Presentation given by Karen Henwood at event 2 of New Frontiers in Qualitative Longitudinal Research: 'Research Relationships in Time'. Cardiff University, 7th February 2013.
This document summarizes a pilot study conducted with an electric utility in Arizona to understand how they market renewable energy programs to the public. The study analyzed cultural artifacts like websites, newsletters and billboards to understand the messaging and its delivery. Interviews with utility employees provided insight into the representation process and their visions. The study aims to understand how collective understandings influence policy feedback loops and examines the links between utilities, policymaking and publics. Future work is focused on similar analysis of community renewable projects in Italy.
This document announces a two-day workshop on developing capacity in multimodal research, community engagement, and energy demand reduction. The workshop aims to promote methodological innovation using multimodal data, enhance research-user engagement, and increase multimodal research capabilities among projects related to sustainable communities and energy demand reduction. Activities will include talks, panels, discussions, and workshops to creatively and analytically work with multimodal data and discuss multimodality and public engagement. The workshop intends to boost participants' research insights and transfer gains to other communities, with plans to develop an interactive mobile exhibition showcasing work across projects.
So cycling to work provided convenience and fitness benefits for Sara. She also cycled when her daughter was young to spend time with her.
Sara: Yes, absolutely. I think the social and emotional aspects are really important. Cycling gave me quality time with my daughter when she was little. It also helped me manage my work-life balance better by shortening my commute. The environmental benefits were definitely a factor too but I think the psychosocial rewards have been more motivating for maintaining the practice over the long term.
Opening up Pandora’s Box: Energy Biographies, everyday practices and the psyc...energybiographies
This document summarizes an interdisciplinary research project on energy use called the Energy Biographies Study. The study uses qualitative longitudinal methods to understand how people's energy use is shaped by their daily routines, life transitions, and broader social and historical contexts. Researchers conducted initial and follow-up interviews with 74 participants across the UK, discussing themes like community, routine activities, and life changes. Between interviews, participants took photographs related to energy use to facilitate discussion. The analysis is exploring topics like intergenerational ethics, continuity and change in energy practices, and perceptions of low-carbon transitions. The overall aim is to better understand people's experiences and decision-making around energy through open-ended conversations about their lives.
This document summarizes the key findings of the Energy Biographies research project, which used narrative interviews and multimodal methods to study how and why household energy use changes over people's lifetimes and within different communities. The research identified several overlooked influences on energy demand, including how lifecourse transitions are often incremental and shaped by wider social changes. It also found that communities can provide foundations for shared efforts to reduce energy use, but that policy timelines may clash with bottom-up initiatives. Additionally, the study revealed how energy infrastructure and practices are intertwined with people's identities and visions of a worthwhile life, and how these attachments can both enable and conflict with sustainable energy use.
This document outlines the objectives and methodology of a research project investigating community-led energy demand reduction initiatives through an analysis of people's "energy biographies". The project aims to 1) develop understanding of energy use by comparing energy biographies across different social settings, 2) examine how demand reduction interventions interact with personal biographies, and 3) improve understanding of how communities can support reduced energy consumption. The researchers are using narrative interviews, longitudinal qualitative methods, and visual methods to collect data from case sites in Wales and England. The analysis will involve coding, case biographies, qualitative longitudinal analysis, and multi-modal approaches.
Will the ‘subject’ of research into environmental risk problems please speak ...Chris Groves
Presentation given at Fate, Luck and Fortune Workshop 3: Popular Narratives of Environmental Risk, University of Liverpopol in London, London, 8 September 2017.
Energy Biographies: Everyday Life and Socio-Technical Change in Energy SystemsChris Groves
In the wake of COP21, it is timely to reconnect strategic visions and policy interventions with research-led understandings of how and why people use energy. A key relevant research focus in STS has been on the socio-technical entanglements of practices and technologies over time, and their influence on trajectories of demand (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson, 2012). The Energy Biographies study (2011-2015, http://energybiographies.org) has developed innovative methodologies for rendering visible sociologically and psychologically intangible aspects of our ways of living in resource-intensive ways. It has developed psychosocially-nuanced understandings of the ways in which relational subjects are essential for understanding energy-using practices. It has also opened creative spaces where energy usage across the lifecourse creates opportunities for exploring continuity and change dynamics. This presentation will bring into relief theoretical and methodological issues involved in experimental ways of working that have been taken forward by this project, and in connection with three substantive concerns: the dynamics of participation in sustainable or unsustainable patterns of everyday energy use; the embedding and entanglements of energy usage and social practices in everyday life, wider systems, and cultural conditions of late modernity; the role of psychosocial intangibles (relationships, emotional attachments and investments) in the dynamics of everyday energy use and systems change. In doing this, we will show how it is possible to bring STS scholarship relating to sustainability transitions, everyday energy use, and sociotechnical systems change together with social scientific research investigating articulations between sociotechnical change in the everyday and lifecourse or psychosocial (including narrative) perspectives.
This document summarizes a pilot study conducted with an electric utility in Arizona to understand how they market renewable energy programs to the public. The study analyzed cultural artifacts like websites, newsletters and billboards to understand the messaging and its delivery. Interviews with utility employees provided insight into the representation process and their visions. The study aims to understand how collective understandings influence policy feedback loops and examines the links between utilities, policymaking and publics. Future work is focused on similar analysis of community renewable projects in Italy.
This document announces a two-day workshop on developing capacity in multimodal research, community engagement, and energy demand reduction. The workshop aims to promote methodological innovation using multimodal data, enhance research-user engagement, and increase multimodal research capabilities among projects related to sustainable communities and energy demand reduction. Activities will include talks, panels, discussions, and workshops to creatively and analytically work with multimodal data and discuss multimodality and public engagement. The workshop intends to boost participants' research insights and transfer gains to other communities, with plans to develop an interactive mobile exhibition showcasing work across projects.
So cycling to work provided convenience and fitness benefits for Sara. She also cycled when her daughter was young to spend time with her.
Sara: Yes, absolutely. I think the social and emotional aspects are really important. Cycling gave me quality time with my daughter when she was little. It also helped me manage my work-life balance better by shortening my commute. The environmental benefits were definitely a factor too but I think the psychosocial rewards have been more motivating for maintaining the practice over the long term.
Opening up Pandora’s Box: Energy Biographies, everyday practices and the psyc...energybiographies
This document summarizes an interdisciplinary research project on energy use called the Energy Biographies Study. The study uses qualitative longitudinal methods to understand how people's energy use is shaped by their daily routines, life transitions, and broader social and historical contexts. Researchers conducted initial and follow-up interviews with 74 participants across the UK, discussing themes like community, routine activities, and life changes. Between interviews, participants took photographs related to energy use to facilitate discussion. The analysis is exploring topics like intergenerational ethics, continuity and change in energy practices, and perceptions of low-carbon transitions. The overall aim is to better understand people's experiences and decision-making around energy through open-ended conversations about their lives.
This document summarizes the key findings of the Energy Biographies research project, which used narrative interviews and multimodal methods to study how and why household energy use changes over people's lifetimes and within different communities. The research identified several overlooked influences on energy demand, including how lifecourse transitions are often incremental and shaped by wider social changes. It also found that communities can provide foundations for shared efforts to reduce energy use, but that policy timelines may clash with bottom-up initiatives. Additionally, the study revealed how energy infrastructure and practices are intertwined with people's identities and visions of a worthwhile life, and how these attachments can both enable and conflict with sustainable energy use.
This document outlines the objectives and methodology of a research project investigating community-led energy demand reduction initiatives through an analysis of people's "energy biographies". The project aims to 1) develop understanding of energy use by comparing energy biographies across different social settings, 2) examine how demand reduction interventions interact with personal biographies, and 3) improve understanding of how communities can support reduced energy consumption. The researchers are using narrative interviews, longitudinal qualitative methods, and visual methods to collect data from case sites in Wales and England. The analysis will involve coding, case biographies, qualitative longitudinal analysis, and multi-modal approaches.
Will the ‘subject’ of research into environmental risk problems please speak ...Chris Groves
Presentation given at Fate, Luck and Fortune Workshop 3: Popular Narratives of Environmental Risk, University of Liverpopol in London, London, 8 September 2017.
Energy Biographies: Everyday Life and Socio-Technical Change in Energy SystemsChris Groves
In the wake of COP21, it is timely to reconnect strategic visions and policy interventions with research-led understandings of how and why people use energy. A key relevant research focus in STS has been on the socio-technical entanglements of practices and technologies over time, and their influence on trajectories of demand (Shove, Pantzar, and Watson, 2012). The Energy Biographies study (2011-2015, http://energybiographies.org) has developed innovative methodologies for rendering visible sociologically and psychologically intangible aspects of our ways of living in resource-intensive ways. It has developed psychosocially-nuanced understandings of the ways in which relational subjects are essential for understanding energy-using practices. It has also opened creative spaces where energy usage across the lifecourse creates opportunities for exploring continuity and change dynamics. This presentation will bring into relief theoretical and methodological issues involved in experimental ways of working that have been taken forward by this project, and in connection with three substantive concerns: the dynamics of participation in sustainable or unsustainable patterns of everyday energy use; the embedding and entanglements of energy usage and social practices in everyday life, wider systems, and cultural conditions of late modernity; the role of psychosocial intangibles (relationships, emotional attachments and investments) in the dynamics of everyday energy use and systems change. In doing this, we will show how it is possible to bring STS scholarship relating to sustainability transitions, everyday energy use, and sociotechnical systems change together with social scientific research investigating articulations between sociotechnical change in the everyday and lifecourse or psychosocial (including narrative) perspectives.
