Recently I have been reading a lot of Elizabeth Shove, a sociologist from Lancaster University who writes a lot about how objects and suites of objects continually shape and redefine daily practice (routines, rituals, conventions) which has application to discussions about sustainability.
What are practices? Here is a nice slide show about the design of everyday life.
The following is a summary of two of her papers on the formation and development of "conventions" and also the convention of comfort within the built environment.
I am now reading her book, the Design of Everyday Life. More to come on that...
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Elizabeth Shove approaches the problem of sustainability in everyday life from a systemic and sociological perspective. In the study, “Converging conventions of comfort, cleanliness and convenience”, she considers the conventions of comfort, cleanliness and convenience for their five-fold increase in resource intensiveness over the last century. She discusses the practices of temperature regulation, water usage and consumption, and their relation to the domains of comfort, cleanliness and convenience.
In the study of sociology of technology and consumption, the main focus has been a vertical approach; examining the invention and deployment of new things, and how they are affected by existing regimes of sociotechnical systems. Much work has been conducted on “the interface between technologies and the practices they script and structure.” In the field of sustainability, much attention has been focused on making products more efficient, or on awareness initiatives. However, the real need is to study how new technologies are horizontally deployed in practice and coordination between products shape everyday practices.
Shove starts her discussion with the three assumptions that (1) domestic consumption and resource usage related to conventions such as comfort, cleanliness and convenience reflect taken for granted normality, (2) are largely invisible (as they are entangled in ordinary routines and habits that are considered “normal”), (3) and can be widely affected and influenced through changing these conventions.
Thus, in the long term it is important to consider how new conventions come to be considered normal and the impact of those changes on sustainability. Within this larger domain, she considers how meanings and practices become taken for granted and how they change over time. Two aspects of change considered very relevant are: escalation (are conventions becoming more resource intensive?) and standardization (are conventions standardizing across the world?). If these changes are indeed occurring then what are the environmental consequences?
The practices of temperature regulation, laundry, bathing and increasing convenience are examined as complex sociotechnical systems that can be described by machine metaphors.
- Ratchet (temperature regulation) no way back, escalation
- System of systems (laundry) system of cogs, some bigger than others, some are conduits of change
- Pinwheel (bathing) range of rationales “pin” practice in place
- Spiral (convenience) escalating feedback loop
These mechanisms and their implications are described in further detail below, with a closer look at the convention of comfort.
The Ratchet
Shove takes the example of space heating and cooling as an example of society’s ratchet-like path dependency towards increasingly resource intensive living. Temperature regulation in the modern world has affected new standards of comfort throughout the world. She explains that “comfort,” was first defined by a strict temperature range in scientific norms, adopted within the built environment, which resulted in the “standardization of comfort”. According to this narrow scientific definition of comfort range, no natural climate can deliver “perfect” comfort conditions, thus strengthening the argument that air conditioning/heating is applicable in all climates.
There is no way back from a time before air-conditioning. It has become hardwired and irreplaceable; natural ventilation features are totally phased out in many new buildings. The impact on cultures and communities is also great. For example, air conditioning has led to the death of the siesta in Mexico through governmental ban. Throughout the world, the expectation of being able to wear, i.e. a suit, all year round further cements the norm of thermal comfort within and between communities. The replacement of elements characterizing place, i.e. local climate and customs, means that there is no way back. Shove describes this kind of development as a ratchet-like dependency where the systems of interlocking technologies and practices make it impossible to move backwards. These conventions restrict the range of actions of people from all sides.
System of Systems
Next, Shove considers the cases of laundering and bathing, both complex systems involving the dimensions of products, technology, and people. She describes the evolution of the laundry convention as a result of co-evolution of dimensions within the system. She uses the machine metaphor of a machine run by cogs of different sizes, where some cogs play a larger role than others or a “system of systems”. In this kind of machine it is important to know how cogs fit together and to be able to identify “conduits of change, such as the laundry machine.
The convention of doing laundry has undergone drastic changes in the past century. Laundry convention today involves more frequent washing at lower temperatures, and the disassociation between “clean” and boiling. In the Western world today, the notion of “doing laundry” is irrevocably linked to laundry machines. The laundry machine is an example of a cog within this system of systems that functions as a major conduit of change. Indeed, anything that comes out of a laundry machine is considered “clean.” The washing machine has also affected a new vocabulary for freshness, the valorization of fragrance, disassociation between heat and clean, and the removal of women from the laundering process.
Other elements also contribute to the continual redefinition cleanliness in laundering. The shift from linen to readily available cotton in the recent past meant a decrease in the resource intensity of laundering. The development of lightweight, mass-produced, machine-washable synthetic materials such as nylon contributes to the ownership of more clothes, and more frequent laundering.
