The Cultures Framework

Abstract

This chapter introduces the cultures framework, which offers a conceptual structure for visualising and analysing the relationship between culture and sustainability. It has been extensively tested through research on a wide range of sustainability problems. The core of the framework—which conveys the interactions between motivators, activities and materiality, together called the cultural ensemble—reflects widely shared understandings of culture’s features and dynamics as discussed in Chapter 3. The framework also incorporates conceptual elements from other fields of knowledge. From systems theory, it takes understandings of system dynamics and system boundaries. From structuration, it adopts the concept of agency and applies it to circumscribe actors’ cultures. Contextual pressures on culture are drawn into consideration as external influences. Sustainability outcomes are the tangible effects of how these variables work through actors’ cultures. These ideas are visually represented in a model which is applicable to cultural analysis at any scale.

Introduction

In Chapters 2 and 3 I focused on the question: ‘what is culture?’ From this chapter onwards, my focus turns to how to depict culture’s relationship with sustainability-related outcomes. This requires both a narrower and a wider framing than the discussion in the previous two chapters. Narrower, because it means paying attention to particular aspects of actors’ cultures that have a causal relationship with sustainability outcomes. Wider, because although cultural theories can help in this quest, other bodies of knowledge also contribute.

As briefly outlined in Chapter 1, the cultures framework was initially developed to underpin research on the poor uptake of energy efficiency by households and businesses. Its development was informed by a range of theories, only some of which could be called cultural. The framework has since been widely used to underpin research on sustainability-related questions and has proved its usefulness as a sound and flexible analytical structure. Over time, the framework has changed subtly as its core language was adjusted to reflect its broadening scope beyond energy topics. In this chapter, I introduce a new iteration of the framework, drawing from my work in developing this book—from both my review of cultural theories (Chapters 2 and 3) and my review of its many applications around the world (Chapters 5 and 6). Readers interested in the backstory of the cultures framework are encouraged to read earlier papers that track its applications and evolution over time (Stephenson, 2018; Stephenson et al., 2010, 2015a).

The cultures framework offers an analytical structure to describe and investigate culture’s relationship with sustainability. It is centred on actors, by which I mean that it is designed to explore the cultural characteristics of individuals, households, communities, businesses, organisations, sectors or other collectives at any scale. It provides a scaffold for identifying cultural characteristics of the relevant actors that give rise to sustainability-related outcomes. In addition, the framework draws attention to actors’ agency, and to broader influences that shape culture and its consequences for sustainability. While the cultures framework represents a widely shared set of concepts about culture, it extends beyond culture to depict the interplay between culture, the agency of cultural actors and their context.

I start this chapter by explaining what I mean by framework, differentiating between theories and frameworks. Because the cultures framework seeks to represent the causal relationships between culture and sustainability outcomes, I then discuss how the concept of causality can be applied to complex systems such as culture. For the remainder of the chapter, I present the cultures framework in stages, first explaining each of its component parts and how these have conceptually evolved, and then how it operates as a complete framework.

Theories and Frameworks

Theories are abstract explanations or conceptualisations of the workings of some aspect of the cosmos. They specify the scope of an inquiry, offer propositions and testable hypotheses, provide a descriptive vocabulary and are usually specific to a discipline or field of study. Whether explicitly or not, theories assume an ontology (the aspect of existence that is ‘real’ for the purposes of the study) and epistemology (the forms of knowledge that can describe that ‘reality’). For example, theories of chemistry are founded in an ontology of material substances, classical physics is interested in forces and fields, and psychology focuses on the processes of the human mind. Theories thus shape what features or qualities of a phenomenon are studied and how they are studied. They can be powerful and effective for in-depth investigations of a particular aspect of the world. However, they can also constrain thinking on complex issues if they force a narrow focus and reductive consideration of the phenomenon being studied.

Traditionally, the scientific method has largely relied upon single-theory investigations, arguing that combining ontologies and epistemologies is bad science. This may be the case where a discipline has particular expectations of what constitutes evidence and proof. However, it is increasingly evident that this does not necessarily produce the best results where the problem under investigation is complex and multi-faceted (Sabatier & Weible, 2014). Relying on single theories can create cognitive presuppositions whereby only parts of complex situations and processes are recognised, and important aspects may be missed. Transformative agendas such as sustainability transitions require collaboration-inducing frameworks that can represent and include diverse forms of knowledge and multiple ways of understanding the world (Wyborn et al., 2019). Using several theories allows complex problems to be investigated from different perspectives, avoiding ‘capture’ by the assumptions that are built into theories, and (if done well) enabling robust conclusions supported by multiple sources of evidence.

