Speculating on shale: Resource-making and the ‘politics of possibility’ in Poland and the UK

Abstract

This paper focuses on the speculative character of knowledge and action in relation to subterranean resources, drawing on the curtailed histories of shale gas development in Poland and the UK. It adopts a political-economic orientation towards speculation rather than a narrowly financial one, seeking to understand the ‘politics of possibility’ associated with speculative resources. Specifically, we build on work in political geography to understand speculation as a form of productive ‘resonance’ replicating across epistemic, economic, and political domains. Thinking of speculation as resonance – as synchronous vibration across different areas of social life, stimulated by and intensifying uncertainty - offers a novel way of thinking about the possibilities of subterranean resources for forging political alignments. We show how speculation was integral to demonstrating the resource potential of shale in both Poland and the UK, and consider how this speculative character of shale subsequently infiltrated into economic and policy realms. Resonating across these domains, and amplifying epistemic uncertainties about shale, speculation produced a politics of possibility orientated towards ‘gambling’ on potential outcomes. By taking seriously the political possibilities of the uncertainties attached to subterranean resources, we extend the value of speculation as a concept for analysing the constitutive role of uncertainty in political-economic governance.