Relationality, entangled practices, and psychosocial exploration of intergenerational dynamics in sustainable energy studies

Extensive knowledge exists regarding how to comprehend the embeddedness of everyday energy usage and resultant demand trajectories within wider social and material contexts. Researchers have explored how people find themselves locked into everyday ways of using energy, and how energy systems have evolved to entangle together practices and socio-technological infrastructures. There is widespread acceptance that the challenges of transforming inconspicuous habitual ways of using energy require research attention. What is less clear is how to approach the study of everyday energy use to reflect the ways in which people make their daily lives meaningful. This article draws upon sociological studies of family life and psychosocial research to thicken existing research on material infrastructures and social practices in energy use and demand reduction studies. Findings concern how relational entanglements have a bearing on everyday practices involving energy, and have significant potential to deepen understanding of historically embedded change in people’s everyday energy dependencie