Frameworks are a way of helping to organise a multi-theoretical approach. The term ‘framework’ is sometimes equated with ‘theory’ by social scientists, but I adopt Elinor Ostrom’s perspective that frameworks operate at a meta-theoretical level (Ostrom, 2005). Frameworks set out highly generalised variables and indicate the relationships between them. By depicting a complex field through certain universal qualities and dynamics, a framework can help researchers to formulate questions and thence identify the theories that are best suited to answering those questions. Once analysis has been undertaken, a framework can help with integrating the findings to describe the field from multiple perspectives.

The cultures framework was initially developed as a framework in Ostrom’s sense, to depict a set of high-level variables that were of shared relevance to a multidisciplinary team of researchers. Across many studies, and at more generalised levels, it has continued to work effectively as a framework that supports multi-theory, multidisciplinary research. At the same time, the cultures framework can be used as a theory in its own right, albeit one that is open to a wide range of methods of inquiry. In this latter respect, it has underpinned many studies as a theory about how cultural dynamics give rise to sustainability outcomes. This ability to use it as either a framework or a theory will be further elaborated in Chapter 8, where I discuss its use to underpin research.

Culture and Causality

Almost any question to do with cultural processes will involve highly complex sets of variables, and especially so where we are needing to consider the interplay between social and physical realms, as with sustainability issues. I find it helpful to think of culture as a complex adaptive system, a term applied to open, dynamic, self-organising systems that involve exchanges and transformations of information, energy and other resources (Turner & Baker, 2019). Self-organisation refers to the concept that no single part of the system has direct or exclusive control over the system as a whole; instead the system’s dynamics are the result of multiple ongoing physical and/or cognitive interactions. External forces—those over which these systems have little or no direct control—can shape the system because it has the ability to respond and adapt. Complex systems thus involve countless interactions between countless phenomena, including feedback loops that can stabilise or amplify features of the system. Common features of complex adaptive systems include path dependence, temporality, non-linearity, emergence and adaptive capacity, all of which are features of culture. Theories of complexity are thus helpful in understanding the dynamics of cultural processes.

We are accustomed to thinking about causality as a linear process: action X gives rise to Y which gives rise to Z. In most scientific studies, statistical evidence is necessary to prove cause-and-effect relationships between variables, but understanding causal processes in complex social systems is a very different consideration. Here causality is the result of multiple diverse factors interacting over time which may be ontologically and epistemologically distinct (e.g. symbolism, human actions, physical technologies, power relationships, policies). Causal reconstructions that seek to explain outcomes need to decide which variables and processes to focus on. This involves identifying high-level and influential processes among variables that can be observed playing out over multiple cases. Causal claims in complex social systems are, therefore, rarely able to be statistically proven because there are too many variables and/or they cannot all be measured. Instead claims of causality must rely on repeated observable and traceable mechanisms.

These mechanisms—the means by which outcomes are brought about—can be explored at a general level or confined to a narrow range of variables and processes. General mechanisms refer to ‘general activities and social interactions that bring about change’ (Geels, 2022: 10). These include actors and their properties, and the activities they engage in by themselves or with others. Assumptions regarding these properties and mechanisms will differ according to the choice of theories. An interpretivist analysis, for example, would focus on the role of sense-making and meaning, while conflict theory would focus on power differentials and struggles, and actor-network theory would be interested in the agentive power of technologies. Specific causal mechanisms are less abstract and ‘provide causal logics for more focused topics and issues’ (Geels, 2022: 10). Examples relevant to sustainability questions include the theory of adoption of new innovations (Rogers, 2003), theory of planned behaviour (Ajzen, 1991) and theories of socio-technical transitions (Smith, 2007). Conceptual frameworks that seek to show how complex systems operate generally accommodate multiple theoretical models at both general and specific levels that elucidate different causal mechanisms and indicate their relationships.

In a complex system, although no single part can control the whole, a change in one variable can have considerable influence on other parts of the system and thus on the outcomes in which we are interested. In addition to the systems’ tendency to self-organisation, it is necessary to pay attention to processes of systemic change, including how and where change is initiated. This means we need to account for agency—the ability of actors in the system to make choices that have repercussions for other parts of the system. Examples from a sustainability perspective could include a decision by an investor to remove their funds from a fossil-fuel intensive sector, an angler’s decision to fish in a protected area, or a commuter’s decision to walk to work rather than drive. Agency adds further complexity to analysing systems, because the social world cannot be analysed as if it were a machine with fully predictable relationships between its parts: humans, thankfully, can do the unexpected.

