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.
Energy Biographies: Everyday Life and Socio-Technical Change in Energy Systems
1. Energy Biographies: Everyday Life
and Socio-Technical Change in
Energy Systems
Prof. Karen Henwood
4S-EASST
Barcelona, 31st
August-4th
September 2016
2. A few introductory remarks
â˘Experimentation â from natural science method to social intervention
â˘A science in & for society problematic - rapidly changing
science-tech-society relations (have effects in) in everyday life, affecting
diverse publics
â˘Risk social science:
- a well developed lens taking on different guises (see e.g. Royal Society
Report, 1992, Henwood and Pidgeon UK Government Foresight Report âRisk
and Identity Futuresâ, 2013)
â˘Methodological issues are at heart of social science projects taking
the form of empirical and analytical experiments
3. Energy Experiments â what are they
are what are they good for?
⢠Real world energy projects/interventions/social experiments as ways of
putting into practice socio-technical transitions
⢠But also something epistemically divergent about them âas alternative
forms of engagementâ
âWe are in an unavoidably experimental state. Yet this is usually
deleted from public view and public negotiation. If citizens are
routinely being enrolled without negotiation as experimental
subjects, in experiments which are not called by name, then
some serious ethical and social issues would have to be
addressedâ (see e.g. van de Poel, 2015 â reporting on EU expert group on
science and governance)
4. Background : experimental ways of working
through methodological innovation
⢠Deliberative methods & stakeholder engagement & extensive empirical work on
responsible development/innovation (see e.g. Pidgeon et al, 2016)
[NB For theoretical discussions of social & ethical issues appear see Owen and
Macnaghten, 2013]
⢠Developing interest in âmorally responsibleâ innovation (Groves, 2015) &
experimentation (ie âsit together with stakeholders and see whether it is acceptable to
continue the experimentâ (van de Poel, 2015)
⢠Researching riskful social practices and assemblages (see editorial, 2016, in QRJ 16
(1)
⢠Also collaborative links outside STS: Carbon Conversations workshops enabling
people to change by dealing with challenges in non-threatening ways
5. Energy Biographies (ESRC/EPSRC 2011-15)
⢠4 year empirical study of the dynamics of everyday energy use for demand reduction
⢠Key assumptions
â current levels of energy use are unsustainable
â it is far from obvious how to respond to this individually or collectively
â hence a twin approach is needed - focussed on understanding both why change is
difficult and opening up spaces for reflection offering possible opportunities for
change
⢠Innovative study design to harness cross disciplinary insights and develop
understanding; so intensive methodological and analytical work
⢠Identifying the specific behaviours and/or practices that need to change to reduce
energy consumption is NOT our focus.
⢠Rather new/interesting kinds of data - offering analytic potential
⢠âBespokeâ approach to data analysis using data and theory to promote exploration
and generate insights
6. Energy Biographies as a Qualitative Longitudinal
Study (QLL) : why temporality and biography?
⢠QLL approaches explore change through time
and accumulate qualitative data that provides
depth and detail
⢠Explores impact of past experiences and
anticipated futures in enabling & constraining
peopleâs present routines and habits
⢠Individual biographical accounts can shed
light on broader patterns of social change
7. Case Sites
Cardiff Case sites:
Ely and Caerau
Peterston-Super-Ely
Lammas Ecovillage
Niche case site
Royal Free Hospital
Workplace case site
8. Interview 1
Themes: community and context, daily routine, life transitions
Activity 1
Participant-generated photos
Interview 2
Themes: changes since interview 1, discussion of pictures generated in activity 1,
follow up on emergent themes from interview 1
Activity 2
Text-prompted photos
Interview 3
Themes: changes since interview 2, discussion of pictures generated in activity 2
discussion of video clips provided by researcher
Energy
Biographies:
Structure of
empirical
work
More information on
each stage available at
http://energybiographies.org/our-project/project-design/
9. EBâs dataâenhancing reflections on everyday
energy use (practices)
âRight more gadgets. TV, PVR,
video player, digi-box, daughter
using laptop whilst watching
television. Yeah just the
penetration of electronics into
our lives which kind of we all
know but when you actually put
the spotlight on and take some
photographs it just brings the
impact up.
(Jeremy, 62, Cardiff)
10. EBâs data âeveryday reflections on infrastructure
âit gives this sense that youâre in an
open space so its airy, its well lit and
you can see outside, it feels bigger so I
think this is great. And it saves them a
lot of energy consumption as well
because they, I noticed that they do
have artificial lights but theyâd need to
use a lot more if instead of glass panels
they had brick walls. But on the other
side I donât know how they keep the
insulation with the glass, I donât know
how good all these windows are for
insulation so it might be that theyâre
saving on one side but spending a lot
on the other side.
