Rationale

Abstracts:

'Sweat and the Indoor Environment' - Elizabeth Shove, University of Lancaster
In this contribution, I want to consider the making of sweat as a social problem.
Whether glowing, perspiring or dripping with sweat our own personal systems of
thermal regulation are laden with cultural and historical meaning and are closely related
to infrastructural developments in building and design. The history and social
significance of sweat – and of efforts to mask or deal with it whether through ‘antiperspirants’,
clothing or other means - are intimately related to efforts to maintain and
manage standardised indoor climates. Huge amounts of energy are invested in
preventing sweat and in doing so at enormous long term environmental cost. In this
respect, senses of smell, sight and touch are already vital in the design and development
of the material infrastructures of everyday life. I use this case to reflect on a range of
broader issues about the relation between bodies, practices and social and material
settings.

'‘Limb Objects’ and the Touchiness of Disability' - Mariela Gaete Reyes and Rob Imrie, King’s College London
In 1925, Le Corbusier suggested that standardized furniture and equipment were "humanlimb
objects" and prosthetic devices. He regarded chairs, pens, and other familiar objects,
as decorative art or part of a ‘mechanical system which surrounds us...an extension of our
limbs; its elements, in fact, artificial limbs’ (Le Corbusier, 1925: 23). For Le Corbusier,
decorative art was ‘orthopaedic’ and a constituent part of humans’ interaction with, and
understanding of, the built environment. Developing the idea of the ‘human limb object’ in
relation to the wheelchair, the paper explores the importance of touch, feel, and tactility in
underpinning the sense and understanding of place articulated by those that depend, in part,
on the use of wheelchairs. The testimonies provide insights into the significance of, and
interrelationships between, touch, corporeality, and geography, and provide a basis for (re)
asserting the importance of the interrelationships between touch in the understanding of
(geography and) disability in society.

'Getting over Yuck: Moving from Psychological to Cultural and Sociotechnical
Analyses of Responses to Water Recycling' - Stewart Russell, Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI), University of Edinburgh
Between our understanding of people’s sensory experience of physical environments –
rather in this case the imagined experience of interactions with them – and that of their
reactions to possible new sociotechnical infrastructures, lie our models of human
responses to such stimuli and visions, traditionally in terms of ideas of perception,
cognition and affect. Water recycling – reusing highly treated wastewater – is being
introduced in a number of countries and is increasingly seen as a key component of
strategies for sustainable water provision. In some places proposed schemes have met
strong objections from the public. Popular discussion of reactions to reuse is now
framed around the idea of a ‘yuck factor’: advocates assume an emotional response to
the association with sewage is the primary determinant of people’s attitudes and they
despair of people accepting rational arguments on its merits. Academic and consultancy
work in the area has been dominated by particular work from psychology: theories of
disgust, models of attitude causation, and psychometric methods for measuring attitudes
and determining the influences on them. This paper questions the models, their
assumptions, the methods used to apply and validate them, their implications for
change, and the practical consequences of framing the problem this way. It suggests that
more fruitful explanations, more effective public engagement, and other interventions
for change, require a shift to a more sociological and cultural explanation, one that
examines users’ practices around the sociotechnical systems of providing water and
handling waste. There are no compelling arguments or evidence that negative reactions
to recycled water cannot change with opportunities to learn about the issues. The paper
argues that deliberative consultation mechanisms are essential, both for understanding
the basis of people’s responses and the influences on them, and as a mechanism for
engagement if people are to reach an informed, reasoned and robust evaluation of the
option. It offers observations from our experiments with deliberative forums on water
recycling in Australia. They have convinced us that the ‘yuck’ discourse is of limited
value in explaining public responses and counterproductive in formulating strategies for
increasing public support.

'What does a low carbon future smell like? A sensory exploration of unmanaged
transitional infrastructures' - Noel Cass, Department of Geography, University of Lancaster
In this paper, a number of case studies are used to explore the sensory experiences
involved in innovative configurations of infrastructures of provision and consumption
that provide for forms of low impact living. The cases used are: an autobiographical
account of ‘living in the caravan, working on campus’; a permacultural intentional
community in Devon, and; protest camps ‘Hori-zone’ and ‘Kamp Rostock’,
convergence centres and accommodation for the anti-G8 protests 2005 and 2007. These
configurations are offered as examples of low-carbon futures towards which
infrastructural transitions might be orientated. The concepts of transition management
and niche systems are interrogated in relation to these examples, to highlight that
transitions involve not only the deployment of innovation in technology and the
reconfiguration of infrastructures as socio-technical systems, but also a re-thinking of
the values and expectations upon which such systems are based. It concludes that the
sensory experiences of existing examples of infrastructural transition (in the sense of
micro-level, niche experiments in transition) suggest not only a rethinking of social
constructions such as comfort, cleanliness and convenience (Shove 2003), but a
reassessment of the idea of managed transition. Low impact living of various forms has
been accomplished despite, rather than through network governance by, the policy
regimes of state and market institutions and by working around rather than in
compliance with the regulations that define the surrounding, hostile regime.

'Visualising Power: Social Representations of Electricity Supply Infrastructure' - Hannah Devine-Wright and Patrick Devine-Wright, UMARC, University of Manchester
Infrastructures of electricity supply underpin everyday lifestyles in the 21st century, yet
are often 'invisible' to users and rarely subject to social research. In this presentation,
social representations of electricity supply are investigated using data collected in
Scotland and England as part of the EPSRC funded Supergen FutureNet project. We
first describe the primacy of the visual within policy and academic accounts of
electricity supply failure, and then outline symbolic and affective aspects of power
infrastructure, as revealed by our study participants. Finally, we discuss how methods of
visual enquiry remain relatively under-theorised, under-utilised and under-valued in
social science. We suggest how this might be addressed through utilising the processes
of anchoring and objectification from social representations theory and utilising
methods such as drawing and association tasks.

'Sense and Sanitation: Reshaping the End-users' Sensory Perceptions of Waste
Water Infrastructures Under Change' - Bas Van Vliet, Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University
The presentation draws on recent work of Spaargaren, Hegger and Van Vliet and deals
with the representation of end users' practices in sanitation, and the reshaping of the
sensory perceptions around sanitary systems against the background of contemporary
socio-technical change in waste water infrastructures in Europe. Sanitary practices can
be ranked amongst the most intimate in everyday life. At the same time the world of
waste water management is dominated by an engineering language of material flows,
nutrients and infrastructure. Environmental innovators in sanitary systems therefore
more often than not - and intentionally or not - seems to overlook the intimacy of toilet
practices and just try to implement the best technologies in terms of nutrient reuse,
water saving or biogas production. Here is where end-user rationales and engineering
approaches clash. In presenting a number of case studies of renewal in sanitary systems
in Europe both the representation of the end-user as well as their sensory perceptions of
new systems will be highlighted: i.e. in the case of urine diverting toilets it is just
assumed that men can easily be instructed to sit down while urinating. In the case of
neighbourhood-on-site grey water systems it is assumed that the occasional smells
would fit in the eco-lifestyles of the residents. The paper ends with a sketch of a social
scientific perspective on innovation in sanitation infrastructures that takes into account
everyday life aspects such as standards of comfort, convenience and cleanliness next to
the environmental engineering ''favourites'' of closing nutrient loops, water saving and
bio energy production.