Energy Research & Social Science 44 (2018) 242–249

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Energy Research & Social Science

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Original research article

Sustainability cultures and energy research: An actor-centred interpretation T

of cultural theory
Janet Stephenson
Centre for Sustainability, University of Otago, New Zealand

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: The energy cultures framework has had widespread use in studies of the energy-related implications of habitual
Culture behaviour and behaviour change, and to other topics including mobility, water and carbon-related outcomes. As
Energy transition a heuristic that has become widely used because it helps researchers to make sense of how cultural formations
Social change influence sustainability outcomes, it is timely to explore its relationship to cultural theory. I discuss the origins
Sustainability
and applications of the framework and elaborate its underpinning concepts about the relationship between
cultural formations and sustainability outcomes. I contrast these concepts with cultural theory and conclude that
the sustainability cultures approach has similar roots to practice theory, but diverges at several key points. The
actor-centred articulation of cultural attributes and their outcomes, with its main focus on actors’ agency in
cultural change, contrasts with practice theory’s view of actors as ‘carriers’ of routine practices. It aligns most
closely with Bourdieu’s habitus although more substantial theoretical enquiry is needed to explore linkages to
Bourdieu’s interest in praxis. Sustainability cultures offers an approach to investigating the significant cultural
changes that will be required for a sustainable future.

1. Introduction expertise could contribute to the areas of inquiry. As will be explained

New concepts to underpin inquiries into the social world do not
necessarily evolve tidily from established theories. Innovations in
thinking can emerge unexpectedly from new junctures of people and
the cross-fertilisation of their ideas. If they work well in helping to
answer questions about the social world, a time will come when some
‘backfilling’ is required to explore how the new concepts fit with es-
tablished theory and whether they offer any theoretical innovation.
This paper undertakes such an exercise with what was originally called
the energy cultures framework, first introduced into the academic lit-
erature in 2010 [1].
The concept of energy culture was developed during a seven-year
research programme on energy (and later mobility) behaviours
amongst households and businesses. The research funder (a government
agency) wished to understand what policy interventions might achieve
desired outcomes such as increased adoption of more sustainable en-
ergy and mobility technologies and more efficient energy behaviours.
The interdisciplinary team, including physics, law, sociology, eco-
nomics and consumer psychology, initially developed the concept of
energy culture as a heuristic to support interdisciplinary inquiry [1].
The concept derived from several disciplinary bodies of knowledge held
within the team. It contained ideas which could be readily grasped by
all disciplines, and enabled the team members to see how their
in Section 2, subsequent applications of the cultures framework have
shown that it is fruitful in helping explain outcomes relating to energy,
mobility, water and other fields of inquiry. ‘Outcomes’ here refers to
both proximal changes such as adoption of new technologies or chan-
ging behavioural patterns and distal changes such as improved health
or reduced consumption. The framework has been applied at multiple
scales of inquiry, from individuals to global cities, and used for inquiries
into habituation as well as transformation.
As will be elaborated, the framework has mainly been used to guide
research that ultimately seeks to know why sustainability-related out-
comes are or are not being achieved. I highlight this aspect because of
the urgent need for social theories that can underpin the widespread
transformations needed to achieve a sustainable future. For example, to
decarbonise the world’s energy systems by the second half of this
century [2,3] will require people’s active involvement in initiating and
implementing change across most systems of production and con-
sumption, not only as individuals but also in their collective lives as
householders, citizens, businesses, employees, non-governmental or-
ganisations, local authorities, governments and global corporations.
The low-carbon transition is thus fundamentally a societal transition,
albeit inextricably tangled with technical, economic and environmental
dimensions. I suggest that it is also a cultural transition, and therefore
invites cultural analysis.

E-mail address: janet.stephenson@otago.ac.nz.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.05.034
Received 23 September 2017; Received in revised form 25 May 2018; Accepted 25 May 2018
Available online 30 May 2018
2214-6296/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
J. Stephenson
Despite its somewhat unorthodox origins, the concept of energy
cultures (and its more generic application to other sustainability-related
topics) is arguably aligned with cultural theories in the sociological
tradition. A distinguishing characteristic of cultural theories is that they
seek to explain and understand actions through symbolic and cognitive
structures of meaning [4], but beyond this, theories differ in the char-
acteristics of social life they attend to. The site of the social is variously
taken to be located in the mind (culturalist mentalism), in symbols and
texts (culturalist textualism), in social interactions (culturalist inter-
subjectivism), or in practices (practice theory). In this paper I explore
the extent to which the energy cultures approach aligns with cultural
theories, and in particular with practice theory with which it is most
often compared.
