The Life of Elements

The most obvious way a practice can change according Watson (2012) is through the elements themselves, due to their nature of accomplishing a practice. In its simplest form then, practices change when new elements are introduced or when existing elements are combined in new ways (Shove et al., 2012, p.120). This is typified by Shove et al. who argue that policymakers and visionaries should ‘hunt down’ those elements which have the most negative impact upon carbon emitting practice and design new elements that would that would support lower emitting practices (2012, p.147). The basic assumption here then is the alteration of bad elements which enable the production of bad practices. Both materials, competence and meanings can be introduced and integrated into existing performances of practices with implications to other elements within the practice. An example Watson provides is that “for

technological changes to affect a practice, they have to be integrated into

performances of that practice by a practitioner, with implications for the competencies and meanings that circulate within the practice” (2012, p.490). This is not stipulate a cause-and-effect relationship however, as it is established that it is difficult to identify the single location of change within a practice due to co-evolution of elements in which an innovation in one element reconfigures the relationship between other elements such that further spaces open up for innovation elsewhere (Watson, 2012).

This concurs with Shove and Pantzar’s (2005) argument that the emergence and demise of practices involve the forging and failing links between elements of meanings, competences, and materials.

Shove et al.’s (2012, pp.149-151) example of the ‘Cool Biz’ programme, a Japanese government intervention to attempt to reduce CO2 emissions involved attempting to change office clothing practices which relied on air-conditioning in the routine enactment of office life. The Ministry of Environment’s marketing technique of transforming the meaning of smart and appropriate wear involved high ranking

government officials wearing loose-fitted short sleeve outfits in formal settings, whilst the Mistry of Environment organised a fashion show in which ambassadors of Asian

countries walked down the catwalk in climatically appropriate wear. With successful business leaders involved, the clothing industry promoted specially designed

garments (materials) under the Cool Biz name. Therefore, whilst the government initially focused on the meaning of clothing in reducing the demand on energy intensive systems and the need for air-conditioning, we can see that new materials were created in the form of specially designed garments, creating a co-evolutionary change in elements of a practice. What was perceived as ‘normal’ was thus

recalibrated in which a new pattern emerged as a result. Whilst some individuals felt this change disturbing and a threating process which required them to abandon habits of a lifetime, others found it a relief in bringing institutional expectation in line with their own casual approach (Shove et al., 2012, p.158).

As already drawn to attention practices cannot simply be imported/exported from one space to another. It is not a case of importing the idea/practice, adapting it to suit local conditions. As commented previously in the ‘Entity and Practice-as-Performance’ section, national distinctions of practices “are significant for and are to some extent made by producers, retailers and importers” (Shove and Pantzar, 2005, p.60). For Shove and Pantzar, their conceptualisation of Nordic Walking’s reinvention in a variety of different countries provides a better understanding than to assume a process of diffusion. Rather than practices spreading to other countries, it should be assumed that new variants of Nordic Walking emerge in new contexts and are therefore different practices. Such practices consist of new configurations of existing elements or new elements in combination with elements that pre-exist in such places (Shove and Pantzar, 2005, p.61). Whilst having a number of elements in common in relation to performing such a practice, they are none the less perceived to be a transnational diffusion of Nordic Walking as a concept rather than as a practice.

Whilst these draw to attention an intentional intervention of a practice through the introduction of new elements or considerable innovation of elements, changes in a practice may also be continuous and unnoticed until zooming out to chart such change over its history. For instance, showering has altered and evolved over the last century through minor multiple adjustments made in private referring to plumbing

technologies and products as well as the timing of the experience, the force of the flow and the value of freshness. This therefore has circulated different and new

materials, meanings and competences which has contributed to a significant evolution of such practice (Shove et al., 2012 p.73). Again, drawing to attention Kuijer’s (2014, p.44) working paper, her visualisation (Figure 2-3) of such a process as outlined in Shove et al. helps to picture how such a process of introducing new elements and breaking such links happens.

Figure 2-3 Reconfiguration of practice through the introduction of new elements (Kuijer, 2014, p.44).

