American Anthropological Association presentation :: Dec. 1, Washington DC

Bright Green:
Shifting Subjectivities and ‘New’ Environmental Values in Green Networks

Jay Hasbrouck, Ph.D. Social Anthropology

As technologies of social change, green networks[1] play an increasingly important organizational and motivational role for people engaged in environmental advocacy. In this work, I explore how networking practices among those who have situated domesticity at the center of environmental action displace the role of the traditional environmental social movements by shaping key discourses around environmental values. Tapping data from recent research with green homeowners and architects, I consider digital media and communications as they pertain to the formation and evolution of subjectivities and values within green networks.

As part of this process, I trace the paths of my ethnographic investigation in order to analyze how negotiations of subjectivity between ethnographer and participant play out in research where networks are pivotal. This includes addressing the challenges of deconstructing the role of cultural expert in what may be an increasingly democratized field setting, as well as the complications that arise from opening the range of roles research participants might assume. Critical to both are recognitions of the importance of subject control over ethnographic representation and the ways in which various modes of network communications condition the expression of environmental values.

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[1] This includes online networks such as www.greendrinks.com, www.greenbuilder.com, www.ortns.org, www.treehugger.com, www.grist.org, as well as extensive informal social networks and information exchanges.

EDRA/Places Award Call for Entries

Deadline: 2/7/08

We invite participation from the full breadth of environmental design and related research activities, including architecture, landscape architecture, planning, urban design, interior design, lighting design, graphic design, environmental psychology, sociology, anthropology, geography and the physical sciences. Each year we assemble a jury with diverse backgrounds in design, research, teaching and practice. The jury evaluates how each project, no matter what the discipline, addresses the human experience of well-designed places. Special attention is paid to the transferability of research about human experience of place into design and planning practice. The jury will select six winners from three categories: place design, place planning, place research, and a book prize.

designboom love your earth contest winners

I like first prize...























...but what really caught my eye was adam peterson's shortlisted entry, which is a great example of how we can inject a bit of humor into green advocacy.

Mark Dziersk and the Evolution of Sustainability

Dziersk has some insights well worth checking out over at FastCompany.
His points about green washing and the end of push advertising are right on target, but it's his view of design as the central hub of sustainable efforts that strikes me as the most promising opportunity:

"Design...often acts as the catalyst in program developments and as a key integration point. Design has the unique combination of interest, methods, and mission. These days, it also has a seat at the table to ensure that issues of sustainability, recylability, reusability, re-purpose, secondary use, and constant loop lifecycles are as equally considered in developing products as price, distribution and manufacturing costs."