Sociocultural Carbon (stage 2)

The objective of this project is to produce novel understandings of the social and
cultural value of carbon emission data. Many people in the global north are aware
of climate change and find it important to mitigate its consequences. Yet they
pursue high-emission lifestyles despite having access to multiple digital means for managing emission data. Qualitative social studies of mitigation strategies have largely focused on governance or on the making of carbon markets, credits and emission data as creating climate conscious subjects and facilitating change of the actions that lead to emissions. There has been far less attention to situations where this change fails to appear, and how the context of the everyday lives of those subjects depend upon cultural continuity. This ethnographic study, instead of assuming technology and ‘datafication’ to generate change in any profound way, focuses on the felt contradictions and values inherent to the discrepancy between knowledge and practice.