The Politics of Energy Security

Energy security is known for its ‘slippery’ nature and subsequent broad range of
definitions. Instead of another attempt to grasp its essence, this book offers a
critical reflection that problematizes the use of energy security itself.
After a short historical and methodological analysis of the proliferation of
energy security, The Politics of Energy Security unpacks three social practices that
drive energy security. These include an analysis of the logics of security, a study
of the relation between the materiality of sociotechnical (energy) systems and
the knowledge people have over such systems, and a reflection on the power
and politics behind (energy) security. Each of these is discussed and ultimately
illustrated in the last chapter to show how energy security works, how it is
shaped, and what role it plays within political processes.
Based on a novel performative reading of energy security with its focus on
ontological politics and an in-­depth look at the often implicitly accepted social
practices that determine how people shape and are shaped by energy security,
this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of energy security and
policy, political theory, international relations, critical security studies and
environmental studies more broadly.

Johannes Kester is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Aarhus

working on the social barriers and acceptation of electric mobility and vehicle-­
to-grid integration in the Nordic countries. His primary interest lies in the
governance of sociotechnical energy systems and their stabilization and trans-
formation, drawing on social theory with a focus on the role of the politics of
security and risk in these processes. He has published articles in Energy Policy,
Energy, Energy Research and Social Science and Mobilities, and defended his PhD,
Securing abundance: The politics of energy security (2016), at the University of
Groningen in the Netherlands.
Routledge Explorations in Energy Studies

Energy Poverty and Vulnerability

A Global Perspective
Edited by Neil Simcock, Harriet Thomson, Saska Petrova and Stefan Bouzarovski

The Politics of Energy Security

Critical Security Studies, New Materialism and Governmentality
Johannes Kester
The Politics of Energy Security
Critical Security Studies, New Materialism
and Governmentality

Johannes Kester
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Johannes Kester
The right of Johannes Kester to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-­in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book

ISBN: 978-1-138-03747-2 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-17789-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Goudy
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Contents

List of illustrations vii

Acknowledgements viii

1 Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Argument, contribution and approach 2
1.3 Overview of chapters 6

2 The historic proliferation of energy security 12

2.1 Introduction 12
2.2 From physical to political security of supply 18
2.3 Securing the economics of energy 19
2.4 Sustainable energy security 22
2.5 Human energy insecurity 24
2.6 Securing energy systems 26
2.7 Reflection: defining energy security 28

3 Analysing energy security 40

3.1 Introduction 40
3.2 Defining, differentiation and categorization 41
3.3 Theories of energy security 45
3.4 Searching for logics of energy security 46
3.5 Reflection: unpacking energy security 49

4 Securing undesired (energy) futures 56

4.1 Introduction 56
4.2 Tackling the unknown 58
4.3 The ethics of security 68
vi   Contents
4.4 Securing exceptional threats 75
4.5 Risk as a security instrument 87
4.6 Reflection 96

5 The materialization of energy security 113

5.1 Introduction 113
5.2 How do we know of the world? 115
5.3 Moving beyond humans and language 123
5.4 Relational ontologies and the question of change 132
5.5 The politics of observing with things 140
5.6 Reflection 145

6 Governing with and through energy security 163

6.1 Introduction 163
6.2 Foucault on security, power and politics 164
6.3 Governing people, markets and the milieu 171
6.4 Governing and materialization 179
6.5 Reflection 185

7 Energy security politics in the Dutch natural gas debate 196

7.1 Introduction 196
7.2 Contextualizing security in a flat performative relationality 199
7.3 The Huizinge earthquake, its interpretation and subsequent
reactions 203
7.4 Balancing security of supply, profits and gasquakes 204
7.5 Calling on safety and scientific uncertainty to securitize the
gasquakes 207
7.6 The politics behind the gasquake science 209
7.7 Reflection 210

8 Conclusion: Performativity, disclosure and the politics of

energy security 220
8.1 The tightrope walker 220
8.2 Towards a performative reading of energy security 223
8.3 A brief reflection on a performative reading of energy security 227
8.4 A research agenda and some implications 229
8.5 In closing 233

Index 236
Illustrations

Figures
3.1 Perceived threats to and from natural resources 42
3.2 Energy trilemma 47
4.1 Types, techniques and logics of security 59
7.1 Frequency and magnitude of Groningen earthquakes 203
8.1 The ontology of a performative reading of energy security 226

Table
2.1 Definitions of energy security 14
Acknowledgements

This book is based on my PhD thesis Securing abundance: the politics of energy
security, which I defended in 2016 at the University of Groningen. It would not
have come into fruition without the helpful advice, patience and occasional
friendly push from a range of people. First, I would like to thank my wife,
Vimke, for joining me on a journey that was not of her choosing but which she
supported as if it was her own. Special thanks as well to both my PhD super-
visors. To Jaap de Wilde for his insightful comments and critique, his guidance
through university politics, and his initial trust in an MA student who wanted
to write ‘something’ about energy and constructivism. Thanks to Benjamin Her-
borth for his encouragement and his enthusiasm to share an almost-­encyclopedic
breadth of theoretical knowledge with me. The book also builds in large part on
the international relations bubble at the Oude Boteringestraat. I feel lucky to
have been part of this group and would like to thank Stef Wittendorp, Lennart
Landman and Kars de Bruijne for their willingness to suffer as a critical sound-
ing board, one that has seen quite some use over the years. Add to them the
others with whom I started my PhD journey and shared many of the joy and
pains of writing a thesis, Petra Boudewijn, Margriet Fokken and Simon Halink,
and you have an environment in which it is a pleasure to go to work each day,
every day. Lastly, I would like to thank Benjamin Sovacool for his support and
generosity to use some of the precious time of our project on the sociotechnical
transition behind electric mobility to rewrite the thesis into the book before
you. Of course, I have encountered many others throughout my research, close
by and far off, who in one way or another have enriched my thinking. The list is
long and, if you feel you are on it, you probably are and I thank you. I can only
hope that this book properly reflects all the lessons and insights that you all
shared so freely.
1 Introduction

1.1 Introduction
I have never considered myself wealthy. Luckily, I have also never known
hunger or thirst and the longest period I have been without electricity involun-
tarily has been half a day at most. In other words, I have had the fortune to grow
up and live in a society with the norms, institutions and markets that cater for
an abundance of natural resources. In fact, as this book shows, I live in a society
that has completely structured its political markets to ensure this. That said,
these same political markets produce several adverse effects for those at its
fringes. Climate change, energy poverty, scarcity, food banks and a degrading
biodiversity are but some of the terms that indicate the negative sides of our
current political economy. A political economy that has benefited many, but
not without excluding some and harming others.1 Simultaneously, this political
economy is constantly defended and secured against the threats and dangers
that its beneficiaries believe to exist. This calls for a need to understand the
security processes at work in the production, distribution and consumption of
energy, food and other natural resources. While the security processes behind
each of these resources (and their nexus) is important, ‘nothing exists that is
not energy, or not affected by energy’.2 This book will therefore focus on the
concept, practice and politics of energy security.
There are many ways to study energy security. Some scholars approach it
conceptually, historically or quantitatively, a lot take a policy-­oriented route,
and a select few offer a broader social critique.3 What many of these analyses
have in common is that they search for an answer to what energy security is or
ought to be – often simultaneously. What is studied are questions like how energy
security should be defined, what exactly needs to be secured, what the threats
are, who is in need of energy security, what needs to be done to counter the
threats, and so on.4 This book is not concerned with such questions. Instead it
argues that the studies asking these questions only partly help us understand
what energy security is, because it does not allow for an understanding of what
energy security does politically. The book thus shifts the question to: what does
energy security do? A question which it pursues by studying how energy security
is approached in current scholarship and then further unpacks with another
2   Introduction
shift in focus from the current energy security literature to the security politics
around energy security and by answering a different set of questions: what is
security and what does security do? How does energy security relate to the mate-
riality of energy, its infrastructure and resources? How does energy security work
politically as a form of governance? And how can we operationalize such a per-
formative approach to energy security?
Following these questions, the book promotes a shift away from a pre- and
descriptive understanding of the concept of energy security towards an under-
standing of energy security as performative: to see the designation and use of the
concept of energy security as an act in itself.5 By seeing energy security as an act,
the repeated practice of its use ‘constitutes’, ‘maintains’ or ‘changes’ the meaning
of the concept itself and the enactment of its material effects, and thereby the
potential involvement and identity of the actors behind it and the possible routes
of action that are open to them.6 Such a performative approach forces scholars to
move away from the ‘quest for certainty’ inherent in studies that want to under-
stand what energy security is, and replace this with the acceptance that the
concept of energy security is embedded, structured, productive, malleable and
used differently by different people in different places at different times.7
The performative reading of energy security (PRES) that is proposed in this
book builds primarily on critical international relations (IR) theory and critical
security studies (CSS), but also draws on insights from new materialism, devel-
opment studies, political geography, sociology and philosophy. By unpacking
the concept of energy security with the help of these different literatures, a
reflexive stance is imposed on both the author and reader towards the triangle
of political economy, security and natural resource policies and their trade-­offs
(closely related to the energy trilemma within energy studies depicting the
trade-­offs between economic concerns, security concerns and environmental
concerns).8 Importantly, these trade-­offs point to the fact that energy security is
only one aspect within the wider debate on energy, which also includes discus-
sions that start from an energy transition or energy justice perspective.9
To be clear, the goal here is not to offer a specific performative reading that
explains energy security, but to problematize current understandings of energy
security through a rigorous theoretical reflection on the concept and the prac-
tices that shape it. These include the different security logics (Chapter 4), the
interaction between energy security concerns and the materiality of the actual
energy infrastructures (Chapter 5) and a deeper understanding of the politics
and power relations behind the organization of energy (Chapter 6). These three,
in all their intricacy and heterogeneity, explain part of how people approach
and secure the production, transportation and consumption of current and
future energy use.

1.2 Argument, contribution and approach

One of the main problems identified within the energy security literature
involves the realization that any definition of energy security is inherently
 Introduction   3
unstable, which leads ensuing research to question the ‘slippery’, ‘blurred’, ‘poly-
semic’, ‘multidimensional’, ‘deepening and widening’, ‘totality or banality’ of
the concept itself.10 Those few studies that do reflect upon the concept either
quantify, categorize or try to find logics behind different forms of energy security
(Chapter 3). Instead of problematizing this openness, this book argues for an
acceptance of its inherent empty and contextualized nature and calls for an
understanding of energy security as a security practice that is always already
political, in line with earlier work from Ciută and Bridge.11 It calls for a perfor-
mative understanding of energy security that does not stop at the identification
of the threat and the success or failure of its countermeasures. Instead it moves
beyond such questions to the acts that are needed to make energy security come
into being in the first place and the subsequent broader socio-­material implica-
tions and effects that follow from this becoming.
Such an approach immediately highlights three alternative insights for
energy security. First, the proliferation of energy security does not stand on its
own. It is for example mirrored in food security, where the concept has also kept
expanding to include ever more elements.12 Likewise, the analyses of security
(Chapter 4) highlight multiple logics that can all be used to approach energy
security. However, to repeat, instead of seeing this as a challenge that needs to
be overcome we can also accept the multiplicity of it. That might add a layer of
complexity, yes. But, if anything, such complexity should strengthen the need
for a different way of thinking about energy security. Second, the acceptance of
such a multiplicity imposes a reflective stance on energy security scholars, on
how their work acts politically as well. This follows the red line of this book,
about the importance of knowledge gathering on and within sociotechnical
energy systems and the normative and ethical dimension inherent to these
observations. A third, but not final, insight centres on the self-­referential aspects
of the theories that are used to examine and explain energy and energy security,
like neorealism and neo-­liberalism. From a performative approach, these the-
ories are not just explaining energy security but are actively involved in produc-
ing its future through what they observe and the assumptions that they justify,
for example on whether to trust the state, the market or humankind.
In short, by unpacking some of the underlying practices and assumptions
behind energy security and by offering a performative understanding of energy
security, this book contributes to a deeper understanding of energy security
based firmly in the otherwise overall deplorably absent humanities literature in
energy studies.13 In the process, it opens up the concept of security, reflects on
the role of the material world in social research and argues for more reflexivity
and attention to the knowledge practices behind energy security practices. In
addition to its contributions to the energy security literature this book also con-
tributes to the CSS literature, which currently is mostly absent from energy and
other natural resource debates, while in turn these sociotechnical systems
around natural resources hardly return within the CSS literature.14 True, CSS
has excellent contributions on the relation between finance and security,15 but
always in relation to terrorism or migration, not in relation to natural resources,
4   Introduction
even though there are clear connections, especially with the recent research
into the materiality of security.16
Besides CSS, another notable absence from this book is international polit-
ical economy (IPE). This is notable considering this book studies the security
processes behind the political economy of energy, a topic for which IPE has very
little if anything to add. Yet, it is also notable because of the origins of the dis-
cipline of IPE itself, as this field traces its own roots to the 1973 oil crisis.17 This
absence can be explained by a combination of the relative independence of
natural resource debates and the overwhelming focus on economic and financial
institutions, globalization, and the organization of markets in IPE. As Strange
remarks in her 1988 classic States and Markets, energy is a ‘classic case of the no
man’s land lying between the social sciences, an area unexplored and unoccu-
pied by any of the major theoretical disciplines’.18 Recent work by Hughes and
Lipscy shows that this mismatch remains valid, as current energy issues are still
conspicuously absent in top-­tier IR/IPE journals.19 Hancock and Vivoda explain
this through the preselection practices in the publication strategies of energy
scholars, which make them bypass IR and IPE journals and thus the debates and
agenda-­setting functions of these journals.20 Interestingly, Hancock and Vivoda
still refer to energy as part of IPE and do not see it as a separate field that follows
its own progression, nor do they see it as a topic that belongs to a broader
natural resource debate. What is more, their future research options for energy
cover a range of issues, but a focus on security and the politics energy security is
not one of them. Instead, they argue for a move away from the focus on oil to
other energy resources and issue areas like renewables, biofuel, electricity and
sovereign wealth funds. That they feel the need to mention such basics is shock-
ing, and further evidence of the lacking integration between energy studies and
the research in IPE and IR.
Lastly, a brief reflection on methodology and methods in this book. First,
many of the theories discussed in this book are not applicable positivist theories
and do not offer inductive or deductive explanatory schemes. They are not
models predicting behaviour but ways to trace actions, interpretations and rela-
tionships. Moreover, the scope and intent of this book is such that there is not
one theory or method(ology) that is appropriate for its subject. In fact, as
Aradau and Huysmans argue in a recent critical reflection, methods inherently
fixate specific epistemological and ontological positions.21 Choosing a method
(or a theory) as a ‘neutral’ way to analyse an event is therefore a self-­defeating
exercise as methods and methodologies are effectively a politics of ontology (see
Chapter 5). They help shape a specific world the moment they are used to
analyse that world. The theoretical scope of this book and more precise the
shifting ontological positions within these theories thus inhibit it from clearly
taking up one theory or method over another (of course, the decision not to
choose is also a decision that performs a specific reality).
Still, that does not mean that the analysed critical theories do not offer tools
to study their subjects. Most of the theories below make assumptions on onto-
logy (what exists in the world) and epistemology (what we can know of this
 Introduction   5
world) and thereby offer an interpretation of how reality works. In terms of
methods, it could therefore be argued that this book, in an equally loose
manner, combines – but does not apply – aspects of deconstruction, discourse
analysis, genealogy, ‘pearl-­fishing’, diffractive reading, disclosure, actor-­network
accounts and so forth. Additionally, the book discusses multiple explicit perfor-
mative approaches, ranging from the speech acts in Section 4.4 and the perfor-
mativity of Butler in Section 5.3 to Barad’s interpretation of intra-­action in
Section 5.5 and Foucault’s insights on the power/knowledge nexus in Section
6.4. What is shared by all these methods and approaches is a critical stance
towards ontology and epistemology, or the awareness that the knowledge we
have of the world helps shape it. In other words, they are all, to some extent,
performative.
To repeat, this book does not offer the performative reading of energy security
and the performative reading it offers should be read in addition to the existing
energy security literature as the reflexivity advanced by a performative reading
of energy security actually needs positivist studies to be able to reflect in the first
place (see the conclusion). Nevertheless, because all the theories are performa-
tive, the conclusion offers a brief reflection on how I personally operationalize
across these theories with security in mind, a view that primarily builds on the
intra-­action between events, observation and assemblages, or how we observe
events and gather things together in response. This is still rather general, but an
unspecified performative reading offers the openness and self-­reflexivity to
understand and cope with the world of energy security as it is performed from a
wide range of perspectives.22 Doing so offers scholars the ability to come to a
more extensive, although always temporal understanding of the socio-­material
drivers behind the concepts and practices of energy security.
What is more, even an unspecified and temporal performative reading of
energy security offers a range of conclusions for energy security. For instance, it
shows that energy security proliferates not because it cannot be defined, but
because (1) it is relative and its meaning can be different for different people at
the same time, because (2) its usage and context changes continuously and
because (3) it is based on empty security logics wherein failure and success
always lead to more security. Moreover, the search for a central definition itself
acts politically as a form of closure and hides the true virtuality and differences
of energy security and is therefore inhibitive of a deeper understanding of the
phenomenon and its underlying social processes. Basically, once defined as the
mode through which people identify undesirable energy futures and act upon them in
the present, energy security is no longer solely something to be achieved but
emerges as a governance technique aimed at energy circulations that consist of
a set of materialdiscursive relations which are constantly performed and dis-
rupted and which consist of humans, things, knowledge, morality, practices and
so on. Energy security becomes a performative act which simultaneously is pro-
duced and is producing a specific understanding of energy security and the
materialdiscursive world around it.23
6   Introduction
1.3 Overview of chapters
The chapters in this book are divided into three parts. The next two chapters
set the stage by introducing the concept of energy security and by problematiz-
ing current approaches to energy security. The subsequent three chapters
unpack energy security theoretically to come to a deeper understanding of the
drivers behind energy security. Finally, the last chapter provides an illustration
of an alternative performative reading of energy security, while the conclusion
offers a reflection on these insights based on a short summary.
Chapter 2 provides a brief historical conceptualization of energy security. It
traces the evolution of the concept in line with its expanding referent object,
from a concept focused on security of physical supplies via economic and ecolo-
gical security towards an understanding of energy security that includes ethical
considerations and focuses on energy systems. Chapter 3 subsequently discusses
how the current literature approaches energy security. It discusses the categor-
ization of the growth of the number of referent objects behind energy security,
the role of geopolitical and neo-­liberal theoretical understandings of energy
security and some recent theoretical developments within the field of energy
security, including the search for underlying logics and contextualization. After
concluding that a constant search for the perfect definition of energy security is
a neverendingly and highly normative struggle, this book moves on to the ques-
tion of what energy security does politically.
To make this performative move and to come to an understanding of the con-
stant proliferation of energy security, this book draws on three distinct literatures
in the next three chapters. Chapter 4 moves from energy security, with its
emphasis on energy, to the security practice labelled energy security. This chapter
offers a theoretical discussion of security along a two-­track approach that first dis-
cusses how the security literature describes security and then moves on to analyse
what security does. Even at first glance this chapter reveals the emptiness of
security as well as the multiple different logics behind it that all revolve on the
will to know the future and to decide upon its undesirability. This chapter also
offers two ways to approach a performative reading of energy security with its dis-
cussion of securitization theory and the governmentality of risk. Where the first
can be found within studies on energy security (and is briefly illustrated here with
the securitization of Russian gas imports by the European Commission), its atten-
tion to exceptionality dismisses the routine everyday security questions that
make up most of today’s energy systems, which is why this chapter introduces the
governmentality of risk as an unexplored alternative.
Chapter 5, on the relationship between materiality and knowledge, tries to
come to terms with the social understandings of security in relation to the geo-
logical and sociotechnical infrastructure that underpins energy systems. This
chapter first analyses the linguistic arguments and the performativity of con-
cepts, and then continues by introducing new materialist understandings of the
role of matter within such a performative epistemological understanding. Matter
here becomes both an impediment (technical solutions to social concerns) and
 Introduction   7
a driver (technological change like the electrification of society) for security
arguments towards energy and other fields. Nevertheless, in line with security,
this chapter ends by highlighting the importance of knowledge gathering prac-
tices and the ethics of observation behind these practices, as materiality offers
both the surprise of socio-­material events as well as the achievement of closure
following the interpretation of these events.
Chapter 6 returns to security by introducing the work of Michel Foucault on
biopolitics. Specifically, this chapter studies the broader political effects behind
the chapters on security and materialization, which primarily look at the politics
inherent to security and ontological politics (how it works and how people get
it to work). For these political effects, Foucault offers another theoretical under-
standing of security. He sees security as a form of political power that is both
negative and productive, which enables him to see security as a form of govern-
ance that organizes freedom and the continuous circulation of goods and people.
However, while Foucault thus offers yet another explanation for security, his
reflections on security, knowledge and materiality do enable us to combine some
of the insights from the previous chapters and simultaneously show how security
acts politically in relation to economic markets, society and the environment.
After these theoretical chapters, Chapter 7 offers an illustration that utilizes
some of these theoretical insights to reflect on the constitution and reification
of energy security, including its practical consequences. Specifically, it discusses
the Dutch debate about the earthquakes that result from natural gas extraction
in the north of the Netherlands. This illustration shows how the insecurity of
the persons living above the gas fields conflicts with the risk assessments and
energy security concerns of the authorities and how the subsequent debate
unconsciously reifies current understandings of natural gas supply security.
What’s more, besides this novel study of these conflicting security logics, this
chapter highlights the importance of security processes for the knowledge prac-
tices over uncertain material events.
Finally, the conclusion will summarize some of the main findings of this book
on energy security. After a summary, it offers a first general assemblage of the
performativity behind all the theories discussed in relation to security – focusing
on events, observation and assemblages. It subsequently reflects on some of the
broader aspects of a performative reading of energy security, about politics, the
desire for knowledge, the question of who acts and the always-­inherent resist-
ance that breaks materialdiscursive assemblages. The chapter ends with five
research topics that deserve further attention and four implications for energy
security scholars, policymakers and performative scholars.

Notes
1 Le Billon 2005, 5.
2 Ciută 2010, 124.
3 Conceptually, qualitatively or historically: Winzer 2012; Chester 2010; Cherp and
Jewell 2014; Yergin 1991. Quantitatively: Kruyt et al. 2009; Jansen and Seebregts
2010; Brown et al. 2014; Narula and Reddy 2015. More policy-­oriented: Luft and
8   Introduction
Korin 2009; CIEP 2004; Kalicki and Goldwyn 2005; Bahgat 2006; Vivoda 2009. And
from a social critique: Sheller 2014; Illich 1974; Shove and Walker 2014; Byrne and
Toly 2006.
4 Cherp and Jewell 2014.
5 Butler 2010; Barad 2003; Bialasiewicz et al. 2007.
6 Aalberts 2006, 3.
7 Herborth 2012.
8 On the energy trilemma, see Figure 3.2 and its discussion in Chapter 3.
9 Goldthau and Sovacool 2012; Sovacool 2013.
10 Chester 2010; Löschel, Moslener and Rübbelke 2010; Sovacool and Brown 2010;
Dyer and Trombetta 2013; Ciută 2010; Cherp and Jewell 2011.
11 Ciută 2010; Bridge 2015. See also the broader work on ‘energopower’ by Boyer 2011;
Boyer 2014; Mitchell 2013. Other critical discursive articles include: Smith Stegen
2011; Byrne and Toly 2006; Campbell 2005; Cooper 2013; Fischhendler and Nathan
2014; Herbstreuth 2014; Kurze 2008; Lovell 2008; Nyman 2014; Teschner and
Paavola 2013.
12 Jarosz 2011; Smith, Pointing and Maxwell 1992.
13 Sovacool 2014, 11. Also, Urry 2014.
14 Kester 2018.
15 Amoore and De Goede 2008; De Goede 2012.
16 Aradau 2010; Schouten 2014; Walters 2014; Aradau, Coward et al. 2015.
17 Gilpin and Gilpin 2001. Gilpin’s classic handbook only mentions energy four times:
either as a side note or in relation to the 1973 origin of IPE. An exception is
Keohane 2009.
18 Strange 1994, 195. See also: Stoddard 2013, 2.
19 Hughes and Lipscy 2013.
20 Hancock and Vivoda 2014.
21 Aradau and Huysmans 2014; Aradau, Huysmans et al. 2015.
22 See also: Cooper 2013.
23 Barad 2003.

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 Introduction   11
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and Shuster.
2 The historic proliferation of
energy security

2.1 Introduction
The crux behind debates on energy security is that the insecurity of
someone living in a European country differs from those living elsewhere in
the world, as well as from those within the same country. Different geograph-
ical, temporal and environmental circumstances dictate different energy
needs, while different market and regulatory structures dictate the options
people have to fulfil these needs. Yet, despite these differences, almost every-
body is connected through global energy systems and markets of coal, oil,
natural gas, uranium, wood pellets, corn, renewable technology, battery
storage and so on. Not a single country can run from the climate effects of
these markets nor can it be entirely independent from them. Simultaneously,
energy is closely connected to the production, trade and consumption of other
resources, while those same resources enable the production of energy, be they
water (cooling/hydro), food (biofuels) or rare earth minerals (renewable tech-
nologies).1 Furthermore, the current transformation from a traditional fossil
fuel system into a renewable electrified energy system is changing the earth’s
topography, physical infrastructures, market structures, social habits and power
structures.
This complexity returns in debates on the concept of energy security. In
fact, Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton rightly remark that there are two things
confusing about energy security: the concept of energy and the concept of
security.2 For Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton, both of these concepts hide
many of the underlying sociopolitical and economic choices behind energy
consumption and production, as they only implicitly touch upon the actual
choice for a particular energy source or the decision who is in need of security.
These latter choices are often foregone conclusions in most policy-­oriented
energy security debates whose prime focus it is to secure the resulting situation
in the first place. In relation to the energy side of energy security,3 a quick
reflection on the meaning of the word already shows that a physicist’s defini-
tion of energy differs from an economic or a political conceptualization.4 Phys-
icists understand energy as the work (joules) needed to lift something over a
fixed distance and they observe that energy cannot be created or destroyed in
 Historic proliferation of energy security   13
closed systems, only transformed into other less useful types of energy.5 This
clearly contrasts with an economic understanding of energy as a commodity to
be produced, sold and wasted, let alone with a political understanding of
energy as a strategic resource that needs to be acquired and controlled. In this
respect, Jansen and Van der Welle remark how it is not energy itself that is in
need of securing, but useful energy: the energy that fits current sociotechnical
energy systems.6
Then again, ever more energy sources are useful or made to be useful. Hence,
the concept of energy security has evolved along the cyclical whims of the
expanding energy markets, in particularly the global oil market. Over the years,
the concept ‘has quietly slipped into the energy lexicon and assumed a relatively
prominent position’ as evident by a range of definitions (see Table 2.1).7 The
International Energy Agency (IEA) provides one of the most accepted and basic
definitions of energy security and defines energy security as ‘adequate, affordable
and reliable supplies of energy’.8 Implicit in this definition is the sense that an
agent is energy-­insecure when the supplies of energy are not adequate, affordable
or reliable. However, who defines what is adequate, affordable or reliable? What
kind of energy is needed? Who needs to make sure that energy is secure? It
seems that the simplicity of the concept quickly breaks down under questioning.
An alternative definition is provided by Ciută, who describes energy insecurity
as ‘the product of the contradiction between a general trend of increasing energy
consumption and a contradictory trend of decreasing energy reserves’.9 Easily
grasped in its simplicity and a core logic behind many of the geopolitics-­oriented
considerations on energy security, such neo-­Malthusian thinking is not self-­
evident and neither is this definition (see Chapter 4).10 In other words, these
definitions break down under scrutiny. So, instead of discussing these and the
other definitions in Table 2.1 (to which we will return later on in this chapter),
the rest of this chapter provides a history of the evolution of energy security and
highlight its expansion by identifying five themes that have become inherent to
energy security.
Looking back, most of the literature that studies energy security retraces its
origin to the 1970s oil crises, not only for its political and economic import-
ance but also because the actual concept of energy security originates from
around that period. Of course, this does not mean that the concerns captured
by the concept of energy security did not exist before the 1970s. For instance,
security of supply concerns have a long history, arguably from the moment that
people became dependent on others for their tools (in the Bronze Age).11
However, the political meaning of the concept of energy, as denoting a combi-
nation of coal, oil, gas and electricity industries and supply chains, only
emerged in the early second half of the twentieth century.12 Before this polit-
ical understanding of energy, the discussions focused simply on the resource in
question. There was a coal problem or an electricity problem, never an energy
problem. The difference becomes clear when one compares Jevons’s 1865 argu-
ment on the importance of coal with Schumacher’s 1964 argument on the
importance of energy:
14   Historic proliferation of energy security
Coal in truth stands not beside but entirely above all other commodities. It
is the material energy of the country – the universal aid – the factor in
everything we do. With coal almost any feat is possible or easy; without it
we are thrown back into the laborious poverty of early times.13

There is no substitute for energy. The whole edifice of modern society is

built upon it. Although energy can be bought and sold like any other com-
modity, it is not ‘just another commodity’ but the precondition of all com-
modities, a basic factor equal with air, water, and earth.14

In comparing these two quotes, three things become apparent. First, the current
understanding of energy (and thus energy security) is a relatively modern under-
standing that has evolved in tandem with developments in markets, society and
technology. Second, while the meanings and content might change and con-
cerns can be added to the concept of energy security, some of the primary con-
cerns, like security of supply, seem to remain stable over time. Lastly, the
importance and all-­pervasiveness of energy in modern societies make any
security argument that calls for the protection of energy a self-­evident argument,
for how can one not secure ‘the factor in everything we do’ or ‘the precondition
of all commodities’?

Table 2.1 Definitions of energy security

Source* Definition

Yergin 1988, 112 ‘The objective of energy security is to assure adequate, reliable
supplies of energy at reasonable prices and in ways that do not
jeopardize major national values and objectives.’
Bohi and Toman 1996, ‘Energy insecurity can be defined as the loss of economic
1–2 welfare that may occur as a result of a change in the price or
availability of energy.’
European Commission ‘[E]nergy supply security must be geared to ensuring, for the
2000, 2 well-being of its citizens and the proper functioning of the
economy, the uninterrupted physical availability of energy
products on the market, at a price which is affordable for all
consumers (private and industrial), while respecting
environmental concerns and looking towards sustainable
development.… Security of supply does not seek to maximise
energy self-sufficiency or to minimise dependence, but aims to
reduce the risks linked to such dependence.’
Bielecki 2002, 237 ‘Energy security is commonly defined as reliable and adequate
supply of energy at reasonable prices.’

Barton et al. 2004, 5 ‘as a condition in which a nation and all, or most of its citizens
and business have access to sufficient energy resources at
reasonable prices for the foreseeable future free from serious
risk of major disruption of service.’
 Historic proliferation of energy security   15
Table 2.1 Continued

Source* Definition

APERC 2007 Four As: Availability (physical); Accessibility (political-

economic barriers); Affordability (costs and prices); and
Acceptability (environmental).
WEC 2008, 4 ‘Energy security is defined as an uninterruptible supply of
energy, in terms of quantities required to meet demand at
affordable prices.’
Patterson 2008, n.p. ‘The energy security that worries politicians concerns supplies
of imported oil and natural gas, not the secure delivery of
energy services, such as keeping the lights on.’
Hughes 2009, 2461 ‘The four ‘R’s of energy security explain the actions needed to
improve energy security, beginning with understanding the
problem (review), using less energy (reduce), shifting to secure
sources (replace), and limiting new demand to secure sources
(restrict).’
Kleber 2009, 2 ‘Energy security is the capacity to avoid adverse impact of
energy disruptions caused either by natural, accidental or
intentional events affecting energy and utility supply and
distribution systems. [it] possess[es] five characteristics: surety
[access], survivability [resilient and durable resources/supply
chains], supply [having resources], sufficiency [adequate to
demand] and sustainability [limit environmental impact].’
Sovacool and Brown ‘We argue … that energy security should be based on the
2010, 81 interconnected factors of availability, affordability, efficiency,
and environmental stewardship.’
IEA 2010a, 559 ‘Energy security, broadly defined, means adequate, affordable
and reliable supplies of energy. It matters because energy is
essential to economic growth and human development. No
energy system can be entirely secure in the short term, because
disruptions or shortages can arise unexpectedly, whether
through sabotage, political intervention, strikes, technical
failures, accidents or natural disasters. In the longer term,
under-investment in energy production or transportation
capacity can lead to shortages and consequently unacceptably
high prices. So energy security, in practice, is best seen as a
problem of risk management, that is reducing to an acceptable
level the risks and consequences of disruptions and adverse
long-term market trends.’
Chester 2010, 893 ‘These findings lead to the contention that the concept of
energy security is inherently slippery because it is polysemic in
nature. The concept has many possible meanings. Energy
security may be delineated through multiple dimensions and it
takes on different specificities depending on the country (or
continent), timeframe or energy source to which it is applied.’

continued
16   Historic proliferation of energy security
Table 2.1 Continued

Source* Definition

Jansen and Seebregts ‘Let us coin the certainty level of enduring, uninterrupted
2010, 1655 access of the population in a defined region to affordably and
competitively priced, environmentally acceptable energy end-
use services by the term energy services security.’
Sovacool and Divide APERC’s four As into five dimensions: Availability,
Mukherjee 2011 Affordability, Technology Development, Sustainability, and
Regulation.
Jansen and Van der ‘We propose to use the term energy services security (ESS)
Welle 2011, 241 instead of energy security as the notion that covers the central
topic of this chapter. Hereafter, ESS refers to the extent to which
the population in a defined area (country or region) can have access
to affordably and competitively priced, environmentally acceptable
energy services of adequate quality.’
von Hippel et al. 2011, A nation state is energy secure to the degree that fuel and energy
78 services are available to ensure: (1) survival of the nation, (2)
protection of national welfare and (3) minimization of risks
associated with supply and use of fuel and energy services.
Goldthau and Sovacool ‘Energy security, defined as the way of equitably providing
2012, 235 available, affordable, reliable, efficient, environmentally
benign, proactively governed, and socially acceptable energy
services to end-users, is gaining ever more prominence on
contemporary policy agendas. Energy security has supply-side
and demand-side components.’
Winzer 2012, 36 ‘we suggest narrowing down the concept of energy security to
the concept of energy supply continuity. This reduces the
overlap between the policy goals of energy security,
sustainability and economic efficiency.’
Yergin 2012, 269 ‘The usual definition of energy security is pretty
straightforward: the availability of sufficient supplies at
affordable prices. Yet there are several dimensions. The first is
physical security.… Second, access to energy is critical.…
Third, energy security is also a system.… And finally and
crucially, if longer-term in nature – is investment.’
Metcalf 2013, 2 ‘Energy security is the ability of households, business, and
government to accommodate disruptions in supply in energy
markets.’
Cherp and Jewell 2014, ‘We define energy security as low vulnerability of vital energy
415 systems.’

Source: author
Note
* For similar overviews and tables see: Sovacool 2011; Cherp and Jewell 2011; Sovacool and
Mukherjee 2011; Winzer 2012; Hughes 2012, 228–229; Boersma 2013. I’m grateful to Jaap de
Wilde for pointing out that many of these definitions do not discuss consumers explicitly but
implicitly take them as passive consumers, as a people who need to be pleased and are in need of
governance. From a critical position, this reinforces the position of the policymakers and scholars
discussing and organizing energy security in a top-down manner.
 Historic proliferation of energy security   17
In reality, the public and scholarly attention to energy and energy security
concerns fluctuates. The oil crises of the 1970s spurred an increase in attention,
but declined in the late 1980s when the market dynamics changed back from
the 1970s’ producer’s market (where producers are able to dictate the market
price) to a buyers’ market (where demand sets the price). This buyers’ market
lasted until the rise in prices from 2003 onwards and culminating in the price
hike of 2008 following unrest in producing countries, increasing demand from
Asia and other developing countries, tightening refinery markets and decreasing
production in non-­OPEC countries. Together these market developments
brought back energy security concerns and fears for a competition over the
remaining fossil resources (and renewable technologies).15 While the general
opinion was that this particular producer market was structural, the same price
hike of over $140 per barrel in July 2008 coincided with the beginning of the
financial crisis that plummeted economic growth and the global demand for
energy. This drop in demand, in turn, coincided with an increase in investments
in renewables and shale gas technology after the increase in oil and gas prices
between 2003 and 2008, in a situation comparable to the responses to the oil
crises in the 1970s, which spurred deep-­sea non-­OPEC oil and gas field explora-
tion. Together these factors have reduced fossil fuel prices and thereby many of
the energy insecurity concerns in Western energy policies. Even such a brief
overview already shows that, when analysing energy security, one constantly has
to be aware that energy has both physical (geographic, technologic, infrastruc-
tural, environmental), economic and sociopolitical aspects.
The concerns captured with the concept of energy security are wide-­ranging
and proliferating. In a recent prominent analysis, Chester captures this prolifer-
ation by arguing that energy security is a ‘polysemic’ concept, by which she
refers to an understanding of energy security that differs depending its context.16
In arguing for a contextual approach to energy security, whole-­heartedly sup-
ported here in this book, it is no longer possible to see the concept as a neutral
policy goal. Energy security instead is a ‘plastic phrase used by a range of
different interest groups to signify many often contradictory goals’.17 Below this
polysemic complexity will be introduced through a brief sketch of the historical
shifts in the meaning of energy security. While impressionistic and impossible
to date precisely, it is possible to identify five general shifts in this brief overview
of the evolution of the energy security literature.18 Section 2.2 discusses the shift
from a physical to a political security of supply; Section 2.3 embraces the eco-
nomics of energy security; Section 2.4 adds the concerns and complexity of
climate change and sustainability; and Sections 2.5 and 2.6 move away from a
state-­centric focus, respectively downwards towards the individual and upward
to the protection of energy systems. The range and complexity of the energy
supply chain and all its perceived threats will be analysed more closely in
Chapter 3. Furthermore, note that most of the energy security definitions in this
chapter share a Western outlook and are thus partial to an energy consumer and
market focus, as they consider security of supply over the security of demand of
producers.19
18   Historic proliferation of energy security
2.2 From physical to political security of supply
The availability of and access to natural resources, like water and food, have in
some form always been a concern for individuals and governments. In the late
nineteenth century, Jevons and Lord Kelvin raised such concerns in relation to
the increasing reliance on coal for shipping, production, heat and electricity.20
However, while Jevons and Lord Kelvin discussed the future of British coal sup-
plies, oil was gradually gaining in significance with the development of the com-
bustion engine. Consequently, concerns over the availability of domestic coal
decreased while security of supply concerns over (foreign) oil increased. Church-
ill’s decision to shift the complete British navy to oil before World War I led to
one of the first debates that fits a modern understanding of energy supply
security.21 Weighing the increased speed and capacity of the Royal Navy in
favour of a dependency on foreign oil from Persia, the British navy tried to
minimize that dependency as much as possible. On the one hand, the Admiralty
decided to control as much as possible of the supply line itself, among other
things by taking ownership of a company nowadays known as British Petroleum
(Anglo-­Persian), by using that same naval power to secure its own supply lines,
and by simultaneously building a domestic reserve. On the other hand, in line
with Churchill’s claim that ‘[s]afety and certainty in oil, lie in variety and
variety alone’, it promoted a global competition of oil suppliers by entering into
supply contracts with other companies and their access to oil resources else-
where in the world.22
While the modern energy security literature picked up on the diversification
argument, the main argument in Churchill’s speech is actually not one of
dependency but one of price volatility and market manipulation by a small
group of companies.23 He feared that the navy would become dependent on
volatile oil markets and, more precisely, would be overcharged for its oil needs.
In Churchill’s own words: ‘The problem is not one of quantity; it is one of price’
and if we are not careful ‘[i]t would mean, however, that we should be made to
pay an excessive price for it’.24 Still, while Churchill clearly points towards the
economics of oil markets, he does so in regards to the military and from within a
frame of national security concerns. Hence, the argument is still based on
national security of supply concerns – as is the energy security literature at this
point.
In fact, this military security of supply argument remained dominant up until
the oil crisis of 1973, even though oil became increasingly important in other
sectors of society, including mobility, industry and electricity generation.25
Heavily influenced by two World Wars and the early years of the Cold War,
energy security was mainly interpreted in terms of its military value: as a neces-
sity to win wars and thus as something in need of protection.26 During World
War II, many resources, including oil, were heavily regulated. These restrictions
only relaxed after the war with the realization that the oil flowed quite abun-
dantly and prices remained low. The Cold War, in turn, highlighted the (stra-
tegic) military vulnerability of energy infrastructure (oil refineries, pipelines,
 Historic proliferation of energy security   19
electricity plants etc.) and gave birth to the field that nowadays is called critical
infrastructure protection.27
This changed with the 1973 oil shock when the Organization of the Petro-
leum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reduced its production level and extended
an export restriction towards Israel, the United States and the Netherlands.
This first use of the ‘oil weapon’ against industrial consumer countries reinforced
two insights: a strong feeling of foreign dependency and a realization of the
importance of energy for economic and social life.28 The first insight was an
acute and broadly shared feeling of dependency across publics in industrialized
countries and a longing for the 1960s’ uninterrupted flows of low-­priced oil.29
The crises also brought forth the public realization that oil consumption had
long trumped coal by tripling in total volume since the end of World War II.30
Moreover, it led to the recognition that decolonization meant that many of
these oil sources no longer fell under colonial rule or under Western markets as
they were increasingly being nationalized.31 Contrary to the public, this was less
of a surprise to energy experts, who had been noting the incidents leading up to
1973. These include the European security of supply concerns raised in relation
to the Suez Crisis in 1956, the nationalization of Western-­owned extraction and
transport facilities in former colonies, and the American debate in the 1950s in
which domestic oil producers called for and received import quotas against
cheap foreign Middle Eastern oil (lasting from 1959 until 1973).32
Still, the 1973 oil crisis and its 1979 sibling following the Iranian Revolution
shook the world. In response, the industrial countries initiated a number of
practical measures to support their continuing oil consumption. This includes
the installation of the IEA in 1974 (planned by Kissinger in 1969) and the
support from Western governments for the development of new non-­OPEC-
controlled oil and gas fields, new technological development as well as the shift
to alternative energy sources (nuclear).33 It also initiated a spur in energy
security research.34 For Yergin, who later became known for his book The Prize
on the evolution of the oil industry, the 1970s’ oil shocks and the following
energy policies of consumer countries showed that ‘[t]he focus of energy security
concerns is on the shocks – interruptions, disruptions and manipulations of
supply – that can lead to sudden, sharp increases in prices and can impose heavy
economic and political costs’.35 Up to this day, politically engineered supply dis-
ruptions remain at the core of energy security concerns.

2.3 Securing the economics of energy

A popular solution to such political supply disruptions is independence.
However, already in the 1970s after the second oil crisis Nye argued against
such a position, as a country will always be part of the global oil market, where
the price for a product is set by the last barrel that is sold, meaning that, even
with very few imports, those imports still influence domestic price levels and
one is still dependent on international affairs and energy markets.36 Equalling
imports with vulnerability therefore only works up to a point and neglects the
20   Historic proliferation of energy security
insight that trade also offers an instrument to dampen supply shocks. This link
between global energy markets and the economic and political costs of supply
shocks relates to a second insight gained from the 1973 oil crisis: the central
importance of oil for economic and social life in general.
The economic crisis that followed the increase in oil prices extended
Churchill’s earlier military concerns about price volatility to the economy as a
whole. The concept of security of supply subsequently broadened to include
price fluctuations and their effects on the overall economy besides the existing
concerns for uninterrupted physical flows of supplies.37 In a key text on the link
between economics and energy security, Bohi and Toman define energy security
as ‘the loss of economic welfare that may occur as a result of a change in the
price or availability of energy’.38 To this day, the IEA uses a similar starting
point for its definition of energy insecurity: ‘Energy insecurity stems from the
welfare impact of either the physical unavailability of energy, or prices that are
not competitive or overly volatile’.39 Initially, however, the welfare impacts of
oil disruptions remained framed in terms of a dependency on foreign countries.
This changed with the privatization and liberalization of consumer countries’
energy markets in the 1980s and 1990s, after Thatcher’s struggle with the coal
miners in Great Britain.40 In line with Churchill’s early concerns about a British
dependency on a limited number of oil companies, the meaning of energy
security extended to an overall economic vulnerability of consumer countries.
In this broadened understanding of vulnerability, not only are foreign countries
and companies deemed problematic, but so are domestic companies (investment
decisions) and acts (labour strikes) that might hamper the flow of oil, gas, etc.41
With the shift in referent object towards the broader economic impact of a
supply disruption, the solution to prevent and minimize potential negative
impacts of such a disruption shifted as well. Following the neo-­liberal-inspired
privatization and liberalization programmes, consumer governments increasingly
relied on independently operating markets and international institutions to
prevent supply disruptions. This market-­based understanding of energy security
has become quite influential and lies at the core of modern definitions of energy
security.42 The main argument for a market-­based energy security policy is that
in a well-­functioning market ‘economic costs may rise but physical shortages do
not materialize’ due to the self-­correcting nature of the market.43 In a neo-­liberal
perspective, markets are seen to be delivering security in two ways.44 In the short
term, they prevent physical shortages by shifting supplies to where they are
needed based on fluctuating price levels, while in the long term markets
promote security because they allow for the free flow of finance and thereby
enable investments when and where they are needed to supply future demand.45
The greater efficiency promised by markets, which in theory leads to lower end
user prices, is seen as a welcome bonus to this self-­correcting nature.
Because energy markets are seen as the main option to prevent and level out
supply disruptions, their future existence is itself cause for concern. This returns
in relation to the functioning of markets as well as to the idea of free markets.
On the one hand, scholars working on the economics of energy study the
 Historic proliferation of energy security   21
markets themselves and ask whether they are operating as they should (they
never do). Bohi and Toman, for example, focus on ‘energy security externalities’
or why energy prices do not reflect all costs and benefits associated with the
product. They pay attention to the level of oil imports (either directly in
volumes and prices or indirectly through inflation or the trade balance), to the
fluctuations in prices and to security expenditures.46 A more recent contribution
by Metcalf reflects on the economics behind energy taxes, the quest for inde-
pendence and the economic value of diversity and strategic reserves.47 Similarly,
the IEA’s attention to ‘regulatory failures’ in more recent reports on energy
security shifts the problem from innocent markets to imprudent governments.48
On the other hand, on a more abstract level the idea of neo-­liberal markets
itself needs protection. For example, one of the reasons why the recent surge in
resource nationalism, from both the state-­owned producer companies in Russia
and the Middle East and the state-­owned consumer companies in China and
India, is perceived as a threat by Western consumer countries is because it
endangers the idea of free energy markets (see Section 4.4).49 Interestingly, there
are calls to install a consumer cartel to level this playing field (in addition to the
IEA). The recent proposal for a European Energy Union for instance included
the idea to negotiate collectively on natural gas with external suppliers.50 As
Labban argues: somehow ‘[c]artel behavior on the part of the producers … justi-
fies a consumers’ cartel; but whereas the former appears to undermine the
security of the energy market, the latter appears to guarantee it, as it paradoxic-
ally promotes market principles’.51 From proposals like the one above, the
impression rises that free markets are just an instrument for Western consumer
countries to govern their security of supply by playing on their primary strength,
namely purchasing power.
While the market delivers a way to flatten supply shocks and is seen to
organize a long-­term balance between supply and demand, it also creates insec-
urity. Price volatility is one insecurity, but so are the price hikes of bull (upward
trend) and bear (downward trend) markets. Both point to the inherent uncer-
tainty of markets. While markets only work when left to their own device, that
same lack of control together with the speed of unpredictable and emotion
driven shocks leads to calls for intervention. As Mitchell argues, ‘[t]he paradox
for policymakers is that extensive and open energy networks both provide resili-
ence and transmit shocks to physical supply and short-­term price’.52 While the
relation between security and markets has never been an easy partnership, the
choice for privatization and competition has created a situation wherein
the search for lower costs leads to underinvestment on spare capacity, back-­up
installations and new long-­term viable technologies. This is said to have con-
tributed to the Gas Bubble in the UK and to the power blackouts in both
America (California, New England) and north-­western Europe in the early
2000s.53
These local blackouts point to another shift in the concept of energy security.
Although extended over time to include gas, the concept of energy security still
focused mainly on oil markets at this stage. For example, in his 1988 article
22   Historic proliferation of energy security
Yergin defined energy security as ‘ensuring the availability of oil at reasonable
prices’.54 However, the increasing reliance on nuclear energy and the develop-
ment of renewable energy sources, the Gas Bubble in the UK and the more
recent blackouts of the early 2000s all point towards electricity as a major source
of energy on its own. At present, electricity, from whatever source, is counted as
the second source of all globally consumed energy.55 What is more, the exten-
siveness of the electricity grid, ranging around the globe, is seen as highly vul-
nerable to external influences, both man-­made and natural. In extending the
referent object of energy security and the number of energy sources, the quite
narrow concept of security of supply evolved into a broader concept of energy
security.

2.4 Sustainable energy security

Environmental concerns are another externality of energy markets that simul-
taneously result from the use of fossil energy fuels and affect the future of those
energy systems and markets. Environmental and climate change concerns can
be traced to the neo-­Malthusian literature of the late 1960s and their official
acknowledgement in the report of the Brundtland Commission in 1987.56 At
stake in this third thematic proliferation are not the short-­term security of
supply concerns but the security of the livelihoods of future generations.
The link between energy security and climate change is strong but not always
as obvious as stated. In an overview, Mulligan describes four phases. For Mulli-
gan it starts in the 1960s and 1970s, when there was a clear link between energy
scarcity and the impact of energy use, a link that was captured with the term
‘ecological security’. In the 1980s and 1990s, he sees the attention shifting to
the conflict potential of these environmental impacts under the heading of
‘environmental security’.57 The third phase, in the late 1990s, shifted the discus-
sions back to the global level with a focus on climate change and the Anthro-
pocene. This move to ‘climate security’ includes the fourth phase of renewed
attention to questions of energy resource scarcity, which became prevalent again
around 2005 and 2006.58 The complex relationship between climate change and
energy security highlighted by these shifts led some authors to conclude that
this link is an ‘unnecessarily broad extension’ of the concept of energy security.59
There are in fact two reasons to incorporate sustainable energy in the concept
of energy security, but also two that question it.
First, there is a clear relationship between global energy consumption and its
negative impacts on climate change and environment degradation. This
includes CO2 and methane emissions that result from fossil fuel consumption
but also biodiversity impacts of large-­scale infrastructure projects like hydro
dams, open-­pit mining and first-­generation biofuels (including indirect land use
change). In turn, climate change is affecting potential future energy production
and extraction. There are three main areas where climate change is said to
impact energy supplies. First, there is the direct link between energy and climate
change impacts. This is exemplified by extreme weather that disrupts electricity
 Historic proliferation of energy security   23
distribution or by the need for fresh water in the production and extraction of
energy resources (e.g. coal, shale gas, biofuels, etc.) and for the cooling of energy
plants. France, for example, was forced to shut down a number of its nuclear
reactors in the summers of 2003 and 2009, as high summer temperatures resulted
in a rising temperature of the river water, which in turn made cooling of the
reactors impossible.60 Second, a more indirect relationship focuses on the impact
of climate change and environmental degradation on vulnerable areas, most
often poor and less developed regions.61 In these circumstances and through its
impacts on water, air and food, climate change is said to act as a threat multi-
plier, causing migration and increased pressure on the resources that are left.
Third, a last link can be found in the consequences of the measures against
climate change upon future energy production. This link returns especially in
the argument of a ‘Carbon Bubble’.62 This financial argument builds on the
premise that the remaining carbon fuels that can be safely burned without an
increase of global temperatures above the agreed 2°C is not equal to the fossil
fuel reserves the major oil and gas companies deem financially viable and upon
which they built their investment portfolios. Simply put, according to this argu-
ment, the companies are not worth what they and the financial markets think
they are.
Second, climate change is part of energy security because the solutions to
climate change reflect the solutions for a future secure energy supply. In prin-
ciple, both build on a sustainable energy supply (a reduction in greenhouse
gases) from renewables and passive energy (efficiency, isolation etc.). By
expanding the volume of locally produced renewable energy sources and by
increasing the efficiency of equipment, the CO2 emissions and total demand for
energy are reduced, as well as the level of dependency from external energy
sources. While this argument is correct in that decentralized and domestically
produced renewable energy could prevent physical shortages, there are some
drawbacks from an energy security perspective. These include the intermittent
nature of renewable energy that requires the construction of conventional back-
­up capacity, storage capacity or demand-­side management programmes.63 It also
needs to come to terms with the fact that renewables favour electricity produc-
tion, whereas transportation is still mainly reliant on oil.64 The transformation
of both sectors is a challenge that will take decades, with fossil fuels remaining
prominent in the near future. During this transformation, cultures of consump-
tion but also cost imperatives and the difficulty of providing public goods within
private markets might undermine the optimal solution to both climate change
and energy security.65 For example, the recent downward pressure on German
wholesale electricity prices is one of the contributing factors to the resurgence
of coal as a major input source for electricity (together with the decision to close
nuclear power plants and the shale gas revolution in the US that also put down-
ward pressure on global coal prices). Again, countries and individuals are not
isolated from the global energy markets. It hardly matters whether you import a
little or a lot of an externally produced source of energy, in the event of a tight-
ening market international prices will go up and so too will domestic prices.66
24   Historic proliferation of energy security
This argument goes in fact both ways. It also makes it impossible for a country –
especially in the EU – to stimulate domestic renewable production directly as
these effects spread out over other countries.67
The link between climate change and energy security is clearly a compli-
cated one. In this respect, Luft, Korin and Gupta make two critical remarks.68
First, although they do not question the direct linkages between climate
change and energy supplies, as in the example of rising temperatures/adverse
weather impacts on French energy production, they do question the usefulness
of including second-­order effects of climate change, like migration and civil
conflict, to the concept of energy security. For Luft, Korin and Gupta these
indirect effects open the definition of energy security to many other second-­
order concerns. They mention religion, which could easily be ascribed a role
in energy security analyses as well.69 Second, they critically reflect upon the
inherent negativity of the relationship between climate change and energy
supply. From an energy security perspective, they argue that theoretically
there could be positive developments as well. In this respect, they point to the
recent surge in interest towards the Arctic, where higher temperatures enable
new trade routes and deep-­sea oil and gas exploration.70 Bad for the environ-
ment, but potentially increasing the security of a fossil fuel-­based energy
system. The fact remains that both are linked very closely in a multitude of
ways. Hence, this rethinking of the relationship between climate change and
energy security highlights a third general reflection on the constant struggle
between the short-­term urgency of energy supply shocks and its long-­term
sustainability.71

2.5 Human energy insecurity

Together with the surge in environmental awareness, the energy security liter-
ature also moved away from its state-­centric approach to human-­centric apprais-
als of energy security. Among others, the 1994 UNDP report on human security
helped codify the focus shift towards the individual as a referent object in energy
security discussions by arguing that:72

Of the world’s six billion people, one-­third enjoy the kind of energy on
demand that Americans take for granted … and another third have such
energy services intermittently. The final third – two billion people – simply
lack access to modern energy systems.73

This geographical inequality is further complicated by the realization that in

energy-­secure nations too there are individuals who do not enjoy such provi-
sions. The resulting break with a state-­centric understanding of energy security
is captured with the concept energy poverty, a concept that comes in three
flavours.74
The first interpretation of energy poverty focuses on the individual from
an economic developmental perspective and is used especially in relation to
 Historic proliferation of energy security   25
individuals in underdeveloped countries. In these countries and regions, the
energy security of the poor is centred on the availability of and access to modern
electricity and cooking equipment. This interpretation stems from a develop-
mental engineering perspective that, on the one hand, analyses the health con-
sequences of traditional biomass energy consumption and, on the other hand,
emphasizes the construction, improvement and affordability of a minimum
energy infrastructure (based on an appraisal of basic energy needs in that par-
ticular environment).75
A second understanding of energy poverty is largely favoured in developed
Western countries. Here access and availability are not the core problem but
affordability is. Also called fuel poverty, this idea, which Moore traces back to
the early 1980s, considers everybody who spends more than 10 per cent of their
income on energy as energy poor.76 Discussions range on what counts as income,
how fuel costs are calculated and at what percentage or threshold someone can
be considered energy poor. This latter benchmark is often connected to con-
siderations of minimum energy needs, predominantly in terms of minimum
room temperatures during winter and subsequent social support programmes for
those who fall below this line.
Together these two readings lead to a third overarching understanding of
energy poverty. At a more abstract and global level, energy poverty is discussed
comparatively in terms of global energy justice.77 This perspective also starts
with the actual access to and affordability of energy, without which there is no
justice at all. However, the ideal type of energy justice goes further. In a recent
contribution, Sovacool argues that a just energy world is based on intergenera-
tional (between generations) and intragenerational (within a generation) equity,
in terms of availability and affordability of energy, access to high-­quality informa-
tion, and decision makers following due process and acting with prudency and
responsibility when deciding on energy investments.78 Heffron and McCauley
make a similar distinction between distributional justice (dealing with access
and affordability) and subsequent procedural justice in relation to collective
decision-­making processes.79 Comparable to the other two approaches to energy
poverty, the focus on distributional justice implies that in this case as well the
core question remains ‘how much and what kind of energy enables a person to
live a truly human life without interfering with or diminishing the ability of
others to do the same’.80
Two general remarks can be made about this literature. First, the shift
towards individuals is not uniform. While energy justice is often discussed in
favour of an individual’s access and affordability to energy, the measurement of
this often caps at a household level, as household are easiest to measure. This
however obscures the intra-­household and family disparities. Then again,
without physical access for the household as a whole the individual has no
access either. In this respect, Pachauri defines household energy security:

In terms of access to secure, stable, and reliable supplies of modern energy

at affordable prices in amounts adequate to meet demands for energy
26   Historic proliferation of energy security
services in full so as to ensure human health and well-­being. In contrast,
energy insecurity can be seen as a lack of, or inconsistent access to, suffi-
cient affordable energy of the type and quality necessary for a healthy life.81

To be fair, this is a relatively comparable definition of energy (in)security to

other more national and state-­centric definitions.
However, second, Pachauri’s definition does introduce the importance and
difference between energy supplies and energy services. ‘As energy expert
Amory Lovins has long pointed out, people do not want energy or kilowatt
hours; they want “hot showers, cold beer, lit rooms” ’.82 People are not interested
in oil; they are interested in the services that are made possible by burning oil:
movement, light, heat, cooling etc. Whereas most of the state- and market-­
oriented perspectives discussed above focus on the access, availability and
affordability of energy supplies and the markets that deliver them, the focus on
individuals and the returning question of what needs to be considered as basic
energy needs highlights the services to which those supplies are put to use.83 For
this reason, Patterson expressly starts from energy services and shows how such
a departure enables the inclusion of alternative ways to reach those services that
have nothing to do with commoditized fuel supplies, like an optimal use of
ambient energy.84 In doing so, the referent object of energy security shifts once
more to a point between the security of supplies and the impact on economic
and social life.85

2.6 Securing energy systems

A last shift in perspective (and referent object) can be found in discussions on
the protection of energy systems. Difficult to pinpoint to a particular publication
or time, this perspective builds on ideas about complex systems in the environ-
mentalist literature and the protection of vital systems in the 1950s and 1960s
strategic defence literature.86 With these, energy security again moves away from
a state-­centric understanding of energy security, but not down to the individual
but up to the complexity of vital energy supply chains and systems. When ana-
lysing the energy security literature from a systems perspective, the protection of
total supply chains as well as the interaction with adjacent vital systems often
return. However, besides these much-­discussed vital energy systems there is
another considerably smaller systems reading, a critical one, that reviews the
self-­referentiality in current energy systems. For authors like Illich and Bryne,
discussed below, the system of energy production and consumption itself is prob-
lematic as the current organization of energy is inherently pushing for more of
the same, and consequently, in terms of the above-­discussed sustainability and
equality concerns, threatening from a security perspective.
Regarding the first ‘traditional’ energy system debate, it should be clear that a
focus on energy systems disregards individuals and nations except as part of the
overall system. Often the physical infrastructure is the focal point of energy
security analyses, especially in relation to the vulnerability to military or
 Historic proliferation of energy security   27
terrorist attacks, but also in relation to extreme weather, human error or insuffi-
cient maintenance.87 Under the general heading of critical infrastructure
protection (CIP), the physical infrastructure of electricity grids and power
plants, oil and gas pipelines or refineries is protected against intentional disrup-
tions.88 These disruptions can be aimed at the infrastructure itself (nuclear
power plant) or indirectly at the services that the infrastructure enables (dis-
rupting socio-­economic life through the electricity grid).89 Two reflections are
in order. First, in an energy system where there are always nodes or parts of the
system that are less protected than others, the desire to defend against unpre-
dictable attacks from either a physical or cyber origins results in the desire to
protect the entirety of the infrastructure system.90 This includes the infinitely
small-­scale daily objects and practices that lie at the base of these large-­scale
assemblages.91 At the same time, knowing that total protection is not possible,
the aim is to build a resilient system that can handle adverse disruptions with
minimum impact. To speed this along, attention is paid to those installations
that are prioritized as most vulnerable or are likely to have the highest impact.92
Second, although prioritization is useful, the core characteristic of a system as a
referent object is that it is never closed. For example, the electricity grid, when
seen as a system, links to other infrastructure systems – telecommunications,
finance, water, public services and transportation – and is hence vulnerable to
potential cascading effects between them. This leads to the urge to control those
systems too and thereby highlights the constant tension between a search for
control and a sense of vulnerability (see Chapter 4).
If a ‘system’ is interpreted more broadly, it becomes possible to engage with
the critical literature that discusses the energy system as part of society in what
it calls an ‘energy regime’.93 Scholars working from such a critical Marxist-­
inspired perspective study the internal logics of the physical energy infrastruc-
ture, energy markets, regulatory regimes and production and consumption habits
of individuals in relation to the lock-­in effects that uphold the status quo of
current energy regimes.94 This perspective argues that the technological path
dependency of increasingly complex systems and the neo-­liberal market incen-
tives within this system constantly work to reinforce the desire for more energy
consumption and thereby foreclose any serious reflection upon consumption
itself. For these critical authors, the energy regime is a regime that builds upon
failures and externalities by patching the holes, thus adding more of itself in a
constant reinforcement of its basic tenets. In other words, it argues that current
energy regimes do not reflect upon the underlying dynamics that help cause
those externalities and insecurities. In addition, new solutions, like modern-­day
renewable energy, only seem to gain general reception because of their direct
link towards the existing regime, for example as they gain financial viability.95
As Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton remark:

If fossil-­fueled capitalism has defined what we mean by energy, then merely

to use the word uncritically is to make a commitment to certain assump-
tions about scarcity, foreclose certain alternatives and cover up some of the
28   Historic proliferation of energy security
most important issues that need to be discussed. Paradoxically, having a
serious discussion about ‘energy security’ requires taking a therapeutic step
back from the modern concept of Energy itself.96

From this perspective, energy security or general security practices are not some-
thing to be achieved but an ‘administrative logic’ (Chapter 6) that is part of the
self-­reinforcing nature of the current neo-­liberal energy regime.97 In other words,
this energy regime literature argues that any understanding of energy security
would not be complete without a critical reflection on what energy security does
in terms of possible consequences and effects, besides questioning the essence of
what energy security is.

