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Appel à CR critiques: ‘Courants’ anthropologiques. Pratiques et critiques de l’énergie

Appel à comptes rendus critiques : Lectures anthropologiques

Numéro thématique

‘Courants’ anthropologiques. Pratiques et critiques de l’énergie 

 

Coordinateurs du numéro :

Nathalie Ortar, Université de Lyon, ENTPE/LAET

Tristan Loloum, Université de Tours

 

Lectures anthropologiques est une revue francophone, en ligne, entièrement dévolue aux comptes rendus critiques. Le présent appel à comptes rendus critiques porte sur les travaux récents ayant pour thème l’énergie.

Après avoir été longtemps absente des préoccupations de l’anthropologie mainstream, l’énergie semble progressivement s’imposer comme un objet légitime de l’anthropologie contemporaine. Cette dynamique s’est développée à la faveur d’un « tournant post-humaniste » des sciences sociales, soit un courant de pensée né à la fin du XXe siècle, qui traite du rapport de l’humain aux technologies et du changement radical et inéluctable que cette relation a provoqué ou risque de provoquer dans l’avenir (théorie de l’acteur-réseau, réflexion sur l’anthropocène, les Science and Technology Studies, etc.), du sentiment d’urgence induit par le réchauffement climatique et des nouvelles tensions et incertitudes induites par la « transition énergétique » (passage des énergies fossiles aux renouvelables, réduction de la consommation, sortie du nucléaire, etc.). Ces changements infrastructurels interrogent l’anthropologie sociale dès lors qu’ils affectent non seulement nos rapports symboliques et matériels à l’énergie, mais aussi nos rapports sociaux et politiques en général.

Les usages de l’énergie – à commencer par la maîtrise du feu – devraient pourtant figurer parmi les objets classiques de l’anthropologie tant ils interrogent notre rapport au monde et notre capacité à satisfaire certains besoins élémentaires, comme se nourrir ou se chauffer. Thématique centrale pour des anthropologues comme Leslie White (1943)[1], l’énergie s’est peu à peu effacée des discussions anthropologiques dans les années 1970, en même temps que les théories évolutionnistes, pour se diluer dans d’autres objets de recherche (communautés, ressources, environnement, développement, etc.) ou dans la recherche « appliquée » (Boyer 2014 :313-314 ; Clarke 2015 : 203-204). Hormis les travaux de Laura Nader (1981) critiquant l’influence de la « culture des experts de l’énergie » sur les politiques publiques américaines, force est de constater que l’anthropologie sociale s’est peu saisie de ces thématiques jusque dans les années 2000 (Strauss et Orlove 2003 ; Wilhite 2005 ; Henning 2005 ; Love 2008). La multiplication ces dernières années d’ouvrages, numéros spéciaux et conférences abordant l’énergie sous l’angle des sciences sociales atteste d’un nouvel engouement pour le sujet.

Plusieurs facteurs peuvent expliquer cette résurgence de l’objet « énergie ». Premièrement, les inquiétudes et remises en question suscitées par les crises environnementales et climatiques nous poussent à reconsidérer nos modes de vie, nos environnements techniques et les systèmes de savoirs qui les soutiennent. Il n’est dès lors pas surprenant que les anthropologues soient de plus en plus enclins à se saisir de ces enjeux qui remettent en cause le fondement des sociétés contemporaines au Nord comme au Sud. À cette curiosité intrinsèque de scientifiques confrontés à l’actualité de la transition énergétique (efficacité énergétique, durabilité, libéralisation des marchés de l’électricité, etc.) dont les conséquences sont autant sociales, économiques (Melosi 2010) que culturelles (Nader, 2010), se combine une demande de plus en plus pressante à l’endroit des sciences sociales, adressée par les politiques et les industriels pour comprendre les problèmes associés aux nouveaux défis technologiques, économiques et comportementaux qu’impliquent cette transition énergétique, et le cas échéant, pour les résoudre. Ce regain d’intérêt pour l’énergie s’inscrit à son tour dans un mouvement épistémologique plus global des sciences sociales tendant vers une plus grande inclusion des « non-humains » (nature, animaux, techniques, infrastructures, objets, etc.) dans l’analyse des faits sociaux. Cela se traduit à la fois par un renouvellement théorique (tournant ontologique, post-humanisme, anthropocène, acteur-réseau, etc.) et une reconfiguration institutionnelle des savoirs, avec la montée en puissance de « studies » (Science and Technology Studies, Infrastructure Studies, Energy Studies) et autres « humanités » à thème (Environmental Humanities, Energy Humanities) situées au carrefour de plusieurs disciplines.

