Kersty Hobson

Bins, bulbs, and shower timers: on the 'techno-ethics' of sustainable living

Domestic eco-efficient technologies, such as recycling bins and compact florescent light bulbs, are integral to the eco-modernisation project. To date, however, little research has examined their role in the production of ‘sustainable citizens’. In response, this paper explores the productivities of commonplace domestic objects. It draws on qualitative research into a Sydney-based sustainable living programme called ‘GreenHome’, to examine how participants’ environmental ethics became articulated through objects’ use. This forges a form of embodied ‘techno-ethics’ that permeates socio-material relations beyond the immediate. Therefore, this examination of the quotidian deployment of eco-efficient technologies, whilst not denying the problematic nature of technologically-dependant futures, suggests some positive outcomes from individuals’ enrolment in domestic eco-modernisation.

Rapid Climate Change and Society: Assessing Responses and Thresholds

Assessing the social risks associated with climate change requires an understanding of how humans will respond because it affects how well societies will adapt. In the case of rapid or dangerous climate change, of particular interest is the potential for these responses to cross thresholds beyond which they become maladaptive. To explore the possibility of such thresholds, a series of climate change scenarios were presented to U.K. participants whose subjective responses were recorded via interviews and surveyed using Q methodology. The results indicate an initially adaptive response to climate warming followed by a shift to maladaptation as the magnitude of change increases. Beyond this threshold, trust in collective action and institutions was diminished, negatively impacting adaptive capacity. Climate cooling invoked a qualitatively different response, although this may be a product of individuals being primed for warming because it has dominated public discourse. The climate change scenarios used in this research are severe by climatological standards. In reality, the observed responses might occur at a lower rate of change. Whatever the case, analysis of subjectivity has revealed potential for maladaptive human responses, constituting a dangerous or rapid climate threshold within the social sphere.

What sceptics believe: the effects of information and deliberation on climate change scepticism

Scepticism about climate change now appears a pervasive social phenomenon. Research to date has examined the different forms that scepticism can take, from outright denial to general uncertainty. Less is known about what climate sceptics value and believe beyond their climate change doubt, as well as how “entrenched” such beliefs are. In response, this paper discusses research into public reactions to projected climate change in the Australian Capital Region. Using Q Methodology and qualitative data, it outlines five discourses of scepticism and explores the impact regional-scale climate scenarios and a deliberative forum had on these discourses. Results show that both forms of intervention stimulate “discourse migration” amongst research participants. However, migrations are rarely sustained, and sceptical positions are infrequently dispelled outright, suggesting the relationship between climate scepticism, broader beliefs, and the methods used to inform and debate about climate change, are pivotal to comprehending and addressing this issue.

‘Say no to the ATO’: the cultural politics of protest against the Australian Tax Office

Researching a broad array of protest forms offers valuable insights into social change. One such unusual form includes protests against tax law rulings made by the Australian Tax Office (ATO). Across Australia thousands of taxpayers invested in ‘tax effective schemes’ in the late 1990s. However, by 2000 each owed on average AUS

Closing the loop or squaring the circle? Locating generative spaces for the circular economy

75,000 as a result of these schemes being ruled illegal. Rather than pay the money owed many have refused, publicly protesting through formal administrative and political mechanisms, and through public debate. At first glance, this appears an issue of individual economic self‐interest. However, qualitative research methods provide a more detailed and contextual picture of why protestors feel justified in their actions. Focusing on the hard‐hit Goldfields region of Western Australia, protests are argued as being about real and imagined identities; concerns over roles and status in Australian society; and the failings of institutional and political frameworks that should support, not...

On the making of the environmental citizen

Heightened concerns about long-term sustainability have of late enlivened debates around the circular economy (CE). Defined as a series of restorative and regenerative industrial systems, parallel socio-cultural transformations have arguably received less consideration to date. In response, this paper examines the contributions human geographical scholarship can make to CE debates, focusing on ‘generative spaces’ of diverse CE practices. Concepts infrequently discussed within human geography such as product service systems and ‘prosumption’ are explored, to argue that productive potential exists in bringing these ideas into conversation with ongoing human geographical research into practices, materialities, emergent political spaces and ‘everyday activism’.

Sustainable Consumption in the United Kingdom: The “Responsible” Consumer and Government at “Arm’s Length”

Debates about how to foster green/environmental citizenship have been central to environmental politics research in the past few decades. While a great deal of this work draws its central tenets from liberal political theory more recently researchers have adopted broadly post-structural analytical frameworks to explore how diverse forms of (environmental) citizenship are formed and enacted. But what can and does this ‘green governmentality’ literature contribute to our understanding of environmental citizenship? In exploring such a question, some key environment and citizenship debates, including the recent post-structural turn, are examined. Research into domestic sustainable consumption and public deliberation around climate change is drawn upon to outline how both forms of intervention worked to produce incomplete and conditional expressions of intent and commitment that could be viewed as environmental citizenship. Green governmentality analysis thus highlights some conceptual and empirical blind spots in prevailing environmental citizenships frameworks whilst raising further questions about appropriate and effective public intervention mechanisms.

Geographies of food: 'Afters'

The project of “sustainable consumption” encompasses broader concerns about how individual well-being and quality of life have been superceded by the quest for sustained economic growth. In 1999, the current UK Labour government revised their sustainable development approach, conceptually placing “people at the centre” and arguing for holistic strategies, thereby suggesting some redress of the above concerns. In light of this conceptual shift, this article inquires about the current state of sustainable consumption policy and practice in the United Kingdom. Focusing on the ideological foundations underpinning Labour’s approach to sustainable consumption, it highlights how the individual “rational” consumer is ascribed with responsibility for creating sustainable consumption patterns. In this environment, Labour chooses to practice sustainability at “arm’s length,” doing little to challenge the profligate resource consumption that typifies the United Kingdom today.

‘Weak’ or ‘strong’ sustainable consumption? Efficiency, degrowth, and the 10 Year Framework of Programmes

This third and final ‘Geographies of food’ review is based on an online blog conversation provoked by the first and second reviews in the series (Cook et al., 2006; 2008a). Authors of the work featured in these reviews — plus others whose work was not but should have been featured — were invited to respond to them, to talk about their own and other people’s work, and to enter into conversations about — and in the process review — other/new work within and beyond what could be called ‘food geographies’. These conversations were coded, edited, arranged, discussed and rearranged to produce a fragmentary, multi-authored text aiming to convey the rich and multi-stranded content, breadth and character of ongoing food studies research within and beyond geography.

Environmental responsibility and the possibilities of pragmatist-orientated research

Although reducing levels and impacts of contemporary consumption and production has been a pivotal socioenvironmental goal for decades, global resource use continues to grow rapidly, particularly across the Asia-Pacific region. Responses such as the ‘10 Year Framework of Programmes on Consumption and Production Patterns’ (10YFP)—an outcome of the 2012 Rio+20 Summit—suggest that nothing short of highly coordinated and multilevel concerted efforts are required to begin to address such trends. However, some commentators fear that the 10YFP will default to ‘weak’ forms of sustainable consumption intervention, focusing on efficiency and technological innovation. By contrast, many are calling for ‘strong’ interventions such as those expounded by the degrowth movement. With this paper I examine both these weak and strong approaches to sustainable consumption, and argue that—although this dichotomy describes two divergent streams of thought and practice—there are conceptual and practice-based spaces where they intersect. Along with a much-needed expansion of the geographical scope of current research and practice, I thus argue that these spaces present one way forward for work in this field.