This document summarizes a presentation about energy use research projects. It discusses:
1) The Energy Biographies project, a large qualitative study exploring how people use energy in everyday life. It generated new understanding of how energy use is patterned across individuals' lives.
2) The Flexis project, which will build on Energy Biographies to understand how proposed new flexible energy systems may impact people's lives, and help shape policy responses.
3) Current Flexis case studies exploring public responses to socio-technical changes in energy in communities in Wales.
The presentation argues social science research is needed to anticipate how people may respond to new energy innovations, to
The document discusses research focusing on promoting energy efficiency in large buildings to achieve zero emission buildings (ZEBs). It presents initial case studies of large buildings in Norway, including a housing cooperative, health institution, university, and student housing organization. Preliminary findings suggest that energy efficiency management is currently characterized by local knowledge and initiatives rather than professional facility management. Greater involvement of "in-between actors" in building operation and an integrated approach combining design, technology, and user behavior are recommended to enhance energy efficiency.
SOCIAL ACCEPTABILITY & RESPONSIBLE DEVELOPMENT OF ENERGY SYSTEMSenergybiographies
.Understanding the whole energy system of the future involves us
i) working in a shared socio-technical “problem space” encompassing what is considered to be:
Possible/plausible and desirable
We are mapping this out (our “issues space”)
Engaging with publics/ideas about imagined futures
ii) Understanding diverse impacts of dynamic changes arising on daily life, the lifecourse, and emergent socio-technical/systems
Smart - as an emergent (socio-technical & socio-cultural) systems dynamic - will impact in ways that matter greatly to people– raising non-trivial research issues
This document provides an overview and update of the Energy Biographies research project. The project uses narrative interviews and longitudinal methods to study people's "energy biographies" and energy use across different communities. It is being conducted in phases by researchers from Cardiff University. The overview summarizes the research questions, case study sites, methods used to date including narrative interviews, and plans for future phases including additional interviews and multi-modal methods like photos. Emergent themes from initial interviews are also summarized.
Learning from discomfort - Science communication experiments between diffusio...energybiographies
This document summarizes Maja Horst's research on using interactive installations to facilitate science communication and public engagement. It discusses experiments using installations to promote dialogue over diffusion and engage audiences physically and emotionally. It also examines challenges like balancing researcher and communicator roles, interpreting audience contributions, and accounting for unexpected responses. The goal is to develop more dialogical, participatory forms of science communication.
Why energy matters: energy biographies and everyday ethicsenergybiographies
In recent years, debates about energy justice have become increasingly prominent. However, the question of what is at stake in claims about energy justice or injustice is a complex one. Signifying more than simply the fair distribution of quantities of energy, energy justice also implies issues of procedural justice (participation) and recognition (acknowledgement of diverse values constitutive of ways of life). It is argued that this requires an acknowledgement of the relational nature of ethical subjectivity. Data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University is used to explore the connections between the relational texture of everyday life and the ethical significance of energy. In particular, the contribution of embodiment, attachment and narrative as capabilities to the everyday ethical evaluation of different ways of using energy is shown to be significant. Ethical investments in ideas of a good life are implicit in bodily comportment, emotional attachment, and biographical narratives, it is suggested. Using multimodal and biographical qualitative social science methods allows these implicit forms of evaluation to become more tangible, and the moral conflicts between some forms of energy-using practices to be exposed
This document summarizes three research projects conducted by Professor Karen Henwood and her team exploring sustainable energy and environmental risk through social science methods and public engagement. The projects include: 1) Making Sense of Sustainability which used arts and social science to facilitate environmental discussions; 2) Energy Biographies which examined energy use through biographical stories and participant photography; and 3) Flexis which looks at potential social impacts of energy system transitions through "stories of change". The document then discusses the team's interpretivist and socio-cultural approach which investigates meaning-making through methods like interviews, text analysis, and participatory techniques involving arts to explore complex subjectivity, reflexivity, conviviality, and obliquity.
The grit in the oyster: using energy biographies to question socio-technical ...Chris Groves
The future, viewed from the present, is not a realm of facts (Jouvenel, 1967), but of possibilities, potentials and expectations that shape the present (Borup, Brown, Konrad, & Van Lente, 2006). It has therefore been argued that social technology assessment requires critique of the socio-technical imaginaries through which visions of future technologies are constructed (Simakova & Coenen, 2013). Technology assessment thus moves beyond weighing risks against benefits, and towards interrogating the ‘worlds’, including social relationships, practices and forms of life, that are implicated in future imaginaries (Macnaghten & Szerszynski, 2013). The contribution that qualitative social science research can make here by exploring the meanings of technologies within everyday practices has been demonstrated by, for example, Yolande Strengers’ ethnographic work on everyday energy use and imaginaries of ‘smartness’ (Strengers, 2013). In this paper, and contrasting with Strengers’ ethnographic approach, we show how the biographical investigation of everyday life can be used to develop deliberation on socio-technical imaginaries. Using a novel combination of narrative interviews and multimodal methods, the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University has examined imaginaries of smartness through the lens of biographical experiences of transformations in how energy is used domestically. In particular, this approach can open up a critical space around future socio-technical imaginaries by exploring the investments that individuals have in different forms of engagement with the world, along with the relationship between these forms and particular technologies. Using a psychosocial framework that also draws on theoretical resources from science and technology studies, we show how these investments can lead to shifts in the meaning of taken-for granted assumptions about the meaning of concepts like convenience, and how valued forms of subjectivity may be conceptualised as emerging out of the ‘friction’ of engagement with the world. In this way, we demonstrate the value for of ‘thick’ data relating to the affective dimensions of subjective experience for social technology assessment.
It has been argued that social technology assessment requires critique of the ‘worlds’ implicated in the future imaginaries through which expectations take shape around new technologies. Qualitative social science research can aid deliberation by exploring the meanings of technologies within everyday practices, as is demonstrate by Yolande Strengers’ ethnographic work on everyday energy use and imaginaries of ‘smartness’. In this paper, we show how a novel combination of narrative interviews and multimodal methods can help in explore future imaginaries of smartness through the lens of biographical experiences of socio-technical changes in how energy is used domestically. In particular, this approach can open up a critical space around future socio-technical imaginaries by exploring the investments that individuals have in different forms of engagement with the world and the relationship between these forms and particular technologies. Using a psychosocial framework that draws on theoretical resources from science and technology studies, we show how these investments can lead to shifts in the meaning of taken-for granted assumptions about the meaning of concepts like convenience, and how valued forms of subjectivity may be conceptualised as emerging out of the ‘friction’ of engagement with the world. In this way, we demonstrate the value for of ‘thick’ data relating to the affective dimensions of subjective experience for social technology assessment and responsible research and innovation.
This document summarizes an academic presentation on the Energy Biographies project, which examines peoples' knowledge and competencies regarding sustainable energy practices. The project uses qualitative longitudinal methods to study four case sites in the UK. Interviews with 68 participants in the first phase explored which knowledges and competencies people demonstrate around sustainable practices. The data shows that people often feel uncertain about what constitutes truly sustainable actions and question whether their current practices are sufficient. This uncertainty arises from complex connections between the meanings, materials, and skills involved in sustainable behaviors.
Smart Living: Implications for health and wellbeingenergybiographies
Smart living involves using technology to increase efficiency, security, and control over daily life through a technologically mediated environment. However, some concerns exist that increased reliance on smart technologies may negatively impact well-being. Qualitative interviews explored how technologies like electric hedge trimmers, patio heaters, and indoor aeroponic gardens impact relationships with nature and mental health. While technologies can aid comfort, their use could create social divides and replace independent thinking with computerized control. Ensuring technologies improve rather than harm well-being will be an ongoing challenge.
This document summarizes a presentation given by Dr. Tom Roberts and Dr. Kevin Burchell about understanding energy as a social phenomenon. It discusses measuring energy consumption, developing smart communities through community engagement projects, historical conceptualizations of energy, and qualitative and folk understandings of energy units. The presentation argues that changing energy behavior requires more than just measurement, and that energy literacy should incorporate corporeal, dramatic, and kinesthetic understandings of energy beyond just quantitative metrics.
Care and STS: re‐embedding socio‐technical futuresChris Groves
STS has, in recent years, seen the foregrounding of concepts of care in attempting to understand the constitution of of socio-technologies, as in, for example, the work of scholars like Annemarie Mol and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa. Despite the explicit attention such research pays to temporality, connections between care and technoscientific futures remain under-explored. This paper addresses this issue by re-appraising the connections between care, socio-technologies and futures, drawing on phenomenology, the ethics of care, and objects-relations theories to explore the relationship between practices, technologies and complex subjectivity. Performing the future in the present, it is suggested, constitutes and is constituted by specific temporal relationships between past, present and the not-yet through which subjects exercise care for the future. These relationships can be lost, in certain circumstances, in the products of the performance itself, in the quest for socially-valorized and desired 'disembedded' knowledge of futures, as manifested in demand forecasts, cost-benefit analyses, profit projections and so on. I explore how restoring an appreciation for the 'artisanal' performance of futures is essential to how innovation, and indeed governance of innovation, can be re-embedded in society as part of the broader goal of reconstructing the contract between technoscience and the societies that depend on it. Normative dimensions in STS, as addressed by recent developments such as responsible innovation ('taking care of the future' through the stewardship of technoscience, according to Stilgoe, Owen & Macnaghten, 2013), are thus brought back into the analytical frame.