In many respects, then, culture operates as a complex adaptive system. Its sustainability outcomes rarely involve linear causality, but generalised and specific mechanisms can be identified. Culture has a tendency towards self-organisation but is also open to change, both from the agentive power of cultural actors and from broader influences on culture.

Of course, culture is not the only contributor to sustainability outcomes. In the case of climate change, for example, causal explanations of human failure to take action include (amongst numerous other explanations) individuals' psychology (Gifford, 2011), market failures (Stern, 2007) and vested interests (Franta, 2021). The cultures framework brings forward the role of culture as another (often overlooked) causal contributor which is a complex system in its own right. The sustainability outcomes of this system depend on the features and dynamics of the cultural ensemble in question and also, importantly, the choices of individual actors. Together, these interactions have implications for social, economic and environmental measures of sustainability.

Overview of the Cultures Framework

The cultures framework is a set of interrelated high-level concepts that represent a complex adaptive system with culture at the core. These concepts and the relationships are visually represented as a model (Fig. 1.2 in Chapter 1)—a cognitive aid offering a ‘thinkable format for reflection on and reasoning about the domain in question’ (Harré, 2009: 133). Models use a set of concepts that attempt to capture the essential characteristics of a field, and a simplified logic to infer relationships between the parts. Each concept represents a distillation of an aspect of the field of study and is given a representative term or phrase.

Words matter, particularly when one is seeking to communicate ideas precisely. As should be clear from Chapter 2, words can have multiple meanings, and may mean different things to different people. A word in one setting can have a very different set of connotations in another, even where it appears to refer to the same thing. Certain words also carry the weight of their own academic histories, having been chosen to represent a specific academic concept, often particular to a discipline or theory. Choosing the right terms to represent a set of ideas can be fraught.

With the cultures framework, the choice of words to describe the core set of stripped-down concepts has evolved over time. This is partly a result of the expanding scope of the model from energy topics (‘energy cultures framework’) to the more generic ‘cultures framework’. Additionally, some of the core terms have been adjusted to ensure they represent the right scope of meaning, are reasonably straightforward to understand at face value, and are as free from theoretical confusion as possible.

The following sections introduce the cultures framework in stages. I first introduce the core elements of the cultural ensemble (‘motivators’, ‘activities’ and ‘materiality’) and their dynamics. I then discuss the means by which culture is learned, enabled and communicated (‘vectors’). This framing might be sufficient to study culture itself as a field of enquiry, but the cultures framework has a broader purpose: to hypothesise the causal role of culture in relation to sustainability. To support this particular agenda, the framework incorporates three further core concepts; the first relating to constraints on cultural actors’ abilities to make independent choices (the ‘agency barrier); the second representing the context that shapes a given culture (‘external influences’); and the third reflecting the implications of the interactions of all of these for selected measures of sustainability (‘sustainability outcomes’).

The diagrams in this section, and indeed throughout the book, are purposefully drawn with basic online drawing tools so that anyone can replicate them with ease. This aligns with my aim to democratise culture as a concept; to make it readily understandable and useable as an analytical approach by anyone in any situation.

The Cultural Ensemble

The term ‘cultural ensemble’ describes the dynamic whole of the three core elements of culture—how people think, what they do, and associated material items. Ensemble is a term most commonly used to refer to a group of musicians, actors or dancers who perform together, but is also applied to a group of any items viewed as a whole. I have adopted ‘ensemble’ in both of these senses: a group of features viewed as a whole that are also dynamically interactive. In the cultures framework, the cultural ensemble is shown as three core elements linked by two-way arrows (Fig. 4.1). These elements comprise motivators, activities and materiality, and align with the three sets of cultural elements identified in Table 3.1.

Fig. 4.1

The cultural ensemble

Motivators

I use ‘motivators’ to refer to shared characteristics that shape or influence actors’ actions and choices. These include norms, values, beliefs, symbolism, language and cognitive and bodily knowledge: the range of cultural qualities associated with ‘how people think’ in Table 3.1.

The important roles that these play in thought processes and thereby in actions and decision-making are extensively discussed in psychological, sociological, anthropological and cultural literature. Learned from others and shared with others, they constrain and shape actors’ thoughts, judgements, decisions and actions. Cultural motivators exclude psychological characteristics that are unique to individuals, and those that are shared by humanity generally.

