Energy Practices and Psychosocial Research: The Energy Biographies Study

Presentation at Association for Psychosocial Studies Conference, December 16-17th 2014, Preston, Lancs, UK.

Professor Karen Henwood, Dr Chris Groves, Cardiff School of Social Sciences & energy biographies team (www.energybiographies.org)

Research Problem & Context• Complex, multiply framed problems in everyday living

posed to people, society, governments & international community

• Transitioning toward socio-environmental sustainability – liveable change (energy biographies) not accelerationism (Noys, 2014)

• Decarbonisation through Carbon Conversations (Randall, 2009; www.carbonconversations .org)

• Energy practices & everyday life

Practice Theory and Psychosocial ConcernsPractice Theory Psychosocial concerns

• Social theory/STS/sociology of everyday practice

• Draws on theoretical work on social practices (Reckwitz, 2002, Schatzki, 1996)

• Wider energy systems made up of interlocking elements of practice (materials, knowledge, meaning)

• Change in one element provokes change in other elements & the practice itself (Shove et al, 2012)

• Addresses questions of individual agency as emergent property of particular sets of practices

• Brings into focus analytically distinct foci (elements) to behaviours & practice theory:

• - biographically constituted attachments, investments

• - fragmented, multiple, contradictory, identities- reflecting self-other relations (difference & connection)

• - identifications, introjected cultural ideals; splitting, projection

• - shared meanings, commitments, beliefs & values, world-views

• - what is not expressed/unspoken/difficult to put into words - the non-cognitive - feelings, emotions, affect (eg anxiety, shame, loss)

• - libidinal forces – wishes, wants and desires

• - intangible aspects of subjectivity –but gaining meaning through sense-making & take up of subject positions, as part of cultural discourses

An empirical study: the energy biographies’ temporal and biographical approach• QLL facilitates an exploration of change through time

and an accumulation of data, which provides depth and detail

• How past experiences and anticipated futures come to have an impact – both enabling & constraining – on people’s present lives, routines and habits

• Individual biographical accounts can • shed light on wider social trends and

changes

Case Sites

www.energybiographies.org

Sample details• Wave 1 – 68 interviews with 74 participants (34 men and

40 women) aged 14 to 80, a range of employment, relationship and household circumstances.

• Wave 2 & 3 (Longitudinal) – 36 participants (18 men and 18 women) aged 18 to 70.

• Transitions during the course of the study – employment status change, relationship breakdown, bereavement, house move, health issues, household composition change, changes to travel practices, building work.

Wave 1 interviews – themes 1. Community and Context

• Talk through how they came to live in their current home/area, how they characterise their community(s) • Connections – e.g. who they live with/is in their family • Discussion points specific to the particular case area

2. Daily routine• Talk through in detail to get an understanding of energy

use and practices• Discuss how this varies for atypical times/events

e.g. Christmas, weekends

3. Life transitions• What have been the key events/turning points that have

resulted in a lifestyle change?• How might lifestyles and transitions differ for future

generations?

Activity 1 – participant-generated photos

1. Activity 1 – participant-generated photos• Participants were asked to take photographs of things they felt were related to

energy use around four themes• Two week period for each theme. Participants were sent texts to remind them

of the theme • Pictures then formed the basis for discussion in interview 2

Jack: That’s a tumble dryer timer so you can control the heat and the time, I’m very aware of using the tumble dryer, I don’t use it very often, in fact just lately I’ve hardly used it at all … I just put the stuff over the clothes horse and then the ambient temperature of the house dries the clothes or I put them outside on the line and I love pegging washing out, it’s one of my favourite things …

Int: And what is it about pegging washing out?

Jack: I don’t know but my mum has it so maybe it’s something I’ve picked up off her … just the ease, the ease and the ability to just have such an easy, to create clean washing is such a hard task and it’s just fantastic to do it, maybe, maybe in the distant past my relatives were in domestic service and had to struggle, washing is a real struggle if you don’t have modern gadgets so every time I do it I really appreciate it.

Wave 2 interviews - themes

Example:There are a few themes emerging from the first interviews which I would like to

ask your views on:Wasting energy – what is seen as wasteful? Is it only seen as wasteful in a

financial sense? Have you noticed anything around the home/workplace/out and about that you consider wasteful? Is there anything you would do to change this?

Second interview – a detailed focus on everyday energy use• Discussion of important life changes since interview 1• Exploring everyday energy use through participant-

generated photographs • Following up emerging themes from interview 1: e.g. waste,

frugality and guilt

Activity 2 – text-prompted photosActivity 2 – text-prompted photos

• Text messages sent to participants at 10 intervals between August-November 2012 asking them to take a picture of what they were doing at the time

• From these pictures we created photo narratives, to be discussed with participants in interview 3

Wave 3 interviews - themesThird interview – looking to energy futures

• Discussion of important life changes since interview 2• Exploring everyday routines through text-prompted

photos and using these to facilitate discussions of pasts and futures

• Using videos to discuss visions of the future

Example: Since last time we spoke (in August) have you experienced any changes/anything happened that has led to change in your life? (Prompt impact for lifestyle changes) Have there been any alterations in your day-to-day life/routine? (Follow up on specific issues from interview 1/2). Has this resulted in any changes to your energy use?

