1. Talk, text and inventive methods: Insights from studying
energy biographies, everyday energy use, and (energy)
systems change
Prof Karen Henwood, School of Social
Sciences, Cardiff University
British Sociological
Society Conference:
Recovering the Social:
Personal Troubles and
Public Issues, 4th April
2017; Manchester
University, UK

2. Energy Biographies: Research Report
• http://energybiographies.org/newsblog/energy-
biographies-final-report-available/

3. Risk and Everyday Life

4. Stratosphere
(15-50km)
Large scale environmental risk issues…

5. Flexis work packages
• WP1 – Flexible Systems
and Expert Visions – viz.
risk, responsible innovation
and energy systems
• WP2 –Energy and
everyday life - tracking
interventions within family &
community settings
• WP3 - Energy
Controversies and
Governance - deliberative
work (communities and
stakeholders)
WP3
•Communities,
Energy
Controversies and
Risk Governance
WP2
•Energy System
Change and
Everyday Life
WP1
•Flexible Systems
and Expert Visions

6. Why methodological invention (MI)?
• Science & technology studies (Lury & Wakeford (2012) (eds) The Happening of the
Social Routledge)
- new empiricism of sensation
- expand portfolio of materially innovative methods
- address limits of the phenomenological (???)
• Object related ontology (see e.g. development of “object interviewing”,
Woodward, S. Qualitative Research, DOI: 10.1177/1468794115589647)
- displace conventional understandings of what QR methods set out to achieve & how they are
practiced, to develop such methods
- increase the methodological capacity of social science for understanding objects as agents,
materials and material culture
- the material turn – away from discourse analysis (???)
• Science & the shift to participatory culture
- Modelling/mapping participatory methods to engage emergent publics & incite "open-ended
ecologies of participation” (Chilvers & Kearns, Eds, Re-making Participation, 2016)

7. Social science & the arts
• Strategies have been devised for conducting
mobile, sensory & object focussed research to
focus less exclusively on meanings within
language, text or discourses alone where the
study focus may be non-representational within
language, and bringing potential for
collaboration with the arts
• see e.g. http://energybiographies.org/our-
work/exhibition-2/

8. Woodward cont’d …. Methods for understanding
what people do with, and say about, things..
• Use ethnographic methods for exploring how things are framed in everyday
life
• Observe what people do with things by using visual methods such as
photography
• Use video capture to explore material practices as interactive and embodied
• Use photo-elicitation techniques in qualitative interviews to explore facets
of the material
• Adopt object elicitation methods as a route into people’s narratives and
memories
• Explore how people provide a narrative context for objects in order to
interrogate the relationships between what people say and what people do
with things

9. …So, although words may not be
enough, they still matter ….
“Whilst words may not be enough in themselves to allow
us to understand material practices they are still part of
how people articulate their relationships to things. Given
how many social science methods centre upon people’s
verbal accounts, it is important to think critically about
what these accounts allow us to understand about
material practices…..[for example] the ways in which
words can evoke the materiality of things.” (Woodward,
2016, p4)

10. Energy Biographies Project (ESRC/EPSRC)
Understanding the dynamics of everyday energy use for
demand reduction
• Study design involved intensive methodological and conceptual work to harness cross
disciplinary insights and develop understanding
• Creating data through new ways of enabling talk about everyday practices would
open up spaces for reflection offering possible opportunities for change
• Harnessing new/interesting kinds of data offered analytic potential
• “Bespoke” approach to data analysis using data and theory to promote exploration
and generate insights
• ie Not an instrumental approach to identifying the specific behaviours that, if
changed, will reduce energy consumption

11. Energy Biographies –study design (case sites &
methodology)
• Funded by RCUK from 2011-2016
• EBs approach uses qualitative
longitudinal interviews (3 over 18
months) and visual methods
(participant photos/films)
• Can biographical stories of
lifecourse change make tangible
hidden aspects of how and why
people use energy in particular
ways?
▫ Past experiences
▫ Anticipated futures

12. Energy biographies as a QLL study: its temporal
and biographical methodological approach
• QLL facilitates an exploration of change through time
and an accumulation of qualitative 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

13. Interview 1
Themes: community and context, daily routine, life transitions
Activity 1
Participant-generated photos
Interview 2
Themes: changes since interview 1, discussion of pictures generated in activity 1,
follow up on emergent themes from interview 1
Activity 2
Text-prompted photos
Interview 3
Themes: changes since interview 2, discussion of pictures generated in activity 2
discussion of video clips provided by researcher
Structure of
empirical
phases
More information on each
stage available at
http://energybiographies.org
/our-project/project-design/

14. 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?