2.7 Reflection: defining energy security

The brief historically oriented analysis of the concept of energy security above
clearly highlighted the proliferations of the different themes and forms that are
captured by a broad policy-­oriented reading of the concept of energy security.
The main conclusion that can be drawn from this overview is that energy
security is an empty concept, but an empty concept with strong political and
social impacts and one that is always filled by someone with a reference to some-
thing or someone. Although the meaning of energy security itself evolves over
time (from individual resources to energy), what mainly shifts are the referent
objects that are in need of security (supplies, services, human health, national
wealth, environmental sustainability, infrastructure systems etc.). With the
growing importance of energy in all aspects of socio-­economic life, this means
that by now almost all of our lives are subject to and in need of energy
security.98
Many definitions of energy security try to capture this proliferation by adding
aspects to the core definition of the IEA on ‘the uninterrupted availability of
energy sources at an affordable price’.99 Table 2.1 listed a number of definitions,
but two are worth mentioning in lieu of their extensiveness. The European
Commission’s green paper on energy security (supplies), from 2000, provides
one of the most extensive definitions of energy supply security available to date:

Energy supply security must be geared to ensuring, for the well-­being of its
citizens and the proper functioning of the economy, the uninterrupted
physical availability of energy products on the market, at a price which is
affordable for all consumers (private and industrial), while respecting
environmental concerns and looking towards sustainable development.…
Security of supply does not seek to maximise energy self-­sufficiency or
to minimise dependence, but aims to reduce the risks linked to such
dependence.100

Likewise, Barton et al. in a 2004 legal discussion of energy security (services)

define it as:
 Historic proliferation of energy security   29
A condition in which a nation and all, or most of its citizens and business
have access to sufficient energy resources at reasonable prices for the fore-
seeable future free from serious risk of major disruption of service.101

Despite their extensiveness, these definitions primarily highlight what is

missing. There is no agreement on what needs protection (the source of energy or
energy in general, the infrastructure, the supplies, the services, the markets that
deliver them). There is no agreement whose energy needs are protected (the state,
the market or business, the individual or the system as whole). Moreover, they
leave open who decides on the relativeness of these definitions (the level of afford-
ability, sufficiency, proper functioning, respectful environmental behaviour, and
seriousness of risk). In addition, the definition from Barton et al. leads to the
question whether it is truly possible to achieve the goal of energy security at all.
While the European Commission searches for energy security for all, Barton and
colleagues offer a definition where energy security is reached when most of the
citizens and businesses are secure, not all of them.
Following similar lines of argumentation, the general conclusion by energy
security scholars seems to be that energy security cannot be defined universally
and that the referent objects will keep expanding.102 One exception includes a
recent reflection by Cherp and Jewell, who argue that, even though the meaning
of energy security is contextual, there is still some shared core meaning behind
it.103 They point towards the values behind energy, the ‘acquired values’ of
modern life, but do not explain these further.104 In response, Ciută disagrees
with such a hidden and shared understanding of energy security (as well as the
search for a perfect all-­encompassing definition) by asking whether it is actually
the totalizing tendency of energy that makes energy security a banality.105 If
everything is energy and hence part of energy security, than its security becomes
in essence unexceptional (banal) and consequentially no longer a form of
security. However, Ciută argues that the totality of energy should not be trans-
lated to its security side.106 While energy is everywhere, security should not be
in line with its prioritization function. Which, in line with this book, points to
the need to study energy security as a security practice.
Furthermore, definitions of energy security not only contain assumptions about
referent objects or particular teleology of security that explain what energy
security is and ought to be, but also hide another layer of assumptions and value
judgements on a range of issues that include economic growth, progress, technolo-
gical development, scarcity and abundance, trust in markets and so forth.107 In
this respect, even the cursory glance above highlights the difference between two
dominant readings of energy security: on the one hand, a geopolitical interpreta-
tion of nation states caught in a zero-­sum game of conflict over the last remaining
scarce resources and, on the other, a neo-­liberal market interpretation of energy
security that puts its faith in energy markets to distribute resources and develop
substitutes. Such differences in core assumptions on conflict (yes, no), scarcity
(yes, no), control (politics, markets) and potential technological development
(unimportant, substitution) are what separate the different readings of energy
30   Historic proliferation of energy security
security. Still, these two readings dominate the discussions on energy security, and
although they differ on important assumptions, the capital-­intensive and central-
ized decision-­making tendencies behind both of them have historically implied
that energy security is a concern for national governments. This state-­centrism in
turn leads Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton to differentiate between the high pol-
itics of ‘Energy Security’ (state-­centric, geopolitical readings of free markets) and
the low politics of ‘energy security’ (individualized services, sustainability and
system maintenance).108 In other words, while the five evolutions identified in this
chapter might add to a broader and deeper understanding of energy security, they
are not read, discussed and rated with equal importance.
In sum, the brief overview above shows that what started as a political
security of supply concern quickly evolved into a set of concerns on political
and military intervention, market externalities, environmental consequences,
health, affordability and the resilience of systems. The continuing evolution of
the concept of energy security shows a proliferation of concerns and referent
objects that follows the evolving technological application of energy in our
lives. The subsequent discussion brought to light the empty and polysemic
nature of energy security and thus the need for contextualization. Such an
evolving conceptualization makes for a banal understanding of energy security
on two accounts. First, because it spreads a simplistic binary understanding of
security that stems from the two dominant theoretical readings of energy
security (geopolitics and neo-­liberalism). Neither of these provides an actual
reflection of the broader (ethical) security theories and questions behind energy
security; they simply observe and reflect the normative logic and power politics
behind current energy markets. Second, it keeps including new (commoditized)
referent objects as a way to tackle newly identified shortcomings. Consequently,
energy security is something that will never be reached, as it will always fail the
next shortcoming. However, as Bridge argues, precisely in this failing ‘ “energy”
when conjoined with “security” creates a potent discursive couplet that is reduc-
tive and performative in equal measure’.109

Notes
   1 Andrews-­Speed et al. 2012; Beisheim 2013; Beddington 2009.
   2 Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton 2012, 6. For a similar argument, see: Bridge 2015.
   3 Chapter 4 will discuss the intricacies of the security side of energy security.
   4 Stern and Aronson 1984, 14–21. In their work, Stern and Aronson identify four
perspectives besides a physicist understanding of energy. These include energy as a
commodity (economics), as an ecological resource, as a social necessity and as a
strategic material. See also Illich 2009, 13.
   5 In turn, power denotes the work done per unit of time (joules per second = watt).
In terms of the discussion on materiality in Chapter 5, energy is an interesting phe-
nomenon as it escapes clear categorization and is neither matter nor force nor social
construction, but all of them together.
   6 Jansen and Van der Welle 2011, 240. For politicians and those working from a
security perspective, the referent object of energy itself (that which needs securing)
is never the issue; it can be anything. See also Chapter 4.
 Historic proliferation of energy security   31
   7 Chester 2010, 887.
   8 IEA 2010a, 559. More generally, the IEA defines energy security as ‘the uninter-
rupted availability of energy sources at an affordable price’ – see IEA 2015.
   9 Ciută 2010, 126.
10 Hirsch 1976; Xenos 1989; Achterhuis 1988; Mehta 2010.
11 Buijs, Sievers and Tercero Espinoza 2012, 201.
12 Patterson 2008, 2; Illich 2009.
13 Jevons 1866, chap. I-­Introduction and Outline. See also Yergin 1991, 543.
14 Schumacher and Kirk 1977, 1–2. See also Yergin 1991, 559.
15 Hoogeveen and Perlot 2005; Yergin 2006; Mallaby 2006; Klare 2008.
16 Chester 2010.
17 Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton 2012, 5. For similar arguments see: Winzer 2012,
36; Labban 2011, 327.
18 Interestingly, the positions themselves were already identified by Stern and Aronson
1984. Yet, when analysing the energy security literature many of these positions
have only been incorporated at later stages. Also, the five themes are here inter-
preted inclusionary, as only together they make up the definition of energy security
(in line with the multiplicity behind a politics of ontology – see Chapter 5).
19 Chester 2010, 891.
20 Jevons 1866; Yergin 2012, 3.
21 Yergin 1991, 153–164.
22 Ibid., 160; Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 1477.
23 Parliamentary Debates, Commons 1913, 1473.
24 Ibid., 1473, 1474.
25 Mitchell 2000.
26 Ibid.; Cherp and Jewell 2011.
27 Collier and Lakoff 2008b.
28 Cherp and Jewell 2011. Stern 2006, 1650, argues that the ‘oil weapon’ was first
termed by the League of Nations debating possible sanctions against Italy in 1935,
and first applied by the United States when it sanctioned Japan over its occupation
of China in 1941 (80 per cent of Japanese imports).
29 Mitchell 2000.
30 Yergin 1991.
31 Cherp and Jewell 2011.
32 Stern 2006; Yergin 1991, 535–540.
33 On Kissinger see: Labban 2011.
34 See for example: Akins 1973; Bradley 1973; Levy 1973; Pollack 1973; Gordon 1974;
Kemp 1978; Stobaugh and Yergin 1978; Deese 1979; Lieber 1980.
35 Yergin 1988, 112, 1991.
36 Nye 1981, 12–13. For an earlier take on dependency see: Lubell 1961. For a more
recent discussion see: Verrastro and Ladislaw 2007; Greene 2010.
37 Bohi and Toman 1996, 3.
38 Ibid., 1–2.
39 IEA 2007, 12.
40 Bohi and Toman 1996, 3; Cherp and Jewell 2011.
41 See Mitchell 2013 for an alternative interpretation of these strikes.
42 IEA 2007, 12 and 32.
43 Bohi and Toman 1996, 4.
44 Labban 2011, 331.
45 WEC 2008.
46 Bohi and Toman 1996. They also conclude that except for the trade balance, which
depend on the country in question, none of the indirect price effects have been
proven.
47 Metcalf 2013. See also Mulder, ten Cate and Zwart 2007 on strategic reserves.
32   Historic proliferation of energy security
48 IEA 2007, 33–34.
49 Labban 2011.
50 European Commission 2015, 6; Beckman 2015.
51 Labban 2011, 335.
52 Mitchell 2000.
53 Mitchell 2002, 6; Bielecki 2002, 236.
54 Yergin 1988, 114. To be fair, in the same article his main conclusion was based on
the importance of energy efficiency, which he claimed had ‘turned out to be the
most important incremental energy “source” of all’ during the 1970s and 1980s; see
ibid., 114–115.
55 Chester 2010, 889; Bielecki 2002, 247–248.
56 Brundtland 1987; Meadows et al. 1972; Ehrlich 1970; Carson 1981; Dalby 2006,
2014. For an historical overview, see: Mulligan 2010.
57 See: Homer-­Dixon 1991, 1994.
58 Mulligan 2010; La Branche 2013, 403–404.
59 Wright 2005, 2273; Luft, Korin and Gupta 2011.
60 Pagnamenta 2009.
61 Brown and Dworking 2011.
62 Carbon Tracker Initiative 2011.
63 Kester 2016.
64 Kester 2018.
65 Brown and Huntington 2008; Luft, Korin and Gupta 2011, 48–51.
66 Mitchell 2000.
67 Mallaby 2006.
68 Luft, Korin and Gupta 2011.
69 Ibid., 46.
70 Ibid., 47.
71 La Branche 2013, 412.
72 UNDP 1994.
73 Wirth, Boyden Gray and Podesta 2003, 138.
74 Bhattacharyya 2013, 424.
75 Bhattacharyya 2013; IEA 2010b; Kaygusuz 2011; Prasad 2011; Sokona, Mulugetta
and Gujba 2012; Okereke and Yusuf 2013.
76 Moore 2012; Hills 2012; Middlemiss and Gillard 2015.
77 Pachauri 2011b; Goldthau and Sovacool 2012; Sovacool 2013; Sovacool, Sidortsov
and Jones 2014; Heffron and McCauley 2014. For an early discussion, see:
Illich 1974.
78 Sovacool 2013, 12.
79 Heffron and McCauley 2014.
80 Sovacool, Sidortsov and Jones 2014, 197.
81 Pachauri 2011a, 191.
82 Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton 2012, 8, quoting Lovins 1990, 21.
83 Patterson 2008, 2010; Jansen 2009; Jansen and Seebregts 2010.
84 Patterson 2008. Ambient energy refers to the energy already available: sunlight,
body heat, the shadow of trees and so forth.
85 See also: Winzer 2012, 37.
86 For an analysis on the origins of CIP see Collier and Lakoff 2008b, 2008a, 2015;
Lakoff and Collier 2010. For one of the earliest systematic reflections, see Lovins
and Lovins 1982. Collier and Lakoff have described its genealogy by analysing
the correlation between the ‘invention’ of scenario studies and the protection of
large-­scale infrastructure systems following World War II. What they show is
how the growing material development of vast and connected infrastructures – of
energy, communication and mobility – together with a deeper scientific under-
standing of biological and chemical flow processes has led to a governing of complex
 Historic proliferation of energy security   33
interconnected infrastructure systems. A governing of systems, which in turn has
been heavily influenced by scenario techniques, which led to an understanding of
inherent vulnerability that nowadays supports all approaches to infrastructure
systems. For an interesting reflection, see Coward 2009.
87 Cherp and Jewell 2014.
88 Farrell, Zerriffi and Dowlatabadi 2004.
89 Labban 2011.
90 Ibid., 338.
91 Mayer and Acuto 2015, 678; Voelkner 2011, 2012. In this respect, Graham and
Thrift discuss the mundane activities of maintenance and repair of the electricity
grid, and in particular how, while often overlooked in political debates, the organ-
ization of these activities is a highly political affair that influences the future direc-
tion of the grid, and consequently our electricity consumption. See Graham and
Thrift 2007; see also Bennett 2005.
92 Farrell, Zerriffi and Dowlatabadi 2004, 440.
93 Byrne and Toly 2006; Hornborg 2013; Illich 1974, 2009; Nye 2014; Huber 2009,
2011a, 2011b; Labban 2010.
94 Byrne and Toly 2006.
95 Ibid., 15–16.
96 Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton 2012, 19–20.
97 Bridge 2015, 3.
98 Ciută 2010, 124.
99 IEA 2015; Cherp and Jewell 2014, 417.
100 European Commission 2000, 2.
101 Barton et al. 2004, 5.
102 Winzer 2012; Chester 2010.
103 Cherp and Jewell 2014.
104 Ibid., 416.
105 Ciută 2010, esp. 138.
106 Ciută 2010.
107 Von Hippel et al. 2011; Valentine 2011.
108 Hildyard, Lohmann and Sexton 2012.
109 Bridge 2015, 1.

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3 Analysing energy security

3.1 Introduction
The multiplicity of energy security, its ‘slipperiness’ or ‘multidimensional’ char-
acter, is well acknowledged within studies on the concept of energy security.1
With energy as one of the core pillars of modern societies, energy (in)security
arguably is everywhere, crossing a wide range of energy sources, actors and posi-
tions within the energy supply chains.2 However, work by both Jarosz and
Maxwell on food security shows that this proliferation is not unique to energy
security, which confirms the argument in Chapter 2 that the security logic itself
could be driving the proliferation instead of an expansion of the referent objects
of energy. This is not how the energy security literature sees it.3 Cherp and
Jewell, for example, argue that the proliferation of energy security results from
the inherent complexity of the supply of energy, the uncertainties within such a
complex energy system, and the conflicting positions that actors have within
this system.4 Another recent overview attributes this proliferation to the differ-
ence in ‘academic disciplines … historical contexts … levels of development …
timeframes … market dimensions … value chain … levels of analysis … and
the primary or transformed fuel in question’,5 in other words all aspects and
positions of the energy supply chain as well as its broader economic and histor-
ical context, including the different disciplinary reflections on the issue of
energy. This chapter turns to this last aspect and discusses how the energy
security literature tries to grasp the proliferation and complexity of energy in
order to secure it.
There are multiple ways to come to grips with the multiplicity of energy
security. Three are worth highlighting and are analysed in this chapter. First,
Section 3.2 discusses how both qualitative and quantitative approaches analyse
this multiplicity by categorizing and systematizing the wide range of energy
security threats. In turn, Section 3.3 looks at the theories that are used to
handle the complexity. For energy security, there are three main theoretical
lenses: a geopolitical, a neo-­liberal and a historic-­materialist analysis.6 Third,
Section 3.4 studies the work of several scholars who look more closely how
energy security works and try to identify the driving logics behind energy
security. Lastly, Section 3.5 builds up to a performative interpretation of energy
 Analysing energy security   41
security and the chapters. Importantly, this chapter does not discuss the emerg-
ing use of securitization theory in energy security, but only because this liter-
ature is extensively discussed in Section 4.4.7 For now, this chapter
problematizes the mainstream energy security literature, because, without a
reflective understanding of how the search for definitions actually shapes human
relationships and human relations with nature, the literature misses a core
understanding that could move the field out of its current impasse of the con-
stant struggle to tackle the proliferation of energy security and come to a fuller
understanding of the practice that is energy security.

3.2 Defining, differentiation and categorization

Qualitative and quantitative research, irrespective of the theoretical back-
ground, always starts with some sort of categorization – all research does.8 For
the energy security literature, a well-­known categorization is provided by
APERC, which tries to order the complexity of energy security through its four
As: availability, accessibility, affordability and acceptability.9 This, however, is
nowhere near the only type of categorization available. Quite a number of
energy security scholars at some point in their career produce a similar list of
their own categories, some resembling the four categories of APERC and others
with up to 20 dimensions.10 In addition, quantitative research takes this categor-
ization a step further by providing a range of indicators for each of the cat-
egories, with one study finding up to 320 indicators in total.11 The previous
chapter discussed a range of threats to energy, which are categorized and
extended in Figure 3.1. This figure is based on APERC’s four As: availability,
accessibility, affordability and acceptability. While other categorizations are pos-
sible, a simple and descriptive one such as in Figure 3.1 provides for a way to
include both security of supply and security of demand perspectives and is indic-
ative of the range of threats, the level of analysis, and the overall complexity of
the security dimension of natural resources.
On closer examination, Figure 3.1 shows that threats to natural resources are
three-­sided. They can be found in the threats to a stable and continuous use of
natural resources (supply interruption), in the threats that follow from an actual
disruption in the use of natural resources (economic services, health impact),
and in the threats that result from a stable and continuous resource use (climate
change). In fact, the (in)ability to respond to potential disruptions is nowadays
itself seen as a potential threat in relation to natural resources.12 In such a case,
the pre-emptive security logic that drives this (see Section 4.2) makes anything
or anybody that hinders the construction of a more resilient energy system cir-
cumspect in its own right. In other words, energy and energy systems are often
both object of security and subject of security. They are in need of protection
while also giving cause for concern.13
More indirectly, Figure 3.1 also points towards energy security concerns and
how they do not only differ per referent object and the value attached to the
referent objects (the resources, the services provided by the resources or the
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Figure 3.1 Perceived threats to and from natural resources.

Source: author.
 Analysing energy security   43
workings of the economy as a whole), but how the threats differ in scope as well.14
For Winzer, these scopes specify how energy security concerns differ not only in
magnitude (the size) of the possible impact but also on the speed of the impact or
whether something comes as a shock or not. In addition, he mentions that the
duration (the sustention) and the scale (the geographic spread) of the impact play a
role, as does the uniqueness (the singularity) of the threat. Lastly, Winzer differs
security concerns based on the perceived sureness of a possible impact, in other
words whether a threat is ‘predicted’, probable or totally unknown.15
Simultaneously, the benefit of Figure 3.1 is limited for a number of reasons.
First, any categorization is always inherently incomplete and the political effects
of the categorization should not be underestimated. As Cherp and Jewell con-
clude in a similar discussion on energy security:

The basis for these classifications is rarely systematically justified: they often
seem almost as arbitrary as the lists of energy security concerns which they
seek to structure. Moreover, classification is not integration. Placing several
concerns in one group does not necessarily help us to understand them
better or to develop integrated solutions.16

Figure 3.1 is a prime example of this. It is per definition incomplete and its sys-
temization is based on implicit assumptions on the meaning of the four cat-
egories in terms of geography and technological prowess, politics and society,
economics and ecology. More important, the close connections between the
subcategories make the initial differentiation rather arbitrary. Subcategories like
government regulation and technology are interwoven in all four categories and
could be read as threat and solution at the same time.
Second, the chosen definition of energy security often prestructures the con-
clusions that can be drawn, as such definitions fixate assumptions on energy,
energy security and temporality.17 To be fair, that is exactly the purpose of sim-
plification. On the other hand, this often leads to an acceptance of a pre-­agreed-
upon status quo. For instance, the food security literature shows how hunger is
often put forward, implicitly, as a supply problem that can only be solved by
adding more supply without regard for social entitlements that hinder the distri-
bution of available supplies.18 It also returns in qualitative energy research
where, for example, Von Hippel et al. and Valentine show how studies that take
a longer time frame often value stability over costs whereas short-­time frame
studies favour costs above all else.19 Likewise, Zeniewski, Martinez-­Anido and
Pearson argue that quantitative approaches regularly favour free market solu-
tions, while qualitative approaches, which are often more socially oriented,
prefer regulated energy markets.20 As they conclude:

On a practical level, the definition of energy security and its scope con-
ditions will crucially affect how both policymakers and academics identify,
order and manage risks and vulnerabilities affecting the energy system, in
whatever form it is analysed.21
44   Analysing energy security
To a certain extent, scholars like Valentine or Zeniewski, Martinez-­Anido and
Pearson draw attention to the claim of this book that the concepts and theories
of energy security help shape the world around us.
This becomes important when one realizes that the definitions and indicators
of energy security are, if not defined, then strongly influenced by the IEA, an
organization by and for developed countries and their search for secure energy
supplies. In other words, modern understandings of energy security build upon
definitions written by a small number of capital-­intensive consumer countries
and their identification of indicators based on their particular experiences.22 In
time, Cherp and Jewell argue, these indicators are exported to other parties who
are unable to develop such indicators on their own.23 To be clear, this does not
necessary have to be a bad thing, but it does point to a level of politics often
ignored.
Similarly, it is well known that energy security contains both absolute and
relative aspects. Chester, in this respect argues that availability and accessibility
are absolute aspects of energy security as they are measurable, while affordability
and acceptability are relative aspects that depend on weighing and agreement.24
However, the idea that there are absolute numerical aspects of energy security
clearly overlooks the actual politics of energy reserves. A good example is the
increase of the officially proven oil and gas reserves between 1982 and 1988 by a
number of OPEC members during the run-­up to new OPEC production quotas.
These increases are circumspect as those countries were not witness to any
obvious exploration or technological advancements in that time, while their
respective quotas were going to be based on their total reserves.25 As the 2010
World Energy Outlook stated:

Definitions of reserves and resources, and the methodologies for estimating

them, vary considerably around the world, leading to confusion and incon-
sistencies. In addition, there is often a lack of transparency in the way
reserves are reported: many national oil companies in both OPEC and non-­
OPEC countries do not use external auditors of reserves and do not publish
detailed results.26

Another example can be found in Reynolds’s analysis of the Canadian decision

in 2003, together with the American EIA, to count the Canadian oil sands as
fully fledged oil reserves. Reynolds describes how Canada’s oil reserves increased
from six to almost 174 billion barrels after the political decision to (1) stretch
the concept of crude oil to include oil sands bitumen and (2) to decree these oil
sands as proven reserves instead of ‘remaining established’ reserves without
physical, technical or economic foundation.27 In other words, Chester’s absolute
dimensions of availability and capacity are not as absolute as they seem and are
effectively subject to a politics of ontology as well (for more, see Chapter 5).
 Analysing energy security   45
3.3 Theories of energy security
An alternative to analysing the contents of energy security through categor-
ization is a theoretical reflection on energy security. While a range of theories
and disciplines are applicable to energy and offer their own priorities for energy
security,28 like political ecology and its environmental focus, energy security
itself, as a field and concept, is primarily discussed by theories that are borrowed
from IR and IPE. These include (neo)realist geopolitics with its focus on con-
flict, neo-­liberals focusing on markets and institutions, and more critical the-
ories that study energy as part of a particular economic order.29 As the latter
literature is only marginally used for energy security itself, Aalto et al. are right
in claiming that the field of energy security lacks theoretical ambition.30
First, a neorealist-­inspired geopolitics is the study of how geographic factors
interact with international relations. It has a long history, but the demand from
Asia and the 2008 oil price shock reinvigorated this approach for energy security
from 2006 onwards.31 The geopolitics practised within energy however has less
to do with the theory of geopolitics and more with the politics of geographically
dispersed natural resources. Actually, not even with the resources themselves,
but instead with the politics of control over natural resources and the ‘political
intentions’ behind it.32 For this, it takes a particular mix between neo-­
Malthusian ideas about scarce resources and neorealist IR theory. Neorealism
within IR assumes an anarchic system with unitary and rational states that are
concerned with survival.33 Combined with (neo-)Malthusian assumptions about
finite resources and unlimited demand, it proposes a self-­centred zero-­sum
struggle over the last remaining resources in the world.34 Problems that are high-
lighted through this approach are a growing dependency on foreign energy
resources, resource nationalism and terrorism.35 It is a highly state-­centric theor-
etical position that is inherently mistrusting of other actors but also, as Camp-
bell notes, focused ‘solely on the supply of oil without interrogating the demand
for this resource’.36 Although the work of geopolitics scholars Criekemans or
Scholten and Bosman, for instance, shows that geopolitics can be applied to
other energy sources as well, including renewables, demand is indeed hardly
ever discussed in this line of reasoning.37
Such a pessimistic reading contrasts with a positive neo-­liberalist under-
standing of energy security.38 A neo-­liberalist reading of energy builds on the
non-­zero-sum logic of neo-­liberalism, which is based on the idea that
cooperation is possible if there are absolute gains to be made and international
institutions structure these international relations in favour of properly func-
tioning energy markets.39 It perceives markets as the best way to extract, dis-
tribute and consume natural resources. Basically, this is the political
underpinning of the economic perspective of energy security as described in
Chapter 2. For this strand of literature, security, especially the simplistic neore-
alist geopolitical interpretation, is a danger to the circulation of energy because
it has the potential to dislocate energy markets. The main dilemma for all those
involved in energy is therefore, according to Van der Linde, ‘how to weigh the
46   Analysing energy security
short-­term risks of a serious disruption or undersupply against the longer-­term
security of more domestically produced (cleaner) energies as long as prices do
not reflect all the risks’.40 This latter observation, that prices should reflect all
externalities, is a key economic argument nowadays encountered in climate
debates and one that reinforces the importance of markets. Simultaneously, it
highlights an aversion of power and the active political manipulation of markets
for goals other than profit.41
These two strands of literature are often used to analyse energy security
debates as they take place in academia and public policy. However, while the
last strand of literature is rather small, it does include the modern analyses of
energy regimes (Chapter 2), the historical materialist and more discursive ana-
lyses of energy security, and the application of securitization theory to energy
security (Section 4.4). Each of these theories offers an attempt to break with
the dominant policy orientation of neorealist geopolitics and market liberalist
perspectives.42 Each of them questions the power relations behind the respec-
tive systems of supply, distribution and consumption. And each of them shares
an understanding that theory is part of the reality that is analysed. In other
words, the reason why a neorealist geopolitical theoretical analysis seems
so applicable is partly because of the theory itself, as policymakers use that
theory to justify their decisions and their fears in a self-­reinforcing interaction.
When theories are used to analyse the world, they come with assumptions and
choices about the world that help shape a difference between good/bad,
between us/them or between politics and the market.43 These differences are as
arbitrary as the theories, but no less real as they are enacted in the creation and
application of these theories. The difficulty to critique neorealist or liberal
approaches to energy security however, is that its subject is no longer energy
security but the theories and knowledge patterns that are in place about energy
security. As such, critical theories have a peculiar position within the over-
whelmingly practical policy orientation that is prevalent in the field of energy
security.

3.4 Searching for logics of energy security

Besides categorization and theorization, an increasing number of scholars are
searching for all-­encompassing logics and discourses behind energy security.
This section briefly discusses three examples of such work on the logics behind
energy security. It starts with the energy trilemma as an example of the relations
between energy security and other energy logics, and it subsequently moves to
two recent contributions that search for the logics of energy security itself.
Lastly, this section reflects on these two sources, among others by offering an
alternative logic of energy security, one that identifies three logics that a person/
country can follow in response to the concern of energy dependency. With this
brief addition, this section shows that while a search for logics focuses on pro-
cesses and thus is step closer to a performative reading of energy security; it like-
wise is not a silver-­bullet answer.
 Analysing energy security   47
A popular way to depict the underlying dynamics of energy policy is the use
of the energy trilemma as depicted in Figure 3.2. It depicts energy security, eco-
nomic equity (access and affordability, often just plain costs) and environmental
sustainability concerns (regularly limited to CO2 emissions alone) as the ‘funda-
mental’ policy positions that need to be combined in a trade-­off for any reason-
able energy policy to work.44 In doing so, this trilemma shapes the debate on
energy, as it sees the different positions as radical opposites that need to meet in
the middle. What the middle is differs per actor. Often it includes some form of
a sustainable renewable energy system, but whether this system includes nuclear
electricity or carbon capture and storage depends on the specific agent. In other
words, it can be argued that the trilemma compresses the complexity of energy
debates into three distinct positions and flattens it to a single level, while in
reality all agents involved have to find their own middle ground on all of these
positions before they can even participate in public energy debates. Agents are
never purely security-­focused, as even the most dedicated energy security scholar
defines energy security with economic and ecological aspects in mind. In addi-
tion, the trilemma excludes alternative views like social reflections on distribu-
tion, a focus on demand reduction or more functional discussions on
maintenance.45 It also discusses energy in terms of private commodities instead
of the services or public goods that are to be provided.46
Another way to analyse energy security, to find some stable structure within
these debates, is to search for the logics behind energy security. Two recent
articles by Ciută and by Cherp and Jewell try to find such logics.47 Interestingly,
both articles find precisely three logics or discourses that are present in energy
security. First, Cherp and Jewell identify a discourse of sovereignty, which refers
to military and geopolitical security of supply considerations as put forward by
nation states. This comes close to the conflict focused neorealist theory dis-
cussed above and is comparable to Ciută’s first logic of war, by which he refers
to political-­military conflicts over energy and other resources. Continuing with
Ciută, he second identifies a security logic of subsistence, where energy is seen as
an unavoidable driving force behind biological life. Energy from this perspective
needs to be secured because it is a basic need that needs to be fulfilled. Lastly,

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48   Analysing energy security
Ciută identifies what he calls ‘total’ energy security. In this reading, energy is a
necessity for social life, as there is not one aspect of life that is not in some way
enabled by the extraction, distribution and consumption of energy resources.
In contrast to Ciută, who describes the importance and levels of conflict over
energy in society, Cherp and Jewell identify the actual logics by which energy
systems are secured. Besides a logic of sovereignty dealing with the political
control over resources, they identify a logic of robustness which focuses on the
technical vulnerability of the production and transport capacity within a socio-
technical energy system. Clearly, this takes an engineering perspective to
security and deals with the safety and stability of the physical infrastructure.
Lastly, they identify a logic of resilience, by which they refer to an alternative
meaning of security that focuses on multiple unpredictable complex systemic
disruptions to which people need to adapt and mitigate. This includes infra-
structure system disruptions, like rolling blackouts, but also instances like price
volatility and ecological feedback loops.
Clearly, the logics of Cherp and Jewell are closely connected to the academic
disciplines behind them. Sovereignty follows a political science and IR reading
of energy security, engineers look at the robustness of the energy infrastructure,
and systems analysts, insurers and economists look at the resilience behind
energy systems. The question is whether these logics and discourses are not just
another way to categorize and prioritize certain phenomena within energy
security debates. And, if so, whether that is problematic. Noticeable in this
respect is that both articles share a sovereign/war logic and both offer precisely
three logics. Why is that? Especially as it is easy to add to them, for example by
adding the logics that structure how people deal with energy dependency (the
perceived lack of control over the access to a resource).48 In this respect, briefly,
there are three (ironic, right?) extreme logics that a person, country or company
can follow in response to the sense of otherness that marks a dependency rela-
tionship characterized by fear and addiction.49 First, an agent can follow an iso-
lationist logic and become completely self-­sufficient. Second, they could follow
an imperialist logic that degrees that one is entitled to the resources no matter
what. Third, they can follow a shared fate logic and accept a level of depend-
ency knowing that the situation is mutual. In reality, the choice for any of these
logics is heavily influenced by neorealist and liberalist readings of international
energy relations (reinforcing their political impact). For instance, the isolation-
ist logic is excluded based on ideas about economic progress and an addiction to
acquired lifestyles. The imperialist logic returns strongly in neorealist approaches
to international energy relations. And the shared fate logic is propagated by the
(neo-)liberalist understandings of a relationship of interdependency.50
On the one hand, such a search for logics definitely helps clarify processes
and assumptions behind energy security and thus help explain how energy
security works. Yet, the two articles and discussion above show that it is a rather
arbitrary process with strong links to categorization and heavily influenced by
the theoretical assumptions and disciplines that are said to observe energy
security relations. This is probably why, for Ciută, ‘energy is not, in this sense,
 Analysing energy security   49
the problem’ to explain the proliferation of energy security.51 The problem origi-
nates elsewhere. It derives from the reification of the theories behind energy
security and, perhaps for now easier to grasp, it derives from the fact that it is
not energy that is secured. What is secured are the infrastructure, the markets,
the price agreements, the system and so forth. Energy security in this sense is an
empty concept that only ‘acquires meaning through a series of assumptions
regarding the linkage between growth, sustenance and the environment’.52 The
problem for Ciută therefore ‘is that of formulating different concepts of security
and creating context where these can acquire legitimacy and political grip’.53 To
be fair, this is exactly what Ciută and Cherp and Jewell do. By simplifying the
debates through a search for security logics, they manage to break with a simple
understanding of security. That said, neither of these articles fully engages with
the full range of insights available within the CSS literature. Furthermore, they
still try to define what energy security is and how it works, instead of engaging
with the question what energy security does.

3.5 Reflection: unpacking energy security

This chapter discussed how energy security is analysed by the literature on
energy security, and specifically how the literature makes sense of the prolifera-
tion of the concept. It identified three core strategies: categorization, theoriza-
tion and a mix of both with the search for underlying logics. In sum, these
approaches identify what energy security is and how energy security works, but,
in line with this book, not how energy security is used politically in daily life.
This becomes important as the chapter above also shows that definitions of
energy security always contain two aspects: they define what energy insecurity
is, as well as what energy security should be. A definition of energy security thus
closes down a situation by defining it as a form of energy insecurity and simul-
taneously offers a specific normative alternative orientation as its solution.
Defining thus comes with a strong normative judgement on how to secure.
More generally, two other things stand out from the discussion so far. First,
the inherent empty nature of energy security and its constant proliferation in
terms of ascribed content and scope. Second, the limited critical literature that
is available on energy security and the realization that the definitions, categories
and theories dealing with energy security are not neutral indicators but help
shape what they analyse. The core argument from this book is that the academic
discussion on energy security lacks a more abstract theoretical reflection on
what the concept and its definitions do besides the deliberations of what they
are and how they work. Briefly, what is missing is an understanding that the
proliferation of the concept of energy security and its totalizing categorical tend-
encies hide the multiplicity of energy and the daily political choices that are
constantly being made and remade on its behalf.
In other words, while the proliferation of energy security shows the range of
choices that can be made regarding the future of energy, it does not detail why
those choices have been made available and not others. The conceptual analysis
50   Analysing energy security
so far does not analyse the politics behind the choices; it only highlights the
perceived need for security and a desire for energy. It does not question why
certain issues are feared as a security problem and others not. It does not help us
understand why people constantly need more energy. These desires and threats
are often taken as self-­evident in the traditional literature. But are they? And
what is behind the constant proliferation of energy security? What are the con-
sequences of state-­centrism for energy security? What role does the scientifica-
tion of energy security play in the governance of these fields? Why does the
literature differ between a security of supply and a security of demand, but not
between a security of abundance (protecting what we have) and a security of
scarcity (gaining that what we never had), or between a politics of insecurity
(the use of security to highlight a new threat) and the politics of security (the
use of security to deal with routine threats)? These are all questions that call for
a deeper theoretical engagement with security and other aspects of the under-
represented humanities literature in the field of energy.54
The three chapters that follow take up this call and together problematize
any remaining notion that energy security is merely an identifiable problem in
need of a solution. The next chapter, Chapter 4, builds on the wider critical
security literature to provide a theoretical foundation for the concept of security
in order to shed light on the constant proliferation of energy security. This
chapter follows a similar line of argumentation as above: it starts by discussing
what security is, quickly breaking with any narrow descriptions, and then shifts
the focus to how it works and specifically what it does when people use it. In
doing so, this chapter provides at least some theoretical grounding to explain
the constant proliferation of energy security from a security perspective. Hope-
fully, it is clear that this implies that the chapters that follow are no longer
about energy security as such but discuss their respective theoretical questions
in breath and on their own terms. What’s more, as any single theory, method or
performative approach simplifies the inherent complexity of each of these topics
and hence would inherently break with the contextualization that is of such
importance to understand energy security, the coming chapters offer as much
breadth as possible for a more complete understanding of the processes at work
behind energy security.

Notes
1 Ciută 2010; Sovacool and Brown 2010, 102; Chester 2010; Dyer and Trombetta
2013; Sovacool and Mukherjee 2011; Sovacool 2011a.
2 Ciută 2010, 133.
3 With the exception of Ciută 2010; Bridge 2015.
4 Cherp and Jewell 2011a.
5 Zeniewski, Martinez-­Anido and Pearson 2013, 40.
6 There are many more social theories used to analyse energy (transitions). A place to
start is Smits 2015, 21, or Rosa, Machlis and Keating 1988.
7 Christou and Adamides 2013; Fischhendler, Boymel and Boykoff 2014; Leung et al.
2014; Trombetta 2012; Nyman 2014; Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008; Stoddard
2012.
 Analysing energy security   51
8 Including this book, although here categories are used more loosely (see the shift
from definitions to reflection in Chapter 4).
9 APERC 2007.
10 Hughes 2009 (four categories); Sovacool and Mukherjee 2011; APERC 2007; Ang,
Choong and Ng 2015; Sovacool and Brown 2010; Vivoda 2010 (11 categories with
44 indicators); Sovacool 2011b (20 dimensions and 320 indicators).
11 Sovacool 2011b; Jansen 2009; Le Coq and Paltseva 2009; IEA 2011.
12 Cherp and Jewell 2014, 418.
13 Johansson 2013.
14 Winzer 2012.
15 Ibid., 37–39.
16 Cherp and Jewell 2011b, 209.
17 Valentine 2011.
18 Sen 1983.
19 Von Hippel et al. 2011; Valentine 2011.
20 Zeniewski, Martinez-­Anido and Pearson 2013, 41.
21 Ibid.
22 Cherp and Jewell 2011a.
23 Ibid.
24 Chester 2010.
25 Salameh 2004.
26 IEA 2010, 115; Cobb 2012.
27 Reynolds 2005, 55.
28 Smits 2015; Rosa, Machlis and Keating 1988; Aalto et al. 2014.
29 Stoddard 2013; Raphael and Stokes 2016.
30 Aalto et al. 2014.
31 Correljé and Van der Linde 2006; Bosse and Schmidt-­Felzmann 2011; Barnes and
Jaffe 2006; Criekemans 2011; Klare 2008; Kropatcheva 2011.
32 Stoddard 2013, 7, quoting Ciută 2010, 130. See also Casier 2011.
33 Waltz 1988.
34 Klare 2001, 2008, 2012; Van der Linde, Perlot and Hoogeveen 2006.
35 Labban 2011, 326.
36 Campbell 2005, 954.
37 Criekemans 2011; Scholten and Bosman 2016.
38 Correljé and Van der Linde 2006.
39 Stoddard 2013; Goldthau and Witte 2009.
40 Van der Linde 2007, 70.
41 Stoddard 2013, 10.
42 On energy regimes see Section 2.6. On discourse analyses see Alcock 2009; Jarosz
2014; Lovell 2008; Scrase and Ockwell 2010. On securitization theory see for
example Nyman 2014; Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008; Shepherd 2012.
43 Nyman 2014, 47.
44 WEC 2015.
45 Graham and Thrift 2007.
46 Mulligan 2010; Patterson 2008.
47 Cherp and Jewell 2011b; Ciută 2010.
48 Not many scholars describe what dependency means for them. Somebody who does is
Le Billon, following Ribot and Peluso, who discusses dependency by separating access
from control. Whereas access is ‘ “the ability to derive benefits” using all possible
means’, control should be seen as ‘gaining, controlling or maintaining access’. Hence,
‘control can be defined as the ability to enforce the rights to benefit from resources,
using all possible means’. See Le Billon 2007, 175–176, who quotes Ribot and Peluso
2003, 173.
49 See Friedrichs 2010.
52   Analysing energy security
50 In case of energy, especially oil and gas, this interdependence can even be asymmetri-
cal as the short-­term disruptive power of gas suppliers is only balanced on the medium
to long term by the income dependency of producers. See Stoddard 2012, 347.
51 Ciută 2010, 139.
52 Ibid., 128.
53 Ibid., 139.
54 Sovacool 2014.

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4 Securing undesired (energy)
futures

4.1 Introduction
The previous chapters show that energy security is characterized by a constant
proliferation, which complicates a study of what it is and how this expansion
impacts the inherent prioritization of security. This chapter unpacks this logic
of security and finds four characteristics, each of them applicable to energy
security.1 First, (energy) security is not one logic. It consists of multiple forms of
insecurity and logics of security, which rely on five different techniques to get to
know the future. Many of these logics are inclusionary: there is always another
unknown potentially threatening future, just as a failed countermeasure only
inspires to do better. Second, (energy) security is highly normative. It is the
choice of what to protect and what not to protect, the choice between what to
see as a threat and what not to see as a threat. Simultaneously, the urgency of
security dispels any thought about the ethical choices inherent to security. Third,
(energy) security is something that is made; it does not exist out there but it is
called upon or written by politicians, concerned citizens, security experts, insur-
ers etc. Lastly, this chapter will discuss that (energy) security is not only a goal,
something that initiates action against a threat, but rather an exercise of power,
a way to govern the present based on an imagination of the future.
One of the most elegant descriptions of security is provided by Booth who
states that security ‘is a powerful political concept; it … energizes opinion and
moves material power’.2 Obviously, this description, in line with the focus of
this book, describes what security does instead of providing a definition of what
it is. In terms of what security is: often security is simply defined as the absence
of threats, in line with Buzan, who sees security as ‘being protected from danger,
feeling safe, and being free from doubt’.3 Alternatively, Brauch defines security
as something that ‘is achieved if there is an absence of objective threats and
subjective fears to basic values’.4 These definitions already show that security
has neither a fixed value nor strong boundaries defining its use, and leads to the
conclusion that security is an empty logic that carries a multitude of meanings
for different people in different times.5 Security is both a state of being (the end
goal of ‘feeling secure’) and the means towards that end (either repairing threats
or avoiding them). Security can be negative (negating threats and dangers) or
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   57
positive (something to strive for). Definitions range from the individual to the
international, from material (food) to symbolic (democracy) forms of security,
from internal (rebellion) to external security considerations (invasion), from
the security of public goods (air quality) to private services (insurance), and
from objective and subjective to intersubjective notions of security (see this
chapter).6
With security (and energy security) construed as an empty logic, any content
driven definition or explanation of what security is comes with strong normative
consequences. Chapter 2 on the evolution of the concept of energy security
already shows how such definitions not only describe what the insecurities are,
but also steer what they ought to be. Any decision on insecurity contains an
image of who/what is to be secured, and hence who/what is not part of that
security. Following the definition of Booth above, this book moves away from
such substantive definitions and instead approaches security as the mode through
which people identify undesirable futures and act upon them in the present. Such a
broad definition might invite the response that it is not a definition, that it is
too broad and unworkable because it can include anything that is deemed
important,7 in other words that it makes security into something banal, a cri-
tique forwarded earlier in relation to energy security. However, the approach to
security proposed above enables a process-­driven analysis of what security is said
to be, how it comes to be and how it affects current decision-­making practices
as well as the consequences of such decision-­making. In other words, this broad
definition enables us to transcend the inherent duality within current under-
standings of security of friend/enemy or secure/insecure to the politics and
origins of security by focusing on how people come to know the future and
decide upon its undesirability.
This chapter consists of four sections. Section 4.2 deals with the question of
what security is. It provides a detailed and up-­to-date examination of security as
it lets go of any fixed definition, instead focusing on general processes and how
it works: the specific rationalities through which we approach uncertain futures,
the techniques used to identify undesired futures, and the security logics that
secure these undesirable futures. Together these make up what here is under-
stood as security. Section 4.3 proceeds to discuss the normative dimension of
security and goes so far as to argue that security essentially is a form of ethics.
This chapter examines the close connection between security decisions and
knowledge, the role of fear in relation to security, and the active political
(mis)use of security to govern vulnerable populations. The last two sections shift
to theories of security and deal with the processes through which undesired
futures are turned into a security issue. Section 4.4 looks closely at securitization
theory, one of the core theories on security that provides a framework to study
how people call upon security (interpreted as exceptional circumstances) in
political arenas. Section 4.5 studies the theoretical literature on the security
technique of risk calculations (with its focus on routine security practices) and
how this helps govern our daily lives. Section 4.6 offers a brief reflection.
58   Securing undesired (energy) futures
4.2 Tackling the unknown

4.2.1 Security/insecurity and the present future

While the notion of security is hard to define, whether compared to its conceptual
relatives (safety and certainty) or its antagonists (insecurity, uncertainty, risks,
threats and dangers), it is one of the dominant values in modern society and often
the bottom line when it comes to survival. This has not always been the case.
Zedner, for example, contrasts a ‘modern’ strive for survival with historic notions
of security that view it as something to be fearful of. Security, it was believed,
would inevitably lead to overconfidence and a person’s undoing, because someone
who feels totally secure no longer pays attention to life itself.8 Der Derian forwards
a similar argument when he distinguishes three different meanings of security.9
First, security refers to ‘a condition of being protected’, in the Hobbesian meaning
of security that refers to a secure state of being and an absence of fear. According
to Der Derian, this is how security is interpreted within IR. Second, security is
used in the ‘form of a pledge, a bond, a surety’. This understanding takes up centre
position in modern economics under the headers of insurance, law and finance.
Lastly, Der Derian identifies a historic interpretation of security when he defines it
as ‘a condition of false or misplaced confidence’ and argues that this historic
notion of wrongness or overconfidence seems to have been lost in modern security
debates.10 Recently, this latter interpretation is reintroduced by scholars like
Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero, who argue that life itself is radically uncertain and that
when one tries to secures life, when one protects and stabilizes it too much, one
actually ‘kills’ life itself (Section 4.5 and Chapter 6).11
Besides these three positions on security, two other aspects are central to it.
The first is the intricate relationship between security and insecurity. As Dillon
phrases it, ‘[a]ll security, however defined, is consequently a relationship towards
insecurity, and vice versa. Security and insecurity belong together.’12 When a
situation is framed as a security issue, it is impossible not to think about how it
could be organized more securely. Similarly, when a situation is described as
secure the first thing that comes to mind is what could break this security. It is
impossible to think about one without thinking about the other, irrespective
the referent objects and fields of application.
The second aspect relates to the time dimension of security, as it is always
the future that is insecure. Even if some historic knowledge is considered threat-
ening, it is in relation to what might happen with it in the future. As Buzan,
Wæver and de Wilde explain:

The impossibility of applying objective standards of securityness relates to a

trivial but rarely noticed feature of security arguments: They are about the
future, about alternative futures – always hypothetical – and about
counterfactuals.13

According to Anderson, this future orientation makes security into ‘a seemingly

paradoxical process whereby a future becomes cause and justification for some
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   59
form of action in the here and now’.14 In other words, people act now to foil
what they fear might come about, because the moment that a threat realizes it is
no longer an imagined future but the present. From such a perspective, security
is a form of epistemic uncertainty or a lack of knowledge about the future.15 The
future is interpreted as either too complicated to comprehend in full (inherent
incomplete knowledge) or as a constant source of surprise that could in prin-
ciple be known if only there were enough resources to study them.16 Then again,
while the future is inherently uncertain, many futures are known at the same
time. These known futures are often seen as unpredictable and as something to
be feared, but are often just as desirable in terms of material gain, political power
or social status, and at other times seen as a positive experience that brings fun
and enjoyment.17 The line between desired and undesired futures is hence not
fixed: even in those instances where the future is feared, some feared futures are
still desired and pursued for the thrill of it (e.g. skydiving), while other people
seek generally acknowledged undesirable futures (e.g. suicide).18
The beauty of security is that one way or another the future is opened up,
reacted to and given shape in doing so. In this process, security offers both cause
and justification for its actions. To understand security one therefore needs to
‘understand how anticipatory action functions, we must understand the presence
of the future, that is the ontological and epistemological status of “what has not
and may never happen” ’,19 a process that Luhmann identifies as ‘time-­binding’.20
Seen as a logic it becomes possible to focus on the processual nature behind the
manifestation of the future in the present, in particular, the manner in which
undesirable futures are identified and subsequently acted on. Hence, (energy)
security is here defined as the way people identify and approach undesirable
(energy) futures in the present. Starting from this processual logic, the following
sections first focus on different types of insecurity by identifying more or less
coherent ways of thinking about undesirable futures. The second section deals
with several techniques used to identify unwanted futures and the third section
deals with security logics or the strategies to counter or relate to the undesirable
futures.21 Together these sections make up Figure 4.1, below.

dLJƉĞƐŽĨ/ŶƐĞĐƵƌŝƚLJ ^ĞĐƵƌŝƚLJdĞĐŚŶŝƋƵĞƐ >ŽŐŝĐƐŽĨ^ĞĐƵƌŝƚLJ

ͻ ZĂĚŝĐĂůƵŶĐĞƌƚĂŝŶƚLJ ͻ hŶĐĞƌƚĂŝŶƚLJ ͻ WƌĞǀĞŶƟŽŶĂŶĚ
ͻ dŚƌĞĂƚƐ ͻ /ŵĂŐŝŶĂƟŽŶ ĞƚĞƌƌĞŶĐĞ
ͻ ĂƚĂƐƚƌŽƉŚĞƐ ͻ džƚƌĂƉŽůĂƟŽŶ ͻ WƌĞĞŵƉƟŽŶĂŶĚ
ͻ ĂŶŐĞƌƐ ͻ ZŝƐŬĐĂůĐƵůĂƟŽŶ WƌĞĐĂƵƟŽŶ
ͻ ^ĂĨĞƚLJ ͻ ^ŝŵƵůĂƟŽŶ ͻ WƌĞƉĂƌĞĚŶĞƐƐĂŶĚ
ZĞƐŝůůŝĞŶĐĞ
ͻ ZŝƐŬƐ
ͻ /ŐŶŽƌĂŶĐĞ

Figure 4.1 Types, techniques and logics of security.

