2nd Call for papers: Geographies of energy vulnerability and resilience
(last submission date October 7th)
Annual Conference of the AAG, Seattle, Washington, April 12-16, 2011
Organisers: Rosie Day, University of Birmingham; Gordon Walker, Lancaster University; and Conor Harrison, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Much attention is currently being given to the domestic consumption of energy in terms of the need to reduce demand, not least for climate change mitigation reasons. However, there are many households whose ability to achieve affordable energy services is already low, and who are, as a result, vulnerable to various adverse consequences. The impacts of what is generally in a European context called ‘fuel poverty’ or ‘energy poverty’ and in the US addressed through ‘weatherisation’ and ‘energy assistance’ programmes, are taken to be attenuated health and wellbeing, but can extend into more various valued dimensions of everyday living and can constrain the achievement of various key capabilities and functionings that constitute a good and flourishing life. In this session we wish to consider what can make households of different forms and in different places vulnerable or resilient to the consequences of insufficient or insecure access to energy and explore some fundamental questions of conceptualisation and definition.
The home is constructed and made functional through materials and technologies, as well as having a social life of occupants with routines, norms, expectations, incomes and expenditures. It is the coming together, or assemblage, of the social and the technical in the routine organisation of everyday life which constitutes patterns of energy utilisation and energy dependency. The domestic sphere of the household is not a homogeneous space: social and technical characteristics are very diverse, and subject to processes of evolution and change. This has consequences for the impacts of energy shocks, failures and stresses across both acute and chronic timescales.
Vulnerability can be understood in different ways, and is a complex state or process with much that contributes to it. It is also a very dynamic notion. Vulnerability is a widely applied concept across a number of different fields of study and policy – natural hazards, climate change, poverty and development in particular. It has not however been used very directly or systematically within energy research. Resilience can be addressed by focusing on pricing, subsidy, and supply side efficiency, which is all about conditions of supply. But coping and adapting to changing conditions may well be more about the way functionings and services constitute energy demand. This involves interacting with culture, as well as the technical materiality of the home and its performance. Our aim in this session is to take forward appreciation of how vulnerability and resilience are manifest with respect to energy issues and through enriched conceptual understanding, how they may be addressed.
Contributions to this session are invited on themes including but not limited to:
• Discourses of vulnerability and their application – existing or potential - in the energy field
• Conceptualisation of resilience with respect to household energy
• The incidence, patterning and constitution of energy vulnerability over space / time / society
• Performative aspects of vulnerability / resilience
• Weatherisation programmes and other forms of intervention - their application, rationale, impacts and implications
• The impacts of climate change mitigation measures on energy vulnerability
• The materiality of the home and its impact on energy vulnerability
• Transport related energy demands and implications
• Notions of social justice underpinning energy resilience measures
Paper presentations will have a 20 minute timeslot each. If you would like to propose a contribution to this session, please send an abstract of not more than 250 words to [log in to unmask] by latest 5pm Thursday October 7th.
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