Call for papers: Individual and collective imaginaries of energy: storying energy in the past, present and future

Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference 2015. University of Exeter, 1^st-4^th September 2015

 

Session convenors:

Mel Rohse (University of Birmingham, [log in to unmask])

Rosie Day (University of Birmingham, [log in to unmask])

Joe Smith (Open University, [log in to unmask])

 

Sponsored by the Energy Geographies Working Group

 

Abstract deadline: 30^th January 2015

 

To date, a high proportion of social research on energy uses has focused on the individual as an energy consumer, with behaviour to be changed through economic enticement and technological intervention. This vision is articulated as a narrative that has come to dominate energy research and policy, effectively overlooking “energy use as a system of social processes” (Moezzi and Janda, 2013: 214), which is embedded in specific localities and temporalities. This runs several risks, such as hindering our understanding of energy practices, disengaging the public from energy conversations and limiting the emergence of new narratives of socio-energy relations. However, opportunity may be offered by narrative research which endeavours to create a space where culturally dominant stories meet counter stories, a contested site where new stories can be imagined (Bamberg and Andrews, 2004). For this session, we welcome papers that use stories (defined broadly) as an imaginative approach to engage with how people live, have lived and might live with energy. Contributions may address, for example

 

•          Collective imaginaries of energy
  
•          Community visioning of future socio-energy relations
  
•          Shared or contested histories of energy production and consumption
  
•          Stories of energy and social change
  
•          Narratives of energy and place / place-making
  
•          Complexities and contradictions within stories of energy
  

 

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words by 30th January to Mel Rohse ([log in to unmask]).

 

Dr Mel Rohse

Research Fellow

Stories of Change: Exploring energy and community in the past, present and future

 

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

University of Birmingham

Edgbaston

Birmingham B15 2TT

 

Tel: +44 (0) 121 41 45542

Email: [log in to unmask]

 

**Please note that I work three days a week at UoB which might delay a response.**