Opening up Pandora’s Box: Energy Biographies, everyday practices and the psyc...
Henwood nn
1. Energy Consumption,
Biography and Self Design
Prof. Karen Henwood
Dr Catherine Butler Dr Karen Parkhill
Dr Fiona Shirani Prof. Nick Pidgeon
2. Energy Biographies Research
Objectives
1. Develop understanding of energy use by investigating and
comparing people's different ‘energy biographies’ across a
range of social settings
2. Examine how existing demand reduction interventions
interact with people's personal biographies and histories.
3. Develop improved understanding of how different
community types can support reductions in energy
consumption
…We are also exploring the usefulness of innovative
(narrative, longitudinal and visual) research
methods for helping people reflect on the ways they
use energy
6. Narrative Interview 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?
7. Identity and Energy Consumption
‘Consumption comprises a set of practices which permit
people to express self-identity, mark attachment to social
groups, accumulate resources, exhibit social distinction, ensure
participation in social activities, and more besides. However, these
processes bear primarily on the way that individuals select among
the vast array of alternative items made available in the form of
commodities and their symbolic communicative potential….
‘…Only at best obliquely and indirectly does the purchase
or use of water, coal, gas or electricity confer self-identity,
mark attachment to social groups or exhibit social
distinction.’
(Shove and Warde, 2001)
8. Identity production in Theory and Method
Time, texture and Shaping of
biography in identity psychosocial spaces
construction / Identities in (Masco)
the making (Henwood)
Risk & identity Fateful
futures (Henwood moments/
and Pidgeon) turning points
(Thompson
Culture, consumption & and Holland)
identity - the extended
critiques (Wetherell)
Identity
Intergenerational
processes in
Individualisation identities,
social change
& self-growth - cultural heritage
and
the art of living & social
consumption
(Wetherell) reproduction
(Warde)
9. Life-histories, social histories: An integrative
identity studies framework within social
psychology (Wetherell, 1996)
Processes under investigation
• The making of individual identity (life history) & the broad formation of
social identities (social history)
• “to consider precisely how all that made society connects with all that
made me” (p300)
Key questions
• How are people positioned as they develop?
• How do we come to be where we currently inhabit?
Accounts given/examined
• = of the particulars of a life - to explain people’s life choices to go
one way or the other
10. Wetherell’s three different arenas of study
& analytic resources
• The making of a life : the weight of social history
• Personality & social practices
• Family life and subject positions
11. Reading Laura’s life change narrative :
engaging with Energy Biographies data
• A narrative of life change in response to
temporal pressure?
• Competing cultural logics (manifest in narrative
discourses & as discursive practices )
• Working through identity/subjectivity
12. ‘Living the good life’ a narrative of
temporal pressure & over-consumption in
lifecourse perpective?
“Since I was a child it was an instinctive thing to me. I remember
watching ‘The Good Life’ and thinking yeah that’s it, that’s how I
want to live...other people want to live like that like me …to grow your own
stuff and to produce your own energy and all this DIY self-sufficient
business I was just instinctively into that regardless of whether it was
beneficial for the planet, it just seemed to me something I was interested
in….But then I found myself living in the city with these three
young children [laughs] and I kept thinking I don’t want to be in
this situation forever. The years were rattling along …it was like
constant things to do and chasing your tail just living really ..I was
thinking no we’ve got to get out before it’s too late...”
13. Parenting identity shift: intensive
parenting culture?
“There’s not so much devoting time to the
children which is something that I feel a bit
worried and guilty about because the kind of
circle of friends that we had (before moving) it
was a real kids first … I really identified our
family as a Kids First family. So you’d
plan the weekends around the children …
and now we’re here we’ve got a lot to do and I
just feel the children must notice the different
feel about it that they’re left to their own devices
a bit more”
14. Thriftiness and Identity…
“They were definitely like post-war generation
people and they were very much waste not want
not…when I grew up I’d taken this on board
..I’d imbibed it and was a little out of step
especially with the 90’s ‘oh just throw it all
away and buy a new one..I really like that
about them…I think it’s a nice way to live and I’m
glad they’ve given me those habits actually….”
