As a response to anthropogenic ecological problems, a group of organisation scholars have acknowledged the importance of ecocentric theorising that takes materiality and non-human objects seriously. The purpose of this article is to examine the philosophical basis of ecocentric organisation studies and develop an ontological outline for ecocentric theorising in the Anthropocene. The paper identifies the central premises of ecocentric organisations from the previous literature, and complements the theory with a set of ontological qualities common to all objects. The study draws on recent advances in object-oriented and ecological philosophies to present three essential qualities of objects, namely autonomy, uniqueness, and intrinsicality. The paper discusses how these qualities are critical in reclaiming the lost credibility and practical relevance of ecocentrism in both organisational theory and the sustainability sciences in general. To organise human activities in a sustainable manner in the new geological era, a new ontology is needed that not only includes materiality and non-humans in the analysis, but also leads to an ecologically and ethically broader understanding of ecospheric beings and their relationships

This paper presents a study of the socio-technical ordering of time around wood-fuelled heating systems of detached houses. It analyses the sequences and rhythms that organize the work of domestic heating, its synchronization with other daily activities, and tempo as the subjective experience of time in these activities. The study is based on a large, pre-existing Finnish free-form diary collection. We suggest that domestic energy technologies become useable and useful through the gradual embedding that involves the temporal organization of everyday life. As a result, technologies that organize time are not only convenient in an invisible way but also act as taken-for-granted coordinates and rhythms of human pursuits in everyday life. In many countries, wood-fuelled heating systems remain a common renewable energy technology in detached houses and stand as one option to lower related carbon emissions. However, the broader use of wood is compromised by time and convenience.

Theories of social practice routinely acknowledge the significance of the material world, arguing that objects have a constitutive role in shaping and reproducing the practices of which daily life is made. Objects are also important for those who approach ‘everyday life’ as an ontology, a tradition in which scholarly interest in the material reaches beyond the somewhat pragmatic concerns of practice theory. In this article we identify traces of both schools of thought in the ways in which people describe their immediate material environments. By drawing on an archive of diary material, we illustrate multi-faceted object relations with reference to the example of keeping warm. We conclude that in keeping warm, diarists weave together encounters, tactics and judgements, encountering objects in ways that extend beyond the ‘mere’ enactment of social practice. In analysing these encounters we explore ways of conceptualising the object-world that are especially relevant for studies of everyday life.

We know that patterns of domestic consumption are situated within broader systems of provision and that home appliances like the fridge freezer bridge between practices of cooking, shopping and eating, on one hand, and increasingly global systems of food production, distribution and diet on the other. In analysing the uses of fridge freezers in Hanoi and Bangkok as expressions, in microcosm, of complex and evolving processes of urbanisation and food provisioning, this article provides new insight into how specific configurations, dependencies and patterns of consumption take hold and how they vary and change. Our analysis of systems and practices in flux has the dual function of showing how household strategies reflect and contribute to more extensive transformations, and of demonstrating how these are shaped by ongoing tensions and relations between new and established forms of urban food supply and associated concepts of freshness and safety. The result is a subtle account of the multiple routes through which consumer ‘needs’ evolve.