Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 1224–1233

Citizens, consumers and sustainability: (Re)Framing environmental practicein an age of climate change

Stewart Barr a,*, Andrew Gilg a,1, Gareth Shaw b,2

a School of Geography, University of Exeter, Amory Building, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJ, United Kingdomb The Business School, University of Exeter, Streatham Court, Exeter, Devon EX4 4PU, United Kingdom

A R T I C L E I N F O

Article history:

Received 1 November 2010

Received in revised form 15 July 2011

Accepted 19 July 2011

Available online 11 August 2011

Keywords:

Citizens

Consumers

Environmental practice

Climate change

A B S T R A C T

Recent moves by national and local policy makers have sought to encourage individuals to engage in a

wide range of pro-environmental practices to address both discrete environmental problems and major,

global challenges such as climate change. The major framing device for these developments is the notion

of ‘citizen–consumers’, which positions individual ecological responsibilities alongside consumer choice

logics in a Neo-liberal socio-economic framework. In the environmental social sciences, there have been

recent moves to interpret the citizen–consumer through adopting a social practices approach, which

advances the notion that in understanding environmental commitments, a deeper appreciation of

underlying norms, values, identity politics and consumption is required to uncover the complex

processes that lead to environmental practices in specific contexts. This paper argues that whilst these

approaches have considerable utility in tracing the normalisation of established and discrete

environmental practices in particular contexts, the issue of climate change represents an independent

and over-arching discursive conflict between new and embedded practices that challenges the ability of

citizen–consumers to act as agents for change. Accordingly, the data presented in this paper suggest that

climate change can be seen as an unsettling and dynamic issue that generates discursive conflict in its

own right around fundamental issues of knowledge, responsibility, scale and place. The paper therefore

argues that a new and more critical perspective is required within environmental social science to

understand (conflicting) discourses of sustainable living between the ‘passive’ normalisation of

conventional environmental practice and the ‘contested’ ambiguities of climate change.

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1. Introduction

The growing number and complexity of environmentaldilemmas facing nation states in the early 21st century is resultingin a wide range of measures aimed at both mitigating and adaptingto new environmental problems. The most complex and wide-spread of these issues is global climate change and this has beenreflected in recent attention focused on developing an interna-tionally driven response to global warming through economic, aswell environmentally based arguments (Stern Review, 2006).However, although international debates amongst the politicalcommunity attain a high media profile, they mask the range ofmeasures that governments are implementing at national andlocal scales. Within this context, one issue has become predomi-nant in discussions of how to mitigate and adapt to environmental

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 01392 723832; fax: +44 01392 723342.

E-mail address: S.W.Barr@exeter.ac.uk (S. Barr).1 Tel.: +44 01392 491545; fax: +44 01392 723342.2 Tel.: +44 01392 723332.

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doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.07.009

problems; known broadly as ‘behaviour change’. This policydiscourse places emphasis on the role of consumers as the primaryagents of positive change, as the UK’s Department for theEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs stated in their SustainableDevelopment Strategy (DEFRA, 2005, p. 25):

‘‘We all – governments, businesses, families and communities,the public sector, voluntary and community organisations –need to make different choices if we are to achieve the vision ofsustainable development’’.

This positioning of consumers as the key reference point forpromoting environmental sustainability represents a much widerand underlying socio-political theme in western capitalist democ-racies (Giddens, 1991) that places greater emphasis on the role ofindividuals in creating social change through the fusing ofconsumption and citizenship. Intellectually, political scientists havehighlighted the central role of ‘citizen–consumers’ (Clarke et al.,2007; Spaargaren and Mol, 2008) who have come to embody socialresponsibilities within dominant consumption logics, using bothpolitical and market-based actions to drive change. Accordingly,

S. Barr et al. / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 1224–1233 1225

individuals perform dual roles as both citizens and consumers,acting as agents of change within the capitalist economy, usingpoints of consumption as sites of power (Giddens, 1991). Thisform of reflexive practice has come to characterise the implicitrole of individuals in policy discourses, introducing the notionthat citizen–consumers are as critical to the Neo-liberal state’sgovernance of environmental issues as state or corporate actors(Barr et al., 2011).

Within the context of this consumption-driven paradigm thathas progressively placed individuals at the centre, this paper usesan analysis of qualitative data collected during two researchprojects to explore the effectiveness of such a paradigm in a periodof heightened awareness and debate concerning global climatechange. The paper initially discusses the emergence of the citizen–consumer paradigm within the context of Neo-liberal politicalagendas and explores these through the lens of recent research onsocial practices within the environmental social sciences, demon-strating the ways in which researchers have come to understandcontemporary environmental behaviours in specific social con-texts. The paper then explores how these perspectives can beviewed in the light of recent research on climate change, whichpoints to a series of conflicts that emerge when this issue isdiscussed, often disrupting established understandings of existingand embedded practices. The paper will conclude by exploring theutility of the citizen–consumer approach, calling for a re-alignmentof both intellectual and pragmatic approaches in environmentalsocial science, which directly address the potential conflictsclimate change can introduce into public understandings ofenvironmental practice.

2. Citizens, consumers and social practices

The growth in attention on individuals as a means of tacklingenvironmental problems in Western democracies is well-docu-mented (e.g. Dobson, 2010; Jackson, 2005; Seyfang, 2005).However, as Clarke et al. (2007) have noted, the outgrowth ofresponsibility from the state towards citizens is one thatrepresents an important shift in the relationship betweengovernments and individuals. As such, this over-arching paradigmfor understanding the role of individuals as agents of change in theenvironmental realm (Seyfang, 2005) deserves a brief theoreticalexplanation.

As Spaargaren and Mol (2008, p. 354) note, the ‘citizen–consumer’ is the post-modern alignment of two fundamentallymodernist concepts ‘‘. . .[that] used to delineate different sets ofresponsibilities, practices and identities, which under the presentconditions can no longer be analysed in isolation’’. In line withGiddens’ (1991) notion of reflexivity, Spaargaren and Mol (2008)argue that conventional modes of exercising citizenship throughthe nation state have become decentralised and distributed intoalternative sites of power that act above and below the state,creating new opportunities for citizen activism from the interna-tional to the local level. In tandem, many of these sites of power forcitizenship politics are also sites of consumption (Livingstone et al.,2007), where the traditional modes of economic exchange arebeing transformed into sites of ethical, moral and economicdiscussion (Clarke et al., 2007). As Scammell (2000, p. 351) notes:

‘‘The act of consumption is becoming increasingly suffused withcitizenship characteristics and considerations. Citizenship isnot dead, or dying, but found in new places, in life-politics’’.