15. Participant photography
1. Participant-prompted
photos
▫ Two week period for each
of four themes
▫ Used as basis of
discussion in interview 2
2. SMS-prompted photos
▫ Used as basis of
discussion in interview 3
alongside film clips

16. 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.

17. 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

18. Activity 2 – text-prompted photos
Activity 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

19. Wave 3 interviews - themes
Third 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?

20. Activity 3 - videos
Activity 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

21. Eb’s data –enhancing reflections on everyday
energy use (practices)
• “Right more gadgets. TV,
PVR, video player, digi box,
daughter using laptop whilst
watching television. Yeah just
the penetration of electronics
into our lives which kind of we
all know but when you actually
put the spotlight on and take
some photographs it just
brings the impact up.
• (Jeremy, 62, Cardiff)

22. Eb’s data –enhancing reflections on everyday
energy use (space, lighting, materials, design)
“it gives this sense that you’re in an open
space so its airy, its well lit and you can see
outside, it feels bigger so I think this is
great. And it saves them a lot of energy
consumption as well because they, I
noticed that they do have artificial lights
but they’d need to use a lot more if instead
of glass panels they had brick walls. But on
the other side I don’t know how they keep
the insulation with the glass, I don’t know
how good all these windows are for
insulation so it might be that they’re saving
on one side but spending a lot on the other
side.
(Suzanna, 34, London)

23. Practices and meaning
“The capability to ‘go on’
through the flow of largely
routinized social life depends on
forms of practical knowledge,
guided by structural features –
rules and resources – of the
social systems which shape daily
conduct”1
“This constructed world of
predictable relationships is the
context of our actions. But it is
subject to constant revision, and
always more or less vulnerable to
loss, self-doubts, experiences
which make no sense to us.
Then we no longer know
what to do.”2
1. Shove, E., M. Pantzar and M. Watson 2012. The Dynamics of Social Practice. London, SAGE
Publications
2. Marris, P. 1996. The politics of uncertainty: attachment in private and public life. London; New
York, Routledge

24. Investing in Unsustainability: On the Psychosocial
Patterning of Engagement in Practices
(Environmental Values, 2016)
Transitioning towards socio-environmental sustainability
involves practice change
Thicker understanding needed of how potential for
practice change is opened up or obstructed
Eb’s analysis - one way of elucidating this potential – by
explaining biographical patterning of investments in our
ways of living unsustainably

25. ‘Heating the outdoors’: practices and
identity
“Cos we love being outside, we just love
that you can you know go, we were
sitting out there one evening I can’t
remember when it would have been, with
friends, and 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 ”
Lucy, Peterston

26. Psychosocial 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 – ie emotional & symbolic - space : one
where engagement in unsustainable practice nonetheless plays a
sustaining role

28. Over-optimism of policy narrative about
change potential afforded by moments of
lifecourse transition
• Transformative moments – viewed in policy as opportunities for intervention, BUT
they involve experiences and effects of unresolved transitions
• Thicker analysis required of lifecourse disruption - forms of such transitions (liminal
and liminoid identity)
• 3 x Eb’s analysis of personal narratives of change : disavowal, active silencing &
acknowledgement
• Cultural constraints of dominant (e.g. linear progress) narrative genre & need for
‘reintegration’ of identities on the other side of transition
• Analysis centred on study participants different ways of living with negativity

29. The lived future: initial interviews
“[…] I do kind of look at the world and see the trends
and think, shit (Laughter), what kind of my life are
my kids going to have? I kind of worry a bit about my
kids’ future and quite what will be available to them,
and their expectations because, you know, they don’t
know all this stuff about houses with coal fires and
coal range cooking and all of that. They have a
very different set of aspirations and
expectations and could be very, very bitter and
betrayed about it if all of that goes.”
(Jeremy, Peterston)