L’objectif de ce numéro spécial est donc double. Dans un premier temps, il vise à s’emparer de contributions anthropologiques récentes portant sur les enjeux sociaux, culturels et politiques de l’énergie, pour montrer la pluralité des approches retenues: tant dans les objets investis, les échelles retenues (du foyer au réseau, en passant par l’immeuble, la collectivité et la gouvernance) que les choix théoriques (économie politique, Actor Network Theory, théorie de la pratique, etc.) et méthodologiques (observation participante, biographies, anthropologie visuelle, sensorielle, anthropologie appliquée, etc.) adoptés. Cette partie interroge également la « demande sociale » émanant des entreprises productrices d’énergie et des collectivités territoriales faisant appel à des anthropologues pour mieux comprendre les « usagers ». Une sous-partie questionne les conditions du « marché scientifique » poussant des étudiants et des chercheurs vers des thématiques potentiellement porteuses en termes de débouchés et de financements. Dans un second temps, il cherche à mieux comprendre la nature des enjeux sociaux entourant les systèmes énergétiques – entendus comme toute installation ou ensemble d’installations intervenant dans la chaine de transformation-distribution-utilisation de l’énergie dans un contexte donné (pays, agglomération, usine, etc.). On cherchera également à comprendre les effets des transferts et transformations des matériaux énergétiques sur l’ensemble des phénomènes sociopolitiques. Il s’agira ainsi d’interroger en quoi l’anthropologie et l’ethnographie peuvent apporter des éclairages nouveaux sur la nature politique de l’énergie (Boyer 2014 : 325-326).

Publications proposées :

  • Atabaki, Touraj, Bini, Elisabetta, Ehsani, Kaveh (dir.), 2018, Working for Oil. Comparative Social Histories of Labor in the Global Oil Industry, Basingstoke, Palgrave.
  • Garabuau-Moussaoui, Isabelle, Magali Pierre (dir.), 2016, Pratiques sociales et usages de l’énergie, Paris, Lavoisier-Tec & Doc, Socio-économie de l’énergie.
  • Howe Cyme (coord.), 2015, “Energy Transitions and Climate Change in Latin America” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, vol. 20, n°2.
  • Jaume Franquesa, 2018, Power Struggles. Dignity, Value, and the Renewable Energy Frontier in Spain, Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
  • Love Thomas, Cindy Isenhour (coord.), 2016, « Energy and economy: Recognizing high‐energy modernity as a historical period », Economic Anthropology, 3, n°1.
  • McNeish, John-Andrew, Axel Borchgrevink, Owen Logan, 2015, Contested powers: the politics of energy and development in Latin America, Londres, Zed Books.
  • Smith Jessica, High Mette (coord.), 2017, « Exploring the Anthropology of Energy: Ethnography, Energy and Ethics », Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 30.
  • Wilhite Harold, 2015, The Political Economy of a Low Carbon Transformation: Breaking the Habits of Expansive Capitalism, Londres, Routledge.
  • Coleman Leo, 2017, Moral Technology. Electrification as Political Ritual in New Delhi, Ithaca, Cornell University Press.

 

Soumettre une proposition

Les propositions de comptes rendus critiques doivent être soumises à nathalie.ortar@entpe.fr et tristan.loloum@univ-tours.fr (copie à : Lectures.anthropologiques@gmail.com),  avant le 1er juillet 2018.

Elles doivent comprendre, dans les éléments suivants :

– Les références de l’ouvrage choisi

– Les prénom et nom de l’auteur.e. – Affiliation institutionnelle – Courriel

– Une notice biographique (max 10 lignes)

Les auteur-e-s seront avisé-e-s par retour du courrier des propositions retenues comme celles non retenues. L’acceptation de la proposition ne signifie pas systématiquement celle du texte final, qui fera l’objet d’une relecture des coordinateurs puis d’une double évaluation.

