Simply Convenient?
The Justification of Convenience in the Digital Transformation
of Domestic Life
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Johannes Kepler University Linz
Submission date: 2025-09-22
Acceptance date: 2026-04-07
Publication date: 2026-06-29
Polish Sociological Review 2026;234(2)
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ABSTRACT
Smart home technologies are commonly promoted through promises of convenience, and the value
of such convenience is often implicitly accepted in sociological research. This article does not conceptualize
convenience as a property of technical systems or as a subjective user experience, but rather offers an analytical
perspective on normative processes of production in everyday life. Based on 22 home visits and interviews with
users of smart speakers, the article examines how convenience is produced, stabilized, and limited through verbal
and practical acts of justification. Drawing on practice theory and the sociology of justification, it shows how
users situationally mobilize different orders of worth to frame technological use as meaningful, appropriate,
or problematic. The analysis demonstrates that convenience is neither self-evident nor stable, but remains
a contingent outcome of ongoing justification work. Thus, the article offers a sociological approach to smarthome
technologies that does not presuppose convenience, but systematically examines its normative production.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Prof. Susann Wagenknecht for her ongoing support and many helpful comments.