Unruly entanglements of sociomaterial change, knowledge, and power in energy frontiers

Unruly entanglements of sociomaterial change, knowledge, and power in energy frontiers

Energy is foundational to climate change adaptation and mitigation goals, but the present moment requires more than clean power plants. Energy frontiers are entangled in uncertain geopolitics, injustices, environmental change, and development efforts, raising the stakes for research on sociomaterial change. UNRULY aims to create a paradigm-shifting, new analytical framework of change, one that transcends disciplinary conceptual boundaries to hold the social and the material together theoretically and methodologically. Grounded in justice issues, the project has four objectives: innovate a new theory of sociomaterial change through ‘unruliness’; create new research methods to analyse sociomaterial change; advance empirical research on energy frontiers; and reframe what requires governing in unruly contexts. UNRULY creates a novel theoretical basis for understanding how power materialises through uncertainties, knowledges, uneven social relations, (colonialism, racism, class, patriarchy) and governance challenges. Methodologically, the project is carefully designed to build towards the higher-risk, high-gain dimensions. The work will contribute fresh insights on hydropower energy frontiers in two case studies (Nepal and Zambia) and develop new methods capable of analysing variables and processes defined as inherently sociomaterial. The results aim to tease out an analytical basis for democratic debate on the tension between efforts at prediction and governing change, and uncertainty and unruliness which can derail those efforts. The PI will lead an international, cross-disciplinary research team, comprised of two postdoctoral fellows, two PhD candidates, three research affiliates, and an advisory board of international academic leaders, boldly challenging existing research conventions on sociomaterial change and reimagining novel approaches to our shared planetary crisis.