Accordingly, the citizen–consumer discourse seeks to concep-tualise new modes of citizenship within a market-orientedperspective and thus views consumers as agents of power,envisioning a new politics of consumer activism. Using this new

‘life politics’ approach (Giddens, 1991), Clarke et al. (2007) andKeum et al. (2004) have charted how the citizen–consumer logichas been applied widely in socio-political contexts as a way ofcharacterising late modernity’s ‘privatised’ society within thecontext of New Right policies emphasising choice and consumerpower. This is most notable in social and welfare policy but can alsobe observed in the wider privatisations of public utilities andservices. Indeed, within the environmental field, commentatorssuch as Dobson (2010) and Seyfang (2005) have offered criticalaccounts of the role of this approach in centring efforts to reduceenvironmental degradation on individuals as consumers andcitizens. Dobson (2010) highlights the ways in which the risingprofile of environmental citizenship, as conceptualised in amarket-orientated paradigm, is able to ‘crowd out’ other waysof viewing both society’s and individuals’ approaches to environ-mental and social change. Such a reliance by policy makers onindividualistic notions of change therefore reinforces the govern-ing of the environment at the ‘citizen–consumer’ scale, viewingpoints of exchange and discussion as those between individualconsumers and producers, rather than deliberation betweencitizens as part of a collective movement for change.

In the light of this political background, the citizen–consumerperspective has been operationalised in a number of ways toexplore how individuals are being encouraged to act as agents forpositive environmental change (Spaargaren and Mol, 2008), butpredominant within disciplines such as anthropology, geographyand sociology has been the emergence of what Verbeek andMommaas (2008, p. 634) term a ‘social practices’ approach toenvironmental behaviour research, where social practices:

‘‘. . .are conceived as being routine-driven, everyday activitiessituated in time and space and shared by groups of people aspart of their everyday life’’.

The origins of this perspective emerged in sociology from thearguments of Macnaghten (2003), Spaargaren (2004, 2006),Spaargaren et al. (2000) and Shove (2003), all of whom haveadvocated a re-focusing of environmental behaviour research tofocus on the everyday and ‘mundane’ practice of daily life. As Shove(2003, p. 9) argues:

‘‘What counts is the big, and in some cases, global swing ofordinary, routinized and taken for granted practice. Thisrequires an upending of the social environmental researchagenda as conventionally formulated. Only by setting ‘theenvironment’ aside as the main focus of attention will it bepossible to follow and analyse processes underpinning thenormalisation of consumption and the escalation of demand’’.

This particular viewpoint, advocated by Shove (2003) as a wayof re-framing the social science of the environment, has provided abroad (though not totalising) focus for researchers interested inunderstanding the ways in which social practices can uncover theunderlying processes that lead individuals (or households) toconsume in different ways and thus to reveal the underlyingdemands that individuals make on the use of culturally significantproducts such as energy or water (Southerton et al., 2004). Suchconsumption is not only to be conceived as pro- or anti-environmental but part of everyday, embedded practice. Thus,seeking to explore why certain individuals do or do not ‘commit’ toenvironmental practices is concerned with coming to an under-standing about the very basis of consumption itself.

The social practices perspective has been applied in a range ofbehavioural domains, notably with regard to waste management(Gregson, 2006; Gregson and Crewe, 2003; Gregson et al., 2007;Bulkeley and Gregson, 2009), water use (Shove and Warde, 2002),energy (Shove et al., 2007) and wider issues of consumption

S. Barr et al. / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 1224–12331226

(Spaargaren, 2003; Southerton et al., 2004). These studies havedemonstrated the ways in which issues such as waste manage-ment can be re-configured to orient attention towards consump-tion itself, rather than the symptomatic indicators of suchconsumption. As Gregson et al. (2007, .p. 698) note:

‘‘. . .discarding consumer goods is a long way from a matter ofautomatic waste generation; that such acts frequently involvesaving as well as wasting things; and, critically, that the processof discarding is one of the key ways in which we make presentand materialise some of our primary social identities and thelove relations that sustain them’’.

Accordingly, social practices are a means by which to trace andplot the processes involved in dealing with the materialities ofeveryday life that become indicators of (more or less) sustainabili-ty. Thus, when considered as part of a broader citizen–consumerperspective, the social practices approach can be viewed in thisway:

‘‘Human agents cannot be properly understood when discon-nected from context, from the practices and sites where theroutines of daily life are enacted in interaction with both otheragents and the structures, products and technologies that helpconstitute. . .these practices’’ (Spaargaren and Mol, 2008, p. 355).

3. Conflicting discourses of environmental practice in an era ofclimate change

The concept of the citizen–consumer and its operationalisationwithin a social practices framework therefore presents a means ofrepresenting environmental practice within the everyday, themundane and the ‘normal’. Such a representation is critical if weare to understand the rises in demand that underlie consumerbehaviour and thus environmental problems. Indeed, in placingemphasis on practices as part of everyday life, this approach frames‘environmental behaviour’ around the relationships betweenpeople and material needs and it is therefore these material needsthat also deserve the attention of practitioners in their efforts tofundamentally change (unsustainable) lifestyles.

As noted previously, the social practices approach has largelybeen focused on specific practices in particular contexts. Yet theemergence of issues such as global climate change is beginning tochallenge our understandings of how individuals engage withenvironmental issues and the ways in which environmentallysignificant practices are influenced by scientific understandings indifferent consumption settings or ‘sites of practice’ (Barr et al., inpress). Such an analysis is critical given the focus that globalclimate change places on ‘low carbon’ lifestyles that necessitatechanges in behaviour across a wide range of practices (such as theuse of energy, water and waste) and spatial settings (such as usagein the home, at work, whilst travelling and in spaces of leisure andtourism).