Previous versions of the cultures framework used the term ‘norms’ rather than ‘motivators’. In early research using the cultures framework, shared norms were shown to be a powerful influence on actors’ sustainability characteristics (Stephenson et al., 2015a). Norms reflect what actors consider to be ‘normal’ in their daily lives, establish expectations about how to behave in a particular context and convey the potential for social disapproval if these expectations are not met. Some of our work suggested that it was also important to pay attention to aspirational norms, as these may act as a springboard for change under the right circumstances (Ford et al., 2017). Although norms can be sometimes hard to extract from research participants as they are so bound up in actors’ perspectives of normalcy, our team and other researchers have repeatedly found them to be an important cultural influence on sustainability outcomes.

Over time it became clear that ‘norms’ did not capture a sufficiently wide range of influential cognitive characteristics. Research using the cultures framework showed that beliefs, understandings, meanings, values and forms of knowledge were also important influences on sustainability outcomes. Their role in culture was further emphasised by the review discussed in Chapter 3. Clearly, it was necessary to adopt a term with a broader reach. In the absence of a commonly used umbrella term for ‘beliefs, norms, aspirations, meanings, values and forms of knowledge and understanding’, I have adopted the term ‘motivators’. This term emphasises how shared cognitive characteristics shape and underpin actors’ actions and decisions, and fits with the focus of the cultures framework on the relationships between culture and sustainability outcomes.

Activities

‘Activities’ encompasses 'what people do' in Table 3.1.  It replaces the term ‘practices’, which was used in earlier versions of the cultures framework. Practices had been intended to be interpreted in its everyday meaning of customary actions, and to include both everyday routines and infrequent actions. This is consistent with some academic interpretations (e.g. anthropologist Sherry Ortner calls practice ‘all forms of human action’ or ‘anything people do’ [Ortner, 1984: 149]). For sociologists, however, practice tends to be more narrowly interpreted as habitual activities, and in social practice theory, it has an even more specialised interpretation (see culture-as-practice, Chapter 2). This caused confusion among some users of the framework.

‘Activities’ has less academic load and is generally understood as the things people do. Research using the cultures framework has repeatedly shown how sustainability outcomes can be strongly influenced by one-off or occasional actions (e.g. purchasing a house or car) as well as by everyday routines (e.g. heating practices). Chapter 3’s review of definitions reinforces that the ‘doing’ of culture includes routines (e.g. ‘habits’, ‘rituals’, ‘habitual behaviours’) and less regular actions (e.g. ‘behaviour’, ‘bodily activities’, ‘actions’) (see Table 3.1) refers to all of the ‘doings’ of cultural actors and includes the full spectrum from regularly repeated routines to occasional or rare actions.

Materiality

It isn’t easy to find a word that is sufficiently broad to capture the range of things that people have, make and acquire. ‘Material culture’ is often used in anthropology to refer to the physical evidence of culture, including tools, objects and structures (Woodward, 2007) and was initially used in the energy cultures framework. The concept includes the understanding that such items have both functional and symbolic qualities, and that people’s decisions to make, use, acquire or discard them are significantly shaped by their alignments (or misalignments) with other cultural characteristics, such as beliefs, norms and practices. The shift in terminology to ‘materiality’ in more recent versions of the framework was largely triggered by the confusion caused by the doubling up of the word ‘culture’ (as in ‘cultures framework’ and ‘material culture’) and also by the particular association of material culture with the discipline of anthropology.

‘Materiality’ avoids this disciplinary capture and is intended as an umbrella term for physical items, features and products as well as those that scarcely have corporeal form, such as digital phenomena. Its scope aligns with the descriptors in the bottom row of Table 3.1. As with all terms, it is not perfect as it carries an alternate sense of significant or important, but this does not seem to have caused confusion in research using the cultures framework to date.

Cultural Dynamics

Motivators, activities and materiality form the core elements of the cultural ensemble, but they cannot be neatly teased apart; in fact, a large part of what we recognise as culture is the utter entanglement of the mental, physical and active aspects of social life. In this section, I discuss how the cultures framework invites consideration of the dynamics within and between cultural elements, and also cultural dynamics between actors within a culture group. Inconsistencies or reinforcements within or between cultural elements may help explain how and why cultures change or remain relatively static over time.

Cultural dynamics in any given situation will be immensely complex, so as with any systems model the attempt here is to highlight particular interactions that may be useful to consider when undertaking cultural analyses, without constraining consideration of other cultural dynamics.

