Blackwell Reference Online

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Provisioning refers to the social and economic organization of the delivery and consumption of goods and services. Its conceptual application falls within three, not mutually exclusive, areas. First is the relationship between production and consumption, spheres of economic and social life often treated empirically and theoretically as separate from one another. Connections between production and consumption are acknowledged (supply and demand being examples), but their relationship tends to be approached from production- or consumption-led perspectives ( Lury 1996 ). Second, by bringing together production and consumption, provisioning is a concept employed to address socioeconomic change. Third, it draws attention to modes other than economic markets through which goods and services reach consumers. The concept has its origins in the “new urban sociology” of the 1970s. In The Urban Question (1977), Castells represented the city as a site of “collective consumption,” an alternative terrain to that of private consumption in commercial markets, highlighting the role of the state in providing for consumers as a public collective (such as health care and urban infrastructures). Debate emerged surrounding the impact on social relations of shifts between collective and private forms of consumption. Saunders (1986) argued that the principal social cleavage in the UK was no longer ... log in or subscribe to read full text