This paper therefore uses the theme of climate change toillustrate the potential barriers and conflicts that a behaviourallycomplex and publicly contested environmental issue such asclimate change can generate and argues that social researchersneed to develop new understandings of socio-environmentalpractices. The empirical research reported in this paper indicatesthat the conflicts which climate change exposes around theconsumer–citizen boundary emerge when existing and embeddedpractices are challenged through unsettling and disruptiveprocesses evoked by four factors: (1) new and contested formsof knowledge, (2) contested ascriptions of responsibility, (3)alternative conceptions of scale, and (4) new sites of practice foractivism. These four factors are derived from the empirical analysis

of data from two research projects and provide an illustrative basisfor the forthcoming discussion of the ways in which climatechange presents potential conflicts between different forms ofpractice. Accordingly, the factors are those which emerged fromconversations with participants in our research and are thus notintended to be comprehensive but rather illustrative of the ways inwhich climate change is re-framing notions of* environmentalpractice. In each case we demonstrate how these factors arereflective of wider theoretical scholarship in environmentalbehaviour studies and argue that it is at these points of ‘socio-ecological’ conflict where individuals are challenged to reconcileexisting and new forms of practice and to re-frame their(ecological) identities. Indeed, it is also at these points of conflictthat new insights into the challenges faced by both academics andpractitioners can be viewed when considering contested andcomplex issues such as climate change.

The remainder of this paper will explore the notion of socio-ecological conflict through data collected as part of two researchprojects undertaken between 2006 and 2008. Both of theseprojects were on the broad theme of sustainable lifestyles andwere funded by the UK Department of the Environment, Food andRural Affairs (DEFRA) and the British Academy. The two projectswere dedicated to an academic critique of the sustainable lifestylesconcept alongside the practical development of behaviour changeprogrammes and thus involved scholarship at the academic–policyinterface. During the projects, a series of focus group discussionsand in-depth interviews was held with individuals selected on thebasis of their reported environmental actions. For both studies, theunderlying aim was to explore the logic of applying a ‘lifestyles’ orsegmentation approach (DEFRA, 2008; Darnton and Sharp, 2006)to understand environmental behaviour. Accordingly, the firststage in both research projects involved undertaking quantitativesurveys of individuals (Barr et al., 2010, 2011) in South WestEngland. The South West of England has a population of 5.2 million(National Statistics, 2010) and comprises a wide range of socio-economic contexts and is one of England’s largest administrativeregions. The region has a range of urban and rural environments,from several large post-industrial cities (e.g. Bristol and Plymouth)to smaller, ‘Cathedral’ cities (e.g. Exeter and Truro), market townsand sparsely populated rural areas. Accordingly, the regioncontains diverse characteristics that make it a useful case studyof the English population.

During the first, quantitative stage of each project, conventionalcluster analysis techniques were used to identify a series ofconsumer segments based on reported environmental behaviours(Barr et al., 2006, 2010). On the basis of these analyses, individualswho had reported a willingness to attend follow-up research wereinvited to either a focus group discussion or in-depth interview.The discussions and interviews asked participants to talk abouttheir environmental practices: in and around the home, whilsttravelling and when on holiday. In each of these settings,participants were asked to reflect on their practice and the waysin which they had come to develop habits and routines. Clearlysuch a methodology has certain limitations when seeking to teaseout and explore notions of practice through only using conversa-tion and is somewhat contingent on the situated context of theresearch setting. However, our aim was to partly explore thepotential conflicts that an issue like climate change could uncoverin different sites of practice and thus for practical reasons we optedfor conventional modes of qualitative research. Accordingly, ouraim in analysing the data was to explore the ways in whichparticipants engaged in pro-environmental practices and the waysin which discourses developed across discussions of differentforms of practice and their performance at different sites.

Quotations provided in the following sections are drawn fromboth interviews and focus group discussions and utilise data from

S. Barr et al. / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 1224–1233 1227

both research projects. Interviewee pseudonyms are provided andgroup number and participant letter identify focus groupparticipants. Quotations marked ‘DEFRA’ are from the DEFRA-funded research; those marked ‘BA’ are from the British Academyresearch. A total of 85 participants took part in the two projects.

The following sections explore these qualitative data throughhighlighting four areas of conflict that emerged at the consumer–citizen interface and are used as examples and illustrations of hownew discourses of environmental practice can disrupt establishedassumptions and embedded routines. The disruptive constructused in this paper is the issue of climate change, which emerged asa key theme for most participants within the focus groups andinterviews when discussing notions of pro-environmental com-mitments in certain settings. In focusing on climate change, we aimto show how an over-arching and globally framed environmentalissue can cause socio-ecological conflict for consumer–citizens andthus bring into question the logic of applying consumer-orientatedapproaches for promoting behavioural change. Indeed, althoughclimate change is used as the illustrative device in this paper, thereare clearly other issues that are likely to have similar impacts forthe current rationales surrounding behaviour change research andpolicy making, an example being the concerns over ‘peak oil’ andthe resultant need to make widespread changes to socio-economicsystems (Hopkins, 2008).

Climate change is still a deeply contested and problematicconcept from an environmental social science perspective. In thepopular media, there is still considerable debate concerning thescientific basis for climate change, as evidenced by the recent‘climate gate’ affair, in which e-mails from the Universality of EastAnglia’s Climate Research Unit were published that raisedquestions concerning the treatment of climate data used to informpolicy making (Sunday Telegraph, 2009). From an academicperspective Lorenzoni et al. (2007) note that the gap emergingbetween scientific consensus and public ambiguity on the issue isstartling and numerous studies cited by Lorenzoni et al. indicatethat whilst public engagement with climate change as a topic isrelatively high, the understanding of climate change, its implica-tions and socio-ecological consequences is weak. The reasons forthis lack of meaningful engagement on the part of the public havebeen the subject of numerous studies (see the reviews by Uphamet al., 2009; Lorenzoni and Pidgeon, 2006). Indeed, recent researchhas explored the links between public engagement and the popularmedia, who have created a new set of critical discourses on climatechange and, more importantly, the ways in which the public isbeing exhorted to change their behaviour in response to this issue(Whitmarsh, 2009). What emerges from this research is the focuson two key aspects that have come to characterise publicdiscourses on climate change, namely; scepticism and uncertainly.Both of these characteristics are regularly displayed in the mediaand create the basis for conflicts to emerge around the notion ofbeing a ‘responsible’ citizen through existing forms of consump-tion practices.

Accordingly, in re-framing our understandings of environ-mental practice, the following sections of the paper demonstratethe discursive conflicts that emerge when the issue of climatechange is discussed alongside existing, accepted and unques-tioned environmental practices and deal sequentially withconflicts surrounding knowledge, responsibility, scale and sitesof practice. These issues are therefore used as empirical devices todemonstrate how the issue of climate change is framed and areintended to act as initial (rather than comprehensive) ‘signposts’in the process of theoretically marking out the role of climatechange in environmental practices. In so doing, the discussion ofeach issue aims to demonstrate the ways that climate change hasthe potential to disrupt understandings of environmental practiceand thus present conflicts for the citizen–consumer between

notions of embedded and routinised practices and those whichbecome questioned and problematised. Accordingly, the empiri-cal material is also intended as a way of encouraging environ-mental social scientists to consider the role and position of‘disruptive’ environmental issues like climate change andpotentially peak oil, which raise fundamental questions concern-ing the ways in which such high-profile and over-arching issuesare considered within existing approaches to understandingpractices.