 

Calendrier

1er juillet 2018 : date limite pour l’envoi d’une proposition

2 novembre 2018 : réception des articles complets

Hiver 2019 : évaluation des articles par les coordinateurs puis les évaluateurs choisis par le comité de rédaction de Lectures anthropologiques et, reprise des textes par les auteurs.

Mars 2019 : remise des textes finaux, travail éditorial

Avril 2019 : Parution du numéro

 

[1] Il donne son nom à la « Loi de White », qui stipule que l’évolution culturelle est fonction de la quantité d’énergie disponible par tête d’habitant et par an.

Peer review of an anonymous Energy Humanities paper – by Laura Watts

Peer review of an anonymous Energy Humanities paper

Laura Watts

www.sand14.com

IT University of Copenhagen

 

The following is based on my comments made at the Energy Impacts Roundtable, Bergen, 2017.

 

This was, as ever, a delightful paper to read; more research into social, cultural, and material relations with energy is always welcome. However, I do have some comments for the editors and authors to reflect on before publication.

First, there are moments when I feel the author is not sufficiently familiar with the language of their fieldsite and research location. There is some confusion in the difference between energy (measured in Joules), electricity (generally measured in Kilowatthours), and power (measured in Watts). These are not the same, but they are related and their relationship matters. Understanding how electricity is generated from energy (stored in ‘natural’ resources), how it is transmitted through a variety of Potential Differences (or Voltages) across different parts of the electrical network, and how it is measured and calculated (in Kilowatthours) through metering and tariffing is crucial to understanding the problems that engineers and policy must address. It generally behoves any researcher to learn something of the language of their fieldsite, and energy systems are no different.

It should also be remembered that energy is not a universal language. There are substantial differences across energy industries (photovoltaics, coal, nuclear, wind, tide etc.), across regions (compare USA with Denmark, for example), and even across local communities– remembering that electricity networks provide more capacity to some places than others. The histories and futures of both electricity grid infrastructure and tariffing are very diverse, and therefore pessimism or optimism in one region does not translate into a global trend.

Second, the author should be cautious not to repeat prior work, but instead refer to literature they might regard as outside their discipline or usual citation. Social, cultural and material studies of energy have been ongoing for many decades in other fields, particularly in Science and Technology Studies (STS), and there are long-standing overlaps between geography, anthropology and other humanities. Energy Humanities is an interdisciplinary field, in my experience, tacking back and forth over energetic seas.

Just to give a few examples of relevant literature the author might want to draw upon to strengthen their argument. Studies of infrastructure as a social, technical and environmental relation seems a core resource, with perhaps the most important work being Susan Leigh Star’s Ethnography of Infrastructures [1]. Her attention is political, on mundane and invisible work, on maintenance and the unsung labours that hold an infrastructure together so that it can endure over time.

Following on, the author might want to draw on Ashley Carse’s work on the Panama Canal, which explores the environment and local forest communities integral to the infrastructure [2]. Or Nicole Starosielski’s work to trace and problematise the practices in undersea cable networks that transmit internet data– work that resonates with electricity grid transmission [3].  The author might also explore prior research in the Public Understanding of Science around nuclear energy (e.g. work by Brian Wynne), which reflects on how publics are made and participate, or not, as experts in energy futures [4].

Third, the author should be cautious not to repeat the technological determinism that comes with the energy industry, nor the associated binary division between social/user and technical/infrastructure. Can they attend to how they ‘cut’ the problem of energy, or in classic ethnographic terms, how they make their fieldsite of energy [5].

When reading the paper, I was concerned that the author sometimes borrows, uncritically, the categories of ‘consumer’ and ‘producer’ (as well as the industry favourite, ‘prosumer’) without reflecting on the implications. To give two examples in the paper, which I feel warrant closer and more critical work:

One, in discussions with the energy operator, ‘people’ were always reduced to ‘consumers’ or ‘prosumers’, which reduces their social and cultural relationship with energy to a number e.g. to the Kilowatthours consumed or produced [6]. This tends to make invisible the richness of social and cultural relations with energy, both within the industry and in the home. Indeed, this reductionism risks losing much that anthropology and the social sciences has to say about people’s relations with energy, including new concepts and approaches they might offer to the energy industry.

