General information
| Course name | Seminar: Post-Nuclear Urbanism: Cultures and Geographies of Energy Transitions |
| Course number | BA: LHGZ |
| Semester | WS 2020/21 |
| Current number of participants | 3 |
| maximum number of participants | 17 |
| Home institute | Ethnologie/Kulturvergleichende Soziologie |
| Courses type | Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen |
| First date | Friday, 13.11.2020 15:15 - 18:45, Room: (Online) |
| Learning organisation |
This course provides analytical tools to explore energy transitions both as localised urban socio-technical projects, and as projects enabled by wider complex geographies (Bridge et al 2013). By dint of in-depth focus on interrelationships between technology of energy generation and its unfolding multiscalar spatial context, the course proposes conceptual scaffolding for social research grounded public discussion of energy transitions. Empirically the course is based on the lecturer's field work in the town of Visaginas, which was built in 1970-s and 1980-s in Soviet Lithuania as a settlement with the only purpose to serve Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. Since 2015 the lecturer could observe and participate in the town's attempts to re-tool its function and symbolic repertoire after the nuclear industry was interrupted (INPP reactors of RBMK type were stopped in 2004 and 2009 according to requirement Lithuania had to meet to join the European Union). Therefore, the course introduces the main notions and arguments in social research on Soviet and post-Soviet nuclear industry, as well as critically discusses the operationalisation of those notions and arguments in applied urbanist research. The course especially emphasises three dimensions of energy transitions - a) the everyday of communities formed around nuclear energy generation; b) meanings of work, employment and the corporate cultures related to nuclear energy; c) symbols of nuclear energy in institutionalised long-lasting political ideologies. Those dimensions are explored in order to develop sensitivity to complex relational spatiality of a specific energy generation project, to its actors and related policies. |