3.1. New and contested forms of knowledge

The production, consumption and interpretation of environ-mental knowledge and information by lay publics has become acentral theme of investigation for environmental social scientistsand from the studies of Burgess et al. (1998), Macnaghten and Urry(1998), Myers and Macnaghten (1998) and Eden (1996) hasemerged the notion that environmental knowledge, prescribed inscientific and expertised terms, was complemented by andsometimes in conflict with public knowledges of the (local)environment. Indeed, Owens’ (2000) call for a deliberativeapproach towards environmental decision-making was largelyinfluenced by the dis-enfranchisement of lay publics fromcontributing to environmental debates and the ‘expertisation’(Eden, 1993) of ecological discourses. These studies have beencomplemented by the developing research agenda on Beck’s(1992) Risk Society (Bulkeley, 2001), that has explored publicunderstandings of environmental issues (from the local to theglobal) through the perspectives of risk and uncertainty (Bick-erstaff and Walker, 2001). Indeed, recent work on climate changehas indicated that the prolonged and occasionally extreme mediaattention afforded to issues like climate change creates greaterlevels of uncertainty and a distance between expert and publicknowledges (Carvalho and Burgess, 2005; Ereaut and Segnit, 2006).

Within the focus groups and interviews, participants wereencouraged to discuss different forms of environmental practice, asthey understood them, without being explicitly asked to identify‘knowledge’ of the issues. Not surprisingly, issues like recyclinghousehold waste, reducing energy use, conserving water andecologically friendly purchases were readily identified. What thesediscussions revealed, however, was the large degree of acceptancethat participants were able to demonstrate for undertaking suchactivities:

‘‘I think it’s been made so much easier now, especially torecycle. When I think back to my mother, she recycled clothes,which were passed down through the family and we don’t do itthat way now but we do recycle paper, bottles and cans andthings like that because we’ve got the technology to do it nowthat we didn’t have fifty years ago’’ (DEFRA, 3G).

Although this comment is ostensibly about convenience, itreveals that the participant did not question the assumptionsbehind recycling. Using a historical comparison, the respondentinstead argued that contemporary forms of dealing with householdmaterials were a re-configuration of past practices. Such assump-tions were also reflected in responses to wider questions ofconsumption, where participants were able to convey and ‘justify’their choices:

‘‘I try to buy as much as I can with Ecover products and thingslike that. They use biodegradable plastic for their packaging butthey’ve also got ingredients that are actually good for theenvironment within them. Things like washing powder, forexample, has got stuff in it that’s not bad for the water’’ (DEFRA,7A).

tal Change 21 (2011) 1224–1233

Along with these sentiments, few of the interviewees or focusgroup participants expressed any reservations about the principleof adopting a wide range of environmentally friendly activities.Accordingly, any discussions over knowledge were framed aroundthe practical issues of performing certain tasks within dailyroutines, for example:

‘‘It’s a bit of a grey area [be]cause you can have things like tinsand things that you can put in the recycling bin that get sortedobviously when it goes through, but other things that you couldput in there that could easily get sorted at the other end like abit of steel. . .could go in the green bin. But a lot of peoplewouldn’t do that. It’s like cans or foil or cardboard boxes orwhatever; we get loads of junk mail and cardboard all throughthe week; all that can go in there. A lot of other people don’trealise that there’s other things’’ (DEFRA, 4E).

This and similar remarks illustrate that, in accordance with thesocial practices perspective, certain forms of environmentalpractice are largely accepted, unquestioned and form part of theeveryday, mundane and normal routines of many households(Shove, 2003). As Gregson et al. (2007) have noted, these practicesform part of the everyday performance of social life and familyrelations that results in consumption and the movement ofmaterials. However, although contested knowledges were absentfrom these forms of daily practice, many of the themes identified inthe literature were apparent when respondents were asked aboutclimate change. In the following responses, two related themesemerged, illustrating both (un)certainty and a gap between lay andexpert(s) knowledge:

‘‘I don’t actually believe that mankind is actually making a lot ofdifference. The earth is natural, purely in my opinion, a naturalprocess; the ice-cores have shown that there is significantclimate shift even before we were around. . .we may be makinga tiny bit of difference but it’s in incredibly small; what doesmake a difference though and always has done is things likeland fill and that’s kind of a space and resource issue’’ (BA, Dan).

‘‘. . .my concern with things like global warming, climatechange, first of all the definitions, the words get muddled up,there’s no real understanding of what the impacts are and everytime one professor says something there’s a counter argument’’(BA, John).

‘‘I don’t think it’s been verified has it? I don’t feel that our use ofCFC’s over major industry actually has that much of a bearing.You’ve got industry that’s churning out a lot more than that’’(DEFRA, 5C).

As Lorenzoni et al. (2007) have indicated, discourses on climatechange are often framed around extreme variations in statedoutcomes alongside the disagreement amongst scientific experts.As opinions in themselves, these are not particularly surprising orstartling revelations; they only attain meaning and significancewhen we note that all three of these interviewees wereparticipants who had embedded numerous sustainability practicesinto their daily lifestyles and did not question the basis for theseactivities. Accordingly, rather than climate change being the nextlogical step for these citizen–consumers, climate change repre-sents a socio-ecological conflict between the acceptance of one setof ecological knowledges and the rejection or contestation ofdifferent knowledges. In this sense, the citizen–consumer not onlyfaces the challenge of contested knowledge but also the implica-tions of these knowledges for practice, leading to multiple

S. Barr et al. / Global Environmen1228

possibilities for action, all characterised by uncertainty in theiroutcomes. Accordingly, public information and the media atten-tion given to climate change present a formidable hurdle forcitizen–consumers in adopting ‘appropriate’ practices.