Two, and this is somewhat related, in the discussion on Smart Meters (and smart energy apps) the paper could take a moment to reflect on the reduction of people to a number on the meter that must be audited and managed. This, again, risks losing sight of the diverse relations people have with energy [7]. To offer a suggestion, I would welcome a more intersectional, and multi-species, account of energy relations [8].

Finally, and most importantly, there is the question of what world the author hopes to generate through writing this paper. With so much at stake in energy futures, whether that be anthropogenic climate change or colonialism through extraction, it feels as if the author needs to take a breath and ask: what world does this paper make possible, and what world does it resist?

I particularly want to point to the problem with critique, and repeat an old argument made by Donna Haraway (and in a different vein by Bruno Latour): when we describe, unchanged, what we wish to critique we are also re-inscribing it and making it travel [9]. In short, all our descriptions of energy relations, and energy systems, are political and they tell the world one way, and not another. There is no pure description, only a political account that is located, and the author must choose its politics. Will the writing reproduce hierarchical orders, colonial stories, and give power to the already privileged? Or will the paper work to write against the grain, to resist privilege, to re-situate power, to give voice to those often silenced? (And this can be within companies and inside industrial communities, of course.)

Moreover, the resources that the author draws on also require attention because they, too, come with their own histories and politics that will cling to their argument; to quote Marilyn Strathern, “it matters what ideas we use to think other ideas [with]” [10]. In short, does the author intend to support the dystopian future of the energy multinational, which they describe in detail?

My comments are not intended to be daunting or frustrating to the author, rather to recognise their power as an academic to make a difference in the world. Here are two practical methods the author might draw on as alternatives.

One, Haraway suggests recognising how knowledge-making is both an empirical and creative practice. This should be familiar to any researcher: you have fragments of evidence that you must work to weave together. Haraway gives the researcher the potential to use this inherent creativity to a greater or lesser extent. From the careful, and always critically informed, retelling of their energy fieldsite, all the way to writing energy science fictions–all are Speculative Futures [11].

An alternative method, two, is to explore and experiment with writing style and public engagement. This may be too challenging to the author, or inappropriate to their audience, so this is a reminder not a requirement. As inspiration, I offer Anna Tsing and Elizabeth Pollman’s Global Futures card game [12], Sara Wylie’s work with citizen scientists around toxins and natural gas extraction [13], and Max Liboiron’s work to enact critical feminist politics in a citizen science laboratory that monitors ocean plastic [14]. Both games and civic laboratories are making futures otherwise, through creating and participating in their fieldsites otherwise [15]. And I regard publishing papers as no less an engagement in what futures can be.

I very much look forward to reading a revised version of this paper, and to its eventual publication. To close with some final words to propel the author: “it matters what matters we use to think other matters with… It matters what stories make worlds” [16]. I have no doubt that this author’s paper, and its engagement, will be one that others will think with, and will make new energy futures with.

 

References

[1] Star, Susan Leigh (1999) The Ethnography of Infrastructures. American Behavioral Scientists 43(3): 377–91.

[2] Carse, Ashley (2012) Nature as infrastructure: Making and managing the Panama Canal watershed. Social Studies of Science 42(4): 539–563.

[3] Starosielski, Nicole (2015) The Undersea Network. Durham ; London: Duke University Press.

[4] Wynne, Brian (2010 [1982]) Rationality and Ritual: Participation and Exclusion in Nuclear Decision-making, 2nd edition. London : Earthscan, Routledge.

[5] When talking about ‘cutting’ out energy and the work needed to locate a fieldsite I am referring to: Gupta, A and Ferguson, J (1997) Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley: University of California Press; Strathern, Marilyn (1996) Cutting the network. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2(3): 517–535.

[6] For the classic discussion on the production of numbers from social groups see: Porter, Theodore M. (1996) Trust in Numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

[7] For a discussion of auditing in another domain see: Strathern, Marilyn (2000) Audit cultures: anthropological studies in accountability, ethics, and the academy. London: Routledge.

[8] Intersectionality is an approach developed in feminist studies to understand how identity is not singular nor a priori, but dynamically intersects between groups see: Crenshaw, Kimberle (1991) Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color. Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–1299. For a discussion of multi-species infrastructure see: Morita, Atsuro (2016) Multispecies Infrastructure: Infrastructural Inversion and Involutionary Entanglements in the Chao Phraya Delta, Thailand. Ethnos: 1–20.

