Christopher Groves, Karen Henwood, Catherine Butler, Karen Parkhill, Nick Pidgeon and Fiona Shirani

Energy Biographies Project (http://energybiographies.org)

School of Social Sciences

Cardiff University

http://cardiff.academia.edu/ChristopherGroves

• Energy as an abstract resource▫ E.g. Vaclav Smil (2003):

just distribution of energy = 60-110GJ annually per

capita worldwide

• Overly reductive understanding of need

• Needs are always fulfilled through particular & singular, culturally & individually significant objects

• Difference between thinking of▫ Food as X calories per day

▫ Food as kosher, halal etc.

• Consumption makes meaning, produces identity

“The meaning of our lives cannot, therefore, be understood as a search to satisfy generalizableneeds for food, shelter, sex, company and so on, as if our particular relationships were simply how we have provided for them. It is more the other way round: without attachments we lose our appetite for life”

Peter Marris (1996), The politics of uncertainty, Routledge

‘[lived experience] encompasses both the “rage for order” and the impulse that drives us to unsettle or confound the fixed order of things’

A universal human concern with the ‘precarious and perilous character of existence’

Michael Jackson (1989), Paths towards a clearing, p. 2 and p. 16

Relationships

Practices

Definition and fulfilment of

need

Reduction of material/ emotional

uncertainty

• Practices threaded with relationships

• Shape sense of who we are and what we can do(identity and agency)

• Also sustain shared ethical sensibilities about what should be done to live a properly human life

• Other threads: socio-technical/material arrangements (Shove, Pantzar and Watson ,2012)

▫ Objects, tools, devices, infrastructures

• But the weave can be

snagged or tangled

• Voluntary/ involuntary

lifecourse transitions

connected to intense

ethical reflection on

practices and forms of

life, as identities shift

(Hards, 2011)

Relationships

Practices

Definition and fulfilment of

need

Reduction of material/ emotional

uncertainty

Devices/ infrastructures

• 3 longitudinal interviews (original group of 74 in first round narrowed down to 36 for rounds 2 & 3)

• 6 months between interviews

• QLL biographical interviews 2011-13

• Participantphotography tasks

‘Lucy’ (Peterston) ‘Christine’ (Ely)

• Lives in affluent rural commuter village

• Mid-30s, white/Welsh

• Husband, two young children

• Recently moved from London to rented house while renovating another

• Recently given up well-paid job to look after children full-time

• Lives in deprived inner-city ward

• Early 50s, white/Welsh

• Husband, four children (one with additional needs)

• Recently became unemployed

• Recently took in elderly father-in-law (who died during period of interviews)

“I don’t think I really feel guilty I just think I’m aware and it does make me cross when like Sean especially just is deliberately almost you know wasting it[…]”

‘I never really wanted to waste money, energy but now I think it’s just, when I got my last energy bill, I couldn't believe it.’

[…] now we are obviously heating a much bigger place, and um, ah you know being here in the day and using tumble dryers and dishwashers and all of that kind of stuff so, it’s really seen a massive increase […].

• ‘a lot of people come here and

complain that it’s cold’

• […] we have a log fire and we are

getting a log fire and how actually

they’re probably super inefficient

aren’t they in heating a room? […]

we’ve put massive radiators in our new

house cos its really Victorian, tall

ceilings, and so we just don’t need a

wood burner to be on at any point but

actually it’ll sort of make the room

[…]

• ‘We do love our patio heater when it’s a sunny

evening but it gets a bit cold and dark and you can sit

out and they’re like probably the worst things

aren’t they? But we love it well we only use it about

five times a year so it’s OK.’

• ‘Cos we love being outside, we just love that you can

you know go, we were sitting out there one evening

… it was like midnight and you could have a drink

outside still and it’s so lovely here cos it’s so quiet

and everything so but you wouldn’t have been able to

do it without that so or you would have been

freezing. So that’s our kind of, we know it’s really

bad but we’re still going to use it.’

The rebuilder

• ‘a run-down property that myself and my first husband renovated’

• ‘[…] the idea was to convert the double garage into a unit specifically for [disabled son], so it was self-contained and that's what we did […]’

The caring parent

• ‘Some are subtle changes that you don't realise until you think about 'oh okay!' our way of living is always like this. Like I said, right at the very beginning, kids leave, kids come back whether it's University or whether [...]whether they move in with a partner, whether that relationship suffers and they come back, they always come back to mum. ’

• Oh God, I literally, you just don't know what's around the corner […] so we don't look into the future as such.

Lucy Christine

• The wise manager

▫ Identifying waste

▫ Cost-benefit framework

• The good host

▫ Constitutive values

• ‘We know it’s bad but we’re still going to use it’.

• The rebuilder

▫ Managing disruption

▫ Needs balanced against , costs

• Caring parent

▫ Constitutive responsibilities to others

• ‘Oh God, I literally, you just don't know what's around the corner […] so we don't look into the future as such.’

• Conflicting identities & commitments

• Commitments ≠ subjective preferences

• Commitments are reasons for acting that represent evaluations of what matters for a genuinely human life

• E.g. Lucy’s patio heater: ‘we’re still going to use it’

▫ The ethical value of the heater: sustaining an identity, sustaining friendships

▫ Might be right or wrong – but opens a space of argument, not simply brute assertion of preferences

• Weaves, snags, tangles produce identities and normative commitments

• Trying to change how energy is consumed can challenge these identities and commitments

• Points beyond distributive energy justice and towards justice as procedural (who decides what matters) and as recognition(understanding the specific value of particular identities) (Schlosberg, 2013)

Commitments can be

• Unspeakable

• a source of shame, anxiety or discomfort,

• disavowed

Relevant publications

Groves, C. et al (2015) Energy biographies Science, Technology and Human Values

Groves, C. et al (2016) 'Invested in unsustainability? On the psychosocial patterning of engagement in practices', Environmental Values forthcoming (June 2016)

http://energybiographies.org