Transcript What do we know

Negotiating Climates of Conflict:
climate communication, social
practices and behavioural
change
Stewart Barr
Geography
Four Intellectual Challenges
1. What do we know about public attitudes
to climate change?
2. How we do climate change
communication research;
3. How we relate climate change to
everyday social practices;
4. How we establish a meaningful
dialogue for positive change.
1. What do we know about public
attitudes to climate change?
“I do [feel concerned about climate change] but the
world always changes anyway ... a little person
like me can't stop the Americans driving their
cars ... so I can't worry about it” (extract from
Barr et al., 2011)
• Reported concern in surveys does not equate to
behavioural intention or responses;
• We need to develop more sophisticated
methods for exploring public attitudes to climate
change.
2. How we do climate
change communication
research
Knowledge into Action?
‘Factors’ that intervene...
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Time;
Convenience;
Knowledge;
Personal responsibility;
Environmental concern;
Values;
Etc...
Climate Change requires a new
approach because...
• It is regarded as contested knowledge;
• Ascriptions of responsibility are unclear and contested;
• It acts / impacts at different scales;
• It cuts across sites of practice.
(Barr et al., 2011)
“When faced with problems like the value - action gap, or with
behaviours that do not respond as normal, the tendency is to
commission further studies in the same mould. This results in a selfsustaining paradigm, along with an entire industry of research and
advice in which behaviour is consistently treated as something that
is shaped by factors” (Shove, 2010, p. 1276).
3. How we relate climate change
to everyday social practices
Social practices ‘‘. . .are conceived as being routinedriven, everyday activities situated in time and space
and shared by groups of people as part of their everyday
life’’ (Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008, p. 634).
‘‘What counts is the big, and in some cases, global swing of
ordinary, routinized and taken for granted practice. This
requires an upending of the social environmental
research agenda as conventionally formulated (Shove,
2003, p. 9).
‘‘I suppose people think a holiday is a
holiday and that they go there to relax and
do their own thing. And you know, it
sounds a bit nasty but you know, when
you’re on holiday, you’re really thinking
about yourself aren’t you because it’s your
time away’’ (extract from Barr et al. 2011)
4. How we establish a meaningful
dialogue for positive change
• Understanding the practices that are
relevant to climate-related behaviours;
• Exploring the underlying social,
historical and economic dimensions of
such practices;
And...
• Flattening the science-lay or expertpublics landscape through co-creation of
climate knowledges...
New forms of knowledge
exchange
• View academics as co-producers of
knowledge with policy makers and
citizens;
• ‘Radical Scientific Method’ (Lane et al.,
2010) for contested problems;
• Co-learning as an engaged practice
around key points of conflict through
competency groups.
ESRC Follow-on Fund project ‘Co-creating
pro-environmental behavioural change
campaigns for sustainable mobility’