15. Sliding into change
“I never thought we would actually do it, actually move
here. There was a thing called ‘Doing Lammas’, like are
we going to do it? Are we going to do Lammas ... it was
a bit like being on a really scary ride you know, at the
beginning of the process you thought ‘this seems really
interesting I think I’ll go and look into this’ … we’d be
like writing the cheque and we’d be putting into the
envelope and we’re like up the ladder, the ride’s at the
top and we’re getting closer and closer and then you
know that moment when the person before you goes
down and you’re like ‘oh my God, reality?” [laugh]
16. The importance of enjoying the
change
“I think that things are going to have to change actually and what I
would like is for people to enjoy making the change rather
than to be forced into it, so you know I really love living here
where I’m forced to grow my own things and I’m forced to live off
grid and so I would just like it if we can work out ways of doing
things that’s really comfortable and attractive and then people would
enjoy it and see it as something to aspire to rather than sort of a
drudge to have to, you know have to give up. Because it always seems
to be giving up things doesn’t it the Green message and that’s not
very positive. But for me it’s always been about the Good Life so
that’s probably what I would like to see”
17. ‘Celebrating’ convenient consumption,
reclaiming normality ?
“As they get older they start to ask things of you that
you might…it doesn’t sit well with your philosophies
and I don’t want to actually force them to do things
that I want them to do…If like for Ella’s birthday, for
her dinner… she actually said ‘can we have a Pot
Noodle each?’ I was like ‘ok!’ Now that’s not
something that I would normally buy for them
because it is highly packaged, it’s very unhealthy, it’s
not very local and organic…but she’s going to get her
pot noodle.”
18. Living in the future and the past
“I think you have to take a lot of things
that worked successfully in the past
and there are lots of little modern
benefits aren’t there like solar panels
… I’d be cautious about trumpeting it as
all like futuristic I think maybe a bit
of both is the most honest way of doing
it”
19. Following the trend, but in the
vanguard of change
“There’s always this egotistical side of me that came
out when I was telling you about being an illustrator
you know having my books there and my magazines
and I like my life to be validated and people to
think ‘she’s doing something really important’
and so there’s that side to it which I’m a little bit
ashamed of but I can’t deny that I enjoy”
20. Frame switch
Int. I mean you were talking about the 90’s blip but what do you think made you
sort of not go where everyone else has in a way?
Laura. I’m thinking now that I’ve just gone with the flow haven’t I?
Because people are kind of, there is generally growing awareness of not
throwing things away and looking after things isn’t there now? So I’m just a
reflection of what a lot of people are doing but because I didn’t enjoy
doing it actually just felt, it just didn’t feel nice you know it felt wrong. I think a
trip to a council recycling centre or tips as they were known is just enough to
make anybody kind of go “oh my God we can’t carry on doing this forever” these
things that people throw away you just chuck them out of the boot and into the
tip. I think the reason why I carried on was like I said before it was just what I
naturally was that’s probably just caught up with the fashion of it all.
I just felt a sense of satisfaction actually looking after things and not throwing
things away too much and making things rather than buying things.
21. Concluding remarks
• Recuperating Self-design (not a shallow concept)
• Life stories not merely personal – assemblage of links
(identity & consumption)
• Driving, lights, televisions, flying, food – all now linked
in public discourse to environmental unsustainablility
Making self design potentially more relevant now to
discussions of energy consumption….
• How far can identity get us – problems of identity – if
don’t want to be associated with green identity (notions
of hippy, tree huggers etc.) – can be problematic
• Problem located with the individual so need to consider
struggles over subjectivity - how are people negotiating
this in relation to their identities
22. Thank you
Professor Karen Henwood
Cardiff University, School of Social
Sciences & Understanding Risk
Group
www.energybiographies.org
