Abstract
This thesis seeks to examine how food consumption and provisioning practices involving the fridge and other supporting appliances are being shaped in São Paulo. Everyday practices are becoming energy intensive in affluent societies; this thesis has chosen the middle class as a target group due to its increasing size and influence recently in the South. These practices are constantly seen as taken for granted, as they do not require much reflection to be accomplished. However, I argue throughout the thesis that the way people engage with appliances influences consumption, as daily practices demand energy in order to be accomplished, and food consumption and provisioning practices are sources of environmental impacts. A Practice theory approach is chosen for this study, as this is a promising approach to investigating how practices are shaped, carried out, developed and can actually change. Qualitative methods such as interviews and observations were used for this study, as they are able to provide insights into how people conceive of the world they live in, meanings and ideas related to their practices, social context and daily life. Ideas of convenience legitimize practices involving the fridge-freezer and microwave, and people are able to order and reorder their practices to suit their needs, avoiding continued shopping trips, freezing and defrosting, having the chance to cook and buy in bulk. These appliances are constantly put in use in combination in order to make tasks efficient and faster. However, they create a certain rigidity and demand their own temporalities, which makes it difficult for people to engage with them in other ways. Time seems to be an important feature in the daily life of the interviewees, which is experienced as lacking or as a constraint, and I argue that the way people experience time it is also influenced by how these practices are shaped. Women are usually the ones responsible for providing food for the family, but there are exception cases where men engage more in these practices after retirement. When women are active workers, and responsible for managing the house and food provision, they experience the dual time burden, which has influences on how tasks involving appliances are accomplished. The usage of the fridge-freezer and microwave includes the consumption of meat and dairy products, which causes great environmental impact due to the use of more water, energy, etc, and I investigate how these products are highly present in these practices.