XVIII World ISA Congresss of Sociology Yokohama, 2014

2. ¿Quién aprende de quién?
Relaciones ambientales intergeneracionales
Who Learns from Whom?
Environmental Intergenerational Relations
Manuela Caballero Guisado
Artemio Baigorri Agoiz
Universidad de Extremadura (Spain)
Julio 2014

3. Overview
• This paper result of ongoing
research conducted for doctoral
thesis called "Senior and
environment: on this side of
post-materialist values"
• Study the influence of elders,
socialized in a scarcity culture, in
education (as complimentary
actors socialization) for their
grandchildren and assumption of
sustainable habits

4. Research objetives
• Adquire fourter knowledge about the
mechanisms and processes that provide
social and cultural changes, whitin a
holystic perspective analyzing the
interrelationships between
environmental and social phenomena
• Understand the role of older people in
advanced societies
• To deepen the understanding of material
values that affect cultural constructions.
• Reflect on the value of the non-scientific
empirical knowledge of traditional
societies

5. Hypothesis
• Have been built with deductive techniques, from
the general principles of Inglehart's thesis on post-
materialist values
• In the research design we consider three
assumptions:
– The children of families living with grandparents
develop pro-environmental attitudes more easily if
grandparents were socialized in a culture of scarcity
– Consistency of pro-environmental attitudes is greater if
it have been generated in a culture of scarcity, and
lower when acquirers in a culture of affluence
– If generations socialized in scarcity they forget these
pro-environmental practices (now called sustainable):
• a) ​​reduces the cultural capital of our societies
• b) reduces individual responsibility in respect for the
environment

6. Methodological Aspects:
Quanti
• Omnibus survey (multi-thematic) on
1,100 families Extremadura rural and
urban environments, conducted in 2011
by our research group
• In order to measure levels of materialism -
postmaterialism, survey include questions
from World Values ​​Survey (World
Values ​​Survey)successive waves
• Other questions are designed to try to
mesure levels of environmental
commitment, involvement in
environmental conflicts, life styles and
habits

7. Methological Aspects:
Quali
• 40 in-depth interviews tri-generacional families
formed with grandparents, parents and grandchildren,
and that live together or have intense contacts
between (conducted years from 2012 to 2014)
• Rural and urban areas and different social strata:
upper middle class, middle class, lower middle class
and working class (upper class has been very difficult
to access, and dont' have interviews in this stratum)
• Several countries:
– Spain: • 6 Rural (middle class and working class)
and 14 Urban (upper middle class, middle and
working class)
– Mexico: 3 Rural (lower middle class) 4 Urban
(middle class and working class)
– Portugal: 6 Urban (upper middle class, middle)
– Colombia : 7 Urban (lower middle class and
working class)

8. First results
• Throw interviews's analysis asses some meaningful
results, which should be taken with caution in this
phase of research
• Most significant in our view is the persistent
memory of poverty lived by grandparents during
childhood and adolescence, which implies
maintaining savings habits and practices, although
most of them recognize the improvement that their
economic situation
• Generally, savings habits and practices are learned
in an environment of scarcity and are reproduced
from parents to children (rarely from grandfather
to grandson directly), so we could say that the
influence is indirect grandparent-grandchild For
consolidation savings habit grandson is basic the
parent's cooperation (who learned it from theirs).

9. • In the most cases practices and saving habits
including grandparents, parents, and even
grandchildren, are not result of environmental
awareness of respondents ( in support of
Inglehart's postmterialists thesis), but are
rather an effect of the fall of income:
– in Europe due to the economic crisis
– in South American countries because the
retirement pensions and wages are low, and taxes
of public services (water or electricity) increasingly
high
• In other words, generally the origin of these
practices of saving and eco-friendly
consumption are not result of the awareness
and defense of environmental interests
– we must for the origin in deeply material basis, as
income available for consumption: with less
income (or anticipation of a decline), the lower
their chance of spending.

10. • Generally, the practices and saving habits
are learned by parents
• They try to inculcate their children and
grandchildren because they understand
that education is a matter of the parents
• The Families with less incomes (lower
middle class and working class) keep saving
and recycling habits, but not waste
separation, except if they could achieve
extra incomes
• Saving, recycling and reusing have been
more or less present in all cultures of
scarcity. But the waste separation is a new
practice, as a result of recent
environmental policies. And it requires
more awareness and personal
commitment, as an attitude which doesn't
generate immediately benefits

11. • However, within wider spectrum of
lower middle class families, those
with more cultural capital, plus
saving practices and recycling, and
also more separation of waste.
• In general we can say that the
separation of waste depends on
many variables:
– available space in house
– existing public infrastructure for this
– the cultural capital of the family
– levels of environmental awareness
– the possibility of receiving income,
etc..

12. • Those who were not socialized in conditions of
scarcity they also express attitudes saving and
recycling and generally also of waste
separation
• These attitudes would be closer to the post-
materialist values ​​as a result of awareness than
basic needs
• The position of these groups could be
summarized in the following sentence (when
we asked from whom he had learned saving
practices and waste separation):
• " (...) I think it has been easy once you became
aware of the problem and reach
environment....So, I think that I've had a
suitable education as a consumer, then it has
been easy to move on habits to concern
(making a daily practice)" (Portugal, Upper
middle class case)

13. • they are developing sustainable practices as a
result of awareness and self-taught and are
sensitive to the introduction of new practices
that suggest them children and grandchildren
• In our view:
– to be able to accept new enviromental practices
propoused by childrens, due to scholar education,
it would be explained by the family cultural capital
– more cultural capital, more likely to recognize the
childrens as persons with own rights and ability to
provide solutions to common problems
• Finally, and despite the different levels of
development of countries in which the
interviews were conducted, no large
differences in pro-environmental attitudes
among respondents were appreciated.

14. Thanks you for you
attention
ars.sociologica@gmail.com