The Social Backgrounds of Ecological Conversion – RSCE

S’il n’est pas à proprement parler pluridisciplinaire, puisque résolument ancré dans l’analyse sociologique, ce programme de recherche articule des échelles et des méthodes d’analyse diversifiées. Enquêtes de terrain par observation et entretiens d’un côté, exploration et modélisation statistique au moyen de base de données issues de la statistique publique, de l’autre.

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Ce programme de recherche conduit à revisiter un certain nombre de questions classique en sociologie de la consommation et des modes de vie, qui touchent notamment aux processus de diffusion des modèles de comportements. Il conduit plus largement à explorer les rapports sociaux sous-jacents aux questions environnementales, qu’il s’agisse de la différenciation des attitudes ou de la répartition des contributions. En marge de ces questionnements théoriques, on se propose aussi d’éclairer les cadres de la décision et de l’évaluation en matière de politique publique environnementale.

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The research programm « Social backgrounds of ecological conversion » is based upon the fact that Northern Life style is now pointed out as heavily responsible for the ecological footprint increase. Therefore the so-called Ecological conversion of contemporary societies partly relies on lifestyles change.
Focusing on the French case, this project aims to systematically analyze large statistical surveys on Housing conditions, Transportation and Household Expenditure Survey, in order to draw up a social typology of “carbon budgets” of individuals and/or households. Together with the analysis of opinion surveys on environmental attitudes, this statistical exploration would contribute to draw up the social space of environmental attitudes and practices.
In order to study more directly carbon footprint of life style, we’ll also create a specific and new survey which will embrace in the same questioning classical sociodemographic variables, life style indicators and environmental and political opinion indicators. The making of this data will take place in the frame of very new facilities of excellence DIME-SHS (Data, Infrastructure, Survey in social science) that give the opportunity to researchers of using a random sample of 6000 individuals. This survey will be benefit from the results of interviews on style life and environmental norms and politics. 300 Interviews will be conducted on a sample based on class distinctions and also on three singular populations: automobile driver; radical ecologists; ecological « moral entrepreneur » like journalists, activists, professionals of communication, experts
The second part of our research will try to understand the distribution of the positions according to social determinations that weight on the adoption of the life style observed in the firth part of the research. A special attention will be paid to behaviour norms coming from the mediatisation of environmental problems, and their socially differentiated effects. Class distinctions will be apprehended through class fractions and fluctuations between ostentatious expense and frugality according to tastes culturally and economically framed. These social differences are also linked to questions of cultural, school and out of school resources which are important dimensions in adopting other practices. We’ll also study the role of occupations and jobs in terms of time of working and non working time, and in terms of useful knowledge in ecological conversion. We’ll pay attention to the composition of the household in terms of sex and generation under the same rook is crucial in domestic choices implied by the life-style reform).
This ambitious survey which combines quantitative and qualitative methods will give the social cost of ecological conversion of life styles and will allow us to target more effectively the most receptive population to this kind of discourse and practice, and also the least armed population to face the social change. Our hypothesis is that environmental prescriptions are not as neutral and as consensual as they seem to be.