3.3 Social Research - the importance of agency. 3.4 Towards an .... in parallel, new mechanisms for 'listening' to the Lancashire public, and for rebuilding trust ...
Public perceptions and sustainability in Lancashire Indicators, Institutions, and Participation
A report by the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change commissioned by Lancashire County Council
Authors Phil Macnaghten Robin Grove-White Michael Jacobs Brian Wynne
March 1995
Acknowledgments This report has been produced by the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) for Lancashire County Council. The research was conducted between August and December 1994. We should like to thank the following for their help and contributions in the research and preparation of the report. - the officers of Lancashire County Council: in particular, Graham Pinfield, Derek Taylor, Graeme Bell, Robert Ormerod, Andrew Mullaney and Will Horsfall; - the following representatives of Lancashire Environment Forum for their time and contribution to the interviews and focus group seminar, including: the chair and County Councillor Mrs Louise Ellman, Steve Byron, Jim Gaffney, Tony Hurley, Brian Jeffrey, John Mortimer, Steve Morton, Jim Mason, John Nairne, Barry Scoffin, Nigel Simmons, Peter Stanway, and John Tyson; - our colleagues at CSEC for their comments, also Greg Myers, Jagpritt Poonia, and Jacquelin Burgess; - Irene Evans for recruiting the groups, and all our focus group participants for turning up and taking part. - Elaine Hobson for speedy and accurate transcription. And finally, we thank John Scott for helping design the project, and for his help in focus group moderation. The research has benefited from a wider body of current research at CSEC on social and cultural dimensions of environmental issues in countries like Britain, much of it funded by the Economic and Social Research Council under its 'Global Environment Change' Programme. Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) Lancaster University, LA1 4YF Tel: 01524 592658 Fax: 01524 592503
Transcription Conventions The conventions used in the transcription of the focus group trancripts were as such: F signified a female participant, M signified a male participant, and Mod signified the moderator. The transcription was orthographic (i.e. no attempt was made to indicate how words were pronounced), and inaudible words were not included. Although the language in the transcripts was occasionally of a 'strong' nature, the actual words are included in this report to accurately reflect 'how people speak' in Lancashire.
Table of Contents Part 1: Context and Story to Date Chapter 1: Introduction and Summary 1.1 Background 1.2 Approach 1.3 Summary of the Report's Main Findings 1.4 General Observations 1.5 Contents of the Report Chapter 2: Sustainability and Indicators 2.1 A Short History 2.2 Sustainability Indicators 2.3 Community Participation and Sustainability Chapter 3: Intellectual Context of Research 3.1 Survey Research on Public Perceptions 3.2 Qualitative Research on Public Perceptions 3.3 Social Research - the importance of agency 3.4 Towards an Institutional Approach Chapter 4: Research Method 4.1 Background 4.2 Aims of Research 4.3 Nature and Constitution of the Focus groups 4.4 Selection Procedure 4.5 Focus Group Procedure Part 2: Research Findings Chapter 5: The Focus Group Discussions 5.1 General Observations 5.2 Identity with Place 5.3 Current Concerns 5.4 The Past 5.5 The Future 5.6 Quality of Life 5.7 Personal Responsibility for Quality of Life 5.8 Perceptions of responsible 'others' 5.9 Sustainability and Environment
Chapter 6: Findings of Particular Groups 6.1 Young Men on YTS 6.2 Asian Women 6.3 Mothers 6.4 Unemployed Men 6.5 Retired 6.6 Rural Professionals 6.7 Working Class Women 6.8 Young Professionals Chapter 7: Public Perceptions of Indicators 7.1 Responses to Existing Indicators 7.2 Indicators and Trustworthy Institutions 7.3 Responses to Proposed Indicator Project 7.4 Indicators and Key Areas of Concern 7.5 Conclusions Part 3: Implementations and Recommendations Chapter 8: Conclusions of Research 8.1 Introduction 8.2 The Idea of Sustainability 8.3 Model of Sustainability Revisited 8.4 Implications for Indicators 8.5 Opportunities for Community Participation in Lancashire 8.6 Society, Political Culture and Sustainability - wider issues 8.7 Summary of Conclusions Annex: The Lancashire Environment Forum A.1 A Recent History A.2 The Challenge of Sustainability A.3 Sustainability and Forum Members A.4 A Cautionary Note Bibliography Appendices
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PART 1: OVERVIEW, BACKGROUND AND RESEARCH APPROACH Chapter 1: Introduction and Summary 1.1 Background This report seeks to throw light on factors likely to influence public responses to a variety of proposed 'sustainability indicators' in Lancashire. It has been prepared by the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) on behalf of Lancashire County Council. Lancashire County Council is a designated 'shadow' authority in a programme designed by the Local Government Management Board (LGMB) to test the possible effectiveness of a range of indicators developed on its behalf by consultants (New Economics Foundation / United Nations Association / Touche Ross). These indicators are envisaged as tools for stimulating public support and involvement in progress towards 'sustainable development'. The research has involved exploration of the attitudes and feelings of members of the Lancashire public towards a variety of social and environmental issues, with a view to establishing the various ways in which proposed indicators might be interpreted and understood by different groups within the county's population. The study has drawn on CSEC's prior work and expertise on - public attitudes towards the environment; - environmental policy and sustainable development; - the sociology of scientific knowledge and of public risk perceptions; and - focus group methodology and analysis. It has been conducted by CSEC with the co-operation of the leader and officers of Lancashire County Council and members of the Lancashire Environment Forum. The research was undertaken between August and December 1994.
1.2 Approach Methodologically, the study has been built around a series of 'focus group' discussions involving selected members of the Lancashire population. It has benefited from a wider body of current research at CSEC on social and cultural dimensions of environmental issues, much of it funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under the latter's 'Global Environmental Change' (GEC) and other programmes. CSEC's work overall is concerned to generate richer, more sensitive accounts of conflicts and tensions in contemporary environmental knowledge and policy development than have tended so far to be available in the public policy domain.
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CSEC is grateful to Lancashire County Council for its flexible and imaginative sponsorship of the study, which is envisaged as marking a new stage in the understanding of issues of mounting regional, national, and international significance.
1.3 Summary of the Report's Main Conclusions The principal conclusions from the research may be summarised as follows: •
People generally are unfamiliar with the idea of 'sustainability' in its environmental sense. But once they understand it, they appear to identify positively with its values and priorities. Indeed, many sense a possible relationship between sustainability and a good 'quality of life'; the notion of 'sustainability' provides a tacit vocabulary for talking about the 'long term'.
•
The 'model' of sustainability underlying local authority indicator initiatives is only partly accepted by the public. Important non-material or relational components of 'quality of life' are seen as under threat, and environmental decline is seen as contributing to this. A 'sustainable' future in which economic activity is held within environmental limits and quality of life is improved commands support. However, people are sceptical as to whether government or business can be 'trusted' to genuinely promote sustainability. Government and business are commonly perceived as part of 'the system', with tendencies towards self-interest and short term goals. This finding has potentially adverse implications for wider public identification with current government or business sustainability initiatives.
•
People's inclination to attend to information about the environment is affected strongly by their sense of 'agency' - that is, by whether or not they feel a capacity to influence events associated with that information. They are also influenced strongly by their degree of trust in the purveyors of the information. These realities may have apparently perverse implications for the credibility and authority of any sustainability 'indicators' proposed in good faith by local or central government.
•
People display a pronounced degree of fatalism and even cynicism towards the country's public institutions, including national and local government. This is reflected in an apparently pervasive lack of trust in the goodwill and integrity of national government, and in doubts about the ability or willingness of local government to achieve positive improvements in the quality of people's lives (not least because local authorities' powers are seen as diminishing).
•
There is a danger that, because of people's largely negative attitudes towards (and apparent recent experience of) such official bodies, proposals by the latter for specific measures to advance sustainability will be interpreted as self-interested, and even as likely to marginalise people further (particularly those in lower income groups). This suggests that any 'indicators' project will need to be accompanied by other positive measures aimed at addressing the factors giving rise to these perceptions.
•
Attitudes towards the activities of Lancashire County Council (LCC) vary in this domain. There is some respect for the Council's commitment to the interests of
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Lancashire's environment, but also a feeling that its sustainability commitments are extremely ambitious. In general, local government institutions are regarded fatalistically, and as tending to be biased towards their own bureaucratic interests. •
People in most population groups express a strong identification with local 'place', and identify especially with their immediate communities, sub-communities and life-worlds. There is a pronounced and affectionate attachment to Lancashire specifically in most groups. This is a strength on which LCC could build, for 'sustainability' purposes.
•
There is considerable public anxiety and pessimism about many current social trends and the apparent inability (or unwillingness) of politicians to do much about them. The key day-to-day concerns emerging from the discussions include increasing job insecurity (particularly amongst the more affluent groups), the prospect of continuing unemployment (amongst the already unemployed), and the growth of crime.
•
People's primary environmental concerns are expressed largely in local terms (e.g. beach pollution, litter and dog mess), though there is also wider anxiety about global problems, particularly among the more affluent groups. However, most people appear to feel powerless in relation to such broader problems, and unconvinced about the commitment of central government to do anything about them. This relates to the importance of feelings of 'agency' in shaping the priorities people feel it worthwhile to articulate.
•
People express considerable pessimism about the future, with currently adverse trends expected to worsen in most fields, including the environment. This appears to be related to the sense of fatalism and cynicism towards the disinterestedness of public institutions supposedly responsible for coping with such trends, expressed by almost all participants in the discussions. It may be that such concern about the future is in part a surrogate for feelings of insecurity and unease about the present.
•
Against the background of intensely sceptical attitudes towards official institutions, the appropriate design of sustainability indicators presents considerable problems. Because there is scepticism about whether local government information would in practice be 'unbiased', the indicators most likely to command public confidence would probably need to be understood as independent, meaningful at a local level, and reflective of particular communities' own local knowledge of the issues addressed. Many of people's key concerns do not lend themselves to measurement, being relational and locally specific. Developing indicators that speak credibly and convincingly to people's lives may require new patterns of consultation and negotiation with the public, on a genuinely open-ended basis.
•
For indicators to have a prospect of success therefore, LCC will need to develop, in parallel, new mechanisms for 'listening' to the Lancashire public, and for rebuilding trust and public identification with local government. These could build on the promising start made through initiatives like the creation of the Lancashire Environment Forum, which has begun to encourage new patterns of trust and active relationship between LCC and a range of interest groups and
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'stakeholder' organisations. Further initiatives to extend genuine and continuing dialogue between the wider public and the policy arms of the local authorities in the area could build on the more extensive use of focus groups, and other similar mechanisms such as 'town meetings' and consultation seminars. These activities may complement and further the existing work of local councillors, and might be followed up with more practical initiatives, aimed at improving the quality of life in individual communities. •
The above findings may have implications for the proposed update of LCC's 'Green Audit'. This should give new emphasis to the mounting importance to the County Council of measures to extend and deepen its interactions with the public, to establish shared approaches towards sustainability.
•
In developing new initiatives, LCC should be aware of the range of emergent new, largely informal social and 'cultural' networks, around issues such as health, animals and food, new leisure groupings, and local self-help. Till very recently, none of these have been acknowledged seriously in public policy discourse, and all have lain largely outside the ambit of discussions about sustainability. Efforts by LCC to develop sensitive new forms of interaction with such networks could prove fruitful for the advancing of sustainability objectives in the county. Such moves might also have wider national implications.
•
Overall, whilst there is substantial latent public support for the aims and aspirations of sustainability, there is also substantial and pervasive scepticism about the good will of government and other corporate interests towards its achievement. 'Indicators' alone will not improve public confidence in the bona fides of local government in this regard. However, participants in the focus groups were impressed by LCC's enterprise in commissioning an independent study like the present one, aimed at developing a more sensitive understanding of the views of the public, whatever the new challenges that might result. Such positive public responses confirm that there are major opportunities for the County Council to build constructively on its work in this field.
1.4 General Observations Two further general observations arise from the research. •
There are grounds for serious concern about the adequacy of government's (central and local) own representations and understandings of the concepts of 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development'. Such representations have frequently given the impression that there is an unambiguous 'objective' scientific underpinning to the terms, from which follow equally unambiguous social and political prescriptions which need now to be implemented. Highly significant though scientific insights are in this field, current research at CSEC and elsewhere (particularly within the ESRC's GEC programme) is throwing increasing doubt on the adequacy of an approach resting exclusively on such a picture. It neglects the significance of social, political and cultural processes involved in the emergence, definition and development of the concepts, and assumes an authority and effectiveness in 'policy' institutions which may now be increasingly questionable. Indeed, it seems likely that some of the difficulties encountered during the present research - for example, the widespread public scepticism about the good faith of
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those public bodies who are now seeking to promote sustainability objectives are being reinforced by such inadequacies of official understanding. If so, there is a need for renewed discussion, at both national and local levels, about the basis on which interpretations of sustainability are now evolving. This will require the serious and open-minded attention of central government and national NGOs, as well as bodies such as Lancashire County Council. •
Our central findings concern the significance of people's sense of agency (or lack of it) in relation to public information, and of their trust (or lack of it) in the official institutions now seeking to mobilise support for sustainability. For people to feel willing to take action at a personal level to advance sustainability, they need to feel that such actions will be useful and productive overall. Such feelings are difficult to engender when there is continuing scepticism, justified or not, about the commitment of central government to serious action on the same lines. A corollary of our key findings at the local Lancashire level is therefore that there is an urgent need for more conspicuous and purposeful policy commitments by central government towards sustainability objectives, if serious independent action by members of the public is to be stimulated. It may be appropriate for Lancashire County Council and its LGMB partners to pursue this issue with Ministers.
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1.5 Contents of the Report Chapter 2 explains the broad background to the emergence of the idea of 'sustainability indicators' and the desire of LCC to understand likely public responses to them. Chapter 3 outlines key intellectual problems associated with research into public understanding of environmental issues, not least amongst researchers themselves. Chapter 4 explains the 'focus group' methodology employed for the present study. Chapter 5 provides a detailed account of the principal public concerns and preoccupations relevant to sustainability emerging from the focus group discussions, and Chapter 6 summarises the findings emerging from each group. Chapter 7 discusses the potential implications of these concerns and preoccupations for the particular design of sustainability indicators. Chapter 8 raises a number of more general issues to emerge from the focus group discussions, relating to other research of potential significance for the County Council.
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Chapter 2: Sustainability and Indicators 2.1 A Short History Sustainability and sustainable development have emerged over the past decade as central concepts in the discourse of government organisations and other institutions concerned with the environment 1. Following the 1987 Brundtland report (UNCED 1987) (in which the term was first given political currency and credibility), the 1992 United Nations Conference in Rio de Janeiro on Environment and Development (at which the implications of the term were explored in detail and endorsed by national governments), and subsequent initiatives such as the international action plan, Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992) (setting out a programme of sustainability), and the creation of the new United Nations body, the 'Commission for Sustainable Development' (through which its implementation is being monitored), sustainability has become a new common language framing the formal environmental agenda of the 1990's. In a British context, the UK Government launched its national strategy document, 'Sustainable Development - the UK Strategy' (HMG 1994), outlining its detailed response to the Rio initiatives, and launching three new initiatives designed to stimulate lifestyle change and create new levels of partnership between government and other environmental actors. These were: a new panel of environmental advisors to government; the 'UK Round Table on Sustainable Development'; and a new citizen's environment initiative, 'Going for Green'. Even before the 1992 Rio conference (UNCED), local government bodies across the globe had begun to take initiatives with respect to environment and development issues (e.g. such as the global cities initiatives). Thus, an important outcome of the UNCED meeting was the idea of a Local Agenda 21, in which the principles and targets for local sustainability could be developed in a partnership between local authorities and local 'stakeholders'. In the UK at local government level, the Local Government Management Board (LGMB) has subsequently developed and submitted to national government its own 'Framework for Local Sustainability', and is currently undertaking a 'Sustainability Indicators Research Project' as part of a wider 'Local Agenda 21' initiative which aims to advance sustainability at a local level. Given that working definitions of sustainability have been broadly accepted by governments, NGOs and business (e.g. cast in terms of living within the finite limits of the planet, of meeting needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs, and of integrating environment and development), there is now a growing impetus towards developing tools and approaches which can translate the goals of sustainability into specific actions and assess whether real progress is in fact being made towards achieving them. Within this framework, the aspiration to develop indicators as tools of measurement is acquiring increasing prominence.
2.2 Sustainability Indicators
1For the purposes of the report no distinction is made between the concept of sustainability and that of sustainable development.
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There is already a wide variety of local, national and international initiatives designed to devise and measure key factors relevant to sustainability. As outlined in a recent LGMB report (LGMB 1994a) these include projects as diverse as: an OECD set of Environmental Indicators; a UK Audit Commission set of indicators designed to enable local government to monitor its performance in service delivery; a DoE project designed to develop environmental capacity indicators for historic cities; and programmes of 'Ecofeedback' and 'Global Action Plan' designed for individuals to monitor their own consumption and lifestyles and to devise their own targets. In addition, the LGMB have noted a number of regular reports which provide data relevant to sustainability, including: the World Bank's annual 'Social Indicators of Development'; the UNEP Environmental Data Reports; the Worldwatch Institute's annual 'State of the World Reports'; and the World Resources Institute's 'Guide to the Global Environment'. At a country level, a number of specific projects on sustainability have also emerged including: several 'Sustainable Communities' projects across Canada and the United States; a National Environment Policy Performance Indicator Project in the Netherlands; and a number of highly publicised local projects such as the Sustainable Indicators project in Seattle in the US. Within the above framework, in 1993 the UK Local Government Management Board set up its 'Sustainability Indicators Research Project', designed to develop indicators for local government bodies to use in advancing towards local sustainability. To date, with the assistance of consultants (the United Nations Association, the New Economics Foundation, and Touche Ross), a framework for measuring sustainability has been developed, a scoping study completed, and 13 themes and a menu of 113 'draft' indicators produced (LGMB 1994a). Phase 2, involving the 'road testing' of sustainability indicators by selected 'pilot' and 'shadow' local authorities with their local communities, has been completed and findings are shortly to be published. A number of factors help explain the current popularity of such indicators and their different roles and functions. First, they are seen in a managerial context as tools for planning government and local government environmental initiatives. Coupled to 'State of the Environment' information, their role is seen as being to provide information for managers to assist in the setting of targets, the implementation of programmes, and the measurement of progress. By devising indicators linked to specific targets, managers can help operationalise the concept and thereby facilitate genuine action towards sustainability at a local level. Second, indicators are envisaged as having a role in political objective-setting. By providing and publicising indicators of environmental quality, it is intended to move environmental questions to the foreground of public decisions. The very act of defining indicators for sustainability is a way of seeking to provide new political objectives, such as reduced energy use or increased recycling. Indeed, there is growing recognition that alternative forms of measurement are required to cogently reflect the sustainability concept, given the sheer inadequacy of existing commonly used indicators (most of which tend to be narrowly economic). And, given the power of current indicators (such as measurements of GNP) to set the boundaries of discussion of societal change in the media and public policy generally, many have commented on the potentially 'subversive' merits of well-designed sustainability indicators, which, if popular, will lead discussion (and hence policy) to areas more in line with a wider conception of economic and social progress.
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Third, as a counterweight to the managerialism which prompted the initial development of indicators, there has been a growing move towards developing programmes of sustainability indicators which promote public communication and participation. Indeed, this has become the principle aim of the LGMB 'Sustainability Indicators Project'.
2.3 Community Participation and Sustainability Moves towards sustainability will affect everybody, so public involvement is seen as vital. The concept of sustainability challenges the still dominant political and social assumption that indiscriminate economic growth can be reconciled with environmental protection, advocating, in contrast, patterns of development based on a new synthesis of social, economic and ecological dimensions. The discourse of sustainability emphasises the links between basic needs, long-term quality of life, and short-term economic considerations; and the need to ensure that human well-being is met only within the finite limits of the planet. Hence, programmes of action for sustainability increasingly involve measures for community participation and involvement, not least via the Local Agenda 21 process. Indeed, the role envisaged for the public in the emerging model of sustainability is crucial. Since Rio, there has been a growing official recognition that governments alone cannot solve what is seen as a looming global environmental crisis. One of the more striking achievements by NGOs at Rio was to ensure that a new language of 'empowerment', 'citizen participation', and 'multi-stakeholder partnership' became integrated into Agenda 21 - the action plan for sustainable development adopted by world governments. In line with local Agenda 21 initiatives, a variety of new 'partnerships' involving local environment fora have begun to consolidate. The Lancashire Environment Forum illustrates these developments. The Forum is a partnership of 90 organisations who, under the aegis of Lancashire County Council (LCC), have collaborated since 1989 in the development of a 'Green Audit' of the county, and of a subsequent Lancashire Environmental Action Programme as elements in Lancashire's own contribution to local and global environmental improvement (the evolution of LCC's approach on this matter is summarised in an Annex at the conclusion of this report). Related local authority initiatives and partnerships are emerging increasingly around the country. Similarly, the DoE's 'Going for Green' campaign, designed to look at ways to increase people's awareness of the role they can play in making a reality of sustainable development, is being overseen by a committee involving business, the media, local authorities, environment groups, the women's institutes, and the church. Likewise, the LGMB's 'Sustainability Indicators Project' reflects an understanding that widespread partnership and consensus between stakeholders is required, to promote a sense of individual and community responsibility and to encourage action. However, whilst there has been considerable talk of the need for community participation and involvement in wider processes of public decision making as an integral part of sustainability, to date there has been little evidence of such participation outside the impressive but still limited arena of academics, NGOs, government, and business. Thus, while environment fora have begun to be successful in reaching out to so-called 'stakeholder' groups (e.g. consortia of business interests, utilities, environment groups, and to a lesser extent community groups), there have
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been few initiatives and little response from ordinary individuals (i.e. those who are not members of this limited set of groups). Against such a background, indicators are now being identified both as a mechanism to promote popular participation in sustainability initiatives, and as a way to provide a climate of public support for local and national government initiatives. Through consideration of the above developments, it is possible to deduce some of the relationships that appear to be assumed, as articulated in the emerging literature and programmes of sustainability2. First, there is the assumption that sustainability implies moving from a current unsatisfactory state to a more satisfactory one. While there is little overall agreement about how to describe the current and proposed state vis a vis sustainability - alternative categorisations used to represent our current state include: environment, social and economic categories (perhaps the most familiar distinctions); economic development and environmental categories (favoured by the UK' Government's 'Sustainable Development - the UK Strategy); quality of life and carrying-capacity categories (favoured by the LGMB 'Sustainability Indicators Project'); or equity, quality of life, futurity and environment principles (favoured by the LGMB 'A Framework for Local Sustainability') - most frameworks tend to distinguish an environmental realm, a social (or quality of life realm), and an economic realm. Moreover, such frameworks tend to assume that current priorities aimed at promoting economic welfare can be at the expense of both the environment and of people's wider quality of life needs, and to imply that an 'ideal' state of sustainability is signalled when people's economic welfare and quality of life needs can be met in ways which respect local and global environmental limits3. Second, there is the assumption that moves towards sustainability require action from government, NGOs, business, other stakeholders, and the public. One key element to any programme of action is thus the identification and monitoring of indicators, which are envisaged as helping inform government and other stakeholders, including the public, of on-going progress towards sustainability. Through accurate and meaningful indicators, the argument runs, members of the public will be more likely to participate in government and business initiatives and to modify their own individual behaviours. Indicators are also pictured as having a more managerial function for government, to help plan and implement sustainability programmes and initiatives. Most reports on the subject to date thus imply a three-stage process, in which:
2 In a UK context these relationships are most developed in the literature emerging from the Local Agenda 21 initiative. This includes: the LGMB's 'A Framework for Local Sustainability' (LGMB 1993); the LGMB's Sustainability Indicators Research Project's 'Report of Phase One' (LGMB 1994a); and the LGMB's Local Agenda 21 Roundtable Guidance Notes on 'Principles and Process' and 'Community Participation' (LGMB 1994 b, 1994c). However, the same relationships can also be partly or wholly recognised in national and international reports on sustainability including: the UN's 'Agenda 21 Programme for Action for Sustainable Development' (UNCED 1992); the EC's Fifth Environmental Action Programme 'Towards Sustainability' (CEC 1992); and the UK's 'Sustainable Development: The UK Strategy' (HMG 1994). 3 While no distinction was applied between quality of life and economic welfare in the LGMB Sustainability Indicators project, the above model can be still be applied. In the development of indicators, the LGMB project divided the category of 'quality of life' into 9 themes (these were basic needs, health, access to information, education, freedom to participate in decision making, freedom from fear, access to services, income, work, leisure and aesthetics), and the category of the environment into three themes (these were resources, pollution and biodiversity).
