If I Don't Do It, It Feels Wrong: Embodying Environmental Ethical Reflexivity through Cultivation and Enactment of Practices

The following analysis focuses on how people are called upon to act and the mode of being that such a change process strives toward. It then explores how training of the body and mind engrave ethical practices and understandings into bodyminds. Thereafter, it zooms in on two important components in this form of change in practices: materiality and social relations. Finally, the analysis describes the effects of embodiment on ethical reflexivity, perception, senses, and emotions.

“I first started learning about these things about four years ago. It might seem weird, but I had just never really been confronted with it before then. Perhaps it sounds strange that so much can change during a lecture, but that’s what happened,” Nina said when she described how she first started engaging with climate issues after participating in a course at the university where she learned about the environmental impact of western consumerism. “I learned how things we do in our part of the world affected people living in other parts of the world. And I thought that I can’t be a part of that anymore,” she explained. Exposed to perspectives and knowledge that demonstrate serious ecological effects from human activities of resource consumption, she realized how she unknowingly participated in creating such impact. In Foucault’s terms, “the mode of subjectivation” (Foucault 2020, 264) becomes clear, as reflecting upon the severity of human impact on the environment drove Nina to recognize a moral obligation. The mode of subjectivation thus relied on the exposure to discursive knowledge and Nina’s ethical and critical reflection upon her own habits and how they relate to established norms and structures of society. While learning about climate change is not a bodily experience as such, acquiring this familiarity about it

nevertheless left an affective mark in the sense that it felt wrong for Nina to keep doing what she usually did. Obtaining this knowledge within social and institutional frameworks deemed trustworthy proved essential – not only for the adoption of the new practices, but also for assigning meaning to her participation in changing the human impact on the environment. As the general understanding of environmental ethics and sustainability is affected and reshaped through such exposure, it creates a desire for change, but without necessarily knowing how to do this in practice.

Challenging established norms and modes of consumption also meant that research participants reflected upon other modes of being to which they aspired. Oscar explained that

I sometimes imagine myself 50 years from now and look back on what I did and what I should have done – would I regret anything? And I conclude that what I would regret most is doing nothing. Well, then if I do what I can, then I couldn't do more. Then at least I tried. Then I don't feel like it's something you should have a guilty conscience about.

Oscar wants his actions to have a positive impact, but he also emphasizes doing what is right because it is in and of itself the right thing to do: doing what is right becomes as much a part of the aim as making a positive impact. Imagining looking back on life from an advanced age may be a common visualization regarding one's personal life and goals. Yet for Oscar, however, the ecological crisis introduces a different kind of temporal horizon that has a certain ethical value as the risk of temperatures rising by more than 1.5°C is conceivable, and predictions of the consequences are becoming clearer. This reflects on the personal ethical relationship between self, human society, and the environment, which plays an important role in his actively trying to alter everyday practices. The “telos” or mode of being (Foucault 2020, 265) that he strives toward thus means being in an ethical relationship with the environment, defined as acting in ways that impact as positively as possible. Moving toward what he would consider an ethical and sustainable life means diverting from commonly established practices of consumption, and here his bodily participation plays an essential role in its realization. It is through the enactment of practices and ways of living that reduce environmental impact that he can realize an ethical mode of being.

Coming to understand their habits as unsustainable and connected to unsustainable social structures meant that research participants needed to

learn new habits, which I will explore in the next sections.

I asked Oscar if he could give an example of how he developed a new habit.

Now I almost only eat vegan food. And that required me to figure out what I should look for in the store and how I use these products. Now it has just become a habit and I completely forget all the other things I could use. It's just not the first thing I think about because it's not what I usually do. A habit is something we usually do and there will be a period of time, if you are changing your habits, where you have to concentrate on doing things in new ways. But at some point, it becomes more of an automatic reaction.

Oscar describes a kind of liminal period with increased attention and effort (Turner 1967). Over time, and through continuous repetition, his body learned how to perform the activity that reflected the alternative moral discourse. Performance of the necessary tasks for eating vegan food, such as cooking and grocery shopping, was trained and embodied through practices. The additional effort was no longer needed because new rules and habits had been established and the competences had become part of his bodily repertoire. Importantly, as Oscar describes, this required an ongoing intentional cultivation of bodily and reflexive practices where he had to “concentrate on doing things in new ways.”

