Periodic Reporting for period 3 - eCAPE (New energy Consumer roles and smart technologies – Actors, Practices and Equality)
Reporting period: 2021-11-01 to 2023-04-30
The transition to a low-carbon society is vital and requires major changes in everyday life for European households, including new prosumer roles linking renewable energy production and household consumption by use of smart technologies. This implies major alterations in the materiality as well as the social organisation of everyday life.
To guide this low-carbon transition, new theory development on the role of technological systems in everyday life is needed. Practice theories represent a strong approach in this; however, they have developed in opposition to understanding actors and structures as mutually interlinked. This means that major drivers, as well as consequences, for sustainable transition are being overlooked.
This project will contribute with important new theory development to understand and promote a low-carbon transition as well as to ensure that this transition does not indirectly become a driver of gender and social inequality.
Three theoretical lines within theories of practice will be developed:
-The importance of gender and social structures when studying household practices, including how these social structures influence formation of practices and how, in turn, social structures are formed by the development of practices.
-The role of the ethical consumer in developing new practices, including how learning processes, media discourses and institutionalised knowledge influence formation of practices.
-The inclusion of non-humans as carriers and performers of practices, rather than seeing the material arrangements only as the context for practices, especially when dealing with automated and internet connected technologies.
Quantitative and qualitative empirical research guided by these theoretical approaches will contribute with work on how future low-carbon living can be achieved and the theoretical developments will form an essential foundation for policy development towards a mandatory low-carbon transition.
To guide this low-carbon transition, new theory development on the role of technological systems in everyday life is needed. Practice theories represent a strong approach in this; however, they have developed in opposition to understanding actors and structures as mutually interlinked. This means that major drivers, as well as consequences, for sustainable transition are being overlooked.
This project will contribute with important new theory development to understand and promote a low-carbon transition as well as to ensure that this transition does not indirectly become a driver of gender and social inequality.
Three theoretical lines within theories of practice will be developed:
-The importance of gender and social structures when studying household practices, including how these social structures influence formation of practices and how, in turn, social structures are formed by the development of practices.
-The role of the ethical consumer in developing new practices, including how learning processes, media discourses and institutionalised knowledge influence formation of practices.
-The inclusion of non-humans as carriers and performers of practices, rather than seeing the material arrangements only as the context for practices, especially when dealing with automated and internet connected technologies.
Quantitative and qualitative empirical research guided by these theoretical approaches will contribute with work on how future low-carbon living can be achieved and the theoretical developments will form an essential foundation for policy development towards a mandatory low-carbon transition.
The project have the first 1½ year been in a starting period, where new PhDs and postdocs have been hired, and quantitative and qualitative data have been gathered. This starting period have been followed by a period where the first publications have come out. These publications include theoretical contributions on gender and ethics within theories of practice, as well as empirical contributions based on both quantitative and qualitative data.
Results beyond the state of art include two theoretical publications on how to conceptualize respectively gender and ethics from a practice theoretical perspective. These results are expected to impact future research within eCAPE as well as broader within the research community. Expected results until the end of the project include further empirically based publications. Specifically on gender, energy and smart home technology a special issue of Buildings and Cities are planned for 2022. Also publications based on the survey on use of smart home technologies will be produced, as will further papers on ethical consumption and processes of learning related to new technology.