"We're just stuck in a daily routine": Implications of the temporal dimensions, demands and dispositions of mothering for leisure time physical activity

Change and stability in British drinking practices and culture between 2009 and 2019: A longitudinal latent class analysis of drinking occasions

Rationale

Theories of practice can support understanding of health-related behaviours, but few studies use quantitative methods to understand time-trends in practices. This paper describes changes in the prevalence and performance of alcohol drinking practices in Great Britain between 2009 and 2019.

Methods

Latent class analyses of annual cross-sectional data collected between 2009 and 2019. The dataset come from a one-week retrospective diary survey of adults resident in Great Britain. It contains 604,578 drinking occasions reported by 213,470 adults (18+) who consumed alcohol in the diary-week. The measures describe occasion characteristics including companions, location, motivation, timings, accompanying activities and alcohol consumed. We estimate separate latent class models for each year and for off-trade only (e.g. home), on-trade only (e.g. bar) and mixed-trade occasions.

Results

We identified fifteen practices; four off-trade only, eight on-trade only and three mixed-trade. The prevalence of practices was largely stable over time except for shifts away from drinking with a partner and towards drinking alone in the off-trade, and shifts away from Big nights out and towards other forms of heavy drinking in the on-trade. We identified five key trends in the performance of practices: (i) spirits increasingly replaced wine as the main beverage consumed in occasions; (ii) home-drinking moved away from routinised wine-drinking with meals on weekdays and towards spirits-drinking on weekends; (iii) the Male friends at the pub practice changed less than other pub-drinking practices; (iv) Big nights out started later, often in nightclubs, and involved less pub-drinking or heavy drinking and (v) the meal-based and Going out with partner practice formats showed few changes over time.

Conclusion

Key recent trends in British drinking practices include a decline in routinised wine-drinking at home, a transformation of big nights out and a mixture of stability and change in pub- and meal-based practices.

Understanding health inequalities through a practice-oriented 'capabilities' perspective. Motherhood and leisure time physical activity

In this article, we explore how a capabilities perspective can advance practice theoretic conceptualisations of persistent health inequalities. Specifically, we seek to understand the capabilities necessary for recruitment to leisure time physical activity (LTPA) practices by low SES mothers, a group traditionally excluded from LTPA. Our study illuminates that mothers living a life of social disadvantage face difficulties in becoming recruited to LTPA practices despite, in many cases, the availability of elements required for performance. We identify that temporal, support and energy capabilities are necessary for low SES mothers to become recruitable to LTPA. The dispossession of these capabilities signals inequalities in the constellation of practices that configure this group's lived experiences, in turn giving rise to practice absence and further consolidating patterns of inequality. We offer a framework of practice capabilities and health inequalities to guide future practice-oriented scholarship in the sociology of illness and health, which signals how capabilities may enable or constrain recruitment to health-promoting practices, give rise to inequalities and condition the possibility of practice absence.

'He called me out of the blue': An ethnographic exploration of contrasting temporalities in a social prescribing intervention

Social prescribing, a way of connecting patients to local services, is central to the NHS Personalised Care agenda. This paper employs ethnographic data, generated with 19 participants between November 2018 and July 2020, to explore the socio-temporal relations shaping their experiences of a local social prescribing intervention. Our focus is on the ways in which the intervention synchronised with the multitude of shifting, complex and often contradictory 'timespaces' of our participants. Our focus on the temporal rhythms of everyday practice allows us to trace a tension between the linearity and long horizon of the intervention and the oft contrasting timeframes of participants, sometimes leading to a mismatch that limited the intervention's impact. Further, we observed an interventional 'drift' from continuity towards unsupported signposting and 'out-of-the-blue' contacts which favour the temporality of the intervention. We demonstrate a need for intervention planning to be flexible to multiple, often conflicting, temporalities. We argue that health interventions must account for the temporal relations lived by the people they seek to support.

The body politics of successful ageing in the nexus of health, well-being and energy consumption practices

In this paper, we introduce the idea of the bio-socio-material body to think through the body politics that emerge within the nexus of health, well-being and domestic energy consumption as people age. Our work draws upon an ethnographic study with older Australians in regional New South Wales, Australia. We enrich social practice theory conceptualisations by foregrounding the body as a dynamic bio-socio-material entity that shapes and is shaped by practices. In doing so, we draw attention to the body politics of managing health, well-being and energy consumption while trying to age successfully. We identify that the bio-socio-material dimensions of the body play an important role in how health, well-being and energy practices are performed. Energy practices are bound up in understandings of health and well-being as an ongoing and contingent process. Here, the use of energy and appliances becomes integral to how people negotiate and work towards successful ageing. We found that embodied practices of health, well-being and energy consumption are linked to biological, emotional, affective, social and material concerns that create body politics. These include tensions and challenges relating to health and vitality, caring for the sick and the dying, maintaining good mental health, the affordances of buildings and appliances, energy affordability and billing anxiety, social connectedness, and pleasures and pains. We raise questions emerging from our research on the implications for successful ageing. We call for attention to how health, well-being and energy are imbricated and for policy and programmes that better support older people to navigate the nexus of health, well-being and energy consumption as they age.

Understanding whole school physical activity transition from a practice theory perspective

Purpose

In this study, the authors offer a practice theory framing of school physical activity transition with conceptual and managerial contributions to whole school approaches (WSAs).

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a literature overview of the limitations of WSA, ecological and systems theorisation and a practice theory framing of physical activity, the authors introduce a model that identifies signs of practice transition and conceptualises the relationship between signs and practice reconfigurations. To exemplify insights from the model, the authors provide illustrations from three cases from the national Estonian “Schools in Motion” programme.

Findings

The signs of practitioner effort, resistance and habituation indicate how practice ecosystem transition is unfolding across a spectrum from practice differentiation to routinisation. Several signs of transition, like resistance, indicate that reconfigured practices are becoming established. Also, there are signs of habituation that seemingly undermine the value of the programme but should instead be celebrated as valuable evidence for the normalisation of new practices.

Practical implications

The article provides a model for WSA programme managers to recognise signs of transition and plan appropriate managerial activities.

Originality/value

The practice theory framing of school physical activity transition advances from extant theorizations of WSAs that have failed to account for the dynamic ways that socio-cultural change in complex school settings can unfold. A model, based on a practice ontology and concepts from theories of practice, is proposed. This recognises signs of transition and can help with the dynamic and reflexive management of transition that retains the purpose of systemic whole school change.