The challenges of studying change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices: Exploring the dynamics of practice change and of normative considerations in knowledge production

Problem. To reach international greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets, the carbon intensity of urban resource and energy consumption must be reduced. Technological innovation alone is not sufficient: The practices that constitute urban household demand for mobility and energy must change. This is no trivial task: Such practices are embedded in complex dynamics and entangled with notions of good and desirable lives and, as such, with normative considerations. Therefore, on the one hand, research is needed on how change in urban consumption practices is entangled with dynamics that concern different domains and play out at different scales. On the other hand, research is needed on how knowledge production that is concerned with such change is shaped by normative considerations.

Aim. This thesis aims to address the challenges that must be tackled when studying change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices. It aims to disentangle the dynamics that give rise to and characterise such change, and to shed light on how normative considerations enter and shape knowledge production that is concerned with such change.

Approach. This thesis is based on an exploratory approach. It takes as starting points approaches and theories that have been found promising to address the problems at hand, and refines them through empirical and literature-based investigations.

Insights. Firstly, this thesis identified open questions regarding promising approaches to study change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices. It shed light on the state of the art of practice theoretic research on consumption; and it summarised the insights gained and the questions left open by studies that enquired into the drivers and dynamics of urban energy consumption. Secondly, at the example of urban commuting, it addressed open questions regarding practice theoretic approaches to consumption. It provided explanations for the complex patterns that can be observed in modal shifts and gave first answers to the question of how meaning becomes ascribed to commuting. The thesis refined practice theoretic approaches so that they better account for the differentiated embeddedness of practitioners in structural dynamics and for the interplay between habitual and intentional modes of acting. Thirdly, at the example of urban energy consumption, this thesis tested assumptions that underpin studies that analyse consumption patterns as emerging properties of cities. It revealed the importance of local level and context specific dynamics. Fourthly, the thesis identified processes through which normative considerations enter knowledge production concerned with change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices, and sketched ideal-typical positions that reveal the different kinds of disagreements that can persist in such knowledge production processes. Lastly, this thesis revealed the dynamics of hegemonisation that characterise such knowledge production, and the challenges they present for knowledge production that aims to critically analyse processes of discursive closure and to open up new perspectives for change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices. Overall, the thesis contributed to a more fine-grained understanding of the challenges that must be tackled when studying change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices, and enhanced approaches for addressing them.

A conceptual framework to study the dynamics of routine practice transitions

Franziska Meinherz

Actors from academia, politics, and the civil society increasingly acknowledge that to address our current unsustainable regimes of resource and energy demand, we need to redefine our ways of being and doing. Everyday practices are a key driver of energy and resource demand. Understanding patterns of practice dynamics and their drivers is therefore key on the way to a sustainability transition. This research aims to improve our understanding of how everyday practices, and their underlying conceptions of normality, are formed and transformed in a context of individual, social, infrastructural, institutional, and ecological dynamics. How conceptions of normality are enacted into practices is at the heart of theories of practice. They look at how the interconnectedness of practices in time and space shapes their reproduction or transformation, and have been powerful in providing insights into the often--observed path dependence and stickiness of practices. This focus on the self--reproducing aspects of practices however results in theories of practice remaining vague on how the conditions for practice change come about. And because practices are seen as constantly evolving, it is difficult to clearly delimit practice change. This complicates the analysis of patterns of practice change across cases. To overcome these issues, we propose a framework that looks at practice change as one dynamic process in a tightly interconnected system of dynamic processes on the individual, social, institutional, infrastructural, and ecological level. Practice change is seen as the result of the interplay of these processes. The framework builds on two metaphors from ecology and resilience theory: The adaptive cycle and the panarchy. The adaptive cycle describes the succession of phases of lock--in and innovation, by looking at variations in connectivity, built--up potential, and resilience. The panarchy describes a systems perspective according to which dynamics of self--reproduction and of innovation result from the spatio--temporal nestedness of different processes, each following the pattern of an adaptive cycle. These metaphors are used to operationalise theories of practice for the analysis of practice dynamics. They provide a structured way of describing practice change, and to derive explanations for the observed dynamic patterns. The framework is illustratively applied to the analysis of commuting practices in Hackney, UK. Hackney has observed an important increase in the modal share of cycling in the last years. As it is commonly done in empirical research building on theories of practice, the practice at hand -- commuting -- was operationalised through the materials, meanings, and skills, which are integrated in its enactment. Using the adaptive cycle metaphor to describe the development over time of commuting practices in Hackney allowed to build a timeline of phases in the life of commuting practices which were each characterised by different dynamics. This analysis notably showed the rapid disintegration of the practice of commuting by car, after this practice had for a long time been caught in strong self--reproducing mechanisms. This disintegration was followed by a phase of experimentation with different modes of commuting, which finally resulted in a new phase of stability, with cycling as the new norm. Focusing on the spatio--temporal nestedness of social, infrastructural, and ecosystem processes which played into the enactment of commuting practices, and on their mutual interrelations, further allowed to identify the drivers of the collapse of the practice of commuting by car, and of the emergence of cycling as the new norm. The framework therefore provides insights into how the self--reproducing mechanisms which keep potentially unsustainable practices in place are broken up, and what drives the emergence of new practices. Such knowledge could inspire policies to achieve a transition to more sustainable practices.

2018

A conceptual framework to study the dynamics of routine practice transitions

Franziska Meinherz

2018