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Community-led housing (CLH) is a promising model for socially and environmentally sustainable living. It is also a very small fraction of the housing sector in the UK. Could CLH be part of the solution to UK's housing crisis and benefit more people? Focusing on the social aspects and taking a critical realist approach, this research looked for mechanisms that make CLH work, and identified who it worked for, under what circumstances - and why. Using mixed-methods, it contributes qualitative insights on housing cooperatives and cohousing communities, thereby filling a gap in qualitative work on UK housing cooperatives. The quantitative work provided new data on the social profile of cohousing in England. The main findings and arguments are set out in three papers, engaging with three research questions: what are the visions and aims of CLH; what kind of social relations form in CLH; what kinds of identities and subjectivities develop in CLH. The paper: "'A place that is different from the usual capitalist world': The potential of community-led housing as safe and just spaces" (chapter 3), deploys Nancy Fraser's theory of justice to argue that the social relations in CLH can create safe and just spaces by responding to socio-economic, cultural-symbolic and political injustice. The paper, "Contested subjectivities in a UK housing cooperative: Old hippies and Thatcher's children negotiating the commons" (chapter 4), shows how neoliberalisation affected members' subjectivities and visions over time. The paper, "Beyond affordability: English cohousing as White middle class spaces" (chapter 5), applies a Bourdieusian analysis to show that the main barrier to diversity in UK cohousing is cultural rather than purely economic, since its core practices and values reproduce classed (and racialised) distinctions. Overall, my contribution is both theoretical and practical. Theoretically, I develop the concepts of safe space (in the context of justice and neoliberal oppression), the cooperative subject and the two-way relation between habitus and class perception. I introduce the concept of minimalist and maximalist visions of the commons, which affect the practice of commoning, and propose a framework to consider the impact of visions, social practices and subjectivities on commoning. Practically, I point at the benefits of CLH for its members; the practical ways commons can challenge neoliberalisation; and the way exclusionary practices operate in the cohousing sector and beyond.

Young people have been participating in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conferences for over a decade, though their perspectives and participatory experiences have been largely overlooked by academics and policy-makers. This is beginning to change, catalysed by the Fridays for Future movement which has seen young people around the world take to the streets calling for rapid, ambitious climate action. Policy-makers are designing new initiatives to engage with young people, and environmental governance scholars are increasingly turning their attention to this dynamic age group. Despite this enthusiasm, the details of youth participation in global climate change governance remain largely unknown, their implications unscrutinised. This thesis critically interrogates young people’s lived experiences of UNFCCC participation. Based on a longitudinal, ethnographic case study, it predates the Fridays for Future movement, offering key insights to guide this burgeoning research agenda. Drawing upon 32 interviews and over 900 hours of participant observation at six UNFCCC conferences between 2015 and 2018, it focuses on a UK-based youth organisation, the UK Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC), which has been participating in UNFCCC conferences for several years. Through immersive engagement and trust built over time, coupled with the researcher’s long-standing interaction with the UNFCCC’s youth constituency, it sheds light on the complexities of young people’s participatory experiences whilst considering the implications for theory and practice. Applying concepts and frameworks from a range of literatures, this thesis takes steps to bridge the interdisciplinary divide between studies of non-state actor (NSA) participation in global environmental governance and studies of youth participation, offering critical insights to both disciplines. First, testing and adapting a youth participation model, it offers a broad categorisation of the lived experiences of youth participants in this context, presenting several empirical and theoretical contributions including the identification of various purposes pursued by youth participants in the UNFCCC, multiple ways in which they are positioned and the impact of psychological factors on their participation. Second, applying key theories of justice and power, it expands and helps to mobilise justice theory beyond theoretical principles to enable a more sociological inquiry of how justice plays out in reality, finding that young people lack self and social recognition which hinders their ability to make justice claims. Third, applying the concepts of input and throughput legitimacy, it explores whether youth participation increases the democratic legitimacy of UNFCCC-orchestrated initiatives, finding that the UNFCCC offers an accessible entry point for young newcomers to climate governance, but this does not necessarily lead to increased engagement in orchestrated initiatives. Finally, taking a step back to examine the implications of these three interlinked studies as a whole, it considers a range of normative rationales which underpin youth participation in this context. It argues that, at present, youth participation in the UNFCCC is not fully delivering against any of these rationales, offering a series of recommendations to ameliorate this. In particular, it emphasises a need for the UNFCCC Secretariat and COP Presidencies to play a more proactive role in supporting youth, along with other less powerful NSAs, to increase democratic legitimacy and establish a fairer, more inclusive global climate governance regime which works for all generations.