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1. the present 'unsustainable' situation is defined (largely by 'experts', whether within government, NGOs, industry and/or academia), 2. new mechanisms and relations are generated (including 'indicators'), to enable progress to be made towards improving matters, and 3. through such mechanisms and relationships the desired state of 'sustainability' is approached. These processes can be pictured schematically as follows: 1. Present Situation
Economic Growth Quality of Life
2. Mechanisms and Relationships for Action
Environmental Conditions
Indicators Information
Information The Public
Participation/ Political Support
Government/ Business
Indicators Individual action
Action
3. Desired State of 'Sustainability'
Economic Welfare Quality of Life Environmental Limits
Model of Sustainability and the Role Envisaged for Indicators But is such a picture realistic? So far there has been little analysis of the key cultural and social assumptions on which it rests. In particular, despite the importance of the role envisaged for the public in this model, there has been little research into the question of whether or not the envisaged mechanisms and relationships for action (as
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in box 2 of the schema above) will be likely to prove credible or effective with the public, in practical terms. Against this background, the present research study focuses on the question -'How do ordinary people in Lancashire feel about 'sustainability' issues, and how will they be likely to respond to 'indicators' aimed at advancing sustainability?'
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Chapter 3: Intellectual Context of Research This chapter discusses features of the intellectual background to the approach and methods used in the research. As noted in Chapter 2, there has been little direct community involvement, to date, in programmes for sustainability. We argue that there is now a need to understand more clearly how members of the public perceive sustainability and environmental issues, if attempts are to be made to increase the community's participation. In contrast to currently dominant research approaches on such questions, we argue that the variables of 'trust' (in a variety of mediating institutions including local government) and personal 'agency' (i.e. the extent to which people feel they can effect change, directly or indirectly) have major relevance for public perceptions of the issues. These need to be fully understood if the opportunities and difficulties to which proposals for local government sustainability indicators give rise, are to be addressed.
3.1 Survey Research on Public Perceptions We consider first some features of existing UK research on environmental issues, which point to a hitherto-unremarked relationship between the public's sense of the ability or willingness of government(s) and other official agencies to address particular environmental problems, and the degree of anxiety which it (the public) expresses when invited, in public attitude surveys, to express a view on such problems. Our suggestion is that, paradoxically, the more politically tractable a particular environmental problem is seen by the public as being, the greater the concern members of the public may tend to articulate. By contrast, where particular problems appear comparatively un-manageable (for example, problems requiring major international collaboration, or radical institutional change for their solution), public responses tend to become correspondingly more fatalistic, and thus apparently more relatively sanguine, in terms of the answers offered in standard attitude surveys. Current UK research on public perceptions of the environment and sustainability has been dominated by quantitative approaches, mostly in the form of opinion polls and attitude surveys. Perhaps the most significant of these is that commissioned by the Department of the Environment (DoE 1986, 1989, 1993) and carried out by NOP, designed to measure changes in public attitudes since 1986. The survey, involving interviews with a representative sample of between 1,500 and 2,000 people, has been used to measure public concern about the environment and pollution, both in general, and relative to other issues. It has included questions about people's levels of concern about 27 individual environmental issues; their levels of optimism over what could be done about these issues; their allocation of responsibility for dealing with such issues, between national government, local government, Europe, and individuals; what the Government is doing to help protect the environment; future environmental issues; and knowledge of current issues. An open question in the survey, inviting respondents to name issues of concern to them, elicited 8% who mentioned the environment/pollution in 1986, jumping to 30% in 1989, and falling back to 22% in 1993. When this was related to specific environmental issues, of which 27 were offered, three top concerns emerged: chemicals in rivers and seas; toxic waste; and radioactive waste. In 1993, these three concerns registered (at 60% and over) well above the three issues with global
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atmospheric implications. Only about one third of respondents registered strong concern about global warming, acid rain, and traffic congestion. Significantly (as we shall argue), this pattern correlated with differences in the public view of the tractability of the problems, with consistently less belief shown in the possibility of doing anything about global warming, acid rain and traffic. In other words, it appeared as if the expressed 'lack of concern' might itself be affected by the perceived intractability of the problem in question - notwithstanding the fact that when questions were asked subsequently about what would be the main problems in 20 years' time, air pollution, global warming, and traffic were this time in the top three listed. Parallel UK survey research also notes the greater sense of the importance of environmental problems when people are invited to conceive of them as concrete and local problems, than when posed in abstract and global terms (see also Burgess 1993). In a survey undertaken for the UK response to the World Conservation Strategy (Johnson 1993), the proportion of respondents who recorded anxiety about environment and resource depletion rose by 50% (16 to 25%) when the question on the issue was asked in relation to daily life activities, as opposed to Britain or the world in general. Thus for example, whilst the recorded concern about the 'global' issues (acid rain, global warming and ozone depletion) reached a peak in 1989 and then fell away - perhaps reflecting the swings of political rhetoric and/or media attention - the recorded concern for more 'close to home' (and hence arguably more tractable) issues such as chemicals in rivers, toxic waste, loss of hedgerows and factory fumes, was by contrast more consistent between 1989 and 1993. Thus, again, there are grounds for surmising that the public's sense of agency (its sense of its own power, directly or through representative political institutions or pressure groups to bring about improvements) may be a central variable in the attitudes expressed about the relative seriousness of particular environmental issues; the more amenable to 'solution' the issue is felt to be, the greater the anxiety it is felt worthwhile to express in opinion poll responses. A second major source of data on public attitudes towards environmental issues in the UK has been the work of MORI (see Worcester 1994). Since 1989, MORI polls have consistently found a public sense of self-conscious confusion and disorientation with respect to environmental issues. In 1993 45% of respondents expressed such a sense of confusion. Nor do such polls reveal any compensating sense of trust that at least governmentfunded scientists understand what they are dealing with. In 1993, as many as 41% responded that "even scientists do not understand what they are talking about when it comes to the environment". Thus, substantially less than half recorded any trust in what scientists working for industry or government had to say, whilst 73% expressed trust in scientists working for environmental NGOs. Unfortunately, no studies to date have examined longitudinally whether the public's sense of confusion, and of mistrust in this domain more generally, have grown over the last ten or more years. In particular, it would be instructive to know whether the substantial public sense of confusion as recorded in 1993 has grown in parallel with overall growth in globalisation of the environmental issues. A further significant finding from opinion surveys is that of Mintel (Summers 1994), that there has been a marked shift through the 1980s and into the 1990s in the UK
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public's overall reliance on individual consumer action. Mintel's surveys have pointed to a substantial increase in responsibility placed in individual hands and a correspondingly reduced emphasis on state or collective institutional action. Such findings are consistent with copious observations by other researchers concerning the contraction of public identification with formal official institutions in many fields. For example, recent polls carried out by Gallup as part of their monthly 'Political and Economic Index' suggest that people have declining confidence in a variety of public institutions4; while other commentators suggest such social processes have more international dimensions (see Johnston 1993 for a synoptic pan-European look at public disengagement from politics). To summarise this section, there are significant indications from within existing quantitative UK attitude surveys that the public's sense of the possibility or likelihood of ameliorative action by the responsible authorities may now be a critically important determinant governing the 'choices' of issues on which public concern is likely to be voiced. The disturbing implications of these observations for the capacity (or otherwise) of UK policy institutions and other actors to mobilise collective responses to large-scale, problematic challenges such as the global environmental agenda and sustainable development are only now beginning to come into focus - a matter we address further in subsequent sections of this report.
3.2 Qualitative Research on Public Perceptions The above opinion surveys (alongside other survey data) have helped to highlight people's expressed levels of concern towards a variety of environmental issues, their current knowledge of environmental problems, and their expressed degree of trust in a variety of actors to safeguard the environment. However, there is an emerging recognition that such 'quantitative' research tends to focus largely on surfaces and may fail to deal adequately with people's ambivalences. It also leaves largely unaddressed the question of any wider social or political significance of environmental concern in western industrialised societies like the UK. With some of these concerns in mind there have been a number of recent exploratory attempts to examine relevant public perceptions, using 'qualitative' methodologies (e.g. Burgess, Harrison and Limb 1988a, 1988b; Macnaghten and Scott 1994; Wynne, Waterton and Grove-White 1993). Current examples of recent qualitative research within the specific framework of sustainability include: a consultants' study for the Countryside Commission (HPI 1994) using both focus group discussions and quantitative tests to explore the attitudes and behaviour of the public vis a vis sustainability, with the particular aim of influencing this behaviour; a consultants' study for the Scottish Office, using focus 4 Between the years 1993 and 1985 fewer people expressed 'a great deal' of confidence in the specific
named institutions: for the church the level fell from 20% in 1985 to only 4% in 1993; for the legal establishment the level dropped from 13% to 4%; for the police the level dropped from 40% to 18%; for parliament the level fell from10% to only 3%; while for companies the level fell from10% to 5%. More generally, UK opinion polls carried out by Gallup also suggest a considerable lack of public identification in formal politics. For example, 52% of people expressed that they were either not very satisfied or not at all satisfied with 'the way democracy works in this country' (Gallup May 1994); 42% believed that 'Britain is going to become a worse country' (Gallup September 1993); while 71% of people agreed that 'the people running the country don't really care what happens to you' (Gallup July 1993).
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groups and survey techniques to investigate public awareness and understanding of the concept of sustainability, and to explore public reaction to the dilemmas of sustainable development; a consultants' study for Hertfordshire County Council (LUC and CAG 1994), designed to explore the views of residents towards issues of environmental sustainability through focus group discussions; and a consultants' study for DoE's 'Going for Green' campaign (Harris 1994), again using focus groups as well as survey techniques, to explore the changes of lifestyle different groups of people might be prepared to consider in relation to the environment and sustainability. Such qualititive focus group studies provide arguably richer accounts than previous quantitative studies of public perceptions of the environment and sustainability, of how people understand environmental concerns, and of what aspects of their behaviour people might be prepared to change. However, even studies using such qualitative methods will be unlikely to cast light on the institutional dimensions of public perceptions (i.e. whether or not people's feelings about their relationships to institutions are significant for their sense of the issues) unless these elements are built explicitly into the research design. It is precisely this further institutional dimension that our own research has sought to capture and reflect. In the next section we explain why issues of trust and agency, reflecting people's felt experience of institutions, are critical for the current debate on sustainability and community empowerment, and why such factors need therefore to inform new research in the field.
3.3 Social Research - the importance of agency Ongoing sociological research by Burgess, Harrison and colleagues at University College, London represents one of the first systematic UK attempts to understand the factors which may be influencing public definitions of and responses to global environmental issues (though see also Kempton 1991). Harrison et al. (1994) are undertaking probing qualitative studies under the ESRC's Global Environment Change Programme, designed to compare the structures of attitudes of equivalent populations in the UK and the Netherlands. Two particular provisional observations appear especially germane. The first is that people's receptivity to knowledge, as offered for example by scientific or policy bodies, is shaped strongly, if tacitly, by their sense of agency - that is by their implicit sense of their own power or freedom to act upon or use that knowledge. This insight is consistent with the conclusions of a body of recent UK research in the parallel sphere of public understanding of science and perceptions of risk (Wynne 1992; Michael 1992). The significance is that people's inability or unwillingness to assimilate information may frequently be due to tacit political or cultural structures of empowerment or disempowerment, which may have no apparent connection with the environmental issue in hand. Thus Harrison et al. (1994) appear to be noting a general tendency towards greater public awareness and understanding of environmental issues in the Netherlands than in the UK, apparently connected to the greater general sense of public agency and involvement in the Netherlands (even though theey also observe a shared mistrust of the institutions and agencies making claims about environmental problems and solutions across both sets of groups). Equivalent groups in the UK appear to feel more distant and disconnected from political and policy institutions, and this general sense of relative alienation and
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disempowerment (over and above the mistrust already referred to) appears to contribute to a correspondingly diminished sense of active involvement in or responsibility for policies connected with such issues, or with information relating to them. In such circumstances it would be hardly surprising to find people apparently less 'informed', or attuned to environmental problems and responses. The crucial point is, it would be misleading to attribute such apparent ignorance simply to a lack of information, 'indicators', or intelligence. Rather, the recent sociological research referred to in this section appears to suggest that more general conditions of current UK political culture - affecting the quality of individuals' identification with public institutions - may now be highly relevant factors in helping explain the apparent fluctuations in trajectories of 'environmental' attitudes, identified in longitudinal polls like those of DoE/NOP and MORI.
3.4 Towards an Institutional Approach The above discussion points to the fact that, in attempts to understand public attitudes and responses towards environmental issues and initiatives, tacit assumptions about the nature of public concerns made by researchers themselves may be of central significance. It is therefore desirable to highlight here a crucially important intellectual debate now burgeoning on these matters in academic and other expert circles concerned with 'risk'. Until recently, the dominant academic and official framework for thinking about environmental risks, and about public responses to them, has rested overwhelmingly on principles which may be characterised as 'methodological individualism' and 'objectivism'. These principles tend to reinforce one another, in a way which (we argue) has tended to be misleading and unproductive. By 'objectivism' is meant here the assumption that risks exist 'out there' independently of human meanings, and can be measured and quantified as such. By 'methodological individualism' is meant the general assumption that human beings act as discrete independent beings with only their own interests or preferences to calculate, and that social responses and norms can be derived from aggregation of such individual actions and choices. In many environmental risk and related studies (see Health and Safety Executive 1989), these deeply entrenched assumptions lead directly to the operating idea that individuals care only about such instrumental factors as likelihood of death, injury and financial cost. What is more, the tacit implication is that such costs (and the probabilities of their occurrence) exist objectively and can be identified by scientists. Indeed, should uncertainties exist in the knowledge of such factors (the argument runs), these in turn can be reduced by applying more science and expertise. It is of course axiomatic that scientific knowledge is extremely important in risk assessment and management. But it has become appreciated in recent years that the above underlying framework is shaped by some problematic assumptions. Seen from the vantage point of ordinary people experiencing risks of various kinds, and being told conflicting things about them, the most important questions, logically, are "Who to believe?" and "How to decide who to believe?" From this end of the issue, the uncertainties in prevailing knowledge become paramount, because these are not abstract intellectual challenges with some hoped-for future resolution, but matters of possible life-and-death. Since people are dependent, unavoidably, on experts to manage and control the uncertain behaviour and effects of whatever activity is
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generating those risks, a key, intrinsic part of the risk problem for ordinary people is their dependence on expert institutions.
Thus the issue of "what is the risk?" is not only a matter of what scientific understanding can say about probable damage to chosen end-points. It is also an issue about whether the actors (e.g. the industries and/or public regulators) supposedly controlling the risk-generating activity can be trusted to do so, under (open-ended) future conditions. This includes whether or not the claims of those scientists who supposedly know the risks and their means of control can be trusted. The dimension of trust as a question therefore entered into the risk assessment and management domain in the early 1980s (Wynne 1980; Royal Society 1992). In terms of public perceptions of risk, it is now recognised that it is perfectly logical for people to be concerned about evidence indicating whether or not the relevant authorities are to be deemed trustworthy - indeed anything else would be illogical. Thus whereas in many earlier studies (Slovic, Fishoff and Lichenstein 1980; Royal Society, 1983, 1985) it tended to be implied that the public was behaving 'irrationally' if it did not behave in accordance with expert conclusions about particular risks and risk probabilities, more recent understanding is that the framing of risk problems by experts employs tacit assumptions about controlling institutions and behaviours which ordinary people may not share. People may for example have had experience of the past behaviour of the same institutions, their honesty, openness, competence, independence etc., which, rationally, influences their reception of the present claims of those bodies. Or they may have had experience of the current behaviour of the same body in a related but different field, which may subsequently be interpreted, quite reasonably, as evidence of trustworthiness or untrustworthiness in the specific field at issue. An important point to note about this more recently recognised dimension of public attitudes and responses is that the 'objective' boundaries of issues assumed in and typically built into current political or institutional arrangements, even into arrangements for official environmental regulation, may nevertheless be misleading for the purpose of predicting public responses. Whether or not people believe indicators or other information on a given environmental issue may be shaped - in principle quite logically - by the behaviour of the relevant body or bodies in another domain altogether; nor does this have to be another environmental issue. In other words 'the issue' as assumed by experts and existing official institutions may not be the issue at all for ordinary people. The 'objective risk' and 'methodological individualism' foundations of previously dominant (and politically, still influential) perspectives are thus exposed as misleading. Instead, a 'relational' and 'contextual' concept of risk and of environmental issues has to be used.
3.5 Implications for the Present Study There are at least three immediate implications of the above insights for the present study. First, the institutional dimensions of risks, of environmental issues, and of public willingness to respond to such issues, need to be brought sharply into focus. Thus public responses towards any specific project by a local authority, however carefully designed in itself, will be mediated powerfully by longer-standing and wider public relationships with, and perceptions of, local government, and perhaps official institutions generally.
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Second, no a priori boundaries can be drawn as to how the issues of environmental sustainability are to be defined or 'constituted'; these must be derived from sensitive listening to people's own categories of experience, value and agency, and attempts must be made to negotiate constructive connections with 'expert' understandings. This in itself may imply a need for different institutional processes from those implied by the assumption that experts already know what 'sustainability' means. The problematic implications of the prevalent 'realist' official discourse of sustainability are discussed further below in Chapter 8. Third, the discussion of the issue of public feelings of 'agency' (or lack of it) needs to be connected to these institutional and contextual dimensions. Insights from the current intellectual debates discussed above suggest that people are continually concerned about their relationships with actors and institutions such as those of government, and that their expressions of hope or despair, willingness to act or not, trust or mistrust, are inseparable from this continuing negotiation of such relationships. Their sense of agency - whether or not individual or neighbourhood action will be effective, and therefore whether or not it is meaningful to act and to take an interest in available information - is bound up intimately in these relational dimensions. It would be a serious mistake to judge people's capacity or motivation on specific initiatives, or the effectiveness of particular campaigns, without taking into account these less explicit dimensions and attempting to understand and address them. Against this background, the present study has required an innovative approach. In the next chapter, we outline the research methods employed in our attempt to capture and interpret the public perceptions involved.
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Chapter 4: Research Method 4.1 Background In mid 1994 the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) was invited by Lancashire County Council to undertake research to help clarify and interpret likely public responses in Lancashire to a variety of proposed 'sustainability' indicators. The central methodology chosen by CSEC for the research was that of 'focus group' discussions. Focus groups are becoming an increasingly well-used methodology for qualitative social research in academic and policy related studies, as well as in the commercial marketing sector. In contrast to quantitative methodologies, they tend to be responsive and open-ended in relation to questions of context, and to the intricate processes of reasoning and argument involved in the discussion of topics of public concern. They also provide suitable opportunities for exploring the wider social frameworks in which particular issues are discussed. The processes of selection for participants in focus groups are different from those of quantitative methodologies, in that they do not seek to achieve truly 'representative' samples of 'the public'. While focus groups aim to tap a wide range of views across a broad section of social experience, they do not claim to identify public opinion in any definitive sense. Rather, the aim is to find participants who are typical of particular groupings, and to explore the full range of meanings and understandings of particular topics within each group. Importantly, when there is strong consensus within the group, one can predict that the views expressed are likely to be more pervasive across other people who share similar characteristics (e.g. of age, sex, socio-economic status, children etc.); and that when there is consensus of understanding across a number of focus groups of differing characteristics, it is legitimate to speculate that such consensus might be of a more general significance for society. Typically, a focus group consists of six to ten participants discussing a particular topic for between one and a half to two hours. Focus groups are carefully mediated by a moderator, to be open, warm, and non-judgmental. The aim is that a group dynamic should be generated. The purpose of the moderator is to engender open and frank discussion, to encourage (neutrally) the articulation of all opinions, bringing out the variety of perspectives within the group. To achieve this, the moderator introduces issues and generally feeds the discussion, taking close attention not to present his or her own personal opinions.
4.2 Aims of Research The aim of the focus group research was to examine public perceptions of different sections of the Lancashire community towards sustainability, and what public responses might be expected to local government 'sustainability indicators' aimed at encouraging community action. However, given our understanding that public responses to local government sustainability indicators will not only be mediated by their own current concerns and anxieties, but also by how they identify with local government (see Chapter 3), we aimed to examine critically the extent to which people's range of environmental and social concerns accorded with current
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'conventional' assumptions about sustainability and the potential role of 'indicators', as outlined in the schematic model in Chapter 2. The particular objectives of the research were to determine: • how people talked about their concerns and aspirations in Lancashire; how they understood and identified with the term 'quality of life'; and to what extent they shared the understanding that current priorities aimed at promoting economic growth were contributing to environmental degradation and a deteriorating quality of life; •
how people understood the limits of their own sense of agency and responsibility in contributing towards a better environment and quality of life; and how they identified with a range of 'other' responsible institutions, including local and national government;
•
whether people understood and shared the principles of sustainability; and the extent to which they understood their future economic and quality of life aspirations within wider environmental and sustainability constraints;
•
the perceived role that accurate, meaningful, and relevant indicators could play in shifting society towards sustainability.
4.3 Nature and Constitution of the Focus groups The methodology of focus groups was chosen as appropriate for this project to enable us to examine public responses to sustainability within the wider framework of people's current concerns and anxieties in Lancashire. The focus groups were set up to reflect significant sectors of Lancashire's community whose views were considered of particular importance to the debate around sustainability. However, unlike current local government initiatives which tend to focus on the views and opinions of major stakeholders (as identified in Agenda 21), we were extremely careful to choose a sample which reflected the more mainstream 'public'. Thus, we were careful not to recruit those who were already converted (e.g. members of environmental groups) as well as those who represented particular interests in a professional or semiprofessional manner. Alternatively, the focus groups were recruited, literally, from the streets of Lancashire. To ensure that our sample of 8 focus groups reflected a broad range of snapshots of life in Lancashire, selection variables of age, socioeconomic status, geographical location, gender, marital status and people's direct experience with local government were taken into account. To ensure that the groups would not have strong, pre-set opinions on the issues under scrutiny we screened out local government employees (since this was a local government project), academics, advertisers and employees in market research (who might be overly interested in the way the project was carried out), and the military (who often tend to polarise group discussions). •
The first group was of Young Men, aged 17 to 19, currently employed on government YTS schemes. The Young Men all lived in Morecambe with their parents. While this was the only youth group we were particularly careful to select a group who shared broad attributes of age, educational qualifications, and class. Young men of this age and class are perhaps the hardest group to moderate, and need to share quite specific attributes if a group dynamic is to be generated.
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•
The second group was of Asian Women, aged between 30 and 40, living in Preston. All the women were learning basic language skills and were largely first generation to this country. Due to cultural and language difficulties this group was co-moderated with an Asian Women. The women were all married with families. Their socio-economic status was C2/D. This was the only group from an ethnic minority community and included a mixture of Hindus and Muslims.
•
The third group was of non-working Mothers, aged between 25 and 40, who all had at least one child under five. The women all lived in Thornton-Cleveleys in suburban houses and were in socio-economic class C1/C2. Two of the women were single Mothers.
•
The fourth group was of Unemployed Men who lived in council estates in Preston. They had all been unemployed for between one and five years. They were all married with children and many had direct experience of local government because of their council homes.
•
The fifth group was of Retired people living in Thornton-Cleveleys. The group included four men and four women, and were between 50 and 70. They were all married and in socio-economic groups B/C1.
•
The sixth group consisted of professionally working people, aged 40 to 60, and included an equal number of men and women. They all lived in rural settings nearby Lytham St Annes. Three of the Rural Professionals had previous direct experience with local government. They were all married and in socio-economic group A/B.
•
The seventh group was of Working Class Women, aged 45 to 60, who lived in Blackburn. They were all married and had children who had now left home. They were predominantly employed in manual factory work and were in socioeconomic group C2/D.
•
The eighth group was of Young Professional men and women, aged 25 or 35, who all lived near Thornton-Cleveleys. They were all not living with their parents, had no children, and were in socio-economic group A/B.
4.4 Selection Procedure The focus groups were recruited by a market research firm. The participants were given inducements ranging from £10 to £30 to attend each session. The focus groups were held in a variety of locations including the recruiter's house at Thornton and various hotel or pub venues in Lancaster, Preston, Blackburn and Lytham St Annes. The groups all consisted of between six and 10 participants over the two sessions. The groups were all tape recorded and the tapes transcribed for subsequent analysis. Three of the sessions were video taped. The groups were all moderated by the principal researcher at CSEC who had expertise in facilitating focus groups. Four sessions were co-moderated by other 'expert' qualitative researchers. The focus group design was aided by a qualitative research expert who is an honary research fellow of CSEC.
