Towards an emotional energy geography: Attending to emotions and affects in a former coal mining community in South Wales, UK

Melanie Rohse,David Llewellyn,Rosie Day

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.02.006

Melanie Rohse, David Llewellyn + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.02.006

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Abstract

In this paper, we make a case for bringing energy geography into closer dialogue with emotional geography, and argue that doing so has the potential to greatly improve our understanding of energy systems and their intersection with everyday life, bringing essential but often overlooked aspects into view. We draw on research carried out as part of an arts and humanities-based project in South Wales (UK), a region once dominated by coal extraction. We present and discuss material from sixteen oral histories recorded with long-standing members of the village of Ynysybwl. Reading their accounts through the lens of emotional-affective constructs reveals not only participants’ emotions about aspects of energy production and consumption, but also the atmospheres and affects arising within and out of the energy system. This brings to light the affectual agency of the energy system as an infrastructure assemblage and its role in everyday production of space. Related to this, it surfaces essential aspects of experiences of energy system change. We argue that recognising and exploring affect and emotion is crucial for energy geography as it continues to explore the functionings of energy systems, and energy transitions.

Highlights

Energy research has long been dominated by the technical disciplines
We argue that affectual dimensions do not belong only to spaces of energy consumption, and to spaces that surround and are shaped by energy production and transmission, that is, the whole energy system
We discuss the concepts from emotional-affective geographies that we have found useful for our case study analysis, and which we believe offer particular opportunity for energy geography more generally

Summary

Introduction

Energy research has long been dominated by the technical disciplines. Only recently have the social sciences and humanities started to make significant strides in this area, as acknowledgement that energy questions are societal, ethical and political, as well as economic and technical has gained traction (Sovacool, 2014; Stern, 2014; Sovacool et al, 2015). There remain, some gaps, and our aim in this paper is to draw attention to an important area that we feel has not been adequately attended to in energy studies generally and energy geography : that of emotions and affect The reason for this may well be a kind of ‘residual cultural Cartesianism’ similar to that which Thrift 57) referred to 15 years ago in relation to urban geography, whereby emotions are seen as something quite separate from the rational business of power plants and cables and grids, even perhaps markets and policies; and yet energy geographers, few in number, have been relatively strong on advancing understanding of cultural dimensions of energy problematics. It seems that energy geography and emotional geography have stayed apart, such that energy geography has not engaged significantly with the ‘emotional turn’ in geography and the more than a decade of work on emotional and affectual geographies

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