Global environmental change introduces new risks and vulnerabilities to urban populations, including those in Europe. Whether and how societies are responding and adapting to these challenges are questions of ever-heightening urgency. We believe it is of critical importance to explore the often-overlooked everyday practices through which people ‘quietly’ address these issues and sometimes unconsciously contribute to environmental and social well-being.

Our research uncovers fascinating examples of everyday “inconspicuous” micro-actions that are unintentionally and “quietly sustainable” (Smith and Jehlička 2013; Ferenčuhová 2022). From repurposing homes and DIY reconstructions, to nurturing local green spaces or reducing household food waste, these mundane practices offer valuable insights into fostering a more sustainable world. Without idealising them, we view these practices as sources of ordinary innovations that prioritize reduced resource consumption, mutual aid, recycling, DIY solutions, and sharing.

We also question how these informal practices interact with formal processes and policies aimed at environmental and social sustainability in cities. Do they complement, conflict, or coexist with these larger-scale efforts?

To delve deeper into these findings and bring them in dialogue with research from other contexts, we invite you to our mid-term conference. Join us for two days of stimulating discussions with experts from across Europe as we examine the transformative potential of everyday micro-practices for a more sustainable urban life.

14 – 15 October, 2024

The schedule is based on Central European Time (CET).

Where: Institute of Ethnology, Meeting room Florenc, 5th floor, Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Florenci 3, Prague, and online.

Your registration will help us to plan and keep you updated. Registration will close on Sunday 13th, 17:00 CET. In case of any technical problems with registration or joining the online event, please contact karelnemecek@mail.muni.cz.

12.45 – 13.15 Coffee and welcoming in-person participants

13.15 – 13.30 Welcoming online participants (Slavomíra Ferenčuhová)

13.30 – 15.00

Jonas van der Straeten, Petr Jehlička

Petr Vašát (chair)

This session aims at diversifying the framings of sustainability. Despite the general tendency to perceive the mainstream, eco-modernist notion of sustainability as value-neutral and universally valid, the concept is embedded in West European and North American societal developments (Mincyte 2011). One implication for sustainability scholarship is the prioritisation of market-based solutions to environmental problems. The other is the inclination, stemming from the popularity of theories of difference in the last century and the current neoliberal prioritisation of innovation (Domínguez Rubio 2020), to positively valorise novelty, creativity, and innovation in terms of high-tech eco-modernist solutions in proposed sustainability transformations. In this understanding, sustainability gains are located in a more or less distant future and are associated with future-oriented capacity building, technological innovation, civic participation and mobilization based on learned intentionality. However, the growing urgency of the need to propose responses to the biodiversity and climate crises and the limited effectiveness of techno-fixes push sustainability researchers to consider unconventional lines of thought.

We echo the growing calls for decentring or decolonizing knowledge-making in debates on sustainability transitions. In this session, therefore, we seek to draw attention to the importance of long-established and socially embedded sustainable practices. To that end, we propose four interrelated shifts to the perspective from which to consider sustainability. The first shift rests in the adoption into sustainability frameworks of what we call already existing sustainability-compliant practices. This endeavour requires looking for sustainability in the present, ‘rather than focusing on creating it or simply waiting for it to emerge, in the future’ (Barron 2020). In suggesting this, we are inspired by the desire to emancipate the maintenance of already existing sustainability practices from their invisibility and association with repetition and lack of creativity. The second shift proposes to diversify the notion of sustainability by drawing on findings about these practices from research outside the Western ‘epistemic centre’, i.e. in the Global South and the Global East. The third shift aims at dissociating these already existing sustainability practices from resource scarcity and poverty and at the possibility of connoting them with more positively valorised qualities such as exuberance and enjoyment. Finally, there is a need for a shift to different actors as the currently prevailing focus on self-recognized change agents (NGO, government agencies, development agencies) and ignorance of historically shaped local forms of governance will do little to change the many current misguided sustainability policies. Consequently, drivers of wider transition processes spanning past, present, and future are missing in the research, specifically informal practices, actors, and institutions.

15.00 – 15.30 Coffee break

15.30 - 17.00

Laura Berger, Slavomíra Ferenčuhová

Petr Vašát (chair)

This session explores the multifaceted history of standardized timber houses, focusing on the production of a Finnish company called Puutalo Oy (Timber Houses Ltd.). During the 1940s and 1950s it became one of the largest manufacturers of prefabricated timber houses globally. Some 30 factories of the consortium, situated across Finland, produced annually more than 10,000 buildings, which were delivered to over 30 countries on every continent.