Oscar explained how one of the most difficult things to change was giving up his favorite spread, liver pâté, which is a Danish food staple.

It took me a year to have the will to try and give it up. All the other kinds of meat were not a problem, but I really loved liver pâté. I just thought to myself, “I will give it a try and I will see how it goes.” Now I think there are also new plant-based products available that taste almost as good, which made it easier, but I have also found a way to make plant-based pâté myself, which is really good.

Learning to adopt new practices also meant replacing and giving up some that were a significant part of people's everyday habits and sensorial preferences. Oscar's example shows how such changes can take a long time – not only to learn how to make something else that satisfies the senses, but also to adapt the senses to other tastes and sensations. Oscar thus found alternatives that tasted similar or at least offered an adequate substitute to meet his sensorial needs. The above examples refer to what Foucault

describes as self-forming activities, or techniques of the self, used to become ethical subjects (Foucault 2020, 265).

The heightened reflexivity and concentration, finding ingredients and alternatives, as well as taking the time and effort to learn how to cook a vegan meal were necessary components and processes for developing the skills to perform such a task. By using such components, his body adopted new skills and his sensory dispositions adapted over time.

While finding alternatives to satisfy bodily needs was possible in some instances, in others it was necessary to adjust the body and senses to material and physical alterations. As I walked through the door to Josephine's old house, my skin immediately sensed the low temperature in the hall and I noticed that Josephine was wearing slippers, a jumper, and a scarf inside on this chilly November day. I asked her before even thinking about it: "Should I keep my shoes on?" She replied: "That's fine. It's an old house and we don't keep it that warm." Concern for the environment was something she had learned from her "hippie parents," and her interest deepened during her previous marriage to a farmer. "It is a bit colder than in other houses," she said, "and that is something we have definitely discussed. It doesn't make sense to use a lot of heat in such an old house. Instead, we put on shoes and a warm jumper." Over time they had gotten used to lower temperatures and developed a new bodily and sensorial "normality." Several studies on energy consumption describe how notions of comfort, cleanliness, and convenience play a role in keeping certain practices in place and accelerating the consumption of energy (Madsen 2018; Madsen and Gram-Hanssen 2017; Shove 2003). For Josephine, comfort was considered in relation to ideas of sufficiency when considering what was acceptable consumption. In practice this involved training the bodymind to adjust to a different measure of sensorial comfort and ways of achieving it. As a technique for living up to their ideas about sufficiency, Josephine and her boyfriend had learned to put on more clothes during the colder seasons and accept that some areas of the house were colder than others.

The process of expanding the repertoire of abilities and engraving them into the bodymind is processual and takes time and effort. Engaging in activities of learning, continuously evaluating, and reflecting upon their experiences, and training through enactment were ways for the research participants to change what Foucault terms the substance of ethics (Foucault 2020, 263), meaning the aspects of the self that are being worked on. The

substance of ethics includes not only people's habits and competences, but also their sensorial dispositions. To embody practices and make habits stick requires both learning how to perform them and reshaping one's sensory dispositions so the bodymind experiences the new practices and habits as normal, acceptable, comfortable, and satisfactory.

Cultivating and embodying new practices to make their consumption more sustainable implied a change in how people related to materials and how they used them for changing practices and self-forming activities, which will be explored below.

"I think a lot about whether we need something and would prefer to buy it used," Kate told me. "And it can be almost anything. Of course, it's also to save money, but if I can get it second-hand, I just think it's much better, because then I'm not responsible for yet another thing being produced." As Kate explains, she had come to understand materials and resources as focus areas to deal with in the pursuit of consuming more sustainably. Reusing, buying secondhand, mending, and caring for objects and materials and thus prolonging their use, as well as lowering levels of consumption by using and buying less, were all understood as pathways for participating in more sustainable consumption.