The document provides information about the Connected Communities Programme, which aims to enhance participation, prosperity, sustainability, health and well-being in communities through connecting research, stakeholders and communities. It summarizes recent and current projects funded by the programme in areas like the creative economy, community engagement, cultures and health/well-being. It also outlines current calls for funding, including for digital community co-production projects and research on the legacy of the First World War. The Digital Transformations theme is working to transform arts and humanities research through new digital resources and methods.
Designing an interactive Ecosystem for Sustainable LivingJohnny Rodgers
Johnny Rodgers presents his research on designing an interactive ecosystem to support sustainable living. His goals are to make resource consumption visible to support informed decision-making using information visualization, HCI, and ubiquitous computing approaches. He discusses tools like dashboards, point-of-consumption feedback, mobile tools, "smart" appliances, and ambient/artistic displays. Motivating sustainable behavior requires combining feedback, incentives, and social influences to establish new norms over the long term. His prototype system ALIS provides integrated information through an ambient display to support sustainable choices.
Taking Communities Seriously: Reflecting on Ethical, Social and Cultural Issueswellcome.trust
Presented by Paulina Tindana (McLaughlin-Rotman Centre and Navrongo Health Research Centre, Ghana) at the Public Engagement Workshop, 2-5 Dec. 2008, KwaZulu-Natal South Africa, http://scienceincommunity.wordpress.com/
Tick TOCS Tick TOCS - channeling change through theory into scenariosWendy Schultz
Describes an original scenario-building method used to explore futures for education, based on combining scanning output with specific social change theories. The social change theories provided logical narrative arcs to evolve different futures from starting points in the present.
This document discusses how science, society, politics, and economics interact and influence decisions. It explains that scientific information helps decision-makers create laws and rules on local, national, and international levels. Additionally, the direction of science is affected by political and societal concerns, while science also influences politics, society and economics. The needs of society and potential economic benefits help determine which research receives funding.
This document summarizes an energy consumption study that uses narrative interviews to understand people's "energy biographies". The study examines how life transitions and community contexts influence energy use. Researchers interviewed people in various UK locations about their daily routines, life events, and views on identity and energy consumption. The interviews explored themes like community, daily routines, life transitions, and how consumption relates to identity. The study aims to improve understanding of how lifestyle changes and community support can reduce energy use. It uses narrative methods to help participants reflect on their energy practices.
This document discusses different approaches to analyzing multimodal data, including sensory ethnography, ethnomethodology, and social semiotics. It provides examples of how each approach analyzes video data and environments. Sensory ethnography focuses on subjective experience and perceptions. Ethnomethodology examines social action and accomplishment. Social semiotics investigates meaning-making through diverse modes of communication. The document also gives an example analysis of child interaction in a science discovery center, finding they engage more in sensory pleasure and social play than learning science concepts.
This document summarizes a presentation about energy use research projects. It discusses:
1) The Energy Biographies project, a large qualitative study exploring how people use energy in everyday life. It generated new understanding of how energy use is patterned across individuals' lives.
2) The Flexis project, which will build on Energy Biographies to understand how proposed new flexible energy systems may impact people's lives, and help shape policy responses.
3) Current Flexis case studies exploring public responses to socio-technical changes in energy in communities in Wales.
The presentation argues social science research is needed to anticipate how people may respond to new energy innovations, to
The document discusses research focusing on promoting energy efficiency in large buildings to achieve zero emission buildings (ZEBs). It presents initial case studies of large buildings in Norway, including a housing cooperative, health institution, university, and student housing organization. Preliminary findings suggest that energy efficiency management is currently characterized by local knowledge and initiatives rather than professional facility management. Greater involvement of "in-between actors" in building operation and an integrated approach combining design, technology, and user behavior are recommended to enhance energy efficiency.
SOCIAL ACCEPTABILITY & RESPONSIBLE DEVELOPMENT OF ENERGY SYSTEMSenergybiographies
.Understanding the whole energy system of the future involves us
i) working in a shared socio-technical “problem space” encompassing what is considered to be:
Possible/plausible and desirable
We are mapping this out (our “issues space”)
Engaging with publics/ideas about imagined futures
ii) Understanding diverse impacts of dynamic changes arising on daily life, the lifecourse, and emergent socio-technical/systems
Smart - as an emergent (socio-technical & socio-cultural) systems dynamic - will impact in ways that matter greatly to people– raising non-trivial research issues
This document provides an overview and update of the Energy Biographies research project. The project uses narrative interviews and longitudinal methods to study people's "energy biographies" and energy use across different communities. It is being conducted in phases by researchers from Cardiff University. The overview summarizes the research questions, case study sites, methods used to date including narrative interviews, and plans for future phases including additional interviews and multi-modal methods like photos. Emergent themes from initial interviews are also summarized.
Learning from discomfort - Science communication experiments between diffusio...energybiographies
This document summarizes Maja Horst's research on using interactive installations to facilitate science communication and public engagement. It discusses experiments using installations to promote dialogue over diffusion and engage audiences physically and emotionally. It also examines challenges like balancing researcher and communicator roles, interpreting audience contributions, and accounting for unexpected responses. The goal is to develop more dialogical, participatory forms of science communication.
Why energy matters: energy biographies and everyday ethicsenergybiographies
In recent years, debates about energy justice have become increasingly prominent. However, the question of what is at stake in claims about energy justice or injustice is a complex one. Signifying more than simply the fair distribution of quantities of energy, energy justice also implies issues of procedural justice (participation) and recognition (acknowledgement of diverse values constitutive of ways of life). It is argued that this requires an acknowledgement of the relational nature of ethical subjectivity. Data from the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University is used to explore the connections between the relational texture of everyday life and the ethical significance of energy. In particular, the contribution of embodiment, attachment and narrative as capabilities to the everyday ethical evaluation of different ways of using energy is shown to be significant. Ethical investments in ideas of a good life are implicit in bodily comportment, emotional attachment, and biographical narratives, it is suggested. Using multimodal and biographical qualitative social science methods allows these implicit forms of evaluation to become more tangible, and the moral conflicts between some forms of energy-using practices to be exposed
This document summarizes three research projects conducted by Professor Karen Henwood and her team exploring sustainable energy and environmental risk through social science methods and public engagement. The projects include: 1) Making Sense of Sustainability which used arts and social science to facilitate environmental discussions; 2) Energy Biographies which examined energy use through biographical stories and participant photography; and 3) Flexis which looks at potential social impacts of energy system transitions through "stories of change". The document then discusses the team's interpretivist and socio-cultural approach which investigates meaning-making through methods like interviews, text analysis, and participatory techniques involving arts to explore complex subjectivity, reflexivity, conviviality, and obliquity.
The grit in the oyster: using energy biographies to question socio-technical ...Chris Groves
The future, viewed from the present, is not a realm of facts (Jouvenel, 1967), but of possibilities, potentials and expectations that shape the present (Borup, Brown, Konrad, & Van Lente, 2006). It has therefore been argued that social technology assessment requires critique of the socio-technical imaginaries through which visions of future technologies are constructed (Simakova & Coenen, 2013). Technology assessment thus moves beyond weighing risks against benefits, and towards interrogating the ‘worlds’, including social relationships, practices and forms of life, that are implicated in future imaginaries (Macnaghten & Szerszynski, 2013). The contribution that qualitative social science research can make here by exploring the meanings of technologies within everyday practices has been demonstrated by, for example, Yolande Strengers’ ethnographic work on everyday energy use and imaginaries of ‘smartness’ (Strengers, 2013). In this paper, and contrasting with Strengers’ ethnographic approach, we show how the biographical investigation of everyday life can be used to develop deliberation on socio-technical imaginaries. Using a novel combination of narrative interviews and multimodal methods, the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University has examined imaginaries of smartness through the lens of biographical experiences of transformations in how energy is used domestically. In particular, this approach can open up a critical space around future socio-technical imaginaries by exploring the investments that individuals have in different forms of engagement with the world, along with the relationship between these forms and particular technologies. Using a psychosocial framework that also draws on theoretical resources from science and technology studies, we show how these investments can lead to shifts in the meaning of taken-for granted assumptions about the meaning of concepts like convenience, and how valued forms of subjectivity may be conceptualised as emerging out of the ‘friction’ of engagement with the world. In this way, we demonstrate the value for of ‘thick’ data relating to the affective dimensions of subjective experience for social technology assessment.
It has been argued that social technology assessment requires critique of the ‘worlds’ implicated in the future imaginaries through which expectations take shape around new technologies. Qualitative social science research can aid deliberation by exploring the meanings of technologies within everyday practices, as is demonstrate by Yolande Strengers’ ethnographic work on everyday energy use and imaginaries of ‘smartness’. In this paper, we show how a novel combination of narrative interviews and multimodal methods can help in explore future imaginaries of smartness through the lens of biographical experiences of socio-technical changes in how energy is used domestically. In particular, this approach can open up a critical space around future socio-technical imaginaries by exploring the investments that individuals have in different forms of engagement with the world and the relationship between these forms and particular technologies. Using a psychosocial framework that draws on theoretical resources from science and technology studies, we show how these investments can lead to shifts in the meaning of taken-for granted assumptions about the meaning of concepts like convenience, and how valued forms of subjectivity may be conceptualised as emerging out of the ‘friction’ of engagement with the world. In this way, we demonstrate the value for of ‘thick’ data relating to the affective dimensions of subjective experience for social technology assessment and responsible research and innovation.
