Bound by ethical complexities and socio-material histories: an exploration of household energy consumption in Singapore

Abstract Households are increasingly subject to environmental regulation and intervention in today’s carbon-constrained world. Highlighting cross- disciplinary synergies between practice theory and material geographies, I illuminate the lived complexities of everyday energy-use in Singapore. Based on an ethnographic study of 8 households, it is apparent that energy practices are sustained and reproduced through the subjectivities of materialities, practical ethics, socialised rules and histories, embedded withinin the spatio-temporalities of the actually-existing household. For energy conservation policy and research, these findings suggest non- engagement with the complexities of household energy-use. By promoting a single normative vision of ‘Green’ energy practices, energy conservation initiatives risk alienating people with practices that do not resonate with household dynamics as they are lived. Instead, an enagement of ‘practices’ instead of ‘behavior’ opens up a more expansive field for research and policy engagement in the dynamic and path dependent processes of social normality, and more effective means of encouraging more sustainable ways of living.

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