 |
 |
Call for Papers, 2017 RGS-IBG Annual Conference (29 August – 1 September 2017) Reimagining sustainable urban energy futures Organisers: Stefan Bouzarovski (University of Manchester) and Håvard Haarstad (University of Bergen) Sponsored by the Energy Geographies Research Group This session seeks to advance alternative thinking on sustainable urban energy futures. Efforts to decarbonise urban energy flows have largely been theorized via frameworks derived from the domain of ‘sustainability transitions’, such as the multi-level perspective. Recent years, however, have seen the emergence of new conceptual sensibilities towards urban energy transformations, informed, inter alia, by experimentation, assemblage, policy mobility and political ecology approaches. The session aims to give a more coherent voice to reimaginings of sustainable urban futures that lie beyond the conceptual mainstream. We highlight the underlying dynamics of power and inequality that underpin energy transformations in cities, particularly in relation to the enclosures and contradictions stemming from the encounter between low carbon transitions and neoliberal capitalism. The session is also geared towards providing a stronger geographical sensibility towards urban energy reconfigurations, by emphasizing the non-linearity of low-carbon urban change, and role of contingencies such as place, scale and territory in this process. We welcome both theoretical and empirically grounded interventions. Please send abstracts to Stefan Bouzarovski ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) or Håvard Haarstad ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) no later than the 13th of February 2017.