This document summarizes an academic presentation on the Energy Biographies project, which examines peoples' knowledge and competencies regarding sustainable energy practices. The project uses qualitative longitudinal methods to study four case sites in the UK. Interviews with 68 participants in the first phase explored which knowledges and competencies people demonstrate around sustainable practices. The data shows that people often feel uncertain about what constitutes truly sustainable actions and question whether their current practices are sufficient. This uncertainty arises from complex connections between the meanings, materials, and skills involved in sustainable behaviors.
Smart Living: Implications for health and wellbeingenergybiographies
Smart living involves using technology to increase efficiency, security, and control over daily life through a technologically mediated environment. However, some concerns exist that increased reliance on smart technologies may negatively impact well-being. Qualitative interviews explored how technologies like electric hedge trimmers, patio heaters, and indoor aeroponic gardens impact relationships with nature and mental health. While technologies can aid comfort, their use could create social divides and replace independent thinking with computerized control. Ensuring technologies improve rather than harm well-being will be an ongoing challenge.
This document summarizes a presentation given by Dr. Tom Roberts and Dr. Kevin Burchell about understanding energy as a social phenomenon. It discusses measuring energy consumption, developing smart communities through community engagement projects, historical conceptualizations of energy, and qualitative and folk understandings of energy units. The presentation argues that changing energy behavior requires more than just measurement, and that energy literacy should incorporate corporeal, dramatic, and kinesthetic understandings of energy beyond just quantitative metrics.
Care and STS: re‐embedding socio‐technical futuresChris Groves
STS has, in recent years, seen the foregrounding of concepts of care in attempting to understand the constitution of of socio-technologies, as in, for example, the work of scholars like Annemarie Mol and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa. Despite the explicit attention such research pays to temporality, connections between care and technoscientific futures remain under-explored. This paper addresses this issue by re-appraising the connections between care, socio-technologies and futures, drawing on phenomenology, the ethics of care, and objects-relations theories to explore the relationship between practices, technologies and complex subjectivity. Performing the future in the present, it is suggested, constitutes and is constituted by specific temporal relationships between past, present and the not-yet through which subjects exercise care for the future. These relationships can be lost, in certain circumstances, in the products of the performance itself, in the quest for socially-valorized and desired 'disembedded' knowledge of futures, as manifested in demand forecasts, cost-benefit analyses, profit projections and so on. I explore how restoring an appreciation for the 'artisanal' performance of futures is essential to how innovation, and indeed governance of innovation, can be re-embedded in society as part of the broader goal of reconstructing the contract between technoscience and the societies that depend on it. Normative dimensions in STS, as addressed by recent developments such as responsible innovation ('taking care of the future' through the stewardship of technoscience, according to Stilgoe, Owen & Macnaghten, 2013), are thus brought back into the analytical frame.
The document provides information about the Connected Communities Programme, which aims to enhance participation, prosperity, sustainability, health and well-being in communities through connecting research, stakeholders and communities. It summarizes recent and current projects funded by the programme in areas like the creative economy, community engagement, cultures and health/well-being. It also outlines current calls for funding, including for digital community co-production projects and research on the legacy of the First World War. The Digital Transformations theme is working to transform arts and humanities research through new digital resources and methods.
Designing an interactive Ecosystem for Sustainable LivingJohnny Rodgers
Johnny Rodgers presents his research on designing an interactive ecosystem to support sustainable living. His goals are to make resource consumption visible to support informed decision-making using information visualization, HCI, and ubiquitous computing approaches. He discusses tools like dashboards, point-of-consumption feedback, mobile tools, "smart" appliances, and ambient/artistic displays. Motivating sustainable behavior requires combining feedback, incentives, and social influences to establish new norms over the long term. His prototype system ALIS provides integrated information through an ambient display to support sustainable choices.
Taking Communities Seriously: Reflecting on Ethical, Social and Cultural Issueswellcome.trust
Presented by Paulina Tindana (McLaughlin-Rotman Centre and Navrongo Health Research Centre, Ghana) at the Public Engagement Workshop, 2-5 Dec. 2008, KwaZulu-Natal South Africa, http://scienceincommunity.wordpress.com/
Tick TOCS Tick TOCS - channeling change through theory into scenariosWendy Schultz
Describes an original scenario-building method used to explore futures for education, based on combining scanning output with specific social change theories. The social change theories provided logical narrative arcs to evolve different futures from starting points in the present.
This document discusses how science, society, politics, and economics interact and influence decisions. It explains that scientific information helps decision-makers create laws and rules on local, national, and international levels. Additionally, the direction of science is affected by political and societal concerns, while science also influences politics, society and economics. The needs of society and potential economic benefits help determine which research receives funding.
This document summarizes an energy consumption study that uses narrative interviews to understand people's "energy biographies". The study examines how life transitions and community contexts influence energy use. Researchers interviewed people in various UK locations about their daily routines, life events, and views on identity and energy consumption. The interviews explored themes like community, daily routines, life transitions, and how consumption relates to identity. The study aims to improve understanding of how lifestyle changes and community support can reduce energy use. It uses narrative methods to help participants reflect on their energy practices.
This document discusses different approaches to analyzing multimodal data, including sensory ethnography, ethnomethodology, and social semiotics. It provides examples of how each approach analyzes video data and environments. Sensory ethnography focuses on subjective experience and perceptions. Ethnomethodology examines social action and accomplishment. Social semiotics investigates meaning-making through diverse modes of communication. The document also gives an example analysis of child interaction in a science discovery center, finding they engage more in sensory pleasure and social play than learning science concepts.
Living with Uncertainty: Attachment and Narratives of Careenergybiographies
This document discusses how attachment shapes human values, behavior, and well-being. It argues that attachment helps individuals cope with the uncertainty of existence by providing meaning, identity, and a sense of continuity. Without secure attachments, people lose their sense of purpose and ability to function. When attachments are broken, such as through trauma or loss of culture, it can profoundly disorient and destabilize individuals and communities by threatening their sense of agency and identity. Overall, the document examines how attachment forms the basis for how people understand themselves and find significance in the world.
Energy Biographies: Researching sustainable energy, inventing sustainable fut...energybiographies
The document summarizes key aspects of the Energy Biographies research project. The project uses longitudinal biographical interviews and participant photography to explore how people make sense of their energy use and envision sustainable energy futures. Interview discussions focus on topics like daily routines, life transitions, and views of past and present visions of technology and society. The project aims to understand how people's lived experiences and social practices shape their temporal horizons and ideas about sustainable futures. Preliminary findings suggest the interviews increase awareness of energy use and that discussions of retro-future visions critique unchecked technological optimism, while discussions of alternative futures emphasize self-sufficiency and disconnect from trajectories of endless growth.
This document discusses wood-based heating practices in Finland based on diary entries and interviews. It finds that wood heating is not convenient but is widely used due to buffers that provide flexibility, the ability to multitask and integrate heating into daily routines. Key aspects of wood heating identified are the annual harvesting and chopping cycle, daily and weekly rhythms of stoking fires, and synchronization of heating with other household activities. The tempo of time experienced varies from fluent flows to stress when falling behind schedules. Lessons for new energy technologies are to present convenience initially and understand how technologies structure temporal practices.
Comparing cases: Insights into energy practices and community from Cardiff Cityenergybiographies
Futurespace is a community group in Cardiff, UK focused on reducing energy consumption and fuel poverty. The group conducts home energy surveys, provides training to volunteers, and pursued a community solar PV scheme. However, changing UK energy policies presented challenges in keeping the community informed about delays. This highlights the need for community groups to build internal cohesion as well as an external "brand" or identity to navigate complex policy landscapes and maintain community support.
This document summarizes research from energy biography interviews conducted in Peterston, Wales. It provides context on the study and its aims to understand people's energy use and behaviors. 68 initial interviews were conducted with 74 participants across a range of demographics. 36 participants are taking part in longitudinal follow up interviews to understand how energy use changes over time. The interviews explore daily routines, life transitions, and attitudes towards energy. Participants also took photographs related to energy use. Emerging findings suggest that individual biography interacts with social and policy factors to influence energy decisions. Insights from Peterston residents suggest openness to local sustainability initiatives but a need for better communication of efforts.
This document summarizes research on communities engaged in low-carbon transitions. It discusses a project that studied 4 case sites in the UK over 1 year, including Lammas eco-village. At Lammas, residents have worked to change outsider perceptions from seeing them as hippies to a well-organized community. Forming community within Lammas requires ongoing effort to balance individualism with communal obligations while under pressure to meet sustainability targets. The visibility of the project is both necessary to change perceptions but also presents challenges for community building.
This document discusses how psychosocial factors like attachment patterns and life transitions can influence individual participation in social practices. It presents findings from interviews with participants in the Energy Biographies project. One interview subject, Lucy, discussed how hosting friends and family from London involved practices like using a wood burner and patio heater. While aware these practices are environmentally unfriendly, she finds internal rewards in how they facilitate outdoor socializing and confirm her identity, showing how attachment and identity needs can compel ongoing engagement in problematic practices. The document examines how narrative interviews can reveal these "evasive" psychosocial dimensions underlying energy-related practices.