3.2. Contested ascriptions of responsibility

In addition to conflicting knowledges, a further academic andpolicy discourse to emerge alongside the sustainability agenda hasbeen the notion of responsibility and its role in promoting (orrestricting) forms of environmental practice. Intricately bound upwith issues of trust and political accountability (Macnaghten andUrry, 1998), environmental responsibility has become a centralcomponent of the citizen–consumer debate (Johnson, 2008) andthe re-framing of citizenship as a reflexive and distributed mode ofexpressing ethical and political concerns (Spaargaren and Mol,2008). Indeed, the roots of promoting citizen environmentalresponsibilities within a consumption framework owes much tothe arguments of both Giddens (1991) and Etzioni’s (1993, 1995)perspective on creating the New Communitarianism, a vision of(sustainable) communities linked by common acceptance ofindividual and collective rights and responsibilities. This pseu-do-political agenda has underlain many environmental campaigns,most notably the proliferation of Local Agenda 21 projects thathave urged citizens to ‘Think Globally, Act Locally’ (Selman andParker, 1997).

Yet despite the re-framing of citizenship into consumption–citizenship and the embedding of personal notions of environ-mental responsibility into mainstream political agendas, recentresearch on issues like climate change has pointed to anunwillingness or inability of citizens to assume responsibilityfor certain issues (Whitmarsh, 2009). Indeed, one of the mostpotent examples of this is Stoll-Kleemann et al.’s (2001) researchon the ‘psychology of denial’, where individuals adopt strategies toascribe responsibility for global climate change to other, externa-lised actors. This externalisation of climate change reflects whatLorenzoni et al. (2007, p. 452) term ‘‘shifting the blame’’, a themethat has been present with climate change since the initial work ofBlake (1999).

Discussing ascriptions of responsibility for the participants inour research once again illustrates the dissonance betweendifferent forms of environmental practice and the implicationsthis has for producing conflicting environmental discourses. Atfirst glance, participants were able to ascribe personal responsi-bility for environmental problems in line with conventionalenvironmental citizenship:

‘‘. . .recently when I went to Australia, there was some litter onthe floor and this child kicked it and the mother said ‘pick it up’but she said ‘it’s not mine’ and the mother said ‘it doesn’t matterwhose it is, we’re all responsible for it so pick it up’’’ (DEFRA,3D).

Indeed, many daily practices were regarded as part of thenormal and routine ways in which families and householdsmanaged their affairs, which often meant that ‘environmental’issues were embedded within financial and practical decisionmaking. In contrast, when asked about climate change andresponsibility, a number of themes emerged. First, the globalisednature of climate change necessarily evokes apparent ascriptionsof responsibility to other groups:

‘‘Yeah, I feel the same way like what am I gonna do? Americaisn’t even signing up to the Kyoto Agreement and you think it’ssuch a big country and if it’s not doing that and their petrol is socheap. . .’’ (DEFRA, 8I).

ntal Change 21 (2011) 1224–1233 1229

Such an apparent external ascription of responsibility is alsoreflective of the sense that climate change removes feelings of self-efficacy and self-control over the power to align the everydaypractices of the citizen–consumer with the responsibilities implicitin tackling climate change. Accordingly, the ‘responsibility’ foracting on climate change is a dis-empowering experience for manyand one that presents a major barrier for action.

A second aspect of responsibility is the way that it is mobilisedby comparative judgements of ‘need’ or ‘blame’:

‘‘And government people are always jetting off around theworld on business meetings, polluting the atmosphere and youjust wonder how many of those meetings are actuallynecessary’’ (DEFRA, 8G).

Such judgements necessarily contrast the behaviour of theindividual with that of the (or a) collective. As well as dis-empowerment, subjective notions of ‘need’ and ‘blame’ cantherefore present ways to externalise responsibility (Lorenzoniet al., 2007) through a comparative judgement of consumptionneeds or even rights, counterbalanced with personal responsibili-ties for climate change. In this sense, the citizen–consumer facescompeting pressures to change their practices in the light ofclimate change, whilst also making judgements about personalconsumption needs and their own responsibilities in the context ofothers’ behaviour.

A final strand of the responsibility theme tackles the tensionthat climate change can present for citizen–consumers in relationto other actors:

‘‘But then I also think that it’s all very well blaming it on theperson on the street but doesn’t it have to start with the bigfirms and the government?’’ (DEFRA, 2D).

Here climate change is partly dis-associated with the individualand thus acts of consumption. Rather, responsibility lies (or ‘starts’)with those who regulate and manage consumption environments,framing the context of everyday habits and practices. Thus theability of the citizen–consumer to act outside of these constraintsis limited. Accordingly, in contrasting responsibilities and resultantforms of practice for climate change with other environmentalpractices, the conflict facing the citizen–consumer is exposed asone often characterised by disempowerment and constraint, atodds with the logic of the citizen–consumer as activist:

‘‘There’s two things that really make you think. The first is whenyou hear things about global warming and try to think of waysyou can be more environmentally friendly, and the other iswhen you hear of Hemel Hempsted3 up in flames and you think‘Oh sod it!’’’ (DEFRA, 4E).

3.3. Alternative perceptions of scale

As the preceding quotation illustrates with regard to respon-sibility, a further issue that has dominated discourse onenvironmental practices has been the issue of scale. As noted atthe start of this paper, recent debates have emerged surroundingthe most appropriate scale at which to study and promote certainenvironmental practices (Bulkeley and Gregson, 2009) and theserange from the individual, to households, family units, socialnetworks, communities and ultimately politically definedregions. However, in discussing scale within the context of the

S. Barr et al. / Global Environme

3 Hemel Hempstead refers to a town in southern England near to the site of the

Buncefield oil depot, which experienced a major explosion and fire on 11th

December 2005.

citizen–consumer and social practices, geographers and otherscholars alike have charted the ways in which scale is used to‘deny’ (Stoll-Kleemann et al., 2001) or challenge the basis forcitizen–consumer action. Indeed, one of the strongest barriers toenvironmental practice cited in the social-psychological litera-ture has been the lack of response-efficacy that some forms of pro-environmental behaviour generate, a concept that Roberts (1996)conceived as ‘perceived consumer effectiveness’. To this extent,scale has partially been framed as a factor determining certainforms of practice according to individual and collective percep-tions of likely impact and has thus enabled a scaling of personaleffectiveness to emerge in the literature.

Yet ‘scale’ in this context needs to be unpacked as a point ofconflict between embedded and new forms of environmentalpractice through exploring the associations between practices,scale and underlying socio-political contexts. Within the focusgroups and interviews undertaken in our two surveys, participantsassociated certain embedded environmental practices with whatcan be characterised as localised, tangible and short-term, evenpoliticised concerns:

‘‘I think being more community oriented as well so that you cando things like car sharing and community composting. Doingthings together, so you’re actually keeping things more local inthat way’’ (DEFRA, 7A).