In the following sections I describe the origins and development of
the energy cultures framework and its underpinning concepts, and then
relate these to the concepts underpinning practice theory. I describe key
differences in the approaches, methods and outcomes. I conclude by
discussing how an actor-centred approach to practice (in the sense of
praxis/the totality of human actions) might offer useful insights for the
challenge of achieving sustainability transitions.
2. The origins of the energy cultures framework
The initial purpose in developing the energy cultures framework
was to create a model that incorporated all of the potential drivers of
household energy behaviour as perceived by the multidisciplinary re-
search team described above. Disciplines had different notions of be-
havioural causes and even of what behaviour meant: it was variously
characterised in terms of energy-related technologies (e.g. does the
household have a heat-pump?), and/or in terms of a household’s use of
energy-related technologies (e.g. when do they use it?) and/or in terms
of the consumer’s norms (e.g. what temperature settings do they prefer
and why?). The team sought to include all of these aspects within the
energy cultures framework, and also to consider how these factors were
interrelated. There was no intended implication that people in-
tentionally chose become members of one or another ‘energy culture’
(indeed one of the problems with energy research is its invisibility to
most consumers [5]). The term ‘energy cultures’ instead refers to those
aspects of cultural formations that are causally aligned with energy-
related outcomes.
The funder of the initial research had asked the team to examine
why households were inefficient in their energy use, so the focus was on
the energy-related outcomes of these interrelationships as well as
seeking to understand how and why people might find it difficult to
change. In this respect the team was also interested in exogenous fac-
tors that might affect also a household’s energy behaviours including
pricing and market conditions, the regulatory and policy environment,
the presence or absence of infrastructure, and other factors beyond the
control of the household [1,6].
The use of the term ‘culture’ in energy cultures originated from
Lutzenhiser’s Cultural Model of Household Energy Consumption [7] where
he suggested that energy consumption was embedded in cultural pro-
cesses, and that material culture interweaves with “roles, relationships,
conventional understandings, rules and beliefs into the cultural prac-
tices of groups”. Lutzenhiser does not appear to have developed this
notion further, but for the research team it seemed to offer a useful
angle for studying energy-related behaviours.
The resulting energy cultures framework, as described in some de-
tail in Stephenson et al. [1] and its further developed in Stephenson
et al. [6], was influenced by a number of social theories. From Bourdieu
[8] the team was influenced by his proposal that the practices that
make up social life are largely generated and regulated by habitus –
persistent patterns of thought, perceptions and action, which them-
selves are a response to the objective conditions within which people
live. This is not to say that habitus is immutable, and indeed Bourdieu
discusses the possibilities of strategic action to alter habitus. For the
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Energy Research & Social Science 44 (2018) 242–249
team’s purposes, the core interest lay in how, through the interplay
between strategic action and agency, individuals and groups might shift
from the self-replicating stasis of habitus to adopting new behaviours,
beliefs, aspirations and/or material possessions, with more sustainable
outcomes.
From structuration [9] the team received insights into the interplay
between social structures and agency, and were particularly influenced
by Giddens’ notions of the fluid boundaries of agency, and how actors
and social structures might each change the other. From STS literature
the team considered the role that technologies play in influencing be-
haviours and expectations, such that ‘social practices and technological
artefacts shape and are shaped by one another’ ([10], p. 351). From
Latour [11] the team took a particular interest in the potential influence
of new material objects to both reflect and re-shape cultures. The de-
velopment of energy cultures was also influenced by systems thinking
with its focus on causality and consequences [12,13]. Systems analysis
requires the setting of boundaries around the system under investiga-
tion, and this was helpful in considering why and how the notion of
culture could be bracketed to allow close investigation. The team was
less overtly influenced by social practice theory as developed at that
time (e.g. [14,15]) because its focus on the replication of practices such
as washing, cleaning and cooking did not align with the team’s interest
in agency and change.
Overall, the team sought to provide a set of concepts that could
enable the description and study of “cultural ‘units’” ([16]: xii) in
multiple contexts, the exogenous influences on these units of culture,
and how these units might change over time. Culture, in the sense that
it is used here, includes “not only the beliefs and values of social groups,
but also their language, forms of knowledge, and common sense, as well
as the material products, interactional practices and ways of life es-
tablished by these” ([17]: 65). The ‘cultural turn’ in sociology has lar-
gely focused on exploring practices (e.g. [4,18]) and symbolism and
meaning (e.g. [19–21]), but energy cultures research became interested
in the broader range of cultural attributes indicated by Hays, including
material and immaterial artefacts that shape and are shaped by the lives
of actors.
The research sought to study how actors’ cultural formations (i.e.
the interactivity between these cultural features) resulted in particular
outcomes of interest (e.g. relating to energy use or mobility choices or
wellbeing outcomes). This framing is unlikely to correspond with the
cultural models in the thought processes of the actors, but is useful for
the purposes of investigating the relationships between cultural for-
mations and outcomes.
