Introduction

1The research domain aimed at theorizing a transformation to low energy use has suffered from weak representations of the social and material contributors to energy consumption. In the dominating theory that informs policy, consumption is theorized as an exercise done by sovereign individuals who deploy cognitive knowledge in economically rational ways in order to achieve instrumental ends. These fully agentive consumers are expected to make rational energy saving purchases (Shove and Wilhite, 1999; Wilhite et alii, 2000; Wilhite and Norgard, 2004). Debates on the efficacy of these assumptions began as early as the mid-1980s as evidence from empirical studies led to serious questions about individual-centered, utility maximizing models of consumption. Based on academic critiques and the now 40 years of evidence on the ineffectiveness of policies based on this theory to deliver significant reductions in energy use anywhere in the world, there is a strong consensus that something new is needed. Nevertheless, the conceptual vacuum has yet to be filled, at least in the main body of theory that informs energy savings policy.

2Over the past decade, a number of social scientists from differing academic disciplines have contributed to the development and application of social practice theory to an understanding of everyday energy consumption (Shove, 2003; Warde, 2005; Wilhite, 2008; Røpke, 2009). This theory has promise for renewing energy consumption theory and providing a basis for new directions in energy savings policy. This conceptualization of the consumer contrasts dramatically with the dominating conceptualization which poses individual consumers as free agents whose intentions and actions are hegemonic in making consumption happen. Policies grounded in this approach divest consumers of the practical knowledge pre-disposed through experience and routine. Such policies are ‘distanced from experience’, in the words of Lave, and ‘divide the mind from the world’ (1993, p. 8). This paper will lay out promising theoretical insights from social practice theory and give examples of new categories of policies for stimulating low-energy practices. I will give special attention to how practices form and change, as well as the relationship between practice transformations and experience-grounded learning.

Practices, bodies and habits

3Social practice theory has its roots in the work of Bourdieu (1977; 1998) and his concept of habitus, defined as a domain of dispositions for action, created and perpetuated through performance of a practice in a given social-cultural space. These dispositions constitute a form of knowledge which influences or predisposes practices. The habitus engages with the “presence of the past” (1998, p. 304) in forming and embodying knowledge. Habitus can therefore be seen as embodied history. In the words of anthropologist Ortner “a theory of practice is a theory of history” (2006, p. 192). Bourdieu and other advocates of practice theory have been accused of ‘downplaying the agency of the subjective meaningfulness of action’ (Warde, 2011, p. 11), agency here used in the sense defined by Ortner (1999) as the potential to influence acts. Lahire (2003, p. 335) addresses this point, articulating a theory of dispositions that acknowledges the role of beliefs, attitudes and other elements of external reality in the production of actions :

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“Instead of siding with approaches to the social world that utterly dispense with historical and social analyses – which will reduce it to nothing more than a grammar or a logic of current actions, of systems of action, of current interactions, etc. – (a theory of social practices) must also move beyond making ritual appeals to the embodied past; it should examine how this past can become socially constituted and how it can be actualized”.

5Following Lahire, we need to be careful about proposing that historical experience mechanically predisposes action. Nonetheless, I claim that habitus and embodiment are important to many energy routines in the home, a point that is largely unacknowledged in the domain of sustainable energy use. The practice theory perspective provides a highly relevant contribution to the emerging effort to understand the relationship between lived experience, practical knowledge and action. How we shop for food on a daily basis, how we clean our bodies and homes, and how we get around are accomplished without much need for reflection, or engagement of the cognitive self. As Seyfang et alii. (2010, p. 8) write, from a practice perspective:

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“Individuals … are no longer either passive dupes beholden to broader social structures, or free and sovereign agents revealing their preferences through market decisions, but instead become knowledgeable and skilled ‘carriers’ of practice who at once follow the rules, norms and regulations that hold practice together, but also, through their active and always localised performance of practices, improvise and creatively reproduce and transform them”.

7The neglect of practical knowledge is not confined to the world of energy research. Crossley writes that the social science of behavior has been obsessed with mind, cognition and reflexive knowledge (2007, p. 83). The post-modern turn left behind the work of Mauss on cultural learning and embodiment (Mauss referred to this as enculturation). Mauss (1973) proposed that lived experience embodies practices related to the ways we dress, eat, clean, organize space and use time. Many forms for body-centered practices develop deeply agentive dispositions and many of these are highly relevant to the ways we use energy: for example, the ways we cool and heat our homes; prepare and consume foods; wash and clothe our bodies; transport ourselves from one place to another. Recent work revives the body and what Lahire (2003, p. 353) refers to as the interaction between (or relations between) forces that are internal and external to individuals, “between dispositions that are more or less strongly established during past socialization and … between external forces, i.e., between elements of the context”.