Dynamics Between Cultural Elements

The interplay between cultural elements is indicated by the curved arrows between the three elements (Fig. 4.1). The arrows draw attention to how cultural features are often closely entangled, such as the symbolism implicit in cars, or how social norms shape our clothing choices. The arrows also indicate how cultural features may shape or influence one another, such as how technologies invite particular practices (e.g. smart phones have led to new forms of communication). This doesn’t mean that these interplays are always supportive—for example, people may believe in climate change but fail to adopt low-carbon travel practices—but it invites the exploration of any relevant relationships between motivators, activities and materiality.

Inter-element dynamics such as these have often been explored in research using the cultures framework, and they appear to play an important role in both cultural stasis and cultural change. Where cultural features actively support each other, they can effectively create balancing loops (using system dynamics parlance), and the resulting cultural ensemble can be very resistant to change. In other situations, where these linkages are less strong, cultures can change rapidly as a result of a disturbance to one element. I will discuss examples of both situations in Chapters 5 and 6, respectively.

Dynamics Within Cultural Elements

The interplay within cultural elements—that is, between the features within an element—can also affect sustainability outcomes (Fig. 4.2). In relation to materiality, for example, if people generate their own electricity through solar power, they may be more likely to want to acquire an electric vehicle. In relation to activities, patterns of church attendance may have implications for cooking routines. Motivators can also interplay, such that safety concerns might override environmental concerns in parents’ choices to drive their children to school. Research using the cultures framework has revealed some of these dynamics and examples are discussed in later chapters.

Fig. 4.2

Intra-element dynamics

This concept of intra-element dynamics is not visually represented in the main cultures framework, but it is indicated here as circular arrows representing interactions between features within each element.

Dynamics Between Cultural Actors

While we can analyse culture at the level of a single actor, culture is a collective phenomenon. Actors (individuals, households, organisations, etc.) learn culture from others and share their culture with others. This is often an unconscious process but may also be intentional, such as within organisations seeking to develop a particular culture. Interactions between members of a culture group are thus another cultural dynamic to consider: the ways in which cultural features are learned from others, mutually reinforced, and shared with others.

To date, uses of the cultures framework have not generally paid much attention to how culture is learned and transmitted, which is unsurprising as this was never discussed or signalled in seminal papers. However, in a sustainability context, it may be critical to pay attention to these processes. To understand how culture is maintained and replicated, or how it alters over time, it is important to appreciate both the means by which it is learned, and the cognitive and physiological processes that enable culture to be absorbed and acted upon.

Culture is learned and passed on through all of our senses. As children we learn our family’s culture through hearing sounds and languages, smelling and tasting foods, seeing and observing what others do, and through bodily interactions such as carrying out tasks and interacting with familiar objects. We learn about the shared significance and meaning of words, objects and practices. At school this learning continues as we are immersed in a new culture, with different languages and signifiers, new bodily skills and new forms of knowledge and understanding. This repeats in different contexts such as being employed in a new workplace or travelling to a different country. We absorb wider cultural concepts through means, such as visual media, social interactions and observations of social life. We model others by learning and adopting particular forms of language and bodily communication. Culture is reinforced through discourses, signifiers and representations that convey meanings which are shared by those within a culture group. In some instances, this involves deliberately closing out others who do not adopt those cultural features (Gray & McGuigan, 1997; Storey, 2018).

Work in the cognitive social sciences has shown that people learn culture through two distinct pathways, and then encode and store this knowledge in physiologically and functionally distinct memory systems that have different retrieval mechanisms (Lizardo, 2017). Omar Lizardo names these as declarative culture and non-declarative culture, but I will use the more easily understood ‘semantic’ and ‘bodily’ knowledge. Semantic knowledge is mostly what Lizardo calls ‘know-that’ and is mainly in the form of propositions about the world that are removed from a personal context. For the most part semantic knowledge is learned through spoken and written language and acquired through a relatively small number of exposures. Examples include lay knowledge absorbed from childhood, formal learning in education and understandings picked up through media. Bodily knowledge is about ‘know-how’ and is acquired quite differently, being built up from long-term repeated exposure to consistent patterns of experience. It involves the repetition of bodily actions, repetitive use of perceptual and motor skills, and recurring cognitive and emotional messages picked up about the world. This is a ‘slow learning’ pathway that builds up through habituation and the learning of skills. The existence of two separate routes for the acquisition and retrieval of cultural knowledge has immense implications for cultural replication and cultural change, and for the design of policy interventions.

