A Postcolonial Critique of Community Energy: Searching for Community as Solidarity in India and Scotland

Abstract

Community renewable energy (CRE) represents a growing empirical and academic turn towards community-based sustainability and climate change interventions. This paper brings together postcolonial theory and CRE for the first time to outline fundamental tensions in the conceptualisation and application of the idea of community. The understanding of community within the CRE discourse is largely: (1) location-based; and/or (2) a community of choice that is consciously opted into. Driven by postcolonial theory, this paper counterpoises both as a form of community as contract against an idea of community as solidarity. Its central thesis is that actually existing community, contrary to how the bulk of CRE literature commonly understands it, is a combination of bonds of solidarity and emergent purposes. The paper conceptualises community as fluid bonds of solidarity that align and realign differently around different purposes. R esum e: L' energie renouvelable communautaire (CRE) repr esente de plus en plus un virage empirique et acad emique en direction d'interventions communautaires de d eveloppement durable et de lutte contre le changement climatique. Cet article fait dialoguer pour la premi ere fois la th eorie postcoloniale et l'approche CRE afin de souligner les tensions fondamentales dans la conceptualisation et l'application de l'id ee de communaut e. La compr ehension de la communaut e dans le discours de la CRE est largement bas ee sur: (1) le local, le lieu, ou la localisation; et / ou (2) une communaut e de choix qui est d elib er ement choisie. Inspir e par la th eorie postcoloniale, cet article s'oppose a ces deux acceptations de la communaut e comme contrat pour proposer l'id ee de communaut e comme solidarit e. La th ese centrale de l'article est que contrairement au sens donn e la plupart du temps par la litt erature traitant de la CRE, la communaut e r eellement existante est une combinaison de liens de solidarit e et de finalit es emergentes. L'article conceptualise la communaut e comme des liens fluides de solidarit e qui s'alignent et se r ealignent diff eremment autour de diff erents objectifs.

Delivering an off-grid transition to sustainable energy in Ethiopia and Mozambique

“…The previous examples show that the more embedded in existing practices of energy access and the more reliant on local communities, the more likely renewable energy technologies are to become stable features of energy landscapes and support broader transitions towards clean energy. At the same time, relying on pre-established community organizations also enhances risks of group capture and intra-communities unequal access to energy [26]. Identifying agents of change in energy governance (particularly within communities) is thus essential.…”

Energy geographies in/of the Anthropocene: Where now?

“…Inspired by a postcolonial sensibility Kumar and Taylor Aiken (2021, p. 19) find an “ontological narrowness” in the Euro‐American (perhaps more appropriately, Anglophone) notions of community motivating community energy research and practice. Rather than working with a liberal notion of community, where groups of people come together to invest, manage, and maintain energy projects (community‐as‐contract), driven by empirical findings from India and Scotland, Kumar and Taylor Aiken (2021) bring together an analysis that looks at the coming together of ‘pre‐modern’ structures with modern motivations of equal rights and individual autonomy. Community then emerges as “fluid bonds of solidarity that align and realign differently around different purposes” (Kumar & Taylor Aiken, 2021, p. 2).…”

“…Rather than working with a liberal notion of community, where groups of people come together to invest, manage, and maintain energy projects (community‐as‐contract), driven by empirical findings from India and Scotland, Kumar and Taylor Aiken (2021) bring together an analysis that looks at the coming together of ‘pre‐modern’ structures with modern motivations of equal rights and individual autonomy. Community then emerges as “fluid bonds of solidarity that align and realign differently around different purposes” (Kumar & Taylor Aiken, 2021, p. 2). As the idea of community energy gains more traction, energy geographers need to critically investigate the idea of community itself because “autonomy and representation are being claimed on behalf not only of individuals but of communities” by both the subaltern and elites (Chatterjee, 2011, p. 206).…”

Hopefulness for transformative grassroots change

“…Crucially, there is no mega‐definition of community that works; it is deliberately an open, fluid, polyvalent term, and the need to continue to expand and contrast examples across space and place remains. There is also a need to continue to critically reflect on how certain definitions get employed and to what ends, when in practice communities remain fluid and emergent (Kumar & Taylor Aiken, 2020). While there is plenty of work yet to be done—through research, in practice and through praxis—it is now unquestionable that community initiatives are central to the possibilities of transformation.…”

“…There is now greater recognition that this scalar approach can limit our understanding of the possibilities of community initiatives and unnecessarily consigns such projects to notions of being marginal or niche. Rather scale is not linear (Leitner, Sheppard, & Sziarto, 2008), place relations are not bounded (but interdependent and emergent), horizontal connections between places and initiatives abound, solidarity networks are transnational (Kumar & Taylor Aiken, 2020), and inspiring ideas and practices travel. All of which de‐emphasise scalar differences, though further work is still required on relations to constraining factors such as state hierarchies (more below on this) and the messiness and compromise this can entail.…”