Source: author.
60   Securing undesired (energy) futures
4.2.2 Types of insecurity
A broader interpretation of security, one that sees security as the politics of
knowing undesired futures and acting upon them in the present, shows that
there are at least five ways to think about insecurity. These include threats,
dangers, catastrophes, uncertainties, risks and safety.22 These terms are often
conflated and used interchangeably, but nonetheless contain individual charac-
teristics and particular logics that determine how situations are interpreted and
how the future is approached.23 What makes it especially difficult is the double
use of many of these concepts. Threats, uncertainty and risk, for example, are
both generic understandings of insecurity that people use in popular language to
discuss security generally, but also specific distinguishable rationalities of
insecurity.
To start with the conception of radical uncertainty. Generically, the future is
uncertain and we do not know what the future brings. Still, there are things we
fear, outcomes we hope for and things we expect will happen. In other words,
there are degrees of uncertainty. Simultaneously, there are those events that
truly do surprise, that do not fit the other categories of insecurity. The concept
of radical uncertainty covers this final category of surprises.24 Knight’s classic
formulation of this problem is based on a distinction between risks and uncer-
tainty. More precisely, Knight sees risks as calculable and measurable whereas
uncertainty is seen as something incalculable, often due to the uniqueness of a
particular situation.25 Knight and many current positivists understand uncer-
tainty as indeterminacy, as a problem of incomplete information that can and
needs to be solved with more and better information. Keynes rejected this
formulation and argued that more information is not always enough to over-
come uncertainty as people also encounter situations of ‘ontic uncertainty’.26 In
these situations, the rules of the game, the event or the setting of the uncertain
future itself are unknown and people have to fall back on others and what they
believe, not on what they know. Keynes points here to situations where people
do not add information but start to reason by analogy.
Kessler and Daase expand upon these insights and distinguish four different
forms of uncertainty. They identify relative frequency where both game and
chance are known (e.g. dice). Second, they identify a form called logical
probability, where the ontological world is open but assumed to be known
and people agree on a distribution of probabilities (e.g. climate change). Third,
they identify subjective probability, a form of uncertainty where the ontological
world is known, but the chance of winning is interpreted subjectively (e.g.
stock markets). Lastly, they identify social probability by which the authors refer
to the epistemic uncertainty of language itself, its open-­endedness, double
meanings, imprecisions and undefined concepts.27 This latter category of social
probability comes close to what is here understood as radical uncertainty. Never-
theless, the ambiguity or excess of language is not the only source of radical
uncertainty.28 Above, this chapter briefly referred to the general concept of life,
as used by Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero, to denote the openness, potentiality and
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   61
heterogeneity of the future. Similarly, Latour places his actor-­networks against a
background of ‘plasma’ (Section 5.4), Bennett discusses the ‘vibrancy of matter’
to describe the radical uncertainty which she finds in the plurality and hetero-
geneity of the assemblage of humans and non-­humans (Sections 5.3 and 5.4),
and Adorno focuses on his idea of ‘non-­identity’ or that what is not conceptual-
ized but still felt as missing.29 Whether stemming from linguistic, material or
social-­material assemblages, this form of radical uncertainty opens the future to
change and free will.
This contrasts highly with the concept of threats that one often finds in IR
and public policy documents. Like uncertainty, threats play a role on two levels.
In its generic understanding, threats seem to denote all future instances that
people deem undesirable. This use of threats conflates dangers, threats, cata-
strophes and other forms of insecurity geared towards the prevention of feared
futures. What separates the specific notion of threats from other insecurities is
the presence of a threatening other.30 Originally, Buzan argued that threats differ
based on source, intensity (distance and urgency) and time frame.31 From a crit-
ical perspective, however, the focus shifts to the realization that underneath
these differences lies a self–other distinction. In terms of energy security, for
example, the EU and its member states see the more recent policy choices by
the Russian government once again as a threat to European oil and gas security
(Section 4.4). Such a threat rationality, which Wæver calls a war logic, is based
on the identification of somebody as being a threat.32 In that, threats discrimi-
nate. Always.33 Threats create an image of the other by demarcating those who
are dangerous as separate from us (the individual or group in need of security).
What is more, as will be discussed later in this chapter, in doing so they not
only give rise to the other but simultaneously shape the self through the identi-
fication and fixation of the referent object (that what needs protection).
Besides the self/other distinction of threats, there are three other ways to
think about undesirable futures and they all share their origin in a non-­human
‘outside world’. In its extreme, the notion of catastrophe refers to those events
that are expected but cannot be countered in any meaningful way, as they
cannot be experienced. The moment one experiences a catastrophic event, the
deadly outcome implies that experience is no longer possible, thus leading to a
desire to know catastrophes ‘without the inconvenience of having to live
through the catastrophe itself ’.34 Examples are hard to find as even for an explo-
sion of Yellowstone Park, the impact of an asteroid or a zombie plague there are
people adapting, tracking, preparing or moving house in the hope of surviving
such imagined catastrophic events. Still, whether based on science or science
fiction, the magnitude and inability for proper counteraction prevents such
issues to reach the security agendas of policymakers. This is where a catastrophe
differs from a danger. Contrary to catastrophes, many policies are concerned
with worst-­case scenarios (more on security techniques below) where people
believe that, helpful or not, not acting is not an option. The ability to act makes
such issues a danger (even when they are presented and dramatized as cata-
strophes). While some events are more urgent than others, danger refers to
62   Securing undesired (energy) futures
those instances where future events are known and counter actions are possible,
but which are not predictable as to when they occur. A failed harvest due to bad
weather or a fungus fits such a rationality. A last and related form of insecurity
is one of safety. Here it is not so much a natural occurrence that needs to be
countered but a sociotechnical event within a broader engineered system, often
framed in terms of quality instead of quantity. Debates about food safety (quality
of food) and nuclear safety (malfunctioning reactor) are a case in point as they
display sociotechnical failures affecting the safety of human life. Of course, the
moment that other people are held accountable for these failures the logic shifts
to a threat rationality.
That leaves risk, the last type of insecurity. Risk is special in that there are
not two but three meanings attached to the concept. First, like uncertainty and
threats, risk is used generically to indicate undesired and uncertain futures.
Second, risk is one of the main security techniques used to tackle the future, as
discussed below. Yet, third, risk also functions as a form of insecurity. What dis-
tinguishes risk is that it deals with those possible future events that do not stem
from ‘the other’ or from ‘the outside world’ but instead result from collective
action and decisions within a particular group. Risks follow decisions, or, as
Luhmann argues, ‘risks are attributed to decisions made, whereas dangers are
attributed externally’.35 According to Luhmann, this means that risks are
observer-­dependent: the risk that decision makers discuss becomes an external-
ity, danger or threat to the persons subject to the decisions.36 When the British
government decides to construct the Hinkley Point C nuclear power reactor,
they decide from a risk rationality. The local residents, however, do not face a
risk but the actual decision and thus a threat. These decisions, Luhmann notes,
are frequently made by people hidden within a range of different institutions of
government and business. This ‘allow[s] for the possibility that modern society
attributes too much to decisions, and so where the decision maker (whether an indi-
vidual or an organization) cannot even be identified’.37 In addition, outside obser-
vers, like historians looking back at the construction of Hinkley Point C, could
decide very differently on the thresholds of the risk that the current government
uses to makes its decision.38 The insecurity behind risk is thus based on the
repeated question whether something is the right decision or not.

4.2.3 Knowing the future

The five types of undesired futures are unknown, but people constantly imagine
them with the help of a range of security techniques. Here we discuss five of
them, including: uncertainty, extrapolation, imagination, risk calculation and
simulation. Each of these broadly encompasses a specific way of approaching the
future and making it knowable, combining both the above-­discussed insecurities
and the below-­discussed security logics. Not only are the techniques different
but they also have multiple uses. This is best exemplified with the three arche-
types of future studies, a field that categorizes the use of these techniques in
terms of forecasting, foresight and backcasting.39 Forecasting is about what will
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   63
happen, often by extrapolating trends within society into the future (expected
energy demand). Foresight studies focus on what could happen by picturing a
range of possible futures (IEA scenarios). Lastly, backcasting identifies one par-
ticular desired future and looks backward from that particular future to identify
the requirements and actions necessary to reach it (reducing CO2 to remain
under two degrees of global warming). The techniques discussed below can thus
be used for multiple purposes, but we will discuss the techniques themselves
instead of their broader use.
Out of the five techniques, uncertainty might be the most difficult to describe
as it is not a technique per se. Contra the other techniques, which all aim to
gain knowledge over the future, the technique of uncertainty is the residual cat-
egory that describes all those instances when people act in relation to the future
without knowing precisely why. This includes moments of intuition, fate, luck
or, as some see them, moments of divine intervention. These are all post hoc
explanations of course, but still moments when something does not feel right
and people decide to wait for the next train or to eat something different. They
have no way of knowing the future but in hindsight have acted as if they did.
This also includes moments when judgement is sought from experts about situ-
ations that could go either way. Situations where none of the instruments below
provide a decisive course of action and it is left to the ‘expert’ to decide whether
it is the right moment for action and to choose from a range of alternatives on
the right course of action. If arranged systematically, for example through the
Delphi method, the use of expert opinion becomes a way to imagine the future
that is more closely related to scenario planning.40
Scenario planning, in turn, is a technique that tries to imagine the future by
offering multiple alternative futures. The idea of imaging multiple futures has a
long history and lies at the core of military planning and games like draughts
and chess. The development of scenarios sped up during World War II and con-
tinued in the 1960s.41 Nevertheless, the use of scenarios outside the military
only gained traction when Shell responded surprisingly fast and favourably to
the 1973 oil crisis. This response was accredited to previous in-­house scenarios
to which its management was exposed in 1972 and which had forced the board
to imagine just such a possibility and the responses to it.42 For Shell:

Scenarios are not projections, predictions or preferences. Rather they are

coherent and credible stories, describing different paths that lead to altern-
ative futures. The process of producing and using scenarios is as important
as the scenario stories themselves.43

The importance of the process itself follows from the main function of scenarios,
which is to order all possible imaginable futures into coherent stories. It is this
ordering process and its socializing effect that helps participants to understand
the scenarios they are working with.44 After Shell’s success, the use of scenarios
quickly spread across society.45 The main issue with scenarios is that, irrespec-
tive of (or due to) their broad application, they are often developed by experts
64   Securing undesired (energy) futures
instead of executive decision makers. This leads to situations where, in hind-
sight, the future is almost always imagined by someone somewhere, but that this
does not guarantee that they are acted upon or favoured by the decision
makers.46 Salter, for example, notes how the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were not a
failure of imagination or scenario planning but that the failure corresponds to
the fact that the imageries in this case failed to convince the policymakers in
charge.47 This practice of using imagination and scenarios by policy and the
media to identify as many possible futures as possible has also been called
premediation.48
The third technique is extrapolation. This is a quantitative way of forecasting
the future by estimating the future value of a variable through an extension of
the historic trend into the future. In the case of natural resources, extrapolation
can be traced to Malthus’s argument about the arithmetic versus geometric
change of respectively food production and population growth.49 More sophist-
icated approaches gained traction, in particular during the first half of the twen-
tieth century in relation to industrial development and, in particular, in relation
to the military during World War II.50 However, extrapolation techniques really
took off with the development of information technology that allowed for the
handling of more complex trend analyses over larger data sets. One of the main
examples remains the original Limits to Growth report, which reinforced
(neo‑)Malthusian concerns on the environmental consequences of economic
growth. Similarly, the price expectations in relation to natural resource com-
modities are partly based on trend analyses. An example would be the oil price
expectations in 2008. At that time, a report by Goldman and Sachs stated that
the oil price, at that moment hovering around 120 dollars a barrel, would con-
tinue to rise to 150 or 200 dollars per barrel (the price peaked at 147 dollars).51
These days, extrapolation is often combined with scenarios wherein particular
variables are altered to offer bandwidths of most likely trends.
The fourth technique is risk calculation. Where extrapolation deals with the
identification of the future, ‘[c]alculation … renders complex future geographies
actionable through the numericalization of a reality to come – numbers that
may thereafter circulate, be reflected on and take on an affective charge’.52 In
other words, calculation focuses on the likely impacts and the chance of an
event occurring. The technique of risk calculation thus centres on the statistical
probability of well-­known events with known variables.53 Accordingly, and
unlike the previous security techniques, risk calculation does not identify the
future but instead categorizes multiple futures. This leads some scholars to argue
that risk should be seen ‘as a governance framework [which] seeks to focus
scarce resources on risks that are ranked according to frequency and impact’.54
The reason that risk calculation is interpreted as a security technique is because
risk assessments are used to identify a set of futures that are not per definition
undesirable or desirable. Risks display both possible costs and potential benefits
and it is up to the individual to decide whether to take the risk or not. This sub-
sequently points towards the politics behind risk calculation, as quantitative
models do not explain the ‘disaster threshold’ or that point in time when people
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   65
decide that the risks are no longer acceptable.55 Recent work by Amoore, among
others, shows the importance of this, as risk calculation seems to be shifting
from the statistical probability of imagined futures and their underlying variables
to calculations that try to prevent events through a method that uses risk calcu-
lation to search for statistical correlations of non-­related variables in extremely
large databases (see Section 4.5.5) in order to identify terrorists before the actual
act by the (not related and non-­criminal) acts that they have in common.56
A last security technique is simulation (performance or acting). This tech-
nique too does not primarily discover new futures but instead enables people to
experience a particular future. For Anderson, performance involves that ‘futures
are … made present through practices that stage an interval between the here
and now and a specific future through some form of acting, role-­play, gaming or
pretending’.57 By simulating a future, participants emotionally and affectively
experience that future as they play it out in the present, leading to a better
understanding of that particular possible future and one’s potential response.
The best-­known examples are fire drills (e.g. on oil and gas platforms), the Cold
War-­style war games, large-­scale disaster management exercises and the stress
testing of oil and gas systems by the IEA.58 On a more individual level, the per-
formance technique is of course the corner stone behind many training pro-
grammes. Pilots, soldiers, physicians and managers are all trained with simulators
and real-­life exercises. In these exercises, people act in the present based on
imagined and experienced futures. They get to know particular futures, and the
skills to handle them, by experiencing these futures.

4.2.4 Logics of security

These security techniques do not stand on their own but identify the undesired
futures and thereby bridge the forms of insecurity with the logics of security that
tackle them. Indeed, it is possible to detect eight security logics divided in three
categories. The logics of prevention and deterrence deal with knowable unde-
sired futures, the logics of pre-­emption and precaution tackle unknowable
futures, whereas the logics of preparedness and resilience counter unavoidable
undesired futures. In relation to these security logics, there is a remaining cat-
egory as well. While the logics below are all aimed at identifying and countering
undesired futures, there are undesirable futures where no action is taken at all.
In line with Rumsfeld’s ‘unknown unknowns’, these are the ‘unknown knowns’:
those things that are forgotten, misplaced or actively ignored.59 Daase and
Kessler identify this category, which they call ignorance, for those instances
where nothing is done to counter undesirable futures, except perhaps to actively
forget them.60
In turn, when the undesirable future can be attributed with a degree of cer-
tainty to a particular cause, it is possible to approach such futures through either
a logic of prevention or a logic of deterrence. In a logic of prevention, one tries to
prevent the undesired future from occurring, whereas in a logic of deterrence pre-
vention has failed as the other has gained the potential to act and one tries
66   Securing undesired (energy) futures
instead to discourage that from occurring. For Massumi the difference between
prevention and deterrence can be found in their internal justification. He argues
that in a logic of prevention an undesired future stems from an externally given
object or event with strong cause–effect relationships for which the moment
and force of impacts is unsure.61 Sharing the same epistemological knowable but
undesired future, a logic of deterrence does not result from an external object
but from the knowledge itself that something is going to happen soon and needs
to be stopped before it happens. Deterrence misses the flexibility of prevention
and replaces it with a certainty and total sense of urgency. To Massumi, this
urgency and the lack of an exogenous foundation marks deterrence as a self-­
referential process:

The only way to have the kind of epistemological immediacy necessary for
deterrence is for its process to have its own cause and to hold it fast within
itself. The quickest and most direct way for a process to acquire its own
cause is for it to produce one. The easiest way to do this is to take the immi-
nence of the very threat prevention has failed to neutralize and make it the
foundation of a new process.62

In this new process, the perceived urgency of the undesired future loses all
doubt; it becomes the justification for the urgency itself and makes the unde-
sired future a reality in the present. In other words, the undesired future is
known because it is acted upon as if it were real. It is performed.
Then there are also undesirable futures that are ‘not yet fully formed’.63 These
undesirable futures are both epistemological and ontological uncertain: they
cannot be known because the ontic nature of the future is not fully known.64 In
other words, there is some idea about what the undesirable future is, but not
where or how it will come about. A logic of pre-­emption was originally coined in
relation to pre-­emptive wars: wars that break the peace in the face of an attack
of the threatening other (contra preventive wars, in which one attacks without
immediate threat of attack). Pre-­emption thus tries to halt a threat from coming
into existence and hence does not deal with possibilities (risks) but with poten-
tialities (scenarios), a constant flux of self-­referential new potentialities.65
Similar to deterrence, the logic of pre-­emption deals with these imagined
undesirable futures by believing them to happen at any moment and with drastic
impacts.66 Massumi sees pre-­emption therefore as a logic that works affectively
instead of causally, as it needs to create its own ‘otherness’ based on a constant
regeneration of the fear of new potential threats.67 The best way to counter such
fears is by acting upon them as if they are real. In doing so, pre-­emption realizes
the potential undesired future in the present. When you fear your neighbour
and treat him as a threat, everything the neighbour does potentially is threaten-
ing and thereby reinforces your fear and further justifies the actions you take to
‘keep him in check’. Consequently, such an affective realization of an undesir-
able future cannot be proven wrong.68 When acting upon pre-­emptive fear,
there is no objective ground to reflect on your actions and subsequently no
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   67
ground for proportionality to your actions. Whether the undesired future ensues
or not, countering the fear was the right thing to do.
Comparable to a logic of pre-­emption, a logic of precaution also works on and
through potentially undesirable futures. Contrary to pre-­emption, however, pre-
caution does not ‘unleash … transformative events in order to avoid a rupture
in a valued life’ but instead cautions against any actions that could potentially
lead to undesired futures.69 This logic is best known through the precautionary
principle, a principle that states that ‘when human activities may lead to
morally unacceptable harm that is scientifically plausible but uncertain, actions
shall be taken to avoid or diminish that harm’.70 Often precaution leads to
demands for more scientific knowledge, although it is just as often a justification
to prevent undesirable actions completely.71 In other words, the precautionary
logic contains strong debates on the proportionality of activities, weighing the
potentiality of a decision to commence those activities against their potential
impacts (in contrast to deterrence and pre-­emption). Precaution is thus a logic
that focuses primarily on the potential impacts of one’s own actions and one’s
own decisions instead of something exogenous. In this it closely resembles
Luhmann’s analyses of a risk rationality, although it misses the ability to calcu-
late the impact of an action or decision as the potential future itself is still
uncertain.72
Besides avoiding undesired futures, some logics work to reduce the impacts of
those undesired futures that are deemed unavoidable. A logic of preparedness, for
example, focuses on a reduction of impacts. It has preventive qualities in that it
deals with what you as an individual or social group can do to keep your current
way of life.73 When analysing natural resource use and critical infrastructure,
preparedness includes well-­known measures like the construction of reserves,
redundancy, interconnections and back-­up capacity, but also includes instru-
ments like insurance and contract law. In the case of insurance, risk calculation
is used to reduce the impact of certain undesired futures by spreading the costs
for rebuilding over a group of people. In the case of contract law, the uncer-
tainty of decision-­making is reduced by agreeing to keep each other accountable
and to discuss responsibilities and cost distribution in case of impacts. Prepared-
ness (or mitigation) contrasts in this case with a logic of resilience. Resilience (or
adaptation) is discussed a bit more in Section 4.5 and Chapter 6, but for now
can be described as a prudential way to tackle the future by taking a more proac-
tive approach, in line with pre-­emption, in actively adapting towards undesir-
able futures.74 These two differ because a logic of resilience does not actualize a
particular undesired future like pre-­emption. Instead, it makes agents see them-
selves as vulnerable and forces them to be aware and constantly open to undesir-
able futures. In other words, a resilience logic does not try to prepare for the
impacts of possible undesirable futures (as in a logic of preparedness) but forces
the agent to adapt by changing himself instead of his surroundings.
In sum, the above forms of insecurity, techniques and logics of security
quickly dispel any remaining illusion or hope for a clear definition of what
(energy) security is. Security is all of those and more. First, security relates to
68   Securing undesired (energy) futures
different types of insecurity following rationalities of threats, dangers, cata-
strophes, uncertainties, risks and safety. Second, security is the range of tech-
niques used to gain knowledge over the future, whether through uncertainty,
extrapolation, imagination, risk calculation or simulation. Lastly, security is the
combination of logics that aim to counter undesired futures, whether known
through the logics of prevention and deterrence, unknown through pre-­emption
and precaution or unavoidable via preparedness and resilience. This multiplicity
of logics and techniques reinforces the richness that lies behind the emptiness
of security and energy security while focusing our attention away from energy to
the range of rationalities, techniques and logics that we use to get to know and
prioritize undesired (energy) futures.

4.3 The ethics of security

4.3.1 Security as ethics

Interestingly, the (critical) security literature has been able to identify these
techniques and logics by broadening its own scope of security. Initially, the the-
ories of security evolved in response to the end of the Cold War by increasing
the attention to topics that were considered low politics, like energy and climate
security. In turn, the theoretical debate on security shifted from realist under-
standings of security towards strong ethical critiques and a focus on individual
human security.75 In addition, it started to discuss the role of risk in society.76
The field also benefited greatly from the idea that security could be approached
as a political argument, as something that people call upon in political debates
(see Section 4.4).77 This claim in turn has been criticized and extended by
approaches that interpreted security as routine practices and a form of govern-
ance.78 In other words, it is possible to trace a constant broadening and theoret-
ical deepening of the idea of security on an academic level as well. In
broadening its scope, the literature progressively builds on a critical under-
standing that points towards the ethical implications of security. This will be
taken up below together with a subsequent discussion on fear, or how people are
motivated to decide and act upon undesired futures.
To start, it seems this attention to the ethics and normativity of security
practices coincides with the increasing use of more open – e.g. epistemic and
ontic uncertain – security logics and techniques that deal with multiple poten-
tial futures, like pre-­emption and imagination. In line with Massumi, it is pos-
sible to argue that we have entered a period wherein the manner used to
approach the future is best characterized as a situation where the ‘absence makes
the threat loom larger’ instead of smaller.79 It no longer matters whether an
undesirable future has happened, is about to happen or is imagined to happen
somewhere in the distant future. It no longer matters, because, as Massumi con-
tinues, the current generic ‘threat is self-­organizing, self-­amplifying, indiscrimi-
nate and indiscriminable, tirelessly agitating as a background condition,
potentially ready to irrupt’.80 The generic idea captured by concepts like threat,
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   69
risk or uncertainty is everywhere and is constantly pressing for attention, which
makes decisions on undesired futures as risky as the futures themselves.81 They
are risky because they have no easy identifiable origin and their ‘ “cause” [is]
complex and non-­local’ and often self-­referential.82 Yet, with the help of
Massumi it becomes possible to describe security as the ‘pragmatic and provi-
sional’ ‘ascriptions’ of a notion of undesirability to certain futures, each ‘relative
to a particular systemic take on the event’,83 in other words as the mode through
which people identify undesirable futures and act upon them in the present.
Besides being highly relative and context-­bound, the function of these
generic insecurities as a background condition means that ‘the potential of [the]
threat is already, in the waiting, an incipient systemic disruption’.84 In high-
lighting that an ascription stems from and only works in relation to an existing
system while simultaneously changing this system because of it, Massumi hints
at the close connection between the identification of an undesired future and
the consequential impact of that identification in the present. Campbell
describes this more explicitly by showing how the identification of an undesired
future ‘objectifies events, disciplines relations, and sequesters an ideal of the
identity of the people said to be at risk’.85 In other words, security does things,
or, as Dillon pushes this point:

By being secured something becomes something that it previously was not.

The act of securing both invents and changes whatever is so secured.… In
short, for something to be secured it must be acted upon and changed,
forced to undergo some transformation through the very act of securing
itself. Securing something therefore violates the very thing which security claims to
have preserved as it is. Securing an object is only possible on the condition
that the integrity of the original thing is destroyed.86

The moment something is identified as undesirable, the referent object and our
relation to the referent object are changed, irrespective whether action has been
taken or not. For Dillon the question therefore is not what security is, or who or
what is threatening or in need of protection, but instead:

What does a representation of danger make of ‘us’ and of those who are not
‘us’? Not by asking who or what is threatened, or what is doing the threat-
ening? But by asking how does the specification of threat and its discourse
of danger determine ‘who’, the ‘we’, and the ‘what’ that is said one the one
hand to be endangered, and on the other to be doing the endangering? …
And, finally, not by asking how to secure security? But, by enquiring about
what is lost and forgotten, and who or what pays the inevitable price, for
the way that ‘we’ are thus habited in fear?87

This gets to the core of the critical position on security. Rejecting the assump-
tions that it is possible to separate theory from reality, facts from values and self
from others, a critical security perspective questions and problematizes the
70   Securing undesired (energy) futures
taken-­for-granted nature of security as something easily identified, with clear
consequences and equally clear countermeasures. Instead, it focuses on the pol-
itics of security: the hard work that is needed to make something into a security
issue, for example by highlighting the American diplomatic efforts to find
support for the 2003 Iraq War. In addition, a critical perspective also focuses on
the consequences of the security distinctions that are forwarded in these polit-
ical debates, and studies the effects that result from the countermeasures which
both reinforce previous situations and materialize their own cause for concern.
From such a critical security position, it is possible to derive an understanding
of security as a highly normative process, if not a form of ethics in itself. Burgess
makes this argument when he states that:

The unknown in its essence, by virtue of being unknown, is the foundation

of ethics. This is the space where ethics ‘happens’; between necessity and
randomness. Ethics, from a certain point of view, is nothing other than
making decisions in the absence of certainty.88

The close connection between security and ethics can be witnessed in the mul-
tiple ethical positions on energy security. Chapter 2 concludes that current defi-
nitions of energy security contain an equality principle when they support the
right of all humankind to energy. On the one hand, such a position can be
pushed further by arguing along Kantian lines that it should be forbidden to act-
ively cause harm. This would imply that we take action against those who act-
ively withhold energy from those without, but it could also include all those
benefiting from a system that methodically excludes sections of the global popu-
lation. On the other hand, a utilitarian would claim that the benefit of most
precedes the harm done to some and that an unequal system does not automati-
cally imply an unethical system. Of course, contrary to both, it is also possible to
argue in favour of a primary biological imperative to feed and protect oneself
and one’s children first (the few over the many). Such a self-­centred position
clearly conflicts with the others’ ethical positions, and is generally frowned
upon, but lies at the heart of security.
Within CSS, the ethical dimension of security and the normativity of
security choices are interpreted both positively, neutrally and negatively. First, a
more positive form of security can be found in Booth’s theory of emancipatory
security.89 Booth argues that true security can only come about if people are free
of ‘the life-­determining conditions of insecurity’, which for him cannot come to
pass without their equality and emancipation.90 In his work, Booth explicitly
studies security in terms of what should be. Not in terms of a utilitarian end goal,
as the future cannot be known precisely, but as an egalitarian process that con-
stantly strives for a more equal and inclusionary humanitarian world. For Booth,
a critique of current security practices alone is not enough; those practices need
to be improved. To do this he accepts the exclusionary nature of security, but
only because he explicitly starts from those who are least secure in life. As
Booth makes clear:
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   71
Like health and status, security is a condition that is not difficult to define;
in each case, the starting-­point should begin in the experiences, imagin-
ings, analyses, and fears of those living with insecurity, ill-­health, or low
status.91

If security is the drawing of boundaries, then Booth’s position is to shift its moral
entry point to those who are less secure and put the burden and responsibility
on to those who are more secure.
Second, Booth’s explicit positive interpretation of security contrasts with the
interpretation of scholars like Dillon and Massumi for whom security is neither
positive nor negative. For them, and other scholars following the insights from
Foucault, security is the process through which society is organized and gov-
erned (see Chapter 6).92 They study how security is used to govern society but
refrain from normative judgements on whether the governing is good or bad.
They do not focus on the objects in need of security but on the process of
security by studying for example how freedom and equality are used instrumen-
tally as a form of governance.
Lastly, Booth’s positive reading of security also contrasts with those who see
security negatively. This is, for example, the position of scholars working from
securitization theory.93 This theory analyses how agents use security arguments
to justify extraordinary measures that ignore normal decision-­making proced-
ures. It poses security as a temporary state of affairs, as a moment to deal with an
undesirable future and then to be returned to normal.94 Security is something
you need, but is not preferable. Another example, one even stronger driven by a
negative understanding of security, can be found in the work of the Foucauldian-
and Marxist-­inspired scholar Neocleous, who equates security with oppression.95
For Neocleous, security is and has been actively (mis)used to structure society in
such a way that it is beneficial for the elites and capital rich. Among other
things, he discusses the close connection between capital/business and security
in the security industry, where security is transformed into a commodity to be
sold and bought at will (creation of demand/insecurity) while, simultaneously,
capital, business and finance are deemed in need of protection themselves as
well from attempts to alter/transform them. With this last point Neocleous
pushes the business–security linkage a step further than, for example Leander,
who studies the ‘commodification of violence’ by focusing solely on the role of
private security companies and how their supply of security creates the actual
demand for it.96
While these positions within CSS differ in respect to the role that security
plays in the governing of the state and the political economy, they do highlight
the importance of a reflection on the hidden normativity of one’s view on
security in general and the security choices one makes in particular. Unfortu-
nately, any such normative reflections on security are dispelled by the inherent
logic(s) of security that overrule any ethical reflection with the urgency of the
threat.
72   Securing undesired (energy) futures
4.3.2 Fear and undesirable futures
The above-­mentioned logics and techniques describe how futures are character-
ized as undesired and as something in need of prevention, adaptation or mitiga-
tion. However, they do not explain why a future is deemed undesirable. The
intricate relationship between ethics and security has already offered a glimpse
of the origin of insecurity by showing that security is something that can be act-
ively used and called upon. This section enquires further into these processes by
analysing how fear works and is mobilized collectively to make some futures
feared and others desired (to be clear, fear is only one motivational force; others
include anger, grief, profit and power).97 In general, people desire and fear to
lose three things. First, a conservation or improvement of the status quo (goods,
relations, needs). Second, a solution to the threat or object that they fear.
Third, knowledge itself, in particular the ontological certainty derived from a
knowledge of the future.98 These three together indicate that fear and desire are
not one-­on-one related. Hence, it should come as no surprise that the processes
behind fear and a desire for security are as context-­bound and relative as security
itself. Some people desire an emotion of fear (adrenaline junkies), while others
fear their desires (addicts). Similarly, emotions like fear and desire on their own
do not explain why some futures are feared or desired, nor which referent objects
are so desired that they need security. Fear is an emotion, but also a mechanism
of security. Below, we will discuss, respectively, the cause and identification of
fear, the active (mis)use of fear, how fear is changing as it is shifting from fear
alone to a fear of fear itself, and how this latter shift affects society.
First, the cause and identification of fear. In brief, the literature suggests that
fear results from desire and simultaneously enables desire to act upon that par-
ticular fear. ‘In fear we are met by something outside ourselves, and what we
meet is a negation of what we want’.99 We fear a rejection of our desires, but at
the same time fear also spurs a desire for action. As Svendsen continues, fear is
an emotion ‘through which we consider the world’, a ‘contagious’ emotion that
‘seek[s] to conserve’ and simultaneously spurs ‘creativity’ to counter itself.100 Fear
is not just an emotion but, as Frost argues, a ‘passion’ that is always applied
towards an object.101 This includes obvious objects, like forms and quantities of
energy, but also a fear for the unknown – where the unknown becomes the
object to be feared. The presence of an object is important because, contrary to
fear, anxiety and panic miss such an object.102 Anxiety for example is a pure
emotion that disperses itself to other people through mimesis.103 Where fear
offers ‘the illusion of individual autonomous agency’, anxiety has no (un)desir-
able external object and thus cannot be countered.104 Fear thus differs from
anxiety and notions like resilience with its sense of vulnerability, as the desire
to counter a fear provides it with an object that leads to the ability to act upon
it. In other words, fear empowers the individual, while anxiety and the inescap-
able vulnerability of resilience undermine such empowerment.
Second, this brings us to the active (mis)use of fear. Building on this dis-
tinction between fear and (objectless) anxiety or panic, Robin distinguishes
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   73
private fears from two forms of public fears. Under private fears Robin categor-
izes phobias for spiders and so on. Under public fears Robin includes those fears
which are shared across groups of people and which originate either exoge-
nously or endogenously. Exogeneous fears are defined by political elites and,
through a politics of fear and self–other distinctions, come to determine the
political agenda. On the other hand, endogenous fears are based on the inher-
ent inequalities within society.105 In this case, fear, through security practices,
not only helps identify the self in relation to a threatening other but also
fixates the socio-­economic and political hierarchies within society. For Robin,
endogenous fear is not just about survival or physical harm, but about some-
thing that he describes ‘[as] an apprehension of harm, and because harm is the
deprivation of some good to the individual, wielders of power can arouse fear
merely by threatening the individual’s enjoyment of that good’.106 This form of
fear deals not with fear in the sense of explicit threats to life and limb but with
the fear of losing employment, liberty or education, in other words the ‘quite
fears’ or the ‘low-­grade fears’ to livelihoods.107 Interestingly, Robin sees these
public low-­key political fears often actively translated as depoliticized private
fears and terrors. For Robin, it is the active conflation of private and public
fears that leads to ‘a separation of fears from morality and politics’ as public
fears are no longer seen to originate from politics and thereby reinforce the
underlying social order.108
Third, while Robin analyses the institutionalized depoliticization of fear,
others conflate Robin’s public fear with the understanding of anxiety proposed
by Svendsen and Frost. Scholars like Massumi, Dillon or Furedi, for example,
argue that fears are feared not because of the object to which fear is attached,
nor because of the active manipulation of fear, but because of the fear for fear
itself.109 Fearing fear itself or the ‘objectification’ of fear can be linked, according
to Furedi, to the idea of constant vulnerability and risk, which gained momen-
tum in the late 1980s.110 The idea behind vulnerability is one of victimhood, for
‘to be a victim is to be relieved of responsibility for the situation in which one
finds oneself ’.111 Such a sense of vulnerability leads to a constant attentiveness
to ones surroundings, an attentiveness that starts to blur underlying causes and
objects, away from a person’s direct experiences with the object and towards the
fear itself. This fear for fear itself and how it motivates or ‘activates’ people, is
something Massumi elsewhere describes in relation to the colour-­coded terror
warning systems.112 These yellow, orange and red coded schemes indicate threat
levels and are aimed to change people’s routines without sharing the informa-
tion or evidence behind the indicated threat level. According to Massumi, such
a coding scheme works on the future present ‘pre-­effect of fear’, by which he
refers to the unconscious effects of fear:

As William James famously argued, fear strikes the body and compels it to
action before it registers consciously. When it registers, it is as a realization
growing from the bodily action already under way: we don’t run because we
feel afraid, we feel afraid because we run.113
74   Securing undesired (energy) futures
The body acts even before we are consciously aware of it. Only when we realize
that our body responds, whether via fight, flight or freeze reactions, do we feel
afraid. This private feeling then continues to drive us. Massumi describes how
people start to reflect on their bodily reaction, trying to find the object or source
of what has become their fear.114 In rationalizing the moment and source of fear,
the fear becomes an affective emotion. Moreover, when we recount that fear
and its rationalized origin to others in a later step, the fear becomes an object
itself, an object that is anticipated by the people who have heard of it and forces
their bodies to react without the initial unconscious bodily response.115 As an
emotion, fear ‘becomes its own virtual cause’.116 When the colour shifts from
yellow to red, the collective calls upon the embodied private fear, without ever
experiencing the original object ‘that we have become fearful in response to’.117
Fearing the fear itself thus has two effects: it decouples the social from the
material (the body) while simultaneously linking the individual to the
collective.118
Fourth, such a publicly shared sense of private fear affects society as it has
many forms and can be found everywhere, to be called upon and experienced
together and alone. Whereas Robin and Neocleous focus on elites using this
public fear for their benefit, Furedi shows how extensive the use of this public
fear is across government, business, media and NGOs. Basically he points to
everyone who is trying to generate ‘awareness’ and influence people’s individual
lives based on the urgency of a particular cause (or a reduction of the urgency of
other causes).119 ‘When we witness the autonomisation of fear,’ Furedi states,
‘then the question becomes not simply what is causing fear, but what are the
potential negative consequences of fear’.120 The main consequence for Furedi is
that the existence of such an objectified fear has led to a society characterized
by a ‘culture of fear’ that is constantly ‘at risk’,121 in other words a society that
sees individuals as passive and vulnerable.122 And, because it sees individuals as
vulnerable, it treats them as vulnerable. According to Furedi, this leads to a situ-
ation where (1) everybody else is deemed governable by those who know best
on a particular issue; (2) fear, not vision, is seen as something positive within
politics as it helps govern those who are vulnerable, passive and unknowing;
(3) those who know best are often so convinced of their cause that they are not
afraid of using half-­truths and ‘good lie[s for] the greater truth’; and (4) with
new issues constantly emerging everyone can become an expert – thereby
reinforcing the culture of public fear as nobody can ‘know’ everything.123
Elsewhere, Burgess describes this inability to understand all the security con-
cerns that are affecting us in terms of the ‘fundamental asymmetry of security
politics’.124
When we follow Massumi and Furedi, the cause of fear is of little importance
anymore. The autonomous existence of political fear implies that it cannot be
proven wrong. While it only works when called upon, the above makes clear
that almost everybody does so. What is more, contrary to an individual’s private
experience of fear, where the undesired future and desired future are identified
simultaneously in response to bodily reactions, in the case of public fear there is
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   75
a more intentional logic at work as the particular desired futures are identified
before their current state is publicized as undesirable and something to be feared.
This brings this chapter back to where it started, with security as a way to
govern the present based on an imagination of the future. Even a primal
emotion like fear turns out to be open to (mis)use based on political choices
over which futures are desirable or not.
Unfortunately, the discussion about fear has not helped us to understand why
some futures are feared or desired, only how they become so. Perhaps it should
be concluded that this is not necessarily a bad thing, as the contextual nature of
security makes any answer to such a question a relative answer anyway. This
chapter instead highlighted the institutionalized and intentional social use of
public fear, as one way to explain how security acts as a form of ethics. In fact,
the above showed that there are multiple ethical positions towards security, also
within the literature itself, and choosing one of them is already a normative act
that shapes a particular world. What is more, this normativity is often dispelled
from awareness through the urgency and necessity that is inherent in the exer-
cise of security itself. When one is trying to secure an object, or minimize the
actions of another, that security process and logic trumps any reflection on one’s
own position and actions. Taking all of this into account means that the chal-
lenge becomes to ‘explore the meaning attached to fear and the rules and
customs that govern the way in which fear is experienced and expressed’,125 in
other words to look even further into how security works. Fortunately, CSS has
two theoretical approaches that do this: on the one hand, securitization theory,
focusing mainly on the manner in which public fears are called upon, and, on
the other, the Foucauldian governmentality approach to risk that studies how
vulnerability is translated into routine and everyday risks and thereby governs
society.

4.4 Securing exceptional threats

4.4.1 Securitization theory

As hinted at above, one way of studying the meaning, experience and expres-
sions of fear is through an analysis of ‘the “security” label [, which] conveys
urgency, public attention, and resources’.126 A theory that deals with such a shift
from normal politics to security, to that heightened sense of urgency and a justi-
fication to spend resources on it is securitization theory. This theory is part of
the framework for analysis of the Copenhagen School introduced by Buzan,
Wæver and de Wilde in Security: A new framework for analysis.127 The theory
focuses on existential threats and the way these are perceived and constituted
by agents through speech acts. Instead of focusing on the objects of fear or the
subjective feeling of fear, the Copenhagen School focuses on the perception of
threats (in the generic sense). For the Copenhagen School, threats are intersub-
jective, meaning that they originate socially in-­between actors, instead of
objective (e.g. that the threat is real and unavoidable) or subjective (that the
76   Securing undesired (energy) futures
threat originates in the fears of one or more persons). This implies that the
theory excludes the material content of threats, as it claims that the importance
and meaning of a threat – or public fears – are primarily provided by its social
context.128 Basically, the theory posits that, until the actual explosion of a
natural gas well the fears for such a possible explosion do not originate from the
reality of an explosion but from a shared imagination that it might explode (e.g.
a security concern). The following chapters will discuss this theory further,
respectively, by introducing its main theoretical claims; by discussing four points
of critique; by offering an illustration on EU–Russia gas relations; and, lastly, by
following more recent literature that moves beyond the claim of exceptionality.
First, the theory divides issues on a shifting non-­political, political and
security scale. Based on these three distinct scales, the theory argues that issues
can shift from one level to another. Non-­issues can become political, just as
political issues can become security issues, and vice versa. The last move, from
the political to security, is of particular interest for the theory as it focuses on a
decision of exceptionality depending on whether the agents deem a certain issue
existentially threatening or not. The focus is thus on those issues that are so
important that they overrule all regular political considerations, in terms of
(legal) rules, time and resources.129 In line with Carl Schmitt’s claim that ‘the
sovereign is he who decides upon the exception’, this decision is often made by
traditional sovereign institutions like the government, although the theory
explicitly states that this does not have to be the case.130 Instead, Schmitt’s
claim is interpreted more broadly and includes all who are able to reframe a
non-­political or political issue into a security issue.
Second, these ‘securitizing actors’, the agents who are able to reframe an
issue, make this move through the use of speech acts: moments in time when
speaking about a certain topic, in a certain time, in a certain manner implies a
(call to) action and not just the mouthing of the words.131 The frequently used
example is saying ‘I do’ during a wedding ceremony, when you do not just say
the words but ‘act’ in making a promise for life and engage in a contract. In
instances like these, speaking is more than just mouthing the words. For the
theory, arguing that something is a threat and in need of a security solution is
an act itself, because it shifts the issue from a political debate into a security
issue and thereby is able to overrule normal (democratic) political procedures.
Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde refer to this act when they argue that securitiza-
tion is ‘the processes of constructing a shared understanding of what is to be
considered and collectively responded to as a threat’.132 More crudely, securitiza-
tion theory concentrates a scholar’s analysis on those agents that are most per-
suasive in voicing their concern on a particular situation and accompanying
referent object (that what is secured).
Third, such a securitization move needs to be accepted by the intended audi-
ence for the securitizing actor to be able to introduce overriding measures that
exceed regular political procedures. For the theory, ‘a successful speech act is a
combination of language and society, of both intrinsic features of speech and
the group that authorizes and recognizes that speech’.133 Just as the speech actor
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   77
can be anybody, so too the audience is not pregiven. It could be the parliament
if a minister is speaking, or the media if an environmentalist is campaigning, but
it could also be the prime minister when parliament is voicing its concern or a
whole neighbourhood when the fire department orders them to stay indoors
after a gas leak. Not only do the audiences shift per issue; frequently there are
multiple audiences crossing formal government institutions, informal
communities or media organizations.134 Important, however, is that it is only
after the audience acceptance of a securitization move and the inherent need
to protect the referent object that the theory claims that there is a case of suc-
cessful securitization.135 All other speech acts that call on the logic of security
are, theoretically, unsuccessful securitizing moves, and hence instances of
politicization.136

4.4.2 Critique on securitization theory

The theory that emerges from these three points offers an easy-­to-grasp and ori-
ginal alternative to the study of security but is not without its shortcomings.
The theory has faced much debate on four aspects in particular. These include
the relation between the political and exceptionality, the role of the context of
security, the normative position of the theory and the analytics of the theory.
First, the discussion of multiple audiences above already indicates a certain
inflexibility within the theory. By offering the criteria of exceptionality as the
benchmark for success, the theory is inherently driven to one act, one speaker
and one audience. However, not only are there multiple audiences, there are
also multiple actors who either speak on the same topic or in favour of other
topics, climate change to name but one, which means that often the same audi-
ence has to weigh a multitude of differing, sometimes contrasting securitizing
moves, making security first and foremost a political contestation. This brings
security back to something akin to Furedi’s culture of fear, namely that security is
all around us always, instead of an exception.
The divergence between these two security notions results from the theory’s
main assumption that successful securitization only happens when truly
extraordinary measures have been taken. Moments when the law and normal
political procedures are put aside to quickly counter the undesirable future.137
However, the exceptionality and the conditions behind it are not explained
further, making it hard to sketch the successfulness of a securitization move. To
further complicate this, there is little guidance on whether it is the speech actor
or the observing scholar who is defining the success of a securitizing move and
its subsequent measures as securitization. In addition, this focus on the excep-
tion contrasts with Furedi’s and Ciută’s earlier assumption that the exception
has become the routine, that fear and a desire for security are totalizing. Accord-
ing to Booth, this focus and its resulting ‘inflexibility’ results from the theory’s
primary definition of security in terms of survival, which keeps up with a tradi-
tional threat logic dating back to its initial opposition of the then-­dominant
military security notions. In his own work, Booth also understands security in
78   Securing undesired (energy) futures
terms of exceptionality. However, whereas securitization theory assumes security
as having no choice, Booth instead defines security as ‘the choice that comes
from (relative) freedom from existential threats’.138 This leads him to argue that
‘the more an individual’s life is determined by insecurity, the more the space for
choice, and acting effectively, is closed down’.139 As mentioned, Booth regards
security positively, because to be secure for him means that a person has already
conquered questions of survival and has a predefined plan (‘a prior political pro-
gramme’) on how to increase security further.140
Securitization theory, on the other hand, considers security negatively.141
This follows from the inherent claim behind speech acts that there is no choice
except to act and instantiate extraordinary measures, which would not have
been possible otherwise. Security breaks with the normal state of affairs when it
shifts to a ‘logic of war’ mode.142 Within this logic, security orders society in a
particular way, geared towards the protection of us, through ‘fast-­track’ ‘prac-
tices [which] buttress institutional arrangements and legitimize forms of domi-
nation and exclusion’.143 Interpreting security in such a manner implies that
security always excludes. Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde are aware of this and
argue as such, for example, when stating that ‘national security should not be
idealized. It works to silence opposition’.144 The theory notes how security
silences politics when dictators decide on threats but also, especially, in demo-
cracies, where, for example, advocates of privacy are silenced during the imple-
mentation of the extraordinary security measures against terrorism. This leads
them to argue that ‘basically, security should be seen as a negative, as a failure
to deal with issues as normal politics’.145
Simultaneously, these extraordinary measures are always aimed towards ‘the
optimal outcome’, namely a negation of the threat.146 The moment when some-
body says ‘ “we are safe now; security has been achieved” – a speech act echoing
a past threat’.147 In other words, counter to the political decision to shift to a
security logic (of war) stands a logic of desecuritization: the counter move that
proposes that actors should strive for truly securitized topics to be politicized
once more. To bring the exception back into the routine of politics. Elsewhere,
de Wilde highlights four ways through which issues can be desecuritized: one
can successfully counter the undesirable future, accept the undesirable future
and adapt, find other more pressing concerns, or fail to do anything and
succumb to the undesired future.148 In contrast to their earlier work that saw
security negatively, de Wilde argues that desecuritization is not automatically
positive, but that like securitization it is a logic that on its own ‘is not right or
wrong; it simply happens or not’.149 What makes the logics of securitization and
desecuritization morally acceptable or not is their context. It is this folding into
context that makes Wæver assert that ‘desecuritization is preferable in the
abstract, but concrete situations might call for securitization’.150
More critically, Hansen claims that the initial military survivalist and thus
realist origin of securitization also influences desecuritization by preventing a
critical stance towards both the manner in which agents themselves desecuritize
events and how observers implicitly assume that a security issue will become
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   79
political.151 Hansen gives the example of female soldiers in post-­conflict situ-
ations who are simply forgotten after the conflict and shows how issues like
these are overlooked by both the local agents and observers as they are not con-
sidered important enough or do not fit the ‘normal’ discourse of security and its
focus on male soldiers.152 Subsequently, these and comparable issues are trans-
formed from security to the non-­political and skip the political contestation
level altogether. Hansen’s critique highlights how the theory is only equipped to
study speech acts, moments when people are able to voice their concerns, not
silences or other (accepted) dominant power structures.
Furthermore, Huysmans raises the reflexive implication that observers cannot
write about a certain security issue or a securitizing move without further securi-
tizing those issues themselves.153 It is impossible to write about the security or
insecurity of an issue without drawing attention to the dialectic other, which
returns the debate towards the question of ethics, as acknowledged by Wæver:

The securitization approach points to the inherently political nature of any

designation of security issues and thus it puts an ethical question at the feet
of analysts, decision-­makers and activists alike: why do you call this a
security issue? What are the implications of doing this – or of not doing it?154

Besides this ethical implication, we are also left with a methodological herme-
neutic critique: that between a strict observer who observes what actors them-
selves see as a security practice and a more judgemental observer who decides
when something truly is a successful security speech act – in this case, when
extraordinary measures are adopted.155 This is a split which, according to Ciută,
originates from a double definition of the term security in the original theory,
where security is defined simultaneously intersubjectively in-­between the agents
themselves and by the security analyst in terms of survival, extraordinarity and
existentialism.156 This complicates the theory and combined with its notion of
success makes it turn from a theory and method into a model, a static one that
could blind scholars to the other logics of security at work in their case
studies.157

4.4.3 EU–Russian gas relations

Irrespective these critical comments on exception, context, normativity and
analytical consequences, it is hard not to notice how applicable this theory is to
read energy security debates. In these debates, often energy security specialists
or other proponents (the securitizing actors) try to convince IGOs, governments
or specific key individuals (the audience) that energy security needs additional
attention based on the claim that international developments are threatening
the future delivery of energy supplies, which in turn threatens the well-­being of
the economy (the referent object). And quite simply we can identify other
energy-­related referent objects or securitizing actors like companies, government
departments and consumer organizations. Interestingly, although energy is not
80   Securing undesired (energy) futures
one of the core sectors of the theory, it does link all five of the sectors that
Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde discuss in their work.158
This has not gone unnoticed and a number of studies have tried to use secu-
ritization theory to analyse energy security. For example, Nyman uses it to prob-
lematize the increasing securitization of US–China energy relations as a
hindrance to potential cooperation and highlight how such a representation
impacts the range of policies open to both countries.159 Leung et al. similarly use
the theory to analyse the energy supply chains of China, arguing that historic
events and certain institutional agents have an interest in securing oil supplies,
but not the rest of the energy system.160 Christou and Adamides use it to analyse
the newly discovered natural gas reserves in the Mediterranean against the
backdrop of the social changes after the Arab Spring.161 And Judge and Maltby
use it to compare types of energy security concerns by looking at securitization
and riskification of Polish and British gas security.162 Likewise, a growing number
of authors have used it to study the security relations between European coun-
tries and Russia on natural gas supplies (the working paper by Trombetta
deserves close reading especially).163 The rest of this section offers an example in
line with this last branch of literature to show how securitization theory could
be applied to energy security.
Within the studies that focus on the Russia–Ukraine gas crises in 2006, 2007,
2009 and 2014, it is possible to differ between studies with a historic attitude
and those that have a future-­oriented perspective. The latter highlight the
increasing insecurity that follows from a dependency of European countries on
Russian gas. They note how Russian gas averages 30 per cent of European
imports (in 2014), down from almost 40 per cent in 2006, and how some
Eastern European countries are completely dependent on Russian gas.164 In this
argument these numbers are aggravated by the position of transit countries,
Ukraine in particular, and an increasing (re)politicization of Russian oil and gas
exports by the Russian government. This contrast with the historically oriented
perspectives that, on the one hand, weaken this insecurity frame by pointing
towards the historic role of the Soviet Union as a steady supplier during the
Cold War.165 However, they also describe how post-­Cold War Russia has used
its oil and gas exports to influence former Soviet republics, through price differ-
entiation and supply regulation. McGowan for example traces four cases of
active, albeit circumstantial, exertion of influence ranging from a reduction in
exports to the Baltic states in 1992–1993, to the disruptions in both Georgia
and Lithuania in the 1990s and 2006, and, lastly, the 2009 cut offs to Ukraine
after a price disagreement that coincided with the stationing of the Black
Fleet.166
These and the more recent repeated price conflicts over Ukraine’s gas prices,
including the 2009 reduction in supplies that left a number of Balkan countries
without gas supplies in the middle of winter, have fuelled the perception of
dependency and insecurity within Europe. Both Russia and the transit countries
are perceived to be threatening the European economy and the health of its
inhabitants. Whether Europe and the EU really are (inter)dependent on Russia,
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   81
as well as the question whether this dependency should be seen in terms of an
asymmetrical dependency (short-­term gas supplies versus medium-­term gas
income) is of course of no concern to securitization theory, which only deals
with the perception of threat as voiced by a range of differing speech actors –
including the European Council, the European Commission, think tanks and
the European Parliament.167 Neither the lack of direct evidence for the four
cases of active political involvement nor the strong market-­oriented discourse
wherein the Russian–Ukraine conflicts are placed negate the perceived uncer-
tainty so much as reinforce it. This is, for example, visible in the way the Euro-
pean Commission introduced the 2014 European Energy Security Strategy:

The EU’s energy dependence is of course not new. But it did gain an added
dimension in the light of recent geopolitical events, i.e. the crisis in
Ukraine. Temporary disruptions of gas supplies in the winters of 2006 and
2009 already provided a wake-­up call for the EU, underlining the need of
infrastructure development, increased cooperation and of a common Euro-
pean energy policy.168

Or by former European Commission president Barroso, who stated at a confer-

ence in the run-­up to this strategy that:

With the events in Ukraine, Europe is facing a threat to its peace, stability
and security the likes of which we have not seen since the fall of the Iron
Curtain. The ‘Great Game’ of geopolitics has made an unwelcome return
and this is being particularly felt in the area of energy.… In fact the
Ukraine crisis once again shows that for Europe energy independence is
crucial.169

In both cases, the Ukraine crises are clearly used by speech actors. But they are
not used to securitize a new issue. They are not even put forward as new threats.
Instead they are voiced as self-­evident, as threats for which the audience accept-
ance is taken for granted. In these high-­level notifications, the crises are used to
reinforce the existing securitized issue of energy dependency and to legitimize
existing and new political and institutional arrangements dealing with that. As
Barroso argued:

There were many times in which we … were pleading for a truly European
energy policy. The reality is that because there were probably other prior-
ities at the time … minds were not sufficiently focused on the urgency of a
real energy policy for the EU. But because of these recent developments, I
believe now minds are focused and we could now make more progress than
in the years before.170

In line with the strict perspective on speech acts in securitization theory, this
form of bureaucratic agenda setting can be regarded as a securitizing move (as it
82   Securing undesired (energy) futures
lacks the extraordinarity of securitization). This is similar to earlier conclusions
by other scholars on the applicability of the theory to the 2006 and 2009
Ukraine–Russia gas crises,171 simply because they cannot confirm whether the
measures enacted in response are truly exceptional. More integration, back-­up
capacity, strategic reserves, or a diversification of suppliers and resources are not
exceptional because these measures have been in place even before Churchill’s
famous statement in 1913 that ‘safety and certainty in oil lie in variety and
variety alone’.172 The events and their interpretations therefore do not break
with the already-­accepted routine security measures. They are integrated into
an existing perception of insecurity and subsequently used to reinforce the
underlying social and material dynamics of a fossil fuel system and the com-
munity that lies at its core – in this case a European community as favoured by
the European Commission.173
At the same time, such wake-­up calls do enable additional institutional and
financial measures that might not have been possible otherwise. In the words of
Barroso, minds are focused once more, and the urgency of insecurity pushes
other items from the agenda, opens up additional budget and enables a stretch-
ing of the original mandate. In response to the 2006 and 2009 interruptions, the
EU pushed for preventive action plans, further integration of the EU internal
gas and energy markets and introduced the Third Energy Package, which
includes a clause that inhibits international parties (read Gazprom) from buying
into European upstream markets without reciprocity on its own markets. The
first two measures in particular, through which the European Commission
encroached on the energy security mandate of the member states, had little
institutional backing before these interruptions.174 These initiatives were fol-
lowed by an extensive EU programme on infrastructure priorities and added the
concept of energy solidarity to the Lisbon Treaty (nowadays extended to an
overall European Energy Union). Similarly, in response to the early 2014
Russia–Ukraine conflict the European Council tasked the Commission to come
up with a revised European Energy Security Strategy before June 2014. For
Trombetta, this request and the time pressure behind it enabled the Commis-
sion to put forward its own community building project, as it combined the spe-
cific supply risks with broader environmental and socio-­economic concerns and
thereby strengthened the Commission’s claim for a stronger mandate on Euro-
pean energy policy.175 Then again, Natorski and Surrallés disagree and have
argued that this initial communitarian call on security in effect undermines the
Commissions position, because a successful framing of the events in a particular
neorealist geopolitical security frame reinforces the intergovernmental mandate
of the member states themselves.176
The tension between, on the one hand, a neorealist geopolitical security per-
spective on energy supplies and, on the other hand, the depoliticized measures
proposed to deal with energy security threats fits well with the theory’s norm-
ative position that securitized issues should be approached from a desecuritiza-
tion logic. The problem being that securitization is only helpful in analysing
(and thereby reifying) these and other geopolitical aspects of security and not
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   83
the wide range of uncertainties found elsewhere in energy politics. Theoretic-
ally, only these explicit threats allow for successful securitization based on extra-
ordinary measures, whereas for oil and gas it is so far only possible to conclude
that ‘threats are successfully constructed, that construction has been accepted
by a relevant audience and often policy changes have followed’.177 Hardly ever
are these policy changes extraordinary. Is it extraordinary that the gas pipeline
from Ukraine to Slovakia is refitted for two-­way transport, enabling the supply
of gas to Ukraine from Europe if needed? One can argue that without the per-
ception of supply risks this investment would not have been made as the market
would not have made it. On the other hand, it is a technical solution to resolve
the Ukraine plight temporarily by increasing the flexibility of the grid; it does
not tackle the root cause – dependency on and political intervention from
Russia – at all.
A last aspect of the use of securitization theory to explain EU–Russian
natural gas relations has to do with the ‘other’ and the referent object. The
‘other’ in the case above, for many is self-­evident. But is it? At first glance, the
idea of supply disruption due to Russia’s political control of its gas exports
merits seeing Russian political elites as the other. However, such a perspective
excludes the role played by the Ukrainian government, which decided to tap
its share from European deliveries. It also excludes the role played by European
member states, for example Germany, and their bilateral agreements with
Russia. In other words, the ‘other’ is made to be Russia. In addition, while the
above is written from the idea of a securitizing move on supply disruptions,
from the implicit undesired future of scarcity, Trombetta argues that, while
important, this was not the main referent object in the securitizing move for
the European Commission. For the Commission, ‘[t]he threat was posed not
directly by Russia or by the scarcity issue but by what Russia represented and by
the reaction to the possibility of a return of geopolitics’.178 The threat for the
Commission, besides the supply disruptions, relates to Russia’s geopolitical
realist approach to international relations, which contrasts with the European
Union’s neo-­liberal faith in trade and international institutions. From
this argument, it is a threat to both what we need and who we are. If one pushes
this point, then the claim would be that without the geopolitical realist pol-
icies of Russia the Commission has no ‘other’ to justify a ‘self ’ (on this issue at
least).179
This brief reflection on EU–Russia natural gas relations through the lens of
securitization theory highlights its workings as well as its strengths and weak-
nesses. On the one hand, the EU–Russia gas illustration shows why securitiza-
tion theory is considered elitist, realist and statist.180 It is most easily applicable
to cases like traditional energy security of supply concerns, where the debate is
structured and organized on a national level by governments and with a clearly
identifiable ‘other’. Similarly, the above clearly shows the difficulties in catego-
rizing the counter measures in terms of exceptionality, especially as the proposed
countermeasures are market-­oriented and hence non-­political, thereby desecuri-
tizing the issue the moment it is securitized. On the other hand, the theory
84   Securing undesired (energy) futures
helps pinpoint at least part of the politics of security, including the active pro-
duction of security issues and the analysis and definition of the threat in line
with the history and language it builds on by naming the other, while fixating
the referent object and reinforcing the self.

