1

Why social change for sustainability may be ‘difficult’.

Many people accept that ‘we live in interesting times’, and for example that liberal

democracy in the west is facing both internal and external threats. An internal threat

is the democratic deficit in which people are beginning to feel the pointlessness of

voting in the face of growing disparities of income and wealth. China’s economic

success challenges notions of free market, politically liberal capitalism while at the

same time the so called Arab Spring shows signs of disintegration. The IPCC’s 2013

fifth report on ‘Climate change, the physical science basis’ has not yet radically

altered our dependence on fossil fuels. In contrast, investment in fracking and

Canadian tar sands continue unabated while carbon reaches towards 400 parts per

million, a figure last noted over 415,000 years ago (planet for life). In the UK the

debate over energy is characterised by its cost and fuel poverty rather than production,

efficiency or reduction in use. Sustainability solutions are being developed, but social

change lags behind the unceasing rise in carbon emissions, ocean acidification and

deforestation. This paper addresses the questions about our social responses and

suggests that our ‘lock in’ to high carbon economies are related to unreformed, and

possibly unreformable, consumer and finance capitalism.

When considering social change we need to think about who are the ‘communities’

who will be involved. The Transition Towns ‘movement’ is an example of a

community who are already committed to some differing vision of the future based on

building resilience to issues around peak oil. Grid-group culture theory, and the

locking in of communities to ‘high carbon systems’, both suggest that top down

education and clearer explanations do not work. Another perspective is that of

Baumann’s (2001) idea of ‘liquid modernity’ in which society is characterised by

atomism, individualism, fragmented social bonds and consumerism. If Baumann is

right about ‘liquid modern’ society, if the ‘lock in’ is correct, and if there are

competing cultural world views as suggested by grid group theory, then the future is

indeed bleak for humanity because each suggests change towards a sustainable future

faces major challenges.

What follows is a brief discussion around consumer and neoliberal capitalism, high

carbon systems and the social ‘lock in’ (Urry 2011), and grid-group culture theory.

We need to understand that human behaviour change around sustainability means

accepting that that this is a ‘wicked problem’ (Rittel and Webber 1973) requiring

‘fuzzy’ solutions. This is not therefore a positive narrative with easy solutions.

Baumann’s liquid modern society needs to be discussed elsewhere.

2

The high carbon economy-society.

Sociologically, we can make the following observations about our current ‘high

carbon economy-society’ (Urry 2011):

The starting point for an analysis of why a society, and hence communities within that

society, engages in particular practices and habits is the observation that energy is the

base commodity upon which all other commodities exist (Urry 2011). We need to

consider ‘commodity’ as a starting point because it is the fundamental analytical unit

for understanding capitalism and capitalism is the base process that drives social

forms. Commodity production, distribution and exchange forms the basis for the

current ‘economy-society’, it is the infrastructure upon which the socio-cultural

superstructure is based. The economics of commodity production, distribution and

exchange has been dominated in western countries by neo-liberal economic theory,

and the process of globalization, since about the 1980’s. Social relationship within

capitalism are played out within commodity production, distribution and exchange

through markets. The kind of commodities societies develop, or have access to,

underpin much of social life.

Consider a society that does not have or has never had access to coal, gas or oil. All

they have is the wind and water for energy. You don’t have to imagine it, those

societies have been well documented and some still exist. Their habits and social

practices are then based on the energy form that water and wind gives them. This is

not to say that the energy commodity determines the social forms they create

otherwise they would all look the same.

At the risk of being too marxist-determinist about this, any understanding of why we

do what we do has to take the mode of production, e.g. capitalism, and the energy

forms that underpin it, into account. Since the discovery of steam power based on

coal, and then power based on oil and gas, our western societies were able to develop

in particular ways until we designed a society that needs this form of energy. Thus,

our community behaviours are implicitly locked into various high carbon systems that

are taken for granted: 1) Energy system: coal, gas, oil which support the 2) Transport

system 3) the high carbon military-industrial complex 4) Urban housing and domestic

technology system, 5) Tourism, e.g. airlines and 6) food, supermarkets, agribusiness

system.

These are all high carbon systems with which we have become enchanted, entranced

and encapsulated, made manifest in and by our everyday attitudes and behaviours.