(Suzanna, 34,
11. EBâs data â practices and identities
â⌠we do love our patio heater when itâs a
sunny evening but it gets a bit cold and dark
and you can sit out and theyâre like probably
the worst things arenât they? But we love it
well we only use it about five times a year so
itâs OK.â
âCos we love being outside, we just love that
you can you know go, we were sitting out
there one evening ⌠it was like midnight
and you could have a drink outside still and
itâs so lovely here cos itâs so quiet and
everything so but you wouldnât have been
able to do it without that so or you would
have been freezing. So thatâs our kind of,
we know itâs really bad but weâre still going
to use it.â
âHeating the
Outdoorsâ
(Lucy,
Peterson-
Super-Ely)
12. EBâs data: â Driving Souped Up Old Cars
(Ronald, Peterson)
â˘I would have no wish to rally in a modern in a modern car, whichever engine it was
propelled by, no wish at all. It would be quite good fun to drive balls out in the most
recent Mini, just to see what it was like through a forest, I would enjoy that yes please! âŚ
but that would be a novelty; it wouldn't be what turns me on. What turns me on is a
piece of old kit that you've put together and you've developed and, you know, the cars I
have are not just reconstructed but I've developed them as you would have developed
them from original. They are not an original but they do stuff that they couldn't do when
they were first built. ... That's the appeal for me; you've done this, you've put it together,
you and your chum, its adventure, more than motorsport in a sense ⌠the adventure bit
is every much as important as the mechanical bit but both are importantâŚ. so I wouldn't
want to do that in a battery-powered car or a hydrogen car or a modern car, wouldn't
want to do it and it wouldn't turn me on
13. Analytic Narrative
⢠Driving, central to identity, centring on cars as specific
material objects
⢠Car-care an activity of comradeship, autonomy
connected with risk experience
⢠Oil depleted/imagined future unable to support shared
meanings of adventure â an internal reward of
participation in risk practice
⢠Imaginatively, loss of attachment through leisure driving
is anticipated for multiple generations
14. How did methodological strategies
work?
⢠Multiple affordances of social sciences data
⢠Elucidating the lived everydayness & lifecourse
dynamics of change
⢠Visual methods âmake discussable core
concerns about what matters to people
⢠Elicits psychosocial issues via focal attentiveness
and creation of spaces for reflection
15. Published analyses
⢠Biographical patterning of
investments in practices
⢠Prior embodied perceptions of
environmental values: Iâm not a
tree hugger, Iâm just like you
⢠Identity challenges & narratives of
transitions (disavowal, silencing &
acknowledgement)
⢠Texturing waste
⢠Intergenerational dynamics
holding together practices &
identities; historically embedded,
major step changes in energy
infrastructure
⢠Environmental Values, 2016
⢠Environmental Politics, 2015
⢠Science, Technology & Human
Values, 2015
⢠Environmental Values, in
press
⢠Family, Relationships &
Society, in press
16. Energy Biographies â Overarching Insights
⢠Energy often intangible and invisible in everyday life â but
brought into view here through methodological innovation
⢠Focus and attention was re-directed at issues generally not
regarded as important in contemporary studies of energy demand
(psychosocial investments and identities)
⍠Changes in energy use can create concerns about everyday
dependences on energy and about not being able to live a worthwhile
life (LAWL)
⍠LAWL means keeping alive valued identities, desires and relationships
with others
⍠Identities are shaped by emotional investments in devices, everyday
practices and also by entanglements with wider infrastructure
⢠But studying the âemotional labour of meaning makingâ
still in its infancy?
17. To read end of award report:
⢠http://energybiographies.org/newsblog/energy-biog
19. From Energy Biographies to FLEXIS
Further programme of empirical work with aims to:
â˘Generate understanding of the complex implications of
proposed FLEXIS technological developments for everyday lives
of diverse communities and publics
â˘Enable policy-shaping in ways responsive to community and
societal concerns, aspirations and desires
â˘Develop a responsible research and innovation (RRI) framework
for future energy systems
20. Flexis: A methological experiment
in ârecursive surpriseâ
⢠Hope and anxiety envelopes: an energy experiment in
producing imaginaries data across professional &
identity domains
⢠Kinship between ebâs photo-elicitation for reflecting on
practice & surprise experiment in interviews
⢠Subject positioning â enabling multiple, different
sources of associations; creating tangibility & mediating
encounters; eliciting personal inscriptions, traces of
cultural memories, making absences present
21. Mapping our methodological
spaceâŚ
⢠Interviews & images in qualitative research
⢠Not emotive texts and circuits & how they travel or
ethnographic performance
⢠But people & their role in sense-making in sets of
relations
⢠And affective investments in subject positions
⢠Cf a flat ontology of practice
22. Back to energy experimentsâŚ
⢠Everyday energy use as âmore than human
entanglementsâ
⢠Yes and no
⢠Devices, artifacts & infrastructure are part of
everyday assemblages BUT
⢠Psychosocial matters also implicated in
dynamics of use & change
23. Our Publications and Presentations
⢠Henwood, K. Groves, C. and Shirani, F. (in press) Relationality, entanglement and psychosocial exploration of
intergenerational dynamics in sustainable energy studies, Family Relationships and Society
⢠Thomas, G., Groves, C., Henwood, K., and Pidgeon, N. (in press) Texturing waste: Attachment and identity in
everyday consumption and waste practicesâ, Environmental Values
⢠Groves, C., Henwood, K.L., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K.A., and Pidgeon, N. (2016). "The grit in the oyster:
questioning socio-technical imaginaries through biographical narratives of engagement with energy." Journal of
Responsible Innovation, DOI: 10.1080/23299460.2016.1178897
⢠Groves, C., Henwood, K.L., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K.A., and Pidgeon, N. (2016) Invested in
unsustainability? On the psychosocial patterning of engagement in practices.â Environmental Values 25(3):
309-328.