The focus on materiality sometimes included creating micro-infrastructures and material arrangements to support performance of practices. Alma, for instance, showed me her garage where she made a waste-sorting system with many different containers. She has arranged containers for plastic, paper, cardboard, glass, cans, and metals. Every now and then she will take different types of recyclables that are not collected by collection trucks to the recycling center. I ask her why she has made this system, as she told me that she knows that even though she sorts at home, some of it will be mixed with the non-recyclables and incinerated once she delivers it. "I have this idea that when the municipality creates a system of waste sorting that actually functions then I'll be ready because I have already been practicing. So, I will know how to do it by then," she explains. "Just look at how much just two people have produced during a week! It's insane!" She feels this helps her to be more considerate when making purchases and having this setup of containers helps her to keep sorting more automatically. For Alma, the ethical and sustainable practice was not solely a bodily matter that could be enacted under any circumstances. It was connected to reshaping infrastructures that themselves carried certain norms, and in their design enabled ethical and

sustainable practices and helped her continue the practice. Repetition and cultivation of the bodily performance of the practice transformed her bodymind perception of what was considered normal. It continuously reminded her to reduce and avoid waste as much as possible. Returning to old practices neither fit the material arrangement nor was it morally defensible. Creating such material arrangements was thus a kind of self-forming activity or technique of the self (Foucault 1988, 39) that enabled ethical practices and enforced ethical understandings. Although such material arrangements helped her perform and maintain such practices, she was also concerned about the inadequacy of her sorting habits as it requires a larger societal infrastructure of waste sorting, recycling, and reutilization that mirrors her practices in the home to have a sustainable effect.

On a larger scale of societal infrastructures and concomitant norms, Kate and Jonas enhanced their ability to consume differently by removing themselves from what they considered an unsustainable everyday life and material culture in the city, which they felt imposed unsustainable practices on them. "It's a bit like waking up and coming to the other side and seeing all that consumption mania that's going on in the city. They are just running around in circles, buying and buying. Buying false happiness. And seeing how scary that actually is, the way people are spellbound by it," Jonas said. "And we have also been like that," Kate added. "Yes, we were like that and contributed to it and weren't able to see any other way. At one point I just wanted more of it. But when you have been part of it and then come out on the other side, then you can see all the mistakes you have made," Jonas said. Moving to the farm gave them the physical and mental space and freedom to organize the material infrastructures in a way that made it possible to enact and routinize the performance of their sustainable practices. Material arrangements, and the cultures of consumption woven into them, could thus both hinder and enable the continued cultivation of more sustainable practices. However, some material and physical circumstances still posed obstacles.

We almost always have to take the car to go anywhere, Kate says. That's how it is when you live in the countryside and still are dependent upon some of the things that are in the city. It's one of the things that make it more impractical and just requires that you use more petrol. That's one of those things where I consider 'is it really that sustainable?' We order quite a lot of goods for the farm for the vegetable production for instance. In just the last three days a delivery truck has come

every day with things. There is just distance, which has some disadvantages. It would be nice if we could be much more self-sufficient in the local community – both with things we need and also social relations and so on.

Their move away from the city thus helped them form a place where different practices and habits were possible and normal, but the lack of self-sufficiency on a community level posed other obstacles for realizing sustainable impact.

Like materiality, social relations play an equally significant part in enabling or standing in the way of performing more sustainable practices, as the next section unfolds.

Yes, I sometimes talk to my friends from home about it. But I also feel that they think that it's just because I moved to Copenhagen that it's something I've started caring about. It can be difficult sometimes, because I feel like I have to tone it down or pretend that 'no, I'm not vegetarian. I can eat meat if it's the case'. So sometimes...I really think it's nice to hang out with the people in [the youth organization], because I know that most people there think more like I do.

Matilde told me that cultivating practices that she deemed more sustainable felt right to her, but being able to perform the practices depended heavily on the social circumstances she was in. It was important to have a connection with a community of practice or social relations, both in terms of exposure to new understandings and learning new skills, and for experiencing social affiliation and belonging. At the same time, it could be difficult for her to balance relationships with others who had opposing convictions, who sometimes criticized her habits, and in whose company it was difficult to perform practices in more sustainable ways. Navigating relations with other people who constantly placed her in situations that made it difficult to perform sustainable practices in daily life was an inevitable and ongoing task. In particular, practices concerning food could be highly contested, as in Matilde's description, which could lead to stigmatization in some social groups where her practices were questioned or criticized. It could be challenging for research participants to consume and live in more sustainable ways in social settings which continuously encourages unsustainable practices, whether in terms of materiality or socially accepted ways of living.

