The Energy Biographies Project at Cardiff University conducts biographical interviews across UK locations to explore the social implications of energy use and technology. Employing a multimodal approach, the project critiques socio-technical imaginaries and reflects on lived experiences with technologies, emphasizing the importance of deliberative practices. Findings suggest a tension between the convenience of modern technologies and the meaningful engagements that emerge from traditional practices, pointing to the need for critical engagement in future technological assessments.

1. Christopher Groves, Karen Henwood, Catherine
Butler, Karen Parkhill, Nick Pidgeon and Fiona Shirani
Energy Biographies Project
(http://energybiographies.org)
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University, UK
http://cardiff.academia.edu/ChristopherGroves

2. • QLL biographical
interviews
▫ Four UK sites: Ely, Peterston
(Cardiff), Lammas (west
Wales), Royal Free Hospital
(London)
▫ 3 longitudinal interviews
(N=74 in first round, N=36 for
rounds 2 & 3)
▫ 6 months between interviews
▫ Multimodal component:
participant photography and
film

3. • Critique of imaginaries explores
viability & desirability of socio-
technical transformation
• Embodies a responsible research and
innovation (RRI) approach
• RRI means reflecting on the social
constitutions1 or ‘worlds’2 of socio-
technical options
• Implies a ‘hermeneutic’ approach to
futures3 & a deliberative model of tech
assessment
1. Kearnes, M., et al. (2006). "From Bio to Nano: Learning Lessons from the UK Agricultural Biotechnology Controversy." Science as Culture 15(4): 291-307.
2. Macnaghten, P. and B. Szerszynski (2013). "Living the global social experiment: An analysis of public discourse on solar radiation management and its implications for
governance." Global Environmental Change 23(2): 465-474.
3. Grunwald, A. (2014). "The hermeneutic side of responsible research and innovation." Journal of Responsible Innovation 1(3): 274-291.

4. • Ethnographic work on ‘smartness’
emphasises entanglement of socio-
technical arrangements and lifeworlds1
• RRI approaches tend to construct
deliberation as discursive & its subjects
as rational discoursers ≈ Habermasian
technological democracy
• But the meaning of technologies is
inseparable from lived engagements2
and affective, embodied subjectivity2
1. Strengers, Y. (2013). Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life: Smart Utopia? London, Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Mol, A. (2008). The logic of care. London. New York, Routledge.
3. Lash, S. and J. Urry (1994). Economies of Signs and Space. London, Sage.
• How can lived,
embodied
engagements with
technologies enter
deliberative arenas
– particularly when
these belong to as
yet only potential
and abstract future
worlds?

5. • Psychosocial approach to
social practices: practices
matter (Sayer, 2011)
• Explores ‘internal rewards’
(Shove, Pantzar & Watson,
2012) of participating in
practices
▫ Constitutive of identity
▫ Supporting sense of agency
• As well as shaped by shared
meanings of practices, identity is
▫ dynamic
▫ relational
▫ biographical
• Complex dynamics of attachment
condition participation in
normative/ non-normative
practices
Groves et al, 2015, ‘Energy biographies: narrative genres, lifecourse transitions and practice
change’, Science, Technology and Human Values
Groves et al., forthcoming,’Invested in unsustainability?, Environmental Values, June 2016

6. • 2nd and 3rd round interviews
▫ Photographing everyday
energy use with smartphone
▫ Using two films to explore
shared imaginaries
 Monsanto’s ‘House of the
Future’ (1957)
 UK Channel 4 ‘Home of the
future’ (2012)