Some of these have become very fashionable and have become embedded into

everyday practice. The material physical world, its energy source, and our

3

relationship to it, is therefore the basis for analysis here.

However we have had a problem with economics as a discipline in telling this

narrative. Orthodox economics has forgotten is ‘political economy’ roots – it is as if

Marx, Smith, Ricardo, Keynes, Veblen, Galbraith, to name a few, have been

forgotten. However, there are signs that there is a growing realisation that this is a

deficit in mainstream economics courses. Economics undergraduates at the University

of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society in an attempt to

critique the ‘free market ideology’ of neoliberal capitalism taught in many

Universities.

‘Free market’ Economics tries to explain human behaviour using overly

‘instrumentally orientated, rational planning, utility maximizing’ model of human

behaviour, populated by ‘homo economicus’. John Urry critiques this for failing to

address the fundamental relationship between people and the material physical world:

“most of the time people do not behave as individually rational separate economic

consumers maximising their individual utility from the basket of goods and services

they purchase and use given fixed unchanging preferences…(we are) creatures of

social routine and habit…fashion and fad…(we are) locked into and reproduce

different social practices and institutions, including families, households, social

classes, genders, work groups, schools, ethnicities, generations, nations…. (Urry

2011 p4).

The material conditions of economic life that we are locked into and so dominate our

thoughts and actions are carbon based. For example, how we move physically in our

locality is now almost exclusively by the use of the motorcar. We simply do not walk,

much. It is as if cars have taken on a quasi-spiritual ‘Top Gear’ meaning for us,

moving beyond simply a means to a travelling end. Being asked to give up the car is

like being asked to give up sex. Unthinkable. So the social practices of meeting up

together, employment, going shopping, sport and entertainments, are very often

mediated through the use of the motorcar.

To date we have to accept that much of social science has been ‘carbon blind’ and has

analyzed social practices without regard to the resource base and energy production

that we now know are crucial in forming particular social practices. We have to now

realize that social practices are in a dialectal relationship with the high carbon

economy-society and that individuals within it have internalized this economy-society

so that it becomes who they are. This explains persistence of behaviours within

certain economies.

4

Social and Individual behaviour change within high carbon economy-societies.

Social change results from myriad, often competing factors such as class struggles,

for example between labour and capital; from ideological struggles, for example over

Austerity economics; the technological, for example the ‘washing machine (Chang

2010), and from the pragmatic availability of material resources at hand. The task

facing us is assisting in some small way the unlocking of communities from some

aspects of these high carbon systems and of ideological commitments to forms of

economy that trash the planet and also encourages inequalities in income and wealth

that are socio-politically damaging (Wilkinson and Pickett 2009).

So, we live in societies that are locked into high carbon systems. We are also being

asked to change our behaviour to adopt low or zero carbon habits, fashions and social

practices. “Deep greens” ask us to fundamentally change everything about how we

live. This rejects all high carbon systems, and that means rejecting totally consumer

capitalism. ‘Mainstream’ sustainability adopts a less radical approach including the

idea that capitalism can be reformed. The focus in the latter is not on complete system

overhaul but on incremental individual behaviour change while encouraging and

being encouraged, or ‘nudged’ by governments and corporations to do the right thing.

A technology of behaviour change is the UK’s ‘Pro-environmental Behaviours

Framework’. Social conduct can be divided up into segments, e.g. our travel

behaviours, which are then amenable to intervention. We can re-engineer choices step

by step. Behaviour forms under certain conditions which then can be manipulated

using social marketing techniques. Concepts include: ‘Behavioural entry points’,

‘wedge behaviours’, ‘behavioural levers’, ‘choice editing’. There is a set of 12

headline behaviour goals categorised within 3 areas of consumption: 1) personal

transport 2) homes and 3) Eco-products. This is the ‘change the lighbulbs approach’

to climate change and sits within a taken for granted neoliberal paradigm which sees

the citizen consumer exercising their freedoms within deregulated markets. This is a

technical-rational approach that assumes that there is no contradiction between

greening our lifestyles and the capitalist system’s need for growth and consumption to

increase. This focus on changing the individual’s behaviour also obscures questions

of collective social responsibility and power. Thus we have the project of the ‘carbon

calculating’ consumer who may be nudged to do the right thing, to exercise choice

within frameworks of governance that does not challenge the fundamentals of

consumer capitalism chasing GDP growth.

