Abstract
Meeting the urgent challenges of climate change and encouraging (more) sustainable consumption requires effective collaborations between multiple stakeholders. However political and professional contexts often prioritise delivery of targets and outcomes (the ‘what’) over good collaboration process (the ‘how’). Indeed, even when carefully planned, the actual ‘doing’ of collaborations is likely to be emotionally intensive work at times. This is where psychosocial theories offer significant insight; however, to date, they have been primarily used to illuminate the lived experience of those working in professions such as caring and health rather than sustainability. Through a psychosocial analysis of stories of collaboration gathered within a major project on low-carbon energy challenges across Europe, this chapter explores the emotional work involved in sustainability initiatives. Results will be of practical interest to those looking to understand, encourage and undertake collaborative work for sustainability.
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Notes
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For example, within the ERSS special issue on storytelling and energy much more prominent frameworks (than emotion) included imaginaries, participatory engagement/vision building, the Multi-Level Perspective, media analysis (including discourse analysis and framing), and social practices.
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Acknowledgements
The research which fed into this chapter was funded through the SHAPE ENERGY project, as part of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 731264. My sincere thanks to all participants of the workshop for their time and insights; if you read this chapter I hope you find it of interest. Thanks also to Jo Hamilton, Paul Hoggett, Rosemary Randall and Mel Rohse for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.
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Robison, R. (2019). Emotional Work as a Necessity: A Psychosocial Analysis of Low-Carbon Energy Collaboration Stories. In: Hoggett, P. (eds) Climate Psychology. Studies in the Psychosocial. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11741-2_5
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