Resultados de la implementación

In this section I explain how ideas of social location are employed in this thesis. Social location is a way of positioning an individual in the world. I have drawn on Bourdieu’s understandings of habitus (1990a, 1990b), class condition and social conditioning (1984), Inghilleri’s (2005) interpretations of Bourdieu’s work in this area, Malpas’ (2016) work on connections of place to understanding, and also on Anthias’ (2013) work on translocation. I use these sources to inform how I deploy social location in the research project. However, my use of social location is most reminiscent of Bourdieu’s concept of habitus. I use social location to broadly situate

participants in space and to explore the dialectical relations between their objective positioning and subjective dispositions (Bourdieu, 1984, 1990a). The word ‘location’ is not confined to physical geography but includes cultural, social, economic, gender, and cultural geographies (Corbett, Vibert, Green, & Rowe, 2016).

While I do not strictly use the lens of social class, Bourdieu’s work in this area has informed my interpretations of what it means to be located in the social world. At times, I deploy understandings of a working class and middle class habitus in similar ways to Bourdieu’s usage6_{. In his description of how class is constructed, Bourdieu}

(1984) notes, “social class is not defined by a property…but by the structure of relations between all the pertinent properties which gives its specific value to each of them and to the effects they exert on practices” (p. 106). In this extract, Bourdieu draws attention to the interconnections between objective classifying properties. It is how these geographies are arranged and come together that provides the foundations for an embodied, relational practice he calls habitus. For example, categories of age, gender, and ethnicity are embodied in different ways in different people; Bourdieu argues that practices and performances are not necessarily predictable, but that they are regulated by the milieu of experiences afforded by the meshing of geographies.

6 _{For a thorough discussion of Bourdieu’s understanding and deployment of social class, see Weininger}

(2002, pp.122-127). Weininger (2002, p.122) notes that Bourdieu’s determination of class is based upon three axes: The first (and most important) axis differentiates locations in the occupational system according to the total volume of capital (economic and cultural) possessed by a person; The second differentiates positions within classes based upon the set of available resources and powers (capitals); The third relates to the changes experienced over time in the volume and composition of capital. However, as noted by Bourdieu (1984, pp. 258-259) “…we can speak of a class fraction although it is nowhere possible to draw a demarcation line such that we can find no one on either side who possesses all the properties most frequent on one side and none of the properties most frequent on the other”. Weinginger goes on to argue “…hence, that within “this universe of continuity,” the identification of discrete class (and fraction) locations amounts to no more than a heuristic convenience” (2002, p. 126). In this research, I use demographic data collected from participants on household income, occupation and education to inform my understanding and deployment of class in the study.

Inghilleri (2005) asserts that classificatory schemes were used by Bourdieu because of “his interest in how knowledge and power [were] distributed within and between social individuals and collectivities” (p. 135). In a similar way, I draw on the demographic information provided by participants in conjunction with their stories to construct a picture of how they are located in social space. I do this as a way of thinking about how ideas of sustainability are understood across social spaces. However, in any kind of naming practice, Bourdieu (1990) asserts that “classes on paper risk being apprehended as real groups” (p. 128). In this sense, I take the idea of habitus as a means of going beyond classificatory schemes and I also take further inspiration from Malpas’ (2016) considerations of place in hermeneutics, as well as Anthias’ (2013) work on translocation to deepen my understanding of what social location means in the context of this project.

Anthias’ (2013) way of thinking about social location encompasses the

permeable and somewhat fluid nature of Bourdieu’s habitus. However, she goes on to include, or at least to consider, the complex temporal and spatial networks in which individuals are entwined in a globalised society (Anthias, 2014a, 2014b; Appadurai, 1996). Questions related to concepts of sustainability are complexly entangled in local, national and transnational fields (Agyeman & Evans, 2004; Dryzek, 1997; Jacobs, 1999; Plumwood, 2002). In this sense, I borrow from the concept of translocation, the connecting and interconnecting of complex spatial and temporal relations, in my understanding of social location. Anthias’ (2013) translocational lens focuses on the “intersections of different social structures and processes, including transnational ones, giving importance to the broader social context and to temporality to position” (p. 131). I draw from translocation, a focus on social locations, rather than a focus on groups. She notes that,

Our ‘location’ is embedded in relations of hierarchy within a multiplicity of specific situational and conjunctural spheres…locations relate to stratification (at local, national and transnational fields), within a contextual and

chronographic context, i.e. they inhabit a ‘real time and place’ context (p. 130).

The idea of location connected to real time and place is reminiscent of Malpas’ (2016) thinking on ‘placedness’ (Malpas, 2006). In the context of

hermeneutic analysis, Malpas (2016) highlights the connections between place and understanding. He argues that “place and understanding are intimately connected” (p. 2), that someone builds understanding through their inhabited place in the world. He contends that there is “an intimate belonging-together of place and thinking, of place and experience, of place and the very possibility of appearance, of presence, of being” (p. 3). Within traditions of hermeneutics, recognition of the ‘placedness’ of

understanding is paramount in interpretations of how this understanding came to be in the first place (Malpas, 2016). Echoing Bourdieu (1990a) with respect to habitus as a concept that is “at once a system of models for the production of practices and a system of models for the perception and appreciation of practices…express[ing] the social position in which it was constructed” (p. 131).

Drawing on these theoretical ideas, I have conceptualised participants’ positioning in the social world through a lens of social location. This framing offers an analytical tool with discrete benefits to the objective of my inquiry. Questions relevant to sustainability embody complex spatial and temporal contexts. An analytical tool that emphasises ideas of location, rather than categorisation, affords the project some interesting ways of understanding how people imagine themselves in

the world, and at the same time, giving me as an interpreter, a way of imagining them in it as well.