[9] Haraway, Donna J. (1994) A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies. Configurations 2(1): 59–71. Latour, Bruno (2004) Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry 30 (Winter): 225–248.

[10] Strathern, Marilyn (1992) Reproducing the future: essays on anthropology, kinship and the new reproductive technologies. Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp.10.

[11] Haraway, Donna J. (2016) Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene, in Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.

[12] Tsing, Anna and Pollman, Elizabeth (2005) Global Futures: The Game, in Rosenberg, D and Harding, S (eds), Histories of the Future, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 107–122.

[13] Wylie, S., Jalbert, K., Dosemagen, S., Ratto, M. (2014) Institutions for Civic Technoscience: How Critical Making is Transforming Environmental Research. The Information Society 30(2): 116–126.

[14] Liboiron, Max (2016) Civic Technologies for Monitoring Marine Plastics. Journal of Ocean Technology 11(2).

[15] Also see both: Watts, Laura (2017) The Draukie’s Tale: Origin Myth for Wave Energy, in Szeman, I. and Boyer, D. (eds), Energy Humanities: An Anthology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Watts, Laura (2014) Liminal Futures: A Poem for Islands at the Edge. In Leach, J. and Wilson, L. (eds.) Subversion, conversion, development: Cross-Cultural Knowledge Exchange and the Politics of Design, Cambridge: MIT Press.

[16] Haraway, Donna (2013) SF: Science Fiction, Speculative Fabulation, String Figures, So Far. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. Available from http://adanewmedia.org/2013/11/issue3-haraway/

Moving with Energy from Periphery to Center of Society – by Ståle Knudsen

I was asked to talk about my research agenda related to energy issues, especially “what I will or would like to study in the near future” and “what should be studied”. Well, this is easy to answer when it comes to the near future as I am currently leading the project Energethics  which explores how Norwegian energy companies handle Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) when they operate abroad. Much previous research has stressed the way in which CSR has been used as a tool, especially by extractive industries, to bypass the state. Our research asks whether CSR is done differently when the corporations are partly or fully state-owned and embedded in a ‘Nordic model’. While we focus on different kinds of energy production in seven countries, we also research management in Norwegian headquarters as well as at other important sites, such as Statoil’s London office. Ultimately the project addresses issues of globalization and neoliberalization. Our multicited approach to the ‘flow’, negotiation and localization of CSR provides a way to study larger processes comparatively.

Neoliberalization in energy policies

In the longer term I want to explore further the role of neoliberalization in energy policies. I have started to work comparatively on this with a focus on Turkey. Based on my earlier work on fishers, fishery management, introduced species, complemented with current research on energy and irrigation, I have started to sketch a discussion of neo-liberalism’s manifold impacts on the environment in Turkey. Combining ethnographic work with other methods, this study will compare the extent to which neoliberal ideas and practices have been implemented in four different sectors – energy, fisheries, agriculture, and the management of biodiversity. I explore and compare the role of the material, the state, international institutions and popular protests amongst other issues, in creating different dynamics in each field. A preliminary analysis of this material indicates that state policy and neoliberal instruments are deployed differently in the energy sector than in other sectors surveyed. Why? Well, to simplify, because the state has different interests in the different sectors. While fisheries and agriculture no longer play a central role to the Turkish political economy, energy has moved to its core. Energy is considered central to the working of society, and a major concern and focus of state policies. Thus, concurrently, moving the attention of the anthropological gaze to energy also means moving ethnography from the margins to the center of society, from periphery to energy/power. This resonates, of course, with recent work on energy (Mitchell 2011) and makes, in certain respects, anthropology more relevant.

New research agendas

Then, what should we study? I suggest that anthropology should direct more, though not exclusive, attention on:

  • Energy corporations. Little anthropological work has been done inside of energy corporations. I disagree with the claim that since ethnographers have a tendency “to emphasize and identify with their subjects” they risk cooptation when doing fieldwork in corporate offices (Benson and Kirsch 2010:464). I think our methods and critical stance is robust enough to handle that challenge, which – by the way – should not be considered unique to studies of corporations. We should be able to distinguish empathy for informants from sympathy for corporations.
  • State regulatory bodies have central roles in the way production, distribution and consumption of energy are managed in most societies. They are key arenas for implementing policy changes, making it important to explore further the interface between policy, corporations and citizens.
  • Infrastructure has recently attracted (re-)new(ed) interest among anthropologists, and studies emphasize the way in which energy, technology and politics are intertwined. I think, however, time is ripe for comparative studies that explore how different types of energy, with different materialities, engender – or interacts with – certain technologies and polities to produce a range of qualitatively different networks or systems with different potentialities.

