Dancing on the head of a needle? "Disciplining" energy justice scholarship

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Boamah, Festus:
Dancing on the head of a needle? "Disciplining" energy justice scholarship.
In: Dialogues in Human Geography. (2025) .
ISSN 2043-8214
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206251347245

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Abstract

Energy justice (EJ) scholarship grapples with conundrums of application and research due to its transdisciplinary nature, the relational character of EJ, and the cross-fertilisation of ideas from divergent and ever-evolving knowledge production and legitimisation cultures – hereafter its diachronic epistemic cultures. The development trajectory of EJ is shaped by disciplinary and ideological commitments, notably from political science, philosophy, geography, environmental justice studies, development studies, and decolonial studies, each with distinct approaches to legitimising knowledge about EJ. As energy transitions entail spatial processes or geographical dynamics, so should the frameworks that guide EJ research and aspirations. Once the justness of space production (processes), energy systems, and epistemic cultures of EJ scholarship are conceptualised as neither pre-existing nor independent of one another, the dynamic aspect of EJ is foregrounded to expose pitfalls in the field. ‘Disciplining’ the transdisciplinary EJ scholarship – with fundamentally spatial implications – requires repositioning it in the core discipline of human geography and foregrounding the clash of epistemic cultures to foster new dialogues that critically interrogate established methods, theoretical perspectives, and epistemologies. I draw on African case studies to illustrate how such commitments could direct EJ scholars(hip) from producing knowledge with little or no practical value.