5

Neo-liberal consumer capitalism

The paradigm within which all of this sits is that of neoliberal consumer capitalism.

This requires, or rather has to have, 3% growth on capital accumulation (Harvey

2010), deregulated markets and accelerating consumption. GDP growth is the central

goal of economic policy. This form of capitalism also externalises costs, has cycles of

crises due to the surplus capital accumulation problem (Harvey 2010) and relies on

technological solutions (Ben-Ami 2010). It also wishes to rely on individual

responsibility for health, welfare and social problems, e.g. Big Society solutions.

Baumann calls it “a parasitic form of social arrangement which may stop its parasitic

action only when the host organism is sucked dry of its life juices” (1993:215). The

contradictions between consumer capitalism and sustainability are obscured, power

and collective responsibility issues are marginalised. It produces two main approaches

to carbon reduction:

1. Macro economics: e.g. cap and trade systems, e.g. the EU’s Emission Trading

System.

2. Micro economic techniques designed to encourage pro environment consumer

choice.

It does not however look to itself to change.

What this seems to imply is that consumer capitalist societies will not address carbon

reduction other than within this paradigm. If we are locked into clusters of high

carbon systems, and given the limits to growth (Meadows, Randers and Meadows

2004), the crossing of ‘planetary boundaries’ (Rockstrom et al 2009) and ecological

devastation, then we will need to focus more and more on disaster management.

David Selby made this point in 2007 in ‘as the heating happens’. Behaviour change

technologies such as the pro-environment behaviours change framework cannot

address the fundamental driver of carbon emissions in anything like the time frame

required because neoliberal capitalism will always outrun sustainability due to its

need for growth and consumption. Its very mechanism is antithetical to sustainable

living.

Resistance to Change.

Webb (2012) suggests citizen consumer knowledge on climate change is patchy at

best. Short term concerns over the practicalities, convenience and cost of domestic

and social life unsurprisingly dominates longer term concerns. Surveys demonstrate

that we on the one hand identify with the need to adopt a low carbon future but on the

other hand adopt high carbon choices. This ‘value-action gap’ is seen by government

6

as a non reflexive fact about self interest, we don’t think about the contradictions in

our answers, which is then seen as a barrier to change. In other words, self interest is

supposed to drive behaviour but from a governments point of view we are not seeing

our self interest as lying towards a low carbon future. We are paradoxically acting

against our self interest. We value a low carbon future but we act as if we don’t

because we are not reflecting on the connections.

However, surveys do not pick up the ‘situatedness’ of our response and the meaning

we give to questions about low carbon living; cultural perspectives, social institutions

and political values mediate the responses to attitudinal surveys and interpretations of

climate science (Leiserowitz et al 2010). Therefore survey responses cannot be taken

to be any true account of our actual preferences because our actual social practices are

bounded by the material life we live in, the sorts of houses we have, the cars we drive,

the products we buy.

Despite ‘sustainability’ seeming to be mainstream, vis the Climate Change Act 2008

and various initiatives and policies such as those of the NHS Sustainable

Development Unit, the continuing existence of and adherence to the high carbon

systems are implicated in the lack of progress towards a low carbon future. This will

not change until enough individuals and organisations can free themselves. To do this

we will need to encourage the development of perceptions that do not encourage

social threat. For sustainability to become fashionable it has to be non-threatening or

else change will be resisted.

Knowing the science, knowing the role of carbon in social practices is not enough. A

personal commitment to a more sustainable lifestyle requires dealing with the direct

threat this imposes to current values and behaviours that are experienced socially. If

one’s family is not similarly committed, if one’s job or career is threatened by

behaviour change such as reducing hours worked or changing to a more sustainable

but lesser paid job, then the personal price may be too high to pay even for those who

who ‘buy in’ to the sustainability agenda.

For those who do not yet accept or know that there is an issue, appealing to

rationality, explaining the science, does not work because we are not rational and we

have different ways of understanding the world. Individuals, with varying emotional

drivers, vested interests and differing ways to rationalize behaviour, will collect

together perhaps virtually as well as physically, and form groups that support their

interests and knowledge. Social groups thus form around their various orientations to

social cohesion and how they consider what are solutions to social problems. This

brings forth various forms of resistance to change as outlined in ‘Grid-Group Theory’.

