CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017
| Author | Surwillo, Izabela |
|---|---|
| Title | Securitizing Energy: From Geopolitics to Energy Democracy The case of Germany, Poland & Ukraine |
| Summary | Confronted with the undertheorized, conceptually polymorphous and economic-centred energy studies literature on the one hand, and the highly theory oriented security studies on the other, this thesis takes up an interdisciplinary quest into the logics that guide energy security dynamics across different empirical contexts. The adopted contextual approach merges the analysis of energy security with theoretical insights from the critical security studies and interpretivist methodology grounded in hermeneutics to uncover multiplicity of security logics in the energy sphere. Similarly to the analyses of climate change or protection of critical infrastructure, the thesis defies the logic of exception as the dominant and universal logic of security. Instead, it illustrates that not only the logic of risk, war and subsistence shape local energy security agendas, but the emerging logic of emancipation increasingly plays a role in different national settings. Characterized by the gradual democratization of energy systems, individuals as the referent objects of security, the rhetoric of social empowerment/liberation and reflexive security practice - the energy security logic of emancipation marks yet another mutation of the meaning and practice of energy security. Since the emancipatory logic in the energy realm cannot be easily confined to any of the existing definitions of emancipation, the analysis of its ‘transformative’ nature leads to a number of analytical insights and empirical contributions. The research shows that the emerging emancipatory agenda: 1) further complicates domestic energy contexts and has important policy implications for the local citizens’ energy initiatives; 2) leads to an alternative conceptualization of the logic of emancipation that deviates from the critical security studies approach, immanent critique and emancipation/desecuritization argument; 3) challenges the analytical frameworks based on a single logic approach and the existing typologies of security logics; 4) provides new insights and conceptual clarity to the conventional energy security studies that remain focused on the state level technocratic energy policy analysis. The emancipatory logic of energy security also mutates across empirical contexts. Whereas it is present both in the rhetoric of social empowerment/liberation and in the energy practice as illustrated by diverse citizens’ energy initiatives in Germany, the Polish and Ukrainian cases point to its dual transformative impact on the energy contexts in the former Soviet space. The transformation of energy systems not only leads here to civic empowerment via the diffusion of energy production, but that societal empowerment can translate into further democratization of the CEE region and gradual transformation of the entire socio-economic models. |
| Supervisor | Kurowska, Xymena |
| Department | International Relations PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/surwillo_izabela.pdf |
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