⢠Groves, C., Henwood, K.L., Shirani, F., Butler, C., Parkhill, K.A., and Pidgeon, N. (2015) Energy biographies:
narrative genres, lifecourse transitions and practice change, Science, Technology and Human Values, DOI:
10.1177/0162243915609116.
⢠Shirani, F., Parkhill, K., Butler, C., Groves, C., Henwood, K., Pidgeon, N. (2015) Asking about the future:
methodological insights from energy biographies." International Journal of Social Research
Methodology, DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2015.1029208
⢠Recent presentations
⍠âEnergy, Biographies and Demand Reductionâ, Hubnet Smart Grid Symposium 2015: The Future of
Network Infrastructure, September 19th 2015
⍠âHow Energy Mattersâ, St Andrews Energy and Ethics conference, 17-18 March 2016
⍠âEnergy biographies, psychosocial research and sustainable livingâ, British Sociological Association Annual
Conference, Aston University, Birmingham, April 6-8th 2016
⍠âThe grit in the oyster: questioning socio-technical imaginariesâ, DEMAND Centre Conference, Lancaster
University, 13-15 April 2016
⍠âInterpretive risk researchâ, Society for Risk Analysis Europe, Bath 20-22 June 2016
24. Citations
â˘Dicks, B., Henwood, K. and Housley, W. (2016) Editorial, QRJ, 16 (1), 3-8
â˘Van de Poel (2015) âNew Technologies and social experiments: Conditions for morally
responsible experimentationâ, Power point slides, TUDelft
â˘Henwood, k. and Pidgeon, N. (2013) Risk and Identity Futures. Commissioned UK
Government Report, Foresight Future of Identities Project: DR18
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/foresight/docs/identity/13-519-identity-and-change-through-a%
â˘Pidgeon, N. et al (2016) âCreating a national citizen engagement process for energy
policyâ PNAS, 1317512111
â˘Groves, C. (2015) âThe bomb in my backyard, the serpent in my house: Environmental
justice, Risk and the colonisation of attachmentâ Environmental Politics, 24 (6).
â˘http://www.carbonconversations.org/
away from current energy systemâs reliance on centralised production as means of meeting high intensity of energy demand
NB Socio-technical change trajectories implicated in multiple, converging/co-existing policy domains - energy, environment & sustainability, and social justice
These are particularly important given that our ways of living out our lives in cultures of modernity â where science and technology is so centrally part of how we live out our lives in changing times (and this is not just a matter of possible or more or less probably environmental harm); and the forms of dependency technological provision can generate for people in their daily lives and in terms of its wider societal patterning).
I have a personal interest in how to bring in to such research on the implications of science â technology â society relations - a concern for socio-cultural dynamics of change and how psychosocial processes of subject formation are under-researched in STS.
The material l turn: ways on encountering Technology, while it is endowed with important qualities (affordances) that can be important for sustaining our material existence, does not in and of itself determine actions that are directed towards it or ways of responding to it (individually or collectively) Likewise, while technological innovation cannot simply be assumed to be a good thing for society, neither can opposition to it. Understanding needs to be sought about technologyâs implications in all sorts of ways.
Energy Biographies â Researchfish âKey Findings
There is effort involved when people are seeking to work out:
what is the best thing to do?
how to resolve moral tensions over long-established and/or contemporary values?
how difficult it can be to think about a longer-term future based on contemporary ideals of what counts as a life worth living?
How to resolve personal uncertainties magnified during key life-course transitions?
Energy transitions and Welsh specific policy context
Engaging members of the public in these energy system transformations represents a key challenge in achieving them- how people are viewing the prospect of system change is therefore of high importance-