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.

1. Transformation and the psychosocial:
biographies of attachment & energy
practices
Christopher Groves, Catherine Butler, Karen Henwood,
Karen Parkhill, Nick Pidgeon and Fiona Shirani
Energy Biographies Project
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University
http://energybiographies.org

2. Energy Biographies: theoretical
background
• Practice theory1 as critique of
methodological individualism
• Social change not caused by
independent variables
• Instead, is patterned but also
non-linear product of
interactions or range of
elements
Practice
Compe-
tences
Infra-
structuresMeanings
1. Shove, E., M. Pantzar and M. Watson (2012). The Dynamics of Social
Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes. London, SAGE Publications.

3. Individual actors
practices

7. How is practice related to agency?
• Practices constrain/enable agency
• Individuals may introduce variation into
practices
• Recruitment to/defection from practices
related to ‘internal rewards’ (Shove,
Pantzar & Watson, 2012: p. 75)
▫ i.e. intrinsic value of practice, such as wider
meaning of participation etc.

8. Patterned practices,
patterned individuals
ATTACHMENTS

9. ‘Transformative moments’
• Sarah Hards1,2 makes a case for narrative
approach to understanding practice
recruitment/defection in relation to
changing values
• Changes in practices may sometimes be
shaped by emotional investments in
ideals (e.g. taking up pro-environmental
practices)
1. Hards, S. (2011). "Social Practice and the Evolution of Personal Environmental Values." Environmental Values 20(1):
23-42.
2. Hards, S. (2012). "Tales of transformation: The potential of a narrative approach to pro-environmental practices."
Geoforum 43(4): 760-771.

10. • A psychosocial approach
is alive to how biographically
patterned emotional
investments may
▫ promote…
▫ …or block
practice recruitment/defection
• Example: practice of
commuter cycling

11. ‘Biographies of attachment’
• Attachment theory
▫ patterning of individual biographies by emotional
investments
▫ Do specific patterns of attachment make certain
internal rewards more attractive?
• Liminality
▫ patterning of lifecourse transitions typical of a given
society
• Key question: how do changing patterns of
attachment create/block potential for change in
practices?

12. Attachment: identity & self-efficacy
• From infancy,
attachment
relationships are
constitutive of self
and world
• A sense of how the
world should be and
how the individual
can influence it
• Tames uncertainty
about the future by
building mutual
expectations

13. Patterns of attachment
• Individuals experience and live with attachment
in different, biographically-patterned ways
(‘styles of attachment)
• Patterns evolve in response to experiences of
vulnerability and attachment loss
▫ Loss may traumatically disrupt identity
▫ Subsequent reconstruction of identity needed1
• Internal rewards of practices may lie in how they
confirm the value of these patterns for
maintaining identity
1. Nussbaum, M. C. (2001). Upheavals of thought: the intelligence of emotions. Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press.

14. Liminal and liminoid1
• Liminal:
▫ traditional and post-traditional
▫ obligatory transitions between
social categories, transforming
individual identity (e.g.
marriage, end of childhood –
retirement)
▫ Managed through rituals for
breaking/reforming
attachments and initiating into
new practices
1. Turner, V. (1974). "Liminal to liminoid in play, flow and ritual: an essay in comparative symbolology." Rice
University Studies 60(3): 53-92.
• Liminoid:
▫ post-traditional
▫ voluntary,
▫ involve reflexivity
towards identity
and towards social
identity categories

15. Through transition to re-
integration
Pre-liminal
Liminal/
Liminoid
state
Re-
integration
Breaking of
attachment
Re-forming
attachment/
creating identity

16. ‘Biographies of attachment’
• Change in practices may reflect social patterning
of biographical transitions
• But change (especially in liminoid transitions)
may be shaped by individual biographies of
attachment
• Internal rewards of practices may reflect
unspoken attachments and dimensions of
identity (felt perhaps to be shameful, etc.)
• Narrative methods can explore these ‘evasive’
dimensions1
1. Parkhill, K. A., K. L. Henwood, N. F. Pidgeon and P. Simmons (2011). "Laughing it off?
Humour, affect and emotion work in communities living with nuclear risk." The British
Journal of Sociology 62(2): 324-346.

17. The Energy Biographies project
• Four sites (West Wales, Royal Free
Hospital, Cardiff x 2)
• 68 first round narrative interviews,
36 2nd and 3rd round
Longitudinal
narrative
interview
approach
• Alongside 2nd and 3rd round
interviews
• Text message-prompted photo task
• Film clips on ‘energy and the future’
Multimodal
methods

18. Example: ‘Lucy’, Peterston-super-
Ely (NW of Cardiff)
• Peterston is an affluent
village community on the
outskirts of Cardiff.
• Lucy moved to Peterston
with her partner and 2
children from London
• She and her partner have
family roots in South
Wales

19. Burning wood to ‘make’ the room
“[…] we’ve put massive radiators
in our new house cos its really
Victorian, tall ceilings, and so we
just don’t need a wood burner to
be on at any point but actually
it’ll sort of make the room
and the you know that kind of
thing but and how expensive
wood is actually as well so all a
bit about I guess how much wood
we’re using.”
(Interview 2)

20. Hosting and conviviality
“[…] so big Saturday dinner and a few bottles of
wine and big Sunday lunch and stuff like that so.
But yeah because a lot of people are coming
from London or that kind of area, we tend to
like you know go to the beach or go to a big park
or go to the woods or you know do the kind of
country stuff as we're here, sort of thing so, yeah.”
(Interview 1)

21. ‘Heating the outdoors’
“So this is, look this is our very
bad but we love cos these are
like, there you go look it hasn’t
been used since then I imagine
but these are our, we do love our
patio heater when it’s a sunny
evening but it gets a bit cold and
dark and you can sit out and
they’re like probably the
worst things aren’t they?
But we love it well we only use it
about five times a year so it’s
OK”
(Interview 2)

22. ‘Heating the outdoors’
“Cos we love being outside, we just
love that you can you know go, we
were sitting out there one evening I
can’t remember when it would have
been, with friends, and it was like
midnight and you could have a drink
outside still and it’s so lovely here
cos it’s so quiet and everything so
but you wouldn’t have been able to
do it without that so or you would
have been freezing. So that’s our
kind of, we know it’s really bad
but we’re still going to use it ”
(Interview 2)

23. Insights
• Liminal/liminoid transitions can motivate ‘first
encounters’ with new practices
• ‘Internal rewards’ derive from interaction
between patterns of attachment and practices
• Rewards can become constitutive of identity,
even if ‘shaming’, and compel ongoing
participation in practice

24. Thanks for your attention
Energy Biographies Project
School of Social Sciences
Cardiff University
http://energybiographies.org