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

这个博士后研究项目旨在调查美国和英国公众对非常规石油和天然气开采技术的态度。具体地说，该项目将重点关注有关紧迫性的想法，因为它们反映了公众对水力压裂(水力压裂)技术在深层页岩中获取石油和天然气的风险、好处和影响的紧急看法。博士后将对现有的定性数据进行比较分析，这些数据涉及美国和英国不同群体的日常生活如何将有关紧迫性的想法置于新的非常规石油和天然气技术的经济、环境、社会和政治方面。STS学者、环境科学家和工程师、行业专家和在能源系统、气候变化、环境正义等多个领域工作的政策制定者将对该项目的结果感兴趣；更广泛地说，与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任何人都将感兴趣。将通过出版物以及编写一份白皮书报告和一份政策简报来广泛传播研究成果。技术总结拟议的项目是一项跨国比较案例分析，通过紧急情况的视角，分析水力压裂技术对两个研究国家不同公众的社会价值观、关系、生计和实践的影响。详细、定性地说明紧迫性如何在公众对非常规开采技术的紧急态度中发挥作用，将有助于对STS和风险认知文献中关于责任、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提供新的学术理解，所有这些都是负责任创新新兴领域的关键问题。拟议的对紧迫性的关注将为审查技术争议提供新的视角，并将使理解其对放大风险和惠益认知的影响的方法系统化。这项比较的跨国研究将更清楚地了解每个国家正在进行的进程，以及它们在能源期货方法方面的历史特殊性。拟议的分析将利用从一个协作小组于2014年10月召开的四次公开审议讲习班收集的一套广泛的定性数据进行，其中包括该项目的主计长和共同主计长。

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.