The map is not the territory: A sympathetic critique of energy research’s spatial turn

Abstract

Energy research in the social sciences has embarked on a 'spatial adventure' (Castán Broto and Baker, 2017). Those setting out on this journey have started from different disciplinary and theoretical locations, yet a "map" of sorts has begun to emerge. Made up of epistemological positions, conceptual vantage points and lines of enquiry, this map demarcates and structures the growing field of energy geography providing a more-or-less agreed guide to the territory. In the paper's first half I reflect on the scope and significance of the spatial turn in energy research. I describe the map now guiding much spatial research on energy, identifying core ideas around which spatially-sensitive social science energy research has come to cohere, notwithstanding its heterogeneity and internal diversity. I offer a supportive reading. In the second half, I offer a more critical reading of the adventure so far, arguing that it is unnecessarily limited in its reading of space. The full potential of a spatial perspective for social science research on energy has yet to be realised. I outline three pathways for realising some of this potential-geographies of knowledge production, differentiation and disassembly-and show how each takes energy research's spatial adventure in new directions.

Rescaling low‐carbon transformations: Towards a relational ontology

“…To date, geographers have been relatively silent in terms of explicitly exploring the relationship between the production and articulation of scale, on the one hand, and urban carbon reduction efforts, on the other (but see, for example, Bulkeley, Broto & Maassen, ). While Geography as a whole has been displaying increasing engagement with low‐carbon and energy transitions as part of an – arguable – “spatial turn” in this field (Bridge, ), questions of scale have rarely received detailed consideration within such debates. At the same time, the literature on low‐carbon urban transformations and scale is dominated by nested and linear understandings of the patterns that exist at different levels of spatial aggregation (van Doren et al., ).…”

Maintaining power: Decarbonisation and recentralisation in Cuba’s Energy Revolution

“…Widely, the Cuban case contributes to a decolonisation of energy geographies – a field that relies extensively on Western experiences for defining research concerns and conceptual frameworks (Bridge, , p. 16). However, inasmuch as Cuba's Energy Revolution highlights the contested politics of energy use, further studies in a variety of empirical contexts, reflecting different political‐economic rationales, are needed to broaden the geographies of theory.…”

The social dynamics of turbine tourism and recreation: Introducing a mixed-method approach to the study of the first U.S. offshore wind farm

“…In light of this gap, scholars have noted how incongruities between academic researchers, business persons, and policy makers can result in the lack of practical application for energy research (Sovacool, 2014). It has become clear that social scientists play a key role in parsing out the social dimensions of energy decisions that go far beyond the mere availability of technology or resources (Hui & Walker, 2018;Bridge, 2018;Stephens, Wilson, & Peterson, 2008), and that social science is crucial in identifying the positive and negative impacts and meaning of energy transitions on society (Stern, 2017;Butler, Parkhill, & Luzecka, 2018;Benham, 2016). In response to this call for more social science in energy research, an increasing number of energy research studies are addressing human dimensions of energy systems, including the importance of place (Firestone, Bidwell, Gardner, and Knapp, 2018;Devine-Wright & Howes, 2010;Hui & Walker, 2018;Bridge, 2018), public engagement (Buhr & Wibeck, 2014;Eaton et al, 2017;Klain et al, 2017), cultural narratives (Bidwell 2017;Malone et al, 2017;Harris, 2017;Moezzi, Janda, & Rotmann, 2017), ethics (Smith & High, 2017;Frigo, 2017;Howe & Boyer, 2016), and social uncertainty (Li & Pye, 2018;Purkus, Gawel, & Thrän, 2017), among others.…”