This thesis applies a post-political lens to online activity on shale gas, using Lancashire, England as its case study. Its focus is upon the ways in which online activity may both contribute to, and constrain, the expression of dissent. It argues there is a dual gap in the current literature: empirically, in considering how online activity may be influencing the development of the debate and theoretically, in how we conceive of conflict over shale gas. It seeks to address these gaps using a combination of 37 stakeholder interviews and social media postings from anti-shale gas groups. The first results chapter draws from post-political theory to build a framework through which to understand the conflict over shale gas in England. It identifies three main areas of dispute: over the legitimate modes for public participation in the debate; over the scope of the threat presented by development, and over the credibility of existing knowledge on shale gas. The second results chapter uses this framework to consider the role of online information in the developing dispute. It shows how a lack of technical information led to an online information divide which constrained how the dominant institutional actors engaged online. Anti-shale gas campaigners remained relatively unconstrained but the substantial burden of online activism contributed towards perceptions of disempowerment, spurring a move to direct action. The third results chapter applies a collective action frame analysis to social media postings aimed at mobilising supporters to take part in direct action. It argues that while mobilising on social media has significant advantages for campaigners, it also has the potential to dilute a movement’s messages amidst pressure to maintain local approbation. The apparent paradoxical effects of digitally mediated activism and the implications for practice and theory are discussed in the final chapter, alongside recommendations for future research.

This is a genealogy of sustainability. It begins with a single discontinuity, observed throughout the literature: that there was once environmental Malthusianism, but now there is ecological modernisation. By working outward from this discontinuity, it is possible to trace the most significant events in the history of sustainability, from its emergence in thought and discourse, through to its present form. The discontinuity itself took the form of a three-stage process: the fall of Malthusianism, the vacuum it left behind, and the rise of ecological modernisation. In order to understand the fall of environmental Malthusianism it is necessary to trace its descent and unpick its emergence; in order to understand the rise of ecological modernisation, it is necessary to discern the conditions of possibility and the unique characteristics that determined its success. The story begins circa 1920, with the birth of ecology, and the ecological problematisation it brought with it. Ecology not only gave us 'the' environment as a single ontological object-and the environmentalism that seeks to protect it-but also provided us with the language and concepts with which to problematise our relationship with it. The first expression of this problematisation was environmental Malthusianism, but Malthusianism itself was a problematic discourse, built upon a relation of power exercised over women. With the rise of feminism came the fall of Malthusianism, and the vacuum in environmental politics was made. By then several decades had passed, and the vacuum was shaped by the political context of the 1980s. The new discourse of environmental politics had to be sufficiently different from its toxic predecessor, sufficiently developed as a policy discourse, and sufficiently compatible with the nascent politics of the time-and ecological modernisation was an ideal fit. What this genealogy shows is that the roots of sustainability are to be found in the ecological problematisation, and that its trajectory has been shaped by events that were often only indirectly related. Sustainability is a product of historical contingency; to understand sustainability is to understand the contingencies that determined its emergence.