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4.5 Focus Group Procedure Each focus group met over two sessions, each session lasting two hours. The sessions were divided into various areas of discussion using a topic guide (see Appendix 1 for the complete topic guide). The topic guide was not used in a strict sense, but more as an aid to the moderator to ensure that the full range of topics under scrutiny were discussed by the participants. The first topic related to people's identity with place. People were asked about where they lived, what it was like, why they moved there, whether it was like other parts of Lancashire, and what other parts of the country were most like or unlike Lancashire. The purpose of this initial discussion was to generate talk on an issue which everyone was comfortable and to determine the level at which people identified with place. The second topic identified people's current concerns and anxieties. People were asked what their current concerns were; whether they perceived things to be getting better or worse; whether things used to be better or worse in the past (30 years ago), and in what way; how they saw the future (in 30 years time), and whether it was likely to be better or worse, and in what way. The third topic involved the introduction of the term 'quality of life' (on a piece of paper): people were asked what the term meant to them, who they would expect to use it, and whether it was a term relevant to their lives. The above discussion lasted for about 90 minutes. The remaining 30 minutes of the first session were devoted to brainstorming (on index cards) a list of things that would seriously improve their quality of life. Respondents were then asked collectively to arrange the index cards into themes and to discuss each of the themes. At the end of session 1 the participants were asked to think of 4 or 5 things over the forthcoming week (i.e. between sessions 1 and 2) that needed to be done, or changed, or fixed, to improve their quality of life. Alternatively they were asked to think of things that had been done, or changed, or fixed, that had improved their quality of life. The second session commenced with the list of 'quality of life' concerns articulated by each of the participants. The group found themes and headings, and then ranked these headings in terms of which were the most important. The themes used in the LGMB sustainability indicators project (see Appendix 2) were then added and the participants were asked to discuss the main differences and similarities. The second topic of discussion concerned various aspects of responsibility. The participants were asked to think of who was responsible for all the above and to discuss in detail how they perceived and understood each of the responsible agents, including local government. For each institution (e.g. central government, local government and business) people were asked about their perceptions, their direct experience, their level of trust and confidence, and their stereotypes. People were next asked what responsibility they had in relation to other institutions, in terms of the things they could change and have influence over. The next part involved the introduction of the term 'sustainability' (again on a piece of paper). People were asked what they thought the term meant, in what ways it concerned them, and its relationship to people's quality of life concerns. People were then asked whether sustainability was the same as the environment, what other environmental problems they could identify, and which of these had most to do with sustainability. The final part of the session was devoted to issues of information and indicators. People were asked how we know whether things are getting better or worse; their awareness and understanding of existing indicators; and the role of information more widely. Only at this late stage
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were people informed of the client, Lancashire County Council, and the true purpose of the research project. People were finally asked to discuss their initial reaction to the proposed local government sustainability indicators and asked for any feedback.
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PART 2: THE RESEARCH FINDINGS In the previous chapters we have explained our rationale and methodology for the empirical focus group study. This second part of the report sets out the findings and is divided into three chapters: chapter 5 summarising the general findings of the focus groups, chapter 6 describing the broad characteristics of the particular focus groups, and chapter 7 focusing in more detail on indicators. The rationale for focusing in detail on people's wider anxieties and concerns (including their relationships to local government), before focusing on people's perception and understanding of sustainability and environmental issues, is that this provides a more sensitive account of how the project of sustainability fits within people's wider preoccupations and aspirations for the future. Only within this broader picture can useful guidance on local government indicators for sustainability be given.
Chapter 5: The Focus Group Discussions 5.1 General Observations The first observation relevant to all eight of the focus groups (conducted in various locations in Lancashire between September and November 1994) concerns the degree of thought and consideration given, by the groups, to the research. People appeared genuinely to have enjoyed the focus group process and were pleased, when they learned that the County Council were paying for the research, that local government actually wanted to listen to their concerns and aspirations. Most people had a fairly considered, thoughtful and well conceived view of the world around them, and a reasonably pragmatic account of the things over which they had a degree of control. However, as we note in section 5.7 this was not necessarily in forms assumed, or perhaps hoped, by institutions promoting local sustainability (as, for example, in the assumptions made within the currently dominant model of sustainability, - see Chapter 2, Section 2.3). Environmental concerns and anxieties were fairly central to most groups, particularly in the context of discussion concerning the future. While the groups were clearly divided over their general contentment with the present, fairly unambiguous anxiety and fear of the future emerged. This apparent pessimism was coupled with a shared distrust concerning institutions seen as having dominant responsibilities for the future, who were typically identified as self-interested, out of touch with the general population, and not motivated by a long term concern for the future. The general point is developed in some detail below. A second observation concerns the striking convergences of view evident in all of the groups. Rarely did participants in the groups disagree radically with each other on substantial issues, and in the one group where there was a divergence of opinions (the young professional group), participants were divided less by a difference in concerns or aspirations, than over the possibility of whether such a future (i.e. one that reflected their aspirations) was realistic (i.e. the dispute was between those who had a fatalistic view of the future and those who were more idealistic). This consensus was even more remarkable in a relatively informal research context, in which participants were encouraged explicitly to air their opinions and to argue against others in a framework where there was no 'right' or 'wrong' answer.
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A third general observation concerns the divergence across the groups concerning their radically different 'lived' worlds; the same issues and concerns (e.g. about crime or job security) were reported from very local different circumstances. For example, the sheer immediacy of crime to the unemployed men - who talked about the need for constant vigilance and care to the extent to which some felt unable to leave their homes empty - was clearly different from the experience of the professional groups, who were only recently experiencing crime impinging on their personal worlds, in the form of petty vandalism or car radio theft. However, whilst the groups talked, at times, as if they were living in different life worlds, there were also clear convergences across the groups - not least in terms of an emerging sense of deep distrust and dislocation from large scale institutions, including government in its various forms; a sense that, in the framework of untrustworthy 'others', it would be largely up to them to be responsible for creating a better future.
5.2 Identity with Place Not surprisingly, people talked in great detail about where they lived, what their life was like there, and the ways in which it differed from other places. Across all the groups people identified their 'place' or 'community' at a sub-district level. This was particularly evident in the mothers group who all identified strongly with Thornton or Cleveleys which were seen as highly distinctive and superior to the neighbouring towns of Fleetwood and Blackpool. While many of the qualities which the mothers identified with Thornton-Cleveleys were related loosely to local environment issues, what appeared to matter most was the sense of community and the quality of their relationships with other people. Thornton-Cleveleys was identified in terms of: a sense of community, friendliness, safety (especially for children), nearby countryside, and quietness. In contrast, Fleetwood was identified as unfriendly, unwelcoming and rough; while Blackpool was seen as a large alienating place without a sense of community (hence the observation: 'there's no locals in Blackpool'). The following exchange from the mothers group captures what they liked about living in Thornton and its sense of community: F
F F F F F
Everything's within walking distance, and it's more friendly for children. There's a lot of things, Brownies, it's all within walking distance, you haven't got to jump in the car, or get a bus - well, I suppose you have for certain things, but a lot of the time you can walk, can't you. (Yes) So around and about here there's people in that similar position that you make friends with, you know, a lot of young families, and everything is within walking distance, easy to get to. Everyone will help if you are ill. They'll pick your kids up from school, and everything is handy I've found. Rather than spread out. It seems to be a smaller community. If you go to Blackpool it's huge, and you'd get lost wouldn't you? Cleveleys is like one shopping precinct You tend to get to know all the faces. Even if you don't know their names, It doesn't matter whether you know them or not. I think when you've got kids in school walking back and to school you meet other mums, and all the kids know each other so you speak to other mums, when you If a kid is called Ian, it's Ian's mum. You don't know their own name, it's Ian's mum.
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(Mothers)
Similarly, the retired group, the rural professional group, the working class women's group, and the young professional group all identified with their immediate locality and happily discussed the subtle distinctions between neighbouring villages (e.g. in the Fylde area) and parts of towns (e.g. parts of Blackburn). In slight contrast the Asian women, the young men, and the unemployed group tended to identify less with their immediate geographical area and more with their immediate life worlds. For example, the unemployed men, all of whom lived in council estates in Preston, saw their concerns as non-specific to Preston but reflected in how wider society has changed over the last 5-10 years; while the young men, who all lived in Morecambe, saw Morecambe as merely the backdrop for a particularly bleak outlook broadly shared by young people on government YTS schemes. While Lancashire was not the term used by any of the groups to describe their locality, it was available as a form of self-identification for a number of groups in particular contexts. Indeed, while many groups acknowledged that the generally accepted stereotype of Lancashire was one of grime, chimneys and cloth caps, the reality was in fact one of open countryside, alive communities, and lots of beautiful countryside. This almost nostalgic view of Lancashire (e.g. in the reference to Lancashire pre-1974 boundary changes) was most evident in the older groups (e.g. the retired group and the rural professional group) and was part of a wider perception that 'the north' was in many ways better than 'the south', not least due to the sense of community that still prevails. The significance of 'Lancashire' in the identity of the rural professional group is reflected in the passage below: F Mod M F F M
F F M F F
I think of myself as Lancashire wherever I've lived, and I've lived all over the country. Is there such a thing as a stereotype of Lancashire? Clogs, innit? I was going to say that. I think Lancashire people realise that Lancashire always was a very disparate area. People thought of Lancashire as all - being grimy, cloth cap and clog stuff, but so much of Lancashire is so beautiful and open. People just don't realise the scope that Lancashire has. I still think of - when somebody says 'Lancashire' I go down the road as - I still think Liverpool is part of Lancashire. Put it down to my age. I also think of Barrow, which is part of Cumbria, as still part of Lancashire. Which it was. Boundaries are just little lines on maps which mean something to people in ivory towers, that make a bloody fortune, think of things. Keep themselves in a job. That's all they do, basically. We'll change the boundaries, it'll keep us in a job. I've always been a Lancastrian, no matter where I've lived. Always. Even the grimiest places in Lancashire are always only a short drive from being in the hills and being Because Lancashire was developed around the slopes and the rivers, of Lancashire, all the towns and all the grime The Ribble Valley, places like that, they are beautiful. I almost feel sometimes - when you talk about the north/south divide, - that we shouldn't let the southerners into the secret that it's so nice. They are feeling sorry for us, but little do they know!
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F
As a Lancastrian, they felt sorry for me in Yorkshire! The wars of the roses still goes on! (Rural Professionals)
5.3 Current Concerns Jobs and job security were identified as most participants' primary current anxieties, not just within groups without a job or with poor job prospects, but also within those with obvious job prospects and qualifications (e.g. the two professional groups). To a considerable extent people's anxieties over jobs were part of a wider anxiety concerning what might be termed 'social cohesion' or stability. For example, both the young and older professional groups talked in remarkable consensus on the fear of redundancy, the new climate of short-term contracts, the loss of respect in age-old professions such as teaching and banking, the problem of becoming too successful (and hence too expensive), and the general perception that business forces, largely beyond their control, were creating a general climate of uncertainty and unpredictability. This is readily illustrated by exchanges within both professional groups. M
Well I should just think its the general climate all around. I've been made redundant twice in my life when I haven't thought the circumstances dictated it but there again I worked at a number of companies for one reason or another where restructuring has gone on, completely outside your control and if your name is one of the numbers, that's it. So I don't feel insecure where I am now, but who can ever say what the long term situation is. You've just got to live with it and just think if something happens, well what the hell. There's nothing you can do about it. (middle aged accountant in Rural Professional Group)
F
Its all changed. They're just made a load redundant from our place, giving them the cheques and then asked for them back because they ran out of money. Mod At the Bank.? (Laughter) F It doesn't pay to be ambitious because you get up to a certain level and then they slice you off again don't they. Mod Because you get too expensive? (Yes) Really. M Well they have to retrained youngsters, bring them in. M Well you see, everything's moving to 12 month contracts aren't they. Nonsuperannuable and much lower wages. F We've got cashiers on 3 month contracts and they could be earning more in the arcades on the front or something. F And they can give them a weeks notice and get rid of them. No holidays or anything. (Young Professionals)
Similarly the working class women, the mothers group, the unemployed group, and the young men's group all talked about the lack of jobs and proper wages, and the worsening conditions now experienced in the workplace. Indeed, for all these groups there was a heightened anxiety that employers no longer tended to care for employees as in the past (e.g. in terms of wages and conditions), and that 'the system' (i.e. those 'in charge) was operating more in the interests of employers, not employees.
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Moreover, these processes were not only leading to deteriorating work conditions but were also now seriously affecting their immediate realities and sense of personal security. The passage below illustrates these worsening conditions in the lives of the working class women's group: F F
Mod F
F F Mod F F
You can't say your job is secure can you. You don't know what is going to happen the day after, the week after. At our place they were laying us off many a time for 3 or 4 months. Well, working a week, away a week. What good is that when you've got all these bills to pay just the same? You can't apply for rebates because you aren't entitled, because you've earned a wage one week. Well, that's all wrong isn't it. If you haven't got the wage coming in how can they expect you to pay the same bills? It's beyond a joke the way they treat people these days. The way who treats people? Everybody, the Government, the Council, whoever is in charge of all this. If you go down and enquire if you can put a claim in, well, you've had a full weeks wage, you can't claim anything. And you fill all these pages in, and you are still getting nothing. What's the point - telling you to fill these pages in and then you don't get anything. It's just time wasting for everybody isn't it? And employers don't treat you the same because they know there's hundred people waiting to step into your job. They can abuse anybody these days. Is this the employers? The management. They know if there's 200 people waiting for your job Your employers employ management, then the underdogs. (Working Class Women)
Crime and the emerging perceived menace of drugs constituted a second major source of anxiety for many of the groups. Shared across the mother's group, the retired group, the young and older professional groups, and the working class women's group was the perception that crime was beginning to become an increasingly conspicuous reality in their own, immediate, local communities. This perception of increasingly proximate crime arose in various forms: a drugs raid involving a gun in the locality (for one of the women in the mothers group); the occurrence of 40 burglaries in 2 months in what had appeared to be a quiet and safe locality (for a self-employed business man in the young professional group); and the appearance of an emerging culture of young people with nothing to do but cause mayhem and trouble (for the older professional group and the working class women). The passage below outlines how local crime was discussed in the young professionals group: Mod F Mod M M M F
OK, I'm just thinking of these changes. If you had to think about some of your anxieties at the moment, your main concerns. What would they be? It would be crime. Crime, is an anxiety. In what way. About the kids on the street till all hours at night. The amount of kids on the street all hours of night just running round doing what they want. If we went down to the Thornton precinct now they'd all be round there, just sat around doing nothing. They've been doing that around 18 years though. Are they any worse? There's more of them.
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M F Mod M F
That's the one thing, isn't it. There isn't a lot of things to do if you're a young person. There wasn't a lot of things to do when I was young but I didn't go hanging about and taking drugs and things like that. Two things come up. There's crime and there's, somebody mentioned drugs, Are these just things from the background that you are vaguely aware of ,…? Have you actually seen them? People take drugs. I was at a party recently and we were passing this bottle round in the kitchen and I thought what's that smell. And I didn't know what it was, I was so naive I was stood next to someone taking drugs and I didn't realise. I left, just went. (Young Professionals)
In contrast to the above anxieties, which were still predominantly local and only beginning to infiltrate their personal world, was the experience of unemployed men on council estates. To these men, crime and drugs were acquiring a much more sinister and pervasive influence on their ability to live normal, decent lives: M
M M M
Mod M
If I go out I leave somebody in the house. The daughter, or the wife has to stay in the house, when I go shopping. Because if there wasn't somebody in when we got back there'd be nothing left. We've got to keep a dog, which we don't want to keep, we have to keep a dog in the garden. Watching everything, and everybody that goes by. … You shouldn't have to do these things, but you've got to do it. They could be putting on patrols, the Council. They are getting that much money off us anyway, they could be actually patrolling the streets. They could be employing people to travel the streets every hour. - they could We are sitting here now, and we could be getting robbed. They took the cameras out, someone's smashed the cameras where this lad lives, here, they still haven't replaced them. It's not getting protected. On these estates now, if you leave your house you've got to leave somebody in it. And that's it. And you are the same, you don't leave your house open? I can't. If I go out, it's either me or my missus has to stay. If you both go out there's a 99% chance of getting robbed. They stand on the corner and watch you. (Unemployed Men)
While most groups did not describe their concerns as explicitly 'environmental', some of their concerns could loosely be described as locally environmental and related to amenity provision. Thus, the mothers and the Asian women were acutely concerned with safety on their streets, the retired group were concerned with litter and dog mess, and the mothers and the young professionals were concerned with pollution of their beaches. However, the ways the mothers talked about beaches appeared to reflect less a concern about a systemic environmental problem, than a sense of shame that dirty beaches were lowering the tone on what otherwise was a clean and tidy locality. For this group talk about 'dirty beaches' first emerged when they were discussing the current stereotype of 'Lancashire', which was linked with images of 'fish and chips, wet weather and dirty beaches'. Given the strong desire of this group to present an image of their community as intact, strong, friendly and proud, the image of 'dirty beaches' threatened the self-respect of what was otherwise a tidy community. This is evidenced in the discussion below about Fleetwood:
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F
F
Mod F F F F
It's very dirty. There's no beach there. It's mostly stones. Gravel. Cleveley's is very stony as well. There's not a lot of sand. It's all washed away now. Years ago it wasn't. It was a proper beach and clean water. Just outside Jubilee Gardens it used to be lovely. Because I used to go and play up there, and we were never told off. Do you not think that people seem to think that if you're a different class of area, then the beaches are better. Like Rossall beach is much better than Fleet beach or something, you know. Wherever you go, that bit of beach is nicer than that bit of beach, because the houses are nicer and the area Does everyone think this, or is anyone going to stand up for the beaches? No. Because there's nothing to stand up for. We were on the beach yesterday We've been here 3 years, and I've never been on that beach, and I've no intention of standing on it. We've relations that live in Lowestoft, and they get a blue flag every year, and we go down there, and my little lad thinks it's heaven to be allowed to play on the beach and dig up, and we just don't let him on up here. (Mothers )
5.4 The Past When asked to describe how things had changed in Lancashire over the past 30 years, the majority of the groups referred to the past in fairly glowing terms. Prevalent amongst the older groups was the perception that things had been modernised; that the local distinctiveness of places had been eroded; that Lancashire had been unjustly cut in half; that there was now less respect for authority, especially among the young; that crime and drugs were on the increase; that jobs were now few and far between; that there was now more traffic, more congestion, and less countryside; that there was less status in professions; and that people had become more self-centred. The passage below, taken from the young professional group, indicates how younger people share this perception of change. Also of note is the extent to which changes from the past are discussed in environmental terms: Mod F F F F Mod M F F F Mod F F
If we go back 30 years, what do you think are the main changes of living here in Lancashire in Thornton Cleveleys ? What has happened? There's a lot more people. More houses. Lots more houses. The fields have gone. Places we wandered, now 45 houses. More houses and less fields. Imagine the 2 are related. What else? Much more traffic. Traffic's terrible. More people. Population's increased. More sewage. More people, more sewage, those 2 things go together as well. More sewage. What else. What other changes over the last 30 years. ICI has declined tremendously. That's the same in a lot of industries though, like our industry, I mean, where you might have had 10 staff, you've got 5. Even in a big branch, its all over, its not just …
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F
Also if you got into the bank when you left school, you'd got a good career for life, whatever. Mod What's happened there? F Well about 10 years ago I started in Garstang and they had about 10 staff and now they've got about 5. And you would have come to a branch like Cleveleys and they would have had about 18 or 19 staff and that's about halved. F You'd fight for a seat. You'd get to work and you'd think, right I'm sitting here and I'm not moving because I'll lose my chair. And now its... F Well a bank manager used to have a real good status but now... M Criminal status. Seriously yes. I think so. F They used to have the Captain Mainwarings of this world. There used to be the bank manager, the solicitor, the doctor and their not the same now. Its not like that. (Young Professionals)
While much of the above account may have been tainted with nostalgia concerning the 'certainty' that prevailed in the past, in the context of current uncertainty and a sense of social instability, its sheer positiveness reflected a strong and legitimate sense that much of what they liked about living in Lancashire (e.g. the friendliness of its people and sense of community) is fast disappearing. Again, this perception was shared across groups, as reflected in the accounts below: one by the young professional group on corner shops, and another from the older rural professional group on what real communities in Lancashire used to be like: M
One thing I've noticed is that there's less sort of individualism where Cleveleys and the whole area used to have individual shops and corner shops. You see the same shops in every, in a lot of shops in towns and cities the same. Iceland here and Quicksave there and things like that. F The community spirit as a whole has gone hasn't it. Everybody sort of like. Well life used to revolve around the corner shop. You used to see everybody who you knew sort of like in there. F Now they're all in Safeways. (Young Professional Group) F
But Lancashire used to be renowned for everybody left the back doors open, and people could wander in and out, and neighbours wandered in and out of the houses, I mean, if I went across to my neighbour across the road, I'd open the door and shout hello, I wouldn't stand and ring the bell, but that stems back from - But I bet there's not a lot of areas, and a lot of communities, that you could still -. Our back doors were never locked except for at night, and I wouldn't know if our bell ever works or not, because people come in. You know. (Rural Professional)
In contrast, the working class women, the retired group, and the young men were more ambiguous, reflecting on a world which was perhaps even harder, where there were more chimneys and local pollution, and where living standards were lower. While the story is complex, and people's attitudes noticeably ambivalent, one factor that appeared to colour their view of the past was the extent to which institutions, now and in the past, used to look after their needs. Thus, while the working class women were still relatively optimistic about the current role of local institutions (including
33
local government) who had been relatively successful in creating a better society, the experience of the unemployed men was of institutions who used to care in the past, but who now have been perceived to have become largely self-interested. The passage below captures how the positive and negative elements of change from the past for the working class women were mediated by the ability of local institutions, including Lancashire County Council, to cater for their needs and look after their local environment. The passage reflects the anxiety that current central government reforms and proposed local government reorganisation might jeopardise this work: F Mod F Mod F F
Mod F F Mod F Mod
F F
We had outside markets. Under canvas stalls. Cobbled Streets. Didn't have as much greenery around. There were all terraced houses. What's happened to the terraced houses? They've grassed it, and planted trees. So you've now got more countryside than 30 years ago? Yes. It's nicer now. The County Council have done a fantastic job, and I'm sorry that they are talking about splitting up, because I think they are doing a brilliant job. County Council. They are going to split up into boroughs aren't they, and I think it's the worst thing they could do. It's going to cost us 28 million to do it. It's all tax payers money isn't it. In what way is the County Council doing a great job? It's the local government, they want to split it up. Clean, it's immaculate now. You go down round Lancashire, the countryside, it's immaculate. You go to Bournemouth and it's beautiful, all clean, and you come back to Lancashire and it's exactly the same. And it's the County Council who have made things clean? Yes. We'll come back to that later. When you talk about where you live I have this wonderful glowing picture, that before it was a bit grimy and dirty, and now it's much better. That it's cleaner, more countryside, it's nicer - isn't there a down side? Has everything got better? It is much nicer. Grass and stuff. When I first got married we used to walk in and put the light on at night, and there were cockroaches all over the house. It wasn't just my house, they were everywhere (Working Class Women)
5.5 The Future Perhaps one of the most striking features of the discussion was the degree of pessimism expressed about the future (i.e. what life would be like in 30 years time). To the older groups talk of the future was uncomfortable, while for the other groups it was not just unpredictable but difficult to imagine: F F F
Mod
I don't think we look into the future for them (the children) too much. We've too much feeling for them, to look into the future for them, because there's nothing good to look at. We don't think about these things, because we've all got grand children, and we'd crack up if we thought about this all the time. (Working Class Women) Think of when your grand children are - 30 years time.
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F Mod M F Mod F
I daren't think about it. Why? I don't know, I just don't know what it'll be like. I'm glad I won't be alive. OK. I shudder. (Retired)
F I can't see further than another 2 years, let alone 30. (Young Professional bank manager)
Perhaps the most extreme case of pessimism was the exchange in the retired group over the possibility of possible nuclear catastrophe, reflecting a deep seated unease that industrial society might be leading to its own destruction: F Mod F F Mod F F F
Will we all be here in 30 years time! All this nuclear stuff, I don't like it. So in 30 years time our first thought is will we still be here? We might all be wiped out! (laugh) Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. (various people) You are not so sure? You seriously think that we might not be? Who else has these anxieties? I have the anxiety but I don't believe it will happen. It is a thought. I do think. No. Oh, no. Nuclear stuff. I just think something could happen. All this nuclear stuff they are burying. (Retired)
However, in less extreme ways, a closer look at the different scenarios for the future suggests that much of the pessimism could be partly explained in terms of the profound lack of control and agency over recent trends (e.g. over the increasing penetration of the market into increasing aspects of social life) which were increasingly impinging upon their personal lives. Hence, many of the groups talked of recent, unwelcome trends accelerating into the future. For the Asian women the worsening future was depicted in terms of more selfish (e.g. western) attitudes amongst the young, leading to the subsequent breakdown of traditional family structure and loyalties; while the young professional group, the working class women, the unemployed group, the mothers, and the retired group all talked of a future where there will be less jobs, more crime, where life will be harder, where there will be less countryside, more cars and pollution, and where jobs (e.g. from teachers to labourers) will be even more prescribed by the needs and interests of 'others' (e.g. business and government). The passages below indicate how the retired group and the young professionals envisaged the future: M M F Mod M F M
Well everyone will be self-employed. There will be no state pension. No NHS. No schooling. Definite, definitely on the decline. Pensions and NHS and things like that. So I put Less or No Pension. NHS. What else? Schooling. Free schooling. I think you will have to pay for schooling. It's going that way already isn't it.
