Welfare, Employment and Energy Demand

The Role of Government in Steering Demand

Dr Catherine Butler@drcbutler

Project background

Invisible energy policy

• ‘What energy is used for, or how energy needs are made, is in part a reflection of how governments shape objectives, investments and ways of providing and working across many different policy domains’ (Shove et al. 2012)

• To effectively unravel, and understand how to reconfigure, the constitution of demand we must attend to a broad sweep of policies that extend beyond what is currently recognised as energy policy.

• Argue for a distinctive approach to or role for governance that can deliver on the requirements for a low carbon, more socially just society

Welfare and Employment Policy

Project Methods

WP1: Document analysis (Jan 2015 ongoing)

WP 2: Policy and stakeholder in-depth qualitative interviews (October 2015 –

July 2016

WP 3: Policy innovation workshops (summer 2017)

Theory: the role of the state in shaping practice

• Governmentality - key concepts of problematising, rationalities, and technologies (Foucault, 1979; Dean, 2010; Miller and Rose, 2008; Rose, 1999)

• Social reproduction of practice through the state and critical reflexivity necessary to think the state (Bourdieu, 1998)

The role of the state

In modern societies the main agent of the construction of official categories though which both populations and minds are structured is the state, which, through a whole labour of

codification accompanied by economic and social effects (family allowances, for example) aims to favour a certain kind of organisation, to strengthen those who are in a position to

conform to encourage through all material and symbolic means logical and moral conformism...’”

(Bourdieu 1998: 71)

Policy analysis approach

• Analyse high level problematisations

• Unpack how relate to constructions of governing modes and policy solutions

• Understand implications for practices and energy demand (social structures, materials, temporal patterning)

• Role for imagining alternatives and unintended outcomes

Problematising

Modes of governing and

policies

Practices – change or

continuities in energy demand

An example case: problematising

Austerity and funding cuts.

Worklessness – individual

“Worklessness - There are currently around 3.9 million workless households in the UK. That is almost one in five of all households.” (Social Justice: Transforming Lives, 2012)

Work is – and always will be – the best route out of poverty and with welfare reform, Universal Credit,

tax cuts and the introduction of the

National Living Wage, we are making sure that it

always pays to work (David Cameron, 2016)

An example case: problematising

“Entrenched worklessness can leave children without a role model and contribute to and compound problems experienced by adults: mental health problems are more common among people who are out of work than those in employment, whilst large numbers of those claiming benefit experience problematic drug and alcohol use or have a history of offending. Work is undeniably the best and most sustainable route out of poverty”. (DWP Reducing Poverty Indicators, Entrenched Worklessness, 2014)

Interviewee: “I suppose politically… that they’ve gradually over time managed to paint people on welfare as scroungers yet most of the people on welfare are actually working hard, or else they have a very legitimate reason for not working but they’ve managed to paint this thing… over a long period of time”. (Interviewee Policy)

An example case: policies

Austerity and funding cuts.

Worklessness – individual

Getting into work - fit for

work & employment

coaches

“Your work coach may refer you to these schemes… you may do work experience to add some career history to your CV”. (Back to Work Schemes, 2014)

Being employed helps promote recovery and rehabilitation and prevents the harmful physical, mental and social effects of long-term sickness absence. Fit for Work is designed to assist you as an employer in helping employees to get back to work as soon as is appropriate. (DWP, 2014)

An example case: practices

Austerity and funding cuts.

Worklessness – individual

Getting into work - fit for

work & employment

coaches

Practices –continuities and

increases in energy demand e.g. work travel

• Time travel surveys show increasing levels of travel related to work (Carlson-Kanyama and Linden, 1999)

• High job densities contribute toward increasing distances travelled for work (Boussauw et al. 2010)

• Work place energy use versus home working (Spurling and Mcmeekin, 2015)

An example case: practices

Austerity and funding cuts.

Worklessness – individual

Getting into work - fit for

work & employment

coaches

Practices –continuities and

increases in energy demand e.g. work travel

Workplace hubs in areas of high employment (Spurling

and McMeekin, 2015)

Practice change - materials, temporal ordering, meanings

Re-imaginings

Changing policy and politics

“The Civil Service is still constructed in such a way as it defends its own bit of its own empire and is very unhappy about pooling resources… One department is seen as being responsible for actually making sure that you're keeping warm and that's an expensive commitment. And it's another department which is seeing the benefit of that from the fact that you are no longer calling on them for emergency health support and so on and so forth. We just do not know how to manage to bridge that sort of stuff.” (Interviewee Charity – policy)

Thank you

c.butler@exeter.ac.uk

@drcbutler