Postdoctoral Fellowship: Energy, Risk and Urgency - Emergent Public Perceptions of Unconventional Oil and Gas Extraction

本博士后研究项目旨在调查美国和英国公众对非常规油气开采技术的态度。具体来说，该项目将侧重于紧迫性的想法，因为它们反映了公众对水力压裂（fracking）技术的风险、收益和影响的看法，以获取深层页岩中的石油和天然气。该博士后将对现有的定性数据进行比较分析，研究美国和英国不同群体的日常生活如何看待新的非常规油气技术在经济、环境、社会和政治方面的紧迫性。该项目的结果将引起STS学者，环境科学家和工程师，行业专家以及在多个领域工作的决策者的兴趣，包括能源系统，气候变化，环境正义；从更广泛的意义上说，他们将对任何对不同公众对当前和未来能源开采、生产和消费的看法和预期行为有利害关系的人感兴趣。将通过出版物和编写白皮书、报告和政策简报来广泛传播研究成果。拟议的项目是一个跨国比较案例分析，从紧迫性的角度分析跟踪技术对两个研究国家不同公众的社会价值观、关系、生计和做法的影响。对公众对非常规开采技术的紧急态度的详细、定性描述将有助于对STS和风险感知文献中关于责任、公平、信任和治理以及更广泛的能源和社会问题的关键辩论进行新的学术理解，这些问题都是新兴的负责任创新领域的关键问题。提出的对紧迫性的关注将为审查技术争议提供一个新的视角，并将系统化的方法用于理解其对风险和利益感知放大的影响。比较跨国研究将使人们更清楚地了解每个国家正在发挥作用的过程及其在能源未来方法方面的历史特殊性。拟议的分析将使用现有的一套广泛的定性数据进行，这些数据是从2014年10月由包括该项目的PI和联合PI在内的一个合作小组召开的四次公开审议研讨会上收集的。

General Audience Summary This postdoctoral research project proposes to examine public attitudes in the US and the UK on unconventional oil and gas extraction technologies. Specifically, the project will focus on ideas about urgency as they figure in emergent public views on the risks, benefits and impacts of technologies used in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to access oil and gas in deep shale rock. The postdoc will engage in a comparative analysis of existing qualitative data on how diverse groups of everyday people in the US and the UK attach ideas about urgency to economic, environmental, social, and political aspects of new unconventional oil and gas technologies. The results of this project will be of interest to STS scholars, environmental scientists and engineers, industry specialists, and policymakers working in multiple fields including energy systems, climate change, environmental justice; more broadly, they will be of interest to any who have a stake in in the perceptions and anticipated behavior of diverse publics regarding present and future energy extraction, production, and consumption. Broad dissemination of research results will be achieved through publications, and through the preparation of a white paper report and a policy brief. Technical Summary The proposed project is a cross-national comparative case analysis of the effects of fracking technologies on diverse publics' social values, relationships, livelihoods and practices in the two study countries through the lens of urgency. A detailed, qualitative account of how urgency operates in emergent public attitudes on unconventional extraction technologies will contribute new scholarly understanding to key debates within both STS and risk perception literatures on responsibility, equity, trust, and governance, and broader issues of energy and society, all critical issues in the emerging field of Responsible Innovation. The proposed focus on urgency will provide a new perspective for examining technological controversies, and will systematize approaches for understanding its effects on amplification of risk and benefit perception. The comparative cross-national study will provide greater clarity about the processes in play in each country and their historical specificities in approaches to energy futures. The proposed analysis will be conducted using an existing set of extensive qualitative data collected from four public deliberation workshops convened in October 2014 by a collaborative team including the PI and co-PI of this project.