H Rau
Biographic Data
| ID | 36843 |
|---|---|
| NAME | H Rau |
| GIVEN NAMES | H |
| FAMILY NAME | Rau |
| SIGNATURE | RAU H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9353-5028 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 162 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Future directions for sustainable consumption research and action
This article identifies ten priorities for future sustainable consumption research and action, prioritising questions of (in)justice. It emerged from a series of interdisciplinary exchanges between sustainable consumption scholars from across Europe, reflecting their expert perspectives and research practices.
How to study energy citizenship reflexively? Research questions and methodologies for an elusive research object
The energy transition crucially involves social and institutional innovations, carried by new narratives and discourses. A prominent example is ‘energy citizenship’. Coined as an emancipatory counter-narrative of capable and politically involved citizens, it has also proven vulnerable to analytical dilution, ideological appropriation and narrow instrumental interpretations. Arguing for a critical but empirically concrete engagement with the conce…
Moving beyond mobility
Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector in Europe have largely been unsuccessful to date, highlighting the need for new approaches. Drawing on Social Practice Theory, recent research has called for cross-domain analyses of mobility practices to identify more effective leverage points for policy intervention. Responding to these calls, this study analyzes 24 week-long mobility diaries and 26 in-depth interviews with un…
Beyond infrastructure
A key reason why people refrain from cycling is a lack of perceived safety. Past research clearly demonstrates that safety perceptions are not only a result of different cycling infrastructures but reflect differences in individual and social factors. However, it remains unclear what causes these differences, as many studies on cycling safety do not pay sufficient attention to causal structures. This study deploys contrafactual causal analysis to…
A new direction for mobility? Integrating immobility into sustainable consumption corridors
The sustainability transformation of the transport sector remains a key challenge in the fight against climate change. However, many resource-intensive mobility practices that people engage in, such as driving a car or flying, have been shown to be highly resistant to change. At the same time, complex patterns of (dis)advantage and social privilege have emerged that relate directly to people’s (in)ability to be (im)mobile, illustrating the ambiva…
Quantitative analysis of everyday temporality
Understanding the temporality of everyday practices—the root of peak energy demand—has been recognized as an essential but overlooked step in the quest to mitigate energy peaks. To address this gap, this study uses a practice-based approach to quantitatively assess how the temporalities of people's everyday practices contribute to their (in)flexibility to shift energy-intensive practices outside of energy peaks and, by extension, engage in peak-s…
Of study enthusiasts and homebirds
Purpose Online education enables location-independent learning, potentially providing university students with more flexible study programs and reducing traffic-related CO 2 emissions. This paper aims to examine whether online education can contribute to university-related sustainable everyday mobility, with particular consideration given to aspects of social sustainability and potential rebound effects. Specifically, it explores sustainability d…
Social practices, gender, and materiality
Current energy-related practices in bioenergy-dependent households and communities regularly reinforce social inequality and exacerbate environmental challenges. By investigating women's influence on rural energy service provision, this study sheds light on gendered practices and women's agency in a case study of three villages in central Ethiopia. Women's lives in these communities revolve around practices such as collecting wood and using fire …
Mobility practices in a changing climate
Mobility practices in everyday life are often highly routinised and resistant to change. But they can also change significantly over the life course, reflecting sudden ruptures linked to incisive life events and more gradual shifts related to changing societal and environmental conditions. Combining insights from practice-theoretical mobility studies and mobility biographies research, this paper critically examines the role of material, social an…
Beyond cooking
More than three billion people depend on solid fuels for household energy, especially in rural areas of low and lower-middle income countries (LIC/LMIC). Rural households in LIC/LMIC use energy for a wide range of purposes, including food preparation, space and water heating, insect repulsion, illumination or the preparation of goods for sale. However, in these contexts, the majority of energy research frames energy end use as “cooking”. So far, …
Responding to the environmental crisis
This special issue examines the role of culture in the environmental crisis. We ask if and how different forms of sociality, cultural diversity and intercultural exchange can contribute to a social-ecological transformation that helps to mitigate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption that characterise many societies and their economies today. By assembling three articles that explore possibilities of change at different levels of s…
Towards representative resilience
Community resilience policies continue to grow in popularity as a strategy to prepare for the local impact of forecasted environmental uncertainty, however, criticisms of community resilience discourse remain. This paper takes forward these criticisms, specifically addressing the issue of representative power over key natural resources, using Gaventa’s [Gaventa, J. 2006. “Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis.” IDS Bulletin 37 (6): 23–3…