The energy cultures framework (Fig. 1) is a heuristic which pared
down the concept of culture to three core elements of material culture
(meaning the actor’s material possessions), practices (meaning the
whole of an actor’s actions and activities) and norms (including the
actor’s expectations and aspirations). This is not to say that other cul-
tural characteristics were unimportant, but these three topics seemed to
capture much about actors’ culture that was relevant to energy out-
comes, and were easily understandable to interdisciplinary teams. The
internal arrows in the framework indicate that these core elements are
linked and interactive. The dashed circle indicates a boundary between
the actor’s energy culture and exogenous influences that are largely
beyond the control of the actor, while at the same time indicating that
this boundary is permeable.
3. Applications of the framework to sustainability questions
The energy cultures framework has underpinned a significant body
of research, both by the original research team and by others inter-
nationally, on a range of topics including (recently) domestic water
demand [22], energy consumption by the elderly [23], energy effi-
ciency in the US Navy [24], driver efficiency [25], urban freight de-
livery [26], household energy behaviours [27], energy poverty [28],
youth mobility [29] and as the basis of a European Union Horizon 2020
J. Stephenson
Fig. 1. The sustainability cultures framework (originally developed as the ‘energy cultures framework’).
pan-Europe research programme on changing energy cultures for
achieving energy transitions [30]. As shown in the following examples,
the framework and the concepts that underpin it have been shown to be
useful for revealing the interplay of cultural and other factors involved
where energy (or other) outcomes are relatively unchanging, as well as
factors involved where changes are occurring.
A qualitative study of households in fuel poverty used an energy
cultures framing to analyse interviews with household members [28].
These households typically lived in uninsulated houses with inefficient
heating and appliances; undertook frugal practices such as sparing use
of heating and wearing layers of clothes indoors; and evinced norms of
constraint and care relating to energy use. For some more elderly in-
terviewees this was how they had always lived and unchallenged, but
others aspired for change and spoke of impacts such as poor health and
social isolation, yet were enmeshed in an energy culture that was hard
to change. Such energy cultures, with poor health outcomes, are evi-
dent more widely across the New Zealand population. Using two
measures of fuel poverty, Lawson et al. [31] identified that 6.3% of
households were ‘fuel poor’ by both measures of using more than 10%
of income on energy, and having gone without power at least once in
the previous 12 months. These households, in contrast to others, were
more likely to live in older houses, have no ceiling or wall insulation,
and have fewer appliances; they kept heating low, reduced heat in
unoccupied rooms, put on more clothes before turning up the heating,
and took short showers; and they aspired to reduce energy consumption
to save money and/or to increase consumption. The well-studied out-
come of fuel poverty in New Zealand includes high rates of excess
winter mortality and excess winter hospitalisations [32]. Unfortunately
households such as those studied by McKague et al. [28] are largely
caught up in a culture of energy deprivation because they have little
effective capacity to act, constrained as they are by exogenous influ-
ences such as the poor quality of rental housing, high electricity prices
and an ineffective social welfare system. Another study, discussed
below, revealed that events that enabled poorer households to collec-
tively share their knowledge and experiences in improving warmth and
reducing costs helped to build their capacity for change [27]. However,
given the limited agency of most households in energy poverty,
achieving change to this energy culture would likely require active
policy interventions to improve material factors such as insulation and
heating [28].
Another study of static energy cultures investigated the US Navy’s
failure to implement clearly cost-effective energy-efficient LED lighting
on their ships [24]. The study identified how shipboard technologies,
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Energy Research & Social Science 44 (2018) 242–249
practices and norms came together to form a naval energy culture that
was impervious to change, and reinforced by external influences such as
congressional appropriation processes, qualified supplier bases and
executive actions of the federal government. The outcome of this cul-
ture was inefficient energy use and greater use of fossil fuels than would
be the case with LED lighting. Achieving change in this instance would
likely require a normative shift within the US Navy.
A number of other studies have investigated processes of change at
an individual and collective scale. Hopkins and Stephenson [33,29]
were interested in the phenomenon that Generation Y have lower ad-
herence to automobility than prior generations. They interviewed
young people (18–35 years old), for some of whom car use was the
dominant form of transport, while others chose multiple (non-car)
methods of mobility. Young people adopting multi-mobility had dis-
tinctive norms, practices and material culture that were, in part at least,
shaped by exogenous influences such as changes to licencing require-
ments, changes to parking availability, the presence of public transport
and active transport infrastructure. Different meanings relating to mo-
bility choices were evident – those who had cars saw them as a source
of freedom; while those who chose not to drive saw freedom in the
absence of ownership and the existence of multi-modal choice. This
emerging multi-modal ‘mobility culture’ did not have a single clear
cause but appeared to be the outcome of an interplay between re-
sponses to personal context and adoption of more generic social norms
favouring dematerialisation, sharing and sustainability. The outcome of
this diffuse set of actor-centred, structural and broad cultural influences
is decreasing car use by Generation Y, a trend which appears to be
common to many developed nations.