8In work from over a decade ago, my coauthors and I pointed out the importance of culture in influencing home lighting practices in Norway (Wilhite et alii, 2001). I can rightfully be accused of overusing this example, but it is a perfect illustration of how culture is deposed as knowledge in practices. In Norwegian living rooms, the preferred pattern of lighting in living areas is to use a number of small lamps around the room to create an aesthetic of light and shadow. In other words, light is not used to produce lumens, but rather a particular culturally determined aesthetic. This practice can likely be traced back to the use of candles prior to electrification, which produce a similar form for light and shadow. On special occasions such as dinners for friends and family, people pay particular care to create ‘cozy’ lighting, using small lamps and candles. Children learn cultural practices through exposure and from parents and other family members. This culturally embodied knowledge is particular to place and difficult to communicate as is demonstrated by the difficulties adult immigrants have in adapting to a new place. In Norway, cultural learning is one of the foremost goals in Norwegian ‘integration’ policies for immigrants. However, lectures and discussions are not sufficient to communicate deep cultural codes such as those associated with creating the correct lighting aesthetic in a Norwegian home. For this, immigrant families need to be invited into Norwegian homes and experience first-hand the ways that light is used in creating a social ambiance. Once learned, new immigrant Norwegians will often be those who go to extremes to demonstrate that they have mastered the local codes. As the author discovered in a study of energy use in building cooperatives in Oslo, lighting practices in buildings in neighborhoods with a high proportion of immigrants conformed to or exceeded Norwegian norms (Wilhite and Ling, 1992).

9Another source of embodiment is repetition. Frequent repetition of an activity such as mowing the lawn, walking the dog, or taking a shower can result in the formation of body habits. Training for sporting activities involves embodiment through repetition of certain movements, either individually, such as learning to serve in tennis, or in tandem with others in team sports. Mauss (1973) called the result of purposive embodiment ‘body techniques’. As Crossley wrote about the ways swimmers improve their swimming techniques, they “do not know the theory and do not need to know it” (2007, p. 89). A body technique such as typing can become a strong habit if it is done frequently, because it only involves one person and a standard keyboard. Swimming for an accomplished swimmer will be a strong habit if swimming is done frequently and the material medium is stable. In a swimming pool with protected lanes, lap after lap can be accomplished without a conscious thought on how to negotiate bodily movements.

10When it comes to complex household routines, the strength of practical knowledge is affected by the frequency of the performance; the number and nature of people and objects involved; the size of the space in which the action occurs; and the time it takes to accomplish it. Performances associated with team sports and dance performances involve an added degree of complexity due to the necessity to interact and coordinate with other bodies. The coordination of movements calls for a mix of practical and cognitive knowledge. Warnier (2001, p. 9) refers to this extra level of complexity as ‘sociomotricity’. This need for coordination and occasional reflection results in weaker habits than those involving only one body. The size of the space in which habits take place can affect the strength of the habit (Harvey, 2010). Tighter, more structured spaces have tighter scripts for action. Showering or bathing take place in small spaces and involve fewer material objects. In the bath or shower cabinet, everything is close at hand, including flowing water, clothes, soaps and shampoos. Showering, soaping and shampooing are performed at least once a day by most Norwegians. In the absence of interruption, such as dropping the soap, finding the shampoo bottle empty and so on, actions happen without the need for much reflection.

11The deployment of an energy appliance adds another dimension of complexity to habit formation. Refrigeration technologies are particularly powerful in restructuring practices. The integration of the refrigerator into Indian food preparation illustrates the refrigerator’s potential to restructure practices (Wilhite, 2008). There is a longstanding food ideology in South India, with roots in India’s Ayurvedic health tradition, which associates the storing of prepared foods with the accumulation of substances which cause laziness and stupidity. This ideology contributed to a lack of enthusiasm for the refrigerator when it became widely available in India in the 1960s. Those who purchased the first generation of refrigerators were more interested in their space saving properties (eliminating the need for storage rooms and cabinets for raw foods like eggs and vegetables) than in their capacity to store prepared foods and reheat them for consumption at later meals. However, after a few decades and two generations, the refrigerator’s potential to save time in food preparation has had an effect on food practices. Many women still insist on cooking food from scratch for each meal and use the refrigerator mainly to store raw foods and dairy products. However, many young women now routinely make food in bulk, storing uneaten portions and reheating them for later meals. These new practices have generated dispositions that have reduced the power of a strongly held cultural ideal. This new practice has also paved the way for other technologies, including the microwave oven, which can be used in tandem with the refrigerator to produce meals from leftover dishes. In 2004, the microwave was the fastest selling household appliance in India. A new regime of production and provision technology is being implemented to support refrigeration, including refrigerated sections in food stores and refrigerated transport between wholesalers and retailers of food. Infrastructures of provision are also affecting transportation habits.