This document describes a research project that examines how individual and shared meanings around energy and sustainability change over time. The project conducts longitudinal interviews with residents of eco-communities in Wales, including Lammas and Tir-y-Gafel, to understand how their practices and perspectives may transform. It finds tensions between shared goals of sustainability and more personal connections to place. Specifically, striving for self-sufficiency creates dilemmas and potential "waste" when economic dependencies remain. The project aims to capture these "quiet struggles" as local meanings interact with and potentially reshape wider sustainability meanings.
How energy matters: energy biographies, ethics and the texture of everyday life Chris Groves
While energy consumption is necessary to support people’s everyday lives in a material and instrumental sense, the ways in which energy is used are also constitutive of ways of life and of identities. The Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University has used biographical narrative interviews and multimodal methods across four case sites in the UK to investigate this constitutive meaning of energy consumption, and its implications for attempts to reduce energy demand.
Our data demonstrates the importance of emotional attachments to practices and technologies that consume energy, and the ways in which these attachments support valued identities, particularly when people undergo difficult lifecourse transitions. We show how a biographical approach can help us appreciate the ways in which ethical and moral conflicts emerge out of everyday energy consumption, not just around the priorities accorded to different values (like convenience, cost, comfort and luxury) but around what are in effect competing ethical frameworks used by people to guide them in balancing their attachments, and thus in determining how to use energy (including e.g. caring commitments to others, the costs and benefits of using energy, the plurality of values that make up a ‘good life’, or deontological rules). We thus show how qualitative biographical approaches can reveal the ethical investments and conflicts that are embedded in the thick texture of everyday life, and how the ethical significance of energy in the everyday lies in the diverse ways in which it comes to matter to us through the lifecourse.
Sensing the Air and Experimenting with Environmental Citizenshipenergybiographies
This document discusses citizen sensing and monitoring of environments. It presents several projects that allow citizens to monitor air quality including the London Air mobile app, environmental monitoring Arduino kits, and air quality monitoring devices attached to street sweepers, robotic dogs, pigeons, and eggs. The goal is to experiment with environmental citizenship and materialize data through do-it-yourself sensing devices. The research is funded by a European Research Council grant for a project called "Citizen Sensing and Environmental Practice".
Social Change, Climate Change and Social Reproduction, Dr Catherine Butler, C...energybiographies
'Social Change, Climate Change and Social Reproduction: Exploring energy demand reduction through a biographical lens', Dr Catherine Butler, Cardiff University, UK
Change, innovation and energy demand reduction: community led initiatives as ...energybiographies
The document summarizes a presentation given at a conference on narrative continuities and changes. It discusses an ongoing UK research project called "Energy Biographies" that is using narrative methods to study community led energy demand reduction initiatives. The project aims to better understand dynamics of energy use and transitions to more sustainable futures through in-depth interviews about people's everyday energy practices and life experiences over time. Initial findings suggest narrative elicitation can provide insights into how people's energy investments and practices may change or remain stable through life transitions and in response to demand reduction interventions.
Exploring the (un)sustainable Normal: Biography and Consumption in Everyday Lifeenergybiographies
This document discusses interviews conducted with people in the UK about their energy use and perspectives on sustainable lifestyles. It profiles two men, Jeremy and Peter, who have lived more sustainable lifestyles. Jeremy has been an environmentalist for decades and led a community energy project. Peter "fell in love" with alternative living after discovering an ecovillage. The document concludes that perceptions of sustainable lifestyles have changed over time but are still not mainstream, and there is a challenge in overcoming stereotypes.
This document summarizes the concurrent sessions from a PI meeting. It provides an overview of 16 session topics, including addressing socio-scientific issues like climate change and implications for science literacy. Each session section summarizes the main takeaways and resources shared. The document encourages reaching out with any follow-up questions.
iSamples Research Coordination Network (C4P Webinar)Kerstin Lehnert
The iSamples (Internet of Samples in the Earth Sciences) Research Coordination Network is part of EarthCube and focuses on the integration of physical samples and collections into digital data infrastructure in the Earth sciences. This presentation summarizes the activities of the iSamples RCN and presents results from a major community survey about sharing and management of physical samples that was conducted as part of the RCN.
Day 1 - Quisumbing and Davis - Moving Beyond the Qual-Quant DivideAg4HealthNutrition
This document discusses the benefits and challenges of integrating qualitative and quantitative research methods. It argues that keeping qualitative and quantitative research separate unnecessarily limits understanding of the social world. Both methods have strengths, and using them together can overcome their individual weaknesses. The document outlines differences in qualitative and quantitative research and provides an example study that combined the methods sequentially and concurrently to better understand long-term poverty impacts in Bangladesh.
This document outlines a project plan for a unit exploring nuclear physics and its impact on society. The unit aims to understand nuclear physics through studying its role in society and the world. It incorporates interdisciplinary subjects and connects with community experts. Students will learn about nuclear reactions, chain reactions, and how scientists developed an understanding of nuclear physics. They will explore how social standards influence science and consider ethics around the funding and applications of science. Assessments include labs, reflections, and a final project researching a historical figure involved in the Manhattan Project. The unit promotes critical thinking about the relationships between science, society, and social justice issues.
This document discusses participatory research and participatory action research. It provides definitions of both, highlighting that they involve researchers collaborating with participants to examine problems and enact solutions. Key aspects include focusing on social change, being context-specific, emphasizing collaboration through iterative cycles of research, action and reflection, and generating knowledge through participants' collective efforts to enact meaningful change. Participatory action research in particular aims to empower participants and improve their situation through knowledge construction and action.
This document discusses ensuring rigor and reliability in qualitative methods for impact evaluation. It notes that while qualitative approaches are increasingly used in impact evaluations, the qualitative components are often small and superficial. Several examples are given of impact evaluations that mention collecting qualitative data but do not adequately describe the methodology or analysis. The document argues more needs to be done to ensure quality, including ethical review, data archiving, and restudies of past evaluations. Restudies can provide methodological insights and allow judging the validity of original claims by exploring how contexts have changed over time.
This document provides an overview of qualitative research methods. It defines qualitative research and describes its key characteristics, including that it takes place in natural settings and focuses on participants' perceptions and experiences. The document also outlines various qualitative research methods like participant observation, interviews, and content analysis. It discusses the strengths of qualitative research in providing in-depth insights but also notes weaknesses like potential subjectivity. Finally, it discusses the importance of qualitative research across different fields like education, psychology, and marketing.
Fifty shades of evidence: A transdisciplinary research project on changing cl...Carina van Rooyen
This document discusses the author's proposed transdisciplinary research project on changing climate and water in the Sekhukhune area of South Africa.
(1) The project will map scientific and local knowledge on climate change and water from various stakeholders in the area.
(2) It will explore the convergence and divergence between these knowledge systems through surveys, interviews and community discussions.
(3) The goal is to understand how knowledge systems can be integrated to inform climate change adaptation decisions at local and regional levels.
This document provides an overview of participatory research and participatory action research. It defines the key concepts, compares participatory research to conventional research, outlines the iterative cycle of participatory action research, and discusses characteristics, frameworks, advantages and disadvantages. Participatory research aims to empower participants and generate knowledge through collaboration between researchers and community members to address problems and enact solutions.
1. The document discusses food practices as situated action, exploring everyday food practices of households through interviews and shop-alongs.
2. It identifies several patterns of situated food practices, such as implicit planning and stocking up on food. These practices are influenced by various household and social factors.
3. The outcomes suggest opportunities for design solutions to help people address food-related challenges and misconceptions. The study demonstrates how understanding everyday practices can inform the design of technologies.
The document discusses how data and collaboration can enhance decision making. It provides an overview of why using data and collaborating are beneficial, as well as some of the challenges. A case study is presented on how the Office of Institutional Research and Recreational Sports collaborated using data on facility usage, which found a relationship between usage and student retention. The collaboration strengthened both groups' understanding and ability to demonstrate the value of their work. The document encourages applying similar collaborations using data to other areas.
This document discusses case study methodology. It defines a case study as an empirical study that examines a contemporary phenomenon within its real-life context. Case studies are useful for studying processes and relationships in natural settings using multiple data sources. The document then discusses different types of case study designs, including single, multiple, holistic and embedded designs. It also covers important considerations for case study research such as formulating research questions, determining methodology, selecting sites, linking methods to questions, and allowing for changes to the research plan during implementation.
Theory And Methodology In Networked Learninggrainne
This document discusses theories and methodologies used in networked learning research. It begins by defining networked learning as learning that promotes connections between learners, learners and tutors, and learners and learning resources through the use of information and communication technologies. The document then discusses some of the dominant theoretical perspectives in the field, including cultural-historical activity theory, communities of practice, actor-network theory, and cybernetics and systems thinking. It also outlines some common methodological approaches such as content analysis, ethnography, case studies, action research, and evaluation. Finally, it discusses challenges of interdisciplinary research in networked learning and strategies for overcoming those challenges.