4.4.4 Moving beyond the exception

The example of EU–Russia natural gas relations, a most likely case if ever there
were one, opens up securitization theory away from exceptionality towards a
politics of security focusing on agenda setting and the routine of threats and
countermeasures. Even if one took a broad definition of speech acts – one that
moves away from a static event to processes over time and one that would
include the acts of not acting (e.g. silence) – the theory offers few tools to analyse
these routines, nor does it provide for ways to include the broader intersubjec-
tive historical and social context in which these speech acts find their relev-
ance.181 This last part in particular, the lack of contextualization, is problematic.
Butler is most succinct when she writes that the ‘realities brought into being
depend upon a speech act, but the speech act is a reiterated form of discourse, so
we would be mistaken to overvalue the subject who speaks’.182 Neal, in turn, posits
that securitization theory seems to forget that any theory that builds upon
understandings of ‘urgency, extraordinary circumstances and exceptional meas-
ures’ inherently takes on board the ‘structural, institutional and ethic-­political
implications’ that ‘are already implicit’ in these concepts.183 Similarly, Patomäki
goes so far as to argue that in the absence of any political and economic contex-
tualization, ‘[securitization theory] is no more than an ideal-­typical model of a
limited-­scale social mechanism’.184 In short, securitization theory explains how
security comes to be, but only for a few very limited cases of truly exceptional
circumstances. It neglects the large range of security debates that are political in
orientation and discussed on a daily basis.
This is also the position advocated by scholars like Bigo and Balzacq, who are
working on alternative theory of security that is based on practice theory.185 The
main insight of this alternative is that security practitioners, like border guards
or terrorism and energy security experts, in their daily routines ‘enact a govern-
mentality of fear and unease’ by constantly reminding others and themselves of
the undesirable future that needs to be countered, in addition to interpreting
and approaching new events through the routines that have helped them in the
past.186 First, Bigo assumes that securitization explains these routines ‘ex post
facto’, as for him securitization is not the act of asking for new extraordinary
measures but a justification to extend the measures that are already in place.187
Balzacq therefore shifts the focus to the agents themselves and to the routine
daily acts performed by these agents. He does so because he believes that suc-
cessful securitization depends not only on the logics of securitization but on the
strategic connections to an external reality that can be witnessed in the acts of
the agents. When analysing agents, Balzacq looks at their relative power posi-
tions and their shared social identity, but above all he looks at the capacity and
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   85
nature of the audience(s), including the enemy and other actors involved, for
example whether an audience provides formal or moral support. Within his
practice theory he analyses the acts from both an illocutionary threat text level
(the logic or grammar of securitization) and from a contextual level, where the
attentions shifts to the strategic (perlocutionary or performative) use of language
in persuading the audience.188
Besides practice theories, there have been other attempts to build upon secu-
ritization theory. Promising is the work of Vuori, who broadens the application
of security speech acts by showing that security speech acts, with their inherent
claims and warnings, are not only aimed at gaining legitimation for certain
exceptional measures (we need to do this because…) but could also include
agenda setting (this is more important than…), declarations of deterrence (if
you do this then I will…), a struggle for control (this is mine) or the repro-
duction of previous securitizations (we are not safe yet).189 In phrasing speech
acts like this, Vuori comes closer to theories of agenda setting and framing, in
other words to how the speech act logic is not only used to shift something
outside the political but also to shift topics within the political through a dram-
atization of sorts. However, while Vuori on the one hand broadens security
speech acts by opening them to other purposes besides an upfront legitimation
of the exception, he simultaneously narrows the theory by seeing security speech
acts as the political use of the threat logic only. Vuori thus opens the door by
offering multiple classifications of speech acts but then closes it again by limiting
these classifications to a single security logic.
Whereas Vuori opens the speech acts themselves to other effects, Huysmans
and Stritzel take an alternative linguistic approach. Like Vuori, Huysmans also
returned to the speech act literature itself, but he champions an even broader
interpretation of speech acts, one where the actual ‘act’ comes from people who
‘politically invest’ in ‘creat[ing] a scene in which actors and things are brought
into a relation that challenges a given way of doing things’.190 For Huysmans,
security is an open-­ended form of politics that follows the meaning of security
within the daily language of the agents themselves. In such a daily language use,
each new iteration is signified by the creation of a rupture and the assembly of a
new set of relations based on claims for urgency. With such an understanding,
Huysmans opens the speech act to other logics besides the strict (realist, statist
and elitist) war logic of securitization theory. Elsewhere, Stritzel takes a similar
linguistic avenue by comparing the idea of speech acts with the sociological
concept of translation.191 Instead of deepening our understanding of securitiza-
tion in more detail, this approach ‘suggests an understanding of security that is
historical, local, non-­essentialist, empirical-­reconstructive and reflectivist’.192 It
builds on the understanding that in each situation the meaning of security is
translated locally through a rupture from a specific old historic meaning into a
new open-­ended meaning. Stritzel here is close to Huysmans’s notion of politics,
although he approaches the issue from knowledge production in general instead
of security. While this implies a total contextualization and thus a break with
any form of predicative theorizing, it opens up security by allowing for situation
86   Securing undesired (energy) futures
where a new meaning of security can conflict with older global notions of
security. In the words of Neal:

When one describes ‘exceptionalism’, the aim should not be to describe a

special category, but to describe a dispersed regularity, an assemblage of
practices, an already existing archive of statements, an array of competing
subject positions, a body of tactics and strategies, a formation of historical
conditions of possibility, the limits of which can never be distilled and
formalized, only problematized.193

Such a linguistic contextualized understanding helps explain why the same illo-
cutionary speech act can have different perlocutionary consequences for
different audiences.194 It explains for example why the US security claims for
the most recent Iraq War were interpreted differently in the US and in parts of
Europe. The exception in these cases is always local and relative, a form of pol-
itics that plays out at the same time, in different places for different people.
Both Huysmans’s rupture and Stritzel’s translation will be taken up in the next
chapters when discussing the materiality of energy and the ontological politics
around it.
To sum up, securitization theory offers an analysis of how security works as a
social mechanism through the speech act of moving something out of the
regular political debate into the exceptionality of security. The theory is ques-
tioned from two directions: first, in terms of the meaning of exceptionality (vs
politics) and the absence of any contextualization and, second, in relation to
the theory’s double methodological positions and the normativity of these posi-
tions and assumptions. By taking on the same questions that securitization
theory has introduced and has been openly struggling with, Huysmans, Vuori,
Stritzel and Balzacq offer interesting additions and alternatives to the speech act
theory that opens the focus of the theory to broader social contexts and to com-
parable logics that do not depend on the word security as such. This broader
approach fits the field of energy security better, as energy security sees a lot of
securitizing moves but hardly any strict securitization in terms of exceptionality.
It is hard to find exceptionality, because there are very few crises in energy (and
other fields) that, one way or another, have not seen any preparation. These
preparations, which are based on imaginations and an abstraction of scarcity
and shortages, lead to a politics of energy security. Security in energy, or energy
security, is not just the moment of crisis itself but the routine prevention of the
next crisis. This makes it a form of politics where security arguments are used to
dramatize an issue to justify investments for one course of action over another.
Nevertheless, if we ignore the focus on successfulness, securitization theory
remains one of the more interesting perspectives on security owing to its focus
on the securitizing moves and the speech acts behind those moves. Speech acts
are an interesting method to highlight how, within the political domain, actors
are dramatizing issues through a call on security logics by which they claim
scarce resources and the time to tackle their preferred issue. It bears reminding
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   87
that, although the theory helps to explain how security comes to be, it does
not provide reasons why it does. It only shows the politics of security, the con-
struction of a (self-­evident) need to counter an undesirable future. Simultan-
eously, by using insights from securitization theory it becomes possible to analyse
both routine practices and moments of rupture. And, instead of putting one
before the other, Bourbeau is correct when he argues that ‘the social world we
live in is a world of feedback’, where speech acts and routine security practices
are acting together ‘in a complex and wider range of ways’.195 The next section
therefore will take up a theory that looks at a more routine security practice
named risk.

4.5 Risk as a security instrument

4.5.1 Risk as an ordering principle

Continuing the move away from a focus on the exception to more routine
security practices, a second CSS theory discusses the practice and logic of risk.
Unfortunately, while risk is a core CSS theory, it has seen little uptake in rela-
tion to energy and energy security besides the more traditional risk analyses
behind company investments.196 In line with the problems inherent to securiti-
zation theory, this is unfortunate as much of the energy security practices seem
to fit more routine risk decisions that are just as performative of society as the
explicit threat logics that lie at the heart of securitization theory. This section
will therefore introduce the literature on risk. It starts with a brief overview of
the concept of risk as a performative knowledge practice, it then takes a step
back and looks at the uncertainty and unknowability that risks try to make
knowledgeable. After describing what risks are, the section focuses on the way
risks are ‘written’ (e.g. performed) and how this is changing. It does so by
looking at the accountability and political decision-­making processes that are
hidden behind a calculable risk rationality. Then it will highlight a number of
trends within the use of risk. And, lastly, it will reflect on how a zero-­risk
approach and increasing computation power are transforming the logics of risk
itself from a calculative into a correlation logic. As all of this it is quite theoret-
ical, Chapter 7 will offer an empirical example which draws on securitization
and risk to analyse an energy security case. Also, while the discussion below is
written from the risk literature that is present in CSS, the insights originally
derive from the French philosopher Foucault and his thoughts on security as a
form of governmentality (which is taken up in Chapter 6).197
Traditionally, when people consider risk they often think in terms of a future
threat that is estimated in terms of likelihood and its possible impact, leading to
a decision to act upon this risk or not.198 Within CSS, however, risk instead is
seen as an ordering principle that is based on (statistical) calculative principles.
It is ‘a means of making an uncertain and unknowable future amenable to inter-
vention and management’,199 in other words as a way to translate dangers and
threats into probabilities and, subsequently, into financial losses and profits.200
88   Securing undesired (energy) futures
Seeing risk as an ordering instrument used to govern populations has at least six
implications on how risk is defined.
First, as Ewald has put it, ‘Nothing is a risk in itself; there is no risk in reality.
But on the other hand, anything can be a risk; it all depends on how one ana-
lyses the danger, considers the event’.201 Second, following the notion that
nothing is a risk in itself, risks need to be seen as performative: in the process of
naming them, they constitute their effects.202 In other words, when people have
identified something in terms of risk they already behave differently towards it;
it is impossible to think of a risk without also thinking about ways of levelling
it. Third, it follows that risks should not be seen as pregiven entities to be
studied independently. Instead, Amoore and De Goede highlight Foucault’s
attention towards ‘ “differential risks,” “risk zones”, [and] “different curves of
normality” ’.203 What they refer to is Foucault’s insight that there are no absolute
risks. Risk assessments differentiate between and within populations on a con-
tinuum that ranges from higher to lower risks, with the goal to ‘normalize’ the
abnormal high-­risk individuals within a population through identification and
targeted policies.204 This often means that individuals are ‘broken up’, compared
and excluded based on one aspect of their behaviour, but which one differs as
the ‘measurable risk factors’ are constantly shifting.205 Risks are thus mobile, and
as a result, fourth, the idea of actually ‘securing’ these risks is a utopia: while
individuals can take action to minimize risks and insure against them, the popu-
lation as a whole will always remain at risk.206 From a Foucauldian perspective,
therefore, ‘what matters instead is that the appearance of securability and man-
ageability is sustained’.207 Risk does this quite effectively, as its numerical expres-
sion gives an appearance of control. Fifth, Foucauldian-­inspired scholars argue
that to really understand risk one should move away from the risks themselves
towards the ‘forms of knowledge that make [them] thinkable’, by which they
mean the practices in those sectors and techniques that ‘make the incalculable
calculable’.208 Finally, sixth, one of the most important aspects of risk is the fact
that once the uncertain has become calculable it becomes tradable as well.209
Insurance schemes make it possible for risks to be bought and sold, thereby
spreading the possible costs of risky decisions, activities or events while making
a profit doing so.
Most of the insights on risk and insurance derive from Ewald’s seminal article
‘Insurance and risk’.210 It is in this article that Ewald concludes that insurance
has no ‘special field of operations’ but that it should be seen as a ‘general prin-
ciple for the objectification of things, people, and their relations’.211 Because
risk, like security for securitization theory, has no object to which it can be
attached, ‘new elements are constantly drawn into its concern’.212 Ewald there-
fore focuses on the practice of risk and its main characteristics, which he identi-
fies as calculability, collectivism and financialization.213 Risk is calculable,
because it combines a statistical defined ‘regularity of events’ with subsequent
probability calculations. This implies a radical shift away from more legal dis-
courses on faults and responsibilities: inside a rationality of risk, accidents
happen, no matter who is to blame.214 Risk is thus collective, and it calculates
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   89
the regularity of events for a certain population statistically. In fact, it makes
individuals part of a population, as it ascribes a shared identity or norm to a
group of people (and excludes those not part of this population). Moreover, it
judges whether individuals fit high- or low-­risk profiles in relation towards this
shared acceptable group norm. Lastly, Ewald sees risk also as a form of capital as
it covers the monetary losses and damages after an event, never the actual life
or limb that is lost. It cannot, because the insurer writes such financial compen-
sations beforehand based on group statistics and thus never in relation to a spe-
cific event.
These characteristics lead Ewald to conclude that risk is not just an economic
and financial technique but also a moral technique that forces individuals to
take up responsibility for their own future, and a governing technique for
‘administering justice’ by spreading out the costs for damages and loss from the
individual over the population. He concludes, in the words of Dean, that insur-
ance is ‘a political technology in that it is a way of combining and using social
forces in a specific fashion, one in which the possibility of the optimization of
individual responsibility is combined with a maximization of social solidarity’.215
In short, with Ewald’s analysis of insurance we can see risk as an ordering prin-
ciple by which people are routinely governed in their daily life.

4.5.2 The commodification of contingent events

So, risk is a form of knowledge that translates uncertainty into contingency. But
what is this uncertainty that risk translates into tradable monetary products? To
be clear, the risk identified is not the identification of the uncertainty, as
Section 4.2 shows it is only one of many forms of taming the future.216 In fact,
theoretically, the uncertainty itself cannot be identified or known at all. It
cannot be known, because every attempt to understand uncertain futures uses
pregiven forms of knowledge.217 Lobo-­Guerrero argues that even to think in
terms of uncertainty itself already implies that one relies up on a specific under-
standing of the world that is certain. However, what exactly is certain often
‘relates to centuries-­long discussions on the determination of what is from what
is not, what is to become the matter of the empirical, the observable and think-
able phenomena’.218 Discussions on certainty and uncertainty thus highlight the
politics of ontology or ontopolitics where ‘risk management [and other forms of
security become] then a continuous problematization of the order of being in
the world, a problematization that makes the political a contingent matter’.219
In other words, what enables thinking in terms of uncertainty is a shift from
‘traditional security discourses’ like danger (live with it) or the will of the gods
(divine intervention) towards perceiving life in terms of a sequence of contin-
gent events.220
This interpretation is not unproblematic, as a discussion of ontopolitics in
terms of an event or number of events can be problematized from both a historic
and philosophical perspective. ‘The event’ is often defined by ‘the surprise’ or
that which ‘disrupts the knowledge resources and expertise available to practices
90   Securing undesired (energy) futures
of governance’.221 Foucault, when thinking on a procedure of ‘eventualization’,
describes this as ‘a breach of self-­evidence [which] means making visible a sin-
gularity at places where there is a temptation to invoke a historical constant’.222
Yet Foucault also notes how immediately after witnessing the surprise of an
event this singularity is ‘rediscovered’ as being part of a whole, deemed ‘self-­
evident, universal and necessary’.223 Alternatively, Lundborg follows the work of
Deleuze when he differentiates such an historical event from a pure event.224
The Foucauldian historical event is based on a separation of ‘before’ and ‘after’,
which Lundborg sees simultaneously as a result (and assumption) of a temporal
delineation of boundaries between events. However, as delineations are always
decided upon by someone in authority (including historians), the process of pro-
ducing a historical chronology of separate events implies a particular political
practice. In contrast, a pure event does not have ascribed boundaries but builds
on the idea of paradoxical processes of becoming (instead of being), meaning
that without a clear referent object pure events can only be studied by focusing
on the paradoxes that they create. In a way, Foucault’s first aspect, the surprise,
might be said to relate to the pure event or that part of an event that cannot be
pinned down. His second aspect, of a historical constant, relates more to a
process that Deleuze calls the actualization of a pure event and which Lundborg
describes as a political practice of historical eventualization; as writing history as
we know it.225
No matter how we describe the event itself, risk presupposes a sequence of
such events and approaches such a sequence through an epistemology based on
a commodification of contingency. It uses mathematical techniques to calculate
the chance and impact of separate events and in doing so steers how our reality
is defined.226 It is a practice of ontopolitics that works by making the contin-
gency calculable, or rephrased, by giving ‘presence to that which is nevertheless
only probable’.227 That what is unknown is imagined and subsequently calcu-
lated and visualized, ‘made real’, repeated in speeches and used as an argument
in decision-­making processes for people to act on, and so on. The contingency
thus becomes real but only as part of a sequence.
This process of riskification comes with its own normative considerations.
For example, such an eventual thinking contains assumptions about biological
life. Risk sees life primarily in terms of protection through ‘strategies of resili-
ence, self-­repair and regeneration’ and the ‘instigation [of] new life forms’.228 It
understands life as something in need of change and emergence.229 Contingency
therefore needs to be monitored and softened but should never be ‘killed’ by
closing the possibility for new events, for example through over-­regulation. This
contrasts with processes of security, which often try to fixate and hold on to the
way life is governed at a particular moment. Where security fixates, the
(bio)politics of risk let live (see Chapter 6). This assumption, in all its inno-
cence, defines the Foucauldian shift from fixed referent objects to the fluid refer-
ent processes of circulation (of goods, energy, people etc.) that enable life and
particular lifestyles.230 As Foucault describes it, risk is a security instrument that
helps ‘organiz[e] circulation, eliminating its dangerous elements, making a
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   91
division between good and bad circulation, and maximizing the good circula-
tion by diminishing the bad’.231

4.5.3 Writing risks and unaccountable power

Risk is thus an instrument to govern populations, but official public authorities
do not always write them. Instead, risks are composed by underwriters. Under-
writers are persons who produce risks by seeing individuals as part of a popula-
tion: those who identify the risk by imagining it and who calculate and
commodify such a risk by weighing the likelihood of an event with the impact it
might have, but also those who decide on the level of financial compensation
and put that down in contractual agreements with predefined categories and
profiles of individuals, and those who trade those contractual insurance agree-
ments with others as a risk itself. These underwriters are frequently situated in
financial institutions but could also include a system operator analysing the
chance of a blackout or a dietician calling for a better diet. Amoore and Butler
respectively describe these underwriters in terms of ‘proxy sovereignty’ or ‘petty
sovereigns’.232 Thereby referring to what Dean calls ‘a government without a
centre, a form of administration in which there is no longer a centrally directing
intelligence’,233 in other words a form of governmentality without direct
accountability.
With risk being decided upon in the back offices of large financial institu-
tions, the question is whether this is problematic. On the one hand, this lack of
accountability and the technicality of risk is something that is actively used in
politics to avoid accountable decision-­making on topics ranging from ethical
questions to climate change. The use of the technical nature of risk to postpone
difficult political decisions is something Amoore observes in respect to the
increasing use of consultation practices by policymakers. She argues, following
Derrida, that this is not a political choice but a ‘redeploy[ment of] calculative
practices’ and therefore ‘a decision that is not a decision’, just the application of
pre-­decided upon rules of calculation.234 There is no decision being made when
something is subjected to a risk calculation, because the algorithm already con-
tains the decisions on the weight of the variables involved. In other words, risk
in this sense is neutral. It is politically useful and it hides a level of account-
ability. On the other hand, a risk does not exist by the grace of the insurer
alone. Like securitization, risk exists by the grace of the population that is its
target.235 Ewald, for example, argues that the reason why some risks become
accepted depends ‘on the shared values of the threatened group’.236 This implies
that what is deemed an acceptable risk does not automatically follow from the
level of danger or the level of certainty involved. Whatever the material reality
behind risks, it depends on the shared values of the population whether a risk is
accepted. Amoore’s example of the accountants in the UK during World War II
and how they wrote the norms around food supplies (discussed in Section 6.4)
argues that they did not invent these norms out of thin air; they based them on
earlier small-­scale practices and understandings of what was deemed appropriate
92   Securing undesired (energy) futures
behaviour. Similarly, an explosion of Yellowstone Park is a real material possib-
ility but one that people try to forget, while GMOs are an accepted risk for the
US and other countries that introduce them in their agriculture but not for
most European countries that oppose them fervently.
The security instrument of risk is thus political in three ways. First, risk is
political because insurers and accountants take upon themselves some of the
sovereignty of security that was originally only granted to heads of state, diplo-
mats and the military.237 Second, risk is also political in the sense that a risk
needs to be accepted for it to exist. This in turn makes ‘the political a contingent
matter’.238 Lastly, risk is political in the sense that risks can be used politically.
Dean argues that this is an overlooked but fundamental aspect of Foucault’s argu-
ment that risk is a security instrument and as such can be attached to different
political programmes and strategies.239 Indeed Dean shows that there are multiple
forms of risk assessments and that an epidemiological risk, which studies rates of
morbidity and health, is more preventive than a form of risk inspired on insur-
ance and capital, while both are more quantitatively oriented compared to what
Dean calls individual ‘case-­management risk’, which also uses qualitative tools
like expert diagnostics and interviews to decide on the risk posed by an indi-
vidual.240 Choosing what risk assessment to take is a political choice as well.

4.5.5 Broadening the use of risk calculation

The politics of risk becomes obvious when looking at the history of risk and
insurance. From dangers to individual risk, insurance and other actuarial tools
have helped transform risk into a collective phenomenon, which slowly
developed into the collective welfare states of the twentieth century.241 During
this time, risks were socialized as the collective increasingly covered the misfor-
tune of individuals. Three trends are drastically turning this twentieth-­century
collectivism around. These include individualization, an extension to include
systems and a scientific move from extrapolation to correlation.
First, the collectivism of insurance is reversed with the withdrawal of the
state in line with privatization and individualization. As Dean concludes, ‘risk
has been to some extent desocialized, privatized and individualized’.242 Aradau
and Van Munster agree and highlight an important aspect of this trend, namely
how insurance is slowly transformed from its early industrial society conception,
where it was seen as a positive force to counter some of the ‘latent side-­effects of
industrialization’, into a more negative conception that focuses mainly on ‘the
prevention of “bad’s” ’.243 Today’s events and risks are seen as a fact of life and it
is again partly the case that it is the responsibility of an individual to organize
proper insurance. In that sense, risk has increasingly been interpreted in terms
of risk minimization – to get the insurance an individual has to change their
behaviour or environment to minimize their vulnerability. Together with the shift
from collective insurance to practices of risk profiling, this means that risk has
become an instrument of governance that is increasingly focused on the identifi-
cation and exclusion of possible future bads (behaviour, events or ideas).244
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   93
Second, it is possible to see an extension in risk analysis from accidents and
individual (mis)behaviour towards the security of critical infrastructure and
climate systems. This trend, identified for example by Collier and Lakoff, com-
bines the modern reflexive focus towards potential future events with a shift
away from individuals and populations towards ‘vital systems security’.245 Collier
and Lakoff describe how this shift from persons to systems started after World
War II in relation to the threat of nuclear attacks. Exercises, mapping and scen-
arios quickly showed the growing importance of a wide range of infrastructure
systems (electricity, communications and transport) and their material compon-
ents to protect the people and their way of life.246 The focus shifted when ana-
lysts started to think in terms of and gathered data on systems, their material
and human components and the interdependencies between systems. Besides
the human–material interaction, another important consequence of a systems
perspective is the evolution and introduction of complex systems theory and the
idea of resilience.
Third, Amoore and De Goede reflect on the changing role of scientific
knowledge in relation to insurance and risk.247 They follow Ewald, who notes
the growing time spent by risk assessments on ‘the infinitely small-­scale’ and the
‘infinitely large-­scale’.248 While Beck at some point claimed that these are not
insurable, in reality they are, although with more complex financial products,
higher risk premiums and more stringent insurance terms and conditions.249
More important, from a risk calculation perspective, is the fact that the analyses
are not able to provide a level of ‘certainty’ for the ‘infinitely large-­scale’ dis-
asters like climate change and nuclear war. They have never happened and are
therefore not based on historic events but on intellectual imaginations. This
shifts risk analysis from statistical extrapolation, which needs at least some fixed
parameters, to practices of (capital market) speculation grounded on a monetary
translation of the expectations of the markets.250 The scientific uncertainty of
such precautionary issues coupled with a need to anticipate future risks leads to
forms of ‘objective’ knowledge that include ‘emotional, affective, and specula-
tive domains’.251

4.5.6 From calculable to derivative risk

Following these trends, it is possible to identify three approaches to risk that
play a role in modern-­day security policies. Besides the management of known
risks through insurance and prevention, the trends highlight the management of
unknown risks through practices of precaution. Insurance is still one of the main
instruments to minimize the costs of an undesired future. In turn, prevention is
a form of risk minimization that limits as much of the consequences as possible
of a known course of action, for example through contingency planning and
training.252 The earlier discussed logic of precaution, however, tackles the
unknowability of risks itself, by assuming a worst-­case scenario and pushing
for (in)action even if the risks are only virtual.253 For Amoore and De Goede,
the first two deal with ‘known knowns’ (insurance) and ‘known unknowns’
94   Securing undesired (energy) futures
(prevention), while precaution instead deals with ‘unknown unknowns’ and
touches upon those instances where statistics and computation alone cannot
provide an answer.254 As a consequence, any decision made to counter a worst-­
case scenario has to assume this particular future as real and in so doing makes
this unknown future an actual reality. However, these futures cannot actually be
known and, because we cannot know the future, it becomes very hard to
account for the decisions that are made on its behalf.255 Aradau and Van
Munster elsewhere call for ‘precautions against precautionary politics’ as they
argue we are witnessing ‘arbitrary sovereign decision[s]’ at ‘the limit of know-
ledge’ based on ‘ “objective” socio-­economic configurations’ that make it very
hard to challenge these decisions.256
The extent and practical consequences of such an approach to risk only
become clear when considering the role that the precautionary logic plays in
relation to the War on Terror. Here pre-­emptive strikes and precautionary
measures are witnessed in the continuous drawing of boundaries and the hidden
decisions on:

The arrest and detention of travellers at the border, the freezing of financial
transactions, the pre-­emptive disruption of plots and indictment of suspects,
the stopping and searching of young Muslim men in the city subway, the
entry of a name onto a selectee list [or the kill orders for a drone attack] –
all advance an invisible political violence, taking unaccountable and often
unchallengeable decisions.257

Moreover, these decisions are made by connecting as many databases as possible,

ranging from financial data to telecommunications, travel, biometrics, health,
judicial, educational, Internet and consumption data. These are linked for ‘scen-
ario planning, risk profiling, algorithmic modelling, information integration, and
data analysis’ and are used not so much to find evidence of previous unwanted
behaviour but to find associations and other signs of imagined unwanted
behaviour in the future.258 In these cases of ‘derivative risk’, Amoore convincingly
argues that what is sought are not ‘risk probabilities’ but ‘risk possibilities’.259 Risk
analyses no longer focus on the chance that a risk might occur based upon par-
ticular historical patterns but increasingly focus on multiple possible risky futures
and how to identify them before they occur. To prevent these possible futures, big
data is used to find clues for possible feared events by associating pieces of informa-
tion that are not related themselves but nonetheless offer a certain ‘precision as a
basis for decision’.260 In this risk logic, decisions are made irrespective of the fact
that the information is not causally related and reported in such a way that the
increasingly ‘obscure’ and complicated algorithms and assumptions behind these
connections are hidden behind simple ‘objective’ visual representations (e.g. a
green or red light).261 In the move from probabilities to possibilities, it has become
even harder to question the decisions and assumptions behind risk.
A precautionary risk logic based on possibility instead of probability high-
lights two aspects that add a troubling note towards the unaccountability of
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   95
power discussed above. First, it highlights the mobility of the norms behind
those who are (or behind what is) deemed a risk factor. Research on practices
initiated in counterterrorism show that what is considered to be normal
behaviour, or, vice versa, what is seen as unwanted behaviour, is not based on a
clearly defined norm. Instead, such considerations are derived from a norm that
is mobile over place and time.262 By behaving correctly today, one can still be
found lacking at a later moment in time. This clearly collides with criminal law,
where one cannot be punished for an action that was not against the law at the
time that it was committed. Second, Amoore shows how the use of fully auto-
matic analysis of big data means that public authorities increasingly need to rely
on outside commercial expert knowledge (for ICT and mathematics) in order to
identify, imagine and measure possible future threats, not to mention that these
experts play a vital role in helping to interpret and explain the crises that have
occurred. This influential position should be considered carefully as these same
experts and consultancies have a vested economic interest in offering ways to
counter these threats, advising on surveillance equipment, data algorithms and
protocols etc.263 For such experts and companies, risk is truly a way to commod-
ify and capitalize on insecurity.
In short, it is possible to summarize risk as a performative practice that iden-
tifies and problematizes contingency based on mobile norms that cannot be
overcome but can only be managed and traded. To understand risks and the
different risk logics, this section followed the focus of the literature on the
knowledge practices that lie behind risk calculations. More specifically, it
showed that the translation from uncertainty to contingency is always based on
existing systems of knowledge, which are reified by each articulation and calcu-
lation of risk. For risk logics to work, one needs to be able to think in terms of
certainty and uncertainty, to separate and identify events as particulars and to
understand life as something to be kept ‘open’. Based on these underlying
assumptions, risk works through its statistical methods to make the unknown
real by imagining a particular future and then calculate and visualize it. These
commodified ‘facts’ are then repeated in speeches and used as an argument in
decision-­making processes, to be acted upon through insurance and prevention
schemes and to be traded for profit.
Simultaneously, this section problematizes risk by questioning the unac-
countable power distribution that results when those who define the past and
imagine the future are just as important as official sovereign decision makers, in
particular as the role of these underwriters and other commercial security
experts is growing as they decide increasingly on the importance of variables
and the connections between variables, thereby identifying what we should fear,
how bad the situation is and what should be done to make it better. Through
risk and financial insurance schemes aimed at risk minimization, these under-
writers actively shape how individuals organize and live their lives. Moreover, it
is their way of seeing the world that is coded in the risk logics and algorithms
themselves, making an apolitical technical instrument suddenly quite political.
Most troubling in this respect is the shift from probable risk to possible risk, to
96   Securing undesired (energy) futures
the desire to act on multiple possible futures instead of the most probable future,
based on only indirectly associated data points from everyday life connected
through increasingly complex algorithms which paradoxically are translated in
ever-­simpler binary outcomes.

4.6 Reflection
The goal of this chapter was threefold. First, to give a potential explanation for
the proliferation of energy security concerns. Second, to unpack the notion of
security in order to problematize its use in the field of energy security. And,
third, closely related, to introduce and provide an overview of the recent
insights from critical security studies as a basis to push energy security analyses
beyond its realist, liberalist and securitization applications. The subsequent sec-
tions offered insights into the multiple logics of security, the ethics of security,
the manner in which security is called upon, and the exercise of power inherent
to the calculation of risk. Together these sections present security as a form of
governing the present based on an imagination of undesired futures.
In pushing the recent literature on security, this chapter started by approach-
ing security in its broadest sense as dealing with and deciding upon undesired
futures. A logical consequence of such a broad definition is the possibility to
observe a more extensive range of different insecurities or undesirable futures,
the techniques used to imagine and decide on that undesirability and the logics
of security that drive the application of these techniques and search for counter-
measures. Together, these techniques and logics help make sense of the future
and make people act performatively in the here and now. The security logics are
both inclusionary and exclusionary. They are inclusionary as there is always
another unknown potentially threatening future, just as failed countermeasures
only inspire to do better. While these logics are inclusionary and help make
sense of events, they do not define the issues at stake. Instead, interpretations
shift and depend on the agent’s position and relation to the referent object.
Hence, security is exclusionary as the identification of an undesired future
always builds on a politics that excludes those not part of the security arrange-
ment. Such normative judgements create ruptures, which are reinforced by the
countermeasures that are enacted. Security was reasoned to be a form of ethics
itself, shaping and reinforcing the interpretation of an event, the image of the
other, the referent object and oneself. The security of undesirable futures is thus
not only epistemological but strongly ontological as well. It is the choice of
what to protect and what not to protect, or, more importantly, the choice
between what to see as a threat and what not to see as a threat.
Security is something that is made; it does not exist out there but is called
upon or written by politicians, concerned citizens, security experts, insurers etc.
To understand the identification of undesired futures, this chapter focused on
the emotion of fear (and desire) as well as the explicit use of fear in political
contexts. Through a separation of private and public fears, it becomes possible
to see the emotive and political use of fear, more specifically how public fears
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   97
build upon a depoliticized idea of private fear by linking the individual to the
collective, while decoupling the private experience of fear from the social call
upon fear. Together with an increasing epistemic and ontic uncertainty that
triggers an autopoietic fear for fear itself, this leads to a situation where the
existence of political fears cannot be proven wrong. Besides, while it only works
when called upon, the above makes clear that almost everybody calls on security
and thus engages or is subject to to security practices. Clearly, not all calls are
successful, but in today’s culture of fear that seems to be of less importance as
the calls always already succeed in reinforcing the desire for more security.
Moreover, contrary to an individual private experience of fear, where the
undesirable future and its opposite (the desired future) are identified in response
to a bodily reaction, in the case of public fear there is a more intentional logic
at work where particular desired futures are identified before their current state is
publicized as undesirable and something to be feared.
The call upon security was analysed more closely through a study of the
insights provided by securitization theory and its singular focus on the excep-
tionality of security over normal politics. With the concepts of speech acts,
securitizing moves and securitization, this theory helps to understand and study
how people call on security. While the theory highlights the process of how
something becomes a security issue, it does not provide the reasons why par-
ticular issues are called on and hence should not be used as such. More gener-
ally, there are questions on the conflation of the theory and methodology of
securitization, its normativity and its focus on exceptionality and lack of
context. Still, the theory, as well as its different critiques, highlight the politics
behind security instead of the outcome of such processes. Behind the self-­
evident threats lies the active politics of multiple audiences, multiple speech
actors and multiple issues that are securitized. In addition, besides showing the
activity that goes into making something a security issue, the theory also opens
up the relationality behind the self–other distinction.
While securitization has proven useful to analyse energy security, it struggles
with the routine nature of energy security. Energy definitely has extraordinary
moments, but most of the time it is characterized by practices that try to secure
the daily functioning of its sources and systems. The reflection on risk with its
focus on routine security practices and its underlying risk calculations offered an
alternative theory. Risk was described as a performative practice that identifies
and problematizes uncertainty as contingency following mobile norms of
security that can only be managed, not overcome. Through its statistical
methods, risk makes the unknown real as it imagines, calculates and visualizes
the future. These commodified ‘facts’ are repeated in speeches and used as argu-
ments in decision-­making processes. Financial insurance schemes aimed at risk
minimization thus actively shape how individuals organize their daily lives:
what they buy, say and do. The use of risk calculation was problematized by
highlighting the growing political role of risk underwriters and ICT experts and
the shifting accountability following recent changes in risk calculation from
probable to possible risks.
98   Securing undesired (energy) futures
Both theories discuss a particular logic of security, respectively a threat
rationality and a logic and technique of risk, but both agree that security is an
exercise of power that is called upon by people who decide on its boundaries.
Yet, where the risk logic accepts an increasing level of contingency, a threat
logic actively resists such contingency. At the same time, the risk literature can
only ascribe probability to an already-­identified undesired future but cannot
explain how something becomes a threat nor how particular thresholds of risk
are set. In turn, the speech act-­inspired security literature is unable to move
away from the exceptional threat to the routine of everyday security and safety
practices that are also inherent to these threats. Clearly, we need to understand
the normative and instrumental characteristics of security and risk, as both
security and risk ‘do … things rather than merely name things’.264 Equally
importantly, they both approach events from a how question, with neither offer-
ing reasons or generalized conclusions that can be used predictively.
What this chapter means for energy security is manifold. At the beginning,
this chapter stated that it is very well possible to read this chapter by just
adding the word energy whenever it spoke of security. While that might push
it, this chapter makes a clear case for moving away from a ‘simple’ goal-­oriented
definition of energy security to an understanding of energy security that is
called upon every time it is used. This chapter thus supports the initial reflec-
tions in the chapters on energy security to move beyond the search for a better
understanding of the content of energy security, to the actual political work
that is done to get particular forms of energy security accepted as a security
concern. Energy security is made to be, by elites, (insurance) companies,
academia (including observing energy security scholars) and the public. It is
not some natural state of affairs. Many of the issues raised in the first two chap-
ters, on the proliferation of the concept, the geopolitical and state-­centric
focus, and the uncritical theorization, can be placed in context now. At the
same time, this chapter also shows that energy security does exist. In line with
Ciută (energy) security is not a banal process; it is very much the opposite.
While everything is constantly performed, there are concerns, like Russian gas,
that can be called on much easier and with a much larger backing and audi-
ence than others, because they fit historical insecurities or because they are
materialized in such a way that they could affect many. The difference between
traditional theories of energy security and the theories on security that were
discussed in this chapter is that the latter acknowledge that they themselves
play a role in the process of securing energy while analysing these processes and
the conditions behind them. In this way, they introduce an understanding of
energy security that is socially performed and never the same, yet made to be
so, while functioning as an exercise of power with strong normative
consequences.
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   99
Notes
   1 This chapter discusses security, not energy security. However, as a logic it is possible
to read this chapter almost from the beginning to end and just add the word energy
before the word security to make it into a discussion on energy security.
   2 Booth 2005, 23, as quoted by C.A.S.E. Collective 2006, 456.
   3 Buzan 1983, 19.
   4 Brauch 2011, 99.
   5 Booth 2007, 95–101.
   6 Zedner 2003; Booth 2007, 105–106.
   7 Such a debate about what is acceptable or real, points to a ontopolitics of (in)
security.
   8 Zedner 2003, 157, quoting Macbeth, Act III.
   9 Der Derian 1995, 28–29.
10 Ibid.
11 Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008.
12 Dillon 1996, 33 (emphasis in original); also Neocleous 2008, 28.
13 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 32.
14 Anderson 2010b, 779. Also Anderson 2010a; Massumi 2007.
15 Burgess 2011, 26.
16 Anderson 2010b, 781.
17 Anderson and Adey 2011.
18 Booth 2007, 104; Svendsen 2008.
19 Anderson 2010a, 778 (emphasis in original), quoting Massumi 2007, n.p.
20 Luhmann 1993.
21 See Anderson 2010a.
22 Alternatively, Daase and Kessler 2007 argue for a categorization of uncertainty built
upon four categories of knowledge. In their article these authors differentiate
between known knowns (meaning actual threats that provide a clear basis for
action), known unknowns (risks where the ontic structure is blurred but methods
exist to diminish these unknowns), unknown unknowns (dangers in the form of
uncertainty) and unknown knowns (ignored or forgotten actual threats). Daase and
Kessler thus approach the concepts of risk, uncertainty, danger and threat from a
systemic perspective by showing the ontic and epistemic differences between these
categories.
23 Anderson 2010a, 789.
24 On surprise and the politics of events, see Section 4.5.
25 Knight 1921; Best 2008; Kessler 2012.
26 Keynes 1921. Compare with Barad in Section 5.5.
27 Kessler and Daase 2008.
28 Best 2008, 356. Best argues that linguistic ambiguity has three functions: it could
actually help govern forms of epistemic uncertainty, it could also be used as an
instrument to govern through, and, lastly, it poses a limit to the actual governance
that can take place.
29 Latour 2005, 244; Bennett 2010; Adorno 1973. For a discussion on Latour’s plasma,
see Harman 2009, 132–134.
30 Rasmussen 2004, 393. See also: Luhmann 1993, 21–22; Beck 2002, 41; Corry 2012.
31 Buzan 1983, 83–84.
32 Wæver 1995.
33 Massumi 2009, 162.
34 Burgess 2011, 61.
35 Luhmann 1993, 107.
36 Ibid., 109.
37 Ibid., 119 (emphasis in original).
100   Securing undesired (energy) futures
38 Ibid., 68.
39 Vergragt and Quist 2011.
40 Linstone and Turoff 2002; Mullen 2003.
41 Mietzner and Reger 2005.
42 Davis 2002.
43 Ibid., 1.
44 De Goede and Randalls 2009, 869.
45 For an overview of different types of scenarios: Mietzner and Reger 2005, 225–227.
46 Salter 2008a, 233.
47 Ibid., 235–236.
48 Grusin 2004; De Goede 2008a.
49 Malthus 1798.
50 Linstone 2011.
51 Subrahmaniyan 2008. Other expectations predicted prices of $300 a barrel in ten to
fifteen years: Korosec 2009, 2011.
52 Anderson 2010a, 784.
53 Amoore 2013, 73.
54 Salter 2008a, 233.
55 Luhmann 1993, 2.
56 Amoore 2013, 73.
57 Anderson 2010a, 786.
58 IEA 2014.
59 Rumsfeld 2002; Daase and Kessler 2007.
60 Daase and Kessler 2007.
61 Massumi 2007.
62 Ibid., para. 7 (emphasis in original).
63 Ibid., 13.
64 Ibid.
65 Also Amoore 2013; Amoore and De Goede 2008c; De Goede 2008b, 2008c, 2011;
De Goede and Randalls 2009; Anderson 2010a, 791.
66 Anderson 2010a, 791.
67 Massumi 2007, note 9.
68 Ibid., paras 17–20; Anderson 2010a, 791.
69 Anderson 2010a, 791; Commission of the European Communities 2000.
70 UNESCO World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Techno-
logy 2005, 14.
71 Bigo 2010, 11; Ravetz 2004.
72 See also Anderson 2010a, 791.
73 Ibid., 792; Collier and Lakoff 2015, 2008b.
74 Evans and Reid 2013.
75 Booth 1991; UNDP 1994.
76 Beck 1992, 2002.
77 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998.
78 Bigo 2002; Balzacq et al. 2010; Dillon 1996; Huysmans 2011; Dillon and Lobo-­
Guerrero 2008; Amoore and De Goede 2008b; De Goede 2012; Amoore 2013.
79 Massumi 2009, 161.
80 Ibid.
81 Luhmann 1993.
82 Massumi 2009, 162.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid., 161.
85 Campbell 1998, 3.
86 Dillon 1996, 122. Italics added.
87 Ibid., 35.
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   101
88 Burgess 2011, 4. See also Browning and McDonald 2013.
89 Booth 1991, 2007.
90 Booth 2007, 256, 348–392.
91 Ibid., 98.
92 Foucault 2007.
93 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998.
94 Ibid.; Wæver 1995.
95 Neocleous 2008.
96 Leander 2003; Leander 2005. See also C.A.S.E. Collective 2006, 464.
97 See also Åhäll and Gregory 2013.
98 On ontological security, see Wendt 1999, 131.
99 Svendsen 2008, 12.
100 Ibid., 13–16, 71.
101 Frost 2010, 160.
102 Ibid., 167–170; Svendsen 2008, 35–37.
103 Frost 2010, 169.
104 Ibid., 160.
105 Robin 2004, 16–18.
106 Ibid., 19.
107 Furedi 2007.
108 Robin 2004, 6, 9.
109 Furedi 2007.
110 Ibid.
111 Svendsen 2008, 52–53.
112 Massumi 2005, 36.
113 Ibid. quotes William, James. 1950. Principles of Psychology, vol. 2. New York: Dover,
449–450, 467.
114 Ibid., 38.
115 Ibid., 40.
116 Ibid., 41.
117 Furedi 2007.
118 Massumi 2005, 45–46.
119 Furedi 2005, chap. 7.
120 Furedi 2007.
121 Ibid.
122 Furedi 2008, 2005, 2007.
123 Furedi 2005, chap. 7, in particular 137 and 139.
124 Burgess 2011, 62.
125 Furedi 2007.
126 Booth 2007, 325.
127 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998. The securitization framework also contains a
level of analysis focus, a sectorial focus and regional security theory.
128 This argument on materiality will be taken up in Chapter 5.
129 See also: Latour 2004.
130 Schmitt 1985, 5; see also Neal 2006.
131 Austin 1975. Austin differentiates within a speech act between: locutionary acts
that are the utterances; illocutionary acts or that what is done in saying (shifting
discourse to exceptionality); and perlocutionary acts or that what is done by saying
(effects on target audience). Balzacq 2005, 175, quotes Habermas: ‘To say some-
thing, to act in saying something, to bring about something through acting in saying
something’.
132 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 27.
133 Ibid., 32.
134 Roe 2008; Vuori 2008; Balzacq 2005.
102   Securing undesired (energy) futures
135 Besides the securitizing actors, referent objects and the audiences that accept the
securitization move, the theory also mentions functional agents, actors not actively
involved in the securitization process but profoundly influencing the issue
nevertheless.
136 Compare with Latour 2004 on matters of fact (non-­political) and matters of
concern (political/security).
137 On speed and silence, see Roe 2012. However, see the earlier discussion on
Neocleous 2008.
138 Booth 2007, 106.
139 Ibid., 107. Compare with recent work on scarcity and abundance that defines abun-
dance as the ability to choose wrongly, see Mullainathan and Shafir 2013.
140 Wæver 2011, 467.
141 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 29; Roe 2012; de Wilde 2012.
142 Wæver 1995, 54. Compare with Ciută 2009.
143 Aradau 2008, 72.
144 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 29.
145 Ibid.
146 de Wilde 2012, 213, 2008.
147 de Wilde 2012, 213.
148 Ibid.
149 Ibid.
150 Wæver 2011, 469; Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 29.
151 Hansen 2000, 2012.
152 Hansen 2012. She actually identifies four options of desecuritization: stabilization,
replacement, rearticulation and silencing.
153 Huysmans 1998b.
154 Wæver 1999, 334.
155 Roe 2008; Salter 2008b; Stritzel 2007.
156 Ciută 2009; Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 27.
157 Huysmans 1998b, 501; Wæver 2011, 469.
158 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998.
159 Nyman 2014.
160 Leung et al. 2014.
161 Christou and Adamides 2013.
162 Judge and Maltby 2017.
163 For specific applications of securitization theory on the Russian and European
energy relationship, see: Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008; Stoddard 2012;
Khrushcheva 2011; Radoman 2007; Boersma 2013; McGowan 2011; Trombetta
2012. For more general energy security reflections on Russia and the European
Union, see: Aalto 2008; Aalto and Korkmaz Temel 2014; Casier 2011; Goldthau
2008; Högselius 2012; Stern 2006. And for good use of the theory in relation to
other countries, see: Nyman 2014; Christou and Adamides 2013; Leung et al. 2014;
Nyman and Zeng 2016; Judge and Maltby 2017; Judge, Maltby and Szulecki 2018;
Cox 2016; Aglaya Snetkov 2017; Fischhendler and Nathan 2014.
164 Stern 2006.
165 Smith Stegen 2011; McGowan 2011; Boersma 2013; European Commission 2000.
166 McGowan 2011.
167 Stoddard 2012.
168 European Commission 2014.
169 Barroso 2014.
170 Ibid.
171 Boersma 2013, 37; McGowan 2011, 488; Trombetta 2012, 22.
172 Yergin 1991.
173 Trombetta 2012.
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   103
174 Ibid., 16.
175 Trombetta 2012; for the theoretical argument, see Huysmans 1998a.
176 Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008, 84.
177 Trombetta 2012, 9.
178 Ibid., 21.
179 Huysmans 1998b, 239.
180 Ciută 2009; McDonald 2008; Stritzel 2007; Balzacq 2005.
181 Ciută 2009.
182 Butler 2010, 149 (emphasis added).
183 Neal 2006, 34.
184 Patomäki 2015, 133.
185 Balzacq 2005, 178–179. Interestingly, in this article Balzacq also argues, with
numerous disclaimers, that there are non-­social, ‘brute’ threats that affect humans
‘regardless of the use of language’ (181). He argues that these external effects/threats
should stand central in any constructivist analysis of security (181) as these are used
by the audience as evidence in weighing securitization claims thereby reducing the
importance of the speaker (191, 193); Bigo 2002, 2014.
186 Bigo 2014, 211; Bourbeau 2014, 196.
187 Bigo 2014.
188 See note 131 on Austin and Habermas.
189 Vuori 2008, 76; Stritzel 2012.
190 Huysmans 2011, 372, 373; Isin 2008.
191 Stritzel 2011.
192 Ibid., 346.
193 Neal 2006, 44.
194 Stritzel 2011, 350.
195 Bourbeau 2014, 197.
196 A recent exception includes Judge and Maltby 2017.
197 Foucault 2007, 2008; Luhmann 1993, 13; C.A.S.E. Collective 2006, 468.
198 Salter 2008a, 233 explicitly mentions scarce resource management: ‘Risk manage-
ment as a governance framework seeks to focus scarce resources on risks that are
ranked according to frequency and impact’.
199 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 9. Dean 2010, 206–207 argues, contra Beck, that
because risks is about making future threats calculable, there is no such thing as
incalculable risks. If something is incalculable it cannot be a risk.
200 Ewald 1991, 199.
201 Ibid.
202 Butler 2010; Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 9.
203 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 11, quoting Foucault 2007, 68 and 91.
204 See also Ewald 1993, 221.
205 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 9, quoting Valverde, M., and M. Mopas. 2004. Insec-
urity and the dream of targeted governance. In Global governmentality: Governing
international spaces, edited by W. Larner and W. Walters, 233–250. London:
Routledge; De Goede 2012.
206 As Dean argues: ‘Risk is a continuum rather than a clear break. Risk, in this sense,
never completely evaporates. It can be minimized, localized and avoided, but never
dissipated’. 2010, 195.
207 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 9.
208 Dean 2010, 206–207.
209 Lobo-­Guerrero 2012, 10.
210 Ewald 1991. Also Ewald 1993, 2002, 2012.
211 Ewald 1991, 206.
212 Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 281.
213 Ewald 1991, 201–205.
104   Securing undesired (energy) futures
214 Ibid., 202.
215 Dean 2010, 214.
216 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 25–26.
217 Dillon 2007, 45.
218 Lobo-­Guerrero 2012, 128–129.
219 Ibid., 18.
220 Dillon 2008, 327; Foucault 2007, 20.
221 Lobo-­Guerrero 2012, 128; Nancy 2000.
222 Foucault 1991, 76.
223 Ibid.
224 Lundborg 2012, 1–7.
225 Ibid., 7.
226 Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 280–281; Dillon 2008, 320.
227 Ewald 1993, 227.
228 Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 287. Elsewhere, Dillon describes how biopolitical
security builds upon biological complex systems theories, à la Kauffman, to describe
life as being about circulation (autocatalysis), connectivity (radical relationality)
and complexity (non-­linearity). See Dillon 2008, 312.
229 Dillon 2008, 314–315, 2007; Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 280 and 283.
230 Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 268; Lobo-­Guerrero 2012, 18.
231 Foucault 2007, 18.
232 Butler 2004; Amoore 2013, 6. As also discussed in De Goede 2008b, 101. Compare
with Shannon 2014, 252.
233 Dean 2010, 259.
234 Amoore 2013, 6–7, 17–18.
235 Ewald 1993, 225.
236 Ibid.
237 Lobo-­Guerrero 2012, 18.
238 Ibid.
239 Dean 2010, 220.
240 Ibid., 218–219.
241 See for example Lobo-­Guerrero 2012.
242 Dean 2010, 221.
243 Aradau and Van Munster 2007, 92.
244 Rose 2001, 11; Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 27.
245 Collier and Lakoff 2015, 2008b, 2008a.
246 Kester 2018.
247 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 27–28.
248 Ewald 1993, 222; Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 27.
249 Beck 1992.
250 Aradau and Van Munster 2007, 106–107.
251 Amoore 2013, 9–10. In respect to information, Amoore (p. 85) also discusses how
risk analyses, for example during border control, increasingly reject people based on
information that would not have been acceptable in court, thereby effectively
judging people outside the law.
252 Prevention is acting without imminent threat (in conflict a preventive war is legally
deemed an act of aggression). Pre-­emption is acting before an imminent threat
materializes and as such is seen as the more justifiable tactic. See also Massumi
2009, 168.
253 Aradau and Van Munster 2007, 103; Amoore 2013, 9.
254 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 29.
255 Aradau and Van Munster 2008, 35.
256 Aradau and Van Munster 2007, 109.
257 Amoore and De Goede 2008a, 14.
 Securing undesired (energy) futures   105
258 Amoore 2013, 9; Amoore and De Goede 2008b; Aradau and Van Munster 2007,
2008; De Goede 2008b.
259 Amoore 2013, 67–68 (emphasis in original).
260 Ibid.
261 Ibid., 69–70, 103.
262 Ibid., 17.
263 Ibid., 20–21.
264 Dillon 1996, 34.

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5 The materialization of energy
security

5.1 Introduction
The discussion on energy security and security so far hints at a primarily social
and linguistically oriented understanding of energy security. What seems to be
ignored are the different material aspects underlying the questions of energy
security. This includes the actual supplies of energy that dissuade security con-
cerns as well as the shortages that are still prevalent, and it includes the rigid
and durable material infrastructure that handles the production, transport and
consumption of different forms of energy. In the case of oil, for example, this
infrastructure ranges from the sulphur and nitrogen content to the overall
quality of the resources, the depth of the wells, the size of the reserves, the dis-
tance to the markets, the infrastructure in place to refine and transport it and
so on.1
This chapter focuses on the social literature that discusses the relationship
between knowledge (over energy systems) and materiality (of energy systems),
and it asks three questions: (1) how do the social and material relate in line of
dominant social interpretations that characterize security, (2) how do these new
materialist theories view our ontology (e.g. how do their theories approach
social-­material relations and objects) and (3) how do they approach surprising
events or change/uncertainty (e.g. their ontological politics)?
The chapter subsequently does not argue that either the material or the
social explanations are better, but it tries to understand their relationship. Based
on a discussion of both the critical constructivist literature and an analysis of
different ‘new’ materialist theories, this chapter puts forward four arguments.
First, that the dialectical representation of matter and thought (mind/body or
nature/society) is an artificial understanding that is simultaneously overblown in
theoretical discussions on poststructural and constructivist research, yet still a
necessary distinction to better understand processes of becoming (the performa-
tive identification, ascription of meaning, reactive politics and the assemblage
that closes the events). Second, when the material and social are able to
perform each other, they are open to a virtuality and eventfulness (e.g. surpris-
ing events) on both sides. Such an eventfulness calls for a politics of ontology:
the politics dealing with the identification of what the event is (like security).
114   The materialization of energy security
Based on the epistemological argument that it is impossible to know what is ‘out
there’, this calls for a relational or phenomenological ontology devoid of sub-
stance and objects except for those that are created relationally and best
described as materialdiscursive. Third, such a relational identification is based on
distinctions. With these distinctions come exclusions and the subsequent need
to be aware of the ethics of observation. In short, fourth, while new materialist
theories argue for additional attention to matter, they ultimately also discuss
knowledge gathering practices albeit in terms of durability and materialization.
In other words, they offer an account based on the materialization of potential-
ity, but have to concede that this only matters because of human-­driven politics.
Unfortunately, this means that the already-­abstract discussion on energy
security will turn even more abstract as discussions on materialism and discourse
cannot be separated from commentaries on, for example, different forms of
agency or the dualisms between object/subject and nature/culture. The easiest
way to introduce these theoretical discussions is by categorizing them into three
distinct positions: between positivist scholars, postpositivist scholars and new
materialist or posthumanist scholars. Where positivist-­inspired research includes
realist and liberalist theories with their assumption of a material world out there
that can be studied objectively, postpositivism consists of a range of poststructur-
alist and constructivist theories that disagree with this and favour the (struc-
tured) social knowledge people have of the world. Lastly, recent ‘new materialist’
theoretical developments outside IR introduce a posthumanist view that origi-
nates from fields as diverse as sociology with actor-­network theory (ANT), fem-
inism with agential realism, philosophy with object-­oriented ontology (OOO),
anthropology and history (e.g. material culture).2 This is a perspective that
focuses on the material world in its becoming, instead of an exclusive focus on
human social interaction or the explanation of a world that already is. Within
IR, a small but growing number of articles is taking up these insights.3
This chapter is constructed as follows. Section 5.2 will analyse the postposi-
tivist rejection of positivism. It will briefly describe the main epistemological
argument and discuss the differences of opinion between critical realists and
radical constructivists on the role of scientific knowledge within such an episte-
mological position. It closes with a brief discussion of two highly abstract lin-
guistic and social structural scholars to see whether these really do reject the
material world as argued by some new materialist scholars. Section 5.3 moves to
the new materialist critique on postpositivist theories and discusses why new
materialist believe a focus on the material is important, what matter is, and how
this can be approached with a performative understanding that observes a mate-
rialdiscursive world. Section 5.4 delves into the new materialist theories by
introducing the relational ontology of ANT. It then reflects on this ontology by
following the critique on ANT, in particular its difficulty to discuss the origin of
the virtuality (change) of its relations. This abstract discussion is subsequently
simplified by discussing the vibrancy of the material in terms of a politics of
ontology that focuses on the event and how observations and subsequent
actions are folded together to close these events. Section 5.5 continuous on the
 The materialization of energy security   115
politics behind observation as it introduces the work of Barad on agential
realism to discuss the ethics behind knowledge practices. The reflection summa-
rizes and reflects on the theoretical debates by setting the stage for the next
chapter.