‘‘The other reason I buy from Riverford all my organic veg is thatthe supermarkets turned him down and so I’d rather supporthim than the supermarkets’’ (DEFRA, 4B).

‘‘We went to a water meter recently; that was really becausethere are two of us in the house; it kind of makes sense evenwith my wife taking huge long showers; that saves a few bob, itis environmentally beneficial, having worked in the waterindustry. . .I reduce energy usage primarily to save money,however, I dislike most ways that energy is produced because itis produced centrally and delivered locally and it’s incrediblyinefficient and that’s frustrating; that’s a good reason to reducethe amount that I use’’ (BA, Dan).

These sentiments accord with other findings from studies of‘local’ environmental issues, being characterised by strongassociations with personal impacts, both in space and time(Macnaghten, 2003). Critically, connections were made byparticipants between ostensibly environmental motivations andwider notions of the local, which served to reinforce the broadercontexts for their practices, such as the contribution to the localeconomy, community cohesion and personal financial benefit.Accordingly, everyday environmentally related practices, evenwhen considering activities that do have demonstrable effects forclimate change (such as saving energy and reducing waste), wereoften regarded as having demonstrable local impacts and benefitswithin a short time frame (Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006). Indeed, inline with research on social practices (Bulkeley and Gregson, 2009),these sentiments illustrate the ways in which participantsfrequently related environmental practices of dealing with waste,using energy and water to the everyday ways of being and living inimmediate and localised social and economic contexts.

This embedding of pro-environmental practices in a socio-economic context can be seen in contrast to the ways in whichclimate change as a ‘single issue’ and globalised concept presents apotential conflict with such ways of living and being. Whereaslocalised environmental issues and practices are often framed bypracticality, efficacy, affordability, community and utility, climatechange presents a scalar challenge to these framings:

S. Barr et al. / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 1224–12331230

‘‘I do [worry about climate change] but the world alwayschanges anyway and you can’t hold it still, it will do what it’sgoing to do and a little person like me can’t stop the Americansall driving their cars and putting the pollution in the air. I can’tstop it so I can’t worry about it’’ (BA, Gemma).

As Lorenzoni and Pidgeon (2006) and Leiserowitz (2005) havenoted, global climate change represents ‘the distant’ in both spatialand temporal contexts. Indeed, as Lorenzoni et al. (2007) highlightin their study of UK citizens, spatial representations of the impactsof climate change were often ‘polarised’ in literal terms, reflectingfor example on the melting ice caps in Antarctica or naturaldisasters in developing nations. In a similar vein, respondents alsodefined climate change impacts outside of their lifetime, framedaround markers of 50, 100 or 150 years. This externalisation ofimpact in space and time was also reflected, in our research, byreflections on practices within the context of climate changecauses:

‘‘I mean I’ve seen an Inconvenient Truth. . .I think I took that witha pinch of salt. I can see that the fuel burnt is not such a goodthing as indeed with deodorants and such like. . .but mypersonal view is the world is evolving, it adapts remarkablywell, mother nature is an amazing thing and. . .we will eitherhave another apocalypse, ice age or meteor strike and we’ll starta fresh or mother nature will just sort us out and rebalance theworld’’ (BA, Donna).

These representations of climate change begin to uncoverdifferences in the ways that scale is implicated in the framing ofembedded environmental practice and the challenges that climatechange can pose when considering shifts in practice to mitigateagainst global warming. Although recognised as an environmentalissue, the global scale of climate change is seen as being isolatedfrom the everyday practice of sound environmental stewardshipand the social contexts in which it is undertaken. As Gemma (BA)noted, the scale of the challenge posed by reducing harmfulpractices like car use in nations such as the United States presents aconflict for the citizen–consumer when considering the practicaland embedded ways in which practices can be adopted to reduceone’s own impact on climate change within existing frameworks ofeconomic activity, consumption and even political democracy.Accordingly, the externalisation of climate change as an issuethrough space and time raises the question of how effective acitizen–consumer logic can be in raising fundamental issues ofmajor social change. Indeed, the scale of climate change bringscitizen–consumers into a zone of conflict between the continua-tion of existing, embedded environmental practices that have localresonance and benefit, and the possibility that new forms ofpractice, radically different from existing behaviours, will berequired to meet the global challenge of climate change.

3.4. New sites of practice for activism

The focus of the citizen–consumer approach ultimately relieson the balance between citizenship responsibilities and activatingthese through points of consumption. The most illustrative conflictthat environmental social scientists need to engage with thereforeencompasses notions of place and in particular the sites of practicethat are so critical to the performance of environmental practice(Shove, 2003). Both the geographical and sociological literatures onenvironmental practice have emphasised the importance ofcontext (Owens, 2000) and the detailed empirical research ofauthors such as Gregson et al. (2007) have illustrated the valuableinsights to be gained from exploring what on the surface appears tobe a ‘throwaway society’ within the intimate setting of thehousehold, where, in this case, the management and metabolism of

materials is representative of social relations, social ordering,values, identities and most of all norms. Such research has thusemphasised the importance of placing environmental practice incontext; yet this and similar research (e.g. Bulkeley and Gregson,2009; Shove and Warde, 2002; Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008) hasfocused on notions of everyday practice within a specific place, orsite of practice; indeed, such work has also explored distinct anddiscrete environmental practices (such as managing waste orwater use). By contrast, emerging discourses of climate changerepresent distributed practices across a range of contexts and thusplaces. Accordingly, the all-encompassing nature of climate changetranscends the neat compartmentalisation of the everyday fromthe holiday, or the home from the resort or workplace, thuschallenging the citizen–consumer’s assumptions about environ-mental practice and its relation to social practice.

Within the focus groups and interviews conducted for our twoprojects, tensions emerged between two dominant sites ofpractice, notably the ‘home’ (defined as the household and thedaily practices of that unit) and the ‘holiday’ (defined as one ormore overnight stays away from home). As the empirical materialreported throughout this paper illustrate, everyday practices withenvironmental benefits were largely unquestioned and placedwithin a wider social and economic context. Accordingly, ourresearch highlighted the sense that the home as a site of practicewas an appropriate and accepted place in which to engage inpractices that derived environmental benefits. Yet the discussionsof participants shifted notably when conversation moved toexplore the ways in which practices were undertaken in sites ofleisure and tourism:

‘‘We’re going to the Caribbean because we’re getting married’’(BA, Jane).

‘‘Wow, that’s fantastic’’ (Moderator)

‘‘Yeah well we’re not too happy because like my children havetold me all about flying and it’s bad for the environment andeverything’’ (BA, Jane).