1. The first theory of change that providing new scientific evidence and improved practices would trigger decrease in deforestation was far too simplistic/naive about how science can influence the rest of the world
2. Interdisciplinary and multi-institutional approaches developed (e.g., ASB matrix) produced relevant and useful results that uni-disciplinary and uni-institutional approaches could not have produced
3. Governance and management structure need to be aligned with science implemented (inclusive, transparent, accountable)
4. To generate new knowledge, IPGs, it is essential to have baseline/benchmark in multiple sites, understanding of processes at play in environment and at spatial-temporal scales before scaling up
5. Flexibility, willingness to learn from mistakes, asking existential questions, re-inventing program are essential to evolve realistic Theories of Change overtime
Applying Pedagogies To Wicked Problems In GeographyWendy Berg
This document discusses applying pedagogies to teach wicked problems in geography. It begins by defining wicked problems as complex problems with no clear solutions that often have moral and political dimensions. Examples of wicked problems discussed include climate change, poverty, and sustainability issues. The document then examines what makes wicked problems difficult to research and teach, and opportunities to address them through interdisciplinary collaboration and more open curricula. It provides an example of a climate change teaching project and concludes by arguing geography is well-positioned to contribute to solving wicked problems through diverse skills and multi-disciplinary approaches.
This document provides an overview of the HCS103 Fields of Practice subject for social work and social welfare degrees. It outlines the aims of the subject to introduce students to the broad field of social work practice. Students will engage with online materials and discussions as well as complete two written assignments. The subject will draw on topics such as human development, social institutions, and how various factors interact in social work situations. It will also explore practice at micro, meso, and macro levels. Social welfare workers aim to enhance opportunities and promote human functioning in society by addressing challenges and obtaining resources for people.
This document discusses approaches to qualitative research. It begins by contrasting qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative research focuses on exploring social phenomena in their natural settings and interpreting meanings, while quantitative research tests hypotheses and looks for statistical relationships.
The document then examines key differences in the steps, beliefs, and activities of qualitative versus quantitative research. Qualitative research involves deciding on an interesting subject, exploring themes as they emerge, and developing research instruments during the process. Researchers must manage their own subjectivity and develop rigor through careful writing and justification of their methods. Overall, qualitative research requires a balance between opportunism and principle as the social situation is studied.
Islanded, connected, visible, intangible? Mapping expert imaginaries of whole...energybiographies
Whole energy system transition implies both complex processes of socio-technical change and complex sets of public values. Making sense of what may happen (the future ‘possibility space’) and what is at stake (the ‘issue space’) are social tasks to which, as science and technology studies (STS) scholars have argued, future imaginaries contribute resources. Such imaginaries provide symbolic templates (Mordini 2007) for understanding possible futures. Often such imaginaries have been associated with single technologies. STS has mapped numerous examples in relation to energy, such as nuclear and all-electric futures. The complexity of a coming renewables-based transition, however, mobilises imaginaries that include within them multiple energy vectors, the governance of the energy system, and the role of publics and other stakeholders. To explore these whole-system imaginaries, we report on interviews undertaken with academic engineering experts and others involved in demonstrator project delivery working on the ERDF-funded Flexis project in South Wales, UK (http://flexis.wales). Despite there being much shared common ground, in the shape of a whole systems imaginary of decentralisation, this brings with it a complex space of possibilities within which different socio-technical constellations can be imagined. These constellations have characteristics with very different implications for energy research and energy policy.
New Technology in a Marginalised Community: Exploring Energy Innovation in th...energybiographies
This document discusses a study exploring public perceptions of a proposed energy innovation project in a marginalized Welsh community. The project involves using minewater as a geothermal source to heat homes and potentially installing smart energy management platforms. While residents were interested in reducing energy costs, there was skepticism about whether smart technology could help with this. Opinions on smart meters varied between age groups, with more enthusiasm from younger people and more skepticism from older residents. The study aims to understand community views and implications for wider technical rollouts.
Making energy futures sensible: expert imaginaries and affect energybiographies
It is increasingly recognised that, when it comes to energy system transitions, ‘energy policy choices reconfigure societies’ which means that ‘the social-dimensions of energy systems are particularly salient for energy policy choices in the context of large-scale energy transitions’ (Miller, Richter, and O’Leary 2015, 30). At the same time, the ways in which anticipations of energy futures influence and flow into action in the present is relatively under-investigated. The sociology of expectations (Borup et al. 2006) has explored how the circulation of promissory texts and images shapes future imaginaries, through which uncertainties about the future are tamed. Absent from such an approach, however, is the ways in which future imaginaries, as anticipatory practices, are interdependent with lived futures, composed of anticipatory emotions and affects (Groves 2016).
This presentation is based on a series of expert interviews conducted with senior investigators from across the academic institutions, local authorities and private sector organisations involved in Flexis (http://flexis.wales), a multi-site and interdisciplinary project focused on investigating potential pathways for low-carbon energy system transformation. Using a cultural probes (Gaver, Dunne, and Pacenti 1999) approach to elicit and explore emotional responses to potential energy futures as part of semi-structured interviews designed to examine imaginaries of energy system transformation, it is argued that a methodological approach sensitised to the emotional aspects of lived futures (Adam and Groves 2007) can take steps towards re-embedding abstract promissory futures in everyday contexts of care and concern. This opens up opportunities to render expert discourses of possible futures more reflexive towards the often unquestioned priorities that shape them.
Talk, text and inventive methods: Insights from studying energy biographies, ...energybiographies
This document summarizes a presentation given by Prof Karen Henwood on insights from studying energy biographies and everyday energy use. It discusses the Energy Biographies project which used qualitative longitudinal interviews and visual methods to understand dynamics of everyday energy use. Key findings included enhancing reflections on practices and meaning through participant photos and videos. The project prompted reflections on usually intangible energy use and emotional attachments to practices and infrastructure that influence potential for change. While lifecycle transitions are seen as opportunities for intervention, thicker analysis of disruption is needed to understand how identities are negotiated through such changes.
1) The document discusses a case study of Lammas ecovillage in Wales and its experiences meeting UK planning regulations that required developing sustainable energy and food systems.
2) Residents found the planning targets were initially unifying but felt underwhelmed once achieved. Some struggled to meet the targets, balance family life, and develop permaculture systems within the timeframe.
3) While the targets focused on measurable outcomes, residents highlighted wider personal and social impacts like inspiring visitors and contributing to community. Smart technology was seen as a way to better manage resources and appeal to more people.
Methodological Invention and the Study of Everyday Energy Practices in Famili...energybiographies
UEA, Qualitative Research Symposium, 27th March 2017; Diversity in modern families and households: Challenges and opportunities for qualitative research
Inside smart homes and workplaces: How are/will people react to the changing ...energybiographies
This document discusses research on how people may react to smart homes and energy systems. It examines opportunities and obstacles for smart energy management strategies in homes. While automation and real-time energy use information could help create smart consumers, these approaches may overlook social practices and personal attachments that influence energy use. Research also found that smart meters alone may not drive behavior change without close support and particular uses. People's practices and cultural meanings associated with energy use can constrain behaviors in unexpected ways for technology designers. Narrative interviews exploring people's past experiences and future visions of energy use provide insights into how technologies may interact with social factors.
Exploring the multimodal methodology developed on the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University for investigating how the stories people tell about their everyday energy use can help us understand the opportunities for and obstacles to transforming energy systems.
Energy biographies: narrative genres, lifecourse transitions and practice changeenergybiographies
The problem of how to make the transition to a more environmentally and socially sustainable society poses questions about how such far - reaching social change can be brought about. In recent years, lifecourse transitions have been identified by a range of researchers as opportunities for policy and other actors to intervene to change how individuals use energy, taking advantage of such disruptive transitions to encourage individuals to be reflexive towards their lifestyles and how they use the technological infrastructures on which they rely. Such identifications, however, employ narratives of voluntary change which take an overly optimistic change of how individuals experience lifecourse transitions, and ignore effects of experiences of unresolved or unsucc essful transitions. Drawing on narrative interview data from the Energy Biographies project based at Cardiff University, we explore three case studies where effects of such unresolved transitions are significant. Using the concept of liminal transition as developed by Victor Turner, we examine instances where ‘progressive’ master narratives of energy use reduction clash with other ‘narrative genres’ which individuals use to make sense of change, based on experiences of transition. These clashes show how nar ratives which view lifecourse transitions as opportunities ignore the challenges that such transitions may pose to individual identity and thereby to interventions which position individuals as agents responsible for driving change
Living the "Good Life"?: energy biographies, identities and competing normati...energybiographies
This paper examines how the ways in which consumers use energy are shaped, not only by practice (Shove, Pantzar and Watson, 2012), but by biographically attachments to ways of life which relate to place and identity. Understanding how practices which require the consumption of energy may be transformed is vital for any transition towards socio-environmental sustainability. However, theorising and explaining the role of individual agency in practice change continues to present challenges. In this paper we address this issue by employing concepts of complex subjectivity to analyse some psychosocial dimensions of energy consumption. In particular, we focus on how a narrative interview-based and multimodal approach to understanding practice can render visible conflicts between different definitions of ‘need’ or the purpose of practices, which often develop into different (and sometimes incommensurable) forms of normative justification for engaging in different practices. Drawing on interviews conducted as part of the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University, we show that engaging in practices is bound up with particular attachments that are seen by interviewees as constitutive of identity and of visions of ‘the good life’ or particular ways of determining what is ‘right’ in a given situation. Lifecourse transitions may produce conflicts between such normative frameworks which can create obstacles to the transformation of practices that are unaccounted for by practice theory.