In contrast, a trial that aimed to get relatively low-income house-
holds to improve their energy efficiency saw a direct link between in-
terventions and changes to the energy cultures. Two different inter-
ventions (personalised energy audits or community energy events) were
trialled in different urban locations. Households undertook surveys
relating to aspects of their energy culture prior to and after the inter-
ventions. Thirteen (out of 21) households made changes to their ma-
terial culture (e.g. installed efficient lightbulbs or insulation), their
practices (e.g. using curtains to retain heat, turning off lights, discussing
energy with community and household members), and/or their
knowledge of efficiency actions. Resulting from the community events,
many reported a sense of collective support and empowerment even
when unable to afford changes at that time [27].
A third study involving change [34] looked at the uptake of
household photovoltaic systems in New Zealand, a country with no
J. Stephenson
subsidies or other policies supportive of PV uptake, and where PV is not
yet cost-effective for most households (according to most financial
measures). Despite this unsupportive environment, PV installations are
continuing to increase. Interviews with home-owners installing or
wishing to install PV revealed common norms including lack of trust in
power companies, support for renewables, confidence in the tech-
nology, a desire for more financial control over energy outgoings, and a
desire for a degree of independence from the electricity grid. Their
changing energy cultures appear to be largely driven by these norma-
tive positions. The outcome is that prosumerism is starting to have
significant implications for the future management of New Zealand’s
electricity network [35]. In this instance, the collective change in en-
ergy cultures is starting to affect the roles and processes of institutions
in the electricity sector – an interesting example of actors’ cultural
changes re-shaping structures through cultural change.
One thing that these examples have in common is a recognition of
how cultural formations, at any scale of actor, have outcomes with
social, economic and/or environmental sustainability implications.
Given its growing use for non-energy applications, I henceforward use
the terminology of ‘sustainability cultures’ to refer to the use of this
approach to study various sustainability-related outcomes of cultural
formations.
Also demonstrated in the examples is the actor-centred perspective
of the sustainability cultures approach, whereby an actor may be con-
sidered at any scale from an individual or business to a sector or city. It
is the cultural characteristics of the actor, how they interplay, and how
this cultural formation may be influenced by factors largely beyond the
actors’ control that are of particular interest. Particular attention is paid
to cultural features that are displayed, acquired or controlled by the
actor, and which have relevance to the question under inquiry.
Consideration is given to the interactions between actors’ material and
immaterial artefacts (assets, structures, technologies, software, appli-
ances), behaviours (routines, actions, acquisitions, activities), and
subjectivities (norms, beliefs, aspirations, expectations) as well as other
cultural factors such as knowledge and skills. In an enquiry about en-
ergy efficiency, for example, the energy culture of a householder may
be studied through their physical artefacts such as the structure of the
house, its insulation qualities, appliances and their relative efficiency,
the householders’ energy-related behaviours, and family members’ ex-
pectations and aspirations relating to energy services.
Cultures do not exist in isolation, but are constantly being chal-
lenged, constrained and modified [36]. The examples above illustrate
how sustainability cultures are shaped by exogenous influences that are
largely beyond the control of the actor. In the examples these included
housing policy, congressional appropriation processes, the changing
norms of Generation Y, and experimental interventions. External in-
fluences may create a tendency for a sustainability culture to remain
unchanged, or alternatively may create a potential for cultural change.
The final example showed how actors’ usually limited agency to in-
fluence social structures could be amplified when cultural change be-
came widespread: the widespread adoption of PV and emergence of
prosumers influenced wider structures that would usually be im-
pervious to individual agency, suggesting that culture change can have
collective agency.
The process of culture change was a particular focus of the energy
cultures research programme from the outset. Some research examined
the interplay between norms, practices and material culture and how a
change in one of these cultural components could lead to consequential
changes in others [37–39]. Other research explored how intentional
changes in external influences could drive a shift in adoption of dif-
ferent technologies or changes in activities and hence in energy-related
outcomes [27,40]. Change to a single cultural feature can also have
consequential implications. Research that examined the introduction of
solar lighting to the Pacific island of Vanuatu found that it gave rise to
unintended (but not unwelcome) consequences by changing everyday
practices and new aspirations for solar technologies [38]. The energy
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Energy Research & Social Science 44 (2018) 242–249
cultures team also developed policy recommendations to achieve (or
support) change in relation to particular energy and mobility outcomes
sought, such as altering the external influences that are locking some
families into fuel poverty, or supporting businesses in becoming more
energy efficient [41].