Stocks, flows, services and practices
Challenging social norms to recraft practices
ENERGISE is the first large-scale European effort to reduce household energy use through a change initiative that adopted a ‘living lab’ approach informed by social practice theory. Two challenges were introduced to 306 households in eight countries: to lower indoor temperatures and to reduce laundry cycles. This contribution demonstrates the usefulness of a practice-centered design that takes habits and routines as an entry point for understandi…
Changing energy cultures? Household energy use before and after a building energy efficiency retrofit
Government- and community-initiated energy retrofits of existing residential buildings abound across Europe. This paper argues that retrofitting initiatives need to extend their current emphasis on technical-material changes to include an equally strong focus on researching and potentially changing the energy-related expectations, aspirations and actual activities of those who inhabit and use these buildings. The concept of energy cultures serves…
Grenzen des Konsums im Lebensverlauf
Wie viel Konsum ist für ein gutes Leben mindestens nötig? Und wo verläuft die Obergrenze des Konsums? Antworten auf diese Fragen unterscheiden sich je nach gesellschaftlichem Milieu, aber auch je nach Lebensphase. So hat sich gezeigt, dass Jugendliche sowie Senior(inn)en besonders offen für einen nachhaltigen und ressourcenschonenden Lebensstil sind. Nachhaltigkeitsforschung sollte daher verstärkt Erkenntnisse der Entwicklungs- und Biografieforsc…
The meaning of meat
Short distance, big impact
Towards a practice-theoretical classification of sustainable energy consumption initiatives
Shared journeys, linked lives
This paper innovatively extends existing practice-theoretical mobility research by examining biographical aspects of people’s everyday mobility that capture and reflect their social relations. Drawing on nine qualitative interviews with couples who live in/near Vienna without a private car, the paper demonstrates the promising potential of retrospective forms of social research for uncovering the dynamics of mobility practices across the life cou…
Disengaging citizens? Climate change communication and public receptivity
The mainstreaming of climate change through processes of media communication and political advocacy carries with it an imagined public. Drawing on qualitative data from 11 focus groups and 19 life history interviews carried out in the Republic of Ireland11. Henceforth Ireland. in 2010, the paper reveals a significant mismatch between the perceived characteristics of this imagined audience, and the practices and experiences of a socially embedded …
Moving across the life course
This article connects existing mobility biographies research with social practice inquiries into the dynamics of consumption and examines the potential of a biographic, practice-centred approach for researching everyday practices. Following a critical review of the benefits and limitations of existing research on mobility biographies, the article explores some key ways in which a practice theory approach can be employed to reframe and extend how …
Carlessness in a car‐centric world
Life events and mobility milestones
Time Use and Resource Consumption
Challenging social norms to recraft practices
ENERGISE is the first large-scale European effort to reduce household energy use through a change initiative that adopted a ‘living lab’ approach informed by social practice theory. Two challenges were introduced to 306 households in eight countries: to lower indoor temperatures and to reduce laundry cycles. This contribution demonstrates the usefulness of a practice-centered design that takes habits and routines as an entry point for understandi…
Life events and mobility milestones
Moving across the life course
This article connects existing mobility biographies research with social practice inquiries into the dynamics of consumption and examines the potential of a biographic, practice-centred approach for researching everyday practices. Following a critical review of the benefits and limitations of existing research on mobility biographies, the article explores some key ways in which a practice theory approach can be employed to reframe and extend how …
The meaning of meat
Carlessness in a car‐centric world
Capturing the consumption of distance? A practice-theoretical investigation of everyday travel
This article contributes to current debates on (un)sustainable mobility by re-conceptualising everyday travel as a set of consumption practices. Treating physical mobility as ‘consumption of distance’ with considerable social, ecological and economic consequences, the article’s theoretical focus moves beyond conventional approaches that have hitherto dominated transport research and policy in Europe and beyond. In addition, it demonstrates how a …
Different shades of green? Unpacking habitual and occasional pro-environmental behavior
This paper argues for a disaggregation of pro-environmental behavior into habitual and occasional behavior. The former captures routine everyday activities such as regularly buying organic food or habitually conserving water. The latter describes occasional or once-off activities such as installing insulation and purchasing energy-efficient household appliances. Drawing on a survey of 1500 households in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Irelan…
Shared journeys, linked lives
This paper innovatively extends existing practice-theoretical mobility research by examining biographical aspects of people’s everyday mobility that capture and reflect their social relations. Drawing on nine qualitative interviews with couples who live in/near Vienna without a private car, the paper demonstrates the promising potential of retrospective forms of social research for uncovering the dynamics of mobility practices across the life cou…
Mapping divergent concepts of sustainability
