Energy and the ethnography of everyday life: A methodology for a world that matters

Abstract

Ecological sustainability is identified as one of the greatest challenges of the present, which the social sciences are called to engage with. The radical nature of the crisis requires researchers to question, update, and experiment with methods, approaches, and tools. The aim is to better grasp the phenomena under study, but also and foremost to produce forms of knowledge that are capable of productively reshaping socio-ecological relations. In this article, I focus on the ethnographic study of everyday energy transitions. Critically building on the ‘ontological turn’, I address this concrete level of experience in its complexity: how symbolic constructions become intertwined with bodily and material processes; the interrelation between micro- and macro-level of organisation; the non-discursive, affective, dimensions of energy assemblages. Multisensory, multimodal, and multimedia engagement might re-position the researcher not only in the field of inquiry but also generally in the process of talking with everyday life and its ecologies.