Thermodynamic attachments and Energy Materials : Cultural Responses to Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Lancashire and Cumbria

Pantsidou, Maria and Spiers, Emily and Coulton, Paul (2025) Thermodynamic attachments and Energy Materials : Cultural Responses to Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Lancashire and Cumbria. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

ABSTRACT This thesis is the product of 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork and literary research in Lancashire and Cumbria. I explore how energy sources shape ordinary people’s stories - both literary and experiential - about the ways they attach to historically embedded energy regimes and infrastructures, namely fossil fuels and nuclear. These energy infrastructures (coal, oil, nuclear) need to be fixed to continue to produce capital (Moore, 2015). Narratives emerging in the peripheries offer an insight into the ways these structures continue to pose issues that pertain to the livelihoods of the people living around them, and they also illuminate and problematise their use. They offer narrative moments where ordinary people tell stories about energy materials as a historical development of attachments to fossil fuels and nuclear energy regimes. I make two propositions in this thesis. The first one is that in order to transition to more sustainable energy sources and uses, we need to better understand why people’s livelihoods, affects and mindsets are still to a large extent embedded into the fixed capital of already existing fossil fuel and nuclear infrastructures, which are seen as historical forms. In support of this argument, this thesis offers case studies focused on the North West of England, where energy infrastructures are aging, and energy sources are staged as historical forms. The second proposition pertains to the need of a more robust interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and social sciences against the historicity of fixed energy capital, and to attend in more illuminating ways what lay people in the peripheries have to offer in their narratives. I also argue that in contemporaneity, energy transitions require a humanities-social sciences insight to spill into policy, in combination or even to position technoscientific solutions in a secondary place. This study argues that our attachments to fossil fuels and other thermodynamic energy sources such as nuclear power are not merely technical systems; they are embedded in the cultural narratives and social practices of local communities. Cultural responses to energy regimes are shaped by energy attachments, necessitating a nuanced understanding of these factors for just transitions. Furthermore, this thesis asserts that energy policies require a more robust shift of paradigm that transcends purely technoscientific solutions. Through the theoretical lens of Affect Theory, New Materialism and Sociotechnical imaginaries theory, this project explores cultural artefacts that treat energy as a deep attachment which started with industrialisation in 19th century England. This study considers fossil-fuel energy as a fuel that created the legacy of the industrial revolution, imaginaries about the future and as a concept that creates contested infrastructures. To examine energy in those terms, I have focused my research on the region of Lancashire and Cumbria, two areas that are historically tied to the first industrial revolution. I see the region as a geographical space that was central to the birth of industrialisation, but also as space where various energy regimes collide and co-exist. The first chapter analyses the Cotton Famine Poetry, offering insight into our first attachment to fossil fuels, as coal powered steam engines were used in the textile industry. The poems offer a unique view into the ways we live with energy materialities and demonstrate how urgent the attachments to these materialities became. The stories these poems tell make energy materials visible and offer a new way to look at the way we interact with them. The second and third chapters examine regional theatre plays written by playwrights in Lancashire and Cumbria that offer imaginaries of the future at the interplay of energy justice, climate change and science-informed performances. These chapters are informed by a multi-method enquiry that pertains to close reading, ethnographic accounts and autoethnography. The final chapter turns to infrastructures of energy in the region, tracing the legacy of nuclear power in the area, which still resonates with contemporary energy debates about the role of nuclear fuel as a sustainable source of energy, and the ever-present issue in the region of radioactive waste disposal. Finally, the conclusion explores the contribution of regional narratives as a method to extract valuable lessons and continuities of otherwise obscured or neglected narratives of energy attachments.