'Greening the People's Home': The Formative Power of Sustainable Development Discourse in Swedish Housing

Abstract

This article analyses what it takes for a new discourse to acquire formative power all the way from the formulation of ideas to the institutionalisation of new practices. Starting from seemingly contradictory propositions in the literature on housing and environmental policy discourses, and combining these with a contextual rational action approach, the empirical analysis traces the fate of the new sustainable development discourse introduced across many policy sectors in Sweden after 1996, including housing. It is found that who introduces new discursive ideas is important for their formative power; discourse introductions by government induce shifts in thoughts and talk across sectors. How this is done is even more important; metaphors and story lines of already institutionalised discourses strengthen formative power. Furthermore, using distributive measures with some strings attached is found to be an effective use of power resources to gain institutionalisation of the new discourse. However, it is found that institutionalised discourses at the local implementing level provide hindrances to formative power reaching all the way to new practices. This is furthermore accentuated by inherent contradictions in the Swedish discourse, as it built on equalising sustainable development with ecological modernisation.