Methodological challenges

Research of all of the abovementioned issues comes with methodological challenges. Often, the classical anthropological method of ‘hanging out’ with people over time will not work. This can be because access to corporations or regulatory bodies is difficult due to the organizations’ high degree of concern about managing public knowledge of them, and the anthropologists’ lack of bargaining power in such situations – we do not have much of interest to offer. Usually, the anthropologist will not have been able to delve deep into the life of the corporation before being kicked out: the corporation often has little interest in the anthropologist’s work, and the anthropologist little to offer in return. The ethnographer will often be considered a nuisance.[1] Additionally, the character of the relations we study impels us to work in many sites simultaneously. This involves travels, more semi-structured interviews than participation, non-continuous involvement with our interlocutors, actively create platforms for interaction, mapping infrastructures of extensive geographical extent or opaque character, and being present at or attending activities that involve alternative forms of sociality (social media, websites, documents, skype-meetings). If we bringe our critical sensibilities to these issues while developing new tools and cultivating teamwork, I believe that anthropology can handle these challenges very cautiously, wisely and creatively.

References:

Benson, Peter and Stuart Kirsch (2010) ‘Capitalism and the Politics of resignation’, Current Anthropology 51(4): 459-476.

Mitchell, Timothy (2011) Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. London: Verso.

[1] Steven Sampson, Department Seminar, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen.

CFP for ERSS: Problems of method in the social study of energy and climate change

CFP for Energy Research and Social Science

https://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-research-and-social-science/call-for-papers/problems-of-method-in-the-social-study-of-energy-and-climate 

Edited by James Goodman and Jonathan Paul Marshall, University of Technology Sydney

Energy and climate change are intimately related, as the main causes of climate change have to do with the production, politics, organisation and technology of energy. Social processes, rooted in prevailing models of capitalism and development, and the associated patterns of energyproduction and use, are altering world ecology and society. Researching questions of energy transition and climate change, poses profound questions for the methods of both social science and energy research.

This Special Issue aims to explore insights arising from how we go about researching energy and climate change from a social perspective. The questions and dilemmas that arise during research are both significant in themselves, and highly revealing of wider issues. Consequently we ask contributors to begin with their direct experience of undertaking research into the social aspects of energy and climate, and to use that experience, and the problems of method evoked, to explore the conundrums we face as part of a wider society being transformed by climate change and related forms of social action.

There are several matters which immediately call for attention:

  1. There are questions about the role of interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary or multi-methods research in grappling with interwoven socio-ecological contexts and their different knowledges;
  2. The extent to which climate and energy research necessarily engages with normative priorities and agendas for political agency, such as the politicization of knowledge;
  3. The degree to which the abstracted and distanced character of climate change creates conflicts between levels and aspects of social action.

There are also more practical issues such as:

  1. How to combine ecological processes with social processes;
  2. How to relate the qualitative experience of climate change with the quantitative ‘big data’ of climate science; and
  3. Problems of how to build methods of data collection and analysis in complex, multileveled situations.

This list of possible concerns is not meant to be exhaustive, but all these concerns engage, in one way or another, with the wider methodological and epistemological questions of how social scientists can bring the socio-ecological imagination to bear, to address the political relations between energy and climate change, and be sensitive to the consequences of the tools they employ. We are interested in papers from all kinds of social and cross-disciplinary research, including anthropology, economics, social psychology, political economy, statistical sociology, political science, cultural studies, social ecology, human geography, social studies of science and their various combinations.

Ideally papers would show how issues of method or methodology transformed a particular empirical study and opened insights into the nature of the social, and other, dynamics involved.

Time Table

Abstracts to be in by August 1st, 2017. Notification of acceptance by August 15th, 2017.

Papers due by November 1st, 2017, or earlier.

Final decision: June 1st, 2018.

Publication around July, 2018.

 

Please send abstracts to: jon.marshall@uts.edu.au & james.goodman@uts.edu.au