Activity 3 - videosActivity 3 – video clips

• During interview 3 participants are shown clips from a 1950s and 2010s version of what a home of the future might look like

• The clips facilitate talk about the future, which can otherwise be difficult to discuss

Theorising the Practice-Psychosocial Interface in the Energy Biographies Study

• Patterns of practices in and of themselves cannot be viewed as responsible for the continuance of unsustainability; our ways of going on being are not exhausted practical, embodied consciousness – multiple forms make up up the fabric of everyday life

• Need to go deeper and broader in thinking about people as carriers of practice; becoming recruited to such practices, remaining loyal to – or defecting from practices as a result of the internal rewards from participation in practice

• Internal rewards in practice theory are competences afforded by doing something well, or by performing a practice in accordance with social norms & cultural distinctions

• But, a psychosocial perspective offers complex views of the various other elements that lock in, or fail to lock in, subjects as carriers of particular practices – and opens up possibilities of change in and through time

Psychosocial theory as a perspective on everyday energy use and practice change

Analytically distinct elements (e.g. biographies of attachments) and other psychosocial investments (e.g. shared affective patterning) derive from – but that cannot be reduced to - social relations

Understood psychosocially, all are viewed emergent & dynamic properties of lived experience, situated in time and place

Sense making activities (e.g. about biographical patterning of experiences and connections/attachments in and through time) contribute to cultural shaping of forms of subjectivity

Well equipped to understand embedding of psychosocial elements/subjects within particular cultural formations (knowledge regimes/discourses) in specific ways

Data Extract 1 – Heating the Outdoors (Lucy, Peterson SuperEly) • … 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.

Analytic narrative

• Psycho-biographical connection to practice : • - involves renewal of identity tied to family connections• - desire for ideal home – centring on surroundings and possibilities

afforded for hosting family and friends

• Participation in the practice derives from internal rewards contributed to identity - constituted by emotional investments & by evaluations of how life is going for them and for people who matter to them (relational rewards)

• Expansion of psychosocial - emotional & symbolic: space is one where engagement in unsustainable practice nonetheless plays a sustaining role

Data Extract 2 – Cycling to Work (Sara, London – Royal Free) • So I cycle there and back…. when my daughter was young I had a seat on

the back for her and cycled as much as I could…. It’s just quicker to get to work, it’s so much quicker…. So it was convenience as well and obviously I wanted to try and get fit and yes, it just seemed like, they’ve introduced an underground sort of cage where you use your pass to get in. So it’s quite a secure bike lock up. So once I knew they had that I was more inclined to… And my mum always cycled when I was young, I always remember being on the back of her bike in Dublin. So yes, and when we lived in the countryside in Ireland, I cycled to school two miles each way because there were no buses. So yes, it’s just something that’s always been there.

• I cycled to Hampstead yeah in my old job which was a lot nicer because you cycle through Hampstead Heath but here it’s Central London, it’s Euston, it’s really really busy and I’m quite scared about because we don’t have decent cycle lanes at all. So just have to be really careful.

Analytic narrative

• Cycling has practical advantages for commuting - but deeper value lies in connecting it to her environment, especially the community in which she lives, her mother, connections between home & workplace

• Internal rewards come from attachment to practice and to objects with shared/community meaning and private meanings

• Such meanings are tangibly linked through biographical narrative to negotiating issues of vulnerability, identity and self-efficacy

• Cycling’s psychosocial value derives from attachments to practices that, even while going through transitions, can afford connection and relational rewards

Extract 3 – Driving Souped Up Old Cars (Ronald, Peterson)

•I would have no wish to rally in a modern in a modern car, whichever engine it was propelled by, no wish at all. It would be quite good fun to drive balls out in the most recent Mini, just to see what it was like through a forest, I would enjoy that yes please! … but that would be a novelty; it wouldn't be what turns me on. What turns me on is a piece of old kit that you've put together and you've developed and, you know, the cars I have are not just reconstructed but I've developed them as you would have developed them from original. They are not an original but they do stuff that they couldn't do when they were first built. ... That's the appeal for me; you've done this, you've put it together, you and your chum, its adventure, more than motorsport in a sense … the adventure bit is every much as important as the mechanical bit but both are important…. so I wouldn't want to do that in a battery-powered car or a hydrogen car or a modern car, wouldn't want to do it and it wouldn't turn me on

Analytic Narrative• Driving, central to identity, centring on cars as specific

material objects

• Car-care an activity of comradeship, autonomy connected with risk experience

• Oil depleted/imagined future unable to support shared meanings of adventure – an internal reward of participation in risk practice

• Imaginatively, loss of attachment through leisure driving is anticipated for multiple generations

Extract 4 – Home freezing (Lucy, Peterson SuperEly)• I think they’re necessary but I think we’re all a bit obsessed, like I

think when people have two freezers like my mother-in-law has a chest freezer and she doesn’t know what half the stuff in there is and I was talking about this with a friend and they said they cleared out their grandmother’s freezer once with her and there were things that had been in there for like eight years that she’s like made and dated,… I think it also results in a way of wasting more food because you go oh I’ll just shove it in the freezer but actually you never end up using it or you end up chucking it out because it’s been in there too long or whatever so. I think it’s a necessary thing that we’ve taken, we’ve become a bit over the top obsessed with you know.

Analytic narrative• Food freezing practices allows management of

conflicting time pressures, but unspoken valuing of household security hinted at as constitutive of identity

• Early biographical experiences made sense of home freezers as enabling ‘escape’ from known times of generational hardship – giving emotional & symbolic & identity significance to participation in specific batch cooking & quick meals

• Obsession defensively evokes seeking security through practice & its inherently unsustainable dynamic – increasing waste & energy use to maintain full freezers

Concluding remarks

• Qualitative data analysis – substantive theory building?

• What is being made visible?

• Policy implications?

Energybiographies.org

Other team Members: Professor Nick Pidgeon & Dr Fiona Shirani (Cardiff), Dr Karen Parkhill (now Bangor, from 2015 York)Dr Catherine Butler (now Exeter)