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F
Mod F Mod F M F Mod M M M Mod F Mod F F
I think my job will be much more dictated, even more than it is now. Very much more descriptive what I've got to cover. Even more than it is now. It is becoming increasingly so. Much much more computer-oriented than it is now. So who's going to prescribe what you...? The government. Because the economy will realise that it needs certain things from schooling and it will try and get it from it rather than it being for the good of the children. So it's going to be more determined by the economy. By the economy rather than the actual needs of the children, unfortunately. (Young Professionals) Barratt houses all over Lancashire. (laughter) Millions of them. And transport. All these cars can't keep coming on the road like this. We can't carry on the transport What will it look like in 30 years time? If they all look like Barratt estates, horrible. What's going to happen with transport and cars. Cars won't be allowed into town centres in 30 years time. OK What's going to happen? I don't know, because there's that many cars now, the road are nearly coming to a halt now. Wherever you go, you just can't get out of the road, can you. Is that going to get worse? Oh, yes. Yes. So what's going to happen then? More chaos on the roads. (Retired)
To the groups who were already marginalised (e.g. the unemployed and young men groups) this picture was depressingly bleak, not least due to their particularly acute sense of dislocation from existing institutions. In other words, since institutions (e.g. those 'in control') were increasingly perceived to be serving either their own interests or those of 'the rich', and since they had little or no influence over them, current and mainly harmful trends were predicted to continue well into the future. Particularly poignant was the way the unemployed men described the future for their children: Mod M M M
M Mod M Mod
If you could think about how things are going to change in the next 30 years when your children are 30 years older? Desperate, desperate for kids. They are going to have to build a prison in every town. Just no future at all for them. There's no apprenticeships for them now, there's no work for them now, it ain't going to improve because they are getting people to retire earlier, they are building all these places you can go swimming, these leisure centres, the Council are building with the main government. Because they know themselves there is nothing for the future, that there is nothing for these kids now. Because, I bet, in 10 years time, the state of everything in this country is just going to, you would not want it - the houses and everything - you just wouldn't want it. It's going to get worse. Definitely. In what way is it going to get worse? The police are not bothered. They know it's happening. So there'll be more crime?
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M
M
Yes. I wouldn't like to say. They'll be robbing banks, because there'll be nothing in people's houses anyway. There isn't now. It'll go back to the days when they used to do the marching. You are saying 30 years in the future, 30 years ago, after the war and all that, they marched to London from where I come from. And we are back 30 years and we'll be back there. When you go to sign on - it won't even be 30 years - they'll give you vouchers for the supermarket rather than give you the money. Degrade you that much that you'll take any shite job. - degraded now, when you go to sign on, some fucking kid telling you what you've got to do. (Unemployed)
However, the higher socio-economic status groups were more ambivalent in their predictions. For example, while the retired group, the mothers, and the rural professionals all shared the anxiety that current trends might possibly lead to widespread environmental problems and social malaise, there was also the aspiration that 'something would be done'. Thus, while the retired group predicted there would be more congestion, less countryside, and more crime, there was a question about whether current trends will inevitably continue into the future. However, the issue was not whether our current institutions were likely to be able to deal with escalating social and environmental problems, but whether things would become so bad that a backlash would develop: F F Mod F M Mod M Mod M
You can't really predict. Things might go into a puritanical backlash. Exactly. It could. If you were forced to make a prediction? Things come in waves. I think there could be a backlash. There could be a change. Swing of the pendulum. It's got to go back. Jack - You mentioned that you think there is a rise in violent crime. How is that going to change? It will decrease. Because the police will get the upper arm or what? You get a certain stage in society where they'll say, that's enough, and they'll revert to the death penalty. (Retired)
To summarise, when discussing the social future, participants tended to present a strikingly pessimistic picture. Differences about the degree of pessimism appeared to be influenced by the respective levels of faith that different groups invested in institutions. Thus the groups who were more disaffected and distrustful of institutions (e.g. the unemployed) were the ones who spoke most fervently about the inevitability of a deteriorating future. Similarly, the young professionals claimed that a better world would result less out of democratic processes, rational choice or sane policy than through a process of 'backlash'. Only when things got demonstrably pernicious (e.g. in terms of riots, smog, or congestion) would saner policies result. In contrast, the rural professionals argued that things inevitably were circular; that new forms of environmental consciousness are linked to how things used to be (e.g. during the war); and that people will change their lifestyles according to a model of natural (as opposed to political) justice. Indeed, only the retired group had any faith in government to sort things out by an appeal to law and order and a greater sense of
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morality. Finally, it is interesting to note the contrast between the working class women's perception that things had materially improved over the past 30 years, and their apparently profound anxieties about the future.
5.6 Quality of Life Although most people did not use the term 'quality of life' as a normal conversational term, the majority of groups talked in some detail about what the term meant to them, and about what would improve it. Generally, people liked the sentiments implicit in the term because it encapsulated a way of talking about aspects of their lives considered more important than mere material possessions. Thus, for some of the groups the term 'quality of life' was immediately contrasted to the term 'standard of living'. In the passage below the young professional group talk of how the two terms differ: Mod
So, what does the term mean to you? If someone came up to you and said 'quality of life'? F Standard of living. F Choices. Mod So quality of life. The first thing that came into your head was standard of living. Yes. (Yes) Is it the same thing or not? F No, cause some people live at a higher standard than other people. Mod So in what way is quality of life different from standard of living? M Well some people are living it one way and others happy living with another. Some like all modern equipment and others like to live in a field in a cottage. M Depending on the person F Its an individual choice isn't it. Mod So its more individual? Standard of living is nothing to do with personal choice or individual? M Standard of living is a standard what's set in front of you isn't it. You have to. Its not quality of life really. M Quality of life is a personal thing. (Young Professionals)
The rural professional group, the working class women, the mother's group and the retired group shared the opinion that 'choice' and being able to enjoy your surroundings and 'the simple things in life', were central to how they understood their quality of life. Quality of life reflected their inner sense of happiness, and the things that contributed to their quality of life, or indeed the things that would improve it, were things that either related directly to their immediate situation (e.g. freedom from stress, overwork, or having enough money not to have to worry), or more general prerequisites (having good health being the foremost criteria). The following passage shows how the working class women understood the relationship between quality of life and economic welfare: F Mod F F
If you are working you should be able to save a little bit and do what you want. So quality of life is doing what you want. I class quality of life as being your health, really. Good quality of life to me is being able to enjoy everyday things. Good health. That's about all.
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Mod F F Mod F F F F Mod F
You say it's about enjoying everyday things. Like - what? Your surroundings, like, the countryside. Quality of life to me is being alive and being well enough to enjoy your surroundings. You've got to be able to afford it though. OK, it's about affording things, having health so that you can appreciate your surroundings. So you can get out, and - you are no good with £50,000 in the bank if you're stuck in a wheelchair and can't get out. So quality of life to me is being able to enjoy your surroundings. What you say - I still say you have to have a decent wage to give you a good quality of life. That's the main thing in any body's life. If you haven't got that you worry yourself to death. Is that it? Freedom from financial worry, and health so you can appreciate things. Anything else? That covers everything. An enormous area. (Working Class Women)
The theme of 'quality of life' involving more than money was a common one and arose in a variety of forms across most of the groups. Thus, when asked what would improve their quality of life, many of the responses related to fairly local and personal issues such as: more time for themselves (e.g. away from children), being able to live life at a slower pace, having a more local job, having more job security, and having peace of mind. Many of people's more materialistic aspirations (e.g. such as a bigger house, more holidays, or more money) were less geared to the pursuit of wealth per se, but to the simple pleasures that could be facilitated through money (e.g. not having to worry so much). In terms of more social aspirations people talked about the need of a more tolerant society, better amenities (especially for children), and a proper community (e.g. where you could leave your house unlocked). Perhaps the relational aspect of the term was most explicit for the Asian women who talked about quality of life almost exclusively in terms of their attachments to others (e.g. their children and husbands): F
Mod F Mod F
F F Mod
Some ladies when they start the married life, then they start quality of life because their childhood is very poor condition. Sometimes there are plenty of children in the family, they didn't get full attention. Something like that. Something is missing in the childhood, then they start their married life, then they start - quality of life. So married life might make our quality of life better? No, they change. Sometimes it gives you more good, sometimes makes you bad. But sometimes, some ladies get proper quality of life. Then they start like my sister, she started when she got married. Why is it different for her then? What is it like for her? Her husband is so caring, never mind she's got money, not rich, but she is very bad in health ways. She's very bad. But she is always happy. Never mind her health is not so good. Her husband is caring, always they go out, they understand each other, they - Anything, even, they want to buy or anything, for £1.00, but they are always so 'sit down and talk about it' then they buy. I think the main thing is love. And understanding. Anywhere. If your children, with neighbours, anybody. Love and understanding is What else makes us happy? What makes our lives feel good?
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F
Being attached to people. Others. (Asian Women)
While people shared the value of the concept, there was also agreement that the concept was really only meaningful on an individual level. As the following quotes indicate: one person's dream is another's nightmare and what constitutes the essence of the concept is the way it is interpreted personally in terms of individual expectations: F
I agree that quality of life - the essential to that is choice. And being able to exercise that choice at whatever level. If you are a millionaire and you want to go on your yacht, fair enough. If you are a pensioner in a flat being able to go into the communal lounge and enjoy your bingo and come home and put your own kettle on, you've got a decent quality of life. At both ends. It is a state of mind, and being physically and mentally - you've got the ability to apply choice. (Rural Professional)
F
Having people around you that you like. Living in a pleasant place. What's pleasant to some people is not pleasant to others. Some people might want to live in a penthouse flat and some people might want to live in a cottage in the country. (Young Professional)
F
It depends on what you know. 'Cause like, you get the people in Fleetwood who live in the Council estates and that's all they know and they can say, oh, I've got a good quality of life, but then if somebody say from a nice place had to go and live there, they'd say, this is a poor quality of life, even though it's the same. To one it would be good, to one it would be bad. Depends on what you know. (Mother)
In contrast, the two groups who were deeply sceptical about the concept of 'quality of life' were the unemployed and the young men. To the young men on YTS, their life was less about 'quality of life' - a term which conjured up notions of responsibility and a view of the long term - and more about 'quantity of life' - a term they themselves made up to express their desires for immediate gratification. The quote below from the young men should be seen in the context of their dissatisfaction with the claimed tedium of life in Morecambe and their desires for escape: Mod M M M M M M
So - quality of life. Where would you expect to hear people talking about that. Who would be saying it? Granddad. People who can't speak properly - use posh words you can't understand. Posh people. What do you mean by 'quality of life'? Yes, because posh people have their quality of life, and we have ours. Our quality of life is going out and getting pissed and shagging women, basically. To posh people, like, it's taking dogs for walks, and It depends whose life it is. You can't talk about lives in general. Because everybody has a different life. Some people have no life, eh, David? (Young Men on YTS)
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Similarly, the unemployed men resented the term, not because they would not like a better 'quality of life', but due to the sheer distance between the sentiments implicit the term and their own material reality. In effect the term was seen, not as a target, but more as a judgement, a wound, which acted to underline the reality of their own situations. In their circumstances of survival, where they could not even afford to buy their children a bag of chips, quality of life aspirations were viewed at best as utopian and at worst as insulting: M M M M
Mod M
Mod M M M M Mod M
If you're unemployed you've not got one (quality of life). Survival. What it boils down to is if you've got nothing you've not got a quality of life have you? If you're unemployed - even when we were working, you could pay the rent, pay the bills, fill up the cupboards with food, give the kids some pocket money, have one night out a week. That's working. Now you can't even have that. What do you say to a kid, you can't have that? So quality of life is having work, so that you can pay your bills, so that you can survive and have self respect? Yes. And have a nice little house inside. A nice council house, nice inside, new pair of sheets, make your living room nice. Hire a tape for one of your kids. Even working you can't do it. Our class of people, even working we're on the border. You can't say "come on love, I'll take you out for a meal" and go in a restaurant. Now you can't even send your kids for bag of chips. So they'd be very scathing about it? Quality of life! What is quality of life? People just get by as best they can. Survival. That's it. Something else in front of me. What is quality of life, we haven't got one. All we are is rock bottom. It can't get any worse. All right. If you could think of things that would improve your quality of life. A job and a proper wage. (a few together) (Unemployed Men)
When people were asked what sort of people would use the term 'quality of life', many responded that it was a term used by professionals and politicians. Two of the groups identified the term to have arisen in a health context as a way in which health professionals could access the utility of health packages as an alternative to traditional medical vocabularies. However, others identified a more cynical usage of the term by advertisers and politicians who would use its feel-good effect and interpretability to their own advantage. Thus they suggested that the term made a good advertising or political slogan since it could not be pinned down to specific, measurable policies: M M M F M F
If it was an advertising slogan, if you said, it would probably improve your quality of life. It's a sort of feel-good effect. Yes, it means something to everybody. It also means something different to everybody. Yes. Yes, so its very clever. (Young Professionals)
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When presented with the specific 'quality of life' and 'environment' themes outlined in the Local Government Management Board (LGMB) document (see Appendix 2), most of the groups felt that their own concerns and anxieties were broadly captured within the LGMB terms. However, while there was much shared territory, there was also the perception that the LGMB themes were more impersonal, utopian, expressed in posh and educated terms, and concerned more with wider issues (e.g. such as pollution and resources). Moreover, even the young professional group felt that the LGMB themes must have arisen from spectacularly well-off people, since there was no mention of money or working hours. However, there was more cynicism over whether any themes could capture everybody's quality of life aspirations, since the term was interpreted most readily on a personal level. This point was discussed in most detail in the young professional group: Mod F Mod F Mod
M Mod M F
If somebody said that we can measure people's quality of life by looking at it in these themes, do you think that would be a good or bad thing, or would they miss the mark? What do you think about that? You can think of a lot on basic needs, and work, health, education. They are massive categories. Do you think that is a problem that they are trying to cover so much? Going back to what I said last week, with quality of life being everything to everybody, I think in order for it to fit the categories have to be pretty massive. So they are massive in two ways, because they cover a very wide spectrum but also within each one they would have to be massive as well to cover all the ways they are interpreted. Shall I put massively interpretable? (Yes) Is there anything else about this? It's very political this, isn't it? In what way? Say a Council, County Council, or even, you've got departments of Education, Health, Employment, Heritage -It sounds like something John Major would come up with, for his next campaign. Government issues. (Young Professionals)
5.7 Personal Responsibility for Quality of Life Having discussed current concerns and anxieties, their perceptions of the past, their predictions for the future, and their understandings of quality of life (including what would improve it), people were asked who was responsible for meeting these aspirations, and what personal role and sense of responsibility they saw themselves as having. Exploring the question 'who is responsible for improving "quality of life"', nearly all the groups named 'themselves' above other agents (such as government, local government and business). Issues of personal agency were considered central to our inquiry since an account of things that people felt a degree of influence over, and their wider sense of trust (or mistrust) towards those with wider responsibility, appeared to be a potentially critical factor in determining how they would be likely to respond to external sources of information. In this context, it appeared that while people felt it was up to them to create change and improve things, their personal spheres of influence were
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nevertheless experienced as fairly local and small-scale. Thus, the mothers argued that they could possibly lobby the council to provide crèches, the working class women and rural professionals talked about setting good examples and showing good morals (e.g. by picking up litter and not thieving), and the young Professionals talked about exercising consumer choice (e.g. not buying hair sprays with CFCs). The passage following reflects working class women's perceived lack of agency: Mod F Mod F F Mod F Mod F F Mod F Mod F
Mod F
What are our responsibilities for changing all of this stuff? What things can we have influence over? We can vote. OK. Voting, and by that we can have a change. What other things can we do? What have we got responsibility for? Somebody mentioned the family, housework, They are individual things. We don't have a say in the other things. We don't have any control. Nobody has. Do people agree with that, that you've only got your vote to change things? We should have more referendums, this referendum on the treaty, it won't happen with John Major. This is interesting, do you think there are other areas where we could change things, that are not about ourselves or our family? Bigger groups of people. (No reply) So it's about voting, and referenda, yes? OK. Is that it? Committee groups. If you've got certain things you feel strongly about, you get a committee, and you write away, don't you. Like Councils, they are your committee groups, your Town Councils. They should argue for you. Do people feel they can influence their local Councillors? Yes, you vote them out if you don't like them. So it's only through voting? We only have to take their word about these people, that they are putting in, they send us these leaflets about who's going in for a Councillor, and we've got to go and vote but we don't know them. Not like we used to do. We used to know the Councillors. They used to come round, and let you know. And that's changed now? You don't hear people like that now. (Working Class Women)
However, whilst most people recognised that it was primarily up to them to improve things, they also were of the opinion that they could only create change at a very local level through individual action, and that more widespread change resulting from more collective action was largely unrealistic. Thus, the retired group spoke of the futility of protest letters, while there was general acceptance that the accepted channels such as voting or seeking to persuade elected representatives were largely ineffective: M F M M Mod F Mod F F
Ultimately it all comes back to the individual. It's up to us to keep the streets clean isn't it? We drop the litter. We let the dogs go out and make a mess. How much can we change things, make things better? You mean personally on our own? In any way. Well, we could clean the streets up straight away. If everybody does.
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M F F Mod F M Mod F Mod F Mod F F M M M F Mod M F
Mod F F Mod M F Mod M Mod F Mod F Mod M
Not just you on your own. Yes. Yes. To keep the street clean - they come and clean the grids out - how many are overflowing all the time. You say they could do it, but who do you mean? Us. I would do that. But who would give you permission and who would pay you? So this is one of the things we can influence The way we vote is our best way to change things. Does the way we vote change things? No. Why not? I don't know. Because politicians don't honour their promises. No they don't . (Retired) I think we should play a fair game, basically. That's it. With pollution, if you go out and burn car tyres in the back garden. I agree. I agree. So we all agree we should set examples. Do you think we can really change all this stuff? Yes. But not on our own. It has to be everybody. A few years ago, CFCs, hair sprays, I chose to have a pump dispenser, and no-one else in the office bothered. So if I was doing it and the whole world didn't decide to change it wouldn't make a lot of difference. So how can you change things then? With other people? How does it work? By influencing them, educating them. You need numbers, as well, to influence, actually producing the pump spray, they only produce them if enough people want them. So there is some sort of consumer power then. You can influence things as consumers. Any other ways? Generally change our lifestyles. Don't use the car every time. Recycle. How else? What things can't we change? How about this industry stuff. We can't change that. Not at all? How about - We can't change big business? We could if we became the bosses. How about Government? You can vote them out. Is that going to change things? No. They'd be just the same. (Young Professionals)
In contrast, and in the face of commonly perceived unlistening institutions, some of the groups, in an as yet fairly unarticulated manner, argued that it would be up them increasingly to organise themselves to create change. Indeed, the few participants who had tried to promote their ideas and initiatives, using their own local knowledge, had experienced clear resistance from local government. Other participants, largely unprompted in the focus groups, enjoyed the opportunity to talk about existing ideas
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or to think afresh of practical ways in which their local environment could be improved. Examples included a scheme suggested by a hotel manager in the rural professional group for how used Christmas trees could be used to stop erosion of beaches, saving council money in clearing sand off roads; ways in which unemployed people could be employed on their own estates as a kind of community task force to clean the place up and give it some respect; how the Asian women would be more than prepared to give time and energy to contribute to Asian community initiatives (e.g. through cooking and helping with the social organisation). Indeed, these schemes were discussed as practical, workable and useful precisely because they did not derive from bureaucrats in offices, but from 'themselves' who truly understood their communities and local environments. We discuss the further implications of such insights in more detail in Chapter 8.
5.8 Perceptions of Responsible 'Others' When people were asked who else was responsible for responding to their quality of life concerns, the groups tended to list central government, local government and business. Discussion of people's perceptions of central government appeared to reflect a deep sense of distrust, and a general lack of faith in the ability or willingness of government to respond to their concerns. Central government was frequently viewed as corrupt, run by quangos and business interests, and increasingly out of touch with the public. Surprisingly, this broad analysis was shared by the professional groups as much as the unemployed and working class women's group. However, apart from the working women's group, no single group was of the opinion that a change of government would really make much difference. The problem was generally perceived to be more endemic to the system of 'politics' that was emerging in Britain today. Thus, the rural professionals exposed themselves as cynical about the current state of politics, with its perceived hypocrisy and the increasing outside interests of MPs, and suggested that the degree of 'sleaze' in politics today was both new and disturbing. This pessimistic perception of government, and politics more generally, was articulated in the discussion in the rural professional group below: Mod M F
Mod F
Mod F
What else, think about government, what else do we think about the government at the moment. Not a lot. Completely honestly, I have absolutely no regard for anybody at all that goes into politics. Anybody to my way of thinking that has convinced themselves that they are capable of running whatever, county council, the borough council or the entire country must be lunatic. I know what a poor job I make of running my own meagre life and anybody that thinks they know how to run a whole country is crackers as far as I'm concerned. I really do doubt the sanity of everyone of them. So if you had to describe a sort of person, what sort of people...? I think unfortunately when people first go into politics they probably, some of them, go in for the right reasons because they want to change inequalities and injustices. But I think there is something about the political system that warps and twists them on the way up so that by the time they get to the top, they're not proper people. They're divorced from the rest of us. What do other people think of politics.? Well they do, that's the way this country's run. The civil service run this country.
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Mod F Mod M Mod M
But for who's interest do they work.? I would say their own if I was cynical. Well what else has changed? I wonder if some of the politicians have a lot more outside interests than they used to have (Too much) And what are these interests? Well commitments to companies. Directorships, that sort of thing. Or unions. (Rural Professionals)
Similarly, the working class women suggested that individuals in government were concerned only with lining their own pockets; the retired group felt that the government was overly complacent and no longer listened to the electorate; the mothers argued that the government was only interested in the very short-term (and not with the state of the world which their children would inherit), whilst the young professionals considered the government to be increasingly run by business interests: F
Mod M Mod F Mod F
I don't see how anybody can take them seriously any more. They just - every minute of every news item, it doesn't matter if they are showing new quangos or anything, everything has got massive dodgy business going on, and it is very, very corrupt and it's never as straightforward as they want us to believe, and the reforms within education and health don't seem to be for the benefit of the people, children or patients. It's just a financial market that just doesn't fit. It's a lot to do with money, and not a lot else, and I don't think that's a very good thing, at all. So the Government are into money in a big way. First we've got these people who are into profit, and they don't care if it messes up the environment? They are just after profit, whether they get cheap labour or whatever they smooth the ... So no care or responsibility...? Insofar as the Government, I think they are absolutely obsessed by everyone's accountability, bar their own. My accountability, nurses' accountability. All your paper filling, is to prove that what you are doing is satisfactory. It's about everyone else's accountability but their own? And you also said they were quite corrupt? Yes. And there are so many decisions being taken that are really undemocratic and secret. (Young Professionals)
Local Government was also identified as part of the emerging system of corrupt politics by many of the groups, but it was regarded as having less real influence. The older and better off groups tended to have slightly more faith in local government, who were 'more get-at-able', but there was still the sense that they did not listen and one had to 'wage battle' to be heard: M Mod F F
The council will listen if you badger and badger and badger You've got to badger them? If you can get hold of them and actually lobby one and lobby another and then they get together and oh yes right, and they do something. The only other comment I have knowing a councillor who when she's discussed going to council meeting with me, it's been in terms of, it's all back to the political system and back biting and one upmanship and this that and the other from what she says. That's the impression she left me with.
