LIST OF PANELS

Policy making and policy implementation of energy transitions often face conflict between governmental actors, residents and market players and at the same time rely heavily on their cooperation. Yet, there is a strict separation between literature on energy conflicts and on energy governance, when in practice energy transitions reflect complex interactions in which cooperation and conflict coexist.

On one hand, policy conflict literature emphasizes social dynamics related to clashing or overlapping cultural meanings, and conflicting framing of problems and solutions, collective emotions, knowledge claims, moral positions, and identities (Dodge and Metze 2017; Verhoeven and Metze 2022). Policy, in these cases, is often the result of a struggle for dominance. Conflict can be productive, however, in generating important and far-reaching policy results for environmental protection and for social, environmental and economic justice.

On the other hand, a body of literature examines possibly transformative collaborations in which new imaginary and just futures are being prototyped and tested, such as energy cooperatives or communities living off-grid (e.g., Fischer 2017), while there is also a boom in literature on collaboration between governments, market players and residents in the renovation of the existing housing stock (Van der Schoor and Sanders 2022). Both streams of literature test new forms of (action)research to support innovation that fosters dialogue between governments, residents and market players.

While conflict literature aims to understand how conflicts can be ‘productive’ by contributing to a more fair and deeper transition, collaboration literature focuses on how innovative collaborations can contribute to transformative change. This panel aims to bridge the gap by bringing conflict and cooperation researchers in conversation with each other, in order to arrive at more common understanding of the social dynamics behind conflict and collaboration and in order to develop a joint analytical vocabulary.

The recent proliferation of energy justice literature (Sovacool and Dworkin 2015, Heffron 2022) addresses distributive, procedural, recognition and epistemic justice, which can serve to reduce conflict and further promote cooperation and can thus begin to bridge these two literatures. Justice can reduce conflict when residents see more benefits than burdens from a wind farm, when they participate in the planning of a data center, when they feel recognized by authorities that want to renovate their homes, or when their local knowledge on fracking impacts is taken seriously. Justice can strengthen cooperation if governments and market players develop a shared framing of burdens and benefits, are transparent to each other, recognize and involve other players as stakeholders, and reflect on knowledge sources strengthening their cooperation.

The main questions of this panel thus are: 1) Which social dynamics underly conflict and collaboration in the energy transition?; 2) What are the commonalities and differences in these social dynamics; 3) What social dynamics contribute to transformative change, and in what ways? 4) In which ways do aspects of justice play a role in these social dynamics; and 5) What kind of justice-related philosophical, theoretical and empirical vocabulary can we develop to bridge the gap between conflict and collaboration literatures?

This panel is open to papers dealing with very diverse theoretical and empirical understandings of the social dynamics behind conflict and collaboration in the energy transition. We seek philosophical, theoretical and empirical papers that aim to engage with and contribute to transformative change in the energy transition. For transformative change to happen current power-relations, assumptions in our knowledge production, policy making and political decision making need to be scrutinized and opened to redesign, for example through prefigurative practices in which actors start doing things differently and through pragmatically designing and testing solutions in field labs, living labs, or transdisciplinary research.

Examples of papers that would be accepted are those about epistemological and ontological justices and injustices, on the social dynamics behind conflict or cooperation in the planning or implementation of wind farms, solar fields, transmission lines, geothermal wells, fracking, natural gas production, data centers, or housing renovation. Among these papers, we do look for contributions on conflict or cooperation between multiple actors, such as governments, residents, civil society organisations and market players (i.e. not single actor papers), and for contributions that use justice concepts to analyze the social dynamics behind these conflicts or collaborations. Papers may choose a micro perspective, for instance by analyzing interactions between street-level bureaucrats and residents, or between policy makers and business representatives, or papers can take a meso-perspective by analyzing the relations and interactions between organizations. Papers that analyze how conflict can turn into cooperation or vice versa are most welcome. Finally, we are highly interested in papers that take interpretive approaches to social dynamics on clashing or overlapping cultural meanings, framing of problems and solutions, collective emotions, knowledge claims and identities.

The panel will be onsite in Chiang Mai, with the opportunity for in-person as well as virtual presentations.