7

Grid-Group Culture Theory

‘Grid-Group’ Culture Theory (Douglas 1992) describes individual perceptions of

societal dangers and then the response to them. Individuals tend to associate societal

harms with conduct that transgresses societal norms. Sustainability practices may

seem to many to be just such a transgression of norms. For example, the social norm

of, say car ownership in a rural community, is transgressed by those advocating active

transport, e.g. walking, cycling. Regardless of the actuality, public transport in rural

areas is seen as non existent and current lifestyles demand a car – walking is just not

an option. So, a social harm caused by giving up the car may be perceived to be the

lack of communication with needed services in the countryside that is poorly served

by public transport. This tendency to equate social harm, Douglas argued, plays an

indispensable role in promoting certain social structures, both by imbuing a society’s

members with aversions to subversive behavior such as ‘Transition Town Behaviour’

or selling the family car, and by focusing resentment and blame on those, e.g.

sustainability advocates, who defy such institutions such as the petrol/steel/car

privatized Transport system.

The second important feature of Douglas’s work is a particular account of the forms

that competing structures of social organization assume. Douglas maintained that

cultural ways of life and affiliated outlooks can be characterized within and across all

societies at all times along two dimensions, which she called “group” and “grid”. A

“high group” way of life exhibits a high degree of collective control, whereas a “low

group” one exhibits a much lower one and a resulting emphasis on individual self-

sufficiency. A “high grid” way of life is characterized by conspicuous and durable

forms of stratification in roles and authority, whereas a “low grid” one reflects a more

egalitarian ordering.

It might then be suggested that Conservatives are low ‘group’ advocates putting faith

in individual action and freedoms and would therefore seek sustainability solutions in

free markets and freedom from government diktat. Socialists tend towards high

‘group’ orientations seeking solutions in such things as international binding treaties

and government action on climate change. Indeed some claim that climate sceptics are

more likely to be conspiracy theorists and free market advocates.

Douglas and Wildavsky (1982) previously had focused largely on political conflict

over air pollution and nuclear power in the United States. They attributed political

conflict over environmental and technological risks to a struggle between adherents of

competing ways of life associated with the group-grid scheme: an egalitarian,

collectivist (“low grid,” “high group”) one, which gravitates toward fear of

8

environmental disaster as a justification for restricting commercial behavior

productive of inequality; and individualistic (“low group”) and hierarchical (“high

grid”) ones, which resist claims of environmental risk in order to shield private

orderings from interference, and to defend established commercial and governmental

elites from subversive rebuke.

Later works in Cultural Theory suggested that group-grid gives rise to either four or

five discrete ways of life, or ways of thinking and rationalising about life, each of

which is associated with a view of nature: as robust, as fragile, as capricious, that is

congenial to its advancement in competition with the others:

The Collectivist.

The Individualist.

The Egalitarianist.

The Fatalist.

There may be a fifth: The Hermit – those who withdraw from social life as completely

as possible.

The model is a two-by-two table, though it must be emphasized that the lines are

arbitrary — the two dimensions are spectra, not binary divisions.

Let’s be realistic, in communities where cultural shifts are being forced through on

the back of austerity programmes, many are locked into clusters of high carbon

systems that will be almost impossible to break out of. This may lead to feelings of

Fatalism. The fatalist culture considers there are many differences, and only limited

bonding, between groups people within society. A result of this is that those ‘who

have’ feel little obligation towards the ‘have nots’. Individuals are left to their own

9

fates, which may be positive or negative for them. They thus may become apathetic,

neither helping others nor themselves. Those that succeed, however, feel they have

done so on their own merits and effectively need those who are less successful as a

contrast that proves this point.

Neoliberalism encourages low group (individualised) low grid (no external

constraints) cultural forms, manifest in the perversity of the unemployed blaming

themselves for being out of work during a time of austerity and recession! In an

individualistic culture, people are relatively similar yet have little obligation to one

another. People enjoy their differences more than their similarities and seek to avoid

central authority. Self-regulation is a critical principle here and in the arena of health,

self control and personal responsibility are emphasized. If one person, or an ‘elite’

takes advantage of others then power differences arise and a fatalistic culture could

develop. Individualistic cultures favour market solutions, accepting competition,

laissez faire, pragmatic materialism as answers to social and economic issues.

