A Missing Link? Capabilities, the Ethics of Care and the Relational Context of Energy Justice

ABSTRACT

Difficulties experienced in obtaining energy services have been represented as unjust because of how they can prevent people from realising primary human capabilities. Capabilities are relational, being embedded within complex interdependencies between people and socio-material systems. These complexities can cause problems for approaches to energy justice that are based on concepts of welfare rights. We argue that the ethics of care, with its emphasis on relationality as the ground of obligation, and particularly on how social relationships are bound up with power and responsibility, can provide firmer foundations for thinking about energy injustice. Care ethicists distinguish between different forms of dependency, some necessary, others oppressive. Using qualitative longitudinal methods to explore people’s experiences of energy challenges and energy vulnerability can show how power and responsibility within dependency relationships can change over time. With data from a longitudinal study in South Wales, we explore how everyday energy-using practices can become entangled with harmful forms of dependency. We show how the everyday ethical evaluation of these relationship undertaken by participants harmonises with the ethics of care. Our data show the utility of understanding relationships of dependence within the energy system in terms of responsibility and irresponsibility, in order to better understand energy injustice.

Keywords:

• Capabilities
• well-being
• inequality
• human rights
• care ethics

Acknowledgements

This research was partly funded by the Welsh Government through the European Regional Development fund as part of the FLEXIS project, and through the Smart Living Demonstrator programme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pseudonyms are used throughout this paper.

2 This research was part funded by the Welsh Government Welsh European Funding Office through the European Regional Development fund as part of the FLEXIS project, and partly through the Welsh Government’s Smart Living Demonstrator programme.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Welsh Government through the European Regional Development fund as part of the FLEXIS project, and through the Smart Living Demonstrator programme.

Notes on contributors

Christopher Groves

Christopher Groves is a research fellow on the FLEXIS project in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. His research interests include risk, uncertainty, social futures, the ethics of technology and intergenerational ethics.

Fiona Shirani

Fiona Shirani is a research associate in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University on the Energy FLEXIS project. Her interests include qualitative longitudinal methods, time, the significance of imagined futures and experiences of life transitions, and families and relationships.

Nick Pidgeon

Nick Pidgeon is a professor of environmental psychology and director of the Understanding Risk Research Group within the School of Psychology at Cardiff University. His research covers risk, risk perception and risk communication with a current focus on public responses to energy technologies, climate change risks, nanotechnologies and climate geoengineering.

Catherine Cherry

Catherine Cherry is a Research Associate in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University, with interests in sustainable consumption, the social acceptability of demand reduction strategies, and the role environmental and everyday values play in public understandings of energy.

Gareth Thomas

Gareth Thomas is a Research Associate in the School of Psychology at Cardiff University on the FLEXIS project. He has a background in policy, science and technology studies specialising in the social acceptability of socio-technical transitions, particularly in the field of energy.

Erin Roberts

Erin Roberts is a Research Associate on the FLEXIS project, based in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, interested in the transformative power of the relationship between energy and society. Combining social science and geography, she works on how identity, place and practice create unique cultural landscapes that provide opportunities and pose barriers to change.

Karen Henwood

Karen Henwood is a professor in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University and principal social science investigator on the FLEXIS project. A specialist in qualitative research methods, her research areas span the social science of risk (environment and personal lives) and identity studies.