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(Rural Professionals)
The unemployed group, many having had direct experience of local government for many years through council houses, were the most damning of 'the council', and spoke of how the council had become less interested, less caring, and more out of touch with their estates: Mod M M
M M
Do you think the Council knows what's wrong on your estate? Course they do, course they do. You have to threaten them with legal action before they do anything. It's not the men who come around. They've got a job to do. It's higher up they have to have an appointment to see the thing before they can act. If I tell you my waste pipe is bust they should come and fix it there and then. Never mind somebody to have a look at it first. Just send somebody to do the job. But they don't do it that way. Then man next door to me, he's been there three months now, and he's still got 10 black bin bags lying in his front garden. If you drive me home now and look in his garden they will still be there. He keeps putting them on top of his bin, and they keep throwing them in the garden again. They are spending a lot of money, millions on Callan estate, doing it up. When it's finished, the kids who are there now, that wrecked it before, they've nowt to do. They'll wreck it again. They don't walk around our estates and say 'how are you getting on here?' (Unemployed Men)
Similarly, the mothers spoke of the council using the image of a fat and self-interested bogey man, while the young professionals talked of corruption in local government, its pre-occupation with image and tourists, its wastage of money, and its lack of common sense: Mod M F M
So thinking about the local council, from what you've said, it's quite variable. What do you think about the local council generally? It's always been corrupt. They seem to waste a lot of money. They dig up the roads and put new kerbs in and there didn't seem to be anything wrong with the old ones. Most people are bored by local politics. It's the most boring subject on Earth. That's why councillors get away with what they do, they are not kept in check by the electorate. It's the old story where if you put up a donkey round here, representing the Conservatives, it would win! (Young Professionals)
In contrast, the only group who were generally supportive of local government, the working class women's group, were of the opinion that local government were doing the best they could in an unfavourable climate of efficiency drives and cut backs. Finally, there was almost unanimous agreement that business was concerned principally with profit, that business people were increasingly in control of a largely corrupt system, and this not only caused widespread environmental damage but also distorted the democratic process:
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M M F Mod F
They are out to make a profit, so they'll cut back on everything else. Just in to making money. They are powerful, because they can bribe politicians. Turn a blind eye to pollution. They can afford to pay the fines if they pollute the water. What's the worst that can happen, oh, we'll pay a fine. Does anyone want to stand up for big business? They do employ a lot of people. (Young Professionals)
In contrast, the only group who were mildly supportive of business, the mothers group, were so not because of any expectation that business might be concerned with 'bettering' their world, but rather because 'the system' was so endemic that it was naive to suppose that change could result from anything other than money and selfinterest.
5.9 Sustainability and Environment As a term 'sustainability' was recognised by only two people in all of the groups and was identified by most groups as jargon, sociological, abstract, and a buzz word which politicians might use: Mod M F M Mod F
Who would actually come up with this term.? A speech writer. Political. A slogan. It's too long to be slogan. Not catchy. Could be used on management courses. You say this is not catchy, it's a long word. Is it not catchy because it's too long, or is it something else about it? It's quite a good word, because when you think about it you know what it means. (Young Professionals)
Indeed, the unemployed group expressed the extreme opinion that the term was an official piece of gobbledygook designed to confuse ordinary people. However, although the term was rarely recognised, most of the groups did accurately capture the broad sense of the term as being about keeping things going for the future, and were even disappointed that such an essential concept could be couched in such an incomprehensible manner. Moreover, both the mothers group and the working class women's group talked about sustainability as a concept antithetical to change or development (e.g. like a museum). To the mothers group this was generally perceived as a good thing, since they showed such little trust (outside of themselves) for others to create a better world; while, for the working class women's group, this was identified as a fundamental flaw, since some change (the example of medical breakthrough was given) was identified as beneficial for society. However, the tacit assumption that 'sustainability' made most sense on a global level was shared by most groups, as was rejection of the notion that sustainability could be applied in any meaningful way at the scale of Lancashire. Interestingly, when people were asked what things should be kept going in the interests of sustainability, many of the responses focused on the wider environment:
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Mod M M M Mod F F Mod M
J Mod J Mod J Mod J F Mod F
So sustainability means keeping things as they are? Yes? No. Sustaining means to keep things going. Do you mean like is our standard of living sustainable, at the present levels, given the way we are using up all our seed corn, that sort of thing? We've used up so much of the Earth's resources, can we keep going the way we are, chopping down forests, digging up minerals, and oil.? And gas. So it's about can we keep things going, because of resources, things running out. Are things going to run out? They'll have to eventually, won't they. They are going to make a bigger hole in the ozone layer, too many green leaves, forests, running out. That's very, very serious. Alter the climate. So climate - all these things are impending change? It's a profligate human race at the moment isn't it. We're gobbling up resources each ten years, more than centuries before. And we still want more and more. Yet basically everyone is happier now - when you think how life has improved. You paint a very gloomy picture. Is he realistic Jack? Realistic. Yes. So these things are going to run out? Not in our time, but in our grand children's time. So in how long? 40 or 50 years. So soon? What do other people think? I hope not. It's frightening isn't it. (Retired)
Indeed, other groups similarly shared the perception of a 'shared world' and of a fundamental need to live within its limits (which tended to be defined in physical and resource terms). This was articulated in considerable detail by the professional groups and the retired group: Mod F F Mod F M F F M F
If this is all sustainability, we'll settle for that for the moment. Now is this something that concerns you, affects you, has anything to do with you or not? Well yes because we're all consumers. We all have to live on this planet as well. So this is you and sustainability. So because you're consumers, because you share the same planet? Yes because we have to survive. You have to live together. We have to inhabit and cohabit. I mean if the ozone layer goes, you can't maintain that. The planet won't sustain itself will it, or us? It affects us all. Yes and even things like planet. You know that you personally are using more of the earth's resources and if it was more fairly distributed there wouldn't be. Well I certainly think there is an end to the number of people you can have on the planet before it will gobble up the resources out of all proportion. (Rural Professionals)
This exchange illustrates how the rural professionals spoke of the environmental agenda in global, equity terms. When asked about the scope of sustainability, most
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groups were of the opinion that sustainability was chiefly an environmental term, but referred to our cumulative long term impact on the environment at a global level. Many of the groups were also of the opinion that there was a clear relationship between sustainability issues and people's quality of life: crudely that our quality of life would be better if we lived in a cleaner and non-polluted environment. Indeed, the considerable awareness of environmental issues, including their sense of connection with quality of life and sustainability, can be seen in the ways the young professional group discussed which pollution problems were the most serious: M F F F F M M F M M F M M M M Mod F Mod M F Mod M
Car exhaust pollution. Water pollution. Losing green areas. Extinction of rare species. Agricultural practices have a lot to do with that. Grubbing up hedgerows. Energy. Waste. Localised pollution, litter. Lack of recycling. Ozone layer. Industries and their air pollution and fumes. And the Greenhouse effect. Effluent discharges. Lack of public transport. Nuclear power. Sulphur dioxide emissions. Wind power. Which of these have anything to do with sustainability? All of them. Are they the same things then, sustainability and the environment? The connection is the length of time. It's the hugeness of the impact of it. Do you think it's a strange way to talk about this stuff, to talk about quality of life? If we didn't have these problems, the quality of life would be very high . (Young Professionals).
Similarly, the majority of groups appeared to accept the environmentalist position that there were currently very serious problems which were now global and potentially catastrophic. Indeed, there was generally high awareness of the range of environment issues (both local and global) and a perception that most of these problems were getting worse. However, when environmental issues cropped up in the wider discussion of people's concerns and anxieties, discussion tended to centre less on global or systemic dimensions and more on human-relational aspects. As discussed in section 5.3, the clearest example of this was the way the mothers group discussed dirty beaches. However, as well as identifying the significance of beach pollution in relational terms (e.g. how others would view them) as opposed to more objective criteria (e.g. a greater risk of infection), others identified this issue as prototypical of the things one was unable to change. The exchange below shows how the mothers view the significance of dirty beaches, and how their knowledge relied on evidence through direct experience. The focus was on people's stock assumptions about Lancashire:
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F F Mod F
F Mod F
F
Fish and chips. Fish and chips and a pint. Wet weather, wet and cold and windy. Dirty sea. Yes, you can't get away from that, can you? You've said that a couple of times - what do you mean, you can't get away from that? Well, you wouldn't even let your dog go in the water, they'd be ill the day after. Dirty beaches. But you see all these holiday makers paddling and you think 'Oh my God!' We know what it's like. They'll be sorry tomorrow. They'll go home bloody ill anyway. And they'll blame it on the booze on the prom. Food poisoning. (Laughter) It could be that as well! Is that just Blackpool or the whole coast? It's the whole coast. People go to Cleveleys and think they are going somewhere cleaner than Blackpool, but it's not. You've still got a horrible tide line haven't you. You can still smell it. I saw a man down there the other day with gloves on picking up the sea weed on the beach and putting it in a big bin bag. That's cleaning the beach, that. It's awful. I know we walked down South Shore last week and everything was just floating "I'm going to have to go off the beach, I'm going to die", it's horrid. (Mothers)
For both the mothers group and the working class women there appeared to be a very substantial gap between the way in which the environment was discussed in local, immediate and highly personal ways (e.g. such as rubbish, dog mess, car fumes and countryside), and the discussion of global issues such as such as global warming, ozone layer, pollution and resource depletion. For example, while the working class women had some knowledge of local and global environmental issues, there was a sense that their own individual responses (such as recycling, saving paper, not using hair spray etc.), was not likely to be effective. Thus, while the problems were broadly accepted, there was argument about what needed to be done and how individuals should be involved. Broadly speaking, the mothers and the working class women found this subject difficult to talk about, given that wider environmental and sustainability problems were considered as beyond their sphere of influence, and tended to express the opinion that 'something should be done' (although who should do what was poorly articulated). The mothers, particularly, relied on the 'hope' that 'they' (again unarticulated) would have to do something, although there was little foundation to believe that much would happen. In contrast, the retired group and the rural professionals spoke of the need for a new morality - one based on selfdiscipline, restraint, and different expectations, but perhaps most importantly, one shared by institutions of government. Again in contrast, the young professionals were divided over whether they could in fact do anything about the environment, while the unemployed group were adamant that since business were the ones causing environmental damage, that they should also be responsible for cleaning it up. Finally, the young men expressed themselves wholly cynical about whether there were in fact any real, large-scale environmental problems, arguing alternatively that this was merely a device to stop those in power from focusing on real, material problems (e.g. such as the homeless problem in Morecambe). To conclude, the discussions suggested that the bleakness surrounding discussion of the ineffectiveness of individual action towards broader, systemic environmental
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problems arose, largely, from the widespread perception that those 'in control' were neither likely or willing to respond to environmental problems. From this perspective, the professional groups, the retired group, and to a lesser extent, the mothers group, and the working class women's group all liked the term 'sustainability' (or at least the sentiments underlying the term) since it provided them with a tacit vocabulary for talking about the 'long term' in an emerging culture which appeared to them to be largely myopic and self-interested. In this way, many groups thought that government and business should be concerned with sustainability but were highly cynical whether any of the major institutions really cared about the future: M Mod F Mod F
It's whether there's any meaning behind it. It's all very glib, isn't it, with politicians. And environmentalist, does it mean anything? If business or government said our policies are sustainable,You'd laugh. They change their minds. You wouldn't believe them? No. They come up with a good campaign when it's near an election, get voted in, then within six months they can't remember what the campaign was, they've changed it. (Young Professionals)
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Chapter 6: Findings from Particular Groups The previous chapter has given a broad account of the findings in general. We now offer a brief description of the flavour of each individual focus group. This chapter aims to provide a broad summary of the outlooks articulated by the various groups. It relies substantially on a diagram which we use as a visual aid for discussion. The diagrams outline certain key relationships that appeared to emerge from each group discussion. They suggest, in condensed form, the groups' expressed concerns and anxieties, the state of their claimed identification with institutions, and their expressed outlooks towards 'the future'. The different themes are enclosed in ellipses which are connected (or not) by arrows. The arrows signify how one aspect of people's world views appeared to be affecting another.
6.1 Young Men on YTS The Young Men, aged between 17 and 19 years old, were all on government YTS schemes. They gave a bleak account of their lives and expectations, and were particularly pessimistic in their discussion of Morecambe, whose specific problems compounded their anxieties about the future. To escape from their immediate reality (e.g. their lack of job prospects, their lack of money, and living in Morecambe), they talked in some detail about an alternative world of beer, women, clubbing, and living for the week-end. Importantly, access to a car (and therefore some form of job) was central, to enable them to escape the limitations of Morecambe. Hence, their aspirations were short-term and hedonistic, although it was recognised that in 5 to 10 years they clearly aspired to settle down, and then aspire to a 'quality of life'. However, they had acquired a fatalism whereby they had very little faith or expectations that external institutions would contribute to their future quality of life, relying on luck that they would have a job and not fall into an even more depressing vicious circle of having no job, no car, and no future. Indeed, in contrast to the majority of their peers (who had no job and were not on YTS schemes) they relied on the hope that the YTS scheme, which was consistently represented as unfair and exploitative, would give them some future. These Young Men expressed little faith in their situation getting better, were clearly stigmatised by their sense of Morecambe as a general 'dumping ground', and had little interest or desire to be involved in politics. They sensed that society was inevitably run through the medium of money, and had little faith in information that did not accord with their direct experience. This being so, they did not believe that claims about wider environmental problems were anything more than a smoke screen to legitimate institutions in not focusing on improving their immediate locality (e.g. in terms of jobs, and such visible and immediate social issues such as homelessness). The observations they made on their lives and priorities can be represented schematically as follows :
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Morecambe
money Good Luck
Little money
Their World
YTS? YTS family
Future a
respect
Job? night out
Bad Luck week-ends Crime clubs
Their Escape 'Quantity of Life' '
beer
women
unemployed Future b
Drugs
Threatening Institutions
In order of preference, things that were presented as having the potential to improve their quality of life were: - better wages; - more respect in work; - cheaper car insurance; - a greater choice of night life; - more things to do in Morecambe; - a cleaner environment (less sewage in Morecambe Bay); - and fair treatment for everyone.
6.2 Asian Women The Asian Women, aged between 30 and 40, were predominantly first generation to this country and spoke relatively poor English (this group was moderated with the help of an Asian moderator). They were very distinctive from the other groups. They were all very committed to their children and to maintaining a traditional Asian family life. In this respect, their main concerns centred on preoccupations with giving their children a good education and with the tensions that were clearly emerging over the more westernised attitudes that their children were tending to adopt. Thus their overarching anxiety concerned the increasing selfishness of society, an emerging perceived lack of respect and of clear distinctions between right and wrong, and of the number of ways in which this was threatening the traditional structures of their community. Such observations were shared broadly by both the Hindu and the Muslim participants. Other points of note included the unselfishness that characterised their aspirations: many of them suggested that having more time would improve their quality of life, although the purpose of this was to have more time to spend with their
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children or to help their husbands. Indeed, their aspirations were also expressed in relational and inner terms, including the importance of inner happiness, understanding and respect. They also talked in fairly fatalistic terms of the future (this may have been due to a cultural understanding that talking about the future would be tempting fate), and found it very difficult to discuss things that would improve their quality of life. When this was probed, we identified that such an admission would have implied that their husbands and existing family structures were not providing for them sufficiently. They had little understanding of or interest in wider politics, but would have liked more facilities for the Asian community for which they were willing to contribute (e.g. by offering to cook or provide some comparable service). Finally, they showed very little knowledge or awareness of 'the environment', and talked about such issues as an inevitable problem of an increasingly disrespectful and selfish society. Below is a diagram which attempts to outline how these emerging cultural tensions, alongside a recognition of some racism and personal health concerns, were seen as impinging on their traditional realities.
Racism
Language worries
Asian Community discipline
education
Their World
respect family
Health worries
freedom education western selfishness
New Cultural Tensions traditions break down new expectations
In order of preference, it was felt their quality of life might be improved by: - more respect and understanding; - more racial tolerance; - safer streets; - more discipline in the family; - the ability to speak better English; - and more joint facilities for the Asian community.
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6.3 Mothers Participants in the Mothers Group were all between 25 and 40 years old, and lived in Thornton or Cleveleys. Apart from two single Mothers, they all had husbands and could be classified as of socio-economic status C1/C2. They identified in very local terms, were generally content and happy with living in Thornton-Cleveleys and were very proud of the strong sense of community that prevailed (in contrast both to neighbouring towns and to 'the south'). Their concerns centred on the paucity of well paid jobs (especially for men), on the emerging proximity of crime, and on local environmental/amenity concerns that were threatening their pride and self-respect (hence their talk of dirty beaches largely reflected a sense of shame). They expressed little faith in government, including local government, and sensed that those 'in control' would only change things when motivated by self-interest. Hence, they expressed a very bleak view of a future where there would be few or no jobs, more crime and drugs, nothing to do for young people, and less countryside. They had more faith in themselves as agents for change but felt that their sphere of influence was very small and localised. They relied largely on 'hope' that something would be done, although, when pressed there was little faith that those with responsibility would act for them (hence in the diagram below the connection which might enable them to affect 'the system' is mediated by 'hope'). Potential improvements to their quality of life were seen as small things to remove stress, that would give them more 'free' time from their children and family. The diagram below seeks to reflect the ways in which the group expressed themselves as dislocated from institutions, and the bleak future that they sensed would result.
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community
local concerns
Their World
personal
family
HOPE uncaring local council
wage battle
business 'The System'
self interest
government
crime
pollution
Future
no jobs
less community
Their accounts suggested that, in order of preference, their quality of life could be improved by: - improvements to their local environment (e.g. more speed bumps, silent policemen, less dog poo, better access for elderly and disabled); - better facilities for Mothers (e.g. more crèches, more and cleaner public conveniences, toddler groups, meet a mum groups); - a cleaner environment (less pollution on beaches, clean up ICI foul smell); - a less stressful personal family life; - and more tolerance in society generally.
6.4 Unemployed Men The Unemployed Group were chosen from men, aged 30 to 40 and living in Preston, who had been unemployed for between one and five years. While they were all good and communicative participants, they were generally resigned, resentful and full of stories of how they were continually up against it in trying to live simple, decent lives. Not surprisingly, their overriding concern focused on money and jobs. Their experience was not simply of things literally drying up in the last 5 years but also of what was experienced as an increasingly degrading benefit system and of increasingly exploitative job agencies. Indeed, their shared experience was of skilled work
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becoming unskilled, of available work being sub-contracted, and of agencies now offering 'degrading' wages often less than half what they used to earn. Coupled to the anxieties about jobs was a shared perception that the council estates in which they were living had become less safe, that there were now fewer accessible amenities, that housing conditions were deteriorating steadily, and that crime and burglary were rife, to the extent that some men could not leave their houses empty. The main reasons suggested for these changes concerned institutions which used formerly to care and look after them (e.g. local government, employers, the police, and to some extent central government); the system had become corrupt and those with power were concerned overwhelmingly with their own self-interest. Thus, members of the group argued that the education system had become a joke, that the council did not care, and that the 'system' was now run by business and politicians largely for their own profit. Moreover, they felt that the current situation was likely to deteriorate further and they saw even less hope for their children. In this situation, while the group were familiar with claims about environmental issues, and while some of them did accept the assertion that environmental problems might be very serious in the future, they felt that these were not really their responsibility (since pollution was caused by business, not them), and anyway there was little they thought they could do about it. This set of relationships is depicted below in terms of a past (where institutions cared) entirely dislocated from the present (where institutions no longer care), fuelled by the system which can only create an even more dispiriting future.
crime
proper community
no hope respect
Past
money
no job
Their World
job
bad housing no money long term Pollution
desparate
less hope for kids
Future
degraded
self-interest
crime & guns
profit
The System 'They'
uncaring institutions
politicans
In order of preference, their quality of life was seen as likely to be improved by: - having a job and a proper wage; - safer streets and a proper community;
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- more facilities for children (e.g. proper youth clubs, opportunities to do judo or other martial arts, bus passes for children); - more facilities for themselves (more shops, community centres, and health services in their estates); - and more caring councils (with employees who talk to you, rather than down to you).
6.5 Retired The Retired Group consisted of men and women living in Thornton-Cleveleys, formally classified as ABC1, aged between 50 and 70. As a group they were thoughtful, intelligent, and fairly content with their lot. While they were profoundly depressed about the current 'sleazy' state of politics, they had firm faith in 'proper' accountable democracy, and advocated a recipe for a more moral order based on common sense, lawful and respectful citizens, and responsive institutions of government. The group identified strongly with their immediate locality, enjoyed the sense of community that existed there, and took advantage of the amenities that existed for Retired people. Like several of the other groups, they were ambivalent concerning the changes that had occurred over the last 30 years. They were increasingly concerned about crime, and spoke in some detail about the general loss of respect for authority, and the problems associated with a more permissive society. While one person observed that people had always feared the future, discussion of it within the group reflected a pervasive anxiety; the perception was that current, unwelcome trends would further accelerate. Thus, the group predicted a future in which Lancashire will look like 'a Barratt estate', where there will be more cars, more pollution, less countryside, and fewer people in work. However, unlike the other groups, here was a vague belief that the government will sort things out (e.g. by more law and order) and that things may re-stabilise. Moreover, there was a belief that ultimately individuals are responsible; indeed given this perception, there was considerable anxiety that the process of democracy (i.e. between elected representatives and the public) was currently being distorted by lobby groups, media interests and greed. Hence, the group perceived central government to have become increasingly money-dominated and complacent, and local government to be slightly more accountable, but still tending to waste money. Members of this group were well informed about environmental problems and advocated a need for more individual responsibility, self discipline and less greed (although they also noted that these prescriptions tended to run against human nature).
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elected representatives voting
lobby groups Local Government
local councillors
Proper Democracy DISTORTION
waste money
New Politics
greed
common sense government voting
self discipline recycling
moral
selfishness
Their World community
caring society
Future a human ingenuity
Future b
crime
pollution
In order of preference, their perceived quality of life would be improved by: - a safer and cleaner environment (less experimentation with animals and humans, fewer additives, more space, fewer motor cars, rail links restored, less interference with nature, less tendency for authorities to play with our future); - fewer impositions on individuals (more freedom of expression, fewer restrictions on personal behaviour, red tape abolished); - more responsible communication (no phone advertising, more responsible media, less petty EC regulation); - stable pension funds; - less noise pollution; - less dependency on the state; - and better health and more leisure time.
6.6 Rural Professionals The Rural Professional Group consisted of successful middle aged people of both sexes, living in the countryside nearby Lytham St Annes. They were generally selfassured, a little nostalgic, content with their lives, and displayed tacit faith in the future without expressing any genuine confidence in particular institutions. Like other groups they identified with the community spirit of Lancashire and identified strongly with either St Annes or Lytham. Their principal sense of change concerned the encroachments on and commodification of their local countryside - busier roads, less community spirit (although the essential character of Lancashire still remained), and increased pressures of everyday life. Their main anxieties concerned a lack of amenities and things to do for children, and a marked sense of job insecurity, now impacting on all their lives. While they predicted that people would be more selfish and isolated in the future (e.g. Lancashire would become increasingly like London), participants in this
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group were considerably less pessimistic than those in others, tending to share a fatalistic belief in the circularity of life. Unprompted, the group argued about whether people were becoming less materialistic, and when encouraged on this point, talked in some detail about the need to change our lifestyles, to share the planet more equitably, to question society's expectations, and not to build more roads. However, whilst the above points were perceived to reflect good 'common sense', they were particularly scathing about bureaucrats (who were deemed to be removed from the public), and were equally dismissive of the government, who were viewed as complacent, warped by 'the system', divorced from the rest of us, and interested in only the short term. Local government faired a little better being nearer to home, but were perceived to have only limited power and to be responsive to their concerns only when badgered. Hence, the group was more sympathetic to responses to environmental problems which stressed their own sense of collective responsibility, as opposed to government initiatives, which, in their light of current experience, were perceived as most likely to be ineffective, self-serving and even irrelevant to ordinary people. outside interests
media
self-interest
Politics
less community civil service short-term severed connection
public transport
The Future
more cut backs
common sense environment consciousness
job insecurity Their World
share planet
circle of life
content responsibility
In order of preference, their perceived quality of life would be improved by: - personal improvements (more leisure time, people to be more considerate, reduced crime); - social improvements (more opportunities for young in housing and jobs, a properly responsive system of politics, fewer lobby groups, more discipline in the family and school, more public transport, less commuting to work, and more opportunities for Mothers not to work); - and work improvements (more job security, greater predictability, and fewer unrealistic cut backs).