We are at a point in history where the struggle between these cultural forms are being

played out within a Neoliberal hegemony. Western media and politics are dominated

by those who proffer free market solutions to social issues. They are distrusting and

accusatory of international solutions, fearing they are on the ‘road to serfdom’. These

voices are low group, low grid cultural forms. Countervailing voices are denounced as

socialist and communist responsible for the economic woes of western democracies.

This is despite the fact that the financial crash of 2008 was precipitated not by social

democratic policies but by the deregulation of financial markets and the

encouragement of personal and sovereign debt. The result is that many people are

now concerned not about ocean acidification or other potentially devastating

environmental issues but by the immediate problems of job losses, low incomes and

high personal and public debt. This is only to be expected whereby the immediate

economics underpinning social relations bring forth certain cultural forms, behaviours

and attitudes. It still is “the economy, stupid”.

One light is Paul Hawken’s idea of the ‘Blessed Unrest’. Hawken describes a

worldwide movement for environmental and social change; a movement largely

unrecognized by the mainstream media and politics, but nonetheless are

countervailing voices. This movement has no leader, no overarching organisation, no

one constitution but it is coming from ordinary citizens and groups who share a

different vision for the world based on social and environmental justice. Hawken calls

this movement ‘unstoppable’.

10

Conclusion.

The four rationalities expressed with grid-group culture theory explain why change is

difficult. The issues are contested and even if agreed upon, the solutions will be very

different. What will then be required is the development of cultural forms and politics

that encourage all forms of rationality and solutions so as to harness the variances in

people’s social orientations. However, a politics dominated by neoliberalism allows

denial and individualism to trump necessary collectivist and egalitarian solutions to

global problems. Ultimately though, grid group theory takes us only so far. It is an

examination of political economy, such as that of neoliberalism and other variants of

capitalism, that require analysis and social change. The challenge now is whether

individuals and societies can adapt and develop fast enough to break out of high

carbon systems before the full effects of climate change become potentially

catastrophic.

Benny Goodman 2014

11

Refs:

Baumann, Z. (2000) Liquid Modernity. Cambridge. Polity

Ben-Ami, D (2010) Ferrari’s for all. Polity Bristol

Chang. Ha-Joon. (2010) 23 Things they don’t tell you about capitalism. Bloosmbury

New York.

Douglas, M., Wildavsky, A.B. (1982) Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of

Technical and Environmental Dangers. Berkley, University of California Press.

Douglas, M. (1992). Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory. London: New York:

Routledge

Leiserowitz, A., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Smith, N. and Dawson, E. (2010)

Climategate, public opinion and the loss of trust. Yale Project on Climate

Communication. July. [online]

http://environment.yale.edu/climate/publications/climategate-public-opinion-and-the-

loss-of-trust/

Meadows, D., Randers, J., and Meadows, D. (2004). Limits to growth: the 30 year

update. Earthscan. London.

Harvey, D. (2010) The Enigma of capital and the crises of capitalism. Polity.

Cambridge

Urry, J. (2011) Climate Change and Society. Cambridge. Polity Press.

Rittel, H, and Webber, M. (1973) Dilemmas in a General Theory of

Planning pp. 155–169, Policy Sciences, Vol. 4, Elsevier Scientific Publishing

Company, Inc., Amsterdam [Reprinted in N. Cross (ed.), Developments in Design

Methodology, J. Wiley & Sons, Chichester, 1984, pp. 135–144

Rockström, J. Steffen, W., Noone, K. et al (2009) A safe operating space for

humanity. Nature. 461. Pp 472-475. 24th

September. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html

accessed 8th January 2011

Selby, D. (2007) ‘As the heating happens: Education for sustainable development or

education for sustainable contraction? Discourse, Power, Resistance Conference,

Talking Truth to power’, http://www.esri.mmu.ac.uk/dpr_07/abstracts_07/index.php

accessed 25th

March 2009

Webb J (2012) Climate change and society: The chimera of behaviour change

technologies. Sociology. 46(1): 109-125.

Wilkinson, R and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit level. Why equality is better for

everyone. Penguin. London.