In addition to technology and material shifts, shifts also occur within the cultural consciousness. The notion of cleanliness is a state of mind, affected and judged by the external world. Shove gives the example that the notion of laundry is contradictory to the norms of previous times; during 16th century France, clothes were considered a sponge to soak up the excrements of the body and an alternative to bathing. Today, laundering is considered a form of clothing care.
Pinwheel
Next, considering the convention of bathing, Shove compares this sociotechnical system to a pinwheel where rationales “pin” or lock practice in place. Unlike the ratchet metaphor for air conditioning, the future of the pinwheel is not path dependant because it is held in place by concepts and rationales of cleanliness (pleasure/duty, social status, body and nature) that have changed in the past and will change again. Because bathing is conducted in private and behind closed doors, the challenge is to understand how habits shift, how they are held in place and by what organizing principles.
In both examples of laundering and bathing, Shove explains that it is important to understand how elements within the system operate together, “how individuals position their own routines in terms of a range of rationales.”
Spiral of Convenience
Finally, Shove discusses convenience which contradictorily creates, shifts and saves time but at the expense of quality and care while escalating time pressure. The use of products and services that save time cause the engenderment of fragmented time while increasing dependency on convenience products to create periods of “quality time”. This feedback loop can be described as a spiral, continually feeding back into itself.
Escalation is a characteristic of both the ratchet and spiral machine metaphors, probably leading to increased resource intensiveness. The systems of systems and pinwheel machine metaphors can spin in both directions and can lead to more or less resource intensiveness. On our current trajectory, systems of sociotechnical systems co-evolve to change conventions and practices in an increasingly resource intensive manner. However, the norms are not fixed and notions of comfort, cleanliness and comfort are malleable.
The Future of Comfort
In “Debating the future of comfort,” by Chappells and Shove, the ideas first presented in “Converging conventions” are elaborated for the convention of comfort within the built environment. Again, the notion that norms are malleable and negotiable is emphasized. The notion of comfort is fluid and controversial and is not just an issue of temperature. Chappells and Shove state that optimum temperature can be viewed from two perspectives which have different implications, as defined by building science or a social construct. Indeed, every building is complex and unique in its own right and it is not always possible or relevant to meet precisely defined standards. They state that basic decisions such as whether or not to air condition set the stage for the future and have extremely large consequences. As such, comfort is deeply entangled in social and political dimensions, reflecting and reproducing the current socio-technical regime.
The looming threat of global warming and climate change require provisions for an uncertain and shifting future. By encouraging debate about comfort within the built environment, Chappells and Shove state that it is perhaps possible to avoid becoming locked onto unsustainable sociotechnical trajectories. They present four different possible scenarios for the future of comfort based on discussions with building practitioners. The results showed a wide range of responses towards the issue of global warming and the evolving convention of comfort. Unexpected views about thermal variety versus monotony as an important factor of comfort surfaced. These views and opinions are expressed in four possible future scenarios:
(1) Conventions of comfort will stabilize and standardize more
(2) Conventions of comfort will develop in more resource intensive ways (escalation)
(3) The idea of comfort will change to include a greater variety of temperature variation which can effect less resource intensive ways
(4) Notions of comfort will converge on the value of cultural and climactic diversity which will lead to ‘regionally appropriate environmental building practices.”
The first two scenarios will demand new and more efficient forms of technology to provide better controlled and calibrated interiors for the resource expenditure needed.
The last two scenarios are potentially less resource intensive than the first two and would demand more elastic definitions of comfort that could redefine definitions of appropriate work wear, for example. In particular, the last scenario suggests an alternative to standardization, where cultural and climactic diversity are valued and can lead to the development of “regionally appropriate environmental and building practices”. Towards sustainability, a “collective social and institutional renegotiation of ‘normal practice’” is required. This will require a wide debate on social, technical and political levels, involving a myriad of stakeholders, and will necessarily challenge existing cultural institutions, definitions, standards and methodologies.
Finally, Shove states that individual products are less important than how they are integrated into the larger scheme of things. It is important to understand the co-evolution and creation of meaning by suites of technologies and products; how they are used together, how they shape conventions, how they are integrated into different cultures, how they interact with existing sociotechnical systems, what their effect is on norms in the long term for different cultures, and what co-requisite sociotechnical settings have to be in place for their operation. The concern of sustainability should focus on where these mechanisms will lead and how future service concepts can be less resource intensive and configured by concepts of service. The future is more flexible than it appears to be.
References
Chappells, H & Shove, E. Debating the future of comfort: environmental sustainability, energy consumption and the indoor environment (2005). Building Research & Information, 33(1): 32-40.
Shove, E. Converging conventions of comfort, cleanliness and convenience (2003). Journal of Consumer Policy, 26: 395-418.
