustainable waste management. Conduits have had a prominent but passive role in explanations of food leftovers within households. We show that a conduit, as an assemblage of investments and practices among interested actors, requires and allows for the further economisation and calculation of waste management. Conduits shape business-to-business exchanges and relationships, deriving demand across domains of exchange and managing risks to the continuation of industrial processes. They resist singular stewardship, instead allowing multiple actors to recognise their interdependence and contest the development of facilities and services. Marketing communications form an important dimension of the conduit, albeit distributed across different parts of the conduit, in aligning actors’ practices of sorting and ‘moving things along’ at and between locations.

Keywords:

• conduit
• performativity
• waste management
• sorting
• economising

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Ambiguous Goods Seminar, part of the series on Doing and Theorising Marketing Work, March 2012 in London. We are grateful to Liz Parsons and Janice Denegri-Knott for comments and criticisms. We thank Katy Mason, Johan Hagberg and Hans Kjellberg for their editorial guidance and advice, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments and criticisms.

Notes

¹ For example, a Nestle plant attracted publicity by ceasing to send its waste to landfill, having previously sent 12.5 tonnes per month to landfill (http://www.nestle.co.uk/media/pressreleases/Pages/NestleZerosInOWasteInGirvan.aspx).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Finch

John Finch is Professor of Marketing at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow. His PhD is from Lancaster University Management School, and he has held academic appointments at the Universities of Aberdeen and Strathclyde. His research interests include business-to-business marketing and the commercialising of science and technology. He is undertaking research into Marketing Green Chemistry (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) and his work has been published in Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Theory and Research Policy.

Conor Horan

Conor Horan is Lecturer in Marketing at the Dublin Institute of Technology and a PhD candidate at the University of Strathclyde Business School. He is undertaking research into the practices and routines of knowledge development and exchange between higher education institutions and companies across different industry sectors. His work has been published in Industrial Marketing Management and Journal of Business Research.

Emma Reid

Emma Reid is a teaching fellow and a PhD candidate at the University of Strathclyde Business School. She is undertaking research in the business-to-business service of audience development in the cultural economy. She is co-editing a special issue of Industrial Marketing Management on market innovations.