While changes within actors’ energy and mobility cultures amongst
households and small businesses are important, a bigger question is the
potential for wider transformative change. The scope of research has
not yet been sufficiently broad to be able to explore some of the bigger
problem areas, such as the potential for cultural change within sectors
and systems of production that are significant users and producers of
fossil fuels. One might hypothesise that sector expectations regarding
the future may have changed due to the implications of the Paris
agreement on climate change [3], but whether that (and other influ-
ences) will result in consequential changes to their organisational cul-
tures (e.g. their investment practices and choice of asset holdings) re-
mains to be seen.
It is commonplace to hear people say that a ‘culture change’ is
needed to achieve a shift to a more sustainable future. The concept of
sustainability cultures offers a structured way to think about what that
culture change might entail.
4. Sustainability cultures and cultural theories
‘Social theories are vocabularies [that] never reach the bedrock of a
real social world, but offer contingent systems of interpretation which
enable us to make certain empirical statements (and exclude other
forms of empirical statements’ ([4]: 257). Underpinning the framework
of sustainability cultures is a set of ideas or ‘vocabulary’ about the
nature of social world. In this section I explore the extent to which these
ideas might align with cultural theories, and with practice theory in
particular.
Practice theory is a specific form of cultural theory that is dis-
tinguished from culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism
by its focus on practices as the ‘smallest unit’ of inquiry ([4]: 245).
‘Practice’, for the purpose of the theory of social practices, refers to ‘a
routinized type of behaviour which consists of several elements, inter-
connected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental
activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of
understanding, know-how, states of emotion, and motivational knowl-
edge’ ([4]: 249). These form a block of interconnected elements which
cannot be reduced to a single element [4]. Reckwitz usefully differ-
entiates between German terms for this specialised use of practice
(Praktik) and its alternate use to refer to ‘the whole of human action’
(Praxis).
The theoretical ancestry of practice theory largely lies in struc-
turation [9,42] and habitus [8]. Bourdieu’s interest in the replication of
patterns of social life led him to suggest that people had an embodied
disposition to replicate past ways of living through a combination of
habitual bodily skills, practical know-how and internalised perceptions
about the social world, which together he called habitus. Giddens was
similarly interested in the consistency of social systems over time,
claiming that ‘social practices ordered across space and time’ were the
basic domain of the social sciences ([9]: 2). He proposed that people
undertake routine behaviours that align with shared (and often sub-
consciously held) formal or informal rules. These practices therefore fit
with their understanding of the world and also reinforce and reproduce
the world that these embedded rules represent [9,42]. Both theorists
took particular interest in repeated patterns of behaviour and how these
are inextricably linked with beliefs about the social world.
Schatzki [43] critiqued and built on this work, and argued that
motivations to act are not based on rules but on feelings aligned with
purpose. He proposed that practices are structured around practical
understanding, explicit rules, and teleoaffectivity (desires, beliefs, ex-
pectations relating to goals). For Schatzki, practice was the ‘site of the
social’ – where the roots of action lie, rather than in the person.
J. Stephenson
Reckwitz [4,44] further developed practice theory to include recogni-
tion of the importance of material objects in building and maintaining
practices, influenced here by Latour’s actor-network theory [11] which
makes a strong argument for the influence of objects in social life.
Reckwitz’ ‘vocabulary’ of practice (in the sense of Praktik) has un-
derpinned the application and development of practice theory in energy
consumption research (e.g. [14,45–47]) as well as other sustainability-
related fields including sustainable consumption [48] and climate ac-
tion [49]. Patterns of energy use are explained by people’s adherence
to, and reproduction of, social practices (such as particular ways of
heating, washing or cooking) that achieve desired qualities of social
life. Practices such as these, it is argued, have an existence separate
from the individuals who engage in them: they “historically precede
individuals” ([50]: 2493). The role of individuals are as hosts or carriers
of a practice’ [51], and consumption occurs “within and for the sake of
practices” ([52]: 145). Although individuals can express agency by
withdrawing from or defecting from a practice, practices recruit prac-
titioners to engage and thereby are enabled to reproduce [18], sug-
gesting that practices too have a form of agency.
Although applications of practice theory have predominantly fo-
cused on the ways in which practices replicate and have continuity over
time, some practice-based researchers have more recently taken an
interest in how theories of practice might have potential for under-
standing change [51] and assist in achieving societal transitions [53]
and behavioural change [54]. Shove et al. in particular contend that
theories of practice have ‘untapped potential for understanding change’
([51]: 1). However, given that the theoretical underpinnings are in
sociological thought that sought to unpack the reasons for stability in
the social realm [9], there may be limits to the extent to which practice
theory can be extended to inform change and transition.