In this conversation, acknowledgement of a conflict emergesbetween the aspiration for a highly conspicuous act of consump-tion and the consequences of that behaviour which, as Janerecognised, has negative environmental impacts. This was a themediscussed by participants in the context of carbon emissions andconsequent impacts on the global climate, leading to attempts forreconciliation between environmentally responsible ‘home’ livingwith the aspirations, needs and symbolic value of continuing totake (carbon-intensive) holidays:

‘‘Yes, I have thought about it and like Margaret said aboutplanting trees, I do; like I recycle 100% of what I possibly can solike now, there’s not one piece of paper goes in my bin, so thatkind of makes me feel less guilty about using my car as much asI do [and] flying as much as I do, but I don’t think I would [off-setcarbon emissions] if I’m honest’’ (BA, 1E).

The notion that holidays are a site of practice that falls beyondthe concerns of climate change is an emerging theme in tourismliteratures (Becken, 2007; Gossling and Peeters, 2007) and partiallyrecognises earlier scholarship that highlights a need to recognisethe fundamental difference between the spaces of liminality,leisure and the home (Krippendorf, 1987). However, it is at theintersection between the home and the holiday, the everyday andthe extra-ordinary (Urry, 2002), that the conflict between theresponsibilities of the citizen and the imperatives of the consumer

S. Barr et al. / Global Environmental Change 21 (2011) 1224–1233 1231

clash, challenging individuals to reconcile embedded practices thatembody environmental responsibility with behaviours that areportrayed in some parts of the media as ecological destruction.Indeed, it is at this intersection that individuals meet the challengeof climate change head on, pulling them into a discourse ofjustification and rationalisation as they wrestle with conflictingidentities:

‘‘I suppose people think a holiday is a holiday and that they gothere to relax and do their own thing. And you know, it sounds abit nasty but you know, when you’re on holiday, you’re reallythinking about yourself aren’t you because it’s your time away’’(DEFRA, 1D).

Accordingly, climate change infiltrates various sites of practice,suggesting that even acts of highly valued consumption areproblematic and raising questions about the value and efficacy ofestablished forms of environmental practice. For some, the conflictpresented by climate change may bring about changes in practicethat enable new and radically different routines; for others, ourresearch suggests that the stark contrasts drawn between existingforms of consumption and the reductions seemingly required tomitigate against climate change are such that divergent forms of(environmental) practice can largely be rationalised and justified.

4. Discussion: socio-ecological conflict in an age of climatechange

The evidence presented in this paper concerning the role ofclimate change in generating a series of conflicts between differentforms of practice suggests that environmental social scientistsneed to shift their attention towards two challenges that face bothacademics and practitioners seeking to study and promote pro-environmental behaviour. The first challenge is that a new andpotent set of environmental discourses associated with climatechange have emerged, which are disrupting the citizen–consumerbalance and the related assumptions that some advocates of asocial practices approach have made about the role of ‘environ-ment’ in studying and defining practice. The second challenge isthat these new climate-focused discourses are characterised byconflict and juxtapose, in the mind of the citizen–consumer,conventional and largely unquestioned environmental practiceswith those for which there is uncertainty, unclear accountability,no sense of immediacy and a limited sense of place. The evidence inthis paper would therefore suggest that these points of ‘social-ecological’ conflict are what define the emergence of these newclimate-focused discourses. Indeed, as climate change continues togrow as a political imperative, these conflicts are only likely tobecome greater.

These findings indicate that three main shifts are required in theways that academics and practitioners conceptualise and promoteenvironmental practice in an era of socio-ecological conflict. Wedeal first with the issue of policy and the challenges that the dataoutlined in this paper present for current political discourses onbehaviour change. We then consider how researchers exploringenvironmental practice need to re-position their research toaccount for the conflicts and disruptions that are emerging in thelight of climate change. Finally, we explore the underlying basis forthe citizen–consumer approach, oriented towards individuals, andthe need to re-consider alternative frameworks for social andeconomic development in an era of climate change.

We begin, therefore, with policy, which has (in the UK at least)adopted the notion of the citizen–consumer in contemporaryunderstandings of how to promote environmental behaviour andwider sets of practices (Clarke et al., 2007; DEFRA, 2008). The basis

of this approach is one that makes assumptions across thepractices and contexts of an individual’s lifestyle and seeks topromote behaviour using consumption-based marketing techni-ques. As Peattie and Peattie (2009) indicate, the adoption ofmarket-orientated strategies to deal with sustainability dilemmasposes a number of problems, not least the ‘consumption problem’;that is to say an attempt to use commercial and marketing-basedmethods to reduce consumption (Peattie and Crane, 2005). Theargument pursued in this paper is that to use the ‘consumer–citizen’ perspective (which crosses boundaries of practice andtherefore place) necessitates agreement and consensus on whatconstitutes an appropriate level of consumption. For accepted andnormalised environmental practices, such levels are generallyagreed and unquestioned. However, climate change represents acontested area, one that depends on uncertainties of knowledge,responsibility, scale and sites of practice. This means thatindividuals with strong commitments towards the environmentassociated with established practices, which hold few uncertain-ties, often separate out these pro-environmental commitmentsfrom those which relate to new forms of environmental practicerelated to climate change. In so doing, it is possible for individualsto lead apparently contradictory and ‘paradoxical’ (un)sustainablelifestyles, which they themselves recognise as a point of potentialsocio-ecological conflict. The challenge for policy, at the very least,is therefore to understand how issues like climate change areframed by consumer–citizens in relation to different forms ofpractices, acknowledging that as an issue it can raise importantquestions about current levels of consumption and thus theresponse efficacy of individuals. In short, policy makers need toconsider the effectiveness of promoting changes in behaviours(such as reducing the number of flights taken) without firsttackling the underlying assumptions of the social practices onwhich such behaviours are based (such as the importance oftourism consumption).

A second shift that we identify necessitates a re-positioning ofthe social practices approach as currently formulated by manyenvironmental social scientists who adopt this perspective. Weargue here that users of a social practices paradigm need toencompass the emergent and powerful discourses surroundingclimate change and the conflicts that this can involve. This is not tosuggest a wholesale rejection of the assumptions or intellectualbasis for understanding social practices, but rather a re-framing ofthe ways that the ‘environment’ is considered in the wider contextof practices.

