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THEORIES OF PRACTICES AND THE UNDERSTANDING OF RESPECTIVELY SOCIAL
VARIATION, ETHICAL CONSUMPTION AND NON-HUMAN ACTORS
KIRSTEN GRAM-HANSSENS E M I N A R AT I N S T I T U TE O F S O C I O LO GY C O P E N H A G E N U N I V E R S I T Y
2 8 TH M AY 2 0 1 9
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eCAPE: New Energy Consumer roles and smart technologies –Actors, Practices and Equality
The eCAPE project starts 1 November 2018 and runs for 5 years. eCAPE is financed by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. eCAPE received an ERC Advanced Grant worth 2.11 million Euro under the grant agreement number 786643. The project is led by Professor Kirsten Gram-Hanssen from the Danish Building Research Institute at AAU Copenhagen.
www.ecape.aau.dk
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Outline of the presentation• Advantages of the practice theoretical
turn
• What we have lost – or are missing?
• Fundamentals of theories of practices
• How to include socio-cultural variation?
• Where is gender in this?
• How to understand ethical consumption?
• Non-humans as carriers of practices
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The advantages of theories of practices – in the study of residential energy consumption
Focus on… • the ordinary rather than the
spectacular consumption
• the practices rather than the energy or the attitudes
• longer trajectories of how practices evolve
• the importance of the materiality
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What we might have lost – or are missing?
• Very few studies include how the performance of practices varies with social characteristics or culture• A problem for questions of gender equality and energy poverty • Not seeing how trajectories of changes in practices might take different
routes for different socio-cultural groups• Not seeing how the socio-cultural dynamics, including gender-issues,
influence the trajectories of practices• Peoples conscious - possibly ethical - decisions, are left out of the theory
• Empirically we see ethics matter – so how to conceptualise it?• Sustainable transitions need people, so theories need to take people
into account
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Fundamentals of theories of practices
• Saying and doings hold together by varies elements
• Recursive relation between practice as entities and as performance–individuals as carriers
• Relates to each other as compounds, boundless or complexes – the individual as the intersection
• Practices constitute time, time consume practices - in certain rhythms, durations and sequences
• The social wold as the plenum of practices
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How to include socio-cultural variation in the performance of practices?
• Some practices are carried by certain social groups rather than by other
• The same practices are performed in different ways by different groups, including
o Enthusiasm and competence varyo Aesthetics and taste varyo Materiality of the practice vary o Practices relates differently to each
other in the different everyday lifeo Timing, sequences and duration of
practices varies between social groups
(Gram-Hanssen, in writing process)
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New trends: Suffusing practices and complexes of practices• Power in practices (Watson,2017)
• Power is all over in practices: in details of performance of practices and in the relations between practices which means that some performances of practice takes part in shaping practices in other times and spaces.
• General understandings (Schatzki 2002; Welch & Warde 2017)• Understand large phenomena and how practices borrow from each other• Explicit the role of culture, works across the discursively and pre-reflexively and mediate discursive formations
and practices
• Discourses (Schatzki 2017; Keller & Halkier 2014) • a key component in connections among bundles. • Understandings in practices can draw from, procedures can be mimed as and engagements can be argued with
reference to media discourses
• Affects, emotions and feelings (Reckwitz 2017) • Social practices are always both cultural and material, anchored in bodies• Emotions and affects transcend the social-material dualism• All practices are affectively tuned and affects are not located in the individual
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What to learn from gender studies related to home, technology and practices?
• Gender: Dualist thinking and how to overcome it
• Power is at stake• Gender is co-constructed with space
(suburban home=female; Urban public=male) • Gender and technology are co-constructed• Gender is significant (but not one-
dimensional) for domestic practices• Gender - together with class, nationality etc -
is structuring for how we life, practice and understand
• We are socialized to our gender by discourses, politics, institutions and labor market
• It is possible both to un-do and re-do gender
(Mechlenborg and Gram-Hanssen, in review process)
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How to understand ethical consumption?
• The ethical as socio-cultural variation in consumption?
• The ethical as general understandings?
• The ethical as a (media) discourse?
• The ethical as affect?
• Not slipping into seeing the ethical as outside the practices, with its own ontological status
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How to work with ethics and gender in empirical studies? Theoretical thoughts for empirical investigations
• Qualitative in-depth analysis to understand the status / specificity / nature of respectively the ethical and gender in residential energy “presuming” practices
• Quantitative analysis on register-data combined with questionnaire survey and energy data to include the socio-demographic and cultural variations of respectively gender and ethics
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Does home automation make a difference for how to conceptualize energy consumption
• Starting point: To understand residential energy consumption we have to focus on practices performed in the homes and how they change with new technologies.
• The future may include that homes becomes fully automated as regards indoor climate and controlled by AI to make the best match between production and consumption.
• Do we need to up-date our understanding of theories of practices and energy consumption to conceptualize this?
(Gram-Hanssen, 2019)
Symmetrical anthropology and non-humans as carriers of practices
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Latour: • No distinction
between humans and non-humans
• All are equal in an actor-network
• Ontologically this network is all we have
Schatzki: • Actor-network =
material arrangements, including humans and non-humans
• Practices exist in these material arrangements
• Humans as the only carriers of practices
My suggestion: • No distinction
between humans and non-humans (symmetrical anthropology)
• Neither in the arrangement nor in the carrying of practices
Different types of non-humans in technology and automation
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Latour do not separate between types of non-human actors. They are all just part of the network.
Just being part of the materiel arrangements we do not have to distinguish, but for carrying practices we might have to….
Substituting what human input?
Technical input Examples of household automation
Human energy Infrastructures of electricity, heat or gas
All appliances and automation rely on this
Bodily movements The previous plus Electromotor
Washing machines, mixers, vacuum cleaners
Sensing The previous plus Thermostats, timers, hydrostats, light and presence sensors, video recorders
Thermostatic control of ovens, control of specific indoor climate parameters, as either heat, ventilation or lighting, timers on all types of appliances, burglary alarms
Control and decision-making The previous plus Computers and digitisation of sensors and other data
Robot vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers, integrated control of indoor climate based on different parameters
Communication The previous plus Internet (of Things), networked devices
Possible remote control of all connected appliances, including communication between different appliances, and machine learning in relation to this control
Dispersed and integrated practices VS single technologies and integrated infrastructures
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Dispersed practices do not have ends but follow rules – simple automation include rule-following and competence sharing: Co-performance?
Integrated practices are teleoaffective – can non-humans pursue their own developed ends?
How to understand AI is this regard? Empirical question
Infrastructures, including buildings, grids and productions plants which are controlled at a system level in relation to weather and by the use of AI.
Providing ambiance to humans in the same way as natural climate.
To be seen as an integrated practice performed by non-humans?
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The work further ahead…..
• Two new post docs, and three PhDs
• Gender, social and ethical studies in a combination of quant-qual methods
• Non-humans partly as auto-ethnography, and qual methods comparing with Australia
• International advisory board to help theory development
