Out of Steam: Energy, Materiality, and Political Ecology

TY - JOUR

T1 - Out of Steam

T2 - Energy, Materiality, and Political Ecology

AU - Cederlöf, Gustav

N1 - Funding Information: The author thanks Raymond Bryant, Alex Loftus, Alf Hornborg, Simon Batterbury, and Matthew Gandy for support and comments on previous drafts of this article. The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2019. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/2/1

Y1 - 2021/2/1

N2 - Energy is increasingly used as a lens to study wider social processes. For political ecologists, ‘energy’ has usually been seen as a resource or socio-technical system that gives rise to contentious social relations. This article instead thinks of energy as a materiality with thermodynamic properties. At once, energy becomes an analytical concept with physical and political-economic dimensions. Developing this perspective, the article examines the notion of ecologically unequal exchange and unpacks discussions on how energy systems are co-productive of politicised environments. The outcome is an expanded definition of political ecology set out in relation to three modes of social power.

AB - Energy is increasingly used as a lens to study wider social processes. For political ecologists, ‘energy’ has usually been seen as a resource or socio-technical system that gives rise to contentious social relations. This article instead thinks of energy as a materiality with thermodynamic properties. At once, energy becomes an analytical concept with physical and political-economic dimensions. Developing this perspective, the article examines the notion of ecologically unequal exchange and unpacks discussions on how energy systems are co-productive of politicised environments. The outcome is an expanded definition of political ecology set out in relation to three modes of social power.

KW - ecologically unequal exchange

KW - energopower

KW - energy

KW - materiality

KW - political ecology

KW - thermodynamics

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85074723593&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0309132519884622

DO - 10.1177/0309132519884622

M3 - Article

SN - 0309-1325

VL - 45

SP - 70

EP - 87

JO - Progress in Human Geography

JF - Progress in Human Geography

IS - 1

ER -