Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 169, 15 December 2017, Pages 143-151
Journal of Cleaner Production

A post-fossil fuel transition experiment: Exploring cultural dimensions from a practice-theoretical perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.154Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Energy transitions are cultural, not only technical challenges.

  • Experiments can help to imagine a post-fossil fuel society.

  • Changes in material arrangements can be both inspiring and threatening.

Abstract

Societies must rapidly abandon the use of fossil fuels to avoid the worst effects of climate change. This paper examines the cultural dynamics of the energy transition by focusing on a post-fossil fuel experiment in an international artist and researcher residency. The aims of the experiment were to explore how fossil fuels currently determine human lives and to imagine and build pathways forward. The six-year ethnographic case study was analysed from the perspective of practice theory, shedding light on how changes in the material arrangements of energy, food and transportation reconfigure meanings and competences. These transformations were found to have inspiring as well as unfortunate, even threatening aspects that need to be taken into account in transition design and governance.

Introduction

Societies must rapidly abandon the use of fossil fuels to avoid the worst effects of climate change (Anderson and Bows, 2011). This is a huge challenge, because the existing infrastructure of industrialised societies relies on a constant flow of fossil fuels: oil, natural gas and coal are needed for maintaining basic activities such as transportation, food production, materials production, heating and electricity provision. How should we understand the dynamics of this transition? Although there has been some interest in studying energy-society relations from social-scientific perspectives over the decades (Rosa et al., 1988), energy has largely remained as a blind spot in research not specifically dedicated to it (Salminen and Vadén, 2015). Recently, however, fossil fuels in particular have received much more attention (Urry, 2014). They have been studied historically within economic systems (Malm, 2016), from the perspective of power (Mitchell, 2011) and philosophically with a focus on experience (Salminen and Vadén, 2015). However, there has been less interest in the social and cultural dimensions of energy, or as Shove and Walker (2014) put it, in the question “what is energy for”.

This paper explores the cultural dynamics of the energy transition, joining the diverse group of scholars under the label energy humanities (Boyer and Szeman, 2014, Diamanti and Bellamy, 2016). Energy humanities questions the commonplace idea that societies only need to switch to cleaner modes of production – as if everyday life could remain unchanged through post-fossil fuel transitions. This idea can be seen as the basis for the typical market and technology oriented and politically oriented narratives (for more about post-fossil transition narratives, see Petrocultures Research Group, 2016). As stated by Boyer and Szeman (2014: 40), “neither technology nor policy can offer a silver-bullet to the environmental effects of an energy-hungry, rapidly modernising and growing global population.” To better understand the possibilities and potential pitfalls of post-fossil fuel transitions, we need to analyse cultural aspects such as habits and aspirations that are behind energy and environmental dilemmas.

One foundation for this study is Salminen and Vadén’s (2015) thesis that energy has been a blind spot for social-scientific analysis for a reason: one of the properties of fossil fuels is that they make themselves unseen. According to these authors, it is precisely the massive and growing use of fossil fuels that has physically enabled humans to disconnect from the material world, to not care about the energy and material flows required to sustain their everyday life. This disconnection has gradually become ingrained in our routines and beliefs. Without fossil fuels – the huge underground energy storage in easily accessible and usable form – humans cannot, however, anymore sustain the illusion of being autonomous from nature. The lower energy returns of other energy sources means that societies will need to allocate a larger share of their overall activity in energy production than during the fossil era (Hall et al., 2009). Profound cultural transformations seem to be taking place: energy and materials will again rise from the background to the foreground.

The aim of this study, then, is to explore the cultural complexities and viewpoints that arise when everyday fossil-fuelled practices are shaken up. The article focuses on a six-year ethnographic case study of the on-going experiment of Mustarinda, an artistic-scientific collective and residency centre launched in 2009. The empirical study is based on the life and work of the researcher as a member of the Mustarinda collective. Mustarinda joins the long artistic tradition of playing with and studying materials and human perceptions of them. It frames its experiment as exploring ways of living and working that would be necessary if societies were to limit global warming close to 1,5° above pre-industrial levels as agreed in the UN climate negotiations in Paris in 2015. The case is analysed from the perspective of practice theory (Schatzki, 2001, Reckwitz, 2002), which is a form of cultural theorising that enables the simultaneous examination of material and social forces affecting energy transitions. It directs attention to social practices rather than individual choice or societal structures and in doing so brings to light historically and contextually evolving cultural patterns.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 elaborates on a practice-based perspective on the experiment. Section 3 describes the ethnographic case study and its methods, and presents the findings of the analysis. The paper ends with a discussion in section 4 and conclusion in section 5.

Section snippets

A practice-based perspective on a post-fossil fuel experiment

This study examines a socio-technical experiment (Bulkeley and Broto, 2012) which explores ways to improve our mental and bodily understanding of how our lives are currently conditioned by fossil fuels and charts the hopes, fears and practical complexities associated to living without them. Such experiments provide settings for learning and seeds for not only incremental innovation but also for more radical societal transitions (Kivisaari et al., 2004, Schot and Geels, 2008). So far, the

Mustarinda as a platform for post-fossil fuel experiments

Mustarinda is formally a non-profit association launched in 2009 in Finland. Its aim is to foster cultural and ecological diversity. In practice, it is an artist and researcher collective whose members, totalling 33 in early 2016, are mostly based in Helsinki. Mustarinda’s artist and researcher residency 650 km from Helsinki in Hyrynsalmi, a municipality with 2500 inhabitants, functions as a test bed for the collective’s exhibition, research and publication activities. The residency is set in a

Discussion

The Mustarinda residency is set up to shake up existing fossil-fuelled practices: to bring to light what constitutes established practices, typically remaining in the background, and to explore how meanings and competences are reconfigured within rules and material arrangements that reach beyond the massive use of fossil fuels. The findings are summarised in Table 1. Situated in a particular setting, an artist and researcher residency, the results complement the nascent body of culturally

Conclusion

Energy humanities and the literature on socio-technical transitions have called for studies on the cultural dimensions of transitions and transition experiments. This study set to explore the cultural complexities and viewpoints that arise when typical fossil-fuelled practices are shaken up. It analysed the experimentation of an artist and researcher residency from a practice-theoretical perspective. Analytically, the practice approach distinguishes between three practice elements: meanings,

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Kone Foundation. I also want to thank Mustarinda’s members and guests as well as the four anonymous reviewers.

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