5.2 How do we know of the world?

5.2.1 Observing ‘the world’

Discussions on the role of the material are often phrased in terms of the ability
of people to know the outside material world. While this is self-­evident for posi-
tivist scholars, there is more to it for postpositivist scholars. This section
explores how the social/material divide is discussed within IR theory as a pre-
amble to the subsequent sections on new materialism. It will subsequently intro-
duce the postpositivist argument on the importance of the role of language
(including knowledge and discourses) in structuring the behaviour and actions
of social agents, as it introduces the epistemological argument that it is imposs-
ible to gain neutral knowledge over the outside world as all knowledge is medi-
ated by previous historic decisions on what constitutes ‘good’ knowledge. Third,
after briefly describing the differences between positivism and postpositivism
and the underlying Cartesian dualist dilemma, this section contrasts the two
main postpositivist positions within IR theory, namely critical realism and
radical constructivism. By contrasting these two positions, and by pushing the
radical constructivists’ position through a short discussion of Wittgenstein’s lan-
guage games and Luhmann’s communicative systems, it becomes possible to
question the social essentialism that new materialist scholars accuse radical
constructivists of.
Still, it is important to note that even to ask the question how the material
world can be known implies that one already has to presuppose ontologically
that there is a distinction between knowledge and matter. In other words, the
question itself is not neutral and presupposes a specific dualist world where
matter is separated from knowledge. This dualism is most famously known as
the Cartesian mind/body dualism. It is based on the epistemological insight that
we can know, for certain, that we are able to think and thus that our mind
exists, but we cannot know whether our bodies exists.4 To be fair, the Cartesian
ontological dualist position is not the only possible position that one can take,
but it is one that is very common in everyday language use. Importantly, it leads
to the question of causality between the mind and the body, as (1) the mind
could be an independent non-­bodily phenomenon, (2) the mind and body could
be causally linked (either through minds or through bodies) or (3) the physical
could be an independent causally closed phenomenon. All three options are
plausible, but the Bieri trilemma states that only two can ever be consistent
with one another.5
In this respect the philosopher Searle argues for a form of physicalism (a
combination of (2) and (3)), which is based on an ontological differentiation
116   The materialization of energy security
between ‘brute facts’ and social ‘institutional facts’.6 Where the rocks and
pebbles on the ground are brute material facts, he argues that ‘there are portions
of the real world, objective facts in the world, which are only facts by human
agreement. In a sense there are things that exist only because we believe them
to exist.’7 Both the money in your wallet or the government people pay taxes to
are a fact of life, but only because we all agree on them. If, for some reason,
people stop believing in these social facts, they cease to exist.8 Between brute
and social facts, Searle identifies four mixed categories based on the relative
importance they attach to the collective assignment of function, in other words
to what extent humans create the facts. There are (1) natural and biological
systems that continue whether humans interpret them correctly or not; and
(2) material products or artefacts that are ‘real’ but need human interpretation
to function, for example, chairs and hammers. Besides these brute facts there are
institutional facts, facts that do not exist without human interpretation. Searle
divides these into (3) non-­linguistic facts like money and (4) linguistic facts
based on written or spoken language, for example business contracts.9 Accord-
ing to Searle, these brute and social facts are erected iteratively on top of each
other, meaning that all institutional facts can be traced to some brute factual
origin. He describes this in terms of the formula X counts as Y in C: every insti-
tutional fact Y is built in a certain context C on a previous social fact X, which
in turn is built on another previous social fact Y-­1 in context C-­1, all the way
down to some brute fact X.10
Within the social sciences the question whether people are able to observe
the outside world returns in debates between positivist and postpositivist
approaches to research. Positivism and postpositivism are based on different
epistemological positions (e.g. ‘how do we know’) that also inherently come
with ontological assumptions (e.g. on ‘what exists’). On the one hand, the posit-
ivism of realist and liberalist theories (Chapter 3) is often presented in combi-
nation with the ontological belief of naturalism. The belief that there is a given
physical reality that can be experienced and explained through the senses of an
observer who is clearly separated from the observed object.11 This epistemologi-
cal claim – that it is possible to study the outside world by creating a true repres-
entation based upon humankind’s experiences – is called empiricism.12 The
latter should not be confused with positivism itself, which calls for a scientific
method consisting of law-­like generalizations and causal facts to analyse these
experiences. Positivism hence rest on a clear dualist ontology that assumes that
the mind can learn about and in time mirror the material world that it observes.
On the other hand, postpositivist scholars reject this dualist epistemological
position as they question the separation between observers and observed.
Scholars from constructivist, critical, feminist and poststructuralist approaches
all argue that reality (which they do not reject), or, to be precise, the experi-
ences of reality, can only be witnessed by interpreting events with the know-
ledge that we already have. These scholars view knowledge, in other words, as
something that is inherently social (not an individual or factual experience) and
can only be shared through language in describing, defining and categorizing the
 The materialization of energy security   117
world around us. This implies that all new knowledge is filtered by that what we
already know. New knowledge is therefore not an actual representation of the
world ‘out there’ but a consequence of historically developed and socially agreed
constructions of what the world is and how it should look like. From this, it
logically follows that no research is value-­free and that researchers should
focus on the consequences of these linguistic structures and their constant
performativity.

5.2.2 Critical realism

Cox famously describes the distinction between positivist and postpositivist the-
ories as a distinction between (positivist) problem-­solving theories and (post-
positivist) critical theories.13 Where the former accepts the world as a given and
tries to improve it, the latter ‘attempts to stand outside the framework of ana-
lysis or action it is exploring and seeks to appraise it in terms of its origins,
development, institutions, and its potentiality for change’.14 In fact, within post-
positivist IR research, there are currently two meta-­philosophical positions that
struggle with the above ontic-­epistemological questions. However, while both
critical realism and radical constructivism agree epistemologically on the inter-
subjectivity of knowledge and the role of linguistic structures, they disagree on
the consequences of such a position and the role that scientific knowledge plays
in this. The rest of this section discusses critical realism while the next section
turns to radical constructivism.
Critical realism draws on a metaphilosophy originally developed by Bhaskar,
which resembles the ontology of Searle to a certain extent.15 In the last decade
it has been reinvigorated in IR with contributions from Wight and Patomäki,
among others.16 Critical realists hold that, while a true representation of the
world (e.g. empiricism and the so-­called correspondence theory of truth) is
indeed impossible, it is possible to use a scientific method to study objectively
the experiences people have of the world, simply because they believe that
scholars should at least try to improve the theories they have. And, for them,
falsification and verification are still the best methods to gain knowledge, ask
questions and reject less plausible answers. They support this argument with two
claims: first they highlight the ‘practical success of scientific knowledge’, which
is demonstrated when scientists manipulate otherwise unobservable entities.17
Second, they build on an ‘ordinary language use’ argument, as ‘scientific practice
itself assumes a depth to reality that it investigates in order to provide explana-
tions of empirical phenomena’.18 By combining these arguments with the episte-
mological lesson that ‘knowledge itself is a social product’ and ‘dynamically
produced by means of prior knowledge’, Wight claims that knowledge is an
‘inherently fallibilist enterprise’ that is based on ‘rational choices between com-
peting knowledge claims’.19 In other words, critical realists believe that it is in
the nature of human beings to constantly strive for better theories and descrip-
tions through a method of trial and error following observations and rational
assessments.
118   The materialization of energy security
This focus on ontological realism (a reality that can be experienced independ-
ently of the mind), epistemological relativism (that this reality can only be
described with ‘potentially fallible socially produced beliefs) and judgemental
rationalism instead of empiricism (that it is possible to judge between social the-
ories) also more or less describes the position taken by social constructivists in
IR.20 Based on the metaphilosophy of critical realism, (thin) social constructiv-
ism is an IR theory that Adler once described as taking the ‘middle ground’
between positivist and postpositivist research.21 There are many authors working
on social constructivism, but the theory most attentive to the material world
and nearest to Searle’s brute and social facts is the one proposed by Wendt.22
With his concept of ‘rump materialism’, Wendt is one of the few IR scholars
who explicitly tries to take both the material and the social into account.23 For
Wendt’s social constructivist theory, the material plays a role following bodily
differences, technological differences and geographical and natural characteris-
tics.24 More specifically, Wendt’s rump materialism rests on a distinction
between two different needs: on the one hand, biologically prescribed needs for
food, water, shelter etc. and, on the other hand, socially induced interests.25 Yet,
even with all this attention to the material, Wendt still prioritizes the social
when he states that ‘(1) the structures of human association are determined
primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces, and (2) that the identities
and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideas rather
than given by nature’.26 Thus, while Wendt’s social constructivism shifts the
attention away from the use of language towards the relationship between ideas
and (material) interests, he too places the social over the material by claiming
that the meaning objects have for people are more important than the objects
themselves.27
While critical realism and (thin) social constructivism seem coherent the-
ories at first, Jackson, in a recent article, argues that many of these critical real-
ists, while adhering to the epistemological logic that it is impossible to have an
objective representation of the world, actually only pay lip service to it and
betray this logic at a later stage in their argument, as Jackson argues, not because
they secretly refer to some form of representationalism between the social and
the natural but because these scholars with their focus on hypothesis testing and
the constraining effects of the ‘outside’ world reinstall a dualism between an
object and observer.28 They artificially create a distance to fulfil their desire to
observe objectively.

5.2.3 Radical constructivism

Postpositivism rejects this object/observer distinction and the resulting scientific
method because it claims that the social cannot be explained by it in any mean-
ingful way. To postpositive scholars, the social world consists of intersubjective
knowledge (whether called social facts, language, discourses, practices, fields or
a similar concept) and does not have the same characteristics as the natural
world. The staunchest proponents of this position even go so far as to argue
 The materialization of energy security   119
that, while reality might exist, we can never know about it and as such should
forgo the search for this holy grail and instead focus on the use and misuse of
knowledge.29 A linguistic-­oriented postpositivist scholar would argue that there
is no role at a linguistic level for the inclusion of a changing material world,
because it is not important whether it is nature or society that ‘acts’. This is not
because radical constructivists reject the surprising event itself but because they
deem it more important who interprets these events, at what moment and for
what reasons. When a volcano erupts in the South Pacific or in northern Italy
the last is interpreted as more important because it endangers human life. A
similar volcanic eruption on Iceland would matter less in terms of human life
were it not that all air traffic across the Atlantic can be hindered by it.30 People
interpret events with the knowledge that they have and with a degree of
urgency that follows from the hopes and fears they have for the future.
This position is favoured by radical constructivists as well as poststructural-
ists, and, to a lesser extent, critical theorists.31 It is a position that finds its origin
in the Frankfurter Schule and the work of French poststructuralists.32 Below this
section will reflect on the importance of language by briefly discussing two other
strongly linguistic-­oriented scholars (neither of them part of the above tradi-
tions). After discussing Wittgenstein’s language games and Luhmann’s commu-
nicative social systems, this section moves back to IR and the response of
Kratochwil and other radical constructivist IR scholars to the critique of critical
realism. In short, through these two discussions this section highlights how
meaning is ascribed, how observations should be seen as the production of dis-
tinctions, and how these two arguments together make all judgements ulti-
mately value judgements and a matter of politics.
First, the role and importance of knowledge. To understand how meaning is
ascribed to events based on the knowledge that people possess, it is helpful to
turn to the later writings of Wittgenstein on language games and his under-
standing of the grammar that enables the interactive and iterative meaning as
use.33 Simplistically, people describe the world using concepts and words. The
meaning of these concepts stems from its use and its (family) relationship with
other concepts within a shared ‘grammar’ or set of rules that clarify acceptable
combinations. These combinations and their shared grammar mark different
language games. For example, the concept of energy is different for a physicist
(joules), a consumer (light/heat) or an oil trader (demand/supply) as each of
these take place within a particular language game: natural science, bodily
experience/survival and economic markets. Consequently, it is only in their
constant use and with repeated reference to other words that concepts gain and
are able to keep a particular meaning.34 Even when people object to a meaning,
they still use that concept and thereby reinforce the overarching language game.
Language games thus presume multiplicity, a world where a concept means
different things, for different people, within different contexts. As long as they
are continuously interpreted in their ongoing use, these worlds are never
entirely defined and cannot be closed off from other agents. In fact, agents con-
stantly participate in multiple, sometimes even contrasting worlds. A physicist
120   The materialization of energy security
working on energy is also a consumer of energy at home. It follows that agents
are able to reflect on and compare between language games. However, they can
only observe themselves from within a third language game, another set of rules,
never from within the primary language game itself.
An even more radical argument about social observation can be found in
Luhmann’s systems theory.35 Luhmann offers a theory that perceives the world to
be divided into physical systems, psychic systems and social systems. Of these
three, Luhmann has written most extensively on social systems, in particular on
the role of communication in and between social systems.36 According to
Luhmann, all communication between two humans, or, more precisely, between
two egos (psychic systems of cognition), takes place within social systems made
up of modes of communication. Luhmann sees social systems as self-­regulating
entities that are based on a distinction between the system (inside) and the
environment (outside). These distinctions are autopoietic: each system is based
on a self-­referential distinction that (re)produces or constitutes the meaning
that a system attaches to itself and its environment.37 Each system closes itself
off from its complex environment by constantly (re)drawing its boundaries
through a reconfiguration of its own specific identity (designed to reduce the
outside complexity). From this ontology it follows that all communication
between systems should, according to Luhmann, be seen as an internal debate
within a particular system over the interpretation of the stimulus witnessed in its
environment. Because language ‘stores’ meaning, new communications between
systems can only be incorporated in a system if it fits or builds on the already
existing autopoietic constituted distinction (what Luhmann calls operational
closure).38 For Luhmann, observation is thus a constant process of producing
and reproducing distinctions. This can be compared with a map – whatever map
you use or make, whether it is a topographic map, a satellite image or a street
map – different distinctions show different aspects of the world depending on
what the observer needs. To be able to make such a claim Luhmann identifies
two levels of observation. Luhmann separates first-­order observations, where
time plays no role for decision makers as everything is happening simultaneously
and people are in the moment, from second-­order observations, where the
observer is able to actually reflect on an event. In reflecting on an event, a
second-­order observer also makes multiple distinctions on, for example, before
and after, good and bad, etc.39
Radical constructivists share this concern over observers and their objects
with Wittgenstein and Luhmann. In fact, it is a concern that returns as well in
other important concepts in the literature. For example, in line with the itera-
tive linguistic idea of meaning as use, the concept of a hermeneutic circle deals
with the continuous theoretical and contextually enforced interpretation of
texts by observers: that all knowledge is always already situated in other know-
ledge. Likewise, debates on agents and structures and their mutual interaction
deal with the position of the individual (agent) in relation to society (structure)
and that neither can be seen as separate from the other.40 If one accepts this
epistemological argument, then these concepts draw attention towards the equal
 The materialization of energy security   121
impossibility to separate facts and values.41 And from this it follows that those
who are able to claim which facts exist actually engage in a political struggle
over the shared knowledge that defines what is normal and what is considered
to exist outside of language.
This in turn is the main argument of radical constructivists in IR against crit-
ical realism, especially with the latter’s focus on rationality and the scientific
method.42 Kratochwil argues that the epistemological argument about the socio-
historical mediation of observation should not be solved by putting ontology
first, as critical realists do when they start from the material impact of scientific
knowledge, but instead should be bracketed by ‘pragmatically’ focusing on meth-
odology and methods to ‘provid[e] the necessary warrants’ against claims of vol-
untarity and ‘anything goes’ arguments.43 More specifically, Kratochwil argues
for a pragmatic social objectivity that is achieved through a consensus ‘court-
room ethics’ (e.g. a consensus theory of truth).44 When all matter and social
relations are interpreted through language and social knowledge, the only truth
available is a social one, and this implies that meaning can only be achieved by
social agreement. Wight replied to this by asking why these scholars offer an
alternative explanation of current phenomena in the first place, if not because
they believe them – in whatever sense – to be better.45 In fact, it is not so much
that radical constructivists reject the scientific logic Wight criticizes them to be
following as well (they do indeed) but that they question, on a higher abstrac-
tion level, the scientific logic itself as being one of many logics or discourse that
can be used to find the ‘truth’.46 In other words, these scholars take fault with
the meaning of the term ‘better’ as they consider this a value judgement.47 For
these scholars, what should be asked instead is the critical question of ‘better for
whom?’. Whose interests are aided by proclaiming something as ‘better’ or
‘progress’?

5.2.3 Social essentialism

There are two popular arguments against the postpositivist approaches dis-
cussed so far. Both of these are strongly influenced by decontextualized quota-
tions from, on the one hand, the early Wittgenstein, who once wrote that ‘the
limits of my language mean the limits of my world’, and, on the other, Derrida’s
famous ‘there is no outside-­text’.48 The first argument is made by positivists
who misread the positions above and succumb to a ‘fear of relativism’.49 This is
the anything goes argument, which states that if all that exists is based on lan-
guage and communication, why not just speak and think differently to change
the world? In a sense, this argument is correct. Language and knowledge are
pliable to an extent that matter is not. However, the above already indicates
the force and stability of social practices, thought patterns (discourses) and
communicative structures: while they change, people constantly and with each
iteration work hard to preserve and stabilize them. Moreover, as discussed
below, people act on them and in doing so materialize the social structures and
norms.
122   The materialization of energy security
A second argument represents the basic assumption behind a relatively new
strand of literature called ‘new materialism’. It is an assumption that builds on
claims like Patomäki and Wight’s argument that ‘for positivists, sense-­
experience is real; for postpositivists, discourses or intersubjectivity is real’.50
The problem for many new materialists is that, if this is the case, if language is
all that we can study, as for example argued in securitization theory, would that
not imply that one has simply shifted a representation of the world towards a
representation of linguistic structures instead?51 As Dolphijn and Van der Tuin
quote De Landa:

General categories do not refer to anything in the real world and … to

believe they do (i.e. to reify them) leads directly to essentialism. Social con-
structivism is supposed to be an antidote to this, in the sense that by
showing that general categories are mere stereotypes it blocks the move
towards their reification. But by coupling the idea that perception is intrins-
ically linguistic with the ontological assumption that only the contents of
experience really exist, this position leads directly to a form of social
essentialism.52

Following a similar line of thought, Barad argues:

Language has been granted too much power. The linguistic turn, the semi-
otic turn, the interpretative turn, the cultural turn: it seems that at every
turn lately every ‘thing’ – even materiality – is turned into a matter of lan-
guage or some other form of cultural representation.53

Where De Landa and Barad focus on the ontological and epistemological prepo-
sition of language over materiality in these quotes, Latour questions the categor-
ical use of the ‘social’ as distinct from the natural. For Latour, what happens
when people designate something as social is that they are diverting attention
away from the process of actual association between the different elements of
such a phenomenon.54 In other words, he focuses on the act of defining some-
thing as social and sees this as a form of politics that performs a closure of an
ongoing process of association between different elements that exist and
originate in the space in-­between humans (e.g. Section 4.4 on the speech act
literature).
De Landa, Barad and Latour all find fault with many postpositivists, who,
according to them, have simply shifted their representational position within
the material/social dichotomy from the material towards the social. The core of
their critique thus focuses on the idea that postpositivist scholars still uphold
a Cartesian dualistic worldview, based on the observer who a priori assumes
that language and the world are separated to begin with.55 It is only in a Carte-
sian dualism where mind and body can represent each other that the above cri-
tique makes sense. This, however, might be phrased too strongly. On the one
hand, yes, it is easy to over-­essentialize language in postpositivist theories, as
 The materialization of energy security   123
highlighted by the quotes of Wittgenstein and Derrida above. Then again, most
of the postpositivist work, including the work of Wittgenstein and Luhmann,
acknowledges objects and materiality. As Hekman (herself working on material-
ity) reflects on Wittgenstein: ‘His discussion of language games as activities, of
general facts of nature, form of life, and many other concepts suggests an inter-
active understanding of the relationship between the discursive and the
material’.56 Similarly, Derrida’s quote on text above, which points to the under-
standing that all knowledge is ‘always already’ situated in other knowledge, is
quite easily reinterpreted in a broader sense of ‘ongoing historicity’.57 A narrow
theoretical focus on linguistic structures therefore does not automatically imply
that scholars claim that language is all that exist.58
In short, it can be argued that the Cartesian dualism that separates matter
and discourse permeates much of contemporary IR research. However, this
section shows that a dualist worldview leads to tensions on both a meta-­
philosophical, theoretical and methodological level, especially for those who
accept the epistemological insight that all knowledge is mediated through dis-
course and other linguistic structures. For such postpositivist scholars, all that
we know are the discourses and the concepts that derive their meaning through
the differentiation from other concepts. These differences have a history that is
based on previous understandings and distinctions. This makes it impossible to
see or experience something new without first being structured by the rules of
society hidden in an intersubjective understanding of the world and the lin-
guistic structures that enable (or inhibit) possible routes of thought and action.
Each of these understandings and distinctions is based on a judgement made by
an observer on an object of study. This translates facts into shared distinctions,
which are based on shared values of judgement. It is here that we see a differ-
ence between critical realists, for whom the better argument is always based on
something because we can act on things (we cannot know the world, but it
exists), and radical constructivists, who instead argue for a pragmatic argument
(we agree that the world exists). Nevertheless, both share that the material
world exists and that it cannot be understood independently of shared social
understandings.

5.3 Moving beyond humans and language

5.3.1 New materialism

To be fair, the broader ontological context of postpositivist studies with its focus
on language, knowledge and social structures does limit the research parameters
of postpositivism, if only for the pragmatic reason that it is hard to study every-
thing. The subsequent inattention to matter is something that sits ill with a
rising number of scholars in IR and the wider social sciences, driven in part by
the complexity and (perceived) urgency to understand phenomena like climate
change, genetically modified food and nanotechnology. This discomfort is often
illustrated with an argument along the lines of Pickering’s claim that one way or
124   The materialization of energy security
the other the world actively resists and accommodates human activity.59 What-
ever meaning we attach to the world, the world is believed to be able to act of
itself and on itself, and is therefore capable of surprising humans by altering the
conditions of possibility. What these scholars question is the predominantly
human-­centred approach in current social theories, from both positivist and
postpositivist theoretical perspectives. As an alternative, they argue in favour of
a posthumanist metatheory, a metatheory that shifts the scholarly focus away
from the overwhelming attention on human agency towards an entangled
material and human agency (hence posthuman and not anti-­human).60 In this
way, instead of entering the matter/social discussion from the side by way of a
postpositivist focus on shared language, a positivist focus on representation or a
focus on materialism, these authors tackle the debate head-­on by questioning
how matter and the social interact or, some would say, intra-­act.61 As Dolphijn
and Van der Tuin describe this intra-­action, ‘the material and the discursive are
only taken apart in the authoritative gesture of the scholar or by the common-­
sensical thinker; while in the event, in life itself, the two seeming layers are by
all means indiscernible’.62
New materialist scholars thus argue that what is missing is an approach that
tries ‘to provide an account of how both materiality and language matter’.63
What is missing is what Jackson elsewhere has called a ‘monist’ approach, by
which he refers to a way of thinking that studies the practices that create both
thought and things.64 A key concept in such a monist approach is entanglement,
which states that the mind/body, society/nature, matter/social and object/
subject distinctions are all posterior distinctions made by human observers
while in reality the world itself is not as clear-­cut.65 The next sections will
therefore build on several new materialist insights to offer an entangled mate-
rialdiscursive ontology instead of a dualist material and discursive ontology.66 An
ontology that still forwards the postpositivist epistemological insights about the
importance of linguistic structures, observation and meaning ascription, but
links this with a constantly changing materiality. This section will introduce
the shared premises of new materialism, it will discuss materiality in terms of
what it is and how it is analysed, and it will introduce Butler’s ideas on perfor-
mativity as a general approach to mitigate the dialectic understanding of
matter and discourse.
The question of how to approach an entangled and active materiality is
studied by an agglomeration of scholars working from a range of different discip-
lines, including philosophy, feminist studies, geography, science and technology
studies (STS), performance studies, history and IR. For convenience’s sake,
these are all branded as ‘new materialist’ even though none of the scholars
seems to support this label.67 As broad as the underlying disciplines are, so are
the perspectives on how to answer the question posted above wide-­ranging.
Below, this chapter’s main influences are Latour and other STS scholars working
on ANT, Harman and Bryant on object-­oriented philosophy, and Bennett
and Barad on the phenomena of entangled agency and the ethics behind
materiality.
 The materialization of energy security   125
While these theories differ in their ontology and all approach this entangle-
ment from very different angles, these authors do share a range of under-
standings. First, they share an understanding of the non-­human world ‘out there’
that is severely influenced by the natural sciences, in particular by the insights
gained from particle physics, chaos theory and complex systems theories.68 They
take from particle physics the instability of objects, as all objects consist of
smaller entities all the way to subatomic particles and smaller, and they take
that all objects are in a constant state of flux in response to the movement of
like entities. In addition, these theories draw on chaos and complexity theories,
which depict the world as a constant dynamic process of ‘an intricate filigree of
relationships’ that is described as self-­organizing (with both positive/reinforcing
and negative/adapting feedback mechanisms), intersectional, multiscalar and, in
the case of chaos theory, nonlinear.69 Basically, new materialism moves past
‘fixed’ material objects to constantly interacting, shifting and mobile objects and
their relative durability.
Second, they all share a move from epistemology to ontology and the ques-
tion of how things become.70 The focus lies not on matter itself but on how
things materialize. New materialists approach this by assuming that materializa-
tion takes place through self-­organization, in a pluripotential, multiscalar and
multidimensional form of actual and virtual agency.71 Third, this ‘more-­than-
human mode of enquiry’ rejects any totalizing ‘overly theoretical, formal
approaches’.72 For new materialist everything is local. Hence, they not only
question radical constructivist theories, with their focus on social structures,
norms and rules, but also deterministic positivist research, like statistics, where
everything is subsumed under the logics of theory and methodology.73 Fourth, to
study such an ontology these scholars shift their epistemology from a focus on
discourse and material objects towards practices and relational affects in order
to highlight the relationality between more-­than-human entities.74 They posi-
tion themselves thus in-­between discourse and material objects by studying the
practices and relations that enable the existence of both. To repeat, these shifts
together do not mean that new materialism scholars reject the main critique of
constructivists on positivist materialist studies.75 On the contrary, fifth, they
actually build on it, through something that Whatmore calls the shift from a
‘politics of identity to a politics of knowledge’76 and Mol introduced as ‘onto-
logical politics’, which she describes by arguing that:

If the term ‘ontology’ is combined with that of ‘politics’ then this suggests
that the conditions of possibility are not given. That reality does not
precede the mundane practices in which we interact with it, but is rather
shaped within these practices. So the term politics works to underline this
active mode, this process of shaping, and the fact that its character is both
open and contested.77

This fifth move draws attention to the idea that in a more-­than-human world
the questions what something is and who exactly acts (and through what)
126   The materialization of energy security
become two very political questions with strong ethical connotations as they
touch upon notions of responsibility and accountability. When every explana-
tion (knowledge) of an event is seen as a potential closure that fixates particular
material and social subjectivities, structures and power relations, they are con-
stantly open to critique.
New materialism is not the only theoretical work that sees the world as an
open and dynamic system devoid of inert objects. For example, the chapter on
security already described risk and resilience with their sense of vulnerability. In
addition, much of the literature on natural resources has shifted towards system
approaches (e.g. energy systems or food systems) based on infrastructure,
logistics or (political) ecological understandings of anthropocentrism. In a time
when humankind dominates its environment, many of these theories highlight
its smallness and note that humans are only a part of the total system. Dillon
and Reid describe this posthuman position as a shift from a world that is com-
plicated to a world that is complex: where complicated worlds can be ‘reduced’
and ‘simplified’, complex worlds can only be ‘embraced’ and ‘orchestrated’.78
Moreover, in such a complex relational perspective, agency and causality are
dispersed, mediated and thus no longer as predictable as once imagined.79

5.3.2 When matter matters

Before discussing the relational ontology of new materialism, it is useful to take
a closer look at what we mean by matter or the material, not because it will
miraculously solve these long-­standing debates but, as Dolphijn and Van der
Tuin make clear above, because the nature/culture dualism itself is something
that is formed in and through people’s everyday use.80 Consequently, we should
be aware of how the use of a term like materiality actually constitutes such
differences. This is taken up below through three different readings of the
meaning of matter, which range from a negative definition, via a substantive
meaning of matter, to an interpretation of matter as a verb, and ends with a
brief reflection on the instrumentalist and deterministic approaches to artefacts.
First, an easy way to circumvent any discussion on the precise meaning of
matter is to turn the question around and define the material by claiming that it
is everything non-­social. But then, is there anything like that? And what pre-
cisely is meant by the social? Dolwick, a maritime archaeologist, clearly
struggled with similar questions on the relations between matter (in particular
human-­constructed artefacts) and the social, and approached them from soci-
ology. In his overview of social theories, Dolwick starts with a brief description
of three broad, inherently limited and heavily contested categories of ‘the
social’.81 The first and broadest definition describes the social as associations
between relational objects (e.g. ANT’s heterogeneous networks of relations;
Pickering’s mangles of practice; Barad’s materialdiscursive entanglements).
More limited is the definition of the social seen purely as ‘humans-­among-
themselves’, thus entering the Cartesian dualism with its agent structure debates
and focus on the creation of meaning. Lastly, and most narrow, is a definition
 The materialization of energy security   127
focused on social structures or social facts. In this definition, the social is bereft of
agency (a position most often taken in empirical postpositivist IR research).82
What becomes clear from Dolwick’s overview is that the distinction is not
natural and basically that a negative definition does not work. These different
explanations of the ‘social’ indicate that it is up to the observer to define what is
social and what is not social, thus reinforcing the epistemological argument of
the linguistic turn. It also confirms that only an interpretation of the social in
terms of associations allows new materialist to escape this fallacy.
Second, a similar discussion on the concept of matter leads to a differenti-
ation between a substantive definition of matter and a socially engaged value
judgement about what matters. The substantive definition of matter builds on a
difference between the interchangeably used terms matter, the material, materi-
ality and materialization. Matter can be defined as something that occupies
space and consists out of mass (atoms, particles, energy). The material is a term
used to describe something made out of matter, when matter is reworked in
different substances or elements. In turn, materialization describes the process of
turning, shaping, enacting or creating material objects from social practices and
ideas. Lastly, the concept of materiality stands for the theoretical and ontological
position that claims that matter exists outside of human sensory observation.
These different aspects of matter clearly show the complexity of matter, one
that is further confused by the shifting links between materiality and terms like
foundationalism (e.g. unquestioned basic beliefs that justify other beliefs,
whether defined as brute material facts or social facts), essentialism (that all
entities, social or material, contain a specific set of attributes) or naturalism
(that everything can be explained in terms of natural causes and laws).83
Third, in addition to these meanings of matter, what matters as well is an
understanding of mattering: the value judgement that some things are more
important. Of course, mattering can be explained anthropocentrically, when for
instance things matter because people desire them (scarce resources) or because
they give cause for concern and are undesired (security). However, such a social
explanation only tells half of the story. It neglects whether the material matters
because it cannot be influenced as it exists independently and lies outside of ‘us
humans’ (a Cartesian argument) or whether it matters because the material is
more durable, because it is too hard to change (a relational or relative argu-
ment). New materialists combine exactly these two points, for example when
Ahmed describes matter by arguing that ‘what matters is itself an effect of prox-
imities: we are touched by what comes near, just as what comes near is affected
by directions we have already taken’.84 New materialist scholars thus study the
things that matter based on a combination of the matter outside of humans and
how it matters relationally for the object in question, how it inhibits and struc-
tures action, threatens one’s existence or contains desirable qualities worth
obtaining. More than that, with the attention to nearness new materialist
scholars argue in line with Deleuze that what matters ‘is always a practical
problem, never a universal problem mattering for everybody’.85 For new materi-
alists everything is local, always.
128   The materialization of energy security
A last aspect worth mentioning in this respect is the role of technology and
artefacts as the materialized bridge between the social and matter. As a bridge,
Winner described technology or artefacts already in the 1980s as being ‘by their
very nature political in a specific way’.86 Winner was one of the first to write
about the active politics of artefacts (including infrastructure), which he
described in two ways: either artefacts matter because of the explicit political
effects of technology, or artefacts matter owing to the particular ingrained polit-
ical organization that is necessary for the technology in question to come into
existence. Winner highlighted the explicit political effects of technology with
the example of the bridges to Long Island, New York.87 Designed at a specific
height and width, these bridges prevented buses from reaching the island. With
personal automobile ownership and use prevalent for whites, these bridges,
through their design in that socio-­economic context, prevented non-­whites
from reaching the island. The design and construction thus had a political
effect. Other examples discussed by Winner include the neglected access to
transport and other facilities for people with a disability or the deliberate con-
struction of labour replacing machinery to limit the influence of labour unions.
As he summarizes:

Consciously or not, deliberately or inadvertently, societies choose structures

for technologies that influence how people are going to work, communicate,
travel, consume, and so forth over a very long time.88

While these examples rest on a (conscious) political choice at the initiation of

the technology, Winner also touches on the ingrained political organization of
artefacts by highlighting the prerequired political and social relations necessary
for the technology to exist in the first place. He explains, for example, how
nuclear energy requires a knowledgeable and capital-­intensive elite as well as an
administrative hierarchy to be able to build and steer a nuclear infrastructure in
the first place. Of course, once constructed, the existence of the infrastructure
reinforces the positions of these elites.
In contrast to Winner’s argument, technology today is mainly discussed in
non-­political terms as either substantive (deterministic) or instrumental.89 Of
these two perspectives, Bourne argues that the instrumental view on technology
‘predominate[s] in western political and social thought’, where it is seen as a
‘neutral tool’.90 As a tool, its use and social impact is determined not by the
technology itself but by the people that use it within their social relations. A
deterministic perspective disagrees with this instrumentality and views techno-
logy as the determining independent factor that shapes social relations and sets
the context of human action.91 On its own a deterministic argument is clearly
overstated, as technology is designed and thus political. However, for McCarthy
a small nuance makes technological determinism more viable than instrumen-
talism because for him they are relative as he argues that ‘it is not that techno-
logy develops outside of human agency, but that it develops outside of some
humans’ agencies’.92 What McCarthy argues is that technological determinism
 The materialization of energy security   129
exist the moment one looks at the relations between societies spread over time
and space.93 The European use of gunpowder and navigation techniques are an
obvious example, just as drone warfare is both an American political choice on
the use of an instrumental technique and a determining factor in the life of
many in Central Asia.

5.3.3 Towards the performativity of new materialism

The deterministic perspective is not only viable based on the plain technolo-
gical dominance of one group over another. McCarthy also discusses the social
and institutional norms that come with such a material dominance and discusses
these as a major source of power that determine the life of those distanced from
the technological innovation and its decision-­making process itself.94 With gun-
powder and navigation came perceptions and norms on mathematics, account-
ing and investment, just as the American drones are accompanied with rules
about proper civil behaviour and (debatable) ideas of justice and security.
It is possible to (re)turn from the discussion on technology to the politics of
matter with the help of Butler, who makes a similar claim as McCarthy on a
very individual and bodily level when she writes:

Of course, persons use technological instruments, but instruments surely

also use persons (position them, endow them with perspective, establish the
trajectory of their action); they frame and form anyone who enters into the
visual or audible field, and, accordingly, those who do not.95

In a way, both McCarthy and Butler highlight that it is not a neutral affair to
describe technology in terms of determinism or instrumentalism. Any analysis
starting from these positions becomes pre-­structured and directs the focus of the
scholar involved. Importantly, these predetermined positions close off any
potential analysis of the actual interaction of matter and social.96 This is a
similar point to the general criticism of Barad on positivist and postpositivist
studies, when she argues that ‘the nature/culture dualism foreclose[s] the under-
standing of how “nature” and “culture” are formed’ in the first place.97 In other
words, for Barad the driving question is not so much whether the social or the
material matter – in fact, not even whether the social and the material matter –
but ‘how matter comes to matter’.98
This question opens the analysis to both sides of the mind/body dialectic. It
studies how matter changes and sediments social understandings, but it also
studies how language plays a role in making sense of matter. Simultaneously, it
moves away from postpositivist understandings of deconstruction and construc-
tion. For new materialists the goal is not to deconstruct issues and open them to
critique and reconstruction.99 Instead, they move the speech act literature back
to its original starting point on acts (in line with Section 4.4) and thereby
include not only explicit and exceptional speech acts but also the distinctions
and delimitations implicit in ordinary language use.100 In addition, the act is
130   The materialization of energy security
extended to include things not speech-­related, like human behaviour, bodily
actions and cause and effect relationships. The concept developed by Butler to
describe this is performativity.
Importantly, in Butler’s original introduction to performativity in 1993, the
concept is not taken to include non-­linguistic acts. For Butler, performativity
‘must be understood not as a singular or deliberate “act,” but, rather, as the reit-
erative and citational practice by which discourse produces the effects that it
names’.101 The act that Butler describes is one based on discourse that produces
an ontological effect as it materializes and brings into reality the social effects
that follow from the discursive delimitations behind the repetition and reitera-
tion of previous practices; it ‘decides, as it were, what will and will not be the
stuff of the object to which we then refer’.102 Performativity is the ‘process of
materialization that stabilizes over time to produce the effect of boundary, fixity, and
surface we call matter’.103 For Butler, performativity highlights what discourse
does to the non-­discursive. At the same time, its constant reiteration unlocks
the potential failure that is inherent to performativity by highlighting a contex-
tualized process where things only exist in the moment. Performativity is inher-
ently incomplete, even when materialized or codified (in contrast to theoretical
explanations of society).104 Part of this incompleteness stems from the material-
ity itself, as bodies and matter resist the ascription of discourse.105 A body is
never shaped by discourse but it is normalized by it and forms itself in line with
its historical social and material evolution. This productive normalization is
something Butler takes from Foucault and leads her to define materiality as
‘designat[ing] a certain effect of power or, rather, [as] power in its formative or
constituting effects’.106
Where Butler remains focused on discourse and the materialization it initi-
ates, others, including Latour and his colleagues from ANT as well as Barad,
broaden this idea of performativity. These scholars try to move away from a
human-­centred approach by opening up their ontology to the actions of matter
itself. They do so by building on the relationality that is inherent in Butler’s
(and Foucault’s) performativity. Contrary to Butler, however, these authors
push the argument by officially moving away from a preference of discourse to
the entangled relationships that shape objects. These relations include the rela-
tion between humans and between minds and bodies (discourse/non-­discursive),
but also the interactions or cause–effect relationships between material ele-
ments. In allowing for interaction outside and in addition to discourse, these
new materialists claim to move beyond Butler’s understanding of performativity.
An interesting performative example that details such a relational under-
standing is Bennett’s analysis of the August 2003 north-­east American electri-
city blackout.107 Her discussion of this massive blackout that affected over fifty
million people highlights not only a – quite literal – relational analysis, but also
discusses the manageability of such assemblages and the ingrained ethical ques-
tions that such an approach calls for. Bennett herself describes the blackout as
‘the end point of a cascade—of voltage collapses, self-­protective withdrawals
from the grid, and human decisions and omissions’.108 While she concludes that
 The materialization of energy security   131
the investigators tasked with studying the blackout had no idea what stopped
the cascade,109 she analyses in detail their conclusions on the accumulation of
(unrelated) factors that contributed to it. As Bennett summarizes the official
report:

The U.S.–Canada Task Force report was more confident about how the
cascade began, insisting that there were a variety of agential loci. These
include electricity, with its internal differentiation into ‘active’ and
‘reactive’ power …; the power plants, which are understaffed by humans
but overprotective in their mechanisms; the wires of transmission lines,
which tolerate only so much heat before they refuse to transmit the elec-
tron flow; the brush fire in Ohio underneath a transmission line; FirstEnergy
and other energy-­trading corporations, who, by legal and illegal means, had
been milking the grid without maintaining its infrastructure; consumers,
whose demand for electricity is encouraged to grow without concern for
consequences; and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, whose
Energy Policy Act of 1992 deregulated the grid, separated the generation of
electricity from its transmission and distribution, and advanced the privati-
zation of electricity.110

This assemblage of factors led to a situation where the stress on the grid
increased in a matter of minutes and kept increasing with each of the power
plants that withdrew from the grid, as each of them added to the strain and in
turn activated the alarms of other power plants. At the end of the cascade, more
than 100 power plants had initiated their automatic safety and shutdown
procedures.
Most interesting for Bennett about this cascade is the fact that it is imposs-
ible to account it to human agency alone. This is not to say that humans played
no role at all. In fact, Bennett is quite adamant that humans most definitely
played a role in the blackout through their capitalist behaviour in the – in hind-
sight – faulty regulated and liberalized electricity markets. However, in addition
to the automatic safety systems, Bennett also highlights the agentic capacity of
the electricity flow itself, a flow which spontaneously shifted its direction after
several transmission lines broke down and thereby strained the grid in ways it
had not experienced before.111 For Bennett, such a distributed agency calls for
an equally distributed accountability, and hence for an ethics that is ‘detached
from moralism’ and a ‘politics of blame’ as both of these are human-­focused.112
In fact, Bennett argues that responsibility and accountability in events like the
blackout should be approached in terms of a choice. Pending the political or
social need, it becomes a judgement to either acknowledge a distributed
accountability or hold only humans accountable.
In sum, in the rejection of a sole focus on language and discourse, new mate-
rialist scholars are trying to study the actual relationship between the social and
the material, by moving away from human-­centred analyses and asking how
matter comes to matter. For this, they use a local and relational ontology that
132   The materialization of energy security
allows them to study the materialization of relationships between humans,
matter, discourse and so forth. They study the becoming or enactment of new
sets of relationships, by taking a performative approach that looks at these rela-
tionships irrespective whether their origin is social or material. In other words,
they place the material on an equal footing with the discursive, as in Bennett’s
example. Interestingly, they still separate the material and social analytically,
and they are unable to study these ontological politics without referring to
knowledge and language. In addition, as discussed below, while new materialism
has the tools to describe and observe new relationships from both sides of the
materialdiscursive assemblage, that is all it can do. It is an approach that does
not hypothesize the reasons why people and objects do things and it has trouble
explaining change as it can only describe what the relationships do and how
they do it.

5.4 Relational ontologies and the question of change

5.4.1 The relational ontology of actor-­networks

Building on that, three elements of Bennett’s example touch on the question
where change comes from. These include the relationality of the different inter-
acting nodes of the electricity grid, the surprise of unintended material effects
and the ethics behind the question of accountability. This first section will
introduce a Latourian version of ANT to further study the ontological relation-
ality of new materialism. The second section discusses the critique that is levied
against ANT in relation to the source of change and the last section will trans-
late this back to the broader new materialist literature by focusing on the unin-
tended material effects.
Actor-­network theory stems from the work of Latour, Law, Callon and Mol
within STS.113 ANT is arguably the most popular of the new materialist
approaches within the social sciences owing to its highly empirical framework
around a network metaphor that studies the relations and traces between the
nodes in that network, while offering explanations for its durability and inher-
ent political effects. The core reason behind ANT’s rejection of a sole focus on
language rests upon the broadly shared observation that the material is vital as
an ordering principle for society, in other words that it is the material that helps
order societies. Latour gives the example of a group of chimpanzees that is con-
stantly touching, fleaing and performing other niceties, not because they like it
but because they lack the use of materials and, as a result, are constantly in need
to (re)constitute their ‘decaying’ society and its hierarchical relations.114
The materialization of social effects in durable material artefacts is not
unique to ANT. Miller, working from a (historic) anthropologic orientation on
the theory of material culture, combines precisely this insight of sedimentation
with a ‘humility of things’ and what Latour describes as ‘black boxing’, namely
the argument that artefacts constantly shift in and out of focus and that the
most unobserved artefact is, in fact, the one that influences humans the most.115
 The materialization of energy security   133
However, before things can shift in and out of focus, Miller claims that these
objects (and subjects) should have gone through a process of ‘objectification’.116
This is based on Hegel’s insight that, in the words of Miller, ‘everything that we
are and do arises out of the reflection upon ourselves given by the mirror image
of the process by which we create form and are created by this same process’.117
Rephrased, he argues that humans can only know themselves when they look in
the ‘material mirror’ of ‘the historical world created by those who lived before
us’.118 A mirror that comes to us in the form of material culture. For Miller,
historical ideas and intentions (social agency) are sedimented through an objec-
tification in the material, after which the material object shifts in and out of
focus and through its connections with other objects is able to extend a limited
agency of its own.119 While Latour agrees with Miller that the social is inscribed
into the material and that ideas need materialization, he questions the assump-
tion of material culture that only humans can be agents. Because then ‘objects
… would be simply connected to one another so as to form a homogeneous layer,
a configuration that is even less likely than one which imagines humans linked
to one another by nothing else than social ties’.120 Instead, Latour sees people
witnessing a wide range of hybrid quasi-­objects, objects that are material, social,
human and non-­human and that do things which are often overlooked and fluc-
tuating depending on the phenomena in question.121
This realization, that scholars will never really know ‘who or what’ is acting
if they do not first question this explicitly, is the basic premise of ANT.122
Latour argues in this respect that:

The task of defining and ordering the social should be left to the actors
themselves, not taken up by the analyst. This is why, to regain some sense
of order, the best solution is to trace connections between the controversies
themselves rather than try to decide how to settle any given controversy.123

In order to trace the connections, ANT envisions (1) a relational network of

nodes that exhibits heterogeneous and rhizomatic qualities.124 Each of these
nodes are actor-­networks in themselves and consist of subsequent nodes and
relations, which in turn are networks of shifting associations, and so on. To be
able to study these sets of actor-­networks without any a priori assumptions on
how the relations look like ANT (2) assumes them to be irreducible and flat.125
All actor-­networks are irreducible (different) from any other actor-­network.
And because the nodes can never be explained by something larger (because
then they would be vertically reducible), the ontology of these networks is flat
in Whitehead’s sense that all entities have an identical (horizontal) ontological
standing, which in practice means that the smallest atom can be as important as
the largest set of human economic relations.126
While ANT talks about actor-­networks, it does not envision these nodes as
human actors but instead (3) prefers the posthuman term ‘actants’. For ANT,
the term actor is not only too human, but it also hides the real set of relations
that make the action possible in the first place.127 An actor never acts alone, or,
134   The materialization of energy security
as Tuana describes it, ‘agency in all these instances emerges out of such inter-
actions; it is not antecedent to them’.128 To get behind the figurehead of the
actor and get to the action itself, ANT introduces the term actants, which ‘are
simply different ways to make actors do things’ irrespective of whether they are
social or material, human or non-­human, micro or macro.129 An actant does not
need motivation, willpower or rationality (which differentiates humans from
animals) and it is neither object nor subject; instead, an actant ‘is that which
does something, has sufficient coherence to perform actions, produce effects,
and alter situations’.130 Like the overall network, each actant in turn is an
assemblage of a range of associations in itself. These assemblages are constantly
shifting, one moment closing old relations and the next entering into new ones.
While ANT sees actants as irreducible and flat to begin with, it does allow for
differences in power: the more associations an actant has, the stronger it can
affect its surroundings and the more real it appears.131
However, an observer can only witness the effects and strength of an actant
if (4) the actant accounts for itself by leaving a mark or trace upon another
actor-­network. Here ANT (5) differentiates between mediators and intermedi-
aries. On the one hand, an intermediary is an actant who offers a highly predict-
able causal relation as it ‘transports meaning or force without transformation’.132
For example, writing a paper depends on many factors, most of which the author
is not aware as these factors (6) have withdrawn from sight and are black boxed.
These intermediaries do not make a difference. That is, until they break down,
as all heterogeneous networks inherently fail at some point. Then suddenly an
unobserved object becomes a thing: the computer could break down owing to a
power surge, a software glitch or a corrupt hard drive, or the author could
develop RSI as the result from a cheap office chair etc. In each case, the ‘black
box’ of the intermediary normally working components are opened up and
matters of fact become matters of concern.133 For ANT, all intermediaries can
transform into mediators, which ‘transform, translate, distort, and modify the
meaning or the elements they are supposed to carry’.134 At that moment of
translation from input to output, mediators leave a trace. More importantly,
they shape reality as ‘they make each other be’.135 However, mediators can only
transform into intermediaries when they are transformed or translated by the
effects of other mediators. Humans are no different. As actants (e.g. based upon
both human and non-­human relations), they often use specific mediators (tools
of observation, like a microscope) to get intermediaries (viruses) ‘to talk’.136
ANT searches for these translations, as these, no matter how big or small, hint
at the actual associations and agency that make up our world.137
In an early reflection on ANT, Law summarized these traces into three
different strategies. The first strategy deals with ordering through time with prac-
tices of inscription and sedimentation (durability). The second strategy deals
with ordering through space by enabling action and communication at a dis-
tance (ANT’s ‘immutable mobiles’ – letters, ships etc.). Third, Law discusses a
strategy of translation based on practices of anticipation, an anticipation of
future relations, which he primarily describes in terms of calculative practices
 The materialization of energy security   135
(compare with Chapters 4 and 6).138 For ANT, all these traces are material.
Even knowledge is considered a collection of material traces because ‘it comes
as talk, or conference presentations. Or it appears in papers, preprints or patents.
Or again, it appears in the form of skills embodied in scientists and techni-
cians’139 Simultaneously, Latour enforces that all ANT scholarly work comes as
a textual account of a set of relations of a heterogeneous network.140 Where
ANT differs from other theoretical explanatory accounts in the social sciences
with its descriptive tracing of relationships is in the accuracy it provides. But to
do so it has to accept a greater level of uncertainty:

An account which accepts to be ‘just a story’ is an account that has lost its
main source of uncertainty: it does not fret any longer at being accurate,
faithful, interesting, or objective.… In a bad text only a handful of actors
will be designated as the causes of all the others.141

Latour refers here to the idea of capitalism. He does not deny that capitalism
exists but argues that one can only truly study it by tracing its local relations,
which in this case means starting with the Wall Street trading rooms and house-
hold budgets decided on at kitchen tables.142
In other words, for ANT scholars, the idea of society or social explanations
like norms, social facts or a concept as scarcity or energy security do more harm
than good because they close off an understanding of what is really going on.
Latour is quite strong on this and criticizes social scientists, who, instead of pro-
viding ‘powerful explanations’, are engaging in the politics of the situation they
describe by freezing ‘the entities already mobilized to render asymmetries longer
lasting’.143 Instead, ANT scholars argue in favour of a better examination of the
construction of social events, one that acknowledges that things can always
fail.144 Because when everything is based on inherently fragile heterogeneous
networks and their mediators, ‘the dichotomy between the real and the con-
structed is, like all dichotomies, a false one’.145 Instead, the question becomes
one of stability or how well things are constructed and performed.146

5.4.2 The missing virtuality in ANT

One of the most interesting and thorough arguments against this Latourian
version of ANT is made by the philosopher Harman in his argument for an
object-­oriented philosophy (OOP), which basically states that ANT is unable
to explain the origin of change.147 By placing ANT in perspective with other
posthumanist philosophers, Harman identifies a renewed attention to the classic
problem of ‘isolation and interbleeding of individual things’.148 In particular, he
questions Latour’s paradoxical claim of ‘action at a distance’: that actants are
simultaneously irreducible to other actants, both large and small, but nonethe-
less able to act and affect each other. For Harman, to be irreducible is to have
distance, while to affect something requires a sense of nearness, a connection of
sorts.149 As described above, Latour and ANT offer translation (by mediators)
136   The materialization of energy security
and abstraction (black boxing) as an answer to this dilemma. According to
Harman, however, such a networked position results in actants who are always
present, and as they are always visible they cannot hide and thus have no
essence.150
By denying actants any form of essence, ANT faces ‘an infinite regress of
actors’ as each network consists of actants, consisting of networks, consisting of
actants etc.151 In this respect, Fine questions the observational arbitrariness
behind what counts as part of a heterogeneous network. If there is always a
larger or smaller network, then the observer actively takes position when they
decide to stop studying the rest of the network.152 In turn, for Harman this lack
of essence means that ANT only studies actual states of affairs and that Latour
theoretically is unable to account for change as he rejects any form of potential-
ity: all relations that can take place do take place.153 Latour is unable to account
for that moment when an actant’s ‘alliances shift’, because at that same moment
‘by definition the actor has changed’.154 One consequence of such an actuality is
a tendency within ANT and other network approaches to favour those relations
that can be observed and measured most easily and thereby offer an illusion of
manageability.155 In line with this, Harman argues that Latour is unable to
explain the reality of ‘buffered causation’, that not all relations are entered the
moment that they can be made.156
To counter the infinite regress in ANT, Harman proposes a perspective that
builds on ‘an absolute distinction between the domestic relations that a thing
needs in order to exist, and the external alliances that it does not need. But the
actor itself cannot be identified with either’.157 When matter is depicted as some-
thing firm and hard, people do not refer to an essential characteristic of the
object but to its relational qualities: something is hard or intelligent only in rela-
tion to that which is not. In Harman’s view, most of his points could be answered
by taking Latour’s metaphysics of actor-­networks and adding the distinction
between internal relations and external relational qualities to the insight that
actants are able to enter a relation through the core of a mediator.158
The precise argumentation of Herman is dense and will not be reproduced
here. Of interest here is the fact that in his more recent work Latour accepts
Harman’s argument and steps away from his earlier claims of irreduction, that
no actant is reducible to another, while admitting that ANT has no way to
study trajectories.159 Before that, Latour offered his view of networks against a
background of unarticulated plasma as a way to explain change in ANT.160 This
plasma represented the potentiality of the network and filled the empty spaces
between the nodes and the connections. Farías criticizes this move in a similar
fashion as Latour criticizes social sciences: in shifting to a base plasma of virtual-
ity that is ‘interrupted’ by the actual relations that take effect, Latour creates an
a priori asymmetry that only explains where change comes from and not how
the virtual becomes actual.161 Interestingly, this brings this section back to the
beginning of the chapter as Farías and Bryant below offer an alternative inter-
pretation of change (the actualization of virtuality) and return to Luhmann and
Derrida and their focus on differences.
 The materialization of energy security   137
On the one hand, Farías turns to Luhmann’s systems of communication,
which he describes as irreducible par excellence and thus comparable to Latour’s
actor-­networks.162 What Farías likes in particular is the self-­referentiality of Luh-
mann’s systems and how they make sense of their own environment (their vir-
tuality according to Farías) and subsequently differentiate themselves from that
environment and make themselves actual. He sees each node (actant) as a
system of relations (actant-­networks) that observes the other nodes (actant-­
networks) and differentiates itself from it.
Alternatively the philosopher Bryant proposes an ontic principle that states
that ‘there is no difference that does not make a difference’ and that ‘to be is to
make or produce differences’.163 This has some major consequences, because if
everything results from difference, than nothing can be traced back to a pure
origin and you can only be sure of your knowledge if you actively engage with
the differences.164 Similarly to ANT, Bryant argues that such an ontic position
leads to a posthuman (all beings differ), irreducible (because beings differ they
are irreducible) and flat ontology (all beings differ and are thus equal) where
scholars have to trace translations (that relations are actively made) and need
to be careful in providing ‘hegemonic’ explanations (that one difference
explains all).165 Contrary to ANT, however, Bryant agrees with Harman as he
too observes that ‘objects persist through time while nonetheless undergoing
change at the level of their qualities’.166 Hence, he too separates the endogenous
relations of an object from its exogenous relations. In contrast to Harman,
however, Bryant looks at topologies of inter-­ontic relations that constrain indi-
vidual actants.167 By this Bryant refers to the observation that beings often share
endogenous relations, independent of any actual relations between the objects.
These inter-­ontic relations are forced on objects by a larger topology (Bryant
gives the example of gravity, which creates a shared need for skeletons). For
Bryant, the possibility for change, the virtual, is limited to the space between
these inter-­ontic topologies and the capacity to act or be acted upon, as only
the latter actualizes a virtual relationship. Change, in Bryant’s work, stems from
the idea that not all effects are always actualized nor that all actualizations bring
new effects, but that the material conditions of possibility are pre-­structured by
the virtual and actual relations of actants and their topologies.
The discussion in this section, with Latour, Harman and Bryant, is dense,
highly abstract and hard to summarize. The reason why it is included in this
book on energy security is twofold. First, the above shows that the question of
stability and change – already difficult when looking only at the material or the
linguistic – becomes even harder when change can come from everywhere and
one loses the stability of a clear dominant social or material explanation. In
other words, in line with the proliferation of energy security, it offers a potential
way to approach energy security when the latter is taken as a truly empty
concept, without favouring the material or the linguistic elements of energy and
energy security. And, second, it clearly links to another aspect within the
chapter on security, namely the discussion of the event, where the event was
interpreted with terms like the surprise and contingency, both terms denoting
138   The materialization of energy security
change and stability and the ontological politics that interpret and shape these
events. The next section continues this discussion in a form that is less abstract
and more focused on the event itself.