This document discusses a qualitative longitudinal study that used various visual and narrative methods to explore how people think about and plan for the future in relation to energy use. It describes using timelines, photos, and video clips to prompt discussions about participants' visions of the future and how their views may change over time. Challenges included asking direct questions about the future, which some found difficult, and balancing in-depth multimodal activities with time constraints and ethical considerations in qualitative longitudinal research.
Long-lived teams working across the primary-secondary analysis spectrum.
1. Long-lived teams working across
the primary-secondary analysis
spectrum
Prof. Karen Henwood
NFQLR
“The research relationship in time”
February 7th 2013
2. The case ‘for relationships’ in QLR
Familiarity & depth of knowledge can develop & be co-produced over time
Cross generational exchanges; distributions of capitals
Makes possible ethical sharing and pooling of valued resources (data sharing
and pooling, reciprocity in other ways)
Intimacy as a resource : intensity brings insight; increases reflexivity – worked
on over time – not just looking back
Intimacy as a provocation (??)
Conducive to “careful judgement based on practical knowledge based in time &
place” (Edwards & Mauthner, 2002)
Technology risks obsolescence, relationships can promote resilience by
enduring/adapting in time
3. Lessons Learned: One Project Team’s Reflections on
Qualitative Secondary Analysis (QSA) in Austere Times
• MaF (Henwood, Shirani & Coltart; 2007-2011)
• QLR study of accounts provided by 2 cohorts of men (2000 & 2008) of their
lived experiences and relationships in & through time (before-up to 8
years after first child)
• Part of Timescapes Network : dynamics of continuity & change – tracking
through multiple waves of in depth qualitative interviews & multimodal
methods
• Unique experiences of efforts at “scaling up” through qualitative secondary
analysis (QSA)
Published in FQS, 14 (1), January 2013
4. MaF project team’s reflections on
tensions & dilemmas of QSA
Ongoing , evolving challenges
Context: rising optimism surrounding QSA
QSA as a strategy for QR to Definitional issues & Historical &
navigate profound socio- Institutional Context of QSA
cultural, political & - as sources of ongoing tension
- & insight into ways of working
economic challenges across the primary-secondary
spectrum
Epistemological Issues – risks of treating
However, such efforts risk data as free-standing or realist
privileging conceptual & position of making data whole
substantive developments versus own experiences of careful
over continuing professional attention to acknowledging the
situated knowledge claims,
& ethical challenges intellectual commitments, relational
& negotiated workings & legacies of
creators of original work
5. Conclusions: Under-examined
costs and risks of QSA
• A defence of interpretive epistemological positioning of QLR
• Over-valuing distancing over proximate knowledge replays a quantitative
epistemological positioning
• Retaining a focus on meaning & context in the generation of insights promotes
subsequent meta- analysis and synthesis of findings
• Strongest arguments in favour of QSA (not involving revisiting by original
researchers) is for new inquiries to approach the data sets in ways that are
temporally, historically & analytically separate from the originating team
• Stress on the importance of QSA taking place in a timely and careful way &
avoiding risking detriment to (the legacies of) primary & secondary projects
6. Can research relationships be shared? The need to
theorise relationships : discourse & subjectivity
Aside from the powerful insights afforded by relational thinking about (research and
other forms of professional) practice, many challenges are posed to relational ways
of working :
- The ties that are enabling (through deepening understanding, increasing
reflexivity etc) are also the ties that bind.
- Interdependency can mean parties feeling constrained if it is set alongside
dominant liberal humanist ideas of “freedom of choice”.
- There are cultural temptations to over-idealise particular ideas of relationships
e.g. over-simplified ideas about what it means to adopt ethical relationships of
“care”.
Two starter references for building a theoretical scaffold - both classics in social
psychological theory .
i) Rachel Hare Mustin (1997) “Discourse in the mirrored room: A Postmodern
Analysis of Therapy “
ii) Jane Flax Forgotten “Form of Close Combat: Mothers and Daughters Revisited”
7. Rachel Hare Mustin (1997) “Discourse in the mirrored
room: A Postmodern Analysis of Therapy “
• Taking a discursive perspective on
relationships means posing questions about
the challenges of arriving at ethical
judgements when value conflicts are involved
• Such value conflicts can relate to different
gender, generational positionnings etc in
respect of justice, fairness, & equality
discourses
8. Jane Flax “Forgotten Forms of Close Combat:
Mothers and Daughters Revisited”
• Questions about gendered subjectivity
necessarily complicate assumptions about the
primacy of attachments or connections in
relationships.
• There are limits to such attachments as
guiding principles in understanding how we
experience the power and importance of
relationships.
10. Disconnected Futures: Primary analysis conducted 2012/13 in
an extended (long lived) research team
A major research initiative is under way to study issues arising for people and
communities as a result of efforts to promote low carbon transitions/reduce
energy demand in everyday life.
Energy Biographies is an ESRC/EPSRC project (Nov 2010-Sept 2014) taking an
innovative methodological approach to investigate “openings for change” in
people everyday energy practices. ”
QLR interview (& multimodal) methods adapted to the new topic area – drawing on
experiences from MaF.
Is it possible to create new working relationships among members of an enlarged
originating project (in the Cardiff University Understanding Risk Group); and the
enlarged Energy Biographies team of researchers?
11. Methods
• Follow up
• These involve
Phase 2a: interviews 5 AND
interviews and
Narrative 10 months with a
informal meetings
Interviews selected sample
with case site
from each case
representatives December 2011- site. Participants
and a wider range
April 2012 are being asked to
of stakeholders to
• 18-30 initial engage in a range
provide detailed
narrative of other multi
contextual
interviews in modal methods
information.
each case site (e.g. photographs)
area (n=68)
Phase 1: Scoping Phase 2b: Extended
Stakeholder Interviews Biographies &
July 2011-December Multimodal Method
2011 May 2012-February
2013
12. Phase 1: Developing Relationships
• Case Site Representatives – initial meetings
• Also full participants in longitudinal research
• Advisory Panel
• Community Volunteering
• Sustaining Relationships
(e.g. Christmas cards)
This is a community newsletter
developed by Karen Parkhill for
Futurespace
13. Case Sites
Peterston and Ely
Caerau, Cardiff
Royal Free
Hospital, Lo
ndon
Tir Y Gafel Eco-
village, Pembrok
eshire
14. Phase 3: Qualitative Longitudinal
1. Initial interview – establishing energy biographies through a focus on three themes:
• Community and context
• Daily routine
• Life transitions
2. 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: waste, frugality and guilt
3. Life transitions
• Discussion of important life changes since interview 2
• Exploring everyday routines through text-prompted photographs
• Expanded talk about the future (both personal and social), facilitated through
video clips
16. Phase 3: Imagined Futures
(Multi-modal Methods)
Monsanto house of the future 1957 Channel 4 home of the future 2012
3. 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
17. Disconnected futures - Data analysis (in press,
Local Environment)
• Could a new set of working relationships be formed, taking into account incoming
specialist temporal knowledge? Which research practices would prove most
useful?
• Not EB’s data; energy localities (UR group, 2009)
- 53 interviews of public perception of different energy production facilities and
futures (2009, Aberthaw coal fired power station and Hinckley Point Nuclear
Power Station)
• Selected for investigation an issue of relevance across both projects (Maf/Eb’s)
domains: intergenerational equity
• With a well known problematic within the sustainable environment/social
change/ futures arena)
- Environmental justice literature suggests current generations have the moral duty
to protect natural resources in the interests of future generations,
- Yet (in the wider environmental practice literature) it is said to be difficult for
people to see the consequences of their actions in remotely distant other times
and places.
18. How the analysis was done…
Familiarity with data (UR group) – it would be possible to explore people’s
connections to other times and places using the public
perceptions/energy locality data
Whole team: it was important (for Ebs study) to explore the implications of
this for understanding their perspectives on equity, justice and ethical
issues related to energy production & consumption
Maf strategy - initial inspection (FS) of relevant data revealed temporal
pattern relating people’s lifecourse positioning to ethical extensions into
the future and connections formed between their own practices and
energy consumption.
19. Presentation of analysis/findings
• Having structured analysis around life course positioning of family members,
subsequent efforts thickened the interpretations of the basic pattern (interpretive
contextualisation)
• Analysis process revealed contentiousness (value differences) and refined
interpretations : “living links to the future” via children not in themselves
necessary to make empathic, ethical links to the future
• What was established, though, was that, when there are completing pressures and
moral demands with something having to give, in order to understand what this is
likely to be means paying attention to the different time horizons associated with
such pressures.
• In the case of pressures associated with parenting , these are located in the
immediate - but socially and formalised routines associates with raising children
whereas, by contrast, moral pressures related to levels of energy consumption and
concerns about future sustainability are located in the long term future.
20. Disconnected Futures Analysis
Conclusion
Hence: our conclusion was that:
“ the different temporalities go some way to
explaining why certain actions take
precedence and that, therefore, there are
important questions to be asked (from an EB’s
point of view) about how is it possible to keep
these competing temporal pressures in
mind?“
21. Review & Conclusion
• QLR offers the promise of temporal insights that can be grasped when it crosses
into new substantive arenas.
• Reliance in QLR on the importance of analytical work generated through
relationship-focussed research remains important; in that:
i) it can be important to work with established team work practices and
understand their practices for deepening and strengthening QLR researchers
epistemic claims
ii) It is possible to change established team boundaries, and produce enhanced
analytical work with academic value
• However, it is not always clear in what ways researcher relationships – even within
such teams- are ‘sharing’ relationships : there are ways of building theoretical
understanding of this.
