Community as tool for low carbon transitions: Involvement and containment, policy and action

Aiken, Gerald Taylor

doi:10.1177/2399654418791579

Cited by 11 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 27 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…The growing use of renewable sources of energy has changed the socio-material energy landscape through the emergence of new technologies, actors, regulations, and forms and spaces of governance. In recent years there has been a growing focus on the emerging role of Rommel et al, 2016;Taylor Aiken, 2018a;Walker, 2011), and considered a key means for changing the social and spatial relations embedded in our energy systems (Burke and Stephens, 2017;Szulecki, 2018;van Veelen and van der Horst, 2018). Community groups -used here to refer to civil society groups rooted in place -are, however, often primarily focused on local energy generation and use.…”

Section: Introducing Energy Intermediariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caught in the middle? Creating and contesting intermediary spaces in low-carbon transitions

Veelen

2019

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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The distributed nature of renewable energy has given rise to new forms and scales of energy governance, in particular the emerging role of households and community organisations in generating and distributing renewable energy. Accompanying this trend has been the emergence of intermediary organisations, whose role it is to mediate between these actors cf. the market and the state, with the aim to move from local experimentation to widespread transformational change. While in recent years a significant body of research has emerged that has considered intermediary functions, less is known about intermediary spaces. By tracing how intermediary spaces are shaped, negotiated, protected, and expanded, this article makes three contributions to the literature on energy governance and low-carbon intermediaries. First, a focus on the relational nature of intermediary spaces challenges the community/state binary in energy governance. Second, it highlights the power dynamics behind these emergent relational spaces; showing such spaces are not neutral, but produced through social relations within and beyond them, affecting the functions that intermediaries seek to fulfil. Third, it provides an understanding of how the ever-changing nature of intermediary spaces can also enable new spaces for action to emerge and challenge the status quo.

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Section: Introducing Energy Intermediariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Caught in the middle? Creating and contesting intermediary spaces in low-carbon transitions

Veelen

2019

Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

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“…But, as discussed in Chapter 1, many other narratives of prosperity exist and operate at different levels of experience and analysis, from the personal to the communal and the organisational, and all interact to shape the emerging discursive space. The consequence is that concepts, notions and narratives can circulate within different sectors, communities and action spaces and can be interpreted differently, in part because of the way they are linked to radically different phenomenological experiences (Taylor Aiken, 2019). For example, it is evident that what communities in Birmingham might associate with the term levelling up differs somewhat from what the UK government intends by the term, and the reasons for this link to their very different experiences of inequality.…”

Section: Prosperity: Lexical Fields and Discoursesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century

2023

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“…The pattern we see emerging has community as a form of contract; a contractual form of association and togetherness. This contract is based on pursuit of a common place‐rooted life, and/or an involvement consciously chosen and entered into as individuals (Taylor Aiken 2018).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kumar

Aiken

2020

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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.

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Community as tool for low carbon transitions: Involvement and containment, policy and action

Abstract: This paper introduces the Heideggerian

Cited by 11 publications

References 27 publications

Caught in the middle? Creating and contesting intermediary spaces in low-carbon transitions

Caught in the middle? Creating and contesting intermediary spaces in low-carbon transitions

Prosperity in the Twenty-First Century

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

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