5.4.3 An eventful folding

The virtual ontology that the performative theories above try to describe with
their metatheoretical discussions about networks of relations is more generally
known in new materialism as the ‘vibrancy of matter’:168

Materiality is always something more than ‘mere’ matter: an excess, force,

vitality, relationality, or difference that renders matter active, self-­creative,
productive, unpredictable.169

Neither mechanistic nor reducible, this vibrant materialism envisions a world of

becoming.170 In a relational ontology this points to the ‘uncertain exchanges
between stabilized formations and mobile forces that subsist within and below
them’.171 This vibrancy is something that a more traditional Cartesian under-
standing of matter would never be able to tackle. Matter in a Cartesian dualist
worldview is, according to Coole, ‘sheer exteriority’ and as such ‘devoid of inte-
riority or ontological depth. It is without qualities like color or smell … without
dark recesses, crevices, or hollows … unaffected by time or negativity.… It is
inert stuff emptied of all immanent vitality.’172 Cartesian matter is observable in
its causality as it ‘tends to determination; it gives itself up to calculation, preci-
sion, and spatizalization’.173 But the above shows that matter does not behave
like that, as it constantly changes and stabilizes.
Furthermore, matter and ‘things are not just simultaneously material and
meaningful; they are also eventful’.174 New materialists interpret the event as
that what interrupts the habits and routines that make up subjects as well as the
withdrawal of objects from its active relations.175 An event is the break with
habit (Chapter 4). That what starts mattering, not because of any a priori
socially provided interests but because:

it gives to that something a power it does not generally possess: the power
to cause us to think, feel and wonder, the power to have us wondering how
practically to relate to it, how to pose relevant questions about it.176

Events actually can be perceived in two ways. First, an event is the surprise (e.g.
something in need of interpretation). Connolly describes an event in this
respect as something that:

Happens rather rapidly; it throws some regular institutions and role defini-
tions into turmoil or disarray; its antecedents often seem insufficient to
explain its emergence and amplifications; its settlement, when under way,
is uncertain; and it makes a real difference in the world, for good or ill.177
 The materialization of energy security   139
As a surprise, an event often emerges as a failure or a breakdown that transforms
a matter of fact into a matter of concern.178 Barry, for example, is interested in
the manner in which the corrosion of the metals of an oil pipeline ignites a
political debate, sometimes even constituting a public that was not there
before.179 Second, Latour also talks about the event in terms of an achievement.
In this interpretation, events are seen as successful practices of observation, as
the achievement to observe and ascribe meaning to a phenomenon that has
never been observed before.180 For Latour, this is an event because it achieves to
connect two previously unlinked objects, thereby creating ‘new possibilities and
new questions for the concerned parties’.181 Defining events in terms of surprise
and achievement thus very much depends on one’s perspective. For instance,
the breakdown of a pipeline through corrosion is an achievement of the ele-
ments involved but a surprise for the people who depend on the pipeline.
Another way to indicate both the surprise and the achievement is by describ-
ing objects, including (post)humans, as folded entities. A fold (or assemblage)
refers to the manner in which an object bridges moments in space and time as
well as opening up additional actions for the user. Latour, when not discussing
the withdrawal or black boxing of objects, uses the example of a hammer to
show how such an object folds time (the history of iron, wood, production,
transport, use), space (mines, forests, factories, markets, homes) and the ‘flux of
possibilities’ that the hammer offers to its wielder (construction, weapon, orna-
ment).182 These folds are never static and always hide their own negation,
simply because something that can be folded can also be stretched, broken and
opened up. 183 The surprise of the inherent failure is countered by the achieve-
ment of the folding itself. Brassett and Vaughan-­Williams draw on Butler when
they describe this as ‘the performative politics of … attempted closures, which are
nevertheless already in excess of their own logic and give rise to unexpected,
unforeseen, and disruptive effects’.184 This separates new materialism once more
from strict constructivist approaches. According to new materialism, the habit-
ual and repetitive folding of sets of relations is based on fragile practices and not
on social norms or rules, as the latter do not allow for their own negation and
have to be resisted from the outside by another norm.185 Furthermore, these
practices enact or perform the actual reality of the folding itself, they ‘co-­
constitut[e] “subjects”, “objects” and “environments” ’186 This means that folds,
and the practices that create them, cannot be studied from a distance as any
observation is an act itself and affects the folded object.187
In short, this section offered an example of a new materialist, posthuman and
relational theory by introducing Latour’s ANT and how it deals with change
and stability. While discussing this theory and its assumptions, two things
became clear. First, specifically in relation to this theory, that the flat ontology
and irreducibility of actor-­networks prevent the theory from explaining change
and instead leave it open to a constant regress of actants. This follows, in part
because the theory is biased towards observable relations and provides no guid-
ance for observers on where to limit their research. The work of Farías and
Bryant offered an alternative, with their focus on differences as the answer to
140   The materialization of energy security
the question of virtuality. Both argue that these differences are performatively
given shape in and by the relations themselves, as these relationships observe
their own distinctions – either as a surprise or an achievement – in something
that the last section introduced as a practice of eventful folding. Second, more
generally, that all of this (1) extends the discussion on the surprising event in
the security chapter, (2) offers a materialdiscursive ontology that adds and con-
trasts to the socially oriented performative security theories, and (3) starts to
point to a more general shared performative notion of ontological politics and
the close connection between events, observation and assemblages. This is
taken up further in the next section.

5.5 The politics of observing with things

While the analysis above of a relational ontology paints a very technocratic and
descriptive picture of relations being entered and disrupted, such a perspective
runs the risk of forgetting the politics behind such disruptions, especially when
humans are involved.188 As soon as humans are involved, either as affected or
affecting party, ‘a host of ethical and political issues’ opens up. 189 A good
example of a situation of ontological uncertainty and the collapse of observation
and practice can be found in the many necessary real-­life experimentations
when introducing or transforming infrastructures and other technologies.190 The
environmental impact of wind turbines or the social effects of smart meters, let
alone the optimal configuration of a smart grid, can only be analysed when they
are build and utilized on scale. Meaning that people need to use them for others
to get to know them. On the one hand, this implies that to analyse the mate-
rialdiscursive consequences of an artefact in its totality, it is necessary to take
the risk to use it in its environmental and social context. And, on the other
hand, such an experimentation not only deflates any social/material dualistic
understanding but also deflates the distinction between experts and laypersons,
as those who use the technology are as much experts as those who are experts
in name.191 In other words, the excess potentiality of the materialdiscursive
collapses the distinction between observation and objects and opens up to
a politics of ontology, which deals with ‘the conditions of possibility [as]
enacted’.192
Someone who explicitly studies ontological politics is Barry in his work on
the BTC pipeline in the Caucasus.193 He focuses in particular on the knowledge
disputes surrounding the construction, maintenance and possible (environ-
mental) effects of this pipeline. While highlighting the materiality of the pipe-
line, its metal construction, landscape, route and environmental impacts, Barry
argues for a better understanding of the public knowledge controversies that
‘make things political’.194 He clearly agrees with the earlier claim of Barad that
it is not about matter, but about materialization and that what makes the
material matter. While acknowledging the instability of matter (its vibrancy)
and its ‘informational enrichment’ in case of alloys and metallurgy, matter is
analysed by Barry as something that enables and hinders, something that is
 The materialization of energy security   141
represented, debated and made public or not by and for humans.195 In other
words, for Barry matter is ultimately subject to human fears and desires.
Then again, contra Barry’s gas pipeline, it is possible to find ontological pol-
itics at work in cases without direct human involvement. For instance, Brassett
and Vaughan-­Williams analyse a posthuman informational-­enriched materiality
by analysing self-­learning sensors that are used in the protection of critical infra-
structure, in their case, natural fresh water filtration areas.196 With the self-­
correcting and improving accuracy of the database behind the motion and audio
sensors, Brassett and Vaughan-­Williams argue that in this case it is the infra-
structure itself (the sensors, databases, cables etc.) that is performing its own –
and our – security. The database raises the alarm, not after an activation of the
sensors but on whether the activity that is measured falls outside the scope of
its own historic irregular activities. It then adds that same measurement to
the database to be used next time that the sensors are activated. The database
and sensors act politically, based on the politics that is written into the program
by its designers who allow the program to define its own normality curve
(Section 4.5.5).
An alternative theory that allows for an active role of artefacts in relation to
knowledge is the agential realist theory of the physicist and feminist philosopher
Barad.197 What is remarkable regarding the theoretical perspectives so far, when
looking at ANT and OOO, is that in their choice for objects and relations they
all seem to start from continental philosophy. Barad, however, builds her argu-
ment on insights gained from quantum theory, especially the work of Niels
Bohr. Based on her combination of Bohr and postpositivist philosophy, Barad’s
theory starts from an ontology of phenomena in contrast to the relational ontol-
ogies discussed so far. This helps her to open the definition of materiality to a
politics of materialization and to argue for an extension of postmodern concerns
on the inseparability of ontology, epistemology and ethics.198 By addressing
ethics and arguing for an inseparability of these three concepts, Barad, first,
introduces a politics of materialization, and, second, by linking ethics to the
practices of observation introduces a radical different view on knowledge. In
contrast to ANT and other new materialist offerings, Barad sees objects playing
an important role in informing and determining what humans are capable of
knowing in the first place. She thus argues in favour of a theory of performativ-
ity that includes how discourse moderates the non-­discursive but also how
matter itself helps perform knowledge in a particular way.
Barad’s work leans heavily on Bohr’s insights concerning the so-­called
measurement problem in quantum theory. Physicists, after having shown that
subatomic particles can behave both as a wave (showing diffraction patterns)
and as a particle (taking up a particular position in space), concluded that it is
impossible for an observer to study both at the same time.199 The focus of the
observer, even retrospectively according to recent research as described by
Barad, determines whether they are witness to particle- or wave-­like behaviour.
The example used by Barad (and Bohr) to clarify this deals with the study of
momentum and position: to study momentum (speed and direction) the
142   The materialization of energy security
observer has to use a movable camera, while if an observer wants to study the
position of an object they can only do so from a fixed position. Momentum and
position are thus mutually exclusive phenomena; it is impossible to study them
both at the exact same time.200 Often this is described as Heisenberg’s uncer-
tainty principle, which sees the measurement problem as epistemological uncer-
tainty: it is impossible to know whether something is a wave or a particle. Barad,
however, shares Bohr’s understanding of the measurement problem in terms of
ontological indeterminacy. For Bohr, the measurement problem does not result
from epistemological uncertainty but from an ontological complementarity: the
world is ontologically inseparable, and that it is the observation and the theories
behind the observation that determine which properties in fact exist in the
world.201 Both wave and particle exist and we are simultaneously moving and in
position, only the observer dictates what exactly we are. From this follows the
main message that Barad tries to convene, that is to say Bohr’s lesson that ‘we
are part of that nature that we seek to understand’.202
Barad rephrases this Bohrian insight by arguing that the practice of observa-
tion should therefore be seen as an agential cut, a becoming of reality. While
the previous theories offered a range of core concepts like materialism, social
structures, language, systems of communication, hybrid forms or actor-­networks
of relations, Barad offers an ontology of phenomena as a way to include all pos-
sible realities that are delineated by this agential cut. In fact, Barad argues that
it is not so much the observer who makes the cut but that the materialdiscursive
practices themselves make the cut. The cut originates from the intra-­action
between all the ‘agencies of observation’: the observer, but also the tools, the
social structures and so on.203 Simultaneously, it creates its own agential separa-
bility, a separation between the ‘object’ and ‘agencies of observation’.204 In the
practice of observation, a causal relationship is enacted between the object (a
cause) and the effect or traces left on the agencies of observation (the subjects),
which in turn enables a logic of objectivity resembling scientific realism.205 The
origin of the cut is not a conscious choice but the result of a constant intra-­
acting between mutually constituting entangled agencies. (Barad prefers the
concept of intra-­acting to the concept of interacting, as the latter implies a rela-
tionship between two separate entities, while intra-­acting refers to two entities
within the same phenomena). These agencies are ongoing enactments and only
become distinct on a relational level: they never are and never will become
individual entities (owing to their ontological inseparability).206 Barad, however,
does distinguish between different intra-­actions that result in different phe-
nomena, just as she sees that a phenomenon can be part of other, larger
phenomena.
For Barad, these phenomena are real; what is more, she argues that they are
physical.207 She comes to this through her argument that ‘knowing does not
come from standing at a distance and representing but rather from a direct
material engagement with the world’.208 Claiming that either the discursive or the
material comes prior to the other is nonsensical, because the ontological insepa-
rability makes these concepts, like space and time, products of observation (à la
 The materialization of energy security   143
Latour). Instead the world is entangled and ‘the material and the discursive are
mutually implicated in the dynamics of intra-­activity’.209 At this point Barad
redefines what we understand as the discursive and material. In line with post-
positivist scholars, she sees discourse losing its meaning without ongoing use.
However, contra those scholars she reinterprets discursive practices in line with
Butler and Bryant as ‘material (re)configurings of the world through which the
determination of boundaries, properties, and meanings is differentially
enacted’.210 Simultaneously, she argues that ‘matter does not refer to a fixed sub-
stance; rather, matter is substance in its intra-­active becoming – not a thing but
a doing a congealing of agency.… “[M]atter” refers to phenomena in their
ongoing materialization.’211 For Barad, discourse is thus material, but matter does
not exist ‘out there’ and instead comes into being through its relations and
observations. Clearly, this latter position, on coming to matter by hiding the
cut, resembles the black boxing of ANT and the ‘humility of things’ form
material culture. This ontological inseparability of materialdiscursive practices
leads Barad to a world of entangled phenomena. A world open to both sides of
the ontological indeterminacy, where an iterative and intra-­acting process of
agential cuts enact particular materialdiscursive practices based on agential
separability.
Barad, like Luhmann and Bryant, thus searches for differences.212 To high-
light the agential cuts or the boundaries created through differentiation, she
proposes a method called diffractive reading. This method builds on diffraction
(patterns), a term used in the natural sciences to explain the effects of the inter-
action between waves, to show how differences create difference.213 For example,
when analysing energy security this would mean that one reads it through both
new materialist and security theories and in doing so find differences and new
insights at the crossing of both approaches. Another important implication of
her theory of entanglement relates to the inherent ethical consequences of
observational cuts:

what is on the other side of the agential cut is not separate from us –
agential separability is not individuation. Ethics is therefore not about
right response to a radically exterior/ized other, but about responsibility
and accountability for the lively relationalities of becoming of which we are
a part.214

With her example of the brittle star, a sea creature not to be confused with
the more popular sea star (brittle stars have snakelike arms), Barad clarifies both
the entanglement and ethics of observational ‘cuts’.215 First, there is the obser-
vation that a brittle star does not have eyes, nor does it have a brain. As such it
does not have the capacity for language, nor can its body be separated from its
mind (it has none). That said, a brittle star still reacts to differences in light
intensity and, above all, it can flee from its predators. Instead of eyes, brittle
stars have an extensive nerve system that makes their entire body act as one big
eye. Theoretically, this means that a brittle star is constantly intra-­acting with
144   The materialization of energy security
its environment: it does not separate between what it sees or what it thinks; it
just is. ‘For a brittle star, being and knowing, materiality and intelligibility, sub-
stance and form, entail one another.’216 In other words, a brittle star does not
face the Cartesian dualism intuitively ascribed to humans and (most other)
animals. A second interesting lesson from the brittle star is that it can break off
one of its arms when it is cornered by a predator. In terms of Barad’s theory, the
moment a brittle star observes a predator it is thus able to discursively redraw the
material boundary between itself and its environment. Sometimes these arms
still wriggle, an event that is often interpreted by human observers as a survival
technique. For Barad, such an interpretation would mean that the main body
and arm are still part of the same phenomenon, e.g. the original brittle star.
However, she argues that one could also see the arm as becoming an auto-
nomous living thing itself, especially in light of the observation that some brittle
stars reproduce by cloning their arms. As Barad concludes, in the end, ‘it’s all a
matter of where we place the cut’ that defines ‘what matters and what is excluded
from mattering’.217
In other words, through the act of observation differences emerge, phenomena
are enacted ‘and knowledge is produced about “subjects” and “objects” (and
“environments”)’.218 First, these cuts are never definitive. Any observation, like
ANT’s settlement of relations, is a simplification of a messy reality and is tempo-
rary as it incorporates its own demise.219 Second, these cuts are not only human-­
made. Barad in particular highlights the role instruments play when humans gain
knowledge, as when she discusses the piezoelectric transducer, a scanning device
used in ultrasonography.220 These and other observational devices often measure
only one thing (e.g. sound, light etc.) and a such play an active role in deciding
what is observed or not, especially when they stutter or break down. What is
more, people need particular skills to use them.221 Tools and tool use are both
part of the agential cut that is made. So, while all theoretical insights from new
materialism highlight their attentiveness to a vibrant material world, Barad, in
ascribing this role to observational tools, is most explicit in stating how tools and
objects actively influence not only other objects but our practices of knowledge
gathering as well. Third, in line with Bryant, these cuts are ontological and not
epistemological.222 They shape the world(s) in which people and things live,
because they engage and perform, not because they imagine.
Together, these three observations about cuts create a theoretical approach
that calls for a certain humility and perhaps even a sense of vulnerability of
humans. For if everything is both affected and affecting, then, as Butler states,
‘one’s life is always in some sense in the hands of the other’.223 Together with
Butler, Latour and other new materialists, Barad argues that we are responsible
for each other. Not in the sense of a responsibility towards the other, as in a
typical security relation, but in the sense of a responsibility for us both.224 Such
an encompassing responsibility thus explicitly includes, according to Tuana, a
responsibility for those ‘practices that account for not knowing’, those actively
‘ignored or rationalized’ accounts of issues like food insecurity or energy poverty.225
As Latour writes on the morality behind technology:
 The materialization of energy security   145
Between the gesture of switching on my computer and what I write on the
screen, I can either ignore the nuclear industry which enables me to work
this morning, or find myself immersed in the uncertain destiny of that same
industry which forces me to take account of the burial in deep silos of the
waste from its stations that the French do not support.226

To deal with this, Hekman offers the concept of disclosure to approach these set-
tlements (e.g. cuts, actants or assemblages). Based on a Baradian ontology and a
critical realist perspective on scientific research, Hekman proposes that the
concept of disclosure can ‘bring to light’ a variety of aspects and perspectives of
those settled phenomena/folds/assemblages that hide the differentiation and
cuts underneath them. None of these disclosed messy realities is more truthful
than the other, but, in a critical realist sense, Hekman does see them as materi-
ally braced and hence comparable on objective grounds.227 Alternatively, Bel-
lacasa introduces the ethical and more critical transformative duty for matters of
care, after Latour’s matters of fact and matters of concern.228 As she would have
it, to explain matters of fact or Barad’s agential cuts, one needs to explain them
with care by respecting all those involved in the observational cut and by giving
those who are silenced a voice – even if that means that in each instance obser-
vers actively have to choose for whom to care more (in line with Booth’s
positive security). Scholars are not only part of what they study but also play a
critical transformative role in a world of becoming.229
In closing, Hekman argues that Barad’s agential realism shows promise as it is
grounded in local experiences, collapses the material/social dichotomy, focuses
on boundaries and boundary drawing practices, and draws ethical conclusions
from practices of observation.230 This chapter can only confirm Hekman’s
summary but adds that Barad, in pushing for a materialdiscursive entanglement,
argues for an understanding of the politics of ‘materialisation and dematerialisa-
tion’.231 In other words, while it is impossible to separate the material from the
discursive and to observe without acting (humans and non-­humans), Barad calls
attention to the fact that it is mainly politics, broadly understood, that deals
with the virtuality of matter. Here we touch on a slightly paradoxical claim in
her argument, because, while she acknowledges the activity of tools to an extent
not seen elsewhere, she too discusses these politics overwhelmingly in terms of
observing scientists, as in the example of the brittle star. In the end, it seems
that Barad too refers back to humans, although no longer masters of the uni-
verse, as the core subjects wilfully reflecting and shaping the materialdiscursive
in their image.

5.6 Reflection
In response to the mostly sociolinguistic understandings of (energy) security
presented in the earlier chapters, this chapter drew attention to the materiality
of energy systems and subsequently examined the role and importance of matter
in relation to knowledge. At the heart of this chapter were three questions:
146   The materialization of energy security
(1) how the social and material relate in line of dominant social interpretations
that characterize security, (2) how these new materialist theories view our onto-
logy (e.g. how their theories approach social-­material relations and objects) and
(3) how they approach surprising events or change/uncertainty (e.g. their onto-
logical politics)?
The chapter started with a discussion on the Cartesian mind/body duality
within IR by opposing critical realism and radical constructivism. This debate
highlighted a strong theoretically induced epistemological argument against
representational knowledge as favoured by positivism, in other words that it is
impossible to know what we observe objectively and truthfully. For many this is
not a new argument, and in fact it lies at the core of the critical theoretical
understandings of security. Still, Section 5.2 discussed a matter of contention
between these strands of theory, in particular whether the pursuit for scientific
knowledge is valid on its own or whether it is a pragmatic social activity. While
this debate is ongoing in IR, Section 5.2 ended with the new materialists, who
questioned the absence of the non-­discursive world in the radical constructivist
theories dealing with meaning and discourse. Without matter, new materialists
claim, one neglects alternative sources of change and order that drastically influ-
ence human life.232 That said, the section concluded that the new materialist
critique of an absence of anything material in critical and radical social theories
was phrased a bit too strongly, as original postpositivist theorists were acutely
aware of the interplay between knowledge and matter but made the choice to
focus on that interaction through a deeper understanding of the social.233 On
the other hand, it could be argued that the many one-­sided attempts to translate
these linguistic insights into empirical research do eschew anything material
and hence validate part of the new materialist claim.
In turn, the new materialist alternative seemed to have proceeded in two
phases. The first phase was mainly focused on showing the relevance of the
material world against linguistic-­oriented postpositivist theories. Section 5.3 in
this respect put forward the shared assumptions of new materialism, including
its adherence to the epistemological critique of postpositivists, its trust in a
world outside of humans, its focus on local assemblages, and the ethical con-
sequences inherent to it. This chapter also offered a partial reprise of the ways
in which the material is used and spoken about. Besides the many meanings and
different terms used to describe ‘the world out there’, the material was discussed
as something non-­social, as objects outside of human influence or as objects
with relational qualities (durable, hard, colourful and so forth), with a special
reference for those technological artefacts that are made by humans. Based on
the latter category, questions were raised towards the traditional separation of
matter as something passive or active and as something instrumental or deter-
ministic. The section ended with a core approach that most new materialists
use, namely an extended understanding of Butler’s performativity or the reitera-
tive acts of materialization. Bennett’s example of the north-­east American
blackout subsequently exemplified this and simultaneously introduced the core
aspects of how new materialist view the world: the relationality of the different
 The materialization of energy security   147
interacting nodes of the electricity grid, the surprise of unintended and unantic-
ipated material effects, and the ethical consequences of the decision on account-
ability within such a relationality.
Section 5.4 took these up as it offered a network-­inspired relational ontology
based on ANT. In analysing the ontological assumptions of ANT, what emerged
was an empirical-­oriented methodology that assumes a network of relations or
actants (actor-­networks), which are posthuman and irreducible, stand on equal
footing in a flat ontology, and which relate to each other through traceable
translation. However, just as social theories are questioned, these networks too
are vulnerable. In particular to an infinite regress argument, meaning that there
is no end to one’s observation while scholars simultaneously only observe fixed
traceable relations, relations that are already actualized.
The story of new materialism as described in this chapter hence moved to a
second phase and the discussion on how to incorporate the virtual in already-­
actualized networks of relations, in other words how to explain the transforma-
tion of beings while also allowing for independent objects. This virtuality was
later described in terms of the condition of possibility of the materialdiscursive
assemblages, or, simply, as the vibrancy of matter. This vibrancy in turn was
described as eventful, with the event acting both as a surprise and as an achieve-
ment. Here new materialist theories move beyond security theories that only
focus on the surprise. However, new materialism shows that the insecurity or
surprise for one person could very well be the achievement or security of another
(e.g. security dilemma). With events interpreted as either surprises or achieve-
ments, the virtual and actual were subsequently placed and found in the perfor-
mative folding of practices. Earlier described as a withdrawal or black boxing of
agentic capacities, a fold was seen as the closure of a phenomenon (like a
security measure), but a closure that is always incomplete and incoherent (also
like a security measure).
Another element was the performative remark that part of the folding is
completed with the practice of observation, both outward and inward. By defin-
ing observations as achievements, observations become an activity and thus a
political act based on differentiation, and as such observation is a core element
of ontological politics.234 Section 5.5 took this up and discussed the politics that
ensues from such a materialdiscursive interpretation of life. Following the phe-
nomenological agential realist approach offered by Barad, this chapter argued
for a closer attention towards the ‘agential cut’ when observing and singling out
a phenomena, object, practice or event. In connecting ontology, epistemology
and ethics, these cuts, whether enacted by humans or non-­humans, affect the
observed event itself (thereby offering the only truly non-­human active theory
in new materialism). They create difference. And, as difference, these cuts call
for a political awareness and ethical reflection on the cuts and where to
place them.
Barad and new materialist scholars therefore call for an ethics of responsib-
ility and care for the relations that are observed. Once observation is seen as the
creation of difference, the practice of observation by an assembly of humans and
148   The materialization of energy security
non-­humans becomes performative of its own reality as it defines what comes to
matter and what does not. As such, observation has long-­lasting ethical con-
sequences for that what is not observed: that excess or negation within the
assemblage that will ultimately undermine it. Knowing this, new materialist
scholars argue for an ethical awareness towards the broader ‘us’ and to support
those who do not matter (e.g. like Booth’s positive security). Basically, what
new materialist theories add is a materialdiscursive understanding of the
vibrancy and order of life and the ontopolitics of difference that shapes it. This
enables an understanding of creativity, durability and adaptability, while it dis-
rupts and discloses most dualistic understandings that we know, like the mind/
body, social/material, past/future, or expertise/laypersons.
In the end, the link between energy and this chapter is strong but not
directly crystalized. Energy security is a discourse that defines the limits of how
people properly secure energy, but it is also a knowledge practice through which
meaning is ascribed to certain events, and it is a materialdiscursive phenom-
enon or actor-­network where earlier energy security observations and know-
ledge practices have generated differences and subsequently achieved to gather
and materialize an infrastructure like the electricity grid in response to that
observation. New events subsequently are influenced by these materialized
materialdiscursive relationships/phenomena through their scope, scale, historic-
ity, durability, time-­binding and mediation of the observation of events. The
implies that the claim from securitization theory that the material does not
matter might be epistemologically correct, but misses that observations are not
purely social; they are materialdiscursive as well and mediated by the tools used
to observe and imagine events. Furthermore, while security is often seen as a
technique to define events/provide closure, another insight from a relational or
phenomenological materialdiscursive ontology is that every observation of
energy security is inherently incomplete and thus itself a potential ‘threat’ in
need of disclosure.
In this sense, new materialism helps to explain the underlying dynamics of
the postpositivist argument in security debates. It offers a fuller account of per-
formativity, one that pushes even the practice theories within the security liter-
ature. They also help turn the focus towards the politics of ontology and,
especially, the role of observation and knowledge in achieving closure. More-
over, they lead to a drastic ethical rereading of practices of observation and the
role that knowledge gathering plays in shaping the world. In other words, they
deflate the distinction between ontology and epistemology, between a politics of
ontology and a politics of knowledge. In general, this chapter describes the
potentiality and virtuality of the endless set of relations of matter and the social
as life itself. However, to acknowledge a more-­than-human world while keeping
up with the epistemological critique of postpositivist scholars is a challenge all
on its own. With Barad’s materialized discursivity and a substance-­less material-
ity, the chapter returned to the same questions of radical social constructivists:
how to account for the actuality and virtuality that can be found in-­between
the discursive and non-­discursive. In the end, while new materialist scholars
 The materialization of energy security   149
offer an account based on the materialization of potentiality, they also acknow-
ledge that this only matters because of politics. The next chapter will therefore
focus on how humans govern their world through a materialdiscursive
environment.

Notes
   1 Bridge 2008.
   2 For actor-­network theory, see Latour 2005; Law 1992, 2007. For agential realism,
see Barad 2003, 2007. On object-­oriented ontology, see Harman 2009; Bryant,
Srnicek and Harman 2011. And on material culture, see Miller 2005. Other more
general work includes: Coole and Frost 2010b; Braun and Whatmore 2010a; Cud-
worth and Hobden 2011; Bennett 2010. Specifically, these authors depart from the
old definition of ‘materialism’, a term used to describe a theoretical framework that
depicts the world to exist from matter, energy and material interactions, and where
all social interactions can be explained by material processes. Also note that there
is quite some resistance against the use of the term of a ‘material turn’, as it is
claimed that the material has never left and as such cannot return. Interestingly, a
similar argument can be made in favour of the ‘linguistic turn’, although that term
is well established.
   3 Aradau 2010; Schouten 2014; Cudworth and Hobden 2011; Voelkner 2011; See
also the special issue in Millennium: Srnicek, Fotou and Arghand 2013; including
the article by Connolly 2013. Recent articles in IR with an explicit but more tradi-
tional focus on ‘the material’ include: Sorensen 2008; Aradau 2010; Meyer and
Strickmann 2011; McCarthy 2011, 2013.
   4 Robinson 2012.
   5 Kessler 2007; Bieri 1981. For example, when combining (1) and (2) one enters a
classic dualist position described as interactionism where mind and body can
interact freely; similarly, a combination of (2) and (3) is described as physicalism
and stands for an approach where the mind is seen as part of the body but not reduc-
ible to it; and, lastly, a combination of (1) and (3) results in epiphenomenalism,
where the mental is seen as a by-­product of the physical without any causal effects
at all.
   6 Searle 1995, 2, 7.
   7 Ibid., 1.
   8 Ibid., 2.
   9 Ibid., 121.
10 Ibid., 55–56.
11 Patomäki and Wight 2000, 216–218. Naturalism is sometimes also described as
realism, which, in turn, should not be confused with materialism.
12 Jackson 2008, 132–133 describes this position as ‘classical objectivity’, meaning
before quantum mechanics, before post-­structuralism and before the linguistic turn.
13 Cox 1981.
14 Booth 2005, 11.
15 Bhaskar 2005.
16 Wight 2007b, 2007a, 2012; Patomäki and Wight 2000; Joseph and Wight 2010.
17 Wight 2007b, 383.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 386.
20 The italic terms are from Patomäki and Wight 2000, 224; compare with Jackson
2008. Other scholars working from this position include Wendt 1999; Adler 2002;
Wight 2007b.
150   The materialization of energy security
21 Adler 1997.
22 Wendt 1999.
23 Ibid., 111. ‘Real’ does not imply materiality, as explained above.
24 Ibid., 110; Sorensen 2008, 10.
25 Wendt 1999, 110–113, 130–136.
26 Ibid., 1.
27 Wendt 1999. Sorensen 2008, 10. Wendt is not alone on this; see: Hopf 1998; Tan-
nenwald 2005; Guzzini 2000; Adler 2002; Checkel 1998; Reus-­Smit 1996.
28 Jackson 2008, 134–135, 139.
29 See for example the illustrative, slightly ironic, subtitle of Kessler 2012b.
30 Adey, Anderson and Lobo-­Guerrero 2011.
31 Kratochwil 2000, 2007b; Kessler 2012b; Fierke 2002; Milliken 1999.
32 Derrida 2005; Foucault 1977; Adorno 1973; Habermas 1984.
33 Wittgenstein 1958.
34 See for instance Derrida 2005.
35 Luhmann 1993, 1995, 2006. Also, Arnoldi 2001; Guzzini 2001; Kessler 2009, 2012a.
36 Luhmann defines communication broadly: language, writing, art, silence, gestures etc.,
everything that has or contains meaning for the entities using it to communicate.
37 In the act of observing or constituting a distinction, a system thus creates an
observer (e.g. subject/object distinction).
38 In addition, he identifies a number of social subsystems based on the recursively
used, and therefore structured or ‘codified’ processing of meaning that leads to func-
tional differentiation between subsystems. The economic subsystem, for example,
has as a code payment/non-­payment and uses money as a communication medium.
Other subsystems include politics, the judiciary, art, media, ecology, society etc. In
switching to these social systems of communication, Luhmann tries to move away
from the Cartesian dualism by excluding the human and the material as a primary
focus of analysis and by placing the agency, as such, on a different level altogether
(that of systems of communication).
39 Luhmann 1993, 34–35.
40 Giddens 1986; Wendt 1987; Sewell 1992; Carlsnaes 1992; Doty 1997.
41 Foucault 1977, 27.
42 Kratochwil 2000. See also: Der Derian and Shapiro 1989; Ashley and Walker 1990;
Der Derian 2009; Onuf 2013.
43 Kratochwil 2000, 73. See Herborth 2012 on the ‘quest for certainty’.
44 Kratochwil 2000, 2007a, 2007b.
45 Wight 2007a. See also Wight 2000 or more abstract Suganami 2013.
46 Compare with Wittgenstein’s language games. God/religion is another logic.
47 See the discussion in Jackson 2008, 136–142.
48 Wittgenstein 1922, para. 5.6; Derrida 1976, 158–159.
49 Jackson 2012.
50 Patomäki and Wight 2000, 218.
51 Wight 2007a, as well as Jackson 2008; Jackson 2010.
52 Dolphijn and Van der Tuin 2012, 98 quote De Landa’s 2006 book A New Philosophy
of Society (pp. 45–46) [original emphasis]; Compare with Lemke 2002, 61, who
argues that scholars:
should prevent … a very serious flaw that dominates much contemporary
critique: the ‘essentialization of the critique of essentialism.’ What do I mean
by this? When social and political scientists increasingly claim the importance
of categories like ‘invention,’ ‘fiction,’ and ‘construction’ for their work, they
often double the theoretical attitude they initially set out to criticize: they hold
that the ‘poststructuralist’ or ‘anti-­essentialist’ stance they adopt does signal a
‘right’ or ‘true’ knowledge.
 The materialization of energy security   151
53 Barad 2007, 132, 2003, 801.
54 Latour 2005.
55 Jackson 2008, 2010.
56 Hekman 2010, 32.
57 Van der Tuin 2011, 285–287, quoting Barad 2003, 821 on ‘ongoing historicity’.
58 See also Hekman 2010, 30–31 or the discussion in Lundborg and Vaughan-­Williams
2015. Luhmann 1995 of course starts from three systems, only one of which is the
social system of communication. Similarly, Cheah 2008 discusses the nondialectical
materialism that is present in Derrida’s focus on ‘text’.
59 Pickering 1993; Pickering 1999.
60 Coole and Frost 2010a, 27.
61 For the term intra-­action, see the explanation of Barad below in Section 5.5.
62 Dolphijn and Van der Tuin 2012, 92–93. Likewise, Latour states that ‘There exists
no relation whatsoever between “the material” and “the social world”, because it is
this very division which is a complete artefact’. Latour 2005, 75–76.
63 Aradau 2010, 497.
64 Jackson 2010.
65 Jackson 2002; Barad 2007.
66 Barad 2007.
67 Whatmore 2006.
68 Coole and Frost 2010a, 11–14.
69 Ibid.
70 Hekman 2010, 68.
71 Coole 2013.
72 Whatmore 2006; Coole 2013, 454.
73 Coole 2013, 454.
74 Whatmore 2006.
75 Walters 2014, 103; Coole and Frost 2010a, 26; Bourne 2012, 155.
76 Whatmore 2006, 604.
77 Mol 1999, 75.
78 Dillon and Reid 2001, 46–47.
79 Bryant 2014, 4.
80 See Dolphijn and Van der Tuin 2012, 92–93, as well as Barad 2003, 828.
81 Dolwick 2009.
82 Pouliot 2004, 329 discusses this in terms of essentialization:
acts of essentialization … are commonplace in social life. They lie at the
foundation of the social construction of reality.… Repeated acts of
essentialization result in the generation of ‘social facts’, the portions of the
world that are treated as if they were real by social agents.… Once reified,
social facts confront agents’ everyday life as ‘objective’ facts that cannot be
ignored.
83 Elsewhere, Harman 2009, 74 and 141–143, notes that Latour sees materialism actu-
ally as a covert form of idealism because it shifts the attention away from actors and
agency towards the physical world (instead of the social) to explain everything.
84 Ahmed 2010, 234.
85 Stengers 2010, 28.
86 Winner 1980, 124, 129.
87 Ibid., 123–126.
88 Ibid., 127.
89 McCarthy 2013; Bourne 2012.
90 Bourne 2012, 142; McCarthy 2013, 473–474.
91 Bourne 2012, 143; McCarthy 2013, 472–473.
92 McCarthy 2013, 476.
152   The materialization of energy security
93 Ibid., 478–479, 481.
94 Ibid., 488.
95 Butler 2009, xii. Also in Holmqvist 2013, 545.
96 Bourne 2012, 143.
97 Barad 2003, 828.
98 Barad 2003, 2007. See also Latour 2004, 2005.
99 Bialasiewicz et al. 2007; De Goede 2012, 32.
100 Butler 2010.
101 Butler 1993, 2.
102 Butler 2010, 1993, 11.
103 Butler 1993, 9 (emphasis in original).
104 Ibid., 2; Butler 2010, 153.
105 Loxley 2007, 135.
106 Butler 1993, 34.
107 Bennett 2005.
108 Ibid., 448.
109 Thereby acknowledging Grove’s point on the incapability of network-­inspired ana-
lyses like ANT to analyse creativity, or in this case non-­existing agentic traces. See
Grove 2014 and Section 5.4.2.
110 Bennett 2005, 449.
111 Ibid., 451.
112 Ibid., 464.
113 Latour 2005; Law 1992; Law and Mol 1995; Callon 1986; Mol 1999.
114 Latour 2005, 70, 198. See also Law 1992, 3 on ‘material durability’ or Pels, Hether-
ington and Vandenberghe 2002, 11, who claim that: ‘Objects need symbolic fram-
ings, storylines and human spokespersons in order to acquire social lives; social
relationships and practices in turn need to be materially grounded in order to gain
temporal and spatial endurance’.
115 Miller 2005, 2–8, esp. 3. Material culture is particularly interested in the relation
between the material and the anti-­material, for example, when it comes to religion,
or, more recently, the current economic society based upon consumption.
116 Latour 2005.
117 Miller 2005, 4.
118 Ibid., 5.
119 Ibid., 17–18. This material culture perspective questions the bivalent logic of reifi-
cation (the material framing of social relations) or fetishism (the symbolic framing
of material objects) as it does both. See also Le Billon 2007, 176 on commodifica-
tion versus fetishization.
120 Latour 2005, 84–85 (emphasis in original). See also: Bourne 2012, 161.
121 Latour 2005, 72 argues, for example, that ‘there might exist many metaphysical
shades between full causality and sheer inexistence’. On pages 84–85 he identifies
four: historical materialism (a material infrastructure like Marx’s that determines
social relations); a material world that ‘mirrors’ the social distinctions (Bourdieu
and other more critical oriented theories); and the material as a stage for human
interaction (instrumentalist perspective); and, lastly, those who put a heterogene-
ously layer atop the material and social (material culture).
122 Latour 2005; Law 1992; Law and Mol 1995; Callon 1986.
123 Latour 2005, 23 (emphasis added).
124 On rhizomatic networks, see Deleuze and Guattari 1987.
125 Bourne 2012, 154. Of course, this goes both ways. While it might be perceived as
more real, in fact all actants are real. They only differ in the number/strength of
their associations, see Fine 2005, 96.
126 Harman 2009, 773; Bourne 2012, 154. For a more critical discussion, see Fine 2005.
127 Latour 2005, 46.
 The materialization of energy security   153
128 Tuana 2008, 9; Dolphijn and Van der Tuin 2012, 54.
129 Latour 2005, 55. Bennett 2005, 446–447 discusses actants as both coherent entities
(e.g. a tree) and forces (e.g. gravity or mineralization), depending on how they
appear to us humans.
130 Bennett 2004, 355. In general, Bennett refers to this with her concept of ‘thing-­
power’.
131 Latour 2005, 180.
132 Ibid., 39.
133 Latour 2004. Things are continuously (re)produced relata, a continuous ‘gathering’
of relations as fact or concern, while Latour describes objects as failed ‘things’, as
taken-­for-granted end-­products of observation.
134 Latour 2005, 39.
135 Dolwick 2009, 45 (emphasis in original).
136 Latour 2005, 79.
137 Hence ‘flattening the social’ and ‘localizing the global’ – i.e. the social does not
stand above the material, and the macro is not more important than the micro/
local, thereby removing the level of analyses problem. See ibid., 165.
138 Law 1992, 6–7.
139 Ibid., 2.
140 Latour 2005, 122–130.
141 Ibid., 127, 130.
142 Ibid., 178–179, 192. For similar arguments on security and economic markets see:
Schouten 2014, 27 and Caliskan and Callon 2010.
143 Latour 2005, 5, 8, 23, 68, 85, 260.
144 Ibid., 249.
145 Hekman 2010, 110.
146 Mol 2002, 7; Hekman 2010, 110; Latour 2005, 89–90.
147 Harman 2009.
148 Ibid., 6, also 99–107.
149 Ibid., 34–35.
150 Ibid., 72 and 75.
151 Ibid., 106.
152 Fine 2005, 96. However, compare Bennett 2012, 228.
153 Harman 2009, 130–134. See also Grove 2014.
154 Harman 2009, 105.
155 Grove 2011, 1–2, 6.
156 Harman 2009, 147. However, Latour does mention overflow. See Latour 2005, 166.
157 Harman 2009, 135.
158 Ibid., 145–146 To read his specific treatise: pp. 151–228, in particular pp. 207–211,
but also p. 187: ‘The potential can only mean a potential for future relations, and
the actual can only mean what is in and of itself actual apart from any relations’.
159 Farías 2014, 28–29; Latour, Harman and Erdelyi 2011.
160 Latour 2005, 244.
161 Farías 2014, 28–29.
162 Ibid., 31.
163 Bryant 2011, 271, 272.
164 Ibid., 272–273.
165 Bryant 2011.
166 Ibid., 279.
167 Ibid., 280–282.
168 Bennett 2010.
169 Coole and Frost 2010a, 9.
170 Connolly 2010.
171 Ibid., 179.
154   The materialization of energy security
172 Coole 2010, 94.
173 Grosz 2010, 150.
174 Braun and Whatmore 2010b, xxi (emphasis added). Later in the chapter they also
call it ‘originary’ (xvii).
175 Braidotti 2010, 213; Stengers 2010, 27; Latour 2002, 251.
176 Stengers 2011, 374; Deleuze 1994; Grove 2014, 366; Bennett 2005, 457–458.
177 Connolly 2013, 404.
178 Latour 2004.
179 Barry 2013a; Marres 2005.
180 Stengers 2010, 12.
181 Ibid., 25.
182 Latour 2002, 249–250.
183 Coole 2010, 107. Compare with Adorno 1973, who discusses this in terms of a ‘non-­
identity’: the difference between concept and thing, with something in the ‘thing’
always resisting the concept. For a discussion, see Bennett 2004, 349, 361–362.
184 Brassett and Vaughan-­Williams 2015, 4; Butler 2010. On closure, see
Luhmann 2006.
185 Stengers 2010, 16; Connolly 2013, 404–405.
186 Squire 2015, 153. The term enactment is introduced by Mol 2002.
187 Mol 2002, 5–6.
188 Walters 2014, 103; Squire 2015, 151.
189 Coole and Frost 2010a, 19.
190 Whatmore 2006, 607; Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe 2009; Mitchell 2013,
240–242.
191 Callon, Lascoumes and Barthe 2009.
192 Hekman 2010, 82; Mol 2002. Braun and Whatmore 2010b, xxiii.
193 Barry 2013a; Barry 2013b. For another new materialist discussion on the politics of
ontology (identifying the event, debating its solution), see Schouten 2014 for a dis-
cussion on the role of the body scanner at airports from a security perspective.
194 Barry 2013b, 7.
195 Ibid., 12–13. Star 1999 actually discusses nine characteristics of infrastructure:
(1) its embeddedness in other (infra)structures; (2) its transparency (once build it is
there in the open); (3) its temporal and spatial effects; (4) its effects on users,
through skills; (5) its effects on social practices; (6) its embodiment of standards;
(7) its fixation of (capital) investments and interests; (8) its modular qualities; and
(9) its withdrawal or black boxing effects.
196 Brassett and Vaughan-­Williams 2015, 39–42.
197 Barad 2007, 2003, 1996, 1998, 2011.
198 Barad 1996, 2003, 2007.
199 However, see the very recent work of Rozema et al. 2012 and Piazza et al. 2015,
which state that it is possible to observe both without influencing them. While this
places question marks behind Barad’s indeterminacy argument, it simultaneously
reinforces her argument about the role that matter plays in observing matter (as we
could not confirm this with older equipment), and thus the boundaries that objects
enact.
200 Barad 2007, 111–113. Another example given by Bohr (as described by Barad) is
when a person holds a stick: you either feel the stick, or you feel through the stick,
but never simultaneously. Compare to Heidegger’s tool-­in-use.
201 Barad 2003, 2007, 2011.
202 Barad 2007, 26, 117–118 (emphasis in original).
203 Ibid., 31.
204 Ibid., 140.
205 Ibid., 120. Both Barad and Latour seem to agree that linguistic/semiotic interpreta-
tion can only occur if based on such a trace or mark.
 The materialization of energy security   155
206 Ibid., 33, 141.
207 Opening her argument to claims that she is a naturalist, which she is, but not in the
normal sense of the term. See Rouse 2004.
208 Barad 2007, 49, also 55–56 and 180–181 (emphasis in original); Barad 2003, 829.
209 Barad 2007, 152.
210 Ibid., 151, 335. On boundaries, see 154–156.
211 Ibid., 151, 336; Barad 2003, 828.
212 One of the main implications of Barad’s framework is that one can only study a
phenomenon by comparing two complementary phenomena from within a third
phenomenon. Comparable to Luhmann, it is not possible to study a system from
within that system.
213 Barad 2007, 71–72.
214 Ibid., 393.
215 Ibid., 369–384.
216 Ibid., 375.
217 Ibid., 348 and 394 (emphasis in original).
218 Squire 2015, 156.
219 Ibid., 157.
220 Barad 2007, 201–222; Aradau 2010, 499.
221 Preda 1999, 350–356. The skills people need to use these machineries result from
the intra-­action between the machine and the observer and hence are a folding
of both.
222 Vint 2008, 316–317.
223 Butler 2009, 14; as quoted by Holmqvist 2013, 549; Braun and Whatmore
2010b, xxv.
224 Dolphijn and Van der Tuin 2012, 69.
225 Tuana 2008, 19 (emphasis in original).
226 Latour 2002, 255.
227 Hekman 2010, 91–93, 127.
228 Bellacasa 2011.
229 Ibid., 100. Booth 2005.
230 Hekman 2010, 73.
231 Squire 2015, 151.
232 Sources of durability, resistance, sedimentation, triggers etc.
233 See also Lemke 2015.
234 Mol 2002, 5.

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Wight, Colin. 2012. Critical realism: Some responses. Review of International Studies 38
(01): 267–274.
Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus 109 (1): 121–136.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1922. Tractatus logico-­philosophicus, translated by C. K. Ogden.
London: Kegan Paul, Trechn, Trubner.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1958. Philosophical investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe.
2nd edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
6 Governing with and through
energy security

6.1 Introduction
Whereas previous chapters described security and materialization, this chapter
tries to combine many of the insights that are gathered there by introducing the
work of an author who seems to have written on all of them, yet is underutilized
in relation to energy security.1 In the security chapter, the risk literature dis-
cussed calculative metrics applied to populations to define the norm of accept-
able behaviour. In turn, the materiality chapter discussed materialization, the
performative politics through which reiterative discursive acts become material
(and vice versa), and the role that knowledge gathering practices play within
this materialization. Both of these insights are based on the work of the French
philosopher Michel Foucault, who developed a theoretical framework to under-
stand the power politics and knowledge structures that govern our lives.2 For
Foucault, the relation between security, materiality and knowledge needs to be
seen in close connection to power. He draws attention to the power/knowledge
nexus that enables discourse to materialize and security to act as a governance
technique that makes this happen. In short, with Foucault’s understanding of
governmentality it becomes possible to analyse the role of security by studying
the techniques and social structures (the mentalities and rationalities) that are
used to exercise power over a population within a political economic knowledge
base to organize, regulate and order the circulation behind human reality.3
While this is a mouthful, this chapter will explain each element in turn.
In fact, this chapter draws four arguments from the work of Foucault. First, it
explicitly understands security as a productive form of power. Productive
security implies a performative understanding of security, meaning that ideas
about (energy) security help govern and produce a specific way of life (e.g. high-­
energy consumption) through the creation of subjects, markets and the materi-
alization of its concerns. Second, it is not possible to secure something, through
risk or other security practices, when people do not know what it is that needs
securing. Security, earlier interpreted broadly as undesired futures, hence is a
prime example of ontic politics: the identification of that what needs to be
secured and the politics of knowledge and observation that guide it. Third,
security works as it performs bodies, minds, objects and the material world
164   Governing with and through energy security
around us. More specific, security works increasingly in one of two ways. Either
by governing the milieu of the humans or objects that need governing or else by
letting the people involved govern themselves based on shared understandings
of normal and acceptable behaviour. Fourth, based on Foucault’s theory, this
chapter examines how security functions in relation to society, governments,
the economy and nature, and how the boundaries between these fields are con-
stantly performed and redefined through the rearticulation of these concepts,
logics and modes of reasoning.
This chapter proceeds by introducing the concept of governmentality in Section
6.2 as part of the theoretical framework behind Foucault’s notion of security and
risk. To introduce governmentality, this chapter delves deeply into Foucault’s
understanding of the conduct of conduct, his understanding of power and his
concept of biopolitics. Following the identification of biopower as a new form of
power in the early eighteenth century, and the active use of this form of power
under the header of biopolitics, Section 6.3 will continue the discussion of gov-
ernmentality by studying the relation between government, markets and society.
A particular form of governmentality that is discussed here is neo-­liberalism: how
freedom is organized through security and how neo-­liberalism actively works to
separate economics from politics and society. Section 6.4 will bring the different
notions together, by focusing respectively on the relations between materiality
and governmentality, between knowledge and materiality and between security
and materiality. This chapter ends with a brief summary and reflection.

6.2 Foucault on security, power and politics

6.2.1 Conduct of conduct

To guide the reader through the rest of this chapter, five initial remarks can be
made on Foucault’s overarching concept of governmentality. First, governmen-
tality is said to link the French words gouverner and mentalité.4 By including the
French term for governing, the concept of governmentality seems to refer to a
modern definition of governing, as in the ‘management by the state or the
administration’.5 Foucault, however, uses governing more broadly by referring to
its classical Greek use, where it meant both the management of the household
(oeconomia), one’s soul and oneself.6 As will become clear below, for Foucault,
governmentality or:

the art of government … is essentially concerned with answering the ques-

tion of how to introduce economy – that is to say, the correct manner of
managing individuals, goods and wealth … and of making the family for-
tunes prosper – how to introduce this meticulous attention of the father
towards his family into the management of the state.7

Second, Foucault captures this triple understanding of government with his

conduct of conduct, a concept that he explains as the ‘activity of conducting’ and
 Governing with and through energy security   165
by which he refers to both the directing of someone and the ‘way in which one
conducts oneself [and] lets oneself be conducted’.8 In his reflection on govern-
mentality, Dean actually presents three forms of conduct that are captured with
this concept. Dean separates the verb ‘to conduct’, which describes the act of
conducting, from the noun ‘conduct’ describing bad and proper behaviour, and
a third form of conduct that describes the ethical self-­reflection of how one con-
ducts oneself.9 In other words, governmentality is not just about a form of gov-
erning from above, by the state or someone in authority, but it is as much a form
of governing by people themselves through a reflection on what they think is
‘appropriate’. Good examples of governing oneself are dieting or working out:
whether for health or aesthetic reasons, people practise them because they are
constantly confronted by pictures of beautiful models and warnings about
unhealthy lifestyles: messages that structure how people think about themselves
and thus how they behave in relation to their body, to the food they buy and
to others.
Third, directing this reflexive behaviour, this bombarding or nudging of
people in a certain direction is where the latter half of the term governmentality,
namely mentalité, comes in. Better translated in its plural as rationalities of govern-
ment, a mentality is described by Gordon as a ‘system of thinking about the
nature of the practice of government (who can govern; what governing is; what
or who is governed), capable of making some form of that activity thinkable and
practicable both to its practitioners and to those upon whom it was practised’.10
It is only by questioning and becoming aware of these invisible and hidden forms
of power that one can study them.11 Fourth, for Foucault the connection between
these two forms of governing, from above and from the self, is his main object of
study. It is at this intersection where one can see resistance brewing, questions
being asked, and uncertainty being made certain again. Not as something tan-
gible, because there is no physical place where these forms of power meet, but as
a balance of forces that no person or organization can escape.12
Fifth, Foucault shunned polemics and deliberately focused on how ques-
tions.13 His thinking on governmentality, therefore, does not provide guidance
for future decisions, nor does it provide a map to follow if you have a desire for
power. His main argument not to do so is epistemological, namely that reasons
are always provided ex post facto, after the event, and thus originate from
within a system of thought and consequentially are always already polemic.
Arguing that something is ‘good’ means that one has already drawn a boundary
that excludes the ‘bad’. Defining the good and bad thus depends on the ration-
ality to which one adheres. For an economist, a core priority is often the organ-
ization of free markets to reduce overall transaction costs and improve efficiency
and profits, but that is clearly not the priority for somebody who identifies prim-
arily as a climate activist. These five points will be explained more extensively
in the rest of chapter, but already it is possible to see how Foucault focuses on
techniques of power and modes of thought to govern people, how the relation-
ship between economics and politics is enacted, and, as we will see, what role
security and risk play within this notion of governmentality.
166   Governing with and through energy security
6.2.2 Power
It is not just the concept of governing that Foucault sees differently. Another,
closely related, concept is power.

