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Minding the Mundane: Everyday Practices as Central Pillar of Sustainability Thinking and Research

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Environment and Society

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Environmental Sociology and Policy ((PASTESP))

Abstract

Global efforts towards sustainability have had limited success to date, which can be partly attributed to the paradoxical nature of the concept itself. This chapter responds to this paradox by redefining sustainability as the accumulation within society of practices that organise socio-cultural life while conserving resources. Although adopting an approach to sustainability—itself a global challenge—that focuses on everyday practices and their measurement might appear counterintuitive, the chapters argues that doing so can yield more accessible and inclusive sustainability initiatives and assessment tools whose design and use involve citizens, communities, scientists and policy-makers. It also reveals how a renewed focus on people’s daily lives offers a radical and credible alternative to growth-based development concepts, opening up new avenues towards sustainability research, policy and practice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Shove (2010) offers a detailed critique of what she labels the Attitudes-Behaviour-Choice (ABC) model of human behavior. Similarly, Edmondson and Hülser (2012) offer a multi-facetted critique of excessively cognitivised ways of conceptualizing reasoning itself.

  2. 2.

    https://www.iisd.org/measure/compendium/searchinitiatives.aspx, accessed 14 August 2015.

  3. 3.

    https://www.iisd.org/measure/compendium/searchinitiatives.aspx, accessed 14 August 2015.

  4. 4.

    http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/indicators/ (last accessed 15 April 2017).

  5. 5.

    https://collabcubed.com/2011/11/01/the-tidy-street-project/ (accessed 14th April 2017).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, LMU, Munich, Germany

    Henrike Rau

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  1. Henrike Rau
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Correspondence to Henrike Rau .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden

    Magnus Boström

  2. Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Debra J. Davidson

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Rau, H. (2018). Minding the Mundane: Everyday Practices as Central Pillar of Sustainability Thinking and Research. In: Boström, M., Davidson, D. (eds) Environment and Society. Palgrave Studies in Environmental Sociology and Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76415-3_10

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