Paper short abstract:

We present research with people impacted by industrial decarbonisation plans in south Wales in the context of global and local uncertainties. Providing a reparative framing that elucidates how affect shapes the contingent, and uncertain ways people develop and respond to visions of future change.

Paper long abstract:

Our research aims to understand the views of people locally impacted by industrial decarbonisation (ID) plans, situated within the context of global and local uncertainty. We address questions posed by interpretive, cultural and relational risk theorists constituting “pedagogies of uncertainty” through researching local responses to industrial stakeholders’ visions for decarbonizing the future. There is a new generation of industries and research centres based on utilisation of renewal energies as well as integration of fossil fuel with cleaner processes involving (blue)hydrogen and carbon capture reuse and storage. We explore how affect shapes and invokes experiences about industrial townscapes opening up the possibility of a reparative space attending to the ambiguous, contingent, and uncertain ways people develop and respond to visions of future change. We draw on data from ID research at two industrial places on the south Wales coast interpreted through a nuanced visual practice, articulated through a framework of liveliness of objects relevant to participants’ lives, drawing out the affective forces that flow through or inhabit localised experiences of global and local uncertainties. Our research makes apparent both gaps and alignments between what can loosely be termed industrialist vision makers and local digestors of such plans. Gathering responses to expert portrayals of industrial solutions to solving problems of climate change through a reparative framework, creates a coherent space enabling local responses to such portrayals to become articulated as reparative and multiple without binary reductivity bleaching out potential problems as well as unifying possibilities.