Rethinking and extending the ‘heat or eat’ dilemma: an attempt to intersect ‘normal’ practices’ deprivation and negative emotions’ generation

For households living in energy poverty, defined here as households facing difficulties in their access to affordable warmth, buying food is often neither mundane nor compulsive but carefully reflected upon according to limited financial means. What is referred to as the heat-or-eat dilemma in the literature on energy poverty (Beatty et al., 2014) thus provides the researchers with a heuristic opportunity to reconsider together two rather different approaches in sociology of consumption. In this respect, a mixed-method research on energy poverty conducted in Belgium during 5 years (2014-2018) gives some insights. This research indicates that this dilemma should be extended to the dwelling’s material equipment, and more strikingly, to recreational activities and to culture in general. It follows that these households are excluded from practices seen as ‘normal’ in the country, such as inviting at home family or friends for a drink or enjoying a one-week holiday elsewhere. This deprivation generates emotions such as feeling of injustice, and/or sadness, depression, sense of emptiness, and/or shame and guilt. From the empirical material, this contribution is intended to explore how these “non-practices” intersect with emotions and to discuss whether and how social practice theories (Schatzki, 1998; Reckwitz, 2002 and 2017; Warde, 2005…) can or cannot accommodate emotions. The empirical material is made of 60 in-depth interviews with energy-poor households and of a large-scale quantitative survey that was realised in Belgium in 2009 under the Generation and Gender Programme (GGP).