Presentation short abstract

This presentation analyses place-making in community-based energy governance in post-disaster Fukushima, showing how initiatives seek to transform the spatial manifestations of power relations in energy governance and highlighting their situated, pluriversal character.

Presentation long abstract

Expectations for community-based energy initiatives have grown significantly, yet such efforts are often romanticised and instrumentalised. Despite the widely shared belief that they deliver just and democratic energy governance, these initiatives in practice can entail adverse effects, unintentionally reproducing existing social injustices within energy governance arrangements. To address the conundrum, some scholars have been critically examining the true calibre of such local engagements by, for instance, foregrounding their disruptive potential. In this presentation, I extend this line of inquiry through an examination of community-based energy governance in a non-Western context, highlighting its situatedness and pluriversal characteristic. Specifically, I focus on engagements in Fukushima following the 2011 nuclear disaster. To date, some residents have engaged in community-based energy governance both inside and outside the affected areas. Yet, the number of initiatives remains small relative to regional electricity demand, which some might take as evidence that their contributions remain modest to decarbonisation at a broader scale. In contrast to this interpretation, I rather attend to the multifaceted roles of community-based initiatives in response to the nuclear disaster. Specifically, by drawing on semi-structured interviews and oral history of the practitioners in and from Fukushima, I delineate how people have engaged with and attempted to transform the spatial manifestations of power relations in and around energy governance through place-making practices. The analysis shows that their engagement exceeds contributions to decarbonisation. It sustains life in radioactively contaminated ‘barren’ landscapes, reweaves relations among humans and more-than-humans, and rebuilds furusato (ふるさと, homeland).