Abstract:
We consider practices that sustain social and physical environments beyond those dominating sustainable
HCI discourse. We describe links between walking, sociality, and using resources in a case study of
community-based, solar, cellphone charging in villages in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. Like 360 million
rural Africans, inhabitants of these villages are poor and, like 25% and 92% of the world, respectively, do not
have domestic electricity or own motor vehicles. We describe nine practices in using the charging stations
we deployed. We recorded 700 people using the stations, over a year, some regularly. We suggest that the
way we frame practices limits insights about them, and consider various routines in using and sharing
local resources to discover relations that might also feature in charging. Specifically, walking interconnects
routines in using, storing, sharing and sustaining resources, and contributes to knowing, feeling, wanting
and avoiding as well as to different aspects of sociality, social order and perspectives on sustainability. Along
the way, bodies acquire literacies that make certain relationalities legible. Our study shows we cannot assert
what sustainable practice means a priori and, further, that detaching practices from bodies and their paths
limits solutions, at least in rural Africa. Thus, we advocate a more “alongly” integrated approach to data
about practices.