Sustainable Consumption Institute

I have long been an admirer of Sarah Pink’s work – not least for her uncanny knack of bringing innovative methodological approaches to bear on topical substantive issues. In Situating Everyday Life, she brings together material from a number of ethnographic projects to engage with theories of place and practice, and apply them to questions of sustainability (about which I know something) and activism (about which I know a lot less). As the title suggests, she places everyday life at the centre of her analysis and proceeds to unpack the activities and environments that shape the dynamics of lived experience whilst keeping an eye on the ways in which these relate to processes of social change.

Pink asserts that debates about sustainability and climate change invite a focus on everyday life, not just amongst the branches of the social sciences that are already dealing with it (sociology, but also anthropology and geography), but also across scholarly traditions (for example engineering and design) and into the realms of formal and cultural politics. I couldn’t agree more and her argument appears to parallel some of Elizabeth Shove’s discussion about the nature and purchase of social scientific engagement with climate …

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