Anita Borch

Identifying Barriers to Sustainable Change: A Practice Perspective

A study of 35 Environmental Initiatives within Housing Energy, Transport and Food

Anita Borch, Gunnar Vittersø and Eivind StøNational Institute for Consumer Research (SIFO)

Paper presented at NCCR Conference in Gothenburg, 30.05.-01.06.2012.

Anita Borch

Sustainable initatives

; organisations which aim to change society in a more sustainable direction

Roles:

-Catalysts

-Bridges

-Sprinklers

-Small miniatures of future sustainable societies, and hence examples to be followed or avoided

Anita Borch

Questions of the paper

- What success factors and barriers can be identified in current sustainable initiatives?

- How can these barriers be overcome?

Plan of this presentation:

- Barriers

- Practice theory

- Our practice perspective

- Assumptions about barriers

- Methods

- Results

- Questions for further study

Anita Borch

Barriers

A barrier is a factor that hinder a condition to be realized

‘Factors’

-Material/infrastructural

-Immaterial/social

A barrier:

-Is many factors working together

-is in varying degree socially shaped, intentional, and controllable

-operates at micro, meso and macro level

Types of barriers determine types of regulation

Anita Borch

Practice theory

Broad (generalized) perspective:

-Practice means «anything people do» (Ortner, 1984)

-Object of study is individuals

-Focus is on the releationship between individals and structures

Narrow (spesialised) perspective:

-Practice is routinized activities (mental, bodily, material, temporal, spatial)

-Thus, the internally differentiated and dynamic character of practices is also taken into account

-The object of study is practices

-Individuals are ‘carriers’ of practices

Anita Borch

Our practice perspective

- Broad (Ortner)

- Using three theories as resources:- Narrow Praktik-perspective (Reckwitz)- Actor-network theory (ANT) (Latour, Callon)- Translation theory (Czarniawska

and Sevón)

- Housing energy, transport, food sector;- fields of practices (or just practices)

- Sustainable initiatives;- innovations aiming to change practices

- Barriers;- factors hindering initatives’ chance of success

and hence society to move in a more sustainable direction

- Knowledge based (Reckwitz, micro)

- Organizational (Latour and Callon, meso)

- Structural (Czarniawska and Sevón, macro)

Anita Borch

Knowledge based barriers

Reckwitz:

«Practice (Praktik) is a routinised type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge.”

Possible barriers:

- ‘Trajectories of development’

- Other practices

- ‘Identity’

Anita Borch

Organizational factors

Practice theory: Organizations are the outcome of social practices

ANT: Organization are networks of actors driven by a shared desire to arrive at the same result (Callon, 1980: 211).

- Example: The car

- Mutually independent relationships

- No human and human actors

- Networks are potentially transient and

conflicting. If relationships are not

sufficiently performed, they will dissolve

-Potential barriers:

- Lack of significant participants

- Realtionships are not sufficiently performed

Anita Borch

Structural factors

Practice theory: Structures are routinised activities

Problem:

-How can rapid structural shifts be explained?

Translation theory by Czarniawska and Sevón:

-Translation is the vehicle for social change

-Translation is put in motion by shared desires and imitations

-People imitate ‘the superior’

-People know what is superior through a collective mode known as ‘fashion’

-Fashion helps people to prepare for the future (reduce insecurity and risk)

-Possible barriers:

- People follow other superiors than the idea of ‘sustainability’, e.g. materialism and ‘the freedom of choice’

Anita Borch

Methods

- Part of the EU-funded project ‘Creating Innovative Sustainability Pathways’ (CRISP) (2011-2014) which aims to identify potential pathways to a low-carbon Europe based on backcasting methodologies

- Involves research teams from England, the Netherlands, Greece, Hungary, and Norway

- Each research team has been responsible for collecting information about 1-2 different cases within housing energy, transport and food.

- For each case a template was filled in (1-2 pages)

- Totally 35 cases were selected (11 housing energy, 9 transport, 9 food, and 6 initiatives crossing the three sectors

Anita Borch

Results

- Organizational barriers are most frequently reported

- The relationships with consumers and financial supporters, including politicians, is emphasized

- Establish and perform relastionships with significant participants

- Knowledge based barriers were also reported, in particular in housing energy initiatives

- Producers and consumers- Establish new or force old trajectories of

developement - Think small (create a ‘Diderot effect’)- Think holistic (cross sectors and levels)

- Structural barriers were also reported, in particular economic barriers in transport and housing energy initiatives

- High level of costs and competition- Identify structural barriers and evaluate if

and how these barriers can be overcome

Anita Borch

Questions for further research

Many types of sustainable barriers that have not been reported in this research:

-Barriers that are taken for granted

- Material and infrastructural faktors

- ANT

-Barriers of unpopular and seemingly «untouchable» changes