Whilst this draws to attention the introduction of new elements or creating new combinations of existing elements, it is also important to consider how elements fall out of use through social-fossilisation (Shove and Pantzar, 2006). For innovations in practice to succeed they must secure resources and committed followers which often refers to a process of re-alignment and displacement. Thus whilst making new links within such practices it also refers to a process of breaking existing combinations of elements in which materials, competences, and/or meanings that once contributed to a practice fall out of use, thus becoming stranded and separated. Shove and Pantzar’s investigation of the growth of Nordic Walking identifies how particular organisations facilitated the widespread acceptance and recruitment to such practice through

breaking links associated to the practice which it was for the fanatical athlete and that the use of walking sticks was associated to frailty, whilst introducing new elements associated to injury prevention, well-being and improving the fitness of ordinary people (2005, p.50). This reflects a process of de-classification and re-classification in which old connotations were shaken off and new ones made (Shove et al., 2012). The introduction of the new meanings extends the meaning to encompass such practice.

But, such introduction of new meanings also means the contraction of others. The example of ‘freshness’ being introduced into laundering and bathing resulted in previous dominant themes of cleanliness or hygiene being overlain, transformed or displaced as a result of the interaction with the meaning of ‘freshness’, to a point where this notion legitimises and can demand more of the practice in longer or more frequent performances (Shove et al., 2012, p.55). Yet as Shove and Pantzar (2005) allude to, the introduction to new elements are not automatically accepted. Whilst the meaning of Nordic Walking was actively marketed as an ‘ordinary activity for ordinary people’ it received criticism, looking like another pointless craze. Yet the promotion of walking groups enabled the performance of the practice without individuals feeling silly with groups becoming smaller once individuals felt they could walk alone without feeling silly. Endorsement by the medical profession further normalised the practice to a point in which the practice existed as an entity and

therefore as a recognizable practice in its own right (2005, p.53). Whilst this assumes that elements can travel fast and immediately, there must be some caution to this. For materials, this generally happens in their physical relocation and therefore relies of infrastructures and systems in which to transport such objects. Whilst elements involving competence and know-how can only ‘travel’ if there is a basis in which to build off of existing competences. This depends on local capacities “to embed, reverse’ and interpret” and therefore the importance of practices past become a significant point in understanding the capacity in which to de-code, understand and facilitate new competences or meanings (Shove et al., 2012, p.57).

Shove and Pantzar (2006, p.1) comment that such elements ‘only have meaning and effect (they only live) when integrated into practice’, in that once elements fall out of use in the ‘doing’ of such practice, they are no longer ‘animated, sustained, and reproduced’ and at such point fossilisation sets in. Once disconnected, artefacts, images, ideas and skills don’t necessarily disappear but remain dormant. Materials once used in motoring for driving involved ‘bundling up’, in which drivers wore special clothing (coats, goggles and gloves) (Shove et al., 2012, p.34). These objects became part of other practices (driving gloves becoming just gloves), others were discarded (goggles) and ended up in museums, sold or reclassified as rubbish, whilst skills and ideas might be stored in the form of instruction manuals no longer utilised.

there is the possibility of such elements being resurrected and being reconfigured into new combinations of such practice in the future. Yet Shove et al., are somewhat sceptical of this, classifying such opportunities of not necessarily seeing them as being reconfigured but rather ‘doing history’. Utilising driving as an example they argue it is “usefully conceptualised as an ongoing, irreversible process of collective forgetting: forgetting how to manage oil and grease; forgetting the full language of hand-signals… and, with satellite navigation, forgetting how to read a map” (2012, p.34). Fossilisation can be both situated as well as systemic, whilst an element can become fossilised in one persons performance, it can remain an indispensable part of another person’s way of life. Such fossilisation can be accelerated when changing cohorts of carriers which sustains such practice fails and the flow of recruits, for instance from parents to children falters, with the requisite elements and potentially wider impact of the practice itself becoming endangered (Shove and Pantzar, 2006).