Assists in levelling out peaks & troughs in workloadsSlide 2This core set of objectives for our project are the ones you will find on our project website (www.energybiographies.org). They are simplified from the original proposal as the website is intended to be an accessible resource.One of our objectives is to “develop understanding of everyday energy use by investigating and comparing people's different ‘energy biographies’ across a range of social settings”. So in addition to seeking to study how life transitions are interpreted in terms of their impacts on energy use, we will be comparing the ways in which people undertake their routine, daily tasks that are involved in sustaining life (called practices) - across different social settings - including at home, work - and travelling between the two. This objective (in its more fully articulated form) shows that we are keen to recognise that questions about mobility (e.g. transportation) are implicated when studying everyday energy use: also that we need to be able to conceptualise people as mobile subjects’ with relationships to spaces and places that need not simply be rooted in pre-given, sealed, bounded and hence static identities – and where their place- or located-ness arises out of (is produced by) processes that are more dynamically, multiply and partially positioned. Our second objective 2 is to….All of our study participants have some familiarity with energy demand reduction interventions that we characterise as taking place in sites that are niche or mainstream. In mainstream sites energy demand reduction interventions are present but do not feature as central to participants everyday activities (e.g. switching off computers before leaving work). Niche involve substantial interventions that involve changes to established everyday routine uses of energy e.g. living off grid and hence without electricity unless it is generated on site by hydro electric schemes of solar photovoltaic cells. We are interested in how these interventions fold into the course of people’s lives – how far they take hold as ways of altering/reworking everyday practice- and whether it is the case that people’s life histories are implicated in these “change trajectories” (and hence whether trajectories involving intensification or reduction in energy consumption are set in train). This involves drawing attention to significant moments of change - first car, setting up home, retirement – and the various circumstances surrounding it.Objective 3. In UK policy there is a current preoccupation with communities as catalysts for change – not just around energy but for providing more resilience to all manner of deeply embedded structurally social problems. A part of our project is investigating the extent to which different community configurations (niche/mainstream) can support reductions in energy consumption. It was a condition of our funding that e work with communities that were winners of the UK government’s low carbon communities challenge - which brings advantages as the communities we have involved have a pre-existing interests in energy demand and its reduction. However, it also raises issues and challenges (although I will not really be focussing on these here). Objective 4. We have removed here some significant wording suggesting that we have a particular interest in studyingforms of consciousness or awareness that may be opened up by investigating ways of relating to energy and its use within different (psychosocial) spaces of perception. Still work in progress & not reported on specifically here.
We have developed think understanding of these issues from multiple perspectives as a result of our synchronous experiences of primary research, team working, cross project secondary analysis/synthesis and as an originator project for an independent secondary analysis project.
QSA as a nebulous concept; overlapping terms, Heaton’s groundwork –QSA includes data originators revising data as primary-cum secondary analysts– unhelpful tension language of scaling up and purported strengths of QR (texture, nuance, depth) Served to take us back to what it means to do a close reading of subjective accounts/qualitative dataAnd appreciate how our analytical work involved considering what came along with taking into account our particulara set of sometimes quite different relationships with our data – K as Pi linking back to the previous project, FS as research interviewer and hands on organiser of the new data sets and coming anew to the old data set but generating a good deal of familiarity through intensive team working, and CC as arriving late to the team and learning about the project and the data through engagement with other team members and disucssion of selected trasncripts for in depth, narrative and psychosocial style analysis. Something about the relational ties developed through project working that created the conditions fro being able to decide what claims one might entertain making from close working with and interpretive analysis of the data, are one’s that should be considered more credible and a suitable basis for working up to make wider substantive and theoretical claims.
Stress on the importance of QSA taking place in a timely and careful way & avoiding capitulating to external pressures and producing poor research which risks detriment to primary & secondary projects
The question set out for this first session is CAN RELATIONSHIPS BE SHARED? From the consideration of teamwork reflections on SA thus far, the answer is both yes and no (or with far more difficulty)– depending on whether the relationships fall within or transcend the boundaries of primary project working practices. However, while the configuration of project/team relationships gives an initial indication, evidently there is a good deal more to be pursued about this topic.A number of immediate caveats follow:Boundaries are made and not fixed; they serve particular needs and circumstances that can change.Relationships may take the form of alliances that may be situated, subject to institutional constraint, and – should circumstances change – could of course prove to be quite temporary. It is necessary to avoid reifying such alliances.The power of relational thinking about ethics in research practice derives, in part, through a contrast that it helps to make with normative ethics (as discussed by Natasha).But there are also well understood risks and a particular need to pay attention to the many challenges that are posed to relational ways of working : the ties that are enabling (in the ways already discussed in the first slide – through deepening understanding, increasing reflexivity etc) are also the ties that bind. Interdependency can mean parties feeling constrained if it is set alongside dominant liberal humanist ideas of “freedom of choice”. There are cultural temptations to over-idealising particular ideas of relationships e.g. over-simplified ideas about what it means to adopt ethical relationships of “care”Although this is not something that can be considered in these short talk, when I was asked by Rachel to identify my extended readings, I thought the issue of how to start to build a theoretical platform capable of opening up the challenges of relational working is one that could usefully be brought into view. So I thought of two sources pointing to ideas about how to theorise about the reasons why it is so challenging to understand the meaning and practice of research relationships, and to make t possible to start to mine a relevant research literature.
Lon term project aspiration“creating empirical and conceptual spaces for making visible people’s everyday energy practices & reflecting on community led demand reduction intervention, to enable people to engage with transformations towards more sustainable futures “
The first phase of our research involved building and developing relationships with case site representatives – initial meetings and interviews, advisory panel, volunteering (Karen Parkhill ) – though represented here as a first phase this is in fact an ongoing process of sustained contact and involvement with case site representatives and participants. All of the case site representatives are also participants in the longitudinal research.
We are conducting our research with four contrasting communities. Two of our communities are in the vicinity of Cardiff. Ely-Careau is typically reported as a deprived inner city area and is increasingly prominent in local council schemes aimed at promoting community development. Peterston Super Ely is an affluent commuter village on the outskirts. Tir-y-Gafel is an eco-village in Pembrokeshire West Wales. It is our niche site and over half way through it’s 5 year period of constructing a community of 9 households living off the national electricity supply grid, building their own homes using low impact designs from locally sourced sustainable materials (e.g. straw bales), and seeking to meet 75% of their household needs directly from the land as a condition of their planning permission. The Royal Free hospital, one of the largest employers in West London, is reducing the energy demand of the hospital in line with the UK governments Carbon Reduction Commitment (& its increasingly challenging targets). Although the interventions to reduce energy demand as experienced by the workers at the hospital are not beyond those many UK citizens experience, this case affords a unique opportunity to examine the wider impacts upon employees in terms of both their home and work practices.
An important and original aspect of this study is that it is longitudinal. By revisiting participants over time we are able to explore changes and continuities in energy use in ways which are unlikely to emerge in one-off ‘snapshot’ interviews.First interviews were conducted between December and May 2012. Second interviews between July and November 2012 and third interviews will be conducted between January and April 2013. This slide shows the main themes of each interview. It illustrates how by connecting with earlier interviews we are linking the discussions together, creating a conversation across three occasions rather than three separate conversations.In QLR, maintaining a sample of people across time is particularly important. In addition to using visual methods within the interviews (as the slide indicates) we have also used activities involving photographs between interviews as a way to engage participants and encourage continued participation.
From our previous research, and as we found in the first interviews, we know that asking people to talk about the future can be challenging. In order to facilitate discussion of the future – which forms a large part of our third interviews – we have included videos of two visions of the future. Firstly, participants are shown clips of a house constructed in the 1950s by Monsanto plastics company, which formed part of the Disneyland exhibit ‘tomorrowland’. The clip includes developments which are now taken for granted (e.g. electric toothbrushes and razors) and those which are quite different from how we live today (e.g. everything in the house made of plastic). The second set of clips come from a channel 4 programme ‘the home of the future’ which renovates a family’s home to include many future technologies (e.g. an electric car and an ‘indoor garden’ to grow plants without soil and using little water). By asking participants to reflect on the clips we get insights into how they imagine their futures (e.g. if they do not like the depicted reliance on technology, what would they like as an alternative?)
In-depth qualitative energy locality study conducted in the summer of 200953 participants were interviewed on two occasionsParticipants recruited from 2 case site localities: surrounding Aberthaw B coal-fired power station in the Vale of Glamorgan and Hinkley Point nuclear power station in South West England
Study participants with no children did not seem to be less likely to raise concerns about future generations or discuss the future in a more abstract way through lack of caring, although they did raise issues about environmental demand and sustainability not raised by the parents.
From my experiences, reported here , of working in two differently constituted teams-based projectIn the sense of being perceived to bemutually satisfying,of equal benefit, or ones that individuals involved in the “sharing” have involved appropriate forms of reciprocity. The ties that we may value for all sorts of disparate reasons (for bringing satisfaction, reward and pleasure) are also the ties that bind. Perhaps we need to accept that investing in relationships can bring its own risks and costs as well as benefits; that the latter may not be equal, reciprocity may be expected some time in the future (but may or may not happen), and one cannot assume that it will always function benignly in everyone’s professional interests.