A Guide to the Systems of Provision Approach

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

   PDF

2. Introduction and Background to the SoP Approach

   • Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

   Pages 1-28

3. The SoP Approach: Theoretical Background and Empirical Practice

   • Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

   Pages 29-52

4. Understanding Material Cultures

   • Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

   Pages 53-72

5. Insights from Operationalizing the Systems of Provision Approach

   • Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

   Pages 73-105

6. A SoP Approach to Understanding Food Consumption

   • Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

   Pages 107-141

7. Conclusion: The Contribution of the SoP Approach

   • Kate Bayliss, Ben Fine

   Pages 143-175

8. Back Matter

   Pages 177-196

   PDF

Understanding consumption requires looking at the systems by which goods and services are provided – not just how they are produced but the historically evolved structures, power relations and cultures within which they are located. The Systems of Provision approach provides an interdisciplinary framework for unpacking these complex issues.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the Systems of Provision approach, setting out core concepts and theoretical origins alongside numerous case studies. The book combines fresh understandings of everyday consumption using examples from food, housing, and water, with implications for society’s major challenges, including inequality, climate change, and prospects for capitalism.

Readers do not require prior knowledge across the subject matter covered but the text remains significant for accomplished researchers and policymakers, especially those interested in the messy real world realities underpinning who gets what, how, and why across public and private provision in global, national, and historical contexts.

• Consumption studies
• Sustainable consumption and social change
• Sustainable Development Goals
• Sustainable consumption and production
• Climate change
• Public health
• Systems of Provision (SoP) approach
• Financialisation
• Material cultures
• Neoliberalism

“Bayliss and Fine’s book on the theory and application of the “systems of provision” approach is a social science tour-de-force, reconnecting production and consumption well beyond the over simplistic supply and demand of neoclassical economics. In our time of climate crisis, the insights arising from systems of provision are not just illuminating: they may prove crucial to spur the necessary transformation of our economies.” (Julia Steinberger, Professor of Political Ecology, University of Leeds)

“The climate crisis has now arrived, and it will require radical changes in consumption patterns, especially in a context of steady erosion of public goods and services. These changes in consumption cannot be understood with mainstream models of supply and demand; instead, they involve complex interactions all along supply chains, whilst practices of consumption involve not only market signals but cultural understandings. In this path breaking book, Kate Bayliss and Ben Fine draw from decades of rich empirical case studies to synthesize lessons into a comprehensive method for understanding consumption. Their concept of ‘systems of provision’ breaks new theoretical ground, offering social scientists and policymakers a way forward for comprehensively understanding and better shaping systems of provision in contemporary capitalism. Social policy experts and scholars in particular now have a powerful analytical key to new insights into who wins and who loses from the (re-)commodifcation of the sphere of social reproduction.” (Lena Lavinas, Professor of Welfare Economics, Institute of Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro)

“Consumption is too important a topic to be left to economists, but can the other social sciences come up with something as all-embracing and coherent? The Systems of Provision approach claims to provide this alternative framework. Consumption in all its complexity can only be understood in a disaggregated way: the energy system differs from the fashion system, the food system from transport, the hospitality system from health care. This book provides a rich application of these ideas and a guide to policy making and activism, all the more important as runaway consumption in the rich world threatens all our futures.” (Ian Gough, Visiting Professor, London School of Economics and Emeritus Professor, University of Bath)

“Who consumes how much of what, and why? This is not really about “individual preferences”, but rather is critically determined by how goods and services are provided, and how integrated chains of provisioning are intertwined with material cultures. This important book will revolutionise how you think about the consumption of items as disparate as food, consumer durables, or education.” (Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)

“This is a must-read for anyone interested in consumption studies. Empirically based and theoretically rigorous, it provides a comprehensive but accessible account of the SOP approach—which has established itself as the most truly interdisciplinary approach to understanding consumption in all its diverse and complex contexts.” (Desmond McNeill, Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo)

“Bayliss and Fine’s systems of provision (SoP) approach offers a useful grand framework for the social analysis of consumption. They go beyond what is consumed and provided to recognize various rationales for consumption. These include norms, incorporating socially and culturally determined propensities to consume, and the spectrum of provisioning, ranging from public goods to private suppliers. As their book includes both theorization and wide-ranging case studies, the approach offers alternative economic theory and analysis of consumption, besides informing related analyses.” (Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Visiting Senior Fellow at Khazanah Research Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue, Columbia University, and Adjunct Professor at the International Islamic University in Malaysia)

• Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

  Kate Bayliss

• Department of Economics, SOAS, University of London, London, UK

  Ben Fine

Dr Kate Bayliss is a Research Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS, University of London, UK, and Visiting Researcher at University of Leeds, UK. She has researched the nature and impact of privatization in provisioning infrastructure and essential services for over two decades, working with UN and other agencies. She has worked on Systems of Provision as Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leeds under the Living Well Within Limits Project, https://lili.leeds.ac.uk/, and at SOAS under the FESSUD project, especially for water, health, housing and energy, http://fessud.eu/ 

Professor Ben Fine is Emeritus Professor of Economics, School of Oriental and African Studies, SOAS, University of London, UK. He has (co)authored or edited over thirty books and published over 250 articles, with strong commitment to interdisciplinarity.  He served for a decade as a founding member of the Social Science Research Committee of the UK’s Food Standards Agency, chairing the Working Group on Reform of Slaughterhouse Controls. He has advised UNDP, UNRISD, UNDESA, UNCTAD, Oxfam and other progressive civil society organizations and trade unions. He led the FESSUD programme on the financialization of systems of provision. He is Chair of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy, http://iippe.org/

Policies and ethics