Emma Hinton

Department of Geography
King's College London
 
Room K4L.04
King's Building, Strand, London WC2R 2LS
Email: emma.d.hinton@kcl.ac.uk
 
 

 
Carbon, Control and Comfort
 
Emma started work in the Department of Geography as a research associate in January 2010. She is working on an interdisciplinary project entitled ‘Carbon, control and comfort: User-centred control systems for comfort, carbon savings and energy management’, which is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and E.ON. In addition to King’s College London, the project consortium includes Leeds Metropolitan University, Loughborough University, Durham University, the University of Greenwich, De Montfort University, UCL and Cardiff University.
 
The core concern of this project is domestic energy consumption in the UK. Individual-level practices in domestic settings can make a significant contribution to reducing energy demand, with associated environmental benefits in terms of reduced carbon dioxide emissions. Whilst new, energy efficient housing stock can support this goal, the majority of housing in the UK is older, less energy efficient housing stock. Whilst refurbishment of these properties can contribute to reduced energy demand, further energy savings can be made through individual-level practices, specifically practices relating to comfort. Energy consumption in existing housing stock (rather than more efficient new build) can account for two thirds of their energy consumption, yet consumption in structurally similar properties can vary by a factor of two or three as a result of variations in individual practices. These practices can include use of the heating system, doors, windows, lighting and clothing.
 
The aim of this interdisciplinary consortium project is to design and test effective control systems and strategies for providing comfort whilst reducing energy use in the existing housing stock. In order to better understand participants’ experiences and constructions of comfort in their homes, Emma – under the supervision of Dr Karen Bickerstaff, and as part of the social research component of the consortium - will carry out in-depth interviews and audio tours with participants at selected sites in the UK, both before and during the user-centred design interventions.
This research will inform the wider literature on socio-technical change in the context of energy systems.
 
Virtual spaces of sustainable consumption

Since January 2007, Emma has been working on her doctoral research project, entitled ‘Virtual spaces of sustainable consumption: Governmentality and third-sector advocacy in the UK’, under the supervision of Dr Mike Goodman  and Professor Michael Redclift. This research received joint funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Defra.


A growing body of multi-disciplinary literature has focused on individual consumption behaviours as a site for the realisation of sustainability. Where previous studies have focused on the practices of sustainable consumption advocacy, they have tended to examine the content of this advocacy – typically in its paper-based or face-to-face forms – and its relative successes and weaknesses in terms of generating measurable behaviour change according to particular definitions of what ‘sustainable consumption’ is. In her research, Emma takes an alternative approach, examining a relatively unexplored area at the frontline of this advocacy – the virtual spaces of sustainable consumption – and the variety of ways that third sector organisations (TSOs) use these spaces to attempt to influence our consumption behaviours.
 
Her dissertation contextualises and analyses the contemporary characteristics and politics of online/offline sustainable consumption advocacy, the multiple networks of power relations in which these hybridities are enmeshed, and explores how these flows of power at the level of the advocate come to shape the ways that we are encouraged to govern our own behaviour.
 
To do this, she has combined an empirical analysis of the reported experiences of 70 TSOs in the UK – collected via questionnaires and interviews, in addition to desk-based analyses of their respective websites – with a theoretical framework that draws from neo-Foucauldian literatures on Governmentality, biopower, ‘panopticism’ and power/knowledge; social movement theory and social network analysis; and discourse analysis. In her thesis, she acknowledges the existence of multiple, competing sustainable consumption discourses, and argues that these heterogeneous discourses and approaches to sustainable consumption advocacy, as they manifest in virtual space, are linked to particular power relations that privilege and make visible certain approaches at the expense of others. These relations flow through multiple and heterogeneous networks that bring together particular groupings of TSOs, funders, collaborators, sources of information, discourses, objects, and, of course, members of the public – all of which come to constitute ‘sustainable consumption’ in different ways, at different times, and in different places.
 
Secondly, she explores the possibilities for ‘flatter’ power relations that virtual advocacy spaces can confer, where, through the various innovations of Web 2.0 technologies, the (tech-savvy) public can share the role of expert with the advocates, producing ‘vernacular sustainable consumption’ discourses to compete with other ‘official’ interpretations.
 
Finally, she addresses the potential implications that these new virtual spaces of sustainable consumption offer up to the politics of ethical consumption and the creation of more sustainable societies.
 

Hinton, E.D. & Goodman, M.K. (2010) ‘Sustainable Consumption: Developments, considerations and new directions’. Chapter 16 in International Handbook of Environmental Sociology (2nd edition), eds: Michael Redclift & Graham Woodgate. Edward Elgar Publishing. (also available as working paper 12 in the EPD series)
 
Hinton, E.D. and Redclift, M. (accepted for publication) ‘Austerity and sufficiency: the changing politics of sustainable consumption’. (also available as working paper 17 in the EPD series)
 
Hinton, E.D. (accepted for publication) ‘“Changing the world one lazy-assed mouse click at a time”: Exploring the virtual spaces of Virtualism in UK third sector sustainable consumption advocacy’. Geoforum (also available as working paper 16 in the EPD series)
 
 
Redclift, M. & Hinton, E. (2008) ‘Living sustainably: approaches for the developed and developing world’. Paper for the Progressive Governance conference in London, April 2008. London: Policy Network. http://www.progressive-governance.net/publications/?id=2198  
 
Hinton, E (2010) 'Review of the Literature Relating to Comfort Practices and Socio-Technical Systems'. (also available as working paper 30 in the EPD series)

Hinton, E.D. (2009) ‘Networks and third sector sustainable consumption advocacy: A governmentality perspective.’ Paper presentation to the Environment, Politics and Development research group, King’s College London, 02/12/2009.
 
Hinton, E.D. (2009) ‘Web 2.0, third sector organisations and the construction of the citizen-consumer in UK sustainable consumption discourses.’ Paper presentation at the RGS-IBG Annual Conference, Manchester, UK, August 2009.
 
Hinton, E.D. (2008) 'Consuming constructions: storylines & subjectivities in the discourses of sustainable consumption.' Paper presentation at the Association of American Geographer's (AAG) Annual Conference, Boston, April 2008.
 

Emma began her academic career as a natural scientist, receiving a BSc Hons from the University of Nottingham in Agricultural and Food Sciences specialising in Environmental Biology in 1999, after which she worked as a Scientific Officer at the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in the Rural and Marine Environment Division. In 2001 she received an MSc in Natural Resource Management specialising in Ecological Conservation from Cranfield University.
 
Following this she developed her practical ability in ecology and conservation by working as Project Officer for two local environmental charities, the Greensand Trust and the North Chilterns Trust, both in Bedfordshire, working in the context of the management of rural and then urban nature.
 
After building on her interest in sustainable energy through working at one of the Energy Saving Trust’s Energy Efficiency Advice Centres in Milton Keynes, she returned to the civil service to join Defra’s Europe Environment Division in the Environmental Technologies team.
 
Before joining King’s College to work on her doctoral research, she worked as a Policy Analyst at the Sustainable Development Commission, focusing on an in-depth review of the government’s sustainable communities policy.
 
Since graduating the first time around, she has also been involved in a voluntary capacity with several third sector groups: serving as an office volunteer with Plantlife International (2001); as newsletter editor with the Bedfordshire Natural History Society (2001-3) and with the London Natural History Society (2007-8); and as trustee with London 21 (2009).
 
She has also produced the www.boomuk.net entertainment reviews website since its inception in 2008, although cannot take credit for the writing contained within it.