Paper short abstract:

Drawing on interviews with Syrian refugees, we explore the everyday activities involved in maintaining access to power in energy unstable conditions. We argue that hope as a method provides an alternative mode through we can modestly engage in STS research with marginalized communities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses hope as a method to explore the renewable energy imaginaries and practices of refugees facing enery vulnerabilities in Lebanon. Ratto & Jackson (2023) argue for a definition of hope that attends to the “ordinary, the mundane, and the everyday” activities of sociotechnical maintenance that evince sustained practices of ‘staying with the trouble’. In a clarion call Letter-to-the-editor, Eve Tuck (2009) urges social science researchers away from the kind of “damage-centred research” that is often performed in (and on) vulnerable communities. We argue that hope as a method provides an alternative mode by which we can modestly and productively engage in STS research with marginalized communities. Centring the everyday activities involved in maintaining access to power in energy unstable conditions, we surface the contingent and local workarounds and strategies developed and managed by individuals, communities and organizations. Our work draws on extended interviews with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, mobilizing a thematic analysis that foregrounds everyday maintenance activities and the infrastructural imaginaries they bring in into being. Bringing the lens of hope to bear, we highlight the diversity of hopeful futures imagined by refugees, non-profits, and academics when asked to consider renewable energy futures for Lebanon.