Social learning and sustainable policies

12Strong habits are durable and resistant to change. The strong energy-intensive habits related to food, transport, comfort and cleanliness will not be affected significantly by small changes in energy prices or as a result of information providing all of the good arguments for saved money, reduced environmental impact, energy security and so on. Changes will be needed in the material configurations of practices. One important policy approach will be aggressive increases in the technical efficiency of energy technologies. However, experience has shown that this tried and true policy measure has not lead to significant reductions in residential energy use, partly because the volumes of houses, numbers of appliances and sizes of refrigerators and washing machines have increased. We need to expand the narrow focus on technical energy efficiency to encompass broader measures intended to reduce the energy intensity of practices, such as moving, heating, cleaning and making our homes thermally comfortable. One obvious focus will have to be on reducing the size of things that need refrigerating or heating, such as homes, refrigerators and freezers. In Wilhite and Norgard (2004) we address policies of reduction, including the example of cold appliance labeling. In today’s labeling system, refrigerators are divided into volume classes and within a given class ranked by their efficiency from F to A (or today to A+++, creating another serious problem for labeling comprehension). Thus a high consuming large refrigerator could have an A rating, while a low consuming small refrigerator could have a C. If volume classes were dropped, the contribution of size would be made transparent and would favor low energy consuming refrigerators.

13As I have argued thus far the acquisition and use of energy equipment is strongly influenced by habit and many consumers do not bother to read or interpret labels. But, for those who do, information should enable reduced energy use, not just greater efficiency. Other examples of the reduction focus: for cars, move the focus from fuel efficiency to a modal shift from automobiles to public transportation and bicycling ; for heating and cooling of buildings, introduce regulations which favor smaller dwellings and give support to natural cooling designs in warm climates.

14Changing to a size or volume oriented regulatory framework is an example of a top-down policy that holds promise for promoting experimentation. Another source of theoretical inspiration can be found in social learning theory, which draws on the same theory of knowledge as social practice theory. It provides a source of new thinking on unlocking energy practices and encouraging changes. Lave is one of the main contributors to social learning theory. Paraphrasing Lave (1993), learning is conceived of as more than a filling of the cognitive vessel (mind), but rather as a process which involves the acquisition of practical knowledge through a combination of cognitive processes and bodily processes. Learning through participation in practices such as sporting activities is an example of social learning. The learning of a sport requires learning the rules, but also participating in exercises and rehearsals in order to build up tacit skills. Another form for social learning is more purposive learning through apprenticeship, involving exposure to and participation in practices along with guidance and feedback.

15There is evidence that when people face major purchase decisions, many rely more on the experiences of their peers than on product information or sales pitches. This is confirmed in a study just getting underway in Norway, where one of the objectives is to examine how and why people decide to buy and install heat pumps in their homes. Initial findings show that an important source of information for potential purchasers is people in family or social networks who have made, or looked into similar purchases. People take advantage of the experiences of others in comparing prices, exploring the choice of entrepreneur, assessing the quality of product and performance. Initial findings show that this form of learning was more important than the advice of experts, such as ENOVA, the Norwegian Energy Directorate, in making a choice to purchase a heat pump (Winther and Wilhite, 2013).

16These insights on social practices and social learning can be important sources of inspiration for sustainable energy policy. They acknowledge the power of habits and the sources of that power; promote learning through doing and learning from peers ; and promote technology designs which foster less energy intensive habits (not just greater energy efficiency). Much work needs to be done on developing a policy agenda reoriented to these goals. Sahakian and Wilhite (2014) give full attention to an exploration of a practice-grounded policy agenda. Here I will provide a few examples of new directions. There is, firstly, more extensive use of demonstration projects, which were used in the USA in the 1970s and 1980s, but were abandoned in the wave of free-market energy ideology of the 1990s. In Davis, California, in the 1970s and 1980s, great strides were made in home weatherization after demonstration homes were set up in neighborhoods around the city. People were able to observe and experience first hand how life in a low energy house could be more comfortable, cozy and yet have much lower energy expenses than the house they were living in. Demonstrations of alternative transport systems can also be useful, such as car free zones (Topp and Pharoah, 1994; Bulkeley et alii, 2011) ; publically organized bicycle infrastructures ; car and laundry sharing systems for apartment buildings or neighborhoods (Wilhite, 1997). There is a potential for developing new forms of information which conform to social learning principles. An example is the provision of households with a benchmark by which they can compare and assess their levels of energy use with other households living in similar dwellings. Observing that one’s own household energy consumption is higher than that of others living in a similar house can be a stimulus to digging into household habits, assessing the energy consequences, and making a change, whether it be the way energy is managed (i.e. thermostats) or a new purchase (energy efficient fridge or wall insulation) (Wilhite et alii, 1999; Fischer, 2007).