Foucault teaches that power is less a commodity that can be held than a
force which comes into circulation when human beings – who he considers
to be free beings – come into relation with one another. To be crude, power
as a force that circulates is more like electricity than it is like a lever or a
sword.14

Power, for Foucault, is thus not something tangible nor is it intentional. It is not
the light switch but everything that lies behind one’s ability and desire to pull
the switch. It has no source and no end, but it shifts and transforms. It is ‘located
and exercised at the level of life’ and as such seems to resemble life.15 Moreover,
because it resembles life, Foucault argues that power is not only restrictive but
productive as well. It produces subjects: individuals behaving within and
conform a particular system of thought (a rationality of government).16 That
said, while it is impossible to touch power, it is still possible to analyse it, some-
thing that Foucault manages by differentiating between multiple forms of power,
namely sovereignty, discipline and biopower.
The first form of power is sovereign power or the power of the prince. An
often-­quoted description that captures Foucault’s understanding of sovereign
power is ‘the right to take life or let live’.17 In the endorsed ability to order a
death, the sovereign is able to govern life. As a form of power, sovereign power
is aimed at the good of the prince against both internal and external opposition
(other princes). The survival or ‘good’ of the sovereign was seen in terms of the
strength of arms, which consequently was translated in the number and well-­
being of the population within his territory,18 in other words on the number and
wealth of his subjects.19 Sovereign power works through both judicial instru-
ments (laws, degrees) and instruments of control (punishment). Such a feudal
form of sovereign power is no longer applicable and Foucault noticed how,
within a modern state, power is actually dispersed over state officials, mothers,
teachers, bosses, generals etc. In other words, lots of individuals and institutes
have some form of sovereign power. This ‘plurality of forms of government’ or
‘the multiplicity and immanence of these activities distinguishes them radically
from the transcendent singularity of Machiavelli’s prince’.20
A second form of power identified by Foucault is discipline. Foucault’s insight
regarding discipline is that the training and conditioning of individuals in
schools or armies, while being applied on the individual is in reality concen-
trated on the group as a whole.21 People are disciplined towards what is con-
sidered to be useful knowledge or correct behaviour. ‘Discipline, of course,
analyzes and breaks down; it breaks down individuals, places, time, movements,
actions, and operations. It breaks them down into components such that they
can be seen, on the one hand, and modified on the other.’22 In other words,
 Governing with and through energy security   167
discipline separates those that ‘behave’ from those that do not and exercises
itself on the latter. It does so by exercising its power on a micro level, meaning
the individual body, by correcting towards a norm that applies to the whole
group.23 Foucault for that reason argued in a later work that discipline is not just
about ‘normalization’ or the correction of the bad, but about ‘normation’ or the
diffusion of the norm itself.24 As a form of power, discipline is of interest for
Foucault because it shifts the focus from the prince and his subject to an indi-
vidual body as part of a particular population.25
Foucault’s third form of power is what he sometimes discusses as security but
initially identified as biopower. Biopower, according to Foucault, is a form of
power that combines aspects of both disciplinary and sovereign power, but is
more than just a combination of the two. From discipline, it takes the focus on
populations and the role of individuals. From sovereign power, it takes the focus
on life and well-­being. Importantly, however, is that in relation to life and well-­
being the focus of biopower shifts from ‘taking lives’ to ‘making live and letting
die’.26 In other words, it differs from both as biopower is mostly a productive
form of power. Literally productive, as it deals with biological ‘matters of life and
death’ and thus ‘with birth and propagation, with health and illness … and with
the processes that sustain or retard the optimization of the life of a population’.27
Biopower is the power to increase life and decrease death through policies that
are based on birth and mortality rates and explicitly aimed at influencing those
rates. This is what Dean calls ‘the administration of life’ or what Foucault in his
earlier work described as ‘regulation’ and later called ‘biopolitics’ (a concept
that is taken up below).28
These three forms of power differ. Discipline and biopower differ on the level
at which their power is effected, with discipline focusing on the individual body
while biopower concentrates on the level of populations.29 They differ as well in
that biopower, by focusing on biological life, works on ‘a number of material
givens’, while discipline instead first ‘determines a segment’ of the overall popu-
lation by ‘isolat[ing] a space’ for itself to work on – those that are in need of
disciplining.30 As a form of power, discipline only works within this site, but
once set ‘allows nothing to escape’.31 In contrast, biopower has no boundaries
and constantly expands to new areas and spaces, depending on what is known
about life and deemed necessary to enhance that life. Most of all, the forms of
power differ on the level of the individual. Whereas discipline makes a norm-
ative judgement on the behaviour of the individual and sovereignty subjugates
the individual to the will of the sovereign, biopower instead takes the behaviour
of individuals for granted and acts only on those effects that are considered con-
sequential for the population as a whole.32 While they differ, Foucault is explicit
in arguing that they do not exclude one another and always return in specific
combinations.33 And, through these combinations, these three forms of power
make up particular forms of governmentality.
168   Governing with and through energy security
6.2.3 Biopolitics
As a form of power, biopower quickly conflates with biopolitics: the actual
administration of life, or, as the concept implies, the politics or strategies of
biopower. While biopolitics is about the politics of life, it is neither a form of
power nor a mode of governmentality. Instead, Foucault sees it as a technology
of power, Collier describes it as a ‘problem space to be analyzed’ (as does
Foucault), while Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero argue that ‘there is no biopolitics
which is not simultaneously also a security apparatus. There is no biopolitics of
this, or a biopolitics of that. When one says biopolitics one says security, albeit
in a certain way.’34 Biopolitics is all that because it administers biological life,
not through the individual as with discipline but by influencing the conditions
or the milieu of individuals based on the knowledge it has gathered over the
population that needs to be secured. Instead of feeding the hungry, biopolitics is
about setting up the conditions for people to feed themselves by enabling and
supporting a circulation of food. Ultimately, biopolitics tries to bring out the full
potential of individuals, a ‘potential [which] is sought to be promoted, enhanced
and, in the process, protected’.35 This full potential needs to be protected against
the ‘random element inherent in a population of living beings’.36 Accidents
happen and they are highly uncertain for individuals. Yet, accidents happen all
the time, so statistically on the level of the population they are far from uncer-
tain (e.g. insurance). In other words, to administer life and protect the well-­
being of a population, what is needed are security apparatuses or techniques and
mechanisms aimed at the ‘objects’ of ‘species life’ by gathering and acting upon
the assessed numbers available on a population.37
Even in this brief description of biopolitics, a number of terms stand out and
call for further inquiry; these are population and statistics, prosperity and poten-
tial, things and the milieu, and security. First, biopolitics is geared towards pop-
ulations. Foucault identifies the advent of biopolitics in the shift when wars
were no longer fought in ‘the defense of the sovereign’ but instead were aimed
‘to secur[e] the existence of a population’.38 Before the idea and ability to think
in terms of populations, government was aimed either at the level of the sover-
eign, as the head of the state, or at the level of the family, as the Greek did
when describing the oeconomia as the management of the family. Combining
both levels only became possible with the invention of statistics, through which
it became possible to gain knowledge at the level of the population.39 When
Malthus advanced his food scarcity dilemma, it was based on his insight about
the ‘bio-­economic problem’ of a limited area for food production and a faster-­
growing population.40
Statistics, in Foucault’s argument, developed along two tracks: on the one
hand, with the organization of the police and, on the other, with the evolution
of mercantilism.41 Police, as a form of government that is internal to the state, is
said by Foucault to be aimed at securing and increasing the domestic output of
the state. It is concerned with the protection of active life, especially those
activities that relate to the state. This implies that the number and safety of the
 Governing with and through energy security   169
population, their basic needs, their health and their productivity are all subject
to this form of government. Importantly, before the police can secure all of this,
it needs to know what to secure.42 In other words, to protect life it is necessary
to know life. Foucault argues in this respect that ‘police makes statistics neces-
sary, but police also makes statistics possible’.43
The biopolitical use of statistics, second, is thus aimed at the well-­being of
the state.44 In this modern form of power the goal is no longer the well-­being of
the prince and his tax revenue but the conditions for the well-­being and poten-
tial of the population. This well-­being and ‘making life proliferate’ has been
interpreted, from the Greek household oeconomia onwards and especially since
the sixteenth-­century physiocrats, as being first and foremost about ‘good eco-
nomic government’.45 A good example of this can be found in Foucault’s discus-
sion of scarcity and how the main idea behind the government of scarce food
supplies shifted from mercantilism to liberalism.46 Foucault describes how food
shortages in France were originally seen as either an unlucky event caused by
bad weather or as a consequence of ‘man’s evil nature’ (his never-­ending desire
and unwillingness to share).47 The reigning mercantilists countered scarcity
through an ‘anti-­scarcity system’ that tried to control all economic and trade
related aspects of it through price controls, hoarding prohibitions, export restric-
tions, import diversification and the stockpiling of reserves.48 In other words,
mercantilism tried to govern scarce food supplies by introducing ‘laws, decrees,
regulations: that is to say, the traditional weapons of sovereignty’.49 As it fixed
prices and organized distribution, it also stifled incentives to increase food pro-
duction during periods of scarcity and thereby prolonged the shortage periods.50
Foucault noted how a strand of scholars called the physiocrats hence argued for
what now would be seen as a more liberal programme: one that moved away
from ‘the obsessive fear of scarcity’ to ‘the reality of grain’ and trusted the
markets to minimize scarcity by letting prices fluctuate and goods circulate in
order to provide individuals incentives to counter a shortage.51 Basically, as
Dean remarks, ‘the discovery of the ontological reality of scarcity … mean[t]
that the administration of life must take into account the means of production
for the subsistence of that life’.52 However, as these means cannot be controlled
by the state directly, the government had to find a way to let go and let the
market handle it (while indirectly governing people by managing the undesired
elements of these markets).
Third, the discovery of the ‘reality of scarcity’ and the ‘means of production’
implies that what is governed through biopolitics are things, not people alone.
Whereas sovereignty exercises its power on a particular territory, biopolitics
exercises its power on the conditions that enable people to live freely; in other
words, on the things they relate to. Foucault takes a broad perspective on these
‘things’. He sees them as material, that is, things like resources or the weather.
He also sees them as ‘men in their relationships with things’, by which he
focuses on the ‘customs, habits, ways of acting and thinking’ through which men
and things relate.53 Finally, Foucault describes these things as uncertain events,
events like ‘accidents, misfortunes, famine, epidemics and death’ that result
170   Governing with and through energy security
from ‘men in their relationship with things’,54 in other words the uncertainty
inherent in life, which is discussed as undesired futures in Chapter 4 and as sur-
prising events in Chapter 5. Biopolitics works on these things: it ‘disposes’ of
them using different forms of power to achieve the desired goal of an affluent
population.55
Fourth, not only is biopolitics a governing of individuals through the things
they relate to, it is also a form of governing based on a certain ‘naturalness’.56
Since the physiocrats, the well-­being of a population has been based on the laws
of the market. While these laws are not part of nature as such – they stem from
the interaction between people – they are seen as natural, as a given. This natu-
ralness results, according to Foucault, in a separation of the state and the
economy.57 Gordon in fact describes this ‘naturalized’ way of thinking in terms
of a ‘transformation in the relationship between knowledge and government’.58
He sees it as an internalization at the side of the government of the liberal argu-
ment that it can never know the economy completely and therefore can never
govern it completely.59
Fifth, just as the category population combines the state with the household,
it also bridges the individual and his environment, a point Foucault takes from
Darwin and his focus on the survival and evolution of the species within a par-
ticular milieu.60 The milieu for Foucault is both a medium and an element. The
milieu is a medium as it ‘is needed to account for action at a distance of one
body on another’, while it is simultaneously the ‘element in which it circu-
lates’.61 As both medium and element, the milieu offers a circular reasoning of
cause and effect between those parts of the milieu that affect and those that are
affected.62 In more general terms, the milieu, for Foucault, is ‘a certain number
of combined, overall effects’ of the above-­mentioned people in their relation-
ship with things and each other. In recent commentaries, the milieu is often
translated in terms of a flat network analogy, where everything is connected in
constant circulation across time and space.63 Through such a relational analogy,
discussed in Chapter 5, the milieu bridges the social environment of people with
their material environment.
To govern such a milieu, filled with men, things, mentalities and uncertain-
ties, biopolitics aims to administer the conditions of life while remaining open
to life itself, in other words to deal with the complexity and uncertainty inher-
ent in the relations that make up life itself.64 Foucault describes biopolitics con-
sequentially as a security apparatus (also security dispotif or mechanism). Such a
security apparatus tries to manage the constant uncertainty of life by ‘plan[ning]
a milieu in terms of events or series of events or [its] possible elements’.65 Bio-
politics does not govern humans directly but focuses on their conduct by:

structuring the desires, proprieties and possibilities that shape the operation
of life working on and through subjective freedoms, governmental rationali-
ties typically develop around specific problematics, such as those of health,
wealth, security, poverty, esteem, culture, sexuality or migration.66
 Governing with and through energy security   171
Alternatively, as Renzi and Elmer state it:

At the same time, government is no longer exercised directly on the subjects

but through interventions that both safeguard and actively produce the con-
ditions for free exchange, circulation and competition, while expanding and
intensifying mechanisms of social control and surveillance.67

While firmly driven by security considerations, biopolitics thus has a clear eco-
nomic focus, a focus that does not influence people by controlling their (eco-
nomic) freedom through laws but by nudging what they desire and by what they
see as possible; in other words, by administering the freedom that individuals
experience.68 Freedom in this perspective is something that is constantly con-
structed through the particular ways that we understand a problem and what we
see as appropriate behaviour. As Amoore concludes, connecting the statements
above, ‘in contrast to a world in which biopolitics eclipses sovereign and discip-
linary power, we see a security apparatus that mobilizes specific techniques for
deploying the norm to govern uncertain and unfolding populations’.69

6.3 Governing people, markets and the milieu

6.3.1 Governmentality
Whereas biopolitics (security), sovereign power and discipline are techniques of
power, Foucault sees governmentality simultaneously as a technique and as
something more than a technique. Foucault writes that he sees governmentality
in three ways: as an ensemble, as a mode of power (equating it with biopower),
and as a process. Governmentality refers to the ensemble of ‘institutions, proced-
ures, analyses and reflections, calculations, and tactics’ that exercises itself as a
form of power.70 In turn, as a form of power governmentality has overshadowed
other types of power (sovereignty, discipline), which are now only active under
governmentality. This follows the creation of the modern state based on the
development of an evolving administrative process from the Middle Ages
onward, which is the third meaning of governmentality. To be clear, the state
itself is not driving this process. On the contrary: the state is an outcome, a
tactic according to Lemke, of governmentality.71 Governmentality is ‘the tactics
of government that allow the continual definition of what should or should not
fall within the state’s domain, what is public and what private, what is and is
not within the state’s competence, and so on’.72 Within this constant judging of
its domain, Dean remarks how a failure to govern has the peculiar effect of
reinforcing the actual governmentality process.73 In line with the discussion on
how failed security leads to more security, governmentality as a mode of power
continues even when its programmes have failed.
Governmentality stems from what Foucault has identified as the pastoral
mentalité and the mentalité of raison d’état. The pastoral mentalité, the Chris-
tian understanding of a shepherd herding a flock, is explained by Foucault as
172   Governing with and through energy security
‘a subtle economy of merit and fault’ where power is not applied on individuals
but through them.74 It is a teleological economy that creates obedient subjects
or people who see themselves as sheep needing to be saved and are situated
within a certain system of knowledge based on a particular truth, in this case
the word of God that can be found in scripture. Within this rationality, the
merits and faults of the individual are analysed by the pastor, atonements are
transferred and penance is offered for the individual to reach salvation. A pasto-
ral mentalité is thus guiding, instead of forcing, individuals as part of the popu-
lation for the good of the individual, instead of the state or the sovereign.75
A more modern form of pastoral power can be found, according to Foucault,
in the above-­discussed ‘police government’ as this has a similar economy of
merit and faults.76 Of course, the economy of a police government is not driven
by salvation and obedience to God but by raison d’état or the survival of the
state itself. Based on statistics and calculation, the state, by way of its
authoritative subjects (police officers and other representatives of the state),
learns of itself and acts on itself through its population. Ultimately, it tries to
produce happy individuals by protecting processes of circulation (of people,
goods, ideas) and by separating good from bad circulation, for the simple
reason that happy citizens are also economically active and useful citizens
who strengthen the state, especially in comparison to other states and their
populations.77
In building on both the pastoral economy of merits and faults and the calcu-
lation and statistics of raison d’état, governmentality introduces an even larger
focus on economic reasoning and thereby increases the separation of economics
and society.78 In each of the mentalités discussed so far, individuals are subjec-
tivized as part of a population within a particular system of knowledge contain-
ing a particular truth. Foucault even argues that ‘to become individual one must
become subject’.79 In other words, while Western citizens consider themselves
free individuals, they are only free because they have become subjects. Whether
that is to a technology of the self (self-­reflection), a form of discipline, or a tech-
nology of the market (promoted circulation) is irrelevant. People are free
because they are made to think and act as if they were free. They are only free,
as Hayek argues, owing ‘to restraints of freedom’.80 In other words, as stated
before, the only freedom people have is the freedom that is provided, organized
and secured.
This hints at the wider relations between the state, economy and society.81
Governmentality builds on a Marxist-­inspired separation of political and non-­
political spheres, with society and the economy as clear examples. By accepting
the reality of grain, the early physiocrats worked hard to make the economy into
a non-­political sphere as they separated it from sovereign forms of control based
on, first, the unknowability of the total economic process (ungovernable) and,
second, the ‘naturalness’ of the economic relations between men (e.g. Smith’s
invisible hand).82 Because the sovereign or government cannot know all the
processes related to the economic circulation of men and things, it cannot act
upon them. A liberal organized economy, according to Foucault, therefore
 Governing with and through energy security   173
always assumes that ‘one always governs too much’ and in reaction tries to
organize government as cost-­effectively as possible.83 In Foucauldian terms, the
market (e.g. the naturalness of economic processes that cumulate in and are vis-
ualized by prices) becomes ‘a standard of truth’ that is used to judge ‘govern-
mental practices’.84 Still, while government can only act indirectly (as described
above), this does not mean that economics is the ‘science of government’ or
that it is the ‘governmental rationality itself ’.85
One reason for this is because society plays a role as well. What nowadays is
known as society is explained by Foucault as ‘the juridical structure (économie
juridique) of a governmentality pegged to the economic structure (économie
économique)’.86 He sees (civil) society as a wider and mainly judicial, sphere of
government, which, on the one hand, offers the economic relations a space to
be played out and, on the other hand, limits the government by offering another
moment of self-­reflection by asking the fundamental question ‘why must one
govern’ in the first place?87 Besides limiting the government, society also inter-
acts with the economy. This too is a double-­edged relationship as markets are
part of society and thus reinforce it, but at the same time undermine the com-
munitarian relations of society with their focus on self-­interest.88 Foucault
describes this interaction by referring to his earlier food scarcity example:

When the economic subject sees that he can make a profit by buying wheat
in Canada, for example, and selling it in England, he will do so. He does it
because it is to his advantage, and furthermore it will benefit everyone.
However, the bonds of civil society mean that one prefers to stay in one’s
community, even if one finds abundance and security elsewhere.89

What this quote highlights is that neither the economic nor the security ration-
alities are total. In other words, there are options that ‘free’ individuals are able
to take which do not follow the forceful logics of either the market or security.
In a sense, this is what Dean means when he argues that ‘while government
gives shape to freedom, it is not constitutive of freedom’.90 Instead, Dean sees
freedom as originating in the acting and thinking of both those who are being
governed and those who are governing.91 Freedom is thus enacted or performed
by all those involved and, as such, is open to change.
Nevertheless, the resulting uncertainty inherent to life that follows from this
openness is a form of freedom that is constantly secured. The desire to secure
against the unexpected is something that Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero have iden-
tified as the ‘fundamental paradox [behind] biopolitics’.92 To secure the living,
life needs to be fixed. However, once secured it is no longer true life, as true life
thrives on transformation and unfulfilled potential. ‘In order for a living thing
… to be secured it has to be allowed – indeed encouraged – to pass out of phase
with itself and become something other than what it was in order to continue
to live’.93 Foucault’s freedom, therefore, is not a freedom in terms of ‘exemptions
and privileges’ but it is a particular ‘freedom of circulation’ of goods, people
and ideas, and it is this freedom of circulation that he sees secured in everyday
174   Governing with and through energy security
practices.94 The consequence of such a practice is that it is not an actual threat
that needs to be contained but that the attention shifts to those parts of life that
might become dangerous, in other words the virtual of Chapter 5.95 By shifting to
the virtual, every fear and imagination can become a source for action. Every-
thing can become dangerous and undesired, but Foucault argues that this all-­
embracing stance is limited by the liberal cost–benefit analyses to which security
is subject as well. Instead of prohibiting all soft drugs, there is an increasing
number of countries where it is regulated or tolerated, only to be acted upon
when thresholds are crossed and the costs incurred by its usage warrant the cost
of governmental intervention.96
To be clear, the goal of governmentality or biopolitics is neither security nor
freedom, especially not liberal (democratic) freedom. In fact, Foucault argues
that a liberal governmentality, as it builds on biopower, is and needs to be
inherently racist in the sense that it constantly creates distinctions (in line with
the focus on differentiation in Chapter 5).97 It needs to be, because how else
to identify and act on those parts of the population that weaken it? How else to
decide ‘between what must live and what must die’.98 Moving this argument to
its extreme, Dean argues that this is another aspect where sovereign power and
biopower differ: contrary to sovereign power, biopolitics does not have a con-
straint on ‘the right to kill’.99 For the sovereign prince the ultimate exercise of
power was to kill, but this would have left him one fewer person to govern.
However, biopolitics, in order to strengthen the population as a whole has no
such limitations and instead contains a Darwinian need to weed out the weak.
An additional violation identified by Dean is found within the subjects them-
selves, who, in the constant biopolitical struggle to behave in a ‘mature and
responsible’ way, in effect repress any alternative desires to behave otherwise.100
Security, in short, draws a boundary between forms of life that are valued and
forms of life that are not.
These boundaries are akin to power, which in line with Foucault is a good
thing. The reason being that a person can resist, however little, a form of power
that is exercised over him or her. If a person cannot resist, if they cannot even
think or whisper, then what is exercised according to Foucault is not power but
brute force.101 Whereas brute force is applied on objects, power is meant to guide
individuals as subjects and can therefore be resisted. This resistance against the
current conduct, whether by thinking, acting or speaking, is something Foucault
named counter-­conduct.102 With this term, Foucault refers not to opposition, dis-
sidence or revolt. Each of these terms originates from within a system of biopoli-
tics and is used to exclude those involved, to differentiate us from them. Indeed,
active opposition to a particular system of thought and practices often reinforces
that system, as direct opposition is simultaneously an indirect form of
acknowledgement. A system can reject and ridicule such opposition, for
example in the case of Occupy Wall Street, but it can also incorporate the con-
cerns. Liberalism is so prevalent because it incorporates sociocultural concerns
on natural resource use, climate change or privacy concerns within its own
system of thought by translating them from externalities to commodities
 Governing with and through energy security   175
(carbon markets).103 In short, counter-­conduct is not a direct act against a par-
ticular mentalité but refers to the desire to behave ‘well’ from within another
rationality, one that counters some of the core assumptions of the former. In
this sense, Evans and Reid as well as Lundborg and Vaughan-­Williams question
the recent interest in the concept of resilience. They see resilience as a concept
which, instead of offering a way out, is a solution that constantly reinforces the
virtual uncertainty and vulnerability that is inherent in liberal systems.104 For
Evans and Reid such resilient subjects are passive subjects: they no longer act-
ively secure or change the world around them, they only adapt to ‘a series of
dangerous events’.105 This in turn, as Foucault teaches, reinforces the initial
assumption behind society, namely that individuals and their freedom are vul-
nerable and need to be governed.

6.3.2 (Neo-)liberalism
Another aspect to mention in respect to the broader line of Foucault’s work is
the already-­touched-upon link between governmentality, biopolitics and
(neo-)liberalism.106 The organization and role of markets and economic rela-
tions is of principal importance in Foucault’s understanding of forms of govern-
ance. Burchell explains how, for Foucault, liberalism is not a ‘theoretical
doctrine’ but a ‘rationalizing governmental practice’.107 It is a rationalizing gov-
ernmental practice because it is ‘a political project that endeavors to create a
social reality that it suggests already exists’ (comparable to Barroso’s securitiza-
tion in Chapter 4).108 In turn, while it is a political project, it is not only a
political project. Collier rightly remarks that it is first and foremost a system
of thought that promotes its own mentalité and practices while it criticizes
other modes of thinking. It is something that is pushed by certain thinkers in a
certain time.109 In other words, ‘liberalism is a version of biopolitics’, as well as
a limit on the biopolitics of governmentality due to its dominance and
principles.110
That liberalism limits sovereign power based on both the unknowability of
the total system and the naturalness of the economic relations has already been
discussed. However, liberalism also limits governmentality by building ‘on the
rational behaviour of those who are governed’, which it does by presupposing
free and rational individuals who uphold a liberal calculative rationality instead
of envisioning individuals with juridical rights and responsibilities.111 In shaping
these rational individuals and the responding rational theories, a liberal govern-
mentality is thus reliant on free individuals who also have the ability to resist
that same liberal governmentality.112 There is, consequently, a certain restraint
on liberal governmentality and the state. Yet, at the same time, the restraint
supports the view of rational individuals and thereby upholds the liberal govern-
mentality. In this respect, Lemke sees the shifting boundaries between state,
society and markets ‘as element and effect’ of a neo-­liberal-inspired governmen-
tality.113 As he argues, ‘the so-­called retreat of the state is in fact a prolongation
of government: neoliberalism is not the end but a transformation’.114
176   Governing with and through energy security
This free individual is not only considered free and rational; they are also
considered to be driven by desire. By translating desire into personal interests
and by assuming that these personal interests, when given ‘free play’ on the
market, become the collective interest, it is desire that links the individual to
the population in liberal economic thought. Foucault argues that in this trans-
formation to collective interests one can witness ‘both the naturalness of popu-
lation and the possible artificiality of the means one adopts to manage it’.115
This implies that desire is something that is and can be managed, which makes
it a technology of power.116 In other words, liberalism governs through the
calculation of a population’s collective interests, which it secures by identifying
the conflicting individual desires and personal interests that endanger the popu-
lation.117 It then works on these individual desires by manipulating the milieu,
but to do so it needs to assume that individual desires are rational (cost-­
effective) and thus governable based on the conduct of conduct. (If these per-
sonal interests are deemed irrational, it is hard to act upon them through the
market itself and liberalism needs to fall back on the state and more traditional
forms of power by actively intervening in the freedom of the individuals.) As
Foucault summarizes this liberal line of thought from the perspective of security
and governmentality:

The problem of security is the protection of the collective interest against

individual interests. Conversely, individual interests have to be protected
against everything that could be seen as an encroachment of the collective
interest.… The game of freedom and security is at the very heart of this
new governmental reason.118

The market and all of society are built around this game between freedom and
security: between the protection from dangers to the game and the protection
against dangers that stem from within the game itself.119
The description of liberalism so far should not be interpreted as if there is a
liberalism, as if it is a closed, totalized system. It is not. Foucault’s main approach
was to open up the naturalness of such central characteristics by showing how
certain ideas have developed over time. In the case of liberal thought, Foucault
differentiates for instance between classic liberals and two types of neo-­liberals,
including German ordo-­liberals and American liberals. Disregarding all his
nuances, early liberals can be said to have introduced the ‘naturalness’ of the
market through the principle of exchange and to have introduced the separa-
tion of market and state. Ordo-­liberals shifted the focus to the principle of com-
petition and consequently looked at the twin organization of the state and the
market, while striving for the optimum conditions for individuals to be able to
live up to their potential. American liberals, in turn, exported the economic
perspective of rational individuals to other social areas, introducing a broader
economized society as a check on government action.120 Again, and following
Dean, these forms of liberalism support the initial position of Foucault that one
should not judge these liberal rationalities but instead be mindful of their
 Governing with and through energy security   177
different effects and implications.121 Dean, however, contradicts his own state-
ment by concluding that both classic and neo-­liberalism are ‘naïve’ as they
reduce the role of the state and thereby open the door to a return of sovereign
power, but this time applied by the markets themselves: he gives the example of
forced work projects for the unemployed.122
Of course, this does not mean that scholars using Foucault’s ideas cannot be
critical. Nally, for example, is highly critical when he discusses the influence of
a liberal rationality on hunger from a food systems perspective.123 His main con-
clusion is that the continuous struggle against hunger is not a ‘failure of the
modern food regime’ as such but instead a ‘logical expression of [the food sys-
tem’s] central paradoxes, particularly its reliance on over-­production in some
places and under-­production in others’.124 These paradoxes, Nally concludes, are
a result of ‘the neoliberal truth regime [which] presents global markets, agrarian
biotechnologies and multinational corporate initiatives as the structural precon-
ditions for alleviating world hunger’.125 Nally shows how hunger in Europe
steadily decreased with an increase in colonization, not because the problem of
hunger was solved but because the problem was displaced from the poor in
Europe to the people in the colonies, where ‘the destruction of pre-­existing anti-
­scarcity programmes was rapid and severe as market mechanisms were frequently
permitted to operate unchecked and with devastating consequences’.126 Pro-
duced food was shipped to those who could afford it: creating abundance where
there was scarcity and scarcity where there was abundance. By using a
Foucauldian-­inspired critical approach to disclose these paradoxes, it becomes
possible to argue that current solutions (often technical fixes or claims for more
free markets) are ‘empirically shaky and ideologically driven’ as they inherently
disregard other alternative explanations, like Sen’s argument that the entitle-
ments to food are more important than the actual amount of food.127

6.3.3 The environment and risk

Nally’s example also highlights that (neo-)liberalism not only has an effect on
humans and how they are governed. As a biopolitical rationality geared towards
‘men in their relation with things’ it governs through the milieu, implying that it
also effects the milieu. For this reason, Massumi interprets governmentality as an
‘ecological theory of power’, which transforms nature, real physical nature,
increasingly into a cultured nature.128 Nature becomes the:

‘environment’ of the capitalist system [wherein] previously untapped areas

are being opened in the interest of capitalization and chances for commer-
cial exploitation. Nature and life itself are being drawn into the economic
[and technocratic] discourse of efficient resource management.129

Nature thus becomes part of a capitalist system, which, like liberalism, is also
not a ‘fixed’ or ‘completed’ way of doing things.130 Instead, Nitzan and Bichler
describe it as a ‘forward-­looking’ and ‘commodified’ mode of power.131 The
178   Governing with and through energy security
financialization of nature, of the milieu itself, offers a search for and commodifi-
cation of knowledge about the future. In other words, in the commodification of
the milieu, ‘enterprising’ capitalists turn towards the practices of risk calculation
to make sense of a ‘permanently uncertain environment’, not to fight it, but, as
Massumi claims, to ‘ride’ it.132
Risk calculation is discussed extensively in Section 4.5, but in terms of neo-­
liberalism and governmentality there are some additional remarks to be made.
First, in terms of its historic development, it is possible to say that modern risk
has its origins in the collective insurance schemes installed with the organiza-
tion of the early shipping expeditions to the Eastern and Western hemispheres.
These schemes transformed individual risks into collective risk and ultimately
evolved with and into the West European welfare states, which took responsib-
ility for social risks such as health and unemployment on a national level. More
recently, with the ‘withdrawal of the state’, risk is once more turning into an
individual responsibility, something the individual is expected to buy into (or
not) depending on the individual’s personal risk analysis.133 Expected, first,
because it is deemed cost-­ineffective for governments to organize totalizing
social insurance programmes, and, second, because, as Lemke argues, a neo-­
liberal rationality ‘aspires to construct responsible subjects whose moral quality
is based on the fact that they rationally assess the costs and benefits of a certain
act as opposed to other alternative acts’.134 Making a risk analysis, making the
right risk analysis and behaving in line with the countermeasures to minimize
risks become moral qualities for people to uphold and on which they are judged
and judge themselves.135 Risk thus works through the technologies of the market
towards the state (and governmentality) and as a moral quality on the level of
the self.
Not only is the meaning of risk changing over time; its contents are shifting
as well. From the possibility of insuring oneself against well-­known but uncer-
tain events (natural disasters, sickness, investments), neo-­liberal risk is increas-
ingly focusing on the virtual. It is no longer enough to deal with events that most
likely will happen, but these days everything needs to be analysed and secured,
from the infinitely small impact and high-­likelihood events to the infinitely
large impact but low-­chance calamities.136 A neo-­liberal future is therefore
described as ‘radically uncertain’ and it is in this uncertainty that security and
economy meet.137 In this respect, Dillon concludes that:

‘the aleatory’ [the radical uncertainty or contingency], arises for Foucault as

one of those factical elements or ‘natural’ processes to which liberal govern-
mentality must attend, with which it must deal and in relation to which it
has to regulate and evaluate its own performance and effectiveness in its
ambition to exercise power over life.138

He continues by concluding that this contingency, which a (neo-)liberal gov-

ernmentality takes as given, is actually a double contingency. It is the contin-
gency of emergent life itself, as described above, but also the contingency of
 Governing with and through energy security   179
decision-­making, on what is appropriate and the right course of action in rela-
tion to future developments.139 Whatever the form of uncertainty, in dealing
with the unknown, security and economics meet through risk and are played
out in the milieu to govern the strategies behind conduct of conduct. In the
search for profit and the need for security, both seek to know the radical uncer-
tain future the best they can. The practice of risk is what binds them and makes
it possible that ‘at the level of ontology, forms of economy offer forms of sover-
eignty a means to harness the productivity of possible futures and the capacity
to reconcile openness, freedom, and mobility with the pursuit of security’.140

6.4 Governing and materialization

6.4.1 Governing through a milieu

The insights from Foucault clearly resonate with the other theoretical chapters.
Although the brief discussion above does not do justice to his nuanced and
extensive work, three aspects in particular deserve closer attention in line with
those chapters. These include the governing of things through the milieu, the
power/knowledge nexus and its relation to the materialization of calculation,
and lastly the material security of circulation.
Before moving on to discuss the governing of things through the milieu, it is
interesting to note that all three of these aspects involve the relation between
discourse and the material. Foucault himself, purposely, was never clear in distin-
guishing them, just as he never clearly defined what he meant by discourse or the
non-­discursive.141 On the one hand, Foucault describes discourse as based on
statements and the ‘rule of repeatable materiality that characterizes these state-
ments’ and simultaneously ‘as practices that systematically form the objects of
which they speak’.142 On the other hand, he offers the concept of the non-­
discursive as a ‘field of practices, appropriation, interests, and desires’ covering
domains that include ‘institutions, political events, economic practices and pro-
cesses’.143 Clearly, he sees them as different yet both focused on acts and prac-
tices, as well as on the materialization of thought through language. Switching
from discourse to materiality itself, Foucault argues that materiality acts ‘as an
instrument and vector of power’, in fact, elsewhere he argues that ‘nothing is
more material, physical, corporeal than the exercise of power’.144 It is this defini-
tion of the material (together with the reiterative nature of statements) and the
realization that all the matter that people see is always in some way materialized
and subjected to forms of power, that Butler uses to build her case for a performa-
tive approach.145 Together, these ‘definitions’ from Foucault lead Hardy and
Thomas to conclude, in line with the new materialist authors in Chapter 5, that
Foucault might differentiate epistemologically between discourse and the non-­
discursive, but ontologically he ‘collapses the Cartesian dualism of mind/body’
and sees them as highly interconnected and made to be differently per context.146
More implicitly, Foucault described his position on materiality in his later
work with the help of La Perriere’s 1567 definition of government as ‘the right
180   Governing with and through energy security
disposition of things arranged so as to lead to a suitable end’.147 From the same
text by La Perriere, Foucault takes his broad definition of things as described
earlier in this chapter (material things, men in their relationship with discursive
things, and men in their relationship with uncertain event like things). The
main lesson Foucault takes from this text, Lemke argues, is the intricate rela-
tionship between humans and things, and how this relationship is made to be
political:

The art of government determines what is defined as subject and object, as

human and non-­human. It establishes and enacts the boundaries between
socially relevant and politically recognized existence and ‘pure matter’,
something that does not possess legal-­moral protection and is ‘reduced’ to
‘things’.148

Human-­like things and thing-­like humans (e.g. ANT’s hybrid human/things)

are made to be subjects with discursive and non-­discursive practices that are
enacted through their milieus. Above it was already discussed that the milieu
offers both the instrument to act on a distance and the element within which it
is possible to do so. This enables Foucault to collapse the distinctions between
the material/social and between the social/environmental milieus. In his ori-
ginal manuscript, Foucault actually describes the milieu as the relations between
multiple humans and things ‘that act on them and on which they act in turn’.149
From this quote, Lemke rightly remarks that what today is described as agency is
not something that thing’s also have (contra Bennett), but something that
follows from the actual relations and boundaries between humans and things (in
line with ANT and Barad).150
A good example of this complexity between humans and things, and how
they interrelate and shape each other, can again be found in the politics of food.
Shannon, for instance, discusses the conduct of conduct of food on a local
municipal level, where ‘the choice between a fried chicken and fruit salad is
never simply a matter of nutrition’.151 In describing how local governments are
influencing the milieu of people for them to behave healthier, Shannon shows
how the fight against obesity starts by defining obesity as something abnormal in
respect to a normal healthy way of life.152 This norm, broadly shared and reiter-
ated with each action that local municipalities take, triggers a governing of the
self. Unfortunately, Shannon does not continue on this self-­governance but
focuses on the knowledge and risk practices of the state/government alone. He
highlights how the municipality programmes often approach obesity by dividing
their populations in clusters of high/low obesity and then mapping those clusters
geographically. In this process, these programmes identify geographic regions at
risk, but also, simultaneously, transform particular geographic factors into the
core problem, like the number of fast-­food restaurants and supermarkets in an
area.153 In so doing, policymakers define obesity as a supply problem and focus
on markets and consumers as they try to provide a broader range of healthier
foodstuffs for lower prices.154 Consequently, they disregard the citizen behind
 Governing with and through energy security   181
the consumer and ‘close off a more systemic interrogation of both food produc-
tion systems and processes of urban economic and racial segregation’.155 In other
words, the wider questions that discuss why the obese live in the poorer down-
town regions with lots of fast-­food restaurants and the healthy people mainly
live in the suburbs with plenty of supermarkets and very little fast-­food
restaurants.
Shannon’s article beautifully shows three important points discussed so far.
First, that governing takes place through a physical milieu. The construction of
healthier restaurants and shops, the promotion of healthier food, and the organ-
ization of healthier and cheaper food for those particular neighbourhoods, indi-
cate that the focus is not on the obese but on their environment, which is
reorganized in such a way that their possibilities increase and decrease. Second,
Shannon’s article shows how the problem definition itself is not neutral. Ini-
tially, the problem shifted from the behaviour of the obese to the food itself.
Later, food was approached in terms of availability, ease of access, and cost: all
related to the organization of supply in concrete buildings (shops, restaurants).
At every step, other potential issues are excluded, ranging from a lack of cooking
courses to the supermarkets themselves, not as saviours and suppliers of healthy
food, but as monopolists within the global food production system pressuring
production prices and thereby decreasing actual production. Third, it shows that
when things can act human-­like then humans can be approached thing-­like.156
Initially, biopolitics implied just that: to study (human) populations with statis-
tics, to define the normal and abnormal and then govern the conduct of conduct
of those behaving abnormally. The obese persons in Shannon’s article are
aggregated as part of the overall city population and within that population are
grouped together in degrees of obesity. During this process, ‘men … became
calculable and measurable and could be conceived of as physical phenomena
themselves’.157 Obese people in this example are transformed into physical
thing-­like phenomena as they are made visible, problematized, and thereby gov-
ernable as they are categorized and mapped.

6.4.2 Materialization through calculation

The core problem shared by new materialists and those working on security is
that it is only possible to govern the things that we know. The power/know-
ledge nexus is Foucault’s way of describing the close linkages between these two.
It describes how knowledge and its systematic gathering, categorization and ana-
lysis always already contain ways to structure and dominate.158 As Rouse argues,
‘a more extensive and finer-­grained knowledge enables a more continuous and
pervasive control of what people do, which in turn offers further possibilities for
more intrusive inquiry and disclosure’.159 The power/knowledge nexus describes
the practice of governing a group of people (a population) by gaining knowledge
over that group and by defining, during the gathering of knowledge, what is
normal and abnormal. This subjectification of people, witnessed in the obesity
example, is a necessity for people and things ‘to have an ontological existence at
182   Governing with and through energy security
all’ in public life.160 Nothing material and no person or thing exists in public life
that is not somehow structured by knowledge gathering practices. Two observa-
tions follow from this argument.
First, while matter and reality are real, the ontology that people use to
describe our reality is historically constructed and thus comes in multiple ver-
sions (multiplicity) and is open to change.161 Second, earlier in this chapter
power was defined in terms of materialization, as the conflation of discourse and
non-­discursive practices and matter. This implies that all matter and bodies are
imbued with power when they act relationally to other things and bodies.
Energy and food in this reading are powerful things that enable us to live a par-
ticular lifestyle that would not have been possible without them. Simultan-
eously, they are part of ‘power struggles’ as they are part of the milieu through
which other humans and things are governed.162 Power is thus based on know-
ledge and knowledge is based on power; the two are not identical but relational,
yet so intricately related that ‘there is no point of dreaming of a time when
knowledge will cease to depend on power’.163
The power/knowledge nexus already briefly returned in the example from
Shannon above. An even better example of how calculative principles help
identify and subjectify humans and things – and consequentially make some-
thing initially ungovernable and unproblematic into a problem that can be gov-
erned – can be found in Amoore’s book The politics of possibility. Amoore
provides an interesting Foucauldian-­inspired reflection on the role of account-
ants and their methods towards food scarcity in Great Britain during World War
II.164 She starts by noting that the British government did not act on its
domestic food supplies and commodities pricing during the first 18 months of
the war. The reason, according to Amoore, was an ‘absence of a defined problem
of scarcity’.165 It was not that the problem of food shortages and price increases
were unknown, but that the controls to counter them were unavailable. Hence,
the problem was not seen as a governable problem that could be acted on.
Amoore then describes how the British Board of Trade subsequently started to
identify the problem not in terms of scarcity, but in terms of a lack of statistical
knowledge and data about the normal consumption patterns of its population.
Without such data, it was deemed impossible to anticipate future consumption,
let alone decide upon exceptional measures (like rationing):166

In the absence of accurate census data, the board authorized accountants

from the firm Price Waterhouse to devise techniques for accounting for the
population and to administer new restrictions on supply: ‘The need to
control and monitor the workings of an economy at war necessitated the
recruitment of accountants as administrators and advisers, many being
granted considerable executive authority’.167

Amoore returns to Foucault to analyse this moment. A moment when

accountants helped open up the unknown world of food distribution through
their methods of accounting and statistics. The resulting data enabled the
 Governing with and through energy security   183
government to act upon the food markets by steering the flows of food commod-
ities and their exchange as if they were known in full.168 In this process, Amoore
argues that the accountants gained ‘executive authority’ as they decided on
what trade and consumption practices were allowed, meaning that they had ‘the
capacity to decide upon the norm’.169 Amoore concludes that this had two con-
sequences: it helped ‘organize’ a wartime economy centred on the army, and it
reified the techniques and methods used for future government practices. The
latter is the main result for Amoore, as ‘a changed system of accounting does
not simply change the measure but also the world and how we see it, how we
apportion it, how we differentiate and divide it’.170 In other words, it changes
our ontology, helps identify new problems (by subjectification) and enables new
ways of governing. With knowledge comes the ability to act, thereby making
knowledge a goal in itself. To reach this goal, a method is developed (statistical
risk calculation), which promises to make the future known. This is such a
strong promise, in fact, that the absence of knowledge and the subsequent
inability to act can become a risk itself.171
These calculative practices develop constantly. Foucault and Amoore high-
light the use of statistics, while Shannon discusses geographical and visual
mapping (GIS).172 Elsewhere, Barry discusses the governing of geography and
territory through common measurement systems, infrastructure standards and
qualification standards (skills).173 All three of these practices are shared ways of
gaining knowledge and not one of them is ‘fixed’ as they are continuously
adjusted and improved. Callon and MacKenzie et al. discuss another calculative
technique when they independently analyse the performativity of economic for-
mulas.174 For these authors, economic formulas and models do not describe or
represent the economic reality ‘out there’ but they see these formulas as consti-
tuting that reality (in line with Searle’s social fact of money).
Someone who pushes the argument that economic calculative practices
shape reality even more is Mitchell.175 More so than Foucault, who sees neo-­
liberal economics and its calculative practices as separating politics from eco-
nomics, Mitchell argues that the main function of neo-­liberal economics lies in
the artificial boundary that it creates to separate the political from the natural.
According to Mitchell, in the shift towards governmentality and its focus on
political economies, nature became something ‘excluded from politics by prac-
tices of calculation’.176 While the sciences define what nature is, economics
defines how it is approached in sociopolitical life by creating ‘the large no-­man’s
land between the two’.177 Mitchell refers to the politics surrounding oil and gas
reserves, in particular the distinction between above ground politicized relations
and the below-­ground geological reserves. Mitchell argues that any discussion of
oil and gas reserves needs to incorporate the ‘space of uncertainty, of economic
possibility’ that economics (e.g. the oil industry) carves out in calculating the
distinction between proven, probable and possible reserves.178 In short, for
Mitchell, ‘the appeal to nature shortcuts political debate and contestation’.179
184   Governing with and through energy security
6.4.3 Securing circulation
The combination of these three – the power/knowledge nexus, the governing
through the milieu, and the desire to organize freedom of circulation for the
benefit of the population – results in practices of security to identify and counter
undesired futures. Foucault’s example of scarce food supplies highlights this
combination quite clearly. In the neo-­liberal acceptance of the ‘reality of grain’,
Foucault argues, what is accepted is ‘the reality of fluctuations between abun-
dance/scarcity, dearness/cheapness’; this is a reality that is governed ‘not by
trying to prevent it in advance’ but by installing ‘an apparatus … which is, I
think, precisely an apparatus of security’.180
Such a security apparatus, is, like his concepts of discourse or non-­discursive,
never explicitly defined by Foucault. In one of the few broad descriptions of a
security apparatus, Foucault discusses them as consisting of ‘discourses, institu-
tions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures,
scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions’.181
Elsewhere, Foucault summarizes his study of security dispositifs as studying
(1) ‘spaces of security’, (2) ‘the treatment of the uncertain’ (what Nally
describes in terms of ‘management of the uncertain or “aleatory” ’), (3) ‘the form
of normalization’ and (4) the ‘emergence’ and ‘reality’ of the population as ‘both
the object and subject of these mechanisms of security’.182 Dillon describes these
security dispositifs as a combination of different security technologies that
assemble under a singular logic.183 Schouten takes a similar approach, but com-
bines insights from Foucault with ANT to define a security dispositif or assem-
blage as ‘the totality of relations structured by security apparatus, or the shifting
– discursive, material, institutional, practical – “milieu” upon which a security
apparatus acts in order to render it secure’.184 In turn, he defines a security appar-
atus as ‘a set of “socio-­technical” arrangements that mediate relations and inter-
actions within a specific sphere of activities, black boxing some concerns and
threats while foregrounding others’.185 Returning to Foucault, perhaps this
concept is another one of his that should not be defined but instead just be
described by what it does. What a security apparatus does, according to
Foucault, is that it indicates the set of relations of a multiplicity of humans and
things; it highlights the nature of these relations and its effects; and it highlights
the strategic function of such a set of relations.186 In other words, it is the identi-
fication of a specific set of relations based on its shared goal or strategy. It is
within these sets that one can analyse the performativity of such a network.187
Above this chapter briefly discussed such a strategy by examining the shift
from mercantilism to liberalism and the subsequent shift in security apparatus
from a direct management of things towards an indirect management via the
observation and protection of circulation. However, lastly, circulation is secured
from at least five directions.188 First, the critical security literature takes Foucault
primarily as discussing the security of circulation in terms of directly separating
good and bad products within the circulatory flow at specific points or gateways
where a decision is made on the thing’s further mobility, as in the literature on
 Governing with and through energy security   185
airport security and migration policies (direct governing of circulation). Second,
Foucault himself provides the scarcity example and describes how the supply
and consumption within the circulation of food should not be governed directly
but indirectly through the neo-­liberal markets and the milieu (indirect securing
of circulation). However, third, this example excludes the protection of the cir-
culation itself and its potential total absence. Within energy security debates,
the fear is not whether the oil is good or bad but whether the supplies them-
selves are secure (the protection of circulation itself against outside influences).
Instead, with the example of scarce food, Foucault himself reinforces the neo-­
liberal separation of politics, economics and nature, while neglecting that scarce
food could also have been organized differently, through diversification or other
political alternative ways of organizing the circulation of food. While these
options most likely cost more and therefore will never result from the markets,
they do not fall back into a direct mercantilist governing of supply and demand.
This enables a fourth form of protecting circulation, namely that the security of
circulation also entails the protection of the idea of free circulation itself against
alternative modes of organizing circulation (introduced by movements like La
Via Campesina, Occupy Wall Street and communes). Lastly, the security
chapter also briefly discussed how security and risk processes themselves are
circular, with failure as an incentive to do better and move on.
Securing circulation thus entails more than separating good from bad or
leaving the markets to its bidding. Energy security for example highlights how it
is not just the product itself that is secured, or the nodes that enable the circula-
tion of these products, but also the idea of free markets, the consequences of the
form of circulation, the lifestyles that it enables, and so on. In other words,
security needs to be problematized on multiple dimensions. This includes
‘refraining from making a priori assumptions about the ontology of (in)security,
instead considering it as itself at stake in – and hence the outcome of – security
governance efforts’.189 In other words, like liberalism, security itself changes with
security practices. For example, after accepting and observing ‘the reality of
grain’, a set of relations of discursive and non-­discursive humans and things was
enacted that empowered/materialized a particular form of security, which
Foucault identified as biopolitics. Security, like neo-­liberalism, is not singular.

6.5 Reflection
This chapter focused on the later work of Foucault in order to combine and
deepen many of the insights on security and materiality from the previous chap-
ters to further the study of energy security as a security practice. In particular,
this chapter focused on the politics of security, combining the performativity of
modern security theories with the performativity of a materialdiscursive world.
It tried to answer how we can make sense of the politics and power behind
security, narrowly in terms of how it works, and more broadly as part of society?
Section 6.2 drew on Foucault’s ontology to introduce the core elements
of security. It surmises that governmentality builds on techniques like the
186   Governing with and through energy security
power/knowledge regimes as well as notions like biopolitics and security apparatuses
to analyse a modern form of (bio)power that is aimed at populations and every-
thing that ‘makes life live’, versus the historic sovereign power ‘to kill or let live’
or the disciplinary power exercised over individuals to make them behave as
part of the norm. Power is key for Foucault in these (and other) political
processes and is understood to be intangible, relational and affective, as electri-
city instead of the light switch. Once administered through shared strategies,
this form of biopower becomes biopolitics. Biopolitics governs life as it regulates
the circulations of people and things. It does so by influencing the desires of
individuals through the milieu in the interest of the population, which is only
possible after knowledge has been gathered over populations. A process that
defines it and subjectivizes people to this population. Without knowledge, there
is no problematization and hence no ability to act. This turns biopolitics into a
security apparatus that organizes and defends freedom. The freedom that allows
circulation to take place and which allows life and the relationships that consti-
tute life to gather and splinter.
The particular manner or strategies through which biopolitics is applied,
through technologies of the self and the market (conduct of conduct), together
with the gathering of knowledge about populations, is part of what Foucault
describes as governmentality. Section 6.3 hence described the outward politics
of security by approaching governmentality as a practice that is constantly
balancing governmental (security) practices with society and economy, each
with their own biopolitics. The economy, for example, includes its own
(neo‑)liberal biopolitics based on the freedom of consumers and producers to
act within markets. It is in the constant rearticulating of this balance, among
others by the liberal argument of the unknowability and hence uncontrollabil-
ity of the economy, that economy and security meet. In the search for profit
and the need for security, both seek to know the radical uncertain future as
best as they can. This turns risk into a core technique to rule the lives of iden-
tified populations by distributing ‘security’ and the accompanying material
benefits.190
Section 6.4 discussed in more detail how Foucault approaches the material
world, by discussing the milieu and circulation, and by continuing the discus-
sion on risk. The goal of this chapter was not to differentiate Foucault from new
materialist and modern security studies or alternative understandings of perfor-
mativity. On the contrary, by reading Foucault through a material lens that
focuses on materialization (of power), which looks at the close connection
between calculation, politics of ontology, the governing of circulation and
security apparatuses, what becomes obvious is how closely related all these
different theoretical fields are. It showed how Foucault’s idea of productive
security is strongly performative of itself and of nature and society. However,
above all, his notion of the power/knowledge nexus bring out both the political
role of calculations and knowledge gathering practices as simultaneously meas-
uring, defining and differentiating, as well as the materialization of these dis-
courses through non-­discursive acts and their enactment in the milieu of the
 Governing with and through energy security   187
humans and things that are recognized and subjected to these knowledge
practices.
In terms of energy security, this chapter offered an alternative to the way in
which energy security is studied in regular policy debates and academia. Simul-
taneously, it offered the theoretical grounding behind many of the conclusions
and insights from the earlier theoretical chapters. Moreover, it added to those
theoretical chapters by seeing (energy) security as a security apparatus that:
(1) is productive, (2) is based on knowledge gathering practices with their
inherent differentiation, (3) is a form of governing and materialization and
(4) facilitates in drawing boundaries on a social level between nature, eco-
nomics, the political and society. With such an understanding, energy security
becomes a set of relations between men and things, a set with strategic intent
that is constantly performed and disrupted, and part of the circulation of energy.
Such a set of relations is enacted by other sets in and through a milieu, while it
acts on the milieu of other sets. In short, each call for energy security is a perfor-
mative act for a particular understanding of energy security and the work of
Foucault helps us understand the governance and politics of energy security and
how (energy) security acts politically towards other forms of governance.

Notes
   1 With some exceptions, as Foucault has been used for energy broadly, with work
from Klauser, Paasche and Söderström 2014; Hargreaves, Nye and Burgess 2013;
Mitchell 2013; Tyfield 2014; Waitt et al. 2016; Gailing 2016.
   2 Foucault 2003, 2007, 2008.
   3 See, for example, Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008; Dillon 2008.
   4 Lemke 2002, 50. However, see Michel Senellart’s course context discussion in
Foucault 2007, 339, note 126, where Senellart argues that this contraction is a
translation error and governmentality instead is the noun of governmental just as
musicality derives from musical.
   5 Lemke 2002, 50.
   6 Ibid.
   7 Foucault 1991, 91.
   8 Foucault 2007, 193.
   9 Dean 2010, 17.
10 Gordon 1991, 3. This thesis follows Dean 2010, 24, who defines rationality as: ‘any
way of reasoning, or way of thinking about, calculating and responding to a
problem, which is more or less systematic, and which might draw upon formal
bodies of knowledge or expertise’.
11 Lobo-­Guerrero 2012, xvi–xvii.
12 Dean 2010, 19.
13 Gordon 1991, 7.
14 Dillon 2010, 63.
15 Lobo-­Guerrero 2007, 330.
16 Foucault 1982.
17 Foucault 2003, 241.
18 Foucault 1991, 90.
19 Foucault 2003, 35.
20 Foucault 1991, 91.
21 Foucault 2007, 12.
188   Governing with and through energy security
22 Ibid., 56.
23 Foucault 2003, 38.
24 Foucault 2007, 57.
25 Foucault 1991, 102.
26 Foucault 2003, 247.
27 Dean 2010, 119.
28 Ibid.; Foucault 2003, 2008.
29 Foucault 2003, 250.
30 Foucault 2007, 19, 44.
31 Ibid., 45.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 8. What Foucault 1991, 102, has called the ‘sovereignty-­discipline-
government’ triangle.
34 Collier 2009, 94; Foucault 2007, 11–12; Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 266;
Watts 2004b. For a problem to be governable, it needs a problem space. Methmann
describes how the earth’s carbon cycle has become such a problem space based on
the technological ability to monitor carbon emissions and their effects. Within this
problem space, the population is defined as those people and institutions that are
related to the emission of carbon. See Methmann 2013, 78.
35 Lobo-­Guerrero 2007, 331.
36 Foucault 2003, 246.
37 Collier 2009, 83; Foucault 2003, 2007; Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008.
38 Campbell 2005, 950.
39 Foucault 1991, 99.
40 Foucault 2007, 77.
41 Gordon 1991, 11.
42 Foucault 2007, 323–326.
43 Ibid., 315.
44 Gordon 1991, 19.
45 Foucault 2003, 253. See also Massumi 2009, 157; Foucault 1991, 92.
46 Foucault 2007.
47 Ibid., 31.
48 Ibid., 33.
49 Foucault 1991, 98.
50 Foucault sees mercantilism as the first serious attempt to gather knowledge/data on
an issue to help govern the problem of food shortages and economic growth in
general. See Foucault 2007, 102.
51 Ibid., 36.
52 Dean 2010, 137.
53 Foucault 2007, 96.
54 Ibid.
55 Foucault 1991, 95.
56 Foucault 2007, 354.
57 Ibid., 349, 354.
58 Gordon 1991, 14.
59 Ibid., 16.
60 Foucault 2007, 78, 2003, 245.
61 Foucault 2007, 20–21.
62 Compare to the discussion of Bryant in Section 5.4.
63 Dillon and Reid 2001, 47; Campbell 2005, 951.
64 Foucault 2007, 296.
65 Ibid., 20.
66 Dillon and Reid 2001, 48. See also the quote by Mitchell Dean in Watts 2004a, 55.
67 Renzi and Elmer 2013, 48.
 Governing with and through energy security   189
68 Dillon 1996, 34.
69 Amoore 2013, 65.
70 Foucault 2007, 108.
71 Foucault 1991, 103; Lemke 2002, 58.
72 Foucault 2007, 109.
73 Dean 2010, 220.
74 Foucault 2007, 173, 184–185.
75 Ibid., 129.
76 Gordon 1991, 12.
77 Dean 2010, 224.
78 Foucault 2007, 348.
79 Ibid., 231, note†.
80 Hayek 1979, 163. As quoted by Dean 2010, 182–183. See also Dillon 1996, 10.
81 And nature; see Mitchell 2013 on the manner in which economics creates nature as
something outside of politics.
82 Foucault 2008, 280–282.
83 Ibid., 319. As Best 2007, 90 argues: ‘Paradoxically, while the economy is often the
exception to politics as usual, it is an exception that simultaneously enables and
constrains the possibility of exercising sovereignty itself ’.
84 Foucault 2008, 32. Dean 2010, 184, reflects on Hayek and notes that Hayek, contra
Foucault’s naturalness, translates his non-­natural state of freedom to the market,
which he sees as neither ‘natural’ nor as an ‘organized system’. Instead, Hayek sees
markets as ‘spontaneous social order[s]’.
85 Foucault 2008, 286.
86 Ibid., 296.
87 Ibid., 296, 319. Aradau and Van Munster 2008, 34 argue that ‘Rather than a formal
guideline, law is part of the material reality of society’.
88 Foucault 2008, 301, 302.
89 Ibid., 303.
90 Dean 2010, 21.
91 Ibid., 24.
92 Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 271.
93 Ibid.
94 Foucault 2007, 48; Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 282.
95 Lundborg and Vaughan-­Williams 2011, 374; Foucault 2007, 315; Dillon 2008, 314.
96 Foucault 2007, 5–6.
97 Foucault 2003, 254–255.
98 Ibid., 254, 258.
99 Dean 2010, 164.
100 Ibid., 156.
101 Foucault 1988, 83–84; Selby 2007, 332.
102 Foucault 2007, 201–202.
103 Dean 2010, 182.
104 Lundborg and Vaughan-­Williams 2011, 375. Evans and Reid 2013, 84 actually argue
that ‘the underlying ontology of resilience, therefore, is actually vulnerability. To be
able to become resilient, one must first accept that one is fundamentally vulnerable.’
105 Evans and Reid 2013, 87.
106 See also Collier 2009, 100, who argues that the overwhelming focus on the concept
of governmentality overshadows any critical readings of (neo-)liberalism.
107 Burchell 1991, 143. See also Best 2007, 91.
108 Lemke 2002, 60.
109 Collier 2009, 100. Collier comments on the limited number of thinkers introduced
and analysed by Foucault to make this point, and the lack of attention of current
scholars towards the fact that this is actually a process (supported by Foucault).
190   Governing with and through energy security
110 Dean 2010, 132.
111 Foucault 2008, 312; Dean 2010, 63.
112 Best 2007, 92.
113 Lemke 2002, 59.
114 Ibid., 58; Foucault 2008, 112.
115 Foucault 2007, 72–73, 73.
116 Rose 1999, 85–89.
117 Foucault 2008, 65.
118 Ibid.
119 Compare with Figure 3.1.
120 Foucault 2008; Dean 2010, chaps 2 and 8.
121 Dean 2010, 73.
122 Ibid., 259.
123 Nally 2011.
124 Ibid., 49.
125 Ibid.
126 Ibid.
127 Ibid.; Sen 1983.
128 Massumi 2009, 177.
129 Lemke 2002, 56.
130 Lobo-­Guerrero 2012, 2, who continuous from Thrift 2005, 1.
131 Renzi and Elmer 2013, 48; Nitzan and Bichler 2009, 280–282, 294; Bichler and
Nitzan 2012.
132 Massumi 2009, 176.
133 Lemke 2002, 59.
134 Ibid.
135 Lupton 2006, 14; Amoore and De Goede 2008, 12.
136 Ewald 1993, 222.
137 Aradau and Van Munster 2008, 29.
138 Dillon 2007b, 45.
139 Dillon 2007a, 22. See also Luhmann 1993.
140 Amoore 2013, 5.
141 Foucault also never discussed the connections between humans and non-­humans;
see Lemke 2015, 5.
142 Foucault 2002, 114, 120–121, 54.
143 Ibid., 77, 179–180.
144 Foucault 1977, 30, 1980, 57–58.
145 Butler 1993, 10–11; Lemke 2015, 13.
146 Hardy and Thomas 2015, 681, 682; Lundborg and Vaughan-­Williams 2015, 19.
147 Foucault 2007, 96.
148 Lemke 2015, 9.
149 Foucault 2007, 22.
150 Lemke 2015, 10; Latour 2005; Preda 1999, 358; Bennett 2010.
151 Shannon 2014, 257.
152 Ibid., 255.
153 Ibid., 250.
154 Ibid., 261, 258.
155 Ibid., 250, 259.
156 See also Lemke 2015.
157 Ibid., 10.
158 Foucault 1980.
159 Rouse 2005, 96–97.
160 Hekman 2010, 57.
161 Ibid., 58; Mol 2002.
 Governing with and through energy security   191
162 Preda 1999, 358.
163 Foucault 1980, 52.
164 Amoore 2013, 32–39.
165 Ibid., 34.
166 Ibid., 35.
167 Ibid., 36 quotes: Edgar Jones (1995) True and Fair: A History of Price Waterhouse,
London: Hamish Hamilton, 12 [emphasis added by Amoore].
168 Ibid., 38.
169 Ibid., 47.
170 Ibid., 39.
171 Luhmann 1993.
172 Related, Elden introduces the concept of geometrics and geopower as an alternative
to biometrics and biopower, believing that biopower focuses too much on humans
and not enough on territory and geography. My reading of Foucault’s biopolitics
above is more material than Elden’s, so I do not follow along in his argument. Elden
2007, 2013; Bridge 2015.
173 Barry 2006.
174 Callon 1998; MacKenzie, Muniesa and Siu 2007; Fine 2005.
175 Mitchell 2013.
176 Ibid., 251.
177 Ibid., 241.
178 Ibid., 247.
179 Ibid., 246.
180 Foucault 2007, 37.
181 Foucault 1980, 194; Aradau and Van Munster 2007, 97.
182 Foucault 2007, 11; Nally 2011, 38.
183 Dillon 2008, 311; Dillon and Lobo-­Guerrero 2008, 266.
184 Schouten 2014, 30.
185 Ibid.
186 Foucault 1980.
187 Aradau et al. 2015.
188 Kester 2018.
189 Schouten 2014, 24. See also the discussion on observation in Section 5.5.
190 Dillon and Reid 2001; Dillon 2008; Amoore 2013.