6.7 Working Class Women
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The Working Class Women's Group consisted of women employed in manual factory work, aged between 40 and 60, living in a part of Blackburn called Wensley Fold. The women identified strongly with Wensley Fold and Blackburn which had a distinctive and rather old fashioned identity. Their perception of changes from the past was mixed. On the one hand they felt that things had got better: that there was now more accessible countryside, more trees, a cleaner environment, and fewer chimneys; while they also sensed that there was now less work and less job security, less community (e.g. local shops, cinemas, pubs and dancing places), and more cars. However, they expressed a shared sharp anxiety about the future, a matter which was uncomfortable for the women to discuss. They looked ahead to a future which included more crime, less work, more pollution, and more racial unrest. Indeed, all these predictions reflected current trends which these women perceived would simply be extended into the future (e.g. cuts in the NHS and state pensions; reductions in salaries; increasing costs of basic necessities; and a generally harder life for the 'underdogs' - i.e. themselves). Their pessimism appeared to be related in part to a pronounced lack of faith in the willingness of 'those in charge' to look after their (i.e. the women's) needs. Indeed, while they shared considerable faith in 'old fashioned' local politics, which had contributed to a proper health system, and in a local government which had contributed to a clean and beautiful Lancashire, they appeared to share a perception that a new pattern of politics was emerging which they described as self-serving, run by business interests, and even corrupt. Thus, while they showed considerable admiration for local government (and indeed for Louise Ellman specially) for doing their best in a difficult climate, they not only felt that the present government 'don't give a toss for the working man', but also had very little faith that a change of government would alter matters significantly. employers
local government Cut Backs & Efficiency
New Politics 'Those in Charge' proper conditions
Old Politics
NHS
profit
corrupt
government
clean lancashire Vote more crime
no job security
Their World 'underdogs'
few jobs
pollutions
The Future
less community
community
racial conflict
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In order of preference, it appeared that their quality of life might be improved by: - better government policies (a change of government, stop privatisation, no VAT on fuel, more job security, better health policies, full employment, a minimum wage, more money on rail and less on cars); - not having to work and to have better pensions; less crime; things which would allow them to be more independent (be your own boss, be able to afford to work voluntarily, more time and leisure); - personal things they hoped might happen (a bigger house and a pools win); - and a new moral world order (more peace in the world, no guns, honesty to oneself, and an end to means testing).
6.8 Young Professionals The Young Professional Group was a mixed gender group from Thornton-Cleveleys, aged 25 to 35 and self-confessed 'Thatcher's children'. They were intelligent, concerned, cynical about those 'in power', and pessimistic about the future. While they described the local area in fairly glowing terms, talking in positive terms about the beauty of Lancashire, its superiority over the south, and its residing traditional qualities, they also spoke of an increasing anxiety about crime and job security. Indeed, they shared a perception that jobs were increasingly insecure and spoke of the many ways in which this was making it difficult for them to think and act for the long-term. They spoke of the past as a time when professions had more status and attracted respect, and were genuinely concerned about contemporary changes - such as loss of local character, less scope for individualism, less community identity and fewer corner shops. They articulated a depressing view of the future, in which people would become more selfish, and society more Americanised; where there would be more crime, more pollution, smaller pensions and a contracted NHS. Moreover jobs would be prescribed increasingly by the needs of global business. As with several of the other groups, their pessimism appeared largely to derive from a fatalistic understanding that current trends would continue, irrespective of their unpopularity and social consequences. Much of this fatalism arose from to their perception of the increasing penetration of 'market' understandings which were generally seen to be dominating everyday life. Thus, the group divided between those who saw the inevitability of a future run by 'money' interests (the fatalists) and those who envisaged a potentially more moral and socially oriented alternative (the idealists). Hence, the group were hugely cynical of central government who were viewed as corrupt and as initiating change more for their own benefit than for the wider public. They also considered local government as both devoted to money and as largely unaccountable (this unaccountability was perceived to be sustained by ensuring that 'local politics was the most boring subject on earth'). Finally, they perceived themselves to have little influence over either business or the wider political system, and maintained that progressive change tended only to be achieved when things got so bad (e.g. in terms of acute smog or riots) that a backlash became inevitable.
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americanisation little respect government diversity
Their World
Those 'in control'
short-term
jobs insecure
financial markets
jobs prescribed
less community
local government
accountable government crime
Future 'a' more pollution
responsibility
Backlash
Future 'b'
environment
In order of preference, they indicated that their quality of life could be improved by: - more free money (money not tied to mortgages); - better work (more job security, to be able to live closer to work); - a cleaner environment (fewer cars and more public transport); - more leisure time (to have 10 weeks holiday a year, more week-ends away); - and domestic luxuries (a bigger house with a garden in the countryside, and a sports car).
job security
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Chapter 7: Public Perceptions of Indicators A key aim of the focus group study was to explore the role that local government sustainability indicators might play in contributing to more widespread community participation. In this chapter we focus more explicitly on how participants in the focus groups responded to the idea of indicators, identifying various ways in which they currently use existing indicators, and the framework in which LGMB's proposed indicators are likely to be understood by the various groups. We highlight the main areas of concern where indicators would be most likely to be useful, and focus on the external social conditions that might need to be in place for indicators to command public support.
7.1 Responses to Existing Indicators The first point to note was the considerable difficulty that was encountered in attempts to initiate a discussion on indicators. Whilst people do in fact use a variety of indicators in their day-to-day lives (e.g. weather forecasts, body temperature as an indicator of health, exam marks as an indicator of educational progress), it appeared to be difficult for people to reflect on the role of current indicators in their lives. Moreover, the majority of the groups not only considered the idea of indicators an abstract and difficult concept, but more generally were suspicious of official statistics and information. Indeed, when asked about existing indicators, people tended to distinguish between those which could be easily correlated with their direct experience, and those which depended on 'expert' systems. The further removed indicators were from people's immediate realities, the less likely they were to find them credible. An extreme example of this phenomenon was the opinion of the young men who claimed not to believe in global environmental problems, simply because they refused to believe anything said by academics, bureaucrats or other experts unless they could directly verify this knowledge with their own senses. This underlined the general point that people tended to believe 'official' information only when they trusted and identified with the institution responsible for generating and publishing it.
7.2 Indicators and Trustworthy Institutions For many of the focus groups there was both a sense that those 'in power' did not understand their local concerns, and a more general sense of bewilderment over just how bad things really were (particularly with regard to the wider state of the environment): Mod
M M F
We've been saying that there are all these things which could be getting worse, science might do something about it, it might get better if people are less selfish and greedy, but people are selfish and greedy so we don't know. But how do we know how bad things are? We don't. We don't really. We only know what we are told. (Retired)
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While the young men (and to a lesser extent, the mothers and the unemployed) tended to rely more heavily on their own immediate senses for reliable information on the state of the world, other groups felt obliged to rely on external sources. The latter included the media, scientists and intellectuals, government and environmental pressure groups (for environmental information). However, most participants not only felt ignorant about wider social and environmental matters, but were also of the opinion that this state of ignorance was perpetuated by institutions carefully and cynically presenting their own biases. The discussion below shows how the young professionals talked about trust and information: M M Mod F F F M Mod F F
I'd trust a pressure group. I'd trust a government run scientific body. You, you and you would trust pressure groups . How about you? I'd have to base it on balancing the facts, because they are fighting for their cause. I would listen to their point of view but I wouldn't assume that their figures are accurate. Because they would be biased. They'd miss bits out same as all the others. I would trust them because they are the ones who brought it to the forefront. This is interesting. You were saying that everybody has their own selective versions of the facts. Do Governments and Science, and independent people from science? They would all present their own bias. But if you are aware of that bias, there is a difference. If you believe everything that's written in a newspaper you are in grave danger, aren't you. Whereas if you look at it and saying hang on a minute I'm not sure. It's having a perspective of overview and weighing up the pros and cons. (Young Professionals)
While the above exchange suggests how a relatively well informed and educated group actively interpreted 'authoritative' knowledge using their own understanding of where it was coming from, other groups felt considerably more disempowered by the perceived bias in expert information (especially government information). For example, participants in both the working class women's group and the retired group claimed not to believe government information, which they suspected as being propaganda designed to support official interests, and also mistrusted any indicator which was used in a political context. From this perspective they talked cynically of how economic indicators were strategically driven in line with elections, and of the 'massaging' of unemployment indicators: Mod F Mod F Mod F
How important is it that the Government actually tells us whether things are getting better or not.? Oh, yes. Definitely (in chorus) Should we know? (Yes) And do we know at the moment? (No) So they are not telling us? They only tell us what they want us to know. And that's the end of that, so you're left with a fog in your brain, so you just think - what have I to worry about? I don't know what they're on about. So why do Government only tell us what they want us to hear? To keep your confidence going. (All together)
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Mod F F
So if someone provides an indicator which says the economy is improving you won't believe it? They've been saying it for about 10 years, but where, I can't see anything! Every time there's an election they say the economy is improving. (Working Class Women)
Thus, while there was strong agreement that government should be publicising 'the facts', there appeared also to be a strong feeling that 'what government was telling us' was driven by its own agenda and interests. Hence, even the retired group (which one might have predicted from demographic statistics to have been the most progovernment of the focus groups) talked of the present government 'suppressing' the truth and keeping them in the dark. This sense of personal ignorance being perpetuated by wider public institutions was even more prevalent within the unemployed group, whose sense of disaffection and alienation from such institutions was now almost complete. Indeed, by their own accounts, their personal lives and expectations had been transformed so radically in the last few years, largely (they contended) through institutions no longer looking after them, that they would no longer be surprised by any eventuality: M Mod M M M M M Mod M
Like Dave says, you don't know what they use. It's down to chemicals but we don't know. So it comes down to you don't know. People don't tell you how bad things are. If someone said that the world is going to end in 20 years, could that be true? It could be. Yes. I'd say it's not going to be. It's not going to happen. The experiments they do now, you don't know what's going to happen. If somebody had said 20 years ago I was going to be unemployed for 6 years, I'd have turned round and said "bull shit". But I have. So the main thing is not really that these things might or might not be serious but that we don't know because people are not telling us? They keep you in the dark, and come up with words like Sustainability! (unemployed)
7.3 Responses to Proposed Indicator Project The current orthodoxy amongst proponents of sustainability is that sustainability indicators will inform the public and contribute to community empowerment, alongside government initiatives. However, our focus groups indicate considerable scepticism towards existing 'expert' information (including central and local government information) which was frequently identified as largely biased, selfserving and removed from the local realities of the public. In this section, we examine the responses when the focus groups were informed of the true purpose of the research at the end of the second session (i.e. that the research was commissioned by Lancashire County Council with the purpose of finding out people's responses to proposed local government sustainability indicators). Not surprisingly, people's broad reactions to the disclosure of the project were heavily conditioned by their general perceptions of Lancashire County Council and local government. To both the retired group and the working class women's group, there
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was considerable faith in the project, since both groups were of the opinion that Lancashire County Council had the true interests of Lancashire at heart: Mod M M Mod M
The Environment Unit have a lot of targets and goals, and have a Forum with business and conservationists, and it will be tied in to that. Would you trust the Council? Do you think they'd be straight? Yes. Because they haven't got an axe to grind except as regards Lancashire. What they decide won't affect anyone down in Devon, but if it was central government they would colour it to what they wanted. But you trust local government? Yes. If they are allowed to do what they want. But they are going to be constrained by Westminster. (Retired)
Similarly, participants in the working class women's group were optimistic that indicators would have the desired effect of spreading awareness and of encouraging community environmental action: Mod F Mod F
Do you think if they had indicators every year, that would be a good thing? I don't think it would be a bad thing. Be completely honest. If you say you wouldn't believe anything they come up with, that's fine. Or ... I think we'd be more aware of the environment, and you'd be more inclined to help to improve it. (Working Class Women)
However, given their experience and perception of local government in other contexts, other focus groups were considerably more sceptical. For example, the rural professional group tended to be sceptical of any local government initiative which involved bureaucrats in offices telling local people the state of their local environment. Their experience was that local people often knew far more about the conditions which prevailed in their communities than local government, and that what was urgently required was action, not measurement: Mod F M
So you wouldn't trust people who do them because they're sitting in offices? No, its not that I don't trust it, its just that it means that the level of , there's a level of people sort of not participating but sort of standing back and just measuring (not producing) yes. Its actually unproductive. It comes back to local knowledge. People have said that the beaches are more polluted than what they've been for years. I could have told you that. Because I've seen from upstairs for 30 years and looked out the window every day and seen the colour of the sand change colour. Whereas it used to be like everybody imagines sand, it's now a browny colour. (Rural Professionals)
Indeed, the rural professional group saw the indicators project as an example of LCC being over-ambitious, and in this light they forecast that the indicators project would be used by the County Council for its own interests. In contrast, what they considered
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was really required was for the LCC to listen to local people, and then to tackle local problems using common sense: F Mod F M
I think Lancashire County Council, tell you the truth, are attacking things on a very grand scale, if you will, when there are much more basic things in the environment that they could put right and it not cost as much money, So that's the stuff about them not listening? Its probably because they feel that they take all the responsibility for it and don't realise that Joe public does want to do something to help. There's all sorts of things like that which the council don't need to spend a great deal of money on but could do and make the environment, people's living just a little bit easier, but they just don't. You know, they're, my job's to stick the sign up pal, you know, not to think whether I can see it or not. (Rural Professionals)
Other groups, such as the mothers group and the young professionals, reflected greater ambivalence towards the indicators proposal. On the one hand, they were clearly disillusioned with local government. On the other hand, both groups saw the need for indicators which gave them information about the state of their local (and to a lesser extent global) environment. Participants in the mothers group expressed this need for 'environmental' information, using their current experience of environmental issues as a seemingly endless catalogue of problems, where existing problems never seemed to be solved, and where new problems of increasing severity appeared endlessly. Thus, the idea of authoritative and unbiased knowledge, which would reflect their concerns and keep them in touch with the wider picture, was appealing to a number of groups. The promise of indicators which would give people benchmarks was attractive, especially since this would enable them to feel that their actions (e.g. in recycling programmes) were contributing to possible solutions. To conclude this section, although most groups remained sceptical about whether local government information would be unbiased, there was a clear argument that if indicators were to command public assent, they would have to be independent, unbiased, meaningful at a local level, linked to clear paths of action, and reflective of the community's own local knowledge of its environment. However, even if all these conditions were in place, many groups still were sceptical of widespread community involvement. Both the working class women and the unemployed groups tended to share the opinion that most people are too self-centred to care about the environment; certainly they argued that people who are currently living on the bread line do not have the choice to change their lifestyles onto a more environmental footing: Mod F F Mod
What they are hoping is that people will say, less energy has been used, so perhaps global warming will be less from Lancashire, then people will be able to relax more, or try to save on fuel. But we can't do that, because we're economising to fit our pockets to start with, so You can normally live according to your means,. All right, a lot of people don't, they live above their means, and then they end up in a lot of trouble, it makes them ill. So what you are saying is that people don't really have that choice. Is that what you're saying?
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F
I think they are just living to their means as it is. They can't economise any more. They can't say I'll do without that, they need the fridges and that, you need to keep warm.. (Working Class Women)
7.4 Indicators and Key Areas of Concern While it was inappropriate within the framework of the focus groups to discuss in detail the specific LGMB draft indicators, due to the ways in which discussion of indicators generally was shaped by peoples' appraisal of local government, it is still possible to run through the LGMB themes and attempt to deduce how people are likely to respond to indicators in the light of how they discussed things that mattered to them. Given that people largely accepted the proposition that there were large scale environmental problems, and that these were likely to get worse, there are undoubtedly a number of environmental attributes indicators could measure at the local level. Possible pollution issues that appear to matter to people in an immediate way include air quality (given that there was a perceived relationship between car emissions and bronchial complaints), water quality, radiation levels, and pollution emissions from local sources (e.g. such as the ICI factory at Fleetwood for the people of Thornton-Cleveleys). There are obvious managerial reasons why these sorts of phenomena should be monitored and measured by local government. However, given the extent of people's general distrust of official data, such figures seem unlikely to be accepted at face value. Indeed, even if the figures were perceived to be unbiased, it still remains difficult to identify how they could activate the community (unless such local government monitoring was responding to a specific local issue which local government was taking up). As regards wider systemic environmental issues such as global warming, the focus group discussions suggest that the role of indicators is likely to be perceived as even more removed from people's everyday concerns, in areas where their sense of personal powerlessness would appear even more acute. However, there may be some role for indicators in an educational role, to demonstrate how everyday activities contribute to such problems as global warming. Similarly, measurements of CFC production and use seem unlikely to engender an energising effect, unless linked to programmes promoting alternatives in which the public are directly involved (e.g. in terms of fridge alternatives and aerosols). In terms of resources, the most obvious issue that motivated people was recycling. However, to encourage people to engage in recycling programmes, it is imperative to recognise the social conditions and rationales that currently motivate people (and those that don't). Particularly for older people, the rationale for recycling lies less in the aspiration to save finite resources (in a global sense), or the need to safeguard the future (again in a global sense), than in an apparently deeply help conviction that the throw-away society is morally wrong, and that we should return to supposedly 'older' practices of careful planning, saving, reusing and recyling. Indeed, while this mentality was linked to basic principles of good housekeeping, people appeared readily to make the connection between this and the more modern concern not to be wasteful of the environment. Given current erosions of trust between consumers and the energy supply industry, not least due to recent VAT increases on fuel and the sense that the industry is geared increasingly to enhancing its own profitability, it is
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more difficult to sense how indicators relating to personal consumption of resources, including domestic energy, could activate the public. While the term 'biodiversity' was identified as alien and overly scientific, many of the groups talked about local spaces of nature which were highly valued and significant to their lives. However, managerial indicators expressed either in quantitative terms (e.g. ratios of green space per person, numbers of hedgerows, acres of woodland etc.) or in terms of existing classifications (e.g. number of SSSI's, AONBs, GLVs etc.) tend to bypass local meanings. In these circumstances, as well as highlighting current measures of biodiversity (e.g. such as the current losses of SSSIs by recent developments, which clearly are touching a public chord), there is an additional need to understand those local aspects of nature which people most value. However, it is imperative to note that people's aspirations towards the local countryside are themselves highly varied, and even potentially in conflict (e.g. whether green space should be primarily for quiet reflection, for more active leisure uses, or indeed for new and innovative initiatives such as festivals or communal living experiments). These cultural and locally specific dimensions pose considerable challenges for the development of sets of indicators. Generating meaningful indicators which measure people's sense of 'quality of life' is going to be an even more difficult process, due to the highly personal ways in which people define the term for themselves. However, we give below some of the ways in which quality of life issues were understood, giving guidance on some of the areas that are likely to present new challenges for indicator selection. 'Basic needs' were not identifiable as a concept relevant to most people. However, they accepted the sentiments that people have basic rights to shelter, food and warmth. As revealed in this study, things that mattered to people within a Lancashire context included housing conditions, levels of homelessness, and the day-to-day cost of living. While the concept of 'local needs' was also not meaningful to the focus groups, there was a common concern that community services were disappearing, in the form of corner shops, local schools, community halls, local police stations, and public transport. While one could try to select indicators on local needs by finding out which local services are considered most vital at a community level, such indicators would have to be very locally specific to be meaningful. Moreover, the aspects that appear to matter most to people tend to be qualitative and relational (e.g. in the sense that 'community spirit' is felt to be disappearing). The question of developing 'qualitative' or 'relational' indicators of sustainability raises new challenges. (We return to this in Section 8.4 below). People's principal concerns vis a vis education were related largely to perceived insensitivities of the educational authorities to participants' own circumstances. Thus, while many of the groups (especially the Asian women and the unemployed group) were very committed to the education of their children, their perception was of an education system increasingly out of touch with many of their own circumstances (hence the authorities were contributing to accusations of stigma and even racism for the Asian women) and interested primarily in the high achievers. For these groups what mattered most was the degree of trust invested by parents in the education authorities. Given the difficulty of measuring trust in any quantitative form, this again points to the difficulties of developing 'qualitative' indicators.
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Work and employment was a central concern for all the groups. While official unemployment measurements and statistics currently exist (albeit of a validity which invited some scepticism), other aspects concerning the 'quality' of work were identified as of increasing importance. For the unemployed, one could measure opportunities for re-skilling and re-training. Unfortunately, given the fact that many current schemes were regarded as discredited, traditional measurements seem unlikely to be accepted as credible by the unemployed. What really mattered to both the young men on YTS and the unemployed groups was not just lack of benefit and job opportunities, but also the lack of respect from relevant authorities, and a sense that they were being degraded by 'the system'. Generating a measure of 'respect' and 'trust' in relevant authorities will pose considerable difficulties. For those in work the greatest fear concerned job security. It might be possible to measure the availability of nursery facilities at the workplace, the level of extra hours that people felt obliged to work to safeguard their jobs, the level of say given to employees in restructuring exercises. However, what mattered most to people was the sense that they had little realistic chance for planning for the long term (e.g. women still felt they had little choice to have families and a job), that they had less respect or understanding from employers, and that their jobs were becoming more prescribed by forces beyond their control. It is very doubtful whether such concerns are amenable to any kind of measurement. While indicators could also be developed to measure the growing reality of the informal economy, e.g. by measuring participation in such schemes as the Local Economic Trading Systems (LETS), it is hard to see how more ad hoc and informal working practices could be measured. Health was central to many of the groups' perception of what constituted their quality of life. However, what people liked most about the term 'quality of life' in a health context was the qualitative dimension, both in the sense that it was more important to have good health than money, and in the sense that one's personal perception of 'feeling' healthy was far more important than any medical definition. Thus the older people talked about the desire to 'grow old painlessly and gracefully', and of the need for policies to be developed which reflected people's different aspirations and understandings of their own health needs. Moreover, in the current climate of government cuts and the market philosophy developing in the NHS (which people commonly perceived to be leading to reduced provision), current attempts to use indicators in the health service were commonly viewed by participants with scepticism (e.g. identified as clever ways to cut the NHS without saying so in direct ways). Again this raises questions about whether measurements are possible at all. As highlighted in chapter 5, crime was an emerging source of anxiety for many of the groups. Indeed, most people suggested that crime would get worse in the future: that violent crime was on the increase; that young people with nothing to do would become increasingly involved in drug-related crime; and that white collar crime was also rising. However, given the different types of crime-related problems expressed by different groups, there is the serious danger that any particular form of measurement would mean different things to different groups. One shared understanding was the considerable erosion of trust perceived by many groups in the police. Subjective measurements of people's level of trust in the police might be one way to focus on people's anxieties about crime. However, although people shared a sense that public relationships with the police had deteriorated substantially, this took a number of forms. The young men on YTS schemes perceived a lack of respect and
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understanding from the police who often expected them to be engaging in criminal behaviour; the unemployed men perceived the police to be relatively uninterested, out of touch, and with little knowledge of their estates; and the Asian women perceived the police to be all-too-often unresponsive, especially in relation to racially motivated crime. Interestingly, many of the groups' most profound fears - the ability of people to leave their houses empty without fear of being burgled; the numbers of policemen and women who came from 'their' community; the levels of perceived harassment; the numbers of community police - all tend to bypass conventional crime statistics. To develop measures which accurately reflect the range of people's anxieties over crime thus raises more questions. Measurements of public participation in civic life might include numbers of people who vote in elections, and of the levels of support for voluntary groups, community groups and tenants associations. However these measures need to be understood in a situation where a great many people appear to feel alienated from conventional mechanisms of democratic decision-making, and where increasingly people may be beginning to turn to alternative sources of authority and collective self-help. Such measures are also likely to bypass alternative sources of community activity which often tend to be unrecognised by formal institutions (e.g. such as new age activities, new religious affiliations, new alternative health movements, and even new direct action networks). Developing new ways to measure such activity raises more challenges, a matter we pursue further in Section 8.5 below.
7.5 Conclusions To conclude this chapter, whilst the specific individual 'sustainability indicators' proposed by the Local Government Management Board have not been tested directly in the present study, the findings from our focus groups suggest that a number of these are likely to bypass many of the concerns and anxieties that matter most to people. The LGMB's proposals for indicators purporting to measure 'quality of life' appear especially problematic, since what people like about the notion is precisely the fact that it is not measurable. More generally, our findings about people's concerns, anxieties, and understandings of the environment and sustainability suggest that the things that really matter to people are often qualitative, relational, and locally and culturally specific. These are precisely the things that are difficult, if not impossible, to represent through indicators with some degree of standardisation. We suggest therefore that developing indicators that speak credibly and convincingly to people's lives will be a difficult process, requiring more extensive consultation and negotiation with members of the public, on a genuinely open-ended basis. In many cases measurement is not appropriate or possible at all. Strategies for communication and action will have to reflect this. Finally, we conclude that local government sustainability indicators will be identified as a local government initiative by the public, and thus that people's perceptions of local government will guide their reactions to the initiative. As discussed in some detail throughout this report, our findings suggest the existence of striking levels of disaffection and lack of faith in political institutions, not least vis a vis local government. Thus, for indicators to command public support, any such programme will need to be linked to a wider programme which strives to restore the corroded links between the public and the realm of wider political institutions. These and other points are discussed in more detail in chapter 8.