Through these cultural vectors, people absorb similar routines to others, adopt or make similar material items, and/or develop similar norms or beliefs. The very existence of common motivators, objects and activities can facilitate inter-group dynamics, creating a strong feeling of identity. This sense of being members of a group that shares cultural features may be overt, such as where people actively align (e.g. members of Extinction Rebellion) or membership may be relatively invisible to adherents, especially where shared features are ubiquitous (e.g. the ubiquitous role of automobiles in everyday life in most developed countries).

There may also be important interplays to consider between different cultural vectors. For example, semantic knowledge will not necessarily be consistent with knowledge learned and held in bodily skills, and this may have implications for sustainability. Research on efficient driving, for example, found that while people cognitively understood how to drive efficiently, their learned bodily skills dominated so that their everyday driving was inefficient (Scott & Lawson, 2018).

Understanding inter-actor cultural dynamics and their role in cultural learning and reinforcement is important for sustainability research. If we are seeking to understand cultural inertia, we need to know how cultural patterns are learned and reinforced between actors in ways that make deviation difficult. If we are interested in cultural change, then it is helpful to be aware of how adjustments in culture are passed from one actor to another within a culture group, and possibly spread beyond a culture group to be adopted by others.

I refer to these dynamics collectively as vectors—ways in which cultural is actively learned and then shared with (and adopted by) others (Fig. 4.3). As with intra-element dynamics, cultural vectors are not visually represented in the standard model of the cultures framework (Fig. 1.2) but may be important to consider in analyses using the framework.

Fig. 4.3

Vectors: processes of cultural learning

Assembling Culture

The conceptual language of the cultures framework describes cultures in terms of certain highly generalised variables. The three core elements of motivators, activities and materiality are strongly aligned with the common elements of culture identified in Table 3.1, Chapter 3. The shared qualities identified in Table 3.2—of cultural membership, cultural learning, cultural systems and cultural endurance—are reflected in inter-element dynamics, intra-element dynamics and cultural vectors.

Weaving these concepts together, I define culture (for the purposes of the cultures framework) as comprising distinctive patterns of motivators (norms, values, beliefs, knowledge  and symbolism), activities (routines and actions) and materiality (products and acquisitions) that form dynamic ensembles which are shared by a group of people and learned through both cognitive and bodily processes.

This definition draws attention to the three core elements of the cultural ensemble, to the dynamics between those elements and to the processes involved in cultural learning and cultural membership. It invites investigation of culture as a complex dynamic system, as well as more simply as recognisable patterns of elements within a population.

Figure 4.4 is a visual summary of the discussion above, illustrating the concepts that are encompassed by the high-level variables of motivators, activities, materiality and vectors.  When this set of concepts is applied in the cultures framework, we purposefully select the motivators, activities and materiality to investigate. The focus is necessarily on those aspects of our actors' cultural ensemble that have a causal relationship with the sustainability outcomes in which we are interested.  If we are interested in water consumption, for example, we are unlikely to need to consider actors' commuting routines, but this would be relevant if we were interested in carbon emissions. In the following chapters there are many examples of how other researchers have determined the scope of the motivators, activities and materiality relevant to their field of interest.

Fig. 4.4

Features of motivators, activities, materiality and vectors

Actors, Agency and the Scope of Culture

From this point, I start to introduce additional features of the cultures framework that take it beyond simply a model of culture. I first put bounds around the scope of culture in order to bring into consideration the potential for actors to alter features of their cultural ensembles. Actors may include individuals, groups, communities households, businesses, organisations or other collectives. The ‘unit of analysis’ is the cultural ensemble of the actor, with a particular focus on those features and qualities of their ensemble that are causally linked to sustainability outcomes. For example, if we were interested in water pollution from dairy farming, the relevant actors would likely be dairy farmers, and we would seek to understand what aspects of their particular ensemble of motivators, activities and materiality, and the dynamics between these, related to discharges to water. In addition, and critically for sustainability purposes, we would need to consider the extent to which they would be able to make changes to this cultural ensemble if they were so inclined.

Generally, when we think of culture, it is a relatively boundless concept; an aspect of social life that is discernible at every scale from (for example) how individuals prepare food to how the global food system operates. Like any system, culture has no defined edges, and this is one of the reasons why it can be hard to describe and study. For the purposes of the cultures framework, however, we purposefully limit the scope of the aspects of culture that form our core focus. This is a common technique used in systems analysis, where an artificial boundary is placed around the part of the system to be investigated while recognising its interconnections with the wider system. With the cultures framework, this is conceptually achieved by drawing a boundary that distinguishes between the motivators, activities and materiality that the actor potentially has some control over, and those that they do not.

