CfP RGS-IBG 2019: Future Research Agendas for Energy Geographies of Global South
Call for papers, RGS
– IBG annual conference, London, 28-30 August 2019
Future Research Agendas for Energy Geographies
of Global South
Sponsored by: Energy Geographies Research Group
(EnGRG)
Session conveners: Ankit Kumar (TU/e), Jonathan
Balls (Melbourne University), Britta Turner (Durham University)
Geographers have been at the forefront of
researching various aspects of energy in the global South. Geographical work
has focused on energy poverty and justice (Castán Broto et al., 2018), energy transitions and renewable
energy (Power et al., 2016), land grabbing and social
oppression linked to large-scale energy investments (Finley-brook
and Thomas, 2011), extractive industries (Kirshner and
Power, 2015) and cultural aspects of new
lighting technologies (Kumar, 2015). There is a host of work on urban
energy inequalities (Castán Broto,
Salazar and Adams, 2014; Silver, 2014) and a smaller body of work on
access to energy (Balls, 2016;
Kumar et al., 2019; Turner, 2019) focusing on the role of non-state
actors in developing new markets for renewable technologies. Geographers have provided
evidence of how economic, political, social, spatial, and technical dynamics
shape, enable, and constrain energy systems, at various scales.
Developments in energy technology and digitisation
are promising radical new opportunities to enable energy transitions and to
deliver energy access to the world’s poorest. At the same time, new technologies
and systems, installed in the last decades, are falling into ruins and taking
new lives as different types of wastes. In
addition, decentralised energy systems touted to bring equity, democracy,
and participation have not always done so (Kumar et al., 2019; Balls and Fischer, 2019). In the on-going rush to
renewables, inadequate research attention to waste, extraction, democracy, and
equity is increasingly becoming clear. Geographers
and geographical theory are well placed to respond to these issues.
On the other hand, energy geographies of
developing areas have drawn only sparingly upon promising emerging theories,
including assemblage theory, practice theory among others. Established
theoretical approaches, notably postcolonial theory and critical development
studies, otherwise employed productively to geographies of the global South,
have been largely missing from energy geographies. In studying developments in
energy systems in the developing world,
there is great potential for critical geographical enquiry to engage more
extensively with a broader range of
theoretical frameworks. Indeed, it is striking how conceptual symmetries in
energy geographies of the global South and global North have been little explored to date.
This session will ask what future geographical research
agendas on energy geographies in the global South are emerging and required. For
example, but not limited to, the following areas:
- · The waste lives and extraction economies of low-carbon energy technologies and systems
- · Digitalisation, Ai, blockchain and other ‘smart technologies’ and their implications for access and exclusion
- · Emerging land, equity, and democracy scenarios, particularly in decentralised systems
- · Prosumer in the global South, energy entrepreneurs, community, and rural financial profiting from energy projects and systems
- · Building upon and advance emerging theoretical approaches, such as assemblage theory, and more established ones like the postcolonial theory
- · Energy geographies beyond the urban global South
Please email abstracts of 250 words to Ankit
Kumar (a.kumar@tue.nl),
Jonathan Balls (jonathannballs@gmail.com) or Britta
Turner (britta.turner@durham.ac.uk) by 10 February 2019. We will inform the
selected session participants by 13 February
2019.
References
Baker, L., Newell, P. and Phillips, J. (2014) ‘The Political Economy of
Energy Transitions: The Case of South Africa’, New Political Economy,
(August 2014), pp. 1–28. doi: 10.1080/13563467.2013.849674.
Balls,
J. (2016) Fluid Capitalism at the Bottom of the Pyramid: A Study of the
Off-Grid Solar Power Market in Uttar Pradesh, India. University of Oxford.
Available at:
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:d4457f09-bf69-4ec6-802e-dcdfa7495455.
Balls,
J. and Fischer, H. (2019) 'Electricity-centered
clientelism and the contradictions of private solar micro-grids in India' Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
doi:10.1080/24694452.2018.1535312
doi:10.1080/24694452.2018.1535312
Castán
Broto, V. et al. (2018) ‘Energy justice and sustainability transitions
in Mozambique’, Applied Energy. Elsevier, 228(December 2017), pp.
645–655. doi: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.06.057.
Castán
Broto, V., Salazar, D. and Adams, K. (2014) ‘Communities and urban energy
landscapes in Maputo, Mozambique’, People, Place and Policy Online,
8(3), pp. 192–207. doi: 10.3351/ppp.0008.0003.0005.
Cupples,
J. (2011) ‘Shifting Networks of Power in Nicaragua: Relational Materialisms in
the Consumption of Privatized Electricity’, Annals of the Association of
American Geographers, 101(March 2015), pp. 939–948. doi:
10.1080/00045608.2011.569654.
Finley-brook,
M. and Thomas, C. (2011) ‘Renewable Energy and Human Rights Violations:
Illustrative Cases from Indigenous Territories in Panama’, Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 101(March 2015), pp. 863–872. doi:
10.1080/00045608.2011.568873.
Kirshner,
J. and Power, M. (2015) ‘Mining and extractive urbanism: Postdevelopment in a
mozambican boomtown’, Geoforum, 61, pp. 67–78. doi: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.02.019.
Kumar,
A. (2015) ‘Cultures of lights’, Geoforum. Elsevier Ltd, 65, pp. 59–68. doi:
10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.07.012.
Kumar, A. et al. (2019) ‘Solar energy for all? Understanding the successes and shortfalls
through a critical comparative assessment of Bangladesh, Brazil, India,
Mozambique, Sri Lanka and South Africa’, Energy Research & Social
Science. Elsevier, 48(March 2018), pp. 166–176. doi:
10.1016/j.erss.2018.10.005.
Power,
M. et al. (2016) ‘The political economy of energy transitions in
Mozambique and South Africa: The role of the Rising Powers’, Energy Research
& Social Science. Elsevier Ltd, 17, pp. 10–19. doi: 10.1016/j.erss.2016.03.007.
Silver,
J. (2014) ‘Incremental infrastructures: material improvisation and social
collaboration across post-colonial Accra’, Urban Geography, 35(6), pp.
788–804. doi: 10.1080/02723638.2014.933605.
Turner,
B. (2019) ‘Diffusion on the ground: Rethinking the logic of scale and access in
off-grid solar’, Energy Research and Social Science, 50(November 2018),
pp. 1–6. doi: 10.1016/j.erss.2018.11.005.
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