Dash for Gas: Climate Change, Hegemony and the Scalar Politics of Fracking in the UK

Abstract

This paper investigates the political contestation over hydraulic fracturing of shale gas, or ‘fracking’, in the UK. Based on an analysis of four public inquiries, it shows how both proponents and opponents of fracking employed scaling to mobilize interests by connecting (or disconnecting) fracking to spatial and temporal scales. The analysis explains how a fossil fuel hegemony was reproduced by linking local and specific benefits to nationally or globally recognized interests such as employment, energy security and emission reductions. The paper contributes to recent debates on environmental political contestation by showing how scaling enables the linkage of competing interests by alternating between spatial (e.g. local vs. global) and temporal (e.g. short term vs. long term) horizons. The authors argue that scaling allows dominant actors to uphold contradictory positions on climate change, which contributes to explaining the current disastrous political climate impasse.

The discursive politics of ‘fracking’: Frames, storylines, and the anticipatory contestation of shale gas development in the United Kingdom

“…These are obviously crucial sites for influencing both general UK policy on shale gas and the specific regulatory conditions within which a shale industry will have to operate. Whilst Nyberg et al (Nyberg et al, 2018a(Nyberg et al, , 2018b(Nyberg et al, , 2017 focus on four select committee inquiries and reports, and so have a focus on the use of frames in and through similar institutions and practices, we draw data from original interviews and a more comprehensive corpus of political literature.…”

“…Our second discussion theme concerns similarities and differences between the UK case and studies on the framing of shale development in other national contexts. The prominence of some frames seems particular to the UK and certain storylines are inherently local and context dependent; but others are more global, linking local or specific contexts to globally recognized discursive features revolving around employment, security, or the environment (Nyberg et al, 2018b).…”

Fueling Climate (In)Action: How organizations engage in hegemonization to avoid transformational action on climate change

“…First, we contribute to the literature on hegemony in organization studies (Banerjee, 2012;Levy & Egan, 2003;Nyberg et al, 2018;Okereke, Bulkeley, & Schroeder, 2009;Wittneben et al, 2012) by adopting a process-based approach to illustrate how an organization engaged in constructing hegemonic discourse over an extended period of time from the "bottom up." Surprisingly, with the exception of some studies of hegemony (e.g., Levy, Reinecke, & Manning, 2016), this "bottom up" perspective of hegemonic construction is largely overlooked; most studies consider hegemony as an inert state of domination rather than a continuously crafted structure embedded within rich historical contexts (e.g., Prasad & Elmes, 2005).…”

“…Scholars often suggest that the lack of effective responses to climate change derives from the way prevailing organizational processes, such as short-termism and risk evaluation, fail to internalize complexities posed by issues surrounding the natural environment (Slawinski, Pinkse, Busch, & Banerjee, 2017; Wright & Nyberg, 2017). Another perspective goes further to highlight how organizations engage in political struggles largely ‘outside’ the organization to ensure the continuation of business-as-usual (Levy & Spicer, 2013; Nyberg, Wright, & Kirk, 2018; Wittneben, Okereke, Banerjee, & Levy, 2012). In this regard, Gramsci’s (1971) concept of hegemony is commonly utilized to explore how powerful corporations strategically maintain a dominant ideology that downplays the need for radical climate solutions (Banerjee, 2012; Levy & Egan, 2003).…”

Environmental Injustices in European Climate Hotspots

“…Equally importantly, development projects are engulfed in controversies, since they appear to threaten rights to health and a clean environment. Noteworthy cases are the shale gas development proposals in the UK or Poland (Lis and Stankiewicz, 2017;Nyberg, Wright and Kirk, 2018) or the continued expansion of open cast mines in Germany (Brock and Du nlap, 2018).…”