In this way, the concept of agency (the capacity to achieve desired change) is incorporated in the cultures framework. If cultural change is to occur (towards more sustainable outcomes) it will generally involve actor-led adjustments to their motivators, materiality or activities. This requires considerations of the extent to which that actor is able to make deliberate changes. So rather than depicting culture as a relatively fuzzy pattern of features observable in social life, the cultures framework draws a boundary around actors’ cultures to represent the point at which their agency diminishes sharply. Beyond this point, cultural characteristics still exist, but for the purposes of the cultures framework these are considered to be external to the actor’s cultural ensemble.

The ‘agency boundary’ is indicated in the cultures framework as a dashed circle around the core dynamics of an actor’s cultural ensemblee (Fig. 4.5). Within the circle are the elements and dynamics of the actors’ culture, to the extent that they enact it and have the potential to adjust it.

Fig. 4.5

The agency boundary

To provide an example of what I mean, I draw from the work of one of my Masters’ students who studied the energy cultures of tenants (Nicholas, 2021). She identified material items, norms and practices that tenants had the capacity to alter in order to improve the energy performance of their homes. This formed the extent of their agency, and thereby formed the conceptual boundary around the tenants’ energy culture. This was contrasted with the energy culture of their landlords, which included attitudes towards tenants’ complaints about damp and cold, their maintenance practices and their ownership of the accommodation and its fixed heating assets. Because of landlord—tenant relationships, there were many actions that tenants could not undertake to improve energy performance and landlords could, but did not necessarily choose to. The agency boundary thus indicates the limits of the actor’s capacity to act to change features of their cultures, should they choose to do so. What is ‘in’ and out’ of a cultural actor’s agency is always going to be context-dependent, but it has proved to be a fruitful concept in research using the cultures framework.

The agency boundary also draws attention to power differentials. Agency will be influenced by many things. For householders, for example, this might include their financial circumstances, their age or gender, their education, their familiarity with bureaucratic systems, specialist knowledge, or whether they own or rent their home. For actors such as businesses or organisations, agency will be affected by other factors. The greater the agency limitations, the harder it is for actors to adjust their way out of an unsustainable culture, and the more their cultural ensembles will be constrained and shaped by external factors including wider cultural influences.

Agency is a critical consideration for policy or other interventions for change because agency limitations (and related power differentials) can constrain actors’ ability to adjust aspects of their cultural ensemble even if they wish to, or prevent them from taking advantage of a policy initiative. I illustrate this point in Chapter 5 with examples, and in Chapters 7 and 8 I show how the concept of agency can be applied in policy development and research.

External Influences

Cultures don’t exist as a separate bubble from the rest of the world—they form and evolve in response to their context. They are shaped by history, environmental conditions, political developments, broad ideologies and countless other influences. These can be conceived of as a variety of external or exogenous influences which either support the current cultural ensemble or support cultural change. In organisational theory, the terms transactional and contextual environments are used to make a similar distinction (Emery & Trist, 1965).

The cultures framework places these influences outside the agency boundary, as they are largely beyond any control by individual actors (Fig. 4.6). There are of course myriad contextual factors at play with any culture, but for the purposes of analysis using the cultures framework we limit the range of external influences under consideration. We focus on those that are either supporting cultural stasis and those that are (potentially) tending to drive cultural change. In applying this to personal mobility, for example, investments in motorway infrastructure and carparking tend to support a car-dominant culture while investments in walkways and cycleways may support a shift to more active mobility (Stephenson et al., 2015b). The power of external influences on cultural stasis and cultural change will be discussed further in Chapters 5 and 6.

Fig. 4.6

Differentiating between external influences that support cultural stasis and those that support cultural change

In Giddensian terms (see culture-as-structure in Chapter 2) the agency boundary can be interpreted as the point of interplay between structure and agency, although analysis using the cultures framework is not limited to always considering external influences in structural terms. It is open to other conceptualisations of these broader influences, including envisaging some external influences as being cultural. In other words, the cultures of less powerful actors can be shaped by the cultures of more powerful actors.  This is indicated diagrammatically in Fig. 4.7 below. I discuss and illustrate this idea of less powerful cultures being influenced by more powerful ones in Chapter 5.

Fig. 4.7

Conceiving of external influences as more powerful cultures

Although external influences are by definition largely unchangeable by actors, there may be occasions when an actor’s influence can reach beyond the agency barrier and help to transform previously unreachable structures and cultures. This transformative potential of culture is discussed further in Chapter 6.

