Dr Kate Burningham
Senior Lecturer in Sociology of the Environment
Email: k.burningham@surrey.ac.uk
Phone: Work: 01483 68 6688
Room no: 06 AD 03
Further information
Biography
Kate Burningham is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology of the Environment; a joint appointment between the Department of Sociology and the Centre for Environmental Strategy (CES) at the University of Surrey.
Her research interests focus on the social construction of environmental problems, public environmental knowledge, environmental inequalities and sustainable lifestyles.
Research Interests
Kate is a co-investigator in the ESRC research group on Lifestyles, Values and Energy Consumption (RESOLVE) and the ESRC, Defra and Scottish Government funded Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG) in which she is leading a qualitative longitudinal project Exploring Lifestyle Changes in Transition (ELiCiT).
She has recently been involved in: an ESRC project (with colleagues at Surrey, Manchester, Loughborough, Lancaster and Northumbria Universities) ‘Beyond NIMBY: A Multidisciplinary Investigation of Public Engagement with Renewable Energy Technologies; a project with AEA consultants for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation looking at vulnerability to heat and drought in the South West of England; a project funded by ESRC, The Environment Agency and Hull City Council (with colleagues at Surrey and Lancaster Universities) exploring children’s experiences of flooding in Hull. Past projects include: work for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on the environmental perspectives of disadvantaged groups; projects for the Environment Agency researching vulnerability to flooding, public responses to flood warnings in the UK, and environmental inequalities and a project funded by the ESRC investigating chemical corporations’ understandings of, access to and use of lay environmental knowledge.
Publications
Journal articles
- . (2012) ''What I've found is that your related experiences tend to make you dissatisfied': Psychological obsolescence, consumer demand and the dynamics and environmental implications of de-stabilisation in the laptop sector’'. Sage Journal of Consumer Culture, 12 (3), pp. 347-370.
- . (2012) ''It came up to here': Learning from children's flood narratives'. Children's Geographies, 10 (2), pp. 135-150.
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(2012) 'Unravelling the threads: discourses of sustainability and consumption in an online forum'. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Environmental communication, 6 (1), pp. 101-118.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/231713/
Abstract
This article analyzes an online discussion that followed an article published by UK environmental activist and journalist George Monbiot in The Guardian online newspaper. The analysis addresses the ways in which participants in an online forum debate responded to the tensions and contradictions between lifestyle, consumption, and sustainability highlighted in the original article. The discursive construction of class, green political orientations, and identities; visions of “the good life”; and appeals to religion and science are highlighted throughout the analysis—as are the discursive strategies for positioning self, other, and audience in the debate. The argument emphasizes the heterogeneity of discursive positioning and reflects on the role of social media in the politics of consumption and sustainability, especially given the inherent reflexivity of web forums as online communicative forms.
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(2012) ''Imagined publics and engagement around renewable energy in the UK''. Sage Public Understanding of Science, 21 (1), pp. 36-50.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/239147/
Abstract
Against the backdrop of the imperatives for actors within the institutional framework of energy socio-technical systems to engage with the public, the aim of this paper is to consider interdependencies between the principles and practice of engagement and the nature of the imagined publics with whom engagement is being undertaken. Based on an analysis of 19 interviews with actors in the renewable energy industry, the paper explores how publics are imagined in the construction of the rationales, functions and mechanisms for public engagement. Three main themes are identified. First, the perceived necessity of engagement – which is not contingent on public responsiveness. Second, engagement is primarily conceptualised in terms of instrumental motives of providing information and addressing public concern. Third, preferences for engagement mechanisms were often a function of the specific characteristics attributed to imagined publics. Implications of this analysis for future engagement around siting renewable energy technologies are considered.
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(2012) ''Are we sitting comfortably?