Nina felt a strong urge to act, yet she also felt like she was alone in trying to do so when she first wanted to change her consumption: "The friends I had at the time were either very sustainable already and did not really think about how they did things differently, or were not very concerned with sustainability. So, I felt like I didn't really have anyone to share the situation I was in with." This was why she sought out the youth organization. Though her exposure to issues concerning the environment happened in the context of the university, Nina felt a need for closer relations with whom she could share not only knowledge about climate issues but also the personal experience of learning and trying to change her own consumption. She told me that

Rather than sustainability being something I had to do because I could see how bad it was for the environment that I lived the way I did, and it being a constant choice I had to make and think about, now I have a whole group of people who come up with interesting ideas and encourage you to do sustainable things. So, I have realized that now it has just made my life better to be sustainable, also because it has made the process of becoming sustainable easier.

Having a community of people who were also trying to change their habits made it a tangible mission that Nina felt added value to her life and was meaningful. It gave her a sense of belonging and affiliation with others and offered an opportunity to explore sustainable practices in a joyful way. While the university context provided technical knowledge about environmental issues, the reassurance and support of having a community of interest and practice significantly supported her practical efforts to change, as well as her experience of change. Participating in a community that supported the performance of practices, and where one could experience affiliation and belonging, was a self-forming practice (Foucault 1988, 39), as it helped people embody, develop, and continue practices.

The internal dynamic of the group also played an important part in cultivating sustainable practices and the ongoing training of body and mind.

I have found really good friends and a good network of people who are really open and honest and non-judgmental in their ways of being sustainable. And that has broadened my understanding of what it means to live sustainably, I think. And I think that was exactly what I needed when I started living sustainably. That it was about celebrating when you are sustainable, but you don't scold when you're not. I think that's the attitude in [the youth organization] and it has pushed me to perhaps spread my sustainability to others.

The nonjudgmental support collectively acknowledged that people are not always perfect in their performance when cultivating and embodying new

habits, but they are training and slowly becoming better. Through the cultivation and enactment of practices people slowly embodied competences to perform them. However, this also affected other aspects of people's abilities, which I will explore below.

Through enactment of what they considered more sustainable practices, research participants were actually able to make changes. Nina related that

I think I've found out that you actually can make a difference and that you don't have to give things up in order to be sustainable. Perhaps it sounds like an exaggeration, but I think because it became easier to make it an everyday thing, then in many ways it added something to my life.

It gave her a sense and degree of agency as she experienced how, in a very practical sense, change was something she could create and facilitate in her own life. Among research participants who did not actively try to change their consumption, a common narrative was constructed around the idea of life becoming poorer and less prosperous if they were to consume in more sustainable ways. In the lived experience of the people who actively tried to change their ways of consuming through cultivating ethical sustainable practices, however, the story was different. Importantly, feeling that change was both possible and achievable meant that the cultivation of ethical sustainable practices was also a cultivation of hope. For instance, Oscar noted

Instead of just thinking about doing something, I do it. And I will keep doing that as much as I can, because otherwise this feeling comes, like climate anxiety. That happens when I don't do what I want to do. For me, feeling unable to do anything brings a feeling of powerlessness, so then I think, why not think, 'how can I do this?' and try and show how you actually can do it.

This reveals the relationship between bodily practices and inward dispositions. Emotions and reflexivity do play a role before bodily enactment. Yet there is a difference in the emotional and reflexive form and the way these are anchored in the bodymind before and after bodily enactment. Learning about environmental issues and the impact of human activities was shown to be an emotionally potent subject and an issue that occupied people's thoughts and emotions. They experienced an ethical judgment of normalized practices where they felt and reflected upon the wrong in continuing participation in certain practices, but without necessarily knowing how to change it. They were exposed to this knowledge

through interaction with people and communities they respected and deemed knowledgeable in these issues. This was how they experienced a call to act. After ethical practices were cultivated through bodily enactment, a synchronization of practices and ethical understanding occurred. The know-how and ethical understandings became embedded into the bodymind. This cultivation and embodiment of ethical practices affects and connects bodily movements, senses, emotions, and perception. At this point, they feel inner resistance and discomfort if they are hindered from performing the sustainable and ethical practice as it goes against their bodily and mental being. Embodiment of practices does not merely mean it is something people become accomplished in performing, expanding practical understanding and developing competences; enactment of ethical practices shape people's internal sensorial, perceptual and affective dispositions embedding the ethics into the bodymind.