Suchergebnisse

Calls for pro-environmental behaviour change among individuals have become commonplace within the ecological modernist framework. To date, research on pro-environmental behaviour has tended to emphasise either the more or less rational decision-making processes undertaken by individuals, or the ways in which broader social discourses and practices enable or constrain pro-environmental action. As far as politics enters into these discussions, it is normally with respect to how responsibility for addressing environmental problems should be allocated between individuals, governments or businesses. By contrast, this paper employs Foucault´s understanding of disciplinary power to interrogate the micro-political processes of social control at work inside behaviour change interventions through which action by individuals comes to be seen as most appropriate solution to global environmental issues. Drawing on an ethnographic case study of a behaviour change intervention called Environment Champions run in the head offices of a British construction company called Burnetts, it reveals the centrality of various subtle techniques of surveillance, normalisation and discipline to behaviour change processes. In so doing, it conceives of behaviour change less as a process of encouraging individuals voluntarily to choose pro-environmental behaviour, and more as one of making up environmental subjects for whom such acts are appropriate.

Questions about the future of the energy system in the UK have, in recent years become deeply entangled with a number of previously discrete intellectual, commercial and policy domains. Not least, the emergence of what Hulme (2009) refers to as 'upper-case Climate Change' to distinguish this discourse from the routine dynamics of weather and climate systems, with its imperative massively to reduce global production of greenhouse gases within the next 50-60 years, has added a sense of urgency and a different rationale to underpin future strategies for managing the energy sector than has previously been the case. Each IPCC assessment report has provided stronger justification for the need for action; many governments in the developed world have responded by seizing opportunities to review, redirect and /or renew their energy policies and provide a framework for future investment by the private sector (see, for example, DTI 2003, 2006, 2007) whilst seizing opportunities to benefit from the rapid deployment of technological innovations to support the growth of 'clean energy' systems.

Smart grids have been heralded as means to build more efficient, connected and sustainable energy systems yet they bring forward many possible futures and potential downsides. Whilst most existing analyses have been technical in focus, emerging social studies of smart grids have separately considered their imagined sociotechnical futures, generalised public perceptions, or micro-scale responses in domestic and community settings. In this paper we aim to address the 'social smartness' of smart grid research by connecting these hitherto distinct strands of work through a distributed appraisal of potential future pathways for smart grid development in the United Kingdom. We involved diverse system actors (n = 26) ranging from experts and policy makers through to interested citizens in a multi-criteria mapping process to systematically appraise a range of sociotechnical smart grid visions. We present the core criteria that respondents developed to determine what it means for smart grids to be both technically and socially smart. These were: technical feasibility, environment, supply security, data security, governance, finance, user engagement, and equity. We show how both citizen and specialist appraisals support more distributed smart grid visions and call for solutions that democratise the energy system through inclusive forms of ownership and decision-making. We suggest that the challenge of developing smart grids in ways that are both socially and technically smart requires processes of responsible innovation to become more distributed across scales.

Studies of societal engagement with socio-technical change are undergoing a systemic turn. Rather than simply viewing public engagement in science, policy and behavioural change in terms of discrete cases, key social theories in deliberative democracy, practice theory, socio-technical transitions and co-productionist scholarship in science and technology studies (STS) are moving to consider how diverse forms of participation interrelate in wider systems. In this paper we take stock of these advances to develop a conceptual framework for understanding ecologies of participation in socio-technical and democratic systems, grounded in relational co-productionist theory in STS. The framework is illustrated through empirical analysis of a systematic mapping of participation in UK energy system transitions between 2010 and 2015. This provides the first insights into system-wide patternings, diversities and inequalities of energy participation, the significant types of interrelation between practices of public engagement within wider ecologies of participation, and their mutual construction with political cultures and constitutions. The value and implications of adopting an ecologies of participation approach are considered with respect to the theoretical, empirical and practical challenges of understanding and building more inclusive, responsible and just socio-technical (energy) transitions.

Role playing is increasingly used in European Studies and political science more generally to foster students understanding of social science theories. Yet in most cases, role playing is only done by students. Not so in Theoretical Theatre, a teaching innovation which puts the onus on teachers to act. In our performances, teachers embody competing theories and enact dramatic scenarios in front, and in collaboration with, their student audience. This article explains how we developed Theoretical Theatre and how it relates not only to games and simulations but also Drama In Education. It reflects on our experience of performing across four modules since 2012 and our students' feedback and discusses how it can be sustained over time and transferred to other settings and disciplines.

