Understanding Social Stratification: The Case of Energy Injustice

Abstract

The continual restructuring of energy systems, around the world, has generated widespread inequities—manifest as profound inequalities and hardship—across the energy continuum. These inequities include: energy unaffordability; access barriers like price or artefacts to utilise the services provided by energy for work and social practices; ‘sacrifice zones’ for new production sites with health, quality of life, and mortality impacts; and, diminished or absent participatory opportunity in production and regulatory decision-making. Fundamental to reaching solutions for the eradication of energy injustices, an exposition is required, we suggest, of the relationships between energy (in)justice, social justice, and inequality. To this end, we investigate two approaches to understanding injustice and inequality—Nancy Fraser’s meta-(in)justice and Stratification Economics. We conclude that the social stratification exhibited through energy injustices, beyond the economic domain, demands solutions that do not replicate the contemporary neoliberal model privileging the private (economic) spheres of power in our societies.