Expanding Ethics Justice Across Borders: The Role of Global Philosophy

Abstract

Our energy systems are truly international, and yet even now, our energy policies tend to be grounded at the national level and in many instances, remain illequipped to tackle transboundary energy issues. Our energy policy systems are also largely detached from the concerns of ethics or justice. It follows that we must find new and innovative ways of not conceptualising these normative issues, but of operationalising response to them. This book stems from the emergent gap: the need for comparative approaches to energy justice, and for those that consider non-Western ethical traditions. Opening the edited volume, this chapter begins by giving context to the concept of "energy justice" itself and outlines our comparative philosophical approach to it, focusing specifically on "global philosophy" for its role in dialectically engaging with philosophies from around the world. We then show how the different chapters of the volume contribute to this purpose in four parts: setting the scene, practice, applying theory to practice and theoretical approaches. The final section of this chapter concludes with reflections on the contribution of global philosophy approaches to energy justice as with a set of future research recommendations. Through these recommendations, and all of those within, we position the book as one that contributes to energy justice scholarship across borders of nations, borders of ways of thinking and borders of disciplines.

Synthesizing value sensitive design, responsible research and innovation, and energy justice: A conceptual review

“…Apart from limited interaction with practice, we also observe that the Energy Justice literature has largely developed without interdisciplinary insights from established philosophical approaches to justice in the energy domain. Indeed, at present, the predominant underpinning of Energy Justice research is Western philosophy and humancentred approaches only [4,139,149] and in many cases, most Energy Justice studies have focused only on a descriptive account of the triumvirate of tenets. Sovacool et al [4] have explored several alternative non-western philosophies and their potential to strengthen Energy Justice theory, yet this field is embryonic.…”

Unattainable proximity: Solar power and peri-urbanity in central Burkina Faso

“…Over the last decade, energy has increasingly been developing into an object of interest of scholars operating in the social sciences. Inspired by a longer tradition of studies in environmental humanities, and environmental justice in particular (Bullard, 1996(Bullard, , 2000Martinez-Alier, 2003;Walker, 2012;Agyeman et al, 2003), students in the energy humanities have started reflecting on possible applications and adaptations of theoretical and empirical tools developed in that older tradition, to their own domain of expertise (McCauley et al, 2013;Sovacool and Dworkin, 2014;Sovacool et al, 2017;Monyei et al, 2018;Bombaerts et al, 2020;Pellegrini-Masini et al, 2020). These publications have rapidly multiplied (Simcock and Mullen, 2016;Jenkins et al, 2017;McCauley et al, 2019;Bombaerts et al, 2020).…”

“…Inspired by a longer tradition of studies in environmental humanities, and environmental justice in particular (Bullard, 1996(Bullard, , 2000Martinez-Alier, 2003;Walker, 2012;Agyeman et al, 2003), students in the energy humanities have started reflecting on possible applications and adaptations of theoretical and empirical tools developed in that older tradition, to their own domain of expertise (McCauley et al, 2013;Sovacool and Dworkin, 2014;Sovacool et al, 2017;Monyei et al, 2018;Bombaerts et al, 2020;Pellegrini-Masini et al, 2020). These publications have rapidly multiplied (Simcock and Mullen, 2016;Jenkins et al, 2017;McCauley et al, 2019;Bombaerts et al, 2020). Unsurprisingly (more on this point in Section 3), most of them have initially focussed on the Global North, and there is still today a strong bias towards that region [Sovacool et al, 2020, p. 21].…”

“…In fairness, such culture-dependent epistemic lopsidedness has been promptly acknowledged by Global North scholars: thus, for example, Sovacool et al (2017) have conducted an early exploration of non-Western conceptualisations of (energy) justice in African, Asian, and South American religious and philosophical traditions, as well as in non-anthropocentric traditions such as ecocentrism and biocentrism. Even more recently, an edited volume by Bombaerts et al (2020) has further contributed to transnationalise and diversify thinking on global energy justice. These recent studies are fundamental in keeping researchers aware of their cultural situatedness.…”

Creating ‘Local Publics’: Responsibility and Involvement in Decision-Making on Technologies with Local Impacts

“…Empirical studies have shown that citizens evaluate the local placing of a technology differently than the placing of the technology elsewhere (Midden and Huijts 2009;Terwel and Daamen 2012;Bombaerts et al 2020), for instance because of the attachment that people have to the place they live (Devine-Wright and Howes 2010). Moreover, knowing about the local context in which a technology is implemented, people are able to reflect on its concrete and immediate repercussions.…”