‘A bigger living room required a bigger TV’: Doing and negotiating necessity in well-to-do households

Abstract

This article investigates how necessity is ‘done’ and ‘negotiated’ in Finnish well-to-do households’ domestic practices and asks whether and how households are engaged in sustainable practices. The main research material consists of 14 in-depth interviews. In this study, necessities are viewed as something that householders perceive they ‘cannot manage without’ in their normal domestic daily life. At collective level, necessity is considered to construct ‘expectation horizons’: what is considered normal for people to have and to desire and how to live their lives normally within a certain socio-economic frame. With a novel theoretical approach, this article views necessity through three kinds of agentic capacities: distributed agency in the material world, socio-cultural surroundings and mental and bodily dispositions. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on the problematics of rising living standards and household sustainability efforts. The findings show that in carrying out daily life, the leeway provided by higher income and education collides with the internalised ethos of ‘not wasting’ (habitus), lack of seeing real possibilities and often blurred views of responsibilities and power to pursue sustainability. Sustainability is seen as distant to daily life and as an inconvenience that requires familiarisation, time and/or money. It also lacks practical meaning. Instead, domestic necessity contributes to personal and family well-being and effortlessness and straightforwardness in daily life. This article provides three key conclusions. First, any vision or innovation for pursuing sustainability is inadequate if it does not carry meaning in everyday functionality. Second, it is important to critically account for the ‘stickiness’ (capacities for resisting change) of non-negotiable parts of domestic practices with embedded consumption of materials, water and electricity; third, based on the previous two, research and policy should take seriously the difficulty of thinking or seeing outside of the ‘expectation horizons’ that incorporate the co-evolving aspirations and conventions.

Home Comfort and “Peak Household”: Implications for Energy Demand

“…This is not surprising in many ways, yet these everyday concerns are largely overlooked in domestic energy scholarship. There is limited literature linking domestic energy demand to companionship and the family (Aro, 2017;Head et al, 2013;Dowling & Power, 2012;Klocker et al, 2012;Walker et al, 2015;Madsen, 2017) or a desire for privacy and personal space (Huebner & Shipworth, 2017;Judson & Maller, 2014;Kuijer & Watson, 2017;Lorek and Spargenberger, 2019;Maller & Horne, 2011). Nonetheless these writings, combined with scholarship on the benefits of smaller homes and cultural variations in managing privacy in the home (Ozaki, 2002;Richmond, 2012;Susanka, 2001), reveal some potential strategies to reduce energy demand: begin to challenge social perceptions that bigger homes are always 'better'; question the 'need' for guest bedrooms and how the 'peak household' is accommodated; and support initiatives and policies that encourage and enable householders to downsize.…”

“…In this paper, we explore the tension between the desire to save energy through investing in the fabric of the building, energy efficiency and microgeneration technologies and how this is reconciled with householders' images of desirable home life. The contradictions between environmental concern and a failure to curtail standards of living (Aro, 2017;Hitchings et al, 2015), including in the context of energy retrofitting homes (Judson & Maller, 2014;Maller & Horne, 2011;Maller et al, 2012), is not new. Indeed, scholars from sociology, anthropology, history, geography and socio-technical studies writing on energy and sustainable consumption have long evidenced that energy use is inherently social, and the materiality of the home co-evolves alongside changing perceptions of basic standards of living, ways of displaying social status, and notions of modernisation (Gram-Hanssen, 2014a;Haines & Mitchell, 2014;Kerr et al, 2018;Munro & Leather, 2000;Wilhite and Lutzenhiser, 1999;Wilson et al, 2018).…”

Demanding expectations: Exploring the experience of distributed heat generation in Europe

“…[48] more energy demanding 'needs' may be negotiated and normalised [49]. This is interesting as the focus on the future, and planning MfH around visions of a future home requires, we argue, a more 'relational, time sensitive' understanding of energy demand (50, p.130).…”

Ilmasto-oikeudenmukaisuus suomalaisessa hyvinvointi- ja terveyspolitiikassa-Suuntaviivoja tutkimukselle

“…Pienituloisten arki on usein melko ympäristöystävällistä vähäisen kuluttamisen, tehokkaiden asumisratkaisujen ja liikkumisen vuoksi (36,37). Sen sijaan moniin hyvin toimeentulevien ja keskiluokkaisten arjen käytäntöihin heijastuu vaatimuksia arjen sujuvuudesta, helposta liikkumisesta ja tilavasta asumisesta, mikä on usein ristiriidassa ilmastonmuutoksen hillinnän kanssa (38,39). Korkean kulutustason elämäntapojen juuret ovat syvällä yhteiskuntien rakenteissa.…”