Domestic imaginaries, laptop practices, and energy use''. Pion Environment and Planning A: international journal of urban and regional research, 44 (11), pp. 2629-2645.doi: 10.1068/a44403
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(2011) 'Flood risk, vulnerability and environmental justice: evidence and evaluation of inequality in a UK context'. Sage Critical Social Policy, 31 (2), pp. 216-240.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/15383/
Abstract
Flooding has only relatively recently been considered as an environmental justice issue. In this paper we focus on flooding as a distinct form of environmental risk and examine some of the key evidence and analysis that is needed to underpin an environmental justice framing of flood risk and flood impacts. We review and examine the UK situation and the body of existing research literature on flooding to fill out our understanding of the patterns of social inequality that exist in relation to both flood risk exposure and vulnerability to the diverse impacts of flooding. We then consider the various ways in which judgements might be made about the injustice or justice of these inequalities and the ways in which they are being sustained or responded to by current flood policy and practice. We conclude that there is both evidence of significant inequalities and grounds on which claims of injustice might be made, but that further work is needed to investigate each of these. The case for pursuing the framing of flooding as an environmental justice issue is also made.
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(2010) 'Stigma and attachment: performance of identity in an environmentally degraded place'. Taylor & Francis Society and Natural Resources, 23 (10), pp. 952-968.Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/239144/
Abstract
Research examining the relationship between place and identity shows that the experience of places influences a person's process of identification, through which an emotional bond with the place may be developed. However, the implications of this literature for land restoration remain unexplored. This is partially due to a gap in empirical research that explores the performance of identities in environmentally degraded settings. This article examines the relationship between identity and place among residents living around five coal ash disposal sites in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The article develops a qualitative model to understand the emergence of divergent responses toward the pollution and illustrates that in an environmentally degraded setting the bonds between the individuals and the place are not necessarily dislocated; in some cases, these bonds may be even reinforced by the performance of adaptative identities in response to environmental change.
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(2010) '"Renewable energy and sociotechnical change: imagined subjectivities of ‘the public’ and their implications"'. Pion Environment and Planning A, 42 (4), pp. 931-947.doi: 10.1068/a41400Full text is available at: http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/239145/
Abstract
The public’ are potentially implicated in processes of sociotechnical change as political actors who welcome or resist technology development in general, or in particular places and settings. We argue in this paper that the potential influence of public subjectivities on sociotechnical change is realised not only through moments of active participation and protest, but also through ‘the public’ being imagined, given agency, and invoked for various purposes by actors in technical – industrial and policy networks. As a case study we explore the significance of an imagined and anticipated public subjectivity for the development of renewable energy technologies in the UK. We use interviews with a diversity of industry and policy actors to explore how imaginaries of the public are constructed from first-hand and mediated experience and knowledge, and the influence these imagined public subjectivities may have on development trajectories and on actor strategies and activities. We show how the shared expectation of an ever present latent but conditional public hostility to renewable energy project development is seen as shaping the material forms of the technologies, their evolving spatiality, and practices of public engagement involved in obtaining project consent. Implications for the actors we are interested in and for broader questions of democratic practice are considered.
- . (2008) '‘“It’ll never happen to me”: Understanding Public Awareness of Local Flood Risk’'. Wiley Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies, Policy and Management, 32 (2), pp. 216-238.
- . (2007) 'Industrial constructions of publics and public knowledge: a qualitative investigation of practice in the UK chemicals industry'. Public Understanding of Science, 16 (1), pp. 23-43.
Book chapters
- . (2012) 'NIMByism'. in Smith SJ, Elsinga M, Fox O'Mahony L, Eng O, Wachter S, Lovell J (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Housing and Home Elsevier 5, pp. 127-130.
- . (2011) 'Symmetries, expectations, dynamics and contexts: a framework for understanding public engagement with renewable energy projects'. in Devine-Wright (ed.) Renewable Energy and the Public: From Nimby to Participation London : Earthscan
- . (1995) 'Environmental Perspectives and Environmental Assessment'. in Guerrier Y (ed.) Values and the environment: A Social Science Perspective Wiley , pp. 19-31.
Reports
- . (2011) Vulnerability to heatwaves and drought: adaptation to climate change.
Teaching
In the Sociology Department Kate teaches on a number of research methods modules and offers options on the sociology of the environment. In CES she teaches an introductory module on social research methods.
Related Links
Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey
www.surrey.ac.uk/resolve/
http://geography.exeter.ac.uk/beyond_nimbyism//.