One of practice theory’s notable advances is that it “counters the
tendency to attribute all responsibility for what happens to individuals
and their choices” ([55]: 176). However, with its main analytical focus
on the overwhelming power of social practices, individuals’ agency is
given less attention. The representation of individuals as practitioners
who are recruited by, enact and carry forward practices is a passive one,
“ignoring their dynamic, normative or evaluative relation to practices”
([55]: 170). By identifying practices as the ‘site of the social’ [4], the
agency of individual and collective actors is arguably under-explored.
5. Key differences to practice theory
The theoretical influences and ‘vocabulary’ underpinning sustain-
ability cultures are similar in some respects to those underpinning
practice theory. Reckwitz’ widely used definition of practice, as quoted
above is, at face value, not unlike the components of culture under-
pinning the concept of sustainability cultures: “the beliefs and values of
social groups, but also their language, forms of knowledge, and
common sense, as well as the material products, interactional practices
and ways of life established by these” ([17]: 65). A key difference
however is practice theory’s focus on routines (Praktik) whereby human
action that is not routine is not under consideration (an exception is
Maller’s [56] work on house purchasing as a practice).
If we are to take an interest in the processes of social change, it
would seem that the whole of human action (Praxis) should be under
enquiry. As Warde [52] notes, both Praxis and Praktik have been of
interest to sociologists of practice, with Bourdieu in particular empha-
sising the importance of Praxis. Yet practice theory, as it has evolved,
has followed the route of Praktik, producing highly insightful work on
everyday routines but paying less attention to the wider gamut of
human action. The approach used in sustainability cultures is to be
open to all human actions, whether routine or not, considering that
even one-off actions, such as the acquisition of a new technology, may
reflect a cultural shift personally, and potentially collectively. Ignoring
the non-routine also fails to capture the consequential changes to cul-
tural formations that may flow from a single act (e.g. behavioural and
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Energy Research & Social Science 44 (2018) 242–249
normative shifts that would follow from a household replacing their car
with a bicycle).
Another key difference is practice theory’s focus on practices as the
unit of enquiry as compared with sustainability cultures’ focus on ac-
tor’s cultural formations as they relate to sustainability outcomes. This
becomes obvious when viewing the heuristic figures developed for
each, where practice (Praktik) is depicted as the interplay of materials,
meaning and competence [51], while sustainability culture (Fig. 1) is
depicted as the interplay of an actor’s material culture, norms and
practices (in the sense of Praxis). In the first, practices (Praktik) are the
locus of enquiry; in the second, actors’ cultures are the locus of enquiry.
The approach in sustainability cultures aligns with the Geertzian view
that culture should be studied from the actor’s point of view [57].
Culture, for Geertz, ‘is not some abstractly ordered system’ but a set of
relations between cultural elements that derive from people acting (as
far as possible) in a coherent way within structural constraints ([36]:
130). The actor-centred focus of sustainability cultures appears to be
more aligned with this aspect of Geertz’ thinking, although he did not
proceed to elaborate this as a theory of action or practice, and distanced
himself from material conceptions of culture [58].
A further point of contrast between practice theory and sustain-
ability cultures is how they relate to structuration. Structuration pro-
poses that patterns of social life remain relatively constant because
social structures such as class, power, material circumstances, systems
of production, and the organisational rules and principles that underpin
these, transcend individuals and shape their thoughts and actions, who
accordingly replicate the social structures [9,17,59]. Agency, or an
actors’ capacity to make (conscious or unconscious) choices amongst
alternatives [17], is shaped and constrained by social structures, and
their tendency to replicate the structures leads to relative stability over
time in the social realm [9,60]. Practice theory transcends the dualism
of structure and agency by offering a frame within which social actors
both benefit from and reproduce social structures, and elaborating the
constraints within which routine behaviours occur [51].
From the research undertaken using the sustainability cultures fra-
mework, situations have been identified in which culture works in a
structure-like way, whereby widely-shared energy or mobility cultures
influence the cultures of individual actors [61,62]. Broadly-shared
cultural phenomena may effectively constrain actors from changing
their cultures, or alternatively may encourage actors to change. A study
of the timber processing industry, for example, concluded that in-
dividual firms were being influenced to continue with relatively in-
efficient timber drying practices and technologies because this was the
culture of the industry sector, which could be seen in such features as
technical and research support and industry-wide norms [61]. At
broader scales, therefore, culture arguably acts in a similar way to
structures.
