25th October, 16.00-18.00
Sustainable belonging: Family and gender in home making practices
Mandy de Wilde, Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, the Netherlands and DEMAND visitor
As socio-technical transitions unfold under the influence of energy concerns, our domestic environment changes. Scholarship on sustainable consumption and production has focused on how socio-technical transitions affect various practices of households and what this means for their energy demand. However, the basic locus of analysis, namely the domestic environment, has received little critical social consideration . This is remarkable considering that home, and the emotions associated with the domestic environment, have become a core symbol of Western culture
In this seminar I operationalize the domestic environment as a nexus of homemaking practices where family relations and gendered identities are negotiated, contested and transformed. I want to explore the possibilities for operationalizing affects into a practice-based account of how families enact (sustainable) belonging within the context of the energy transition and how gender is articulated in this process.