The environment on holidays or how a recycling bin informs us on the environment
Författare
Summary, in English
Purpose: This study explores how people account for their translation, negotiation and shaping of environmentally relevant practices as information practices in their everyday life during the holidays and asks further how these narratives can be seen as accounting for situated information practices. It focuses on how summer guests holidaying in southern Sweden talk about how they connect different kinds of common everyday life practices to environmental information.
Design/methodology/approach: The investigation was carried out over a period of 5 months during 2008. It is based on 7 semi-structured interviews with 9 owners of summer cottages in a holiday village in southern Sweden, 3 field visits to the village, one including a guided tour, as well as textual analysis of official documents and a local journal. A qualitative thematic analysis, together with a theoretical reading, brings together the intertwined narratives on environmental and information practices, which emerged in the interviews with close readings of textual documents. The resulting themes were given additional meaning by relating them to observations from field visits.
Findings:Firstly,there is no obvious link between people's theoretical knowledge of environmental issues and their actual practices in everyday life. This is also the case for those aware of the impact individual practices are said to have on the environment and on society at large. Secondly, certain objects and the practices tied to them seem to have become carriers of environmental information in themselves. They are so routinely connected to environmental issues that people ‘think’ through them, when they account for how they think about the environment in a way that has meaning to them.
Social implications: Focusing on the situated information practices involved in creating meaning on environmental issues could have implications for how we think about information campaigns and policy making regarding environmental issues and lifestyles.
Originality/value: This article suggests that a strong focus on the various perceived and constructed roles of information might contribute to conceptualise more robustly the role of objects and practices for conveying and enacting environmental issues and help counter the de-coupling of private and institutional responsibilities.
Type: research paper. /
The writing of this article was made possible through a grant awarded by the Erik Philip-Sörensens stiftelse.
Design/methodology/approach: The investigation was carried out over a period of 5 months during 2008. It is based on 7 semi-structured interviews with 9 owners of summer cottages in a holiday village in southern Sweden, 3 field visits to the village, one including a guided tour, as well as textual analysis of official documents and a local journal. A qualitative thematic analysis, together with a theoretical reading, brings together the intertwined narratives on environmental and information practices, which emerged in the interviews with close readings of textual documents. The resulting themes were given additional meaning by relating them to observations from field visits.
Findings:Firstly,there is no obvious link between people's theoretical knowledge of environmental issues and their actual practices in everyday life. This is also the case for those aware of the impact individual practices are said to have on the environment and on society at large. Secondly, certain objects and the practices tied to them seem to have become carriers of environmental information in themselves. They are so routinely connected to environmental issues that people ‘think’ through them, when they account for how they think about the environment in a way that has meaning to them.
Social implications: Focusing on the situated information practices involved in creating meaning on environmental issues could have implications for how we think about information campaigns and policy making regarding environmental issues and lifestyles.
Originality/value: This article suggests that a strong focus on the various perceived and constructed roles of information might contribute to conceptualise more robustly the role of objects and practices for conveying and enacting environmental issues and help counter the de-coupling of private and institutional responsibilities.
Type: research paper. /
The writing of this article was made possible through a grant awarded by the Erik Philip-Sörensens stiftelse.
Avdelning/ar
- Avdelningen för ABM, digitala kulturer samt förlags- och bokmarknadskunskap
- Information Practices: Communication, Culture and Society
Publiceringsår
2011
Språk
Engelska
Sidor
823-839
Publikation/Tidskrift/Serie
Journal of Documentation
Volym
67
Issue
5
Länkar
Dokumenttyp
Artikel i tidskrift
Förlag
Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Ämne
- Information Studies
Nyckelord
- environmental information
- Library and information studies
- lifestyle
- LIS
- everyday life
- information practice
- environment
Status
Published
Forskningsgrupp
- Information Practices: Communication, Culture and Society
- Information Studies
ISBN/ISSN/Övrigt
- ISSN: 0022-0418