This paper examines how the ways in which consumers use energy are shaped, not only by practice (Shove, Pantzar and Watson, 2012), but by biographically attachments to ways of life which relate to place and identity. Understanding how practices which require the consumption of energy may be transformed is vital for any transition towards socio-environmental sustainability. However, theorising and explaining the role of individual agency in practice change continues to present challenges. In this paper we address this issue by employing concepts of complex subjectivity to analyse some psychosocial dimensions of energy consumption. In particular, we focus on how a narrative interview-based and multimodal approach to understanding practice can render visible conflicts between different definitions of ‘need’ or the purpose of practices, which often develop into different (and sometimes incommensurable) forms of normative justification for engaging in different practices. Drawing on interviews conducted as part of the Energy Biographies project at Cardiff University, we show that engaging in practices is bound up with particular attachments that are seen by interviewees as constitutive of identity and of visions of ‘the good life’ or particular ways of determining what is ‘right’ in a given situation. Lifecourse transitions may produce conflicts between such normative frameworks which can create obstacles to the transformation of practices that are unaccounted for by practice theory.

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
http://cardiff.academia.edu/ChristopherGroves

2. • QLL biographical
interviews
▫ Four sites: Ely, Peterston
(Cardiff), Lammas (west
Wales), Royal Free Hospital
(London)
▫ 3 longitudinal interviews
(original group of 74 in first
round narrowed down to 36
for rounds 2 & 3)
▫ Multimedia component
▫ 6 months between interviews

3. • Emphasis on interviews on exploring how
changes in practices are connected to
lifecourse transitions
• Analysis examines individual biographies as
accounts of how and why practices matter
• Exploring identity as bound up with how and
why energy is used

4. • Energy demand reduction
policy: focus on individual
behaviour change
• Treats subjects as ‘resource
men’1
1. Strengers, Y. (2013). Smart Energy Technologies in Everyday Life: Smart Utopia? London, Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Shove, E., et al. (2012). The Dynamics of Social Practice: Everyday Life and how it Changes. London, SAGE Publications.
Practice
Compe
-tences
MaterialsShared
meanings
Vanderbilt
University
campaign
(USA,
2015)
• Individuals not ‘hyper-
rational’ choosers – instead,
agency is multiply conditioned
• Practice theory locates shared
practices as conditions of
agency and of beliefs/values2

5. • Intentional social change (e.g. altering how we
use energy) is not ‘behaviour change’
• Instead, requires redesign of elements of
interconnected practices – materials, meanings,
competences
• But individuals still ‘carriers’ of practices
• What ‘recruits’ individuals to practices or makes
them ‘defect’?

6. • Shove et al1 employ concept taken
from Alasdair MacIntyre to explain
defection/recruitment
• Non-instrumental value of
practices: exercising competence
in a practice is end-in-itself
(‘internal reward’)
• Practices that have significant
intrinsic value recruit, others don’t
(explains difference between fads
and stable practices)
‘In brief, the idea is that
performing a practice
well, that is in terms of
standards that are part
and parcel of the
definition of a practice
itself, is of immediate,
internal reward’
p. 75
1. Shove, E., Pantzar, M. & Watson, M. (2012) The dynamics of social practice, London: Sage

7. • Links between practices and
identity
• John O’Neill:1 the constitutive
value of practices
• Practices as constitutive of
individual identities
• Play a role in narratives about
how a life is going
• Another internal reward of
practices: ingredient of valued
identity
“Human beings like other
entities have goods constitutive
of their flourishing and
correspondingly other goods
instrumental to that flourishing
[…] Friendship in turn is
constitutive of a flourishing life.
Given the kind of beings we are,
to lack friends is to lack part of
what makes for a flourishing
human existence”
pp. 23-4
1. John O’Neill (1993), Ecology, policy and politics London: Routledge

8. • Beyond carriers of practice to
complex, evaluative subjects
• Identities as relational identities
that matter1
• Shaped by attachments that
matter (to people, practices,
places, objects, ideals…)
• What happens to my
attachments affects how I take
my life to be going
• Attachments and commitments
anchor normative perspectives
on ‘how the world should be’
“Commitments come to
constitute our character,
identity and conception of
ourselves, such that if we are
prevented from pursuing
them, then we suffer
something akin to
bereavement, for we lose not
merely something external,
but part of ourselves”
p. 125
1. Sayer, A. (2012) Why Things Matter to People, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

9. • If attachments ‘secure’ identity, they do so in, biographically-
specific ways
• Attachments secure identity but also make us vulnerable to
new uncertainties
• We therefore evolve distinct styles of being-attached1, e.g.
▫ Defensive/distancing
▫ Solidaristic
▫ Withdrawing
• The specific internal rewards we get from practices are
rooted in our biographies and in our style(s) of being-
attached
1. Marris, P. (1996) The Politics of Uncertainty, London: Routledge

10. • The ‘resource (wo)man’
• The ‘good host’
“I don’t think I really feel
guilty I just think I’m
aware and it does make
me cross when like Sean
especially just is
deliberately almost you
know wasting it […]”
“[…] we have a log fire and they’re
probably super inefficient aren’t they in
heating a 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 […].”
“Cos 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
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 that’s our
kind of, we know it’s really bad but we’re
still going to use it.”
‘I never really wanted to
waste money, energy but
now I think it’s just, when
I got my last energy bill, I
couldn't believe it.’

11. The ‘resource woman’ The ‘good host’
• Attachment to an ideal of
efficient management of the
household
• Systematic, reflexive rationality
towards practices (e.g. A+
appliances, lighting)
• Makes clear normative
distinction between wasteful
and essential energy use
• Understands distinctions
between specific practices in
these terms
• Keen to maintain attachments
to friends
• These commitments under
stress thanks to house move
• Builds attachments to practices,
objects (burning wood on the
fire, patio heater) as connected
with aesthetic/ethical ideal of
homeliness

12. The ‘resource (wo)man’ The good host
• Language of costs vs benefits
• Measurable, quantifiable,
commensurable outcomes
• Trade-offs possible (e.g. short-
term cost of appliance vs long-
term savings)
• Homeliness, hospitality,
friendship: constitutive elements of
a worthwhile life
• Realising these ideals requires
specific practices
• More than a clash of values (e.g. luxury vs efficiency)
• Instead, a conflict between identities, and indeed, between
competing normative frameworks (‘how things should be’)

13. • Recruitment to practices (including unsustainable ones) shaped
by their affective internal rewards, e.g.
▫ the individual, biographical contribution of practices to identity
(e.g. Lucy’s adoption of ‘homely’ practices because of attachment to
friends and rural home aesthetic)
▫ how practices help tame the uncertainty associated with some
lifecourse transitions
• Relationship between identity and practices therefore has
affective dimension that can be obstructive or assistive to
change
• Affective dimension not necessarily purely individual (e.g.
‘structures of feeling’1)
1. Hoggett, P. & Thompson, S. (2012) ‘Introduction’ in Politics and the Emotions, London: Continuum

14. 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)