Sustainability and Social Relations

Lucie Middlemiss

Sustainability Research Institute

University of Leeds, UK

@luciemiddlemiss

Today’s talk

• Why social relations and sustainability?

• Individualisation and sustainability

• Fuel poverty and social relations

• Subjectivity in fuel poverty policy

• Where next? My research agenda

Why sustainability and social relations?

Why 1? Sustainable consumption in community

Middlemiss, 2008, 2010, 2011 a and b, Middlemiss and Parrish, 2010

Why 2? Environmentalist narratives: Utopian pasts to dystopian futures

Wingate, Middlemiss and Wesselink, 2014

Individualisation

Individualisation in Social Theory

Homo Clausus: ‘a little world in himself who ultimately exists quite independently of the great world outside’ (Norbert Elias, 2001, p. 472).

Middlemiss, 2014

Anthony Gormley Another Place on Crosby Beach, Liverpool (Source: anthonygormley.com)

Evidence for individualisationBowling alone (Putnam, 2000)• All types of involvement in civic life have diminished over

time in US.

Repeat study of families in Swansea (1960s and 2000s) (Charles, et al. 2008)1. people don't behave in a self-seeking individualistic way2. people are committed to each other and their children3. gendered expectations around women's caring role still

guide behaviour4. individuals operate according to values that balance the

needs of self and other.

Individualisation and SD

• Garett Hardin: Tragedy of the commons (1968)

• Elinor Ostrom: Management of common pool resources (1992)

• Brundtland: ‘effective participation in decision-making processes by local communities can help them articulate and effectively enforce their common interest’ (1987)

Does SD policy individualise?

• Calls for individual action (ride a bike, plant a tree, save the world)

• Voluntary simplicity: self-help environmentalism

• Low Carbon Communities Challenge (DECC, UK, 2010): ‘save money, save energy’

Late-modern identity and SD

Importance for SD of;

• Understanding imagined (individualised) subjects of SD

• Developing a nuanced understanding of lived experience of subjects (and their experience of social relations).

• Critically assessing the direction of SD policy.

Fuel poverty and social relations

Stigma, individualisation and poverty

• Poverty individualised and stigmatised (Shildrick et al., 2013): poor people deny their own poverty and blame ‘the poor’

• Stigma can result in people distancing themselves from close relationships (Shildrick and MacDonald, 2013; Garthwaite, 2015)

• Family and other close contacts can increase or diminish resilience to multiple deprivation (O’Leary and Salter, 2014; Tavistock Institute, 2015)

Stigma and energy use

• Hards, 2013: practices can have an impact on status; lack of competence in a practice could be stigmatising.

• Reid et al, 2015: people may avoid energy efficiency measures to avoid looking too poor (compounding existing stigmas) or too posh.

• BUT public discourses on energy use (money-grabbing corporations) and poverty (scroungers on benefits) apportion blame differently.

Evidence on social relations

Challenge:Households have a wide variety of different support network arrangements

Resilience:Family and friends help out with fuel bills and fuel-hungry practices.

Vulnerability: People with limited social relations have no one to turn to in times of hardship;

Non-negotiable needs of household members can result in unaffordable fuel bills;

Tensions within households around practices that use energy.

Middlemiss and Gillard, 2015

Relations: inside, outside and agencies

Inside

Interviewer: “Do you have the central heating on much?”

Steve: “Not these past weeks but yeah, whenever the kids are in. If I’m in on my own I just wear a hat.”

Outside

Maureen “Me daughter… she doesn’t have a drier, she doesn’t live far from here, so she’ll just ask if I’ll wash it and dry it. You know clothes for school and that… Only if she needs it for the day after or summat”

Agencies

Mildred: “And it was X who petitioned and kept on that we needed the double glazing. She was the housing officer here at that time”

Subjectivity in fuel poverty policy

The new subject of FP

Energy Policy: Subject: the income poor and energy inefficient household –structurally disadvantaged.

Welfare Policy:Subject: stigmatised, individualised, needs to take responsibility for him/herself.

Energy prices:Subject: needs support to

become rational actor.Middlemiss, forthcoming

Where next? My research agenda

Approach:

• Critical approaches and understandings

• Learning from the lived experience

Questions:

• What are the connections between people’s relationships and their resource use?

Key concepts:

• subjectivity; individualisation; lived experience; social relations; sustainable development.

Thank you for listening!I look forward to hearing about your work.