This paper examines local sustainability concepts in Connemara, a predominantly rural region in the West of Ireland (in this paper, the term “Ireland” refers to the Republic of Ireland), to show how they are (re-)constituted through people's interactions with social and biophysical environments. We argue that these interactions produce diverse forms of lay environmental knowledge and expertise that encompass cognitive and emotional aspects, a fac…
Disengaging citizens? Climate change communication and public receptivity
The mainstreaming of climate change through processes of media communication and political advocacy carries with it an imagined public. Drawing on qualitative data from 11 focus groups and 19 life history interviews carried out in the Republic of Ireland11. Henceforth Ireland. in 2010, the paper reveals a significant mismatch between the perceived characteristics of this imagined audience, and the practices and experiences of a socially embedded …
Mobility practices in a changing climate
Mobility practices in everyday life are often highly routinised and resistant to change. But they can also change significantly over the life course, reflecting sudden ruptures linked to incisive life events and more gradual shifts related to changing societal and environmental conditions. Combining insights from practice-theoretical mobility studies and mobility biographies research, this paper critically examines the role of material, social an…
Short distance, big impact
Doing the Job as a Parent
Recent studies of family life in Ireland have focused on changes in 'traditional' family structures, including the increase in one-parent families. This article illustrates the impact dominant conceptions in Irish society that privilege the family based on marriage have on one-parent family policy. The authors focus on two key areas of social interaction associated with family life-parenthood and (un)paid work-to identify both congruences and ten…
Movements, mobilities and the politics of hazardous waste
Global flows of hazardous waste and waste management technologies are major sources of environmental contestation. They reflect political structures and struggles within, and between, developed and less developed countries. The 'new mobilities paradigm' is tested using two cases of protest in Malaysia and East Germany. Focusing on the conjunctures of various (im)mobilities, the ways in which political circumstances combine with the materialities …
Towards a practice-theoretical classification of sustainable energy consumption initiatives
Time Divided - Time United
To illuminate the persisting division between East and West Germany, this article explores temporal aspects of East German culture and their impact on German unification. Arguing that approaches to GDR time in the contemporary literature border on oversimplification, the article focuses on different layers of time in East Germany. It also deals with possible time-related sources of conflict between East and West Germans, such as contradictory tem…
Time Divided - Time United
To illuminate the persisting division between East and West Germany, this article explores temporal aspects of East German culture and their impact on German unification. Arguing that approaches to GDR time in the contemporary literature border on oversimplification, the article focuses on different layers of time in East Germany. It also deals with possible time-related sources of conflict between East and West Germans, such as contradictory tem…
Introduction
Ireland’s transition from a predominantly rural to a (sub)urban society over the course of the twentieth century coincided with fundamental changes in its socio-cultural and environmental fabric (Corcoran et al. 2007; Moore and Scott 2005; Punch 2004).1 In particular, the recent suburbanization of many Irish towns and cities has raised interesting questions about the spatial organization of human social life. How important is public space for dem…
Movements, mobilities and the politics of hazardous waste
Global flows of hazardous waste and waste management technologies are major sources of environmental contestation. They reflect political structures and struggles within, and between, developed and less developed countries. The 'new mobilities paradigm' is tested using two cases of protest in Malaysia and East Germany. Focusing on the conjunctures of various (im)mobilities, the ways in which political circumstances combine with the materialities …
(Im)mobility and Environment–Society Relations
Doing the Job as a Parent
Recent studies of family life in Ireland have focused on changes in 'traditional' family structures, including the increase in one-parent families. This article illustrates the impact dominant conceptions in Irish society that privilege the family based on marriage have on one-parent family policy. The authors focus on two key areas of social interaction associated with family life-parenthood and (un)paid work-to identify both congruences and ten…
Mapping divergent concepts of sustainability
This paper examines local sustainability concepts in Connemara, a predominantly rural region in the West of Ireland (in this paper, the term “Ireland” refers to the Republic of Ireland), to show how they are (re-)constituted through people's interactions with social and biophysical environments. We argue that these interactions produce diverse forms of lay environmental knowledge and expertise that encompass cognitive and emotional aspects, a fac…
Time Use and Resource Consumption
Capturing the consumption of distance? A practice-theoretical investigation of everyday travel
This article contributes to current debates on (un)sustainable mobility by re-conceptualising everyday travel as a set of consumption practices. Treating physical mobility as ‘consumption of distance’ with considerable social, ecological and economic consequences, the article’s theoretical focus moves beyond conventional approaches that have hitherto dominated transport research and policy in Europe and beyond. In addition, it demonstrates how a …