The research has also distinguished between cultural and structural
phenomena as separate influences on the social realm. A study of future
transport, for example, found that structural influences supporting the
status quo included vested interests, fuel subsidies, political structures,
infrastructure commitments, and entrenched beliefs and norms. Those
supporting change included investment in and development of new
transport technologies, new sources of autonomy and prestige, chan-
ging expectations regarding environmental concerns, and travel sub-
stitution technologies. At the same time, the change process could be
interpreted through a cultural lens, whereby cities-as-actors had
adopted new technologies, new practices and new norms which to-
gether had created a new culture of mobility which in turn was chan-
ging the mobility lives of citizens [62].
The concept of sustainability cultures has similarities with practice
theory in drawing core ideas from Bourdieu and Giddens, and being
interested in the interplay between cultural characteristics. It differs in
the key respects of (a) a focus on Praxis (all human actions) rather than
Praktik (behavioural routines), (b) a focus on actors’ cultural forma-
tions rather than practices that recruit actors, (c) the ‘unit of enquiry’
J. Stephenson
being the sustainability outcomes of cultural formations, rather than
practices such as eating, washing and sleeping, (d) a predominant focus
on cultural change rather than a predominant focus on cultural re-
plication, and (e) a focus on the interplay between actors’ agency and
structure through the medium of culture rather than through the
medium of practice.
In this respect the concept of sustainability cultures is an application
of concepts that have a long history in social theory, and in particular in
the work of Bourdieu whereby habitus is an ‘active generative matrix of
action’ ([63]: 380, emphasis in original) and a structure in its own right
within a broader structuralist framing. In contrast with practice the-
orists, Bourdieu does not see practice as a coherent entity and empha-
sises the importance of the totality of human action within the framing
of habitus [52]. The development of sustainability cultures to date has
not explored the potential of a deeper engagement with habitus, but the
way in which ‘culture’ in sustainability cultures inquiries is similarly
interpreted as both constraining and generative of change suggests that
deeper exploration is warranted. Furthermore, Bourdieu’s interpreta-
tion of structuration differs from Giddens in the important respect that
he proposes a duality of structures, one manifested in human bodies
with their dispositions and motivations, and the other in wider in-
stitutions and social orders [63]. The findings in the sustainability
cultures research regarding the way in which culture can act in a
structure-like way presages future explorations of culture and structure
through a deeper engagement with Bourdieu’s habitus.
6. Potential applications of sustainability cultures
The concept of sustainability cultures invites exploration of the
cultural formations underpinning sustainability outcomes. Its potential
applications are not only to consumption – it is equally applicable to
exploring the cultures underpinning production (e.g. [61]) or govern-
ance (e.g. [24,62]) which are critical to sustainability outcomes. It
supports exploration of sustainability cultures of actors at multiple
scales, from those of individuals to those of collectives.
The vocabulary and framework of sustainability cultures invites
exploration of questions such as:
- to what extent are these changing or unchanging sustainability
outcomes a result of this/these actors’ cultural attributes?
- are actors’ aspirations to act more sustainably being constrained by
other aspects of their own culture (e.g. material possessions) and/or
circumstances beyond their control?
- if change occurs to one aspect of an actors’ culture (e.g. new ma-
terial culture, changed aspirations) how will this affect other aspects
of their culture, and what will the sustainability-related outcomes
be?
- can clusters of similar cultural formations be identified that are
having similar sustainability outcomes?
- how are actors experiencing wider cultural and structural influences
and why are some changing more than others?
- how can exogenous influences be adjusted and tailored to support
sustainability changes for clusters of actors with similar cultural
formations?
- if this cultural change becomes widespread, what might be the im-
plications for structures and for sustainability outcomes?
As well as offering a way of conceptualising the role of culture in
sustainability outcomes, it also provides structured approach to analysis
by defining the ‘unit of enquiry’ and its nominal boundaries. Research
into energy and mobility cultures has used both qualitative and quan-
titative methods to study cultural characteristics, including focus
groups [25], surveys [64] and interviews [26]. Studies have gathered
data on external influences through a variety of methods including
interviews [29], policy analysis [65], and expert Delphi [62]. Findings
have underpinned the development of policy advice on interventions to
247
Energy Research & Social Science 44 (2018) 242–249
support more sustainable energy and mobility cultures [41].