In abstracting ‘environment’ from studies of social practices, theapproach of authors such as Shove (2003) (adopted by manyresearchers studying environmental practice) has set in place aframing device for enabling scholars to understand practices aspart of the everyday acts of living, being and consuming. Suchcontextualisations of practice are indeed critical for the interpre-tation of ‘environmental behaviour’ and enable scholars to framesuch actions around values, ethics, norms and social structures(Bulkeley and Gregson, 2009). However, in viewing environmentalpractice from this perspective, from ‘below’, we also need torecognise that new and contested forms of practice, which aredriven by political discourses to tackle climate change, aregradually but sporadically intruding from ‘above’ into theconstruction and discussion of daily routines and habits. Accord-ingly, these climate-centred discourses hold a place in theeveryday framing of practice, alongside values, ethics, normsand social structure, and thus become a part of the context forsocial practices, which deserves an explicit focus in our framingand inquiry of the everyday as environmental social scientists.Therefore, the call here is for those who seek to sideline‘environment’ in studies of practice to re-consider their approach,viewing it instead, in an era of climate change, as part of underlying

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contexts that may be disrupting both attitudes and establishedpractices.

Finally, the re-positioning of the social practices approach alsonecessitates an appraisal of conventional citizen–consumerassumptions (Johnson, 2008) and therefore a need to recognisethat as new and contested forms of environmental discourseemerge, points of conflict between ‘citizenship’ and ‘consumption’will occur that challenge individuals to reflect on their role(s) inthis context (Dobson, 2010). As Johnson (2008) has recentlyargued, a wider perspective on the citizen–consumer weakens thecase for advocating a Neo-liberal approach towards promotingecological citizenship through mainstream, market-orientedpractices. Indeed, in critiquing this notion, Johnson (2008, p.232) notes that the use of such a perspective:

‘‘. . .implies a social practice that can satisfy competingideologies of consumerism (an ideal rooted in individual self-interest) and citizenship (an ideal rooted in collectiveresponsibility to a social and ecological commons)’’.

This apparent contradiction identified by Johnson reveals acritical point about individualistic conceptualisations of environ-mental behaviour, which are characterized by the (re)balancing ofconsumption norms, habits and routines with notions of ecologicalresponsibility (Slocum, 2004). Indeed, the data presented in thispaper illustrate that the challenges individuals face in reacting toissues such as climate change often present points of conflict forconsumers who in the recent past have managed to find a balancebetween consumption and citizenship. As highlighted with thedata on ‘sites of practice’, climate change implies changes inconsumption that challenge and conflict with established modes ofpractice in certain contexts and thus present a barrier to adoptingand embedding new forms of behaviour. A far wider pointtherefore, is the extent to which the citizen–consumer perspectiveoffers a realistic and sustainable pathway towards the harmonisa-tion of individual responsibilities and consumption needs whenconsidered in the context of climate change. Such a questiontherefore necessitates a deeper reflection in the academiccommunity on the role of individuals and thus the individualisticstances adopted by some researchers in environmental behaviourstudies (Shove, 2010). The research reported in this paper suggeststhat the socio-ecological conflicts which can emerge for individu-als raise questions about policy, practice and more fundamentallythe role of citizens as consumers in an age of climate change.Accordingly, an issue such as climate change may well necessitatethe kind of fundamental social and economic re-framing thatSeyfang (2005, p. 303) has advocated in her research on shoppingand sustainability where she argues that:

‘‘. . .to build a social context consistent with an enabledecological citizenry, governments must look to the alternativeperspective to sustainable consumption which aims to providethis context through radical changes to lifestyles, infrastructureand social and economic governance institutions, in order toredirect development goals and reduce absolute consumptionlevels – thereby reducing ecological footprints.

Accordingly, the socio-ecological conflicts that emerge aroundan issue like climate change raise fundamental questions about thesocial and economic structures on which ever-increasing levels ofindividual consumption and thus consumer practices are based. Itis therefore to these questions of conflict and their broadimplications for society that environmental social scientists needto turn if researchers are to make the kind of contribution that anissue such as climate change would appear to merit.

5. Conclusions

The emergence of climate change-focused environmentaldiscourses has been noted for some time amongst climate changeresearchers (Lorenzoni et al., 2007; Leiserowitz, 2005; Whitmarsh,2009). However, the evidence in this paper suggests that unlikeprevious public discourses that have emerged on the promotion ofenvironmental behaviours (such as exhortations to recycle wasteor reduce water use), climate change presents a far more disruptivechallenge for consumers, bringing into question the assumptionsabout everyday practice and the very role and importance ofcurrent consumption levels. Accordingly, these findings lead us toquestion and re-position both the debates on citizen–consumers(Spaargaren and Mol, 2008) and the social practices approach(Verbeek and Mommaas, 2008) that have come to dominate muchof the intellectual landscape in environmental social science. In re-positioning these agendas, emphasis needs to be placed onrealizing the limits of the citizen–consumer concept (Johnson,2008) and recognising the need for researchers to engage with newand problematic environmental discourses that challenge therelations between a post-modern and reflexive notion of thecitizen with embedded consumption habits. This does not need toreject the notion of the citizen–consumer in particular settings, butrather to re-frame the power relations citizens have in particularspaces and places and, ultimately, to recognise that climate changeposes challenges that it may be possible to address only partiallythrough such an approach.

In this way, the potential enormity of climate change as a social(as well as natural) phenomenon implies that researchers need toevaluate their focus on the role and power of individuals to effectchange, leading to wider and fundamental questions of therelationship between individuals and the state and the ways inwhich behavioural change as a political discourse is promoted andgoverned. As Shove (2010) has noted, the focus on individuals andthe logic of the ABC (‘Attitude’ – ‘Behaviour’ – ‘Choice’) model ofpolicy making within a consumer-focused society has significantlimitations. The evidence in this paper would suggest that climatechange as an issue is undermining, for individuals as well asresearchers and practitioners, the logic of the ‘citizen–consumer’through the emergence of apparently conflicting (ecological)practices. Such an unraveling of this construct necessitates botha questioning of the citizen–consumer model of behaviouralchange as well as a focus on how climate change is re-positioningthe perceived value of environmental practices from being part ofeveryday life to being fundamentally in opposition to existingforms of consumption. Understanding these shifts is importantbecause it is through charting the conflicts that emerge aroundclimate change that forces open the wider political debate on howradical social change can be generated through collective anddeliberative processes, which can not only lead to new ways ofdealing with climate change, but also prepare societies for dealingwith other global challenges such as peak oil (Seyfang, 2005;Shove, 2010).

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Department for theEnvironment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) (Project No.EPES040514) and the British Academy for their financial supportin undertaking this research.

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