Sustainability Outcomes

The final component of the cultures framework vocabulary is ‘outcomes’. Cultural ensembles and their dynamics have consequences for measures of sustainability and indeed for any yardstick (e.g. educational achievement [Hsin & Xie, 2014] or intergenerational inequality [Lareau, 2011]). Outcomes as used here refers to social, economic, environmental or other sustainability-related consequences of actors enacting their cultural ensembles.

The outcomes chosen for study will differ according to the interests of the researcher and the context of the research: outcomes could range from empirical measures of a single dimension such as energy use, to multi-dimensional social, cultural, and spiritual qualities. Research using the cultures framework to date has considered outcomes as varied as gender equity, water consumption, health and wellbeing, and the adoption of renewable energy technologies.

The concept of outcomes is depicted in the framework as an arrow from the heart of the cultural ensemble to a triangle representing sustainability outcomes (Fig. 4.8). This indicates that we are interested in the implications of cultural dynamics (including their interaction with external influences) for the outcomes of interest. The arrow pointing back into the heart of the cultural ensemble is a reminder that achieving change in sustainability outcomes may itself result in consequential change to a cultural ensemble. I refer to the latter as ‘proximal outcomes’ (i.e. changes to cultural features) and the former as ‘distal outcomes’ (i.e. changes to sustainability measures). These are illustrated and discussed further in Chapters 7 and 8.

Fig. 4.8

The complete cultures framework

The outcomes that are of interest will determine the pertinent features of the cultural ensemble to be studied. For example, if we are interested in health outcomes of housing retrofits we are likely to be looking at different cultural ensembles and different patterns of occurrence than if we are interested in the implications for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Cultural ensembles are rarely purposefully aligned around sustainability outcomes. For example, although a lot of research has examined ‘energy cultures’, this does not imply that actors perceive energy per se as defining of their identity or the purpose of their social lives. Energy may figure only tangentially within their motivations, knowledge systems, activities and material choices. People may live sustainably (or not) without any particular intention to do so, which means that investigations using the cultures framework often reveal unintended or unconsidered consequences of actors’ cultural ensembles.

Some actors or groups of actors consciously adopt cultural features that align with their sustainability concerns, such as the upsurge in people becoming vegans or vegetarians, communities seeking to become self-sufficient in renewable energy, and businesses seeking to become carbon zero.  In some instances the purposeful adoption by a few actors of new aspirations, beliefs, practices and other shared cultural elements may form the basis of new social movements that can sometimes radically change societies (Snow et al., 2018). Historical examples include anti-slavery movements, union movements, feminism, gay rights and environmental movements. However, in most cases sustainability is only one of multiple concerns of cultural actors, and the links between their cultural ensembles and sustainability outcomes are not necessarily obvious to them. Analysis using the cultures framework can help to reveal how cultural ensembles and their dynamics are complicit in sustainability outcomes.

Conclusion

The cultures framework offers a conceptual structure for visualising and analysing the relationship between culture and sustainability. It is a set of interlinked high-level ideas that bring attention to salient features and dynamics in this field of inquiry. Its language and diagrammatic form reflect well-established understandings about culture and its dynamics, but it is not only a model of culture. Beyond its core concepts of cultural ensembles and their dynamics, the framework adds conceptual elements from other fields of knowledge. From systems theory, it takes understandings of system dynamics and system boundaries. From structuration it adopts the concept of agency and applies it to circumscribe actors’ cultures. External influences, which represent contextual pressures on culture, are considerations in many disciplinary fields. Sustainability outcomes refer to how these variables interact and result in tangible sustainability-related consequences.

The diagrammatic form and language of the framework, as described in this chapter, reflect its evolution but are still consistent with its earlier forms. The main changes have been to broaden the scope of some concepts, to add the concept of cultural vectors, and to visually depict ‘outcomes’ as part of the framework rather than just describing them.

In the next two chapters, I show how the cultures framework has been used to explore numerous sustainability questions in many parts of the world. Most applications to date relate to energy-related topics, which is unsurprising given its origins as the energy cultures framework. Issues explored in this context include energy consumption, energy efficiency behaviours, smart grids, adoption of energy technologies and energy poverty. Actors have included households, age cohorts, businesses, industries, universities, economic sectors and countries. As well as energy topics, it has been widely applied to transport outcomes including mode choices, driving behaviour, freight efficiency and city-wide transport policies. It has also been applied to other sustainability issues such as water, food and climate change. The stories in the next two chapters show how the framework can help reveal the hidden workings of culture in relation to sustainability outcomes.