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Part 3: Implementations and Recommendations Chapter 8: Conclusions of Research 8.1 Introduction The aim of our study has been to throw light on factors relevant to public understanding of 'sustainable development', and on possible obstacles to public identification with the 'Sustainability Indicators' currently under consideration by Lancashire County Council. The indicators in question are those derived by consultants on behalf of the Local Government Management Board (LGMB). The study has involved lengthy discussions, in focus groups and interviews, both with members of the general public in Lancashire and with representatives of institutions (including the County Council itself) committed to progress on the 'sustainable development' front. In Chapters 5 and 6, we summarised the main substantive themes to emerge from the focus group discussions. In Chapter 7, we offered pointers, derived from these discussions, on how the issue of indicators might be approached most fruitfully by the County Council. In this final chapter, we offer further more general conclusions, based on our fuller interpretation of the discussions and their wider possible implications. A tacit working assumption of the LGMB appears to have been that by adopting and advancing its sustainability indicators, local authorities will, ipso facto, encourage public identification with (and involvement in) sustainable development processes on the ground. The focus group discussions suggest that this assumption begs a number of important questions: - whether information emanating from local government and other authorities is perceived by the public to be credible/authoritative, - whether information per se is the key issue, or whether the crucial lack, is of a genuine sense of agency on the public's part (that is, a sense that action will be effective), and - how 'sustainability' objectives are perceived by the public - that is, whether the way these have been framed by government, LGMB, etc., is itself credible to people outside the 'policy' world, against the background of lived contemporary experience. Satisfactory answers to these questions, and to the difficulties they may pose, are now vital if advances are to be made in the effective promotion of sustainable development, nationally in the UK and locally in Lancashire. Before we outline our further general conclusions, it is important to clarify the status we ascribe to the focus group findings. The methodology developed was not aimed at providing findings statistically representative of the Lancashire public. The focus groups consisted of 8 groups, each of between 6 and 10 people, conversing about broad and complex themes over a period of several hours each. The findings should
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thus be seen as suggestive, rather than as definitive accounts of people's lives. Moreover, the issues touched on in the focus groups were a mixture of the familiar (e.g. their 'identity with place'), the slightly familiar (e.g. the environment and 'quality of life'), the uncomfortable (e.g. 'the future'), and the unknown (e.g. 'sustainability'). In such circumstances it is inevitable that many of the responses will have been conditioned by images, priorities and information derived from the media. Nevertheless, given the degree of consensus within each of the groups, and the strong convergences between the groups on a number of key issues, the main findings probably have significance beyond the confines of the particular people involved. Focus group methods are now widely acknowledged to gain in depth over what, inevitably, they may lack in statistical representativeness. Indeed, the strength of particular responses: e.g. of pessimism concerning the future, and lack of confidence in a wide range of institutions (including central and local government), suggest more pervasive phenomena that are borne out in other recent research. Moreover, given the lack of coherent reasons why Lancashire should be seen as distinct from other parts of the country, and notwithstanding the paucity of current data, there are strong grounds for suggesting that such findings may have wider national significance.
8.2 The Idea of 'Sustainability' There appears from our research to be considerable latent public support for (though unfamiliarity with) the idea of sustainability. This was true for all the groups, though it would be possible to conclude, on certain readings, that the 'poorer' groups were less interested. However, the latter conclusion would be misleading, since, as the groups as a whole confirm, environmental concerns tend to be experienced as inseparable from wider social experiences of social marginalisation and lack of political agency. There is a pervasive sense that, whilst the idea of sustainability captures important and benign aspirations for society overall, there is little that could be done by disadvantaged sections of the population, since (a) they would not be listened to, (b) the better-off should set an example first (e.g. vis a vis reductions in car use), and (c) they have more day-to-day concerns. Even so, the discussions suggest that there is considerable will towards self-help, provided that can be underpinned by resources and the prospect of genuine influence. It is impossible to separate this finding from those of other recent commentators on social and political processes over the past decade - including upheavals to a range of previously familiar institutions, (new insecurities about work/employment; privatisations of a range of public utilities; fragmentations of loyalties to political parties, trade unions, etc.; growth in 'consumerism' and market individualism). Thus the collective impulses implied by sustainability need to be seen in the context of recent social and political developments which have been pulling in the opposite direction. The challenge for Lancashire County Council in its attempts to encourage wider commitment to sustainable development objectives is thus to develop further ways of swimming against currently powerful social currents. The signs so far are that they have made a good start with LEAP. Our research overall tends to suggest the existence of a significant gap between the wary - even jaded - expectations of members of the public towards their own potential role in the promotion of sustainable development objectives, and the more optimistic
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attitudes of relevant local government officials and (to varying extents) members of the Forum. A key barrier implicit in most of the focus group discussions has been the striking current sense of fatalism and cynicism towards government and politicians generally. There was a marked and repeatedly echoed lack of confidence in the sensitivity of central government and doubts about the ability of local government to achieve significant steps forward (not least because of the latter's diminishing powers). This in turn was part of a disturbing broader picture of anxiety concerning certain perceived trajectories of society, reflected in an apparent fatalism towards the limited responsiveness of public institutions. There was little faith (in all groups) in the prospect of any immediate stabilisation of social and economic trends - trends which appear to be generating mistrust of politicians, regardless of party. Indeed, anxieties about the future may well be a surrogate for major insecurity and uncertainty concerning the present. This dominant pessimism about the future might be interpreted most appropriately as a paralysing lack of confidence in the ability of proposals for shared action to be effective in present circumstances. This suggests the need for the County Council to involve people in LEAP in terms meaningful to them from their own immediate lives.
8.3 Model of Sustainability Revisited To date there has been little or no systematic research designed to address the salience to the public of emerging officially-embraced models of sustainability. Given that sustainability programmes still lie in their early infancy, this is no great surprise. Our research was set up with the specific task of exploring people's own understanding of their quality of life; of determining how their understandings of sustainability and the environment fit within these concerns and aspirations; of determining how people identify with a range of institutions who have responsibility for these concerns, and how they view their own individual sense of responsibility; and of determining how local government indicators designed to measure sustainability are understood with this wider framework. Thus, if we return to the Model of sustainability outlined in chapter 1 (page 10), it is possible to assess the extent to which the model is or is not accepted by the focus groups. The top section of the model, formulated in terms of three partly intersecting ellipses termed economic growth, quality of life, and environmental conditions, reflected the hypothesis that national and trans-national drives towards maximising supposed economic welfare (by individuals, business and government) may in fact be helping to lower many people's 'quality of life' and contributing to environmental degradation. To some extent this part of the model was endorsed by sections of the focus groups. Apart from the young men's group, and a very few members of the other groups, there was awareness not just of the range of environmental problems, but also of the position that environmental problems were now not merely global but potentially extremely serious. Further, there was a high level of agreement with the assumption that we all (e.g. as consumers) not only contribute to environmental degradation, but also, as morally responsible citizens, play a role in environmental problems, alongside government and wider institutions.
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Moving to the bottom section of the model of sustainability, we also find the representation is, to a considerable degree, accepted by most of the focus groups. While the term 'quality of life' is considered alien to most groups, and even hurtful to others (given the sheer distance between the term and the weight of people's immediate 'survival' concerns), the sentiments underlying the term were acknowledged to point to significant aspirations in people's lives. Hence, in contrast to current conventionally employed indicators of human well-being (e.g. money), many people talked in preference of simple aspirations such as: having good health, having inner happiness, friendship, respect, understanding, a strong community, job security, and being in a position to enjoy one's surroundings. Indeed, many of the things which people felt would contribute to the quality of life were environmental in a local and immediate sense (e.g. safe streets, fewer cars, enjoying the local countryside) while some people also made the connection that a healthy environment was prerequisite to a good quality of life. Moreover, in the light of our finding that many people appear genuinely to fear that the future may entail a deteriorating quality of life, coupled with even more serious environmental problems, we can be relatively confident that a programme which articulates sustainability in terms of how to improve long term quality of life within environmental constraints has the potential to command public support. However, whilst those aspects of the model which reflected the current situation and the proposed state of sustainability appeared to conform to the world views of practically all the groups, the mechanism connecting them - i.e. the middle section of the diagram - commanded far less identification. Indeed, as reflected in the diagrams used in chapter 7, institutions of government (including local government) generally recognised as part of 'the system' were seen as tending to contribute to the production of future environmental and social malaise rather than as contributing to solutions. Thus, our most crucial finding was the lack of faith in the willingness or capacity of established institutions to promote sustainability. This sceptical, even cynical, understanding of institution attitudes and behaviours appeared to reflect people's daily experience of public institutions, which were perceived to have become less caring, more out of touch, more self-interested and dominated by corporate interests. As a corollary, the mechanisms designed to make institutions publicly accountable were perceived not to be effective (e.g. voting). Our findings from the focus groups thus suggest that the assumptions underpinning the role of indicators in the sustainability model, i.e. that information provided to the public will lead to action, are unlikely to work in the manner proposed, given that information per se is not perceived to be the problem. People already have a considerable understanding of a wide range of sustainability issues; more importantly, they feel generally powerless in the face of an increasingly troubling agenda. Moreover, given their felt general lack of personal agency, people are highly unlikely to perceive that their participation in government initiatives will be rewarding. In contrast, they are likely to view government initiatives with scepticism (since they do not really believe that government cares about the environment), and are more likely to view their own individual actions in symbolic terms (since people feel that what they do personally is likely to have little or no effect on 'the system' which is perceived to be accelerating global environmental problems).
8.4 Implications for Indicators
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As indicated above, we have encountered a striking lack of confidence in officially supplied information. This finding is consistent with the wider erosion of trust in public institutions already noted in para 8.2. It has particular relevance for the proposed role of indicators. We have noted a marked and realistic sense of the importance of attitudes towards the purveyor of information, in determining whether or not that information should command trust. (There were several references to the fact that publicly deployed information had been found to be at odds with an individual's own direct experience). On the one hand, people liked the idea of indicators, particularly if they could show meaningfully that things were getting better or worse. On the other hand, they were sceptical about the practice. We observe a striking irony here. There is currently widespread official emphasis on the implications of the 'information revolution' for the democratisation of public policy processes, and for social choice and emancipation generally. Yet our findings suggest that, in the absence of authentically improved, more symmetrical social relations between the public and public authorities (particularly central government), the provision of more 'information' risks compounding people's sense of alienation and manipulation. In other words, the much-vaunted idea of the emancipatory impact on society of the information revolution ignores the prior fact that people do not know whether they can trust the information that is broadcast, increasingly intensely, into their lives. This problem is amplified by the sheer density and variety of such information, and by the plurality, novelty and obscurity of many of its sources - realities which make it difficult to render such information in some way accountable, or mediated by trusted interlocutors (such as, in the case of industrial accident information, the word of friends who work in the industry concerned). If this general problem of trust and alienation is not recognised, a new discourse of indicators and related specialist vocabularies risks simply exacerbating people's sense of insecurity, confusion and impotence, unless deliberate countermeasures are also taken. This points again to our earlier central conclusion: local government sustainability indicators will need to recognise the widespread and continuing corrosion of trust in our institutions, as articulated in practically all the focus groups. Indeed, if this is not recognised, we foresee that sustainability indicators will be unlikely to command public support or to engender community participation, outside a very limited arena of 'the already converted' (e.g. some environment groups, some businesses, and parts of local government). In contrast, the majority of people will view local government sustainability indicators as they appear from the focus groups to view other government initiatives - as out of touch with the public and common sense, and as self-serving. They will thus most likely not identify with the initiative, not view quality of life indicators as reflecting their quality of life, perceive the information to be biased and not independent, and indeed perceive the project as a waste of their money. Moreover, for some groups who are already disadvantaged and living lives geared simply to basic survival, indicators could even lead to further feelings of disempowerment and alienation. Indeed, implicit in the remark from one of the unemployed men, 'They keep you in the dark and then come up with terms like
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Sustainability', was the sentiment that such a programme, couched in specialist, technical terms, might actually be used to further obscure facts from the public. Indeed, there is a real possibility that the indicators project might be perceived by sections of the public as another component of a general tendency to suppress and camouflage the truth from the public, propped up by an alliance of business and government interests. Sustainability would then be identified as camouflage for local government self-interest, to the general discrediting of the concept.
To avoid such dangerous pitfalls, and to encourage more widespread community participation in a local government programme of sustainability, will require broader processes of renewal, and the building up of patterns of trust between local government and communities. In the next section we explore some tentative models and mechanisms which might help promote such a programme.
8.5 Opportunities for Community Participation in Lancashire Although widespread community participation is necessary for a comprehensive LCC programme of sustainability, we have argued that indicators alone are unlikely to be a successful mechanism. Alongside indicators there need to be additional mechanisms aimed at building trust, such that the information deriving from indicators is more likely to be believed, and to be seen as relevant, locally meaningful, and likely to lead to action. The first possible mechanism consists of ways to demonstrate to the public that local government (especially LCC) really cares about their concerns. While it may seem a disturbing finding for people working in local government, the majority of the participants in the focus groups were themselves highly surprised to learn that local government really cared about their concerns and anxieties. In contrast, their experience was of institutions which did not listen, did not care about them individually, and against whom one had to wage battle to create any impression. Indeed, for disadvantaged groups (such as the unemployed group) there was very little sense of being able to influence 'the council'. Therefore, we propose the regular monitoring of local concerns through new mechanisms of 'listening'. Given the current reality of pervasive alienation from local government, and all the faults with questionnaire methodologies (e.g. the fact that the respondents play no role in the design of questions and are then limited by the initial framings), we suggest that initiatives need to be set up, involving face to face contact, which aim to monitor current concerns and anxieties in a non-judgmental and open manner. Given our sense of success with the relatively limited use of focus group methodologies in the present research, we suggest that wider use of this methodology might be appropriate. To be successful, such an initiative needs to be undertaken in a systematic manner, covering a range of communities (taking variables of class, age, gender and geographical location into account), preferably on a longitudinal basis. Coupled to the above process of keeping 'in touch' with the public, we suggest the creation of new mechanisms which might aim to mediate between the public and official institutions. Given the wide range of institutions who are already members of the Lancashire Forum, we suggest that the same impetus which gave rise to the Forum could also be developed by Lancashire County Council (and possibly the Forum) to foster such initiatives. The aim should be to provide new linkages between community concerns and institutions with policy responsibilities (in the context of
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current widespread lack of trust). Indeed, the Environment Policy Unit (within LCC) could provide some of the expertise to ensure that local concerns, ideas, and initiatives became translated into policy circles. This might involve open meetings involving representatives and officers from local government, local business, the police and the education system - listening to the concerns of particular communities. Such meetings might also be coupled with interactive days, at which the public could introduce their own ideas for the community (including environmental initiatives), and where institutions would have to respond5. The Forum could ensure that fruitful dialogue was maintained. A third related suggestion would extend the conception of the Forum still further, into as yet uncharted waters. There is scope for new imagination in respect of a whole range of networks and informal groups with whom LCC or the Lancashire Environment Forum should now be in dialogue. Although much of the discussion reported from our focus groups can and should be read as indicating that many individuals now feel increasingly disenchanted with and alienated from established institutions and organisations (public authorities, political parties, trades unions, churches, et al), there were also modest signs of possible hope and optimism. Many social ligatures, particularly at a local, self-help level, appeared to be intact, notwithstanding the new and adverse pressures. Such encouraging signs at a grassroots 'cultural' level are consistent with other signals from current research. For example, work in progress at the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC) suggests that, in parallel with such 'negative' developments, new forms of shared social identity and collective endeavour may now be flourishing - albeit barely acknowledged in mainstream policy discourse - in Britain in the mid 1990s, through emerging cultural networks and groupings around preoccupations as diverse as complementary medicine, gender, local 'place', animal rights and vegetarianism, leisure activities and sport, crafts, personal therapies, disability and self-help, music festivals, food quality, new spiritual practices, and the like (Szerszynski 1994, 1995; Grove-White 1994). Such networks, of which there are many local instances in Lancashire, are generally informal and loosely constituted, and hence are not appropriate for incorporation within the Forum in its present form. However, they represent important and, from a sustainability perspective, potentially significant new cultural phenomena - as, arguably, new 'hidden' arenas in which people's interdependencies are now being developed and explored, outside the ambit of conventional politics and social action, through concerns hitherto thought of as largely personal, private and even selfregarding. We suggest that LCC needs to foster the development of radically new mechanisms for relating to these networks, not only because, unobtrusively, increasing numbers of people are identifying with them, but also because the moral energies such networks are now engaging in people may well prove to be of the profoundest relevance to the aspirations of sustainable development. CSEC's hypothesis in its current research into such phenomena is that, contrary to current nostrums about the 'decline of citizenship' and the 'growth of selfishness' in contemporary Britain, such new cultural networks may embody in emergent forms the 5 There may be lessons to be learnt from recent initiatives on community participation by other local authorities. Avon County Council's experience on 'Community Profiling' (Burton 1994) and Reading Borough Council's joint initiative with World Wildlife Fund for Nature on developing 'Neighbourhood Agenda 21's' may provide two such examples.
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seeds of fresh patterns of citizenship and social responsibility, in the circumstances of 'post-modern' social fragmentation and pluralism in countries like ours. It seems likely that "energies that once might have been directed into political projects aimed at transformation of the social order are now more often directed into the more limited, but equally significant project of building a meaningful world at the personal level. It is possible to see them as the bearers of the relationality and collectivity albeit in transformed guises - which have suffered such a general decline in society and politics" (Szerszynski, 1994). We suggest that LCC should explore these possibilities too as a matter of urgency. If appropriate connections can be established and fostered, they could lead in time to the catalysing of new constituencies of support for LCC's Local Agenda 21 objectives. More broadly, they could also suggest ways in which political institutions could begin to realign themselves with ground-level energies. Finally, there is the possibility of furthering the above initiatives with practical schemes, derived from the community with local government backing, which aim to promote the principles of sustainability by improving the quality of life in local communities. With appropriate sponsorship and resources attached, this would give people new ways to empower themselves and begin to make connections between local responsibility and a required sense of global responsibility. However, as stressed throughout this report, such initiatives need to be linked firmly to efforts to revitalise the now fragile bonds of trust between the public and our collective institutions.
8.6 Society, Political Culture and Sustainability - wider issues Threaded through the whole of this research project has been a serious difficulty which has been impossible fully to resolve. Initially, the project was based on the reasonable assumption that indicators of sustainability could be meaningfully defined, ranked, selected and operationalised by local government. However we have found the situation to be more complex and problematic than this. Our findings raise questions about the adequacy of government's (central and local) own understanding and characterisation of 'sustainability' and 'sustainable development' themselves. The concepts have their political provenance in the debates of the 1980s in and around the Brundtland Commission - and have tended to assume that once the broad character and goals of sustainability were articulated by international agencies and governments, implementation could gradually be encouraged to follow through the involvement of an ever-wider public. The 'participation' of the public has been assumed - and promoted through post-Rio initiatives such as Agenda 21. However, the model of 'participation' has tended to picture the public largely in instrumental, rather than in genuinely interactive terms. Our findings can be read as pointing to serious limitations embedded in this approach. The tacit assumptions made in the 1980s by the Brundtland Commission and its successors, to the effect that governments and other official institutions would command the social authority to engender the ready involvement of a willing public in pursuit of social goals which would not fundamentally alter the distribution of prevailing social and economic goods - now seem fragile. The neglect of serious analysis in the reports of Brundtland and others concerning the cultural conditions
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under which widespread public identification with sustainability goals might be generated can now be seen as a serious deficiency. Our research suggests that there is even a risk that sustainable development, however benignly and progressively intended (by policy communities, academics, etc.), may be in danger of developing as a 'currency of exclusion', rather than as a link across social differences. It is difficult to over-emphasise the importance of these inadvertent negative dynamics, emerging from even the most positive efforts to develop and advance the priorities of sustainable development. Another dimension to this same analysis is provided by reflecting upon the implications of the ways in which official talk about sustainable development has itself become structured. As reflected in official documents of the kind referred to in Chapter 1, the dominant discourse is solidly 'realist', in the sense that it refers to 'sustainability' as if the full meaning of that term already existed objectively 'out there', perhaps (it is often implied) defined exclusively by the objective carrying capacity of the global biosphere, which 'experts' can discover for society. Whatever the precise implied objective criteria, the dominant language often gives the impression that 'the experts' know what sustainable development means, and thus know what constraints and norms these definitions imply for society. This representation of 'sustainability' now faces challenges of various kinds from social scientists. The work of some leading analysts (e.g. Harrison et al. 1994; Redclift 1987, 1993; Sachs, 1993) confirms that, within the apparently straightforward sustainability paradigm, there are radically different, and even mutually contradictory, representations of sustainability derivable from available 'scientific' understandings. Others show that relevant scientific knowledge is imbued, at its very core, with value commitments (Royal Society, 1992 Ch 5; ShraderFrechette and McCoy 1994). Indeed, it is now recognised increasingly that apparently unambiguous 'realist' representations of environmental phenomena tend also to embody significant tacit social and cultural assumptions - which in turn may frequently give rise to unpredicted difficulties of social acceptance, when such descriptions come to be applied 'innocently' in real world situations (Buttel and Taylor 1994; Grove-White and Michael 1993; Thompson et al. 1986; Wynne 1994). These and other recent intellectual developments have important implications for how government (central and local) should be promoting ideas about sustainability. Thus it is useful to consider how an unequivocally 'realist' representation of sustainability may well appear to many people in society who are wholly unfamiliar with the background to the sustainability debate, feel ill-equipped, educationally and in other terms, to become involved in such public debates, and who feel wary, to say the least, about official information and interventions. Seeing officialdom and experts speak as if they know what sustainability means and what it demands of society, but then finding in practice that few clear proposals or initiatives are advanced (even if they would find some of these unpalatable - that is another issue), it would not be surprising to find that people were suspicious, or that some reacted to this 'sustainability discourse' as another elite 'conspiracy'. After all, official bodies often seem to talk about sustainability as if it is objectively grounded, rather than being constructed and its meaning negotiated as we go along; but it may then appear as if those objective meanings are being held back from public disclosure.
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This also has implications for the update of Lancashire County Council's 'Green Audit'. While there is obvious benefit in the proposed pulling-together of data relevant to sustainability issues in the county, the above intellectual developments, coupled with the empirical findings in this report, suggest that such data will need to be linked to initiatives aimed at developing the County Council's relationships with the wider public. We thus suggest that a central component of any future programme of action linked to sustainability should be an explicit attempt to build up social relations and networks with the public, as discussed throughout the report. Thus the innocently 'realist' nature of the dominant official discourses of sustainability needs itself to be critically examined for its inadvertent encouragement of further public suspicion and alienation. It may be a prerequisite of greater public involvement and shared responsibility, that the public discourses of sustainability are themselves modified to recognise unequivocally that no one can claim access to an objective interpretation of sustainable development, but that all members of society are beginning to feel their way collectively, in exploratory manner, using the best scientific knowledge available, but neither cocooned nor enslaved by it. Such a perspective, which is more grounded in reality than one which implies unambiguous objective definitions and meanings, if unequivocally expressed by policy authorities, would reinforce the intentions of Local Agenda 21 concerning public participation. It entails its own challenges and risks - for example the accusation that "they don't know what they are talking about". But our conclusion, reinforced by the focus group findings, is that other approaches now risk sinking under the weight of the public disorientation, alienation and apathy which they tend to encourage, however innocently. Indeed, the approach which assumes 'realist' grounding of operational definitions appears to reflect a model of policy authority and effectiveness which is itself becoming outmoded and self-defeating, as some of the underlying dynamics described in Chapter 3 have become evident. A further conclusion which cannot be avoided from the evidence of the focus groups is that a condition of wholehearted public participation in Local Agenda 21 may be the creation of public belief in more serious and committed policy from central government. The logic of this derives from the observations about trust, agency and the relational character of public perceptions. Most people appear to believe that sustainability targets are necessary and desirable. Persuading them of this seems to be less of a problem than persuading them that action from within their own compass is likely to be at all meaningful. The so-far unrecognised problems we have identified in this research are those of agency and relationality - that is, that people believe that their own action is futile in reaching such targets (no agency) , unless they can trust that others will also change their practices in appropriate ways (the relational dimension, which also includes the acute sense that they may be penalised more than others). It is difficult to imagine how such widespread public confidence that others will also act in ways which may (at least in the short term) be more expensive, unfamiliar and inconvenient, can be engendered unless it is backed with formal policy force, whether fiscal, legal, or other. The importance of this unacknowledged relational dimension should not be underestimated. In other words, somewhat paradoxically, a sense of individual and local social agency - which is a necessary condition of effective sustainability indicators and policies appears to require unambiguous central government initiatives to underpin it. As we have noted, there is no evidence for any dearth of will to self-help, even amongst the
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less affluent and less educated or qualified sectors of the public. But there is overwhelming evidence that this impetus is not being properly linked to that of government and other agencies, and thus risks being moribund. The radically different atmosphere surrounding local participation in environmental actions in other countries with more broadly-based decentralist political cultures hints at what might be possible (see for example Gordon 1994). Therefore, the challenge to UK policy bodies to develop new relationships with the public, and the importance of national as well as local action on sustainability needs to be recognised and addressed, at the same time that initiatives continue at local government level.
