Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Overall, we find that Julian took things for-granted, he followed routines and one
can find patterns of how he perceived the world. Some of his routine activities
were as follows: he perceived the world much through the computer and used it to
organise information; he had to rely heavily on authorities for his work and
seemed to take this for-granted; and furthermore, he perceived it as necessary to
do the recycling of the student union offices and he carried it out routinely, al-
though he did not enjoy doing it. This means, doing recycling (whatever this
means, a care for the environment or just getting the job done) was more reason-
able for him than not doing it. As already pointed out, communicating was of high
importance to him. He communicated a lot, using all kinds of technologies. In
terms of his work's content, his work place organisation included several items
which carried messages like “making business sense of climate change” and an
environment & money leaflet. As it was his work place organisation, these items
could be interpreted to express content which he took-for-granted to be relevant.
In terms of schemes of perception it was striking that he interpreted it as worrying
when a communication partner forgot his name:
“Adam. Why is she calling me
Adam? That's a bit worrying”
33
. He had the perception that people avoided him
and that he needed to use force to make people actually interact with him. Listen
to this:
“people are avoiding you”
,
“you have only a certain time chasing peo-
ple”
,
“force him
[the person he is calling]
to have an appointment with me”
34
.
With Bourdieu, Julian's perceptions and motivation can be considered part of his
habitus. The latter makes much sense in terms of Julian's position in the field: he
was working in an environmental job with little in the way of job requirements.
Much competition existed for such jobs. Hence, if he was not motivated and did
not sustain his motivation it was likely that he would have been replaced. At the
same time, fitting to his position in an 'unpolitical' context
35
was his acceptance of
mainstream propaganda on environmental issues (like the “business sense of cli-
mate change”)
36
. To play the game of Ecological Modernisation well it was
probably more than just helpful to be convinced of its value and being committed
allows a seemingly strong position in the field. His habitus was to see small insti-
tutional improvements of 'greening' as significant successes and for this reason he
contributed pragmatically his own resources to his work - sometimes even beyond
job requirements and at other times against his liking.
To sum up, while thinking with Bourdieu emerges as an apt method of situating
an environmental manager in terms of her habitus it remains to be discussed in
more depth how technology and materiality can influence the actor.
33
Quote
34
Quotes
35
Officially, his job was executive, rather than political. The student union had an officer
who was responsible for environmental politics.
36
If he had ethical/political problems with this message it seems it would have been easily
possible for him to dispose it: taking away a sticker, commenting it, hiding it.
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