Background

Major reductions in CO2 emissions are requested to prevent severe climate change. In Denmark, as in the rest of the Global North, CO2 emissions to a large extent relates to consumer activities of respectively mobility, food and housing, which at the same time constitute some of the most fundamental pillars of human life.

The primary assumption of FoMoHo is that a successful reduction in CO2 emissions requires a simultaneous transition within mobility, food and housing, in respectively the supply sector and the everyday consumer activities. So far, however, no major cross-cutting study has been conducted to provide a knowledge basis for such transitions. 

Research method

FoMoHo will build on the extensive research, which exists within studies of everyday life and respectively mobility, food and housing. A review within each area will draft the main conclusions and learnings from the three areas, where similarities and differences are looked for.

Based on this review, new empirical data will be produced in two parallel PhD projects, on young adults’ considerations, and practices. These PhDs are based at respectively Department of Planning, AAU and Department of Sociology, KU. A selection of 30 young adults, representing variation in socio-economics, will be interviewed. The two PhDs will work in parallel with each their informants, and will focus on different aspects of respectively how everyday practices interlink with each other and how institutional material arrangements interact with these everyday practices.

Following these two parallel PhD studies, a new method building on the focus group approach will be developed and conducted, attempting to combine focus group procedures with elements of a dialogical version of stakeholder-interviewing. This work will be carried through by the postdoc, situated at BUILD, AAU. Eight focus groups will be conducted with representatives from institutional material arrangements, such as suppliers, retail and public institutions related to the identified consumption patterns in the interviews with young adults. Focus will be on ways of changing the arrangements and provision side to accommodate sustainability.

Theoretical approach

The theoretical approach in FoMoHo builds on theories of practice in everyday life as developed by authors as Theodor Schatzki and Allan Warde. Theories of practice are particularly strong at describing and interpreting micro-processes in everyday life activities, which are embedded in material and social conditions and dynamics. This approach has been used in the social sciences to analyze reproduction and change in everyday life, particularly in relation to sustainability issues among others by Gram-Hanssen and Halkier.

In FoMoHo, this is combined with a focus on structural stories that explain agency, understood as micro discourses guiding everyday practice as developed among others by Freudendal-Petersen. Through the structural stories, mobility, food and housing practices becomes “objective” factors, which the individual has no possibility or control to change. FoMoHo combines practice theory with structural stories and highlight the importance of how specific norms of what the good life is, has implications for how practices change or not.