Investigating culture, and its outcomes, at the level of an individual
actor may appear to be challenging its fundamental interpretation as a
shared social phenomenon. However as Archer ([66]: 336) points out,
there are two distinct strands within the concept of culture, one being
“the notion of a cultural pattern with an underlying unity and a fun-
damental coherence” and the other being “the notion of uniform action;
identified with the above and stemming from it to produce social
homogeneity”. The rationale for starting at the actor level is to explore
the nature and coherence of their cultural attributes in terms of the first
strand, and to then explore the degree of uniform expression of co-
herent cultural patterns across a wider group or society as a whole, and
ultimately to consider the sustainability outcomes. Furthermore, while
culture may be a collective expression when considered at an aggregate
level, it will never be identically expressed given the infinite variety of
actors and contexts, so the ‘social homogeneity’ referred to by Archer is,
in the real world, more likely to be subtle variations on a theme (and
occasionally a more significant shift from one cultural formation to
another). While it is possible (and important) to identify similarities in
cultural characteristics across groups of actors, it is useful to understand
its expression at the level of individual actors first (and with this, to
recognise individuals may display different cultural formations in re-
lation to different sustainability questions). Using this as the base unit
of analysis, it is possible to build up an understanding of shared or
similar cultural patterns across the population under study.
Cultures change over time, and change will not be uniform across a
culture group. Change, whether rapid or slow, is characterised by al-
terations in people’s ways of life, either on a one-off basis (e.g. ac-
quiring a new technology) or on an ongoing basis (e.g. choosing to cycle
rather than using a car). For social scientists with an interest in sus-
tainability transitions, these moments of change, and their causes and
effects, would seem to be of at least equal importance to understanding
the reproduction of routines. There will always be some actors leading
change in a particular direction and some lagging, so understanding
this variability across actors will help in studying the process of change.
The approach used in sustainability cultures is to recognise that cultural
change can happen in stages (e.g. a normative shift may precede a
behavioural shift, or a new technology may precipitate new practices).
Studying these changes at the granular level of the actor helps reveal
the uneven, incremental process of culture change. Finally, any given
actor is likely to have multiple cultural identities when viewed from an
outcome perspective: for example, their energy consumption norms at
home may be at odds with their energy consumption norms when at
work. These varied cultural formations may be important to explore
especially if they are working against each other and preventing a shift
to more sustainable outcomes. Studying these phenomena helps reveal
how culture can constrain change, as well as the processes whereby
cultures may change and thereby alter the sustainability-related out-
comes.
There is scope to further extend the sustainability cultures ap-
proach. Within the energy context, household and business energy
cultures can be further explored and contrasted to help understand
heterogeneity and identify options to develop carefully targeted policy
interventions. Studies are needed to examine the extent to which actors’
cultural attributes are internally consistent in relation to sustainability
outcomes, and, if not, whether inconsistency (e.g. aspirations at odds
with practices) indicates opportunities for change interventions. The
nexus of multiple co-existing sustainability cultures (e.g. an actor’s
water culture vs energy culture, or multiple mobility cultures within a
single household) could be usefully explored to reveal the interplay
between these. Future opportunities for methodological extension exist
to undertake ethnographic-type studies that explore a wide range of
cultural characteristics including knowledge, language and symbolism.
Further studies could contrast the interpretation of culture as depen-
dent variable in a field of cause-and-effect relationships with culture as
meanings embedded within practice and material artefacts. Application
J. Stephenson
to under-explored and new topics (e.g. water, carbon, agriculture, food)
could help address applied questions as well as assist in further theo-
retical development.
Despite its unorthodox interdisciplinary origins, the concepts un-
derpinning sustainability cultures are aligned with cultural theory, and
Bourdieu’s habitus in particular. Its interest in Praxis rather than
Praktik, its focus on actor’s cultural formations, its ‘unit of inquiry’
being the relationship between cultural attributes and sustainability
outcomes, represent significant differences to practice theory. More
substantial theoretical inquiry is needed to explore whether the un-
derpinning concepts of sustainability cultures have ontologically
sounds linkages to Bourdieu’s lesser known interest in Praxis.
7. Conclusion
Transitioning to a sustainable future requires widespread changes in
collective subjectivities – what Reckwitz calls a change in the social
‘ought’ ([4]: 245) – along with changes in the material and behavioural
components of the lives of households, businesses and other societal
collectives. The 20th century focus of social theory on why societies are
so stable continues to influence social and cultural theories. The chal-
lenge for social research in the 21st century is, however, about deep
societal change: how to rapidly transform systems of production and
consumption in ways that achieve a sustainable, just and equitable
future. This question invites new ways of thinking about stability and
change in the social world and its intersections with the physical.
Although a relatively new approach, sustainability cultures shows
promise for inquiring into the cultural underpinning of sustainability
outcomes in multiple contexts and at different scales. Its primary focus
on processes of change offers a different but complementary approach
to practice theory’s primary focus on replication. At an applied level,
the ‘vocabulary’ of sustainability cultures leads to investigations of the
social world that link outcomes to cultural formations, and identifica-
tion of opportunities to change those outcomes. As a heuristic device it
opens up a different way of seeing the social world and analysing social
phenomena. Extending from its original applications to energy ques-
tions, it is apparent that it has scope to address a broader range of
sustainability topics including at the nexus of energy, mobility and
carbon.
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