Role playing is increasingly used in European Studies and political science, to foster students' understanding of social science theories. Generally, role playing is only done by students. Not so in Theoretical Theatre, a teaching innovation which puts the onus on teachers to act. In our performances, teachers embody competing theories and enact dramatic scenarios in front of, and in collaboration with, their student audience. We explain how we developed Theoretical Theatre and contextualise it in the pedagogical literature of games and simulations, and of Drama In Education. We reflect on our experience of performing across four modules since 2012, and on our students' feedback, to discuss three key themes emerging from our practice: making theory more interesting and engaging, easier to understand and apply; and changing classroom dynamics and engagement. We outline the challenges and opportunities in sustaining this teaching method and transferring it to other settings and disciplines.

Role playing is increasingly used in European Studies and political science, to foster students' understanding of social science theories. Generally, role playing is only done by students. Not so in Theoretical Theatre, a teaching innovation which puts the onus on teachers to act. In our performances, teachers embody competing theories and enact dramatic scenarios in front of, and in collaboration with, their student audience. We explain how we developed Theoretical Theatre and contextualise it in the pedagogical literature of games and simulations, and of Drama In Education. We reflect on our experience of performing across four modules since 2012, and on our students' feedback, to discuss three key themes emerging from our practice: making theory more interesting and engaging, easier to understand and apply; and changing classroom dynamics and engagement. We outline the challenges and opportunities in sustaining this teaching method and transferring it to other settings and disciplines.

The UK's energy transition (to a sustainable, low-carbon development path) may turn out to be highly dependant on the engendering and embedding of new types of social practice as well as on the widespread uptake of new low-carbon technologies. We argue that social change and social movements may be of vital importance in the energy transition, because the energy transition implies significant systems change and systems level innovations and not just individual-level behaviour change. Therefore market segmentation models that focus on behaviour change at the individual-level are missing the systemic implications of an energy transition. Behaviour change will likely occur in the context of changing values, lifestyles, and cultural norms modulated through social contexts, including social movements. This paper conceptualizes and theorizes the likely dynamics of social change and social movements in the context of an energy transition, explores a new empirical case study of the UK´s transition movement and sets out elements of a research agenda designed to further explore these links. It does this by firstly presenting a case study, with new empirical evidence, of a civil society movement engaging in energy transitions, namely the Transition Towns movement. The Transition Towns movement provides an example of an emergent civil society movement with an agenda of instigating grassroots change directly rather than attempting to lobby or influence existing policy processes. The movement also presents its own formulations of what the end-point of an energy transition might be, emphasizing, for example, a localization of systems of production and consumption. Insights from the case study are then used to demonstrate how the current body of theory on 'sustainability transitions' can be extended to better include and address grassroots innovations, using insights from theories of social movements, and social practice theory. By extending current theory we conceptualize how social innovations link to macro-level systems change on the one hand and individual-level behaviour changes on the other hand. From this analysis we identify elements of an interdisciplinary research agenda for the empirical investigation of impacts of civil society movements for transition.

Grassroots innovations for sustainability are attracting increasing policy attention. Drawing upon a wide range of empirical research into community energy in the UK, and taking recent support from national government as a case study, we apply three distinct analytical perspectives: strategic niche management, niche policy advocacy, and critical niches. Whilst the first and second perspectives appear to explain policy influence in grassroots innovation adequately, each also shuts out more transformational possibilities. We therefore argue that, if grassroots innovation is to realise its full potential, then we need to also pursue a third, critical niches perspective, and open up debate about more socially transformative pathways to sustainability.

Version 1.1 ; [Abstract] The purpose of this deliverable (D3.2) of the TRANSIT research project is to report on the development of a 'first prototype' of a middle-range theory of transformative social innovation. The 'prototype' is presented here in the form a framework for Transformative Social Innovation, which at this point (in the research process) consists of a theoretically-grounded conceptual framework for TSI together with a set of propositions about the dynamics of TSI, that have been developed based on the findings of the first phase of empirical research in the project. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, Grant agreement n. 613169