In this thesis, I explore and interpret ethical food consumption as a site of formation, negotiation, and articulation of individuals’ personal and social identities. Drawing on Margaret Archer's conceptualization of reflexivity as an essential human property and identity as a unique constellation of ultimate concerns about the world and our relationships with it, I develop an account of ethical consumer practices as subjective, reflexive, and intentional projects of morally concerned agents through which they attain their desired self-concepts and engage with corresponding social roles. By exploring the origins of the participants’ concerns over food ethics and tracing the evolution of their dietary commitments, I yield an understanding of how people develop ethical consumers identities as well as how they negotiate their moral food projects within the constantly changing objective conditions and subjective circumstances. Coming from a critical realist perspective, I examine the ways in which agency and structure interact to give rise to idiosyncratic ethical consumer practices and pursuits, the role that both agential and structural properties and powers play in shaping individuals’ engagement in ethical food consumption, and how both the continuities and inconsistencies of subjective ethical food commitments might be explained, thus aiming toward a more comprehensive social theory about the underlying causal mechanisms and generative principles of ethical consumer practices and identities. In doing so, I seek to put critical pressure on the conceptual fallacies and methodological biases that reside in the field of consumer research and, in counterbalance, point to a more integrated and balanced approach to studying, understanding, and explaining consumer behaviour in general and ethical consumer practices in particular. I contribute to larger theoretical debates on the relationships between consumption activities and the construction of individual identities as well as the interplay between agential subjectivity and structural objectivity in human practices and behaviours.

This thesis examines how and why different grassroots sustainability associations (GSAs) frame sustainability issues to mobilise members of the community to participate in or support the association and to practice sustainably. There was limited existing literature on the role of GSAs in framing sustainability issues and how framing affects GSAs’ approach to delivering their sustainability objectives. The research for this thesis took a qualitative approach; semi-structured interviews and document research were conducted to collect data on three diverse GSAs based in the UK. Drawing on literature from social movement researchers on collective action frames it demonstrates how and why different GSAs frame sustainability issues differently. This thesis focusses on a broad range of internal processes that guide the work of GSAs, including framing processes, rather than focussing on external processes or the outcomes of the collective action of GSAs. In doing so, it makes three contributions to our knowledge of GSAs. First, this thesis increases understanding of how and why different GSAs frame sustainability issues to mobilise members of the community to participate in or support the group and to practice sustainably. Second, it provides an understanding of how the framing of sustainability issues influences the strategies and resources that GSAs use. Third, it provides a framework for understanding the collective action of GSAs that builds on previous work in the social movement literature on framing, strategies, resources, culture, and collective identity. These concepts have not previously been brought together to understand framing processes and collective action. The framework shows that when a GSA draws on one of the elements this constrains the range of other elements that can be drawn on. Therefore, GSAs are constrained in their ability to deliver sustainability. These contributions complement the literature on practice change for sustainable communities, grassroots innovations, and skills for sustainable communities.

This research study focuses on children’s influence on parents’ pro-environmental behaviour, motivated by a long-term environmental education programme. This locus of interest has been approached from four different views (experts, teachers, parents and children), applying innovative methods for data collection and analysis. This study is framed by the literature on environmental education and education for sustainable development, as well as by the literature related to children’s influence on parents’ pro-environmental behaviour. Moreover, this framework is also complemented by the literature on children’s role in family decisionmaking process and influence on parents in general. This study makes methodological, theoretical and empirical contributions. More specifically, the methodological novelties lie in the use of innovative data collection methods and a differentiated approach of the topic which constitutes the methodology of the research. The theoretical contribution of this study regards the development of the ‘Children’s confidenceinfluence model’ that explains an ongoing feedback process based on the impact of children’s confidence in their knowledge and ability to influence, on their parents’ perceptions of their children’s influence. The empirical originality of this study lies in the fact that it is the first to address the topic of inter-generational influence in the context of education for sustainable development as a central focus. Moreover, this research study presents a classification of children’s influence on their parents’ pro-environmental behaviour based on parents’ own perceptions of their children’s influence.