Putting Practice Theory into Practice:

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Putting Practice Theory into Practice:Drought, Climate Change, and the Uncertainty of Water Demand

Dr Alison Browne

Lancaster Environment Centre

a.browne@lancaster.ac.uk

Calling all Translators...

Successful policy = Social science as ‘active mediator’ and ‘translator’

However:

Is translation enough?

Is business and industry involvement merely a ‘fourth’ discourse?

Is there room to unveil normative elements of discourses?

Argue the need for change?

Overview

Introducing a new ‘discourse’ into the debate – that of ‘practice theory’

Identifying need for resetting policy and scientific agenda

Identifying

maladaptations

in current agendas

Identifying current research at LEC chiefly the Adaptation and Resilience in a Changing Climate project (ARCC-Water)

ARCC-Water

Applying sociological

approach

to regional

water resource

models

(SE UK) sensitive

to climate

change

Identify true

uncertainty and sensitivity of water using practices

to climate

and other social, technical and infrastructural changes

.

Social Science Impacts:

to provide

a (sociologically informed

) estimate of

future demand

‘agitator

’ of the

assumptions of the physical

science agenda within this project and the water industry.

The Problem of Estimating Demand

Approaches

which focus on average calculations of demand actually fail to reflect the different services that water

provides,

as well as the distinctive characteristics of the different practices (gardening, laundering, bathing etc), in and as part of which water is consumed in daily life.

The Disconnect between Supply and Demand

Agendas

which focus on simply interacting with the public (to reconsider their water use, to reconsider their use of water efficient devices etc) simplifies the complex relationships between the development of supply and infrastructural options (including technological change) and the everyday practices that characterise water demand.

Maladaptation

F

ive

different types of characteristics

increasing

emissions of greenhouse gases;

disproportionately

burdening the most vulnerable;

having

high opportunity costs

;

reducing

incentives to adapt;

and

increasing path dependencies.

Discourse Coalitions, Saturation and Institutionalisation

Discourse Coalitions in the Economic, Psychological and Engineering Agendas

signify the importance of intervention in terms of supply, provision of water technologies and behavioural change as immediately related to the valued concept of ‘water’.

Maladaptive Discourse Coalitions

Are these discourse coalitions actually maladaptive?

Do they reduce

the ‘interventions’ that are legitimised as adaptive within the space of water resource management?

E.g.,

Legitimising large scale infrastructural change (desalination, recycled

water)

and

choice based consumption (water efficient technologies)

versus

the

efficacy of ‘bringing back the flannel’

i.e.,

changing cultural understandings of what it means to be

clean, value of gardens, value of water using services?

Calling all Agitators... Practicing Practice Theory

Practice based discourses open up other alternatives for

understanding water management

For conceptualising demand

For considering a wider understanding of the concept of ‘intervention’

For reshaping dominant discourses

For providing new ways into interpretive governance regimes that challenge agendas and discourse coalitions

Barnett, J. & O'Neill, S.

Maladaptation

.

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Chappells

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Sofoulis

, Z. in

Creating Value: The Humanities and their Publics. 36th Annual Symposium of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 17-18 November 2005, Canberra: AAH.

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