7. • Older interviewees: remember
liberating, life-enhancing socio-
technical transitions
• Convenience widely seen as becoming
an end-in-itself
• Biographical narratives echo STS
analyses of a thinned1 lifeworld in
which attention is dispersed2
• Stiegler: dispersed attention reduces
opportunities for individuation
1. Casey, E. S. (2001). "Between Geography and Philosophy: What Does It Mean to Be in
the Place-World?" Annals of the Association of American Geographers 91(4): 683-
693.
2. Stiegler, B. (2010). Taking care of youth and the generations. Stanford, CA, Stanford
University Press.
It’s the best thing in the world that
happened to me, was going from coal
that we had over in Hywel Dda there.
But when I first moved from Cambria
Road to Heol Deva that was a house of,
it was unbelievable, we had central
heating and I was only 10, in all the
rooms, a steel house, wonderful,
wonderful.
(Jeffrey, 60s, Ely)
‘[…] yeah, everything is really easy and
convenient I mean you want the TV on
you hit a button and it’s on and you’ve got
like 500 channels at your fingertips
should you want to watch them and then
you’ve got all your music players and
you’ve got not just one but maybe one in
each room […] and then you’ve got,
you’ve got Wi-Fi and internet and stuff ‘
(Monica, RFH)

8. • Against the ‘frictionlessness’ of
convenience and smartness1
• Friction as individuating2 – the ‘grit in
the oyster’ of subjectivity
• Associated with valued forms of
relational subjectivity
“Yeah but I don’t like that. I look back
and I think actually I see for me how I
had no connection with it [central
heating], no connection you know,
whereas when the wood’s there and
you see the fire going you think maybe
I’ll just turn the fire down cos the pile
of wood is shrinking.”
(Emmanuelle, Lammas)
“I think we were saying about the log
fire, it’s rewarding when you sit back
and see the log fire whereas if you just
flick a switch and it’s there it’s not as
rewarding so who knows you know on
how it effects our happiness in the long
run things like that, don’t know.”
(Sarah, RFH)
“Yeah well that’s, my partner says
I’m obsessed with it because I’m
always off up the woods looking for
wood and things like that, ‘I’m going
to light it tonight’, ‘oh no you’re not
are you?’”
(Robert, Peterston)
1. Ellul, J. (1964). The technological society. New York, Vintage: p. 414
2. Stiegler, B. (2010). Taking care of youth and the generations. Stanford, CA, Stanford
University Press.

9. • Reflecting on
imaginaries produces
critical observations
▫ On unacceptable forms
of dependency
▫ On forms of
technological mediation
that erode
individuation
“[talking about Ch4 film] all the
gadgets I mean that was you know
similar to the bloody [Monsanto]
house you know you’re hungry and
the electricity is down and you can’t,
you know you can’t have a shower
because you can’t turn on the tap
(Vanessa, Lammas)”
(Vanessa, Lammas)
“I still think it sort of dumbs us down
as a kind of society and replaces our
you know ingenuity and our thinking,
free thinking with controlled you know
thinking and you know
computerisation of everything”
(Dennis, RFH)

10. • Reflecting on valued forms of
agency and links to
practices/technologies spreads
to values like comfort,
convenience and
controllability1
• Leads to a re-tooling of the
meaning of these dominant
values
• E.g. differently convenient:
localisation of infrastructure
rather than always ready-to-
hand services
1. Vannini, P. and J. Taggart (2014). Off the Grid: Re-Assembling Domestic Life. London, Routledge.
“I had no connection with
it [central heating], no
connection you know,
whereas when the wood’s
there and you see the fire
going you think maybe I’ll
just turn the fire down cos
the pile of wood is
shrinking.”
(Emmanuelle, Lammas)

11. 1. Interviews feature reflexivity that is aesthetic,
embodied, relational
2. Indicates value of multimodal-narrative-
biographical approach as occasion for
deliberation
3. Involves using biographical reflections on
practical lifeworlds as the basis for imagining
future ‘worlds’
4. Opens paths for extending deliberative
approaches beyond ‘Habermasian
technological democracy’

12. http://energybiographies.org
Other team Members:
Professor Karen Henwood, Professor Nick Pidgeon
& Dr Fiona Shirani (Cardiff),
Dr Karen Parkhill (now York)
Dr Catherine Butler (now Exeter)