Different shades of green? Unpacking habitual and occasional pro-environmental behavior
This paper argues for a disaggregation of pro-environmental behavior into habitual and occasional behavior. The former captures routine everyday activities such as regularly buying organic food or habitually conserving water. The latter describes occasional or once-off activities such as installing insulation and purchasing energy-efficient household appliances. Drawing on a survey of 1500 households in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Irelan…
Moving across the life course
This article connects existing mobility biographies research with social practice inquiries into the dynamics of consumption and examines the potential of a biographic, practice-centred approach for researching everyday practices. Following a critical review of the benefits and limitations of existing research on mobility biographies, the article explores some key ways in which a practice theory approach can be employed to reframe and extend how …
Carlessness in a car‐centric world
Life events and mobility milestones
Disengaging citizens? Climate change communication and public receptivity
The mainstreaming of climate change through processes of media communication and political advocacy carries with it an imagined public. Drawing on qualitative data from 11 focus groups and 19 life history interviews carried out in the Republic of Ireland11. Henceforth Ireland. in 2010, the paper reveals a significant mismatch between the perceived characteristics of this imagined audience, and the practices and experiences of a socially embedded …
Towards a practice-theoretical classification of sustainable energy consumption initiatives
Shared journeys, linked lives
This paper innovatively extends existing practice-theoretical mobility research by examining biographical aspects of people’s everyday mobility that capture and reflect their social relations. Drawing on nine qualitative interviews with couples who live in/near Vienna without a private car, the paper demonstrates the promising potential of retrospective forms of social research for uncovering the dynamics of mobility practices across the life cou…
Short distance, big impact
Changing energy cultures? Household energy use before and after a building energy efficiency retrofit
Government- and community-initiated energy retrofits of existing residential buildings abound across Europe. This paper argues that retrofitting initiatives need to extend their current emphasis on technical-material changes to include an equally strong focus on researching and potentially changing the energy-related expectations, aspirations and actual activities of those who inhabit and use these buildings. The concept of energy cultures serves…
Grenzen des Konsums im Lebensverlauf
Wie viel Konsum ist für ein gutes Leben mindestens nötig? Und wo verläuft die Obergrenze des Konsums? Antworten auf diese Fragen unterscheiden sich je nach gesellschaftlichem Milieu, aber auch je nach Lebensphase. So hat sich gezeigt, dass Jugendliche sowie Senior(inn)en besonders offen für einen nachhaltigen und ressourcenschonenden Lebensstil sind. Nachhaltigkeitsforschung sollte daher verstärkt Erkenntnisse der Entwicklungs- und Biografieforsc…
The meaning of meat
Towards representative resilience
Community resilience policies continue to grow in popularity as a strategy to prepare for the local impact of forecasted environmental uncertainty, however, criticisms of community resilience discourse remain. This paper takes forward these criticisms, specifically addressing the issue of representative power over key natural resources, using Gaventa’s [Gaventa, J. 2006. “Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis.” IDS Bulletin 37 (6): 23–3…
Stocks, flows, services and practices
Challenging social norms to recraft practices
ENERGISE is the first large-scale European effort to reduce household energy use through a change initiative that adopted a ‘living lab’ approach informed by social practice theory. Two challenges were introduced to 306 households in eight countries: to lower indoor temperatures and to reduce laundry cycles. This contribution demonstrates the usefulness of a practice-centered design that takes habits and routines as an entry point for understandi…
Responding to the environmental crisis
This special issue examines the role of culture in the environmental crisis. We ask if and how different forms of sociality, cultural diversity and intercultural exchange can contribute to a social-ecological transformation that helps to mitigate unsustainable patterns of production and consumption that characterise many societies and their economies today. By assembling three articles that explore possibilities of change at different levels of s…
Beyond cooking
More than three billion people depend on solid fuels for household energy, especially in rural areas of low and lower-middle income countries (LIC/LMIC). Rural households in LIC/LMIC use energy for a wide range of purposes, including food preparation, space and water heating, insect repulsion, illumination or the preparation of goods for sale. However, in these contexts, the majority of energy research frames energy end use as “cooking”. So far, …
Of study enthusiasts and homebirds
Purpose Online education enables location-independent learning, potentially providing university students with more flexible study programs and reducing traffic-related CO 2 emissions. This paper aims to examine whether online education can contribute to university-related sustainable everyday mobility, with particular consideration given to aspects of social sustainability and potential rebound effects. Specifically, it explores sustainability d…
Sociology (25 works) · Political science (16 works) · Social science (15 works) · Economics (12 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Urban Transport and Accessibility (11 works) · Business (9 works) · Geography (9 works) · Sustainability (9 works) · Engineering (8 works)