We will present two interconnected narratives: the history of the standardization of timber house production in Finland during the early 20th century and the post-war era, and the subsequent adaptation of these houses by their residents.

First we introduce the design and production of timber houses from the point of view of the Puutalo corporation. From the very beginning, its representatives promoted the notion of flexible standardisation, asserting that each commissioner is free to determine the size and the type of their building, which will also be possible to expand later with use of prefabricated components. We will examine the factors driving this approach and the relationship between standardization and prefabrication.

Next, attention will be shifted to the experiences of residents who have lived in these houses. Through case studies from Czech cities and examples from other global locations, we explore how some of the residents have perceived, interacted with and modified their homes and their materiality and spatial configurations. Specifically, we highlight do-it-yourself reconstructions and repurposing as significant strategies for adapting standardized houses to meet individual and household needs.

By juxtaposing these two narratives, we aim to stimulate a discussion concerning the complex interplay, tensions and synergies between top-down and bottom-up innovations in the realm of housing. The session points out that do-it-yourself modifications are not merely deviations from a standardized ideal but rather integral components of the ongoing evolution of housing practices, especially in the case of prefabricated timber constructions.

17.00 – 17.30 Day 1 closing discussion

9.30 – 9.45 Welcoming online participants (Slavomíra Ferenčuhová)

9:45 - 11:15

Bianka Plüschke-Altof, Anja Decker

Petr Jehlička (chair)

In this session, we would like to present and discuss examples of informal practices in urban green spaces. These could include practices of care, production, gardening and communality. While such practices have in the literature been discussed as political acts of guerilla gardening, rebellion against neoliberal urban governance regimes and creative performances of sustainability-centred values, in the stories discussed here, the main protagonists experience these actions as mundane, everyday practices, or emotional acts of building connections with human and non-human beings. Often, their modes of organisation rather follow an individualistic than a cooperative logic and at times our interlocutors seek to avoid cooperation with other practitioners and institutional actors. While these informal practices might not be intended as political interventions, we would like to discuss the political implications they might nevertheless entail - for spatial planning, community building, environmental management and climate change adaptation more broadly. Which are the political consequences and what conclusions to draw from them? If these are non-intended, then how to deal with them? Whose, if anybody’s, task is it to make these often hidden practices more visible, draw and communicate their political implications - and what are the potentials and risks of directing attention to these practices? Based on stories from fieldwork in the Czech Republic and Estonia, we invite you to jointly discuss these questions with us.

11.15 – 11.45 (12.45) Coffee break and lunch break (individual)

12.45 – 14.15

Luca Sára Bródy, Terezie Lokšová

Slavomíra Ferenčuhová (chair)

This session examines participation in urban governance by focusing on top-down participation, everyday resistance, and citizens’ agency. Firstly, it traces how the local voices have been positioned and channelled through formal involvement. Secondly, the session focuses on the often-overlooked informal character of civic action and its motives to transform institutional politics.

Drawing on qualitative data from more than three decades of Czech participatory design and planning, the session demonstrates how the relationship between the expert approaches and local mundane practices and knowledge has been shaped: how the position of the locals and their knowledge, as well as the notions of good, innovative, relevant participatory practices, developed over time under the influences of mobile policies from the West. The discontinuous history of public involvement illuminates how the potential for including local voices has been selectively constrained.

In the context of recurrent political and institutional crises, formal governance structures often fail to address the needs of local populations, leading citizens to rely on informal networks and practices for survival and resilience. These informal practices provide critical support to communities by filling the gaps left by weakened local governments. The research based on three case studies in Hungarian cities examines how these informal networks function and highlights their importance in sustaining civic engagement and promoting resilience in urban areas. It explores the complex interplay between these informal practices and formal governance structures.

The session aims to overcome the prevailing focus of post-socialist civil society and public participation research on implicit comparisons with the generalised West and on what is perceived as lacking. It problematises the role of the deficiency model and challenges the traditional views of civic action that often overlook the power of informal, everyday practices.

14.15 – 14.45 Coffee break

14.45 – 15.30 Closing discussion

Your registration will help us to plan and keep you updated. Registration will close on Sunday 13th, 17:00 CET.