30. “I think it was looking at a kind of increased convenience and it
had just come out of the war hadn’t it? […] And it was I mean
the 50’s was that the hoover, the vote, the automobile you know
all those things like washing machines, dryers that all kind of
came at that time so it was sort of life was going to be easier
because of it.”
(Vanessa, Lammas)
“And I think we lost common sense on things like energy and
material usage, in perhaps the Sixties and Seventies, where the
standard of living went up.”
(Jonathan, Peterston)
Film clips: critiques of futures past

31. Energy Biographies – Concluding remarks (see e.g.
energy biographies final research report)
• We have prompted reflections on the usually intangible ways of using
energy in everyday life using methodological innovation
• Directing attention at psychosocial issues generally not regarded as
important in contemporary studies of energy demand & change trajectories
• Reported findings concern emotional attachments/investments
-in material objects, devices, everyday practices, entanglements with wider
infrastructure
- & how they are biographically, narratively & culturally mediated

32. Energy Biographies – Concluding remarks (see e.g.
energy biographies final research report)
• But studying the ‘emotional labour of meaning
making’ is still in its infancy?
- Changes in energy use and demand unlikely to be
possible if they create concerns about everyday
dependences on energy and a resultant sense of not
being able to live a worthwhile life (LAWL)
- LAWL means keeping alive valued identities, desires and
sustaining relationships with others

33. henwoodk@cardiff.ac.uk
Energybiographies.org
Other team Members: Professor Nick Pidgeon, Dr
Chris Groves & Dr Fiona Shirani (Cardiff)

34. EB’s Psychosocial Publications
• Groves, C., Henwood, K., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K. and Pidgeon, N.
(2016) “Invested in unsustainability? On the psychosocial patterning of
engagement in practices” Environmental Values . For pre-publication copy
go to http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/EV/EVpapers.html
• Groves. C., Henwood, K., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K., and Pidgeon,
N. (2015) “Energy biographies: narrative genres, lifecourse transitions and
practice change”, Science, Technology and Human Values,
DOI:10.1177/0162243915609116
• Henwood, K. , Groves, C., Shirani, F and Pidgeon, N. (2016) “Relationality,
entangled practices, and psychosocial exploration of family dynamics in
sustainable energy studies”, Families, Relationship and Society.
DOI:10.1332/204674316X147584383416945

35. EB’s Methodological publications
• Shirani, F., Parkhill, K., Butler, C., Groves, C., Pidgeon,
N .and Henwood, K. (2015) “Asking about the future:
Methodological insights from energy biographies”,
International Journal of Social Research Methodologies.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2015.1029208
• Henwood, K. Shirani, F. and Pidgeon, N. (forthcoming)
“Using photographs in interviews: When we lack the
words to say what practice means” in U. Flick (ed) Sage
Handbook of Qualitative Data Collection.

36. Eb’s Other Publications
• Thomas, G., Groves, C., Henwood, K., Shirani, F and Pidgeon, N. (2016) “Texturing waste:
attachment and identity in everyday consumption and waste practices”, Environmental Values
http://www.whpress.co.uk/WV/papers.pdf
• Shirani, F., Butler, C., Groves. C., Parkhill, K., Henwood, K. and Pidgeon, N. (2016) “Living in the
future? Environmental concerns, parenting and low-impact lifestyles”. Geographies of Global
Issues, Eds N. Ansell and N. Klocker. Singapore: Springer
• Parkhill, K., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Groves, C., Henwood, K. and Pidgeon, N. (2015) “We are a
community [but] it takes a certain amount of energy? Exploring shared visions, social action and
resilience in place-based community-led initiatives. Environmental Science and Policy, 53, Part
A:60-69.
• Shirani, F., Butler, C., Henwood, K., Parkhill, K. & Pidgeon, N. (2015) “‘I’m not a tree hugger, I’m
just like you’: changing perceptions of sustainable lifestyles”, Environmental Politics, DOI:
10.1080/09644016.2014.959247
• Butler, C., Parkhill, K., Shirani, F., Henwood, K. and Pidgeon, N. (2014) “Examining the dynamics
of energy demand through a biographical Lens”, Nature and Culture, 9(2), 164-182.