8.7 Summary of Conclusions The principal conclusions from the research may be summarised as follows: •
People generally are unfamiliar with the idea of 'sustainability' in its environmental sense. But once they understand it, they appear to identify positively with its values and priorities. Indeed, many sense a possible relationship between sustainability and a good 'quality of life'; the notion of 'sustainability' provides a tacit vocabulary for talking about the 'long term'.
•
The 'model' of sustainability underlying local authority indicator initiatives is only partly accepted by the public. Important non-material or relational components of 'quality of life' are seen as under threat, and environmental decline is seen as contributing to this. A 'sustainable' future in which economic activity is held within environmental limits and quality of life is improved commands support. However, people are sceptical as to whether government or business can be 'trusted' to genuinely promote sustainability. Government and business are commonly perceived as part of 'the system', with tendencies towards self-interest and short term goals. This finding has potentially adverse implications for wider public identification with current government or business sustainability initiatives.
•
People's inclination to attend to information about the environment is affected strongly by their sense of 'agency' - that is, by whether or not they feel a capacity to influence events associated with that information. They are also influenced strongly by their degree of trust in the purveyors of the information. These realities may have apparently perverse implications for the credibility and authority of any sustainability 'indicators' proposed in good faith by local or central government.
•
People display a pronounced degree of fatalism and even cynicism towards the country's public institutions, including national and local government. This is reflected in an apparently pervasive lack of trust in the goodwill and integrity of national government, and in doubts about the ability or willingness of local government to achieve positive improvements in the quality of people's lives (not least because local authorities' powers are seen as diminishing).
•
There is a danger that, because of people's largely negative attitudes towards (and apparent recent experience of) such official bodies, proposals by the latter for specific measures to advance sustainability will be interpreted as self-interested,
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and even as likely to marginalise people further (particularly those in lower income groups). This suggests that any 'indicators' project will need to be accompanied by other positive measures aimed at addressing the factors giving rise to these perceptions. •
Attitudes towards the activities of Lancashire County Council (LCC) vary in this domain. There is some respect for the Council's commitment to the interests of Lancashire's environment, but also a feeling that its sustainability commitments are extremely ambitious. In general, local government institutions are regarded fatalistically, and as tending to be biased towards their own bureaucratic interests.
•
People in most population groups express a strong identification with local 'place', and identify especially with their immediate communities, sub-communities and life-worlds. There is a pronounced and affectionate attachment to Lancashire specifically in most groups. This is a strength on which LCC could build, for 'sustainability' purposes.
•
There is considerable public anxiety and pessimism about many current social trends and the apparent inability (or unwillingness) of politicians to do much about them. The key day-to-day concerns emerging from the discussions include increasing job insecurity (particularly amongst the more affluent groups), the prospect of continuing unemployment (amongst the already unemployed), and the growth of crime.
•
People's primary environmental concerns are expressed largely in local terms (e.g. beach pollution, litter and dog mess), though there is also wider anxiety about global problems, particularly among the more affluent groups. However, most people appear to feel powerless in relation to such broader problems, and unconvinced about the commitment of central government to do anything about them. This relates to the importance of feelings of 'agency' in shaping the priorities people feel it worthwhile to articulate.
•
People express considerable pessimism about the future, with currently adverse trends expected to worsen in most fields, including the environment. This appears to be related to the sense of fatalism and cynicism towards the disinterestedness of public institutions supposedly responsible for coping with such trends, expressed by almost all participants in the discussions. It may be that such concern about the future is in part a surrogate for feelings of insecurity and unease about the present.
•
Against the background of intensely sceptical attitudes towards official institutions, the appropriate design of sustainability indicators presents considerable problems. Because there is scepticism about whether local government information would in practice be 'unbiased', the indicators most likely to command public confidence would probably need to be understood as independent, meaningful at a local level, and reflective of particular communities' own local knowledge of the issues addressed. Many of people's key concerns do not lend themselves to measurement, being relational and locally specific. Developing indicators that speak credibly and convincingly to people's lives may require new patterns of consultation and negotiation with the public, on a genuinely open-ended basis.
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•
For indicators to have a prospect of success therefore, LCC will need to develop, in parallel, new mechanisms for 'listening' to the Lancashire public, and for rebuilding trust and public identification with local government. These could build on the promising start made through initiatives like the creation of the Lancashire Environment Forum, which has begun to encourage new patterns of trust and active relationship between LCC and a range of interest groups and 'stakeholder' organisations. Further initiatives to extend genuine and continuing dialogue between the wider public and the policy arms of the local authorities in the area could build on the more extensive use of focus groups, and other similar mechanisms such as 'town meetings' and consultation seminars. These activities may complement and further the existing work of local councillors, and might be followed up with more practical initiatives, aimed at improving the quality of life in individual communities.
•
The above findings may have implications for the proposed update of LCC's 'Green Audit'. This should give new emphasis to the mounting importance to the County Council of measures to extend and deepen its interactions with the public, to establish shared approaches towards sustainability.
•
In developing new initiatives, LCC should be aware of the range of emergent new, largely informal social and 'cultural' networks, around issues such as health, animals and food, new leisure groupings, and local self-help. Till very recently, none of these have been acknowledged seriously in public policy discourse, and all have lain largely outside the ambit of discussions about sustainability. Efforts by LCC to develop sensitive new forms of interaction with such networks could prove fruitful for the advancing of sustainability objectives in the county. Such moves might also have wider national implications.
•
Overall, whilst there is substantial latent public support for the aims and aspirations of sustainability, there is also substantial and pervasive scepticism about the good will of government and other corporate interests towards its achievement. 'Indicators' alone will not improve public confidence in the bona fides of local government in this regard. However, participants in the focus groups were impressed by LCC's enterprise in commissioning an independent study like the present one, aimed at developing a more sensitive understanding of the views of the public, whatever the new challenges that might result. Such positive public responses confirm that there are major opportunities for the County Council to build constructively on its work in this field.
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ANNEX The Lancashire Environment Forum This annex outlines how one local authority, Lancashire County Council, in partnership with the Lancashire Environment Forum, has been responding to the new sustainability agenda. Lancashire County Council is a shadow authority in the LGMB 'Sustainability Indicators Project', and has played a lead role in the national debate on sustainability indicators. The annex reflects interviews with Lancashire County Council officers, the leader of the County Council (and Chair of the Forum), Mrs Louise Ellman, and a number of Forum representatives.
A.1 A Recent History Although Lancashire County Council (LCC) has been involved historically in such environment-related 'statutory' functions as waste management and strategic planning, during the 1980s it became increasingly involved in wider environmental issues that were causing major public anxiety at that time. As public concerns over such issues as nuclear power and pollution began to heighten during the mid to late 1980s, LCC began increasingly to identify ways in which they could respond. Responding to global issues such as Chernobyl, coupled with public concern about the number of nuclear installations in and around Lancashire, LCC helped establish a local authority system of atmospheric radiation monitoring in the mid 1980s. Similarly in 1987 LCC responded to a proposal by North West Water Authority to dump untreated sewage off Blackpool and Fleetwood by extending the length of the outfall into the sea. Finding the then water authorities' pollution control procedures insufficient, and being of the opinion that such a scheme would not only cause more widespread pollution of the beaches but could also jeopardise Blackpool's tourism aspirations, the LCC decided to mount a campaign against the proposal. At the time there was poor cooperation between the Districts, insufficient strategic overview, and no formal powers attributed to the County. However, through perseverance, planning inquiries and international court action, the LCC eventually won its case, and proved how a forward thinking local authority could successfully act on environmental issues that lay outside its statutory remit. As public concern mounted in the late 1980's, and in the wake of Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher's 1988 speech to the Royal Society, local authorities began to 'discover' the environment. Thus, when Kirklees produced the UK's first State of the Environment (SoE) report in 1989, and in the run-up to the county council elections, there was cross-party support for Lancashire to produce its own SoE report for the county. And when Labour returned to power in the 1989 elections, the LCC set up a new and well-resourced Environment Unit with the task of producing an SoE report. Shortly afterwards, in an acknowledgement that other organisations must be on board if there was to be significant environmental change across the county, the LCC initiated the Lancashire Forum on the 6th of December 1989. In local authority terms, the invitation from a county council to such a wide range of groups (including environment groups, business representation, trade unions, as well as other district councils) was both innovative and far sighted. Indeed, while there was initial ambivalence from both the Water Industry (not least due to their rather painful
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experiences over the sewage incidents) and the Districts, a work programme was put forward, objectives accepted, and a State of the Environment report delivered in the form of the exceptionally well received 'Green Audit'. Following the publication of the Green Audit in 1991, a Lancashire Environment Action Programme (LEAP) was produced with detailed proposals, targets, time scales and responsible agencies set out. These included 203 measures designed to deal with a large variety of environmental problems that the county faces, each with a time scale for implementation and relevant agencies attached. Whilst certain measures failed to achieve consensus (e.g. those which the CBI argued would adversely affect the economic competitiveness of the county's businesses) the vast majority of the measures were agreed. Much of the apparent success of the programme arose from the innovative working practices pioneered by the Forum in the form of specialist working groups, inter-active working days (designed to iron out tensions between different Forum members, where possible) alongside Forum meetings, an active steering group, and a very strong commitment from the chief executive and leader of LCC, Louise Ellman. As well as LEAP other initiatives have included an internal audit of LCC practices through its 'Better Environment Practices Strategy'; the establishment of 'Centres of Environmental Excellence'; a 'Lancashire Environment Information Service'; a 'Go Green for Good' awareness raising campaign; and a linking project between Lancashire and Gulu in Uganda. The Lancashire Environment Forum has produced well researched documents, increased the environmental awareness of a wide range of Forum organisations, created new opportunities for interest groups to have a direct input to a large strategic local authority, and has broken out of a traditional committee structure into a more horizontal and co-operative working practices. However, there are also a number of unresolved tensions and difficulties. These include the failure to get the wider business community involved (outside the large utilities); the limited extent to which the Forum has managed to modify the practices of other County Council departments; the sense that the Forum has become too large and unwieldy, and that its remit is too all-encompassing; and a continuing tension over whether the Environment Forum is owned by everyone or whether it remains an initiative of the County Council. Finally, there is an emerging dilemma over the shift in remit of the Forum from one of environmental protection to one of sustainability. In the remainder of this annex we discuss the challenge of sustainability to the Forum, the range of opportunities and obstacles as perceived by Forum members that emerge from such a programme, and the implication arising from such a programme for wider community participation in Forum matters.
A.2 The Challenge of Sustainability Since the publication of LEAP in 1993 the concept of sustainability has become increasingly central to how the LCC's Environment Policy Unit and the Lancashire Environment Forum understand their remit. Reflected in LEAP and subsequent publicity materials a clear understanding has emerged that the Forum's activities and initiatives should be linked increasingly to issues of global and local sustainability through existing mechanisms. This has led to close involvement in Agenda 21 processes; maintaining a close liaison with international initiatives such as the Commission for Sustainable Development (CSD) and the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives (ICLEI), and with national sustainability initiatives
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such as the LGMB 'Sustainability Indicators Project' and the DoE 'Going for Green' campaign. Indeed, since the majority of commitments made in the Earth Summit document 'Agenda 21' require the involvement of local authorities in their implementation, Lancashire is increasingly stressing the wider significance of the global sustainability agenda in its local initiatives. Thus, the 'Go Green for Good' campaign involved the distribution of a leaflet promoting sustainable lifestyles to every household in Lancashire, identifying ways for individuals to change lifestyles to safeguard the global environment, whilst Centres for Environmental Excellence have been specifically designated to look at practical ways to implement sustainable development with local communities. This radical project of sustainability was reflected in the interviews with the LCC officials who talked about sustainability in terms of the capacity of the earth to cope with economic activities; the absolute need to conserve and maintain the environment against pollution and resource degradation; and how a programme of sustainability embraced a spectrum of social and economic as well as environmental issues. In this respect they outlined how a programme of environmental protection, as outlined in the first Green Audit, was only part of the picture. In addition, a programme of sustainability should address basic needs, tackle the root causes of poverty, and redefine development in terms of quality of life (e.g. focusing on people's real concerns and anxieties) in ways which respected the finite limits of the planet. In this way, a programme of sustainability was identified in social terms as well as in physical and scientific ones. Given the above reading of sustainability the LCC officers spoke of the gradual learning process that was required for LCC and the Forum to embrace the sustainability challenge. They acknowledged that such a programme would require a new input from business, and perhaps most importantly, a much wider role for the community in local government initiatives. Indeed, they saw that the County Council had only limited power to carry out Local Agenda 21, and that the role of the County Council would be increasingly to develop partnerships with the public in the delivery of local sustainability. The role of indicators would be to inform the public with reliable information, to provide a more receptive political climate, and to encourage communities to work towards sustainability (with appropriate back-up from the LCC and Lancashire Forum). This perspective helps explain the importance given by Lancashire County Council to the LGMB 'Sustainability Indicators Project' and its attempt to derive robust, reliable and meaningful indicators (e.g. indicators which both accurately reflect people's own concerns and anxieties and which measure local environmental quality). For, without such information it is difficult to see how communities have knowledge of their local situation, devise their own goals and targets, and assess their own progress, alongside wider government and business initiatives.
A.3 Sustainability and Forum Members When Forum members were asked how they considered the shifting remit of the Forum from environmental protection to sustainability, the reaction was mixed. On the one hand there were those who thought that a programme of sustainability was a logical progression from the Green Audit and LEAP and were optimistic about the opportunities arising from Local Agenda 21. The advocates tended to identify the environment in social terms, and were of the opinion that local environmental issues
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were intricately linked to quality of life issues. They accepted the argument that it was only right and proper to connect environmental programmes with issues of more immediate concern, such as crime, housing and personal security. Thus, programmes to tackle global warming should be linked to traffic calming schemes and pedestrianisation; and recycling schemes should be linked to local concerns over fly tipping. In this way, local initiatives could not only meet local concerns, but do so in such a manner as to trigger connections with the wider environmental agenda (e.g. such as global warming, ozone depletion, rain forests and resource use) within the framework of local and global sustainability. From this perspective indicators need to be locally specific and meaningful, yet also scientific and measurable in more generalised ways (to allow comparison). Similarly, there were advocates who saw opportunities in the ways by which a sustainability agenda can facilitate wider institutional links between such disparate arenas as public health, environmental conditions, housing and poverty, in the face of countervailing tendencies. Thus, for example, there were perceived opportunities within the framework of sustainability, not just to demonstrate the link between health and the environment, but also to improve public health by focusing more explicitly on the prevailing environmental conditions. Other members were of the opinion that they should not get too caught up with precise definitions, but focus alternatively on ways in which the Forum and LCC had been successful. This pragmatic approach and understanding of sustainability led members to talk of the clear need to focus on specific projects which would both improve the environment, and get people involved. The past success of the Lancashire's environment initiatives was partly linked to its success in 'doing the impossible' (as in the sewage campaign), and doing so in such a way as to touch a public nerve. Such an approach identified no clear strategic difference between the activities which the Forum and LCC had been undertaking and a future programme more tied to sustainability. Thus, the role of indicators was identified less as a way to instigate widespread community participation in a programme of local sustainability, and more as a way to help public identification with Forum and LCC environmental initiatives. Indicators were also identified to have a campaigning role to lobby central government in areas where Forum organisations have little or no statutory power. In marked contrast to these views were those representing an array of business interests, other districts, and public utilities, whose perception and relationship to the Forum was mediated less by precisely what it stood for (e.g. environmental protection or sustainability) and more by statutory remits, local alliances and agendas, and public relations. With these members there was little recognition that a programme of sustainability would differ much from one of environmental protection. From the perspective of business there was the perception that the primary role of the Forum was to inform, educate and make the public more environmentally aware; rather than to fundamentally change the practices of business. Indeed, the business members tended to view the Forum as a key mechanism to keep abreast with public opinion and to inform other members of their existing environmental commitments (e.g. the targets agreed by NWW for LEAP were identical to those which they were already committed to with government). However, from the standpoint of smaller businesses there was the view that they had not been made to feel welcome; that notice of meetings was too short; and that agendas appeared to be pre-set with little room for fundamental discussion and negotiation. Moreover, from the viewpoint of business representatives, the agenda of sustainability appeared abstract, far removed from their
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local realities, and to make sense more on a global scale (which they were sympathetic to) than at the scale of Lancashire. Finally, while there was recognition of the fundamental importance of the Green Audit, there remained the perception that the role of the Forum should be to monitor problems, and to deal with them by persuasion, the setting of standards and examples of good practice; and that more widespread fundamental change in business practice would only be achieved through government legislation. From the standpoint of district councils there was widespread approval of the Forum's publications which provided much useful information on the county. However, there were differing views on whether the high profile LCC initiatives were acting as a launch pad for district initiatives, or merely taking credit and publicity away from their own initiatives. There were also differences in how districts were responding to the challenge of sustainability: some districts were more in favour of Agenda 21, and wanted to see more emphasis on environmental auditing, a more precise definition of carrying capacity, and on indicators which would aim to measure the wider sustainability implications of a variety of policies. In contrast, other districts tended to view the sustainability agenda as overly ambitious, unrealistic, and out of touch with the increasing hostility and lack of tolerance from the public towards local government. However, there was the shared perception that the Forum was seen too much as a LCC initiative; that the LEAP proposals were too wide ranging and difficult to monitor; that the Forum worked best at sub-group level; and that full Forum meetings were becoming too large and in danger of becoming a talking shop, insufficiently linked to practical action. Some representatives from the environment movement urged a cautionary note on sustainability. From this perspective, while the Forum's working practices were highly commendable, and while much had been achieved through the commitment to environmental protection, there were perceived dangers in moving towards a sustainability framework. First, there was an understanding that the concept of sustainability was most useful at a physical and global level (e.g. at the level of conserving resources and achieving a steady state global economy), and that such a definition could effectively constrain and narrow the Forum's remit. For example, there was the anxiety that policies promoting a more sustainable countryside could do little to illuminate and resolve current tensions over conflicting aspirations. Indeed, while such policies could help define limits (e.g. in terms of land-use patterns or urban settlements), there still remained the possibility for policies to be environmental in purely sustainability terms and unenvironmental in cultural terms. Moreover, when sustainability was conceived as having social and economic as well as environmental dimensions, there was the added anxiety that such a shift would focus attention away from an environment agenda. In this regard, there was a sense that a broad approach to sustainability, as identified in the LGMB project, was overambitious, would take the debate even further away from the public, and would not take account of the real constraints that lead people to make environmentally unfriendly choices (e.g. in terms of transport behaviour). There was also an added anxiety that once indicators had been accepted and put in place, that this would have the effect of stalling dialogue and inhibiting proper debate. In other words, given that there exist competing definitions over what constitutes the environment (including what constitutes a limit), let alone what precisely constitutes quality of life, the Forum would forego its original role as being a Forum where people and organisations from
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differing perspectives could engage in debate and dialogue with the aim of achieving consensus. Finally, there was scepticism whether any indicator could capture the tensions and concerns of environmental groups in relation to such issues as historically charged as people's aspirations for the broader countryside.
A.4 A Cautionary Note To summarise, our interviews with council officers and Forum representatives suggest the need for a degree of caution in how the Forum embraces a sustainability agenda. From the interviews we suggest: • that the Forum needs to be especially vigilant in how it proposes to link a formal environmental agenda with wider social concerns (e.g. issues of equity, basic needs and social justice). Many Forum representatives were especially concerned about the way in which the LGMB scoping document had defined sustainability to include such a wide range of social issues, including issues over which the Forum had little influence. •
that while the Forum has been remarkably successful in bringing a wide range of different interest groups together to discuss and begin to tackle environmental issues, there remains a profound lack of mainstream community involvement. This problem is not solely related to Lancashire. Indeed, it is fair to surmise that very few people have even heard of sustainability, let alone devised ways to change their lifestyles to meet the sustainability challenge. A programme of sustainability, tied to principles of community participation, will require new and innovative ways to involve the wider public.
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APPENDICES Appendix 1 Focus Group Topic Guide Session 1 1) Welcome and introduce session. Have you been to one of these before Explain that the sponsor will be revealed at the end, and that any questions will be answered. That you are a social researcher who works for a variety of organisations. That they should feel free to express their opinions. Their opinions matter. That there is no right or wrong answer. That this should be enjoyable.
2) Start discussion on 'quality of life'. (what makes places good to live in) Where do you live and why did you move there? What is life in your part of Lancashire like? Is it like other parts? What are the upsides, downsides? Which other parts of country are most like/unlike Lancashire? In what ways? Are you optimistic? What makes you anxious? what concerns you most? What will it be like in 1 generation time? Better/Worse? What was it like in the past? Better/Worse/why? (60 mins) 3) Introduce the concept of 'quality of life' and explore what this means in their terms: Put term on table and ask: what does it mean to them? Where do they expect to hear the term 'quality of life'? Is it a term you would use? Who do they expect to be saying it? Is it a modern term? (why?) What other words are used to express that thought? 4) Exercises a) Think of things that would seriously improve your QOL (list on index cards). Discussion on what contributes to QOL. What makes for a better QOL. b) Ask respondents to make conceptual map of quality of life examples (theirs and others' on sort cards). (This will be an involved process but the debate will be revealing). Task between sessions Over the next week I want you to think
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a) either something that you see that needs to be fixed/changed/done that would improve your QOL b) or I'm glad something has been done and this has improved my QOL
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Session 2 1) QOL concerns how do they change/add to the map we arrived at in session 1. Find themes/heading Which are most important/debate/rank Add LGMB QOL themes discuss difference/similarities (40 mins)
2) Responsibility Who is responsible - Parties attach parties to themes explore direct experience/confidence/trust, stereotypes What do you think your responsibilities are for all of this? What sort of things have you some control over? What things could you change? What is your role in fixing all this? (60 mins) 3) Introduce Sustainability Explore awareness and understanding (Keeping things going for the future) What things, why, for whom Does this concern you? what areas of your life affect other people/other things/future people Have any of us though about our behaviour in these terms? Are there limits to our desires/QOL aspirations? Does Sustainability affect our QOL concerns (now/future) 4) Environment Are talking about the 'environment' Are you surprised? Is this a different way from how you would expect to talk about the environment? What other environmental problems can you identify? (list) Which of these have most to do with sustainability? (90 mins) 5) Proof/Evidence/Knowledge How do we know things are getting better or worse? Who provides/should provide proof? In what form? Introduce idea of indicator (indicate state of things) How do you know what the state is of, e.g. unemployment, road accidents, quality of air (air quality indicators), economy (GNP), cleanliness of beaches (blue flag) How much do you use them already? Do you trust/believe them? Why not? (20 mins)
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6) Explain sponsor and explore Why do you think LCC are doing this? What are their interests? (trust) How do you think LCC might use this research? ('faith' re results) How should it be communicated (cw other initiatives: road accident deaths etc.) (10 mins)
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Appendix 2 LGMB Sustainability Themes 1. Resources are used efficiently and waste is minimised by closing cycles 2. Pollution is limited to levels which natural systems can cope with and without damage 3. Biodiversity: The Diversity of Nature is valued and protected 4. Where possible, Local Needs are met locally 5. Basic Needs: Every-one has access to good food, water, shelter and fuel at reasonable cost. 6. Everyone has the opportunity to undertake Satisfying Work. The value of unpaid work is recognised, while payments for work are fair and fairly distributed. 7. People's good health is protected by creating safe, clean, pleasant environments and health services which emphasise prevention of illness as well as proper care for the sick. 8. Education/Information: Access to facilities, goods and other people is not achieved at expense of environment or limited to those with cars 9. Personal Freedom/ Security: People live without fear of personal violence from crime or persecution because of their personal beliefs, race, gender, or sexuality 10. Access: Every-one has access to the skills, knowledge and information needed to enable them to play a full part in society 11. All sections of the community are Empowered to participate in decision-making 12. Opportunities for Culture, Leisure and recreation are readily available to all.
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13. Places, spaces and objects combine meaning and beauty with utility. Settlements are 'human' in scale and form. Diversity and Local Distinctiveness are valued and protected.
