doxic and heterodox

I've been reading an excellent book, Comfort, Cleanliness & Convenience, which has a wealth of concepts and ideas surrounding how our energy practices - the habits and behaviours associated with the way we use and consume energy - can change and come about.

One interesting passage reflects on how might deeply ingrained routines come to be challenged and altered. This is of interest to me not just in terms of people changing their use of energy to a less environmentally demanding habit, but also other habits we just unquestioningly go along with. It doesn't have to be just religious experiences that alter our behaviour to a more healthy alternative.

Shove - in C, C & C - uses Bourdieu to offer one explanation as to how this comes about. Bourdieu describes two realms. One - the doxic - is unconscious, where we take-for-granted and exist in habits and common sense. The other - the heterodox - is where rules and ways of conducting oneself are explicit, contested and manipulated.

The argument is that for us to radically alter our behaviours the doxic realm is brought into the realm of the heterodox, where our unconscious thoughts, beliefs and biographies (the things that make us act the way we do) can be seen more explicitly and then challenged and, perhaps, altered. before they then slip back into the doxic realm, becoming again unquestioned habit.

There is no mention as to how this may be done, either through psychoanalysis, meditation, shamanism or some other deep soul searching. What is interesting though, is in the quest to alter our blind practices of using energy that we habitually follow. It appears here that any change (or transition) to energy practices that are less environmentally problematic, cannot be done through more information, or new technology alone. The change rather, needs to come about at a deeper, doxic, spiritual even, level.

Something to think about.