Living the "Good Life"?: energy biographies, identities and competing normative frameworksChristopher Groves, Karen Henwood, Catherine Butler, Karen Parkhill, Nick Pidgeon and Fiona Shirani

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

School of Social SciencesCardiff Universityhttp://cardiff.academia.edu/ChristopherGroves

The Energy Biographies project (2011 – present)

• QLL biographical interviews▫ Four sites: Ely, Peterston

(Cardiff), Lammas (west Wales), Royal Free Hospital (London)

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

▫ Multimedia component▫ 6 months between

interviews

Lammas, West Wales

Royal Free Hospital,

LondonPeterston, Cardiff

Ely, Cardiff

Narrative biographical approach

•Emphasis on interviews on exploring how changes in practices are connected to lifecourse transitions

•Analysis examines individual biographies as accounts of how and why practices matter

•Exploring identity as bound up with how and why energy is used

Practice theory and individual subjectivity• Energy demand reduction

policy: focus on individual behaviour change

• Treats subjects as ‘resource men’1

1. Strengers, Y. (2013). Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life: Smart Utopia? London, Palgrave Macmillan.2. Shove, E., et al. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes. London, SAGE Publications.

Practice

Compe-

tences

Materials

Shared meaning

s

Vanderbilt University campaign

(USA, 2015)

• Individuals not ‘hyper-rational’ choosers – instead, agency is multiply conditioned

• Practice theory locates shared practices as conditions of agency and of beliefs/values2

Practice theory and social change•Intentional social change (e.g. altering

how we use energy) is not ‘behaviour change’

•Instead, requires redesign of elements of interconnected practices – materials, meanings, competences

•But individuals still ‘carriers’ of practices•What ‘recruits’ individuals to practices or

makes them ‘defect’?

‘Internal rewards’ • Shove et al1 employ concept

taken from Alasdair MacIntyre to explain defection/recruitment

• Non-instrumental value of practices: exercising competence in a practice is end-in-itself (‘internal reward’)

• Practices that have significant intrinsic value recruit, others don’t (explains difference between fads and stable practices)

‘In brief, the idea is that performing a practice well, that is in terms of standards that are part and parcel of the definition of a practice itself, is of immediate, internal reward’

p. 75

1. Shove, E., Pantzar, M. & Watson, M. (2012) The dynamics of social practice, London: Sage

Internal rewards and psychosocial approaches • Links between practices

and identity• John O’Neill:1 the

constitutive value of practices

• Practices as constitutive of individual identities

• Play a role in narratives about how a life is going

• Another internal reward of practices: ingredient of valued identity

“Human beings like other entities have goods constitutive of their flourishing and correspondingly other goods instrumental to that flourishing […] Friendship in turn is constitutive of a flourishing life. Given the kind of beings we are, to lack friends is to lack part of what makes for a flourishing human existence”

pp. 23-4

1. John O’Neill (1993), Ecology, policy and politics London: Routledge

Identity and attachments• Beyond carriers of practice

to complex, evaluative subjects

• Identities as relational identities that matter1

• Shaped by attachments that matter (to people, practices, places, objects, ideals…)

• What happens to my attachments affects how I take my life to be going

• Attachments and commitments anchor normative perspectives on ‘how the world should be’

“Commitments come to constitute our character, identity and conception of ourselves, such that if we are prevented from pursuing them, then we suffer something akin to bereavement, for we lose not merely something external, but part of ourselves”

p. 125

1. Sayer, A. (2012) Why Things Matter to People, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Biography and attachment• If attachments ‘secure’ identity, they do so in,

biographically-specific ways• Attachments secure identity but also make us

vulnerable to new uncertainties• We therefore evolve distinct styles of being-

attached1, e.g.▫Defensive/distancing▫Solidaristic▫Withdrawing

• The specific internal rewards we get from practices are rooted in our biographies and in our style(s) of being-attached1. Marris, P. (1996) The Politics of Uncertainty, London: Routledge

Example: ‘Lucy’ (Peterston)• The ‘resource (wo)man’

• The ‘good host’

“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 […]”

“[…] we have a log fire and 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 […].”

“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 that’s our kind of, we know it’s really bad but we’re still going to use 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.’

Lucy’s juxtaposed identitiesThe ‘resource woman’ The ‘good host’• Attachment to an ideal of

efficient management of the household

• Systematic, reflexive rationality towards practices (e.g. A+ appliances, lighting)

• Makes clear normative distinction between wasteful and essential energy use

• Understands distinctions between specific practices in these terms

• Keen to maintain attachments to friends

• These commitments under stress thanks to house move

• Builds attachments to practices, objects (burning wood on the fire, patio heater) as connected with aesthetic/ethical ideal of homeliness

Clashing commitments, conflicting identities

The ‘resource (wo)man’ The good host

• Language of costs vs benefits

• Measurable, quantifiable, commensurable outcomes

• Trade-offs possible (e.g. short-term cost of appliance vs long-term savings)

• Homeliness, hospitality, friendship: constitutive elements of a worthwhile life

• Realising these ideals requires specific practices

• More than a clash of values (e.g. luxury vs efficiency)

• Instead, a conflict between identities, and indeed, between competing normative frameworks (‘how things should be’)

Hard to reconcile – leading to defensive

disavowal of conflict between identities: ‘we

know it’s really bad but we’re still going to

use it.’

Implications• Recruitment to practices (including unsustainable ones)

shaped by their affective internal rewards, e.g. ▫ the individual, biographical contribution of practices to

identity (e.g. Lucy’s adoption of ‘homely’ practices because of attachment to friends and rural home aesthetic)

▫ how practices help tame the uncertainty associated with some lifecourse transitions

• Relationship between identity and practices therefore has affective dimension that can be obstructive or assistive to change

• Affective dimension not necessarily purely individual (e.g. ‘structures of feeling’1)

1. Hoggett, P. & Thompson, S. (2012) ‘Introduction’ in Politics and the Emotions, London: Continuum

Thank you

http://energybiographies.org

Other team Members: Professor Karen Henwood, Professor Nick Pidgeon& Dr Fiona Shirani (Cardiff), Dr Karen Parkhill (now York)Dr Catherine Butler (now Exeter)