17There is ample evidence that people are open for change in periods of transition. As Lahire (2003:340) writes, “some habits may be established durably in the bodies of individual agents who, when their situations are changed by such life events as marriage, birth, divorce, the death of a loved one, or a new position … It seems that the new situation induces them to feel that their habits have become strange to them”. A move to a new home often initiates a flurry of projects involving the organization of the home’s spatial layout, the purchase of new appliances and changes in practices in the new home (Wilk and Wilhite, 1985; Wilhite and Ling, 1992). Another period of reflection begins when people are preparing to have a child, or towards the end of the family cycle when children move out of the home. Sustainable policy should give more attention to households in transition, providing information and incentives for low-energy solutions.

18Finally, there are a number of community-based efforts around the world that involve experimentation with new policies and practices for reducing energy use (Bulkeley et alii, 2011). Practice changes embedded in initiatives such as the transition movement and the ‘convenant of mayors’ (http://www.covenantofmayors.eu) involving over 4000 cities worldwide, and aiming at reductions of energy use significantly deeper than those discussed in international negotiations or in national energy plans, deserve wide exposure, as do other examples of participatory-driven social transformations that yield energy reductions and life quality improvements.

Conclusion

19Social practice theory offers new insights on stability and change in consumption. It acknowledges the co-presence of subjects and objects in the world and gives attention to the field of opportunities and obstacles which are formed in their interrelationship. It offers a new theoretical foundation for energy savings policy, drawing on social learning theory, which is both enabling yet at the same time imposing, because for policy, it implies a much more robust and costly framework as well as the necessity for a long term perspective. It implies supplementing market signals with a new range of policies that operate on the forces that are internal and external to consumers. Consumer awareness and economic motivation must be supplemented by policies that reconfigure choices in the domains of home energy use, transport and food provision in ways that structure reduced energy use. A reliance on internal evaluation of change based on cognitive appeals and deductive arguments on the economic advantages of reducing energy use must be supplemented by the creation of environments for practical learning. One important policy direction would be drawing attention to the many and varied community efforts around the world that have decided not to wait for a change of national policy, but are moving forward to change their own practices. Many local communities are asking fundamental questions about how they want to live and whether the ways they live will be sustainable for future generations. The key elements in this change are participatory goal forming and decision processes, and planning for the long term. This opens for investments in infrastructural changes at the community level in areas such as transportation, food provision and low energy housing.

20Policy can draw inspiration from these promising developments as well as community and internet-based experiments with shared ownership and various forms of collaborative consumption. As Weltzer (2011, p. 37) wrote, ‘These projects are shaping the future – not as mere proposals, but as living examples. For the time being, the political problem of this lived-in future is its particularity, its smallness, which makes it appear insignificant as a social counterforce.’ Greater exposure through best-practice type marketing, in situ workshops and supporting grants would provide non-participants with the opportunity to experience and experiment with low energy practices, demystifying low energy living and showing how it can be accomplished without degrading – and in fact improving – practitioners’ well-being.

21As a concluding thought, even if we get the theory of transformation right, it is difficult to imagine how mainstream, middle-class high energy living practices can be unlocked and reformed in a growth economy. A century of lived experience in political economies privileging material growth and fueling it with energy has led to a habituation to not only high levels of materials and resources used in everyday practices, but to a habituation to expansion itself. Neither mainstream energy theory nor climate change politics has demonstrated the vision or scope to come to grips with this. Low energy and low carbon policy are putting all of their efforts into making sustainability happen within an expansionist frame. The record shows that several decades of variations on this policy have not been successful in reducing energy use or carbon emissions in the OECD countries, and will be unlikely to put a dent in rapidly increasing energy use elsewhere. Social practice theory suggests a framework for understanding how these high-energy practices have formed at the levels of family, household and community and suggests a new policy platform for unlocking them. But this new framing will only deliver reductions in energy use if it is accompanied by a commitment to rethinking fundamental relationships between economy, progress and growth.