International Politics of Energy Resources: A Materiality Approach?
Energy resources play a critical role in international politics, contributing to social, economic and political conflict and cooperation. The conventional International Relations approaches to the study of energy focus on certain political effects or outcomes of the politics of energy. These include on how it can cause conflict and war; how it determines the behaviour and interaction between states and companies; and how it contributes to empire and neo-colonialism. The materiality approach differs from these approaches by taking a different starting point. It examines the physical and material attributes of different energy sources and how these change and transform themselves through the production cycle from exploration, production, transportation, processing and consumption. This materiality approach gives power and agency to energy resources as non-human objects and demonstrates how these physical resources co-create and co-determine social, economic and political reality.
This materiality approach will be illustrated through a case-study of oil.
About the lab
The Climate and Energy Policy Lab is an exciting new unit run by climate change and energy policy experts at the University of Westminster.
The Climate and Energy Policy Lab Academic Coordinator is Dr Wojciech Ostrowski - [email protected]
Event location
Room UG05, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW
About the speaker
Roland Dannreuther, Professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster
Roland Dannreuther has published extensively in the areas of security studies, the politics of energy, and the regional politics of Russia, the Middle East and Central Asia. His latest book is co-edited with Wojciech Ostrowski, Handbook on Oil and International Relations (2022) and which develops the materiality framework for the study of the politics of oil.