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7 Energy security politics in the
Dutch natural gas debate

7.1 Introduction
Where the pervious chapters engaged with three strands of literature to under-
stand the politics of energy security, and before we sum up and reflect in the
conclusion, this chapter illustrates how such a performative reading of energy
security could look like.1 As such it draws heavily on the previous chapters to
analyse the discussion about the natural gas debate in the Netherlands, a topic
heavily debated in the author’s region at the time he wrote this book and one
that shows strong energy security politics. As discussed in the introduction and
hopefully clearer after the theoretical chapters, it is difficult to provide a
detailed operationalization of how performativity works as that itself performs
one particular reality on top of the fact that each case is highly contextual.2
This chapter specifically draws on a combination of the security theories and
ANT, as this combination helps to highlight the intra-­action between events,
observation and governmentality in this particular case. Another example,
published elsewhere, focuses more on Foucault’s conduct of conduct to highlight
the same intra-­action in relation to the governance of consumers through
smart grids.3 However, even though they follow different theories, discuss
different aspects of energy (fossil fuel and electricity) and focus on different
levels of materialization (the gas infrastructure is established, while the smart
grids are under construction), in both cases the eventfulness of matter is prob-
lematized, interpreted and defined through a politics of ontology. And, in both
cases, the issues are addressed by governing ‘men in its relationship with things’
through the milieu.4 In the gas example below, this returns primarily with the
lowering of the volume of gas that is extracted but also with the reinforcement
of buildings.
Furthermore, in both illustrations energy security returns as a dominant dis-
course. Yet, it is a reading that builds on a certain level of absence of energy
security within these debates. The phenomenon of energy security is so
dominant, and yet so openly defined, that it hardly leaves traces and acts as a
black box that drives people to act on others in their relationship with things in
order to fulfil their desire for energy. Only in the gas example is energy security,
in its narrow security of supply definition, mentioned as an argument. It is also
 The Dutch natural gas debate   197
here that energy security is reified through its opposition, as the opposition
focused on the costs and safety decisions of a secure energy supply and not the
supply of energy itself. In contrast, in the smart grid example energy security is
hardly ever mentioned but only because it is generally accepted as the core
driver behind the development of these technologies and their security appar-
atus. Moreover, that energy security is relatively absent does not mean that its
meaning is static (both cases show how energy security itself changes). All of
these reflections are for the conclusion, however, after the actual illustration on
the earthquakes and natural gas extraction in the Netherlands.
In short, the Netherlands has been developing natural gas fields since the dis-
covery of a large field in the region of Groningen in the 1950s. By 2015, this
had resulted in C275 billion of state revenue as well as an infrastructure that
connected almost all Dutch households to these gas fields for heating and
cooking purposes. Simultaneously, the Groningen gas field has been drained to
roughly one-­third of its original low-­calorific reserves (680 of its original 2,800
billion m3). Unfortunately, from the mid-­1980s onwards the areas above the
fields have experienced light earthquakes, which have been increasing in mag-
nitude and frequency (Figure 7.1, below).5 For local residents, the everyday
experience with and consequences of these earthquakes are conflicting with the
long-­standing national economic and security of supply concerns of the Dutch
government and European energy markets. For a long time, the concerns for
earthquakes remained limited to a small number of Groningen inhabitants.6
This changed with the 2012 Huizinge earthquake, which, as the strongest and
most heavily experienced earthquake in the Groningen area to date, led to a
large public debate and a string of reports on all aspects of the Dutch natural gas
extraction and ultimately to a cap on extraction as of 2014. Consequently, the
question is why, after years of neglect, the security concerns of an initially small
number of local residents suddenly superseded the energy security concerns of
policymakers and energy scholars working on the Dutch gas and energy supplies.
In other words, this chapter studies the security politics behind an under-
standing of energy security.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, the literature has described energy security as a
‘slippery’, ‘fuzzy’ and ‘multidimensional’ concept.7 Definitions vary widely but
simultaneously often share common points of interest building around notions
of security of supply, vital systems, environmental and economic energy
(in)security concerns.8 As such, ‘the energy security concept nicely weaves
together disparate policy issues into one basket’.9 Consequentially, the discus-
sion on how energy security is used and defined seems ultimately a context-­
bound one.10 As Pasqualetti remarks in his reflection on a two-­day meeting of
40 energy security experts, ‘Any discussion of energy security must recognize
that it varies from one place and one culture to another, especially at the house-
hold level’.11 Chapter 3 discussed the multiple ways through which this is
resolved. More traditional historical and geopolitical policy analyses draw con-
clusions from the debates they describe.12 Another prevalent approach is to map
and develop the range of indicators and metrics used to analyse energy security.13
198   The Dutch natural gas debate
In a similar line, Cherp and Jewell, two strong proponents of a contextual
approach, confirm the importance of ‘social reality in shaping perceptions of
truth’ and identify a range of storylines about energy security, which they subse-
quently categorize into a framework that can be used for further analysis.14
Elsewhere, however, these same authors argue that ‘energy security is an
instance of security in general’ and thus needs to inquire about the often-­taken-
for-­granted values and assumptions behind energy security.15 This chapter
follows this latter position and argues that energy security, whether defined by
scholars or as a shared understanding of participants, is part of a wider political
spectrum. However, instead of defining what energy security is, it approaches
the context-­bound nature of energy security by studying how it works. How one
of its elements, in this case security of supply, becomes what those involved
understand it to be, how it changes over time and how it shapes debates about
energy production, transport and consumption. And, while ‘the need for empiri-
cal investigation into the ramifications of using … energy security [claims], for
what purpose and by whom’ is not a new question, it remains an imperative
one,16 especially given its small sample size, as the energy security literature
mainly studies it from a constructivist perspective on language and discourse17
or from securitization theory.18
The discussion below builds on these studies in two ways. First, the gasquake
debate offers an analysis of a central energy security concept, security of supply,
in its broader societal context.19 As such, it does not study competing under-
standings of energy security20 or the linguistic construction of a specific energy
security understanding.21 Instead it shows how the Dutch security of supply
understanding is influencing the debate and in turn is shaped by the resistance
it faces coming from the safety concerns of the local population. The repetitive
intra-­action between these two security concerns builds on a broader relational
understanding that is at the heart of this chapter. It is a relationality that,
second, extends the discursive focus above by incorporating ideas of securitiza-
tion into the flat relationality offered by new materialist studies, in particular
actor-­network theory.22 A flat relationality puts the shared understandings of
security of supply and safety on an equal footing to the materiality of the earth-
quakes and the models used by the knowledge institutes. In other words, it
reduces the analytical importance of the security claims by forcing the observer
to study the security claims as part of their wider constantly changing context.
The analysis itself builds on media coverage, news briefs, (court) statements
and a number of reports, among them the 2015 report by the Dutch Safety
Board (DSB) on the decision-­making process behind the Dutch natural gas
extraction from 1959 until 2014.23 Although the debate is still ongoing (January
2018 saw another earthquake of magnitude 3.4 on the Richter scale and
reignited the debates about the speed of the reduction of gas extraction and
damage compensation procedures), this chapter focuses specifically on the
period following the Huizinge earthquake in 2012 up to the autumn of 2015, as
by then most of the major policy changes had taken place, including the deci-
sion to cap the extraction volume.24
 The Dutch natural gas debate   199
This chapter continues in Section 7.2 with an explication of the theory and
subsequent contribution of this chapter. Section 7.3 introduces the Huizinge
earthquake and its consequences. Besides a discussion of the gasquake itself, this
section touches in particular on a report from the main regulatory body (the State
Supervision of Mines (SSM)), which studied the Huizinge earthquake and shows
how it is this report that actually shifted the value judgement behind the assess-
ments of the decision makers. Section 7.4 discusses the internationally encapsul-
ated position of the gas-­industrial complex, while Section 7.5 looks more closely
at the safety and security claims of the locals. Section 7.6 moves on to discuss the
knowledge politics behind the earthquakes in order to highlight the struggle over
the uncertainty behind the scientific models and how security considerations
played a role in this process as well. The reflection brings these lines together.

7.2 Contextualizing security in a flat performative

relationality
This chapter offers four main additions to the literature mentioned above. First,
it completely conflates the distinction between security and politics. Second, it
offers a long-­term illustration that enforces a dynamic securitization analysis.
Third, by placing security of supply in opposition to safety arguments, this
debate not only studies two competing securitization processes but also places
the resistance against current energy extraction practices in a Western context
(contrary to insights from development studies on mining in Latin America or
Africa),25 with an immediacy and geographical focus that are not always present
when energy security is for example studied in relation to climate security.
Lastly, the debate studies this immediacy and how it increased over time by ana-
lysing the security claims in relation to the actual gasquakes and the scientific
knowledge about them. The reinforcing interaction between these elements and
the actual material presence of the gasquakes in turn supports the theoretical
argument that security should be placed in a flat relationality.26
First, the question was raised whether the below offered a discussion of energy
security or instead was about energy politics.27 The relation between security
and politics has in fact long been a core issue within critical security studies,
and one that is gaining traction once again.28 It also lies at the heart of securiti-
zation theory, discussed in depth in Chapter 4, when it proposes that security is
a category separate from regular political and non-­political issues.29 In this
theory, security is reserved for those extraordinary issues, like war, where an
existential threat is believed to exist and extraordinary action is taken without
concern for other social parties (e.g. outside normal political and economic rou-
tines).30 As Chapter 4 concludes, energy security does not often fit that category
and if it does it seems to be subject to economic security, climate security or
military security.31 In this sense, a discussion on energy security (contributing to
its concepts and theories) as removed from a discussion on energy politics makes
little sense as the former is always part of the latter and – as per the question
above – the interaction itself deserves closer study.
200   The Dutch natural gas debate
This is reflected in other security theories, where the distinction is more con-
flated. For instance, in Foucault’s biopolitics32 or the security practices literature33
security is not taken as a separate exceptionality but as a thoroughly routinized
political process closely linked to knowledge practices (the ways people try to
gain knowledge of the world) and the exercise of power. And, while these three
theories approach the relation between security and politics differently, all share
the view that security acts as a call for urgency based on distinctions between
friend and enemy, safe and unsafe, risk and no risk, insecurity and security.34
They also share an understanding that threat images are performative, first,
because the wording of these threats help shape the world we live in by defining
an event (and, in doing so, defining not only the event or enemy but also oneself
and the (referent) object in need of security), and, second, because people act in
the present to prevent these imagined future realities and through these acts
materialize an alternative future.35 On a political level, this implies that policy-
makers, scholars and other actors are responsible not only for a failure to counter
threats but also for the threats that they propose themselves: for the distinctions
between friend/enemy, for the choice of what to protect and for the resources
drawn from other areas in terms of actual resources and agenda setting.36
Second, this chapter moves beyond the static nature of securitization theory
with its implicit focus on a security claim made by a speech actor towards a
single audience.37 With its focus on the speech act, that moment when a securi-
tizing actor identifies and presents a future event as a threat and subsequently
asks the audience for support to counter it, the theory is predicated on single
acts from the perspective of the speech actor. While it would be fairly simple to
write the Groningen gasquake debate solely in terms of the local population
securitizing their safety concerns, it would offer a description of one actor (a
representative of the local population) who calls for the threat (future con-
sequences of more gasquakes) in the hope to convince the respective audience
(decision maker). However, the illustration below shows how neither the speech
actor nor the audience was a single entity and that they constantly evolved, as
the growing audience acceptance of the gasquake threat subsequently meant a
growing mass of speech actors, each calling for the gasquake threats in their own
way and wording (see Section 7.5).
Third, even though a more dynamic long-­term reading of securitization
theory would pick up on this, it would still only focus on one event and its
accompanying security claim (the threat of future gasquakes). While there is
some work done on conflicting energy security claims and interpretations38 and
competing security claims are one of the main reasons for issues to lose their
urgency,39 most of the work done on how energy security relates to other con-
cerns sees energy security as subject to military and economic concerns (above)
or as involving negotiations in line with the energy trilemma.40 In contrast, the
gasquake debate offers a case with two active security processes, a case where
the securitization of the safety concerns of the local inhabitants interacts with
the institutional security of supply concerns that dominate the debate.41 For,
even though security of supply considerations often remained implicit, as the
 The Dutch natural gas debate   201
debate primarily focused on safety concerns, compensation and extraction
volumes, it was central to it. For the governing bodies and gas industry, security
of supply was one of the core reasons to continue with business as usual. And
therefore it was also central to the local population as it presented the boundary
of what they could achieve. Irrespective of popular calls for a complete halt of
extraction, on a political and legal level the argument focused on safe extraction
levels and a minimalization of volumes (see Section 7.5). The negotiations and
subsequent actions of the actors involved actually reproduced security of supply
as a central motif, albeit with a redefined understanding of what it meant. In
contrast to an earlier shift in the meaning of security of supply (from its initial
unlimited extraction to the strategic ‘small gas field policy’) that resulted in
equal measure from economic and security of supply reasoning (see Section 7.4),
this security debate redefined the Dutch security of supply understanding away
from economic gains to the minimal extraction necessary for a continuation of
energy demand within the existing sociotechnical infrastructure.
Lastly, the debate nuances the discursive nature of security, something that
comes across most strongly in the idea in securitization theory that security is ‘a
self-­referential practice’ and that threats are always imaginary (as they have not
happened yet) and hence have no material standing.42 As Van Wijk and Fis-
chhendler argue in relation to risk, ‘the question of whether risk is genuine or
not is irrelevant. What matters instead is the actualisation of risk in policy pro-
cesses in general.’43 Yet, even when agreeing that threats are imaginary, the gas-
quake debate offers two ways in which material elements do play an active role.
On the one hand, the support for the safety claims of the local population grew
with the tangible experience of ever more and stronger gasquakes. In time it was
accepted that (1) the gasquakes threatened local lives and livelihoods (a clear
sharable referent object even with people not directly threatened), that (2) a
reduction of extraction volumes was an effective (and potentially the only)
solution, and, most of all, that (3) the causal relationship between extraction,
gasquakes and increasing damage was undisputable.44 On the other hand, the
security of supply understanding has always been closely related to the existing
gas infrastructure in the Netherlands. It is the existing infrastructure, including
the conversion and extraction capacity and the gas-­fired boilers in households
(with resulting demand for gas), and the expected rate of change of that infra-
structure, which offers the boundaries of minimum extraction capacity and
thereby the current boundary of the local safety claim.
In other words, the debate highlights the need for (energy) security scholars
to focus on the interaction between threat images, material events and espe-
cially the knowledge practices that mediate between these two. Contrary to the
facilitating conditions that securitization theory offers, where material elements
are subject to security,45 this chapter places such elements in a flat relational
ontology that equalizes them to security images. Such a flat relational ontology
is proposed in the field which, by lack of a better term, is called ‘new material-
ism’.46 Scholars in this broad field have long been uneasy with a sole focus on
linguistic explanations in constructivist work, while not wanting to refer back
202   The Dutch natural gas debate
to more traditional realist and objectivist approaches that lose the performative
insight that our shared social understandings of the world help shape it. While
Chapter 5 concluded with the work of Barad and Foucault, for simplicity’s sake
this chapter uses the popular relational alternative offered by actor-­network
theory (ANT).47 To repeat, this theory depicts the world in terms of networks
of nodes, nodes which themselves are networks, and so on. These networks are
irreducible and flat, meaning that one should not and cannot prefer one element
over another. Whether that element is a social explanation (energy security),
something material (a gas well), a law or a newspaper article, all these elements
together form our current world. Importantly, as each node exists out of its own
networks, theoretically, if any of these nodes is missing, the world is not the
same. In other words, security claims and images are only one element out of
many and they only have their specific meaning as part of a broader security
apparatus.48 As Latour summarizes the goal of ANT, ‘It simply means not to
impose a priori some spurious asymmetry among human intentional action and
a material world of causal relations’.49 Instead of assuming who acts (the speech
actor) the idea is to actually study who acts by observing the traces that are left
when relations change (the damage after a gasquake, a changed interpretation
in reports, a new scientific model, etc.). Luckily, the core assumption is that
networks are constantly changing and that stability is actually a product of hard
work. In this sense, a security argument is the associative work done to create
some semblance of stability in an ever-­changing environment.
The reading below shows how the local inhabitants, the Grunningers in their
dialect, here represented by the Groninger Bodem Beweging (GBB, which trans-
lates as Groningen Ground Movement), have been increasingly successful in
securitizing the gasquakes as a threat to their livelihood. They have managed to
put the induced earthquakes on the political agenda with a sense of urgency,
while achieving a reduction in gas extraction and an increase in monetary com-
pensation. The lesson however is that they were not believed until the number
of measurements increased (which only occurred after repeated security claims),
nor granted their urgency until the materiality of the gasquakes became visible
through those measurements and material effects. Just calling for the threat of
the gasquakes had little effect, as shown by the duration of the debate, but
including the scientific uncertainty in those safety arguments ultimately did,
especially as the uncertainty led to more seismographs, which led to more meas-
ured gasquakes, thereby strengthening the claims of the local population. Simul-
taneously, one can witness within government and industry a debate geared
towards the weighing of the benefits of natural gas extraction and the risk and
consequences of these earthquakes. For these institutions, in a typical risk logic,
the debate itself rarely changes so much as the numbers and valuation behind it.
Consequently, these assessments (weighing security of supply, safety and profit)
and the uncertainty behind the scientific knowledge over these tremors lie at
the core of the struggle between the local population and the gas-­industrial
complex (het Gasgebouw):50 the small and closely connected group of companies
and institutions in charge of Dutch natural gas extraction.51
 The Dutch natural gas debate   203
7.3 The Huizinge earthquake, its interpretation and
subsequent reactions
With a magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter scale, the Huizinge earthquake of 16
August 2012 was the strongest ever experienced in the Groningen area.52 To
understand its impact, it is necessary to place it in the ongoing debate on the
potential relation between gas extraction and earthquakes. This includes the
history that the Grunningers have with an increasing number of such earth-
quakes, which also have been of steadily higher magnitude (see Figure 7.1), and
their struggle for acknowledgement of these quakes. Moreover, it includes the
public pressure that resulted a year later from the news that 2013 turned out to
be a record year, both in terms of an exceptionally high extraction volume with
subsequent revenues53 and in terms of a record number of 119 tremors, of which
about twenty could be felt by inhabitants.54 Within the debate on the gasquakes
in Groningen, the Huizinge earthquake thus acts as a turning point, not only
because its magnitude and subsequent public attention made the Grunningers
start to protest in earnest (while allowing them a media platform) but also
because it turned out to be the event that made officials acknowledge the need
for a shift in their values. In this respect, the unsolicited report of the SSM in
response to the Huizinge earthquake turned out to be especially important.55
As the official supervisory body, the SSM is responsible for ensuring that any
mining activities in the Netherlands are in accordance with mining law.56 Even
though the Huizinge earthquake fell below the maximum of 3.9 on the Richter
scale that was calculated in earlier risk assessments, the SSM initiated a study in

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204   The Dutch natural gas debate
response to the growing unrest under the local population.57 In this unsolicited
report, the SSM, until 2015 still part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (and
thus part of the gas-­industrial complex), openly and strongly questioned the
constant adjustments and increases in the maximum magnitude that risk assess-
ments have put forward since the early 1990s. The SSM combined this with
earlier discussions on methodological uncertainties (see Section 7.6), and for
the first time put these uncertainties up front. In fact, it concluded that it is
impossible to estimate a possible maximum magnitude for the induced earth-
quakes in Groningen, even going so far as to take a magnitude of 5.0 as a valid
possibility. To prevent this, it advised the Minister of Economic Affairs to
reduce the output of the Groningen gas field as quickly and drastically as
possible.
The SSM’s shift came as a surprise to the other parties within the gas-­
industrial complex and its advice was not immediately accepted by the Ministry
of Economic Affairs.58 Instead the minister called for more research on the rela-
tion and effects of the earthquakes and the gas extraction.59 He did so even
though he acknowledged the possibility of higher-­magnitude quakes and agreed
with the NAM on a sum of C100 million for preventive construction meas-
ures.60 The SSM report meanwhile influenced the regional government, the
Province of Groningen, to initiate its own study, which repeated the main con-
clusions of the SSM and thereby confirmed the local concerns. In turn, the local
population used these reports in their protests.61
In late 2013 the debate heated up once more following the publication of the
range of reports requested by the minister, which confirmed many of the con-
cerns voiced up to that moment, as well as the news that 2013 turned out to be
a record year.62 This time the government heeded the concerns and decided on
a range of issues. These included, among others, the organization of an open
dialogue among all affected private and public parties.63 The government also
tasked the NAM to conduct a full-­scale below-­ground survey (which had been
missing thus far) and to reduce the extraction in the most effected clusters
(while making up for the losses in other clusters). Simultaneously, it increased
construction standards and preventive measures, while also improving the
administrative procedures behind the compensation claims. And it offered the
region an overall package to improve its economic and employment perspec-
tives.64 These measures were reinforced in the winter of 2014–2015, at which
point the Minister of Economic Affairs initiated a first provisional cap on the
total gas extraction from the Groningen field, which has since been extended.65

7.4 Balancing security of supply, profits and gasquakes

Even though the Ministry of Economic Affairs reduced production at specific
clusters and initiated a cap on the total extracted volume, there remains a strong
political debate about the installation of permanent extraction quotas. Cur-
rently, the safety concerns of the Grunningers are acknowledged. However, the
parties responsible for gas extraction are arguing that they are bound to produce
 The Dutch natural gas debate   205
whatever is needed in response to contractual and seasonal demand from the
Dutch consumers and the European countries that have bought Groningen gas
on long-­term contracts, and as such cannot limit themselves by installing a defi-
nite extraction cap.66
For instance, in its 2013 reaction to the reports from the SSM and other
institutes on the Huizinge earthquake, the ministry argued that:

In the near future, the Groningen gas extraction cannot be substituted by

gas imports or other measures. A diminished availability of the Groningen
natural gas will have serious consequences for the Dutch society and the
societies in our surrounding countries.67

Likewise in 2015, after the initial decision to cap the volume, the ministry
stated that:

The consequences of long-­term gas extraction in Groningen have become

increasingly clear in recent years.… Simultaneously, the gas extraction is of
essential importance for the energy supply in the Netherlands. Both the
mixture of the gas and the fact that the gas from Groningen, due to its size,
can be used flexibly, makes that a reduction from the Groningen gas field
could lead to problems with the heating of buildings or other usages. In
addition, for multiple decades the gas extraction is an important source of
income for the Dutch state.68

This position has since been confirmed – but simultaneously limited – with a
ruling from the highest administrative court in the Netherlands.69 In its ruling,
the court argued that in the assessment of the balance between the safety of the
local population and security of supply (which the court defines as the low-­
calorific natural gas needed to comply with the demand for this type of gas) the
minister had not explained why he chose the demand from a harsh winter scen-
ario as the minimal supply benchmark instead of other more averaged demand
scenarios.70 As such, the court considered that the lowest minimal production
was not 30 bn Nm3 as favoured by the Ministry of Economic Affairs but that it
should follow a more average scenario of 27 bn Nm3 (with upward allowances for
harsh winters).
This debate should be placed in an energy security context where the role of
gas is already shifting for the Netherlands. Before the 1960s, the Dutch did not
experience gas insecurity, simply because the level of gas consumption was
minimal. Nowadays, the Netherlands is highly gas-­dependent but not seen as
gas-­insecure because most of its gas is extracted domestically. With the draining
of the Groningen gas field and other Dutch natural gas reserves this is expected
to change. In the near future, the Dutch will be gas-­insecure precisely because
they have come to rely on it. Similarly, while the Netherlands is one of the least
dependent European countries on Russian gas, it does import Russian gas and
expects to increase its imports in the future to balance the reduction (and
206   The Dutch natural gas debate
capping) of its emptying domestic fields – negatively influencing its security of
supply position. To counter this position in a post-­gas era, the Dutch state has
launched an ambitious strategy to become the ‘gas roundabout’ of north-­western
Europe, combining its central position and the empty gas fields as natural
storage facilities.71 This gas roundabout idea aims to profit from the material
(empty gas fields, pipelines and pumping and conversion capacity), legal
(national and European long-­term contract law and other regulations) and
social (knowledgeable and influential gas elites) infrastructure that supports
current gas extraction practices.
It is especially the latter social framework and the practices resulting from it
that the DSB describes as encumbering the incorporation of the everyday safety
of individual citizens in the gas extraction decisions. The board describes the
everyday decision-­making of these organizations as driven by three main para-
digms: (1) maximum profits and winnings, (2) an optimal and strategic use of
the natural resources, and (3) a continuity of Dutch gas supplies for both citizens
and industry.72 All three are captured in the 1974 small fields policy that
replaced the initial unstructured pumping of gas in the early 1960s with a more
strategic and economic long-­term vision, based on an optimal development of
new small gas fields by giving those fields priority on the Dutch gas market while
using the Groningen field more sparingly as a swing field to fulfil the remaining
demand.73 In addition, the board also concluded that ‘all efforts within the gas-­
industrial complex are aimed towards an imperceptible extraction of natural
gas’.74 Together these four maxims for a long time structured the everyday
practices within the gas-­industrial complex concerning the Groningen natural
gas field. Importantly, they excluded the safety and insecurity concerns of
the locals, except as a condition to be met for the other goals.75 This, in turn,
preconditioned the initial response from the organizations to claims of insec-
urity by locals and it explains why these responses, for a long time, have been
soothing instead of informative and why they only followed the scientific
updates of the magnitude – without repeating the mentioned uncertainties and
knowledge gaps.76
Up until the debate following the SSM report, the gasquakes were considered
an externality of the gas extraction, to be paid off through damage payments.
Security of supply arguments simply meant business as usual and an optimal
utilization of the Dutch gas fields. With the SSM report and the increasing
pressure of the Grunningers, media and other parties (like local governments,
safety regions, environmental groupings and so on), the discussion for the
gas-­industrial complex shifted to more extensive compensatory measures and
mitigation practices, while opening up the question of when precisely the
Dutch will be gas-­secure. Looking back, the gasquake protests and subsequent
shift from the SSM and other knowledge institutes forced the government
to look closer at its understanding of security of supply. In doing so, it renewed
its security of supply considerations that structured the energy debates in
the Netherlands, but this time no longer interpreted it in economic or stra-
tegic terms but in terms of minimal gas extraction, specifically the minimum
 The Dutch natural gas debate   207
extraction that is required to fulfil the expected demand within the current soci-
otechnical gas infrastructure, including the technical capacity to fulfil this
demand with alternative supplies.

7.5 Calling on safety and scientific uncertainty to securitize

the gasquakes
Of course, the local inhabitants above the Groningen gas field do not primarily
deal with energy security concerns, contractual obligations and other risk assess-
ments. Instead, they deal with a steady increase in frequency and magnitude of
induced earthquakes caused by the natural gas extraction, a reluctant
acknowledgement of the causality between extraction, quakes and damages, the
difficulties in getting their direct and indirect earthquake damages reimbursed,
decreasing house prices, a soothing communication by the gas-­industrial
complex and the perceived unequal distribution of the gas benefits.77 These
grievances and concerns are being voiced through media channels, legal proced-
ures and letters of complaint to official institutions both regionally (like the
safety region of Groningen and municipalities, which in turn also started to
petition) and nationally (the SSM, parliament, the Minister of Economic
Affairs and other regulatory and political institutions). In addition, the street
protests grew in number and size to gatherings of hundreds of people by late
2014 (a number that is still growing).78 These protests mainly focused on three
claims. First, an overall demand for more attention and acceptance of the
urgency of their problems with banners like ‘Groningen a ticking time bomb’.79
Second, especially later in the debate, showcasing their distrust towards the gas-­
industrial complex and in particular the NAM and the Minister of Economic
Affairs with banners like ‘Groningen tremors, but The Hague will quiver’.80
And of course, the need to prevent further gasquakes by calling for a reduction
of the natural gas extraction, with banners reading ‘Kamp Gas Terug Nu’,
calling on Kamp, the Minister of Economic Affairs, to take his foot of the gas
throttle.81
Obviously, some Grunningers have been aware of the gasquakes since the
early 1990s and have tried to make themselves heard over time, either as indi-
viduals82 or through well-­organized associations like the Groninger Ground
Movement83 or the more activist Shocking Groningen.84 Looking back into the
debate, it is illustrative that it took seven years and a large interdisciplinary
study after the first earthquake in 1986 for the government and the NAM to
officially acknowledge that the quakes were directly linked to the gas extrac-
tion.85 Until that study in 1993, the NAM ridiculed any claims from individuals
and organizations that proposed such a link.86 Once recognized, it took another
twenty years for the official parties to start taking the risks and potential con-
sequences of these induced earthquakes seriously enough to adapt their extrac-
tion volumes. In those twenty years, every couple of years NAM, government
and knowledge institutes have been forced to increase their estimates on the
frequency and magnitude of potential quakes.
208   The Dutch natural gas debate
This eventful material reality and the decades of uncertain knowledge claims
that accompany it (only reinforced by the slow response and delaying tactics of
the gas-­industrial complex since the Huizinge earthquake)87 have led to feelings
of insecurity and distrust.88 That it took until 2013 for the uncertainty behind
the earthquakes to become widespread public knowledge can be explained, so
the argument goes, by the idea that the Grunningers were loyal and felt a sense
of pride for helping their country to develop as a whole.89 This slowly changed
with the constant adjustment of the risk analyses and maximum magnitude of
the earthquakes. In their search for answers, ever more people started to read
the actual reports. They called on the uncertainty itself – in depth – in their
letters of complaint to official institutions, for example to parliament.90 The
SSM report can be described as a turning point in this respect as well, as it not
only informed the gas-­industrial complex on the uncertainty in the analyses
used so far but also supported and legitimized earlier readings of the Grunnin-
gers. As Van der Voort and Vanclay argue, ‘the publication of the SSM report
was an impact in itself with people becoming more anxious about what will
happen to them’.91 With the report and the media attention following it, a
broader group of people learned that there was no certainty in store for them.
What is more, the subsequent decision of the Minister of Economic Affairs to
not directly follow the advice from the SSM gave the local population further
ammunition and a clear focus for their grievances.
One of the largest and most organized interest groups is the GBB, which is
actively lobbying, securitizing and litigating against the gas-­industrial complex.
In terms of security of supply, the GBB has constantly maintained that ‘the
extraction is reduced or halted until independent research shows at what level
extraction can take place safely and securely’.92 More importantly, ‘if “safe extrac-
tion” is technical impossible, the GBB demands a total halt to the gas extrac-
tion’.93 The GBB, together with other interested parties, made this tangible in
their appeal to the highest administrative court in the Netherlands.94 Building
on their earlier call that the minister was not acting, they argued that legally the
Ministry of Economic Affairs had not sufficiently substantiated the decision to
cap the gas extraction. The ministry based its decisions on the certainties it had
(the budgetary necessity of the gas benefits and security of supply), as opposed to
the many uncertainties that accompany the gas extraction.95 During the hearing,
they called for a preferred reduction to 12 bn Nm3, which the SSM in 2013
argued was a safe extraction level,96 only accepting 21 bn Nm3 if practical circum-
stances (read minimal security of supply and international contractual obliga-
tions) dictated otherwise in line with the bottom bandwidth of the GTS report.97
Although they were unhappy with the legal ruling that confirmed the prevalence
of security of supply concerns and set the level at 27 bn Nm3,98 this and the
second option show that the GBB is forced to accept security of supply as a
primary consideration in the debate. In other words, while the local population
does not primarily discuss the gasquakes in terms of security of supply, the Dutch
security of supply considerations are a constant absent presence in their claims
for recognition, safety and a reduction of natural gas extraction.
 The Dutch natural gas debate   209
7.6 The politics behind the gasquake science
Behind the debate on the minimal extraction volume lies the lack of knowledge
over the tremors, both in terms of the availability of seismographs to actually
monitor them and in terms of the uncertainty of the scientific models that are
used to analyse and predict the gasquakes. In this respect, the Groningen gas
debate shows (1) that what is not monitored and measured cannot be known,
(2) that researchers had little incentives to work on the uncertainties in their
models, especially (3) when the institutions using and sponsoring the results are
happy with the outcomes. For the argument of this chapter, the debate shows
that the decision to monitor is just as political as the decision to cap the extrac-
tion, and thus just as much a security decision, in other words that these deci-
sions are heavily influenced by the interests and (energy) security positions of
the parties involved, while simultaneously the parties feel justified in their posi-
tions by the subsequent outcomes of the studies.
For example, the only reason why the 1986 earthquake near Assen, a town
just south of the Province of Groningen, which has its own small gas field, was
identified as an earthquake, contrary to other orally reported ‘air’ tremors,99 was
because it was strong enough to be picked up by the sensors of the Royal Neth-
erlands Meteorological Institution (KNMI) in the middle of the country. One
of the main results of the debate that followed was that the Dutch Parliament
influenced the Minister of Economic Affairs to order the KNMI – for which the
earthquake was unexplainable as it lacked any longitudinal data – to install a
number of seismographs around the Assen field in 1989 and around the Gronin-
gen field in 1992.100 Reflectively, this brings up the question whether the start of
Figure 7.1 resulted from the first true Groninger gasquake or was actually a result
of the capacity to monitor them.
Either way, new waves of attention and research followed, among others in
1993, 1995, 1997, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2006 and 2009, owing to both earthquakes
and regulatory changes. Of these, 2004 is of interest on two accounts: first,
because the NAM for the first time publicly acknowledged that the maximum
magnitude could be corrected if necessary, thereby implying that these cannot
be estimated upfront, and, second, because the 2004 KNMI report not only
increased the maximum magnitude to 3.9 after an update of its database, but
also acknowledged that it was using static models for a situation that was not
static (as the earthquakes result from shifting levels of gas extraction). However,
it stated that it simply lacked the tools and subsurface information to cope with
the fluctuating gas extraction and its relation to the induced earthquakes.101
It took until the Huizinge earthquake and the report by the SSM for the
number of studies to increase dramatically (as did the number of seismographs).
Many of these reports were commissioned as part of the large interdisciplinary
study on the gas supply chain by the Ministry of Economic Affairs, which was
receiving conflicting advice from the parties involved. Before 2013, the Minis-
try of Economic Affairs relied on the reports of the KNMI and other knowledge
institutes and it expected these reports to be paid for by the NAM after its legal
210   The Dutch natural gas debate
obligation to take the necessary safety precautions. However, as the DSB con-
cludes, the NAM, as the exploiter most knowledgeable of the gas fields, wel-
comed the results from these reports that the earthquakes would only have a
minimum impact and hence saw no cause to order additional studies on the
uncertainties mentioned in the reports.102 To be fair, it also took the semi-­
independent SSM until 2012 to put forward the uncertainties behind the sci-
entific models and risk assessments.
With the NAM unwilling to study the scientific uncertainties, the ministry
passively relying on advice and the SSM (and other expert councils) confirming
the official reports, there was little incentive for the KNMI and other geological
knowledge institutes to build alternative models. They tried, in part by looking
at international research, but then quickly ran in to the unique material qual-
ities of the Groningen gas field.103 What remained were the static models and
their outcomes, which ‘focused on the number, the estimated maximum magni-
tude’.104 In the end, this focus on the number worked both ways. It simplified
matters for the gas-­industrial complex as it constantly reinforced their position
that the gasquakes did not pose a safety concern but over time also fuelled the
distrust and uncertainty of the Grunningers, for whom the message not to worry
contrasted with the constant adjustments and their experience with the actual
earthquakes. The 2013 SSM report in this sense is interesting as it shows the
importance of reflexivity within an energy security and safety debate, in par-
ticular the awareness that security of supply still needs a value judgement.
Clearly, the Grunningers, with their focus on safety (and their search for
answers), judged this threshold differently than the gas-­industrial complex
which looked at the balance between costs, profits, legal obligations and security
of supply.

7.7 Reflection
The Groningen gasquake debate offers an example of a security debate in a
developed country that puts security of supply considerations in a broader polit-
ical context (in this case human security arguments). The analysis built on the
interaction between three lines of enquiry. First, it took seriously the material
reality of the earthquakes and their impacts, but also the gas field itself and the
infrastructure around it, which keeps the debate localized (no earthquakes
outside Groningen) and situated in a Northern European market through its
pipelines at the same time. Second, it highlighted the politics over these earth-
quakes in terms of their origin and their potential impact, as well as the know-
ledge politics related to the scientific uncertainty of the models behind the
earthquakes and their future trends. Third, it illustrated the struggle by the Grun-
ningers to attribute a sense of urgency to both the materiality of the earthquakes
and their future uncertainty. While successful, the above also shows that the
local population could not escape the assessments of the gas-­industrial complex.
In fact, in order to break with the conservative force stemming from the
unreflective use of security of supply and in order to increase the audience
 The Dutch natural gas debate   211
acceptance of their safety claim, the local population needed, first (and pain-
fully), the frequency and magnitude of the earthquakes as well as the visibility
of their impact. Second, they helped to speed this up by focusing on the scient-
ific uncertainties in the reports, slowly convincing neighbours and local authori-
ties and then media, semi-­regulatory institutions and so on. Third, once the
SSM accepted the claim and published the report that legitimized the safety
claim, the focus shifted to the decisions of the Minister of Economic Affairs.
While this was initially a decision not to act, later the focus shifted to the deci-
sion about the level at which the natural gas extraction was capped. That said,
while deciding to wait, the minister had already demanded the report from the
GTS on the minimum security of supply levels, indicating an early acceptance
to review the Dutch security of supply position.
In reflection, this illustration highlights the importance of a contextual and
broader political understanding of security of supply. Throughout the debate,
the gas-­industrial complex slowly increased its willingness to accept and com-
pensate for the consequences of the gas extraction. It was not until it had com-
promised on almost all aspects of the gas supply chain that it was willing to
consider a closer look at the meaning of security of supply and reduce the
extracted volume for safety concerns. Similarly, the case showed that, while
the Grunningers called for a further reduction, they ultimately took a forced
pragmatic legal stance towards a minimum extraction volume based on security
of supply considerations. The debate thus centred on the meaning of security
of supply as it relates to the low-­calorific natural gas of the Groningen gas field,
the estimated demand and the available technical capacity to substitute the
Groningen gas. From a security perspective, however, the local population
through their resistance against the gas extraction practices helped reify the
principle of security of supply. Even though their concerns fitted a potential
wider understanding of human energy security, they never really successfully
questioned the security of supply principles behind the decision-­making pro-
cesses. Consequently, security of supply has been reproduced while it structured
the debate by setting the outermost boundaries of acceptable actions and
reductions. Still, it has not been reproduced the same: the gasquakes have chal-
lenged the Dutch understanding of security of supply, with natural gas no
longer seen as a silent and bountiful resource but as a necessity to which the
country is addicted.
From this we can draw three lessons. The first is the need to study the use of
security and threat images in their wider political context. This should include
the sociotechnical energy infrastructure, material causal events, and especially
how security practices relate with other knowledge practices that are used to
make sense of these events. Second, besides the insight that people who use
security language are morally responsible for the distinctions they make, the
agenda-­setting power they exert and the resources that are drawn from other
options, there is the lesson that security is simultaneously about urgency and
conservation. It is about protecting and conserving a certain situation, except
that it always fails as security changes the referent object itself. Protecting the
212   The Dutch natural gas debate
existing gas extraction volumes had clear impacts (the gasquakes), just as
arguing for the safety and living standards had an impact on the actual gas
extraction (a cap). Security is never static and the search for the definition of
what energy security is can therefore only be described as an active political
intervention itself. Energy security scholars should be aware of this and not only
study ‘new’ security threats or categorize old ones but explicitly focus on existing
energy security practices, their distinctions and the constant renegotiation and
hard work that keep them stable.

Notes
   1 This chapter is a lightly altered version of an article published in the journal Energy
Research & Social Science and reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution
4.0 International License (CC BY); see Kester 2017 (doi:10.1016/j.erss.2016.
12.019).
   2 Then again, not providing such an operationalization also performs a reality,
although it offers one open to free assemblages and association on the side of the
reader.
   3 For the purpose of this chapter, the choice of debate is thus second to the idea to
highlight the performative approach. Another example, with another performative
approach can be found in relation to smart grids, see Kester 2016.
   4 Foucault 2007, 96.
   5 NAM 2015a; KNMI 2015.
   6 Van der Voort and Vanclay 2015.
   7 Chester 2010; Valentine 2011.
   8 Sovacool 2011; Winzer 2012.
   9 Fischhendler and Nathan 2014, 152.
10 Cherp and Jewell 2011; Chester 2010.
11 Pasqualetti 2011, 278.
12 Luft and Korin 2009; Yergin 2012.
13 Ang, Choong, and Ng 2015; Kruyt et al. 2009; Sovacool 2011.
14 Cherp and Jewell 2011, 334.
15 Cherp and Jewell 2014, 415.
16 Fischhendler and Nathan 2014, 153.
17 Herbstreuth 2014; Littlefield 2013.
18 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998. Christou and Adamides 2013; Fischhendler,
Boymel and Boykoff 2014; Fischhendler and Nathan 2014; Natorski and Herranz
Surrallés 2008; Nyman 2014.
19 Christou and Adamides 2013.
20 Fischhendler and Nathan 2014.
21 Herbstreuth 2014; Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008.
22 Barad 2007; Bennett 2005; Coole and Frost 2010. On ANT, see Latour 2005;
Mol 2002.
23 DSB 2015.
24 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2015d.
25 Bebbington et al. 2008.
26 This comes with a strong moral responsibility for the observer, as it is they who
decide what to study as part of this relationality or network: Latour 2002.
27 Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for bringing this up.
28 Mandelbaum, Kristensen and Athanassiou 2016; Wibben 2016.
29 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 23–24.
30 Ibid., 26.
 The Dutch natural gas debate   213
31 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998; Christou and Adamides 2013, 509–510;
Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008, 74.
32 Foucault 2007.
33 Balzacq et al. 2010.
34 Booth 2007.
35 These insights are related to a performative reading of energy security; see also
Bridge 2015, where actors are seen to be directed in how they approach the world
by earlier practices and understandings, and subsequently, when acting (re)produce
those or other new social and material practices and effects.
36 Balzacq 2011, xiii.
37 Balzacq 2005; Roe 2008.
38 Fischhendler, Boymel and Boykoff 2014; Fischhendler and Nathan 2014.
39 de Wilde 2008.
40 WEC 2015.
41 This can be read as implying that safety concerns about energy production are not
part of energy security itself, which I would argue against in line with the focus on
the social/environmental acceptability of vital energy systems. Here, however, I
make an analytical distinction to better contrast the positions of the two parties
(which together with the choice for specific spokespersons is another analytical
choice to simplify the debate).
42 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 24.
43 Van Wijk and Fischhendler 2016, 22 quoting Adam and Van Loon, 2000.
44 Natorski and Herranz Surrallés 2008, 74.
45 Buzan, Wæver and de Wilde 1998, 33.
46 Barad 2007; Bennett 2005; Coole and Frost 2010.
47 Latour 2005; Mol 2002.
48 Foucault 2007; cf. Schouten 2014.
49 Latour 2005, 76.
50 All translations from Dutch are by the author, but I am grateful to the editors and
reviewers for offering a better translation of this term.
51 The Netherlands has a framework that distributes the legal ownership, extraction
rights and profit sharing between the Dutch state and the companies involved,
through a range of legal entities and subsidiaries, which nowadays is bundled under
the heading het Gasgebouw (see for example Van Gastel, Van Maanen and Kuijken
2014). In this tight network, Shell and ExxonMobil have the licence to operate the
Groningen natural gas field through their ownership of the Nederlandse Aardolie
Maatschappij (NAM). Both also own shares of GasTerra, the company responsible
for the sale of the natural gas. The Dutch state (read the Ministry of Economic
Affairs) is directly involved through a legal entity called EBN. The NAM and EBN
both cooperate in and own the Maatschap Groningen, which is responsible for the
actual exploitation of the natural gas fields. The Dutch state also owns shares of
GasTerra both directly (via the Ministry of Finance) and indirectly (through EBN).
All in all, the DSB (2015, 8, 75, 88) concludes that, through these constructions
and the close personal connections between the boards of GasTerra and the
Maatschap Groningen, the decision-­making on Dutch natural gas is made in a
closed system that is effectively owned by Shell, ExxonMobil and the Dutch state: a
system devoid of opposition and ruled by ten persons at most.
52 Although not the strongest ever experienced in the Netherlands (which was a
natural earthquake in Roermond, 1992), and not nearly close to the magnitude of
some of the recent US shale gas-­induced earthquakes. The Richter scale is loga-
rithmic and its magnitude highlights the energy released. Everything below 3 on
the Richter scale is hardly perceptible. That said, the actual experienced magni-
tude depends on multiple factors (energy released, wave speed, ground conditions,
force, duration, depth and so on), not all of which relate one-­on-one to the
214   The Dutch natural gas debate
earthquakes in Groningen. In particular, the minimal depth between 1 and 3 km,
the ground conditions (clay, high groundwater levels) and the fast speed of the
ground waves mean that people experience them earlier than the Richter scale
would indicate. Other complicating factors are the uncertainty within the Richter
scale itself (±0.1) and the delay of about a year between the gas extraction and the
earthquakes.
53 Up to 54 billion Nm3; see NAM 2015b.
54 Out of 133 total in the Netherlands; see KNMI 2015.
55 SSM 2013.
56 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2008.
57 SSM 2013; see also DSB 2015, 66; Muntendam-­Bos and De Waal 2013.
58 DSB 2015, 77.
59 GTS 2013.
60 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2013a, 2013b, 2013c; Commissie Meijer 2013.
61 Provincie Groningen 2013; Commissie Meijer 2013.
62 KNMI 2015; NAM 2015a; SSM 2014a, 2014b.
63 Kabinet, Provincie Groningen and NAM 2014.
64 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2014.
65 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2015b, 2015a.
66 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2015d, 2015a.
67 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2013a, 4.
68 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2015c, 4.
69 RvS 2015b; RvS 2015a.
70 GTS 2013.
71 Ministerie van Economische Zaken 2006.
72 DSB 2015, 70–71; comparable: SSM 2014a, 4.
73 Steen et al. 2013.
74 DSB 2015, 74.
75 Ibid., 71; GBB 2015a.
76 DSB 2015, 81–82, 86.
77 GBB 2013b; Havermans 2015; Van den Berg 2015; Van der Voort and Vanclay
2015, 7–9.
78 FocusGroningen 2014.
79 RTL Nieuws 2014.
80 OOG TV 2015.
81 De Telegraaf 2015.
82 See Van Hamersvelt 2013 on Van der Sluis. Or, more recently, Dwarshuis 2015;
Groeneveld 2015.
83 Groninger Bodem Beweging, see GBB 2011, 2013b.
84 Schokkend-­Groningen.nl 2013.
85 BOA 1993.
86 Van Hamersvelt 2013.
87 GBB 2014.
88 Van der Voort and Vanclay 2015.
89 Commissie Meijer 2013, 21.
90 See GBB 2013a.
91 Van der Voort and Vanclay 2015, 8.
92 GBB 2015b, 4.
93 GBB 2013b, 1.
94 Plas Bossinade Advocaten Notarissen 2015.
95 GBB 2015a, 7.
96 Muntendam-­Bos and De Waal 2013.
97 GTS 2013.
98 GBB 2015c.
 The Dutch natural gas debate   215
99 Van den Berg 2015.
100 Commissie Meijer 2013; Havermans 2015; Meij 1994; Van den Berg 2015.
101 Van Eck et al. 2004; see also Dost and Kraaijpoel 2013 for a similar study after the
Huizinge earthquake; or the BOA 1993 report for a predecessor.
102 DSB 2015, 65–66.
103 See note 3; Ibid., 64.
104 Ibid., 63.

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8 Conclusion
Performativity, disclosure and the
politics of energy security

8.1 The tightrope walker

The philosopher Achterhuis, in one of his books on scarcity, described the
world we live in with the metaphor of a tightrope walker: a world where society
acts as an agent who is constantly collecting goods, yet needs to keep moving to
stay upright. With each good the agent becomes heavier and more packed,
forcing him to speed up to keep his balance and able to move to the next good,
always forwards at increasing speeds, never able to look back and reflect on what
he carries or leaves in his wake.1 Achterhuis uses this metaphor to criticize the
insatiable desire of relative scarcity that lies behind modern resource use and
the consequential imbalance that this creates with local and planetary environ-
mental boundaries. The desire for more and the fear of falling are also two core
elements that shape the politics of energy security. Neither of these has received
much attention in the literature on energy security. Perhaps because there is no
need, for who does not know what is desired and feared when discussing energy
security? Who would object to the shared concern that energy needs to be
secured and who does not agree that all humans are entitled to a shared
minimum energy consumption? Yet, even the brief personal reflection that
opened this book indicates that there is not a single energy security but that
what is secured differs across time, space, person and purse.
This view is confirmed in the first two chapters, both dealing with the
current energy security literature. Chapter 2 provided a brief historical per-
spective of the meaning of energy security and its proliferation in terms of refer-
ent objects and scale. It found a concept that has evolved and proliferated from
an initial understanding in terms of security of supply into a concept that also
covers economic, environmental, human rights and systemic aspects in line
with the growing importance of energy in society. Chapter 3 subsequently
reflected briefly on the different methods and approaches that the energy
security literature uses to make sense of its issue area. It discussed the qualitative
and quantitative methods used to define energy security, in addition to the the-
orization of and the search for underlying logics hidden behind energy security.
In short, the first chapters argued that the search for a definition of energy
security might repeatedly add new variables but does not provide any
 Conclusion   221
understanding as to why it constantly proliferates nor what its effects are. More-
over, they reflected that the use of current methods and theories seems to help
shape a specific form of energy security (in this particular reading at least). As
such the book argues that the search for a central definition or the core logics of
energy security provides a form of closure that will always be hiding the virtual-
ity and the differences that result from the actual energy security associations
and is therefore inhibitive of a deeper understanding of energy security and its
underlying social processes.
To be clear, this is definitely not a call to drop the search for such definitions,
to give up scenarios and modelling, or to throw away the study of the theories
and logics behind energy security. It is simply an observation that the currently
literature on energy security misses a set of questions and literature, which
focuses on this proliferation as it analyses the politics of energy security in use.
What for instance causes the proliferation of energy security definitions? Is it
problematic that each author and report upholds their own definition? And how
do we study energy security politics, not just energy security? For the latter ques-
tion in particular, the chapters above move beyond energy to the broad liter-
ature on security. In other words, how can the focus be shifted from energy
security to energy security as security in order to ask what security is and how
security works (Chapter 4)? And how do the social and linguistic focus of
current critical security studies relate to the materiality of the systems behind
energy production, transport and consumption (Chapter 5)? Another question
to study is how security acts politically in relation to other social processes
(Chapter 6). In short, the chapters offered initial answers to these questions by
unpacking energy security with critical social theory from the field of critical
security studies, new materialism and governmentality studies.
Chapter 4 argued that security is not one thing or one logic but that there
are multiple forms of insecurity, different techniques that can be used to identify
undesired futures and several security logics that enable a person to act in the
present on such futures. Security hence was defined as the mode through which
people identify undesirable futures and act upon them in the present. The latter half
of the chapter discussed security as a performative act. It finds a mode of reason-
ing that (1) always discriminates, as there are always things and persons
excluded from that what is to be secured, which (2) is productive and not just
conservative as it helps create the values that it tries to secure, and which (3) is
called upon in political arenas to provide a level of urgency to its referent
object. And it is a mode of reasoning (4) that through risk assessments and
insurance practices to a large extent structures our daily lives. Above all, this
chapter sketched an image of security as inherently empty and constantly bound
to new referent objects. For the moment that people think themselves secure is
also the moment that new insecurities arise: a disturbing conclusion but also a
hopeful one, as it means that we can secure increasingly more specific or ‘luxuri-
ous’ aspects of life.
Chapter 5 started from the question how the materiality of the energy
systems relates to the social- and linguistic-­driven explanations of security. For
222   Conclusion
an answer, this chapter theorized the relationship between knowledge and mate-
riality to understand the durability, spatiality and eventfulness that spring from
these resources and infrastructure systems. Through multiple theories, ranging
from critical IR theories to a number of theories squared under the header of
‘new materialism’, this chapter makes four points. First, it built on the critical
literature and its epistemological argument that all observations are pre-­
structured by previous knowledge, with the realization that the material/­
knowledge duality is a post hoc explanation that does not exist in reality but
nevertheless is needed academically to understand the world we live in. Second,
this chapter, building on the new materialist literature, argued that we should
study the political processes through which matter comes to matter, in terms of
both knowledge and its effects, and give ample voice to the mediating role of
matter in these processes. Third, to study these processes, what needs to be
studied are the knowledge practices through which we get to know matter. More
specifically, this chapter ended with the idea that observation, by humans,
objects or a mix of both, is based on the creation of distinctions between that
what is and what is not observed. As in the case of security, such distinctions
are ultimately both ethical and material choices, as each observation assembles
and folds a set of relations together that make up what we understand as the
ontology of an (unknown or uncertain) phenomenon. Together these new
materialist theories offer a world of materialdiscursive relationships, their becom-
ing and breaking apart, a world of artificial distinctions and boundaries custom-
ized in social laws but also a world of artefacts and other hard material
achievements.
Chapter 6 continued with the closing remarks on the politics of matter in
the previous chapter and the insights on risk in the security chapter, which both
pointed to the later work of Michel Foucault and one main question: if we see
security as a performative practice that shapes a messy materialdiscursive world,
then how can we make sense of the politics and power behind it, not just the
politics of the application of security but also more broadly the role of security
in society? This chapter continued the discussion on the relationship between
events, observation and the materialdiscursive world, by turning to Foucault’s
insights on power/knowledge, biopolitics, conduct of conduct, and governmen-
tality. In particular, it paid special attention to the exercise of power that
Foucault describes in terms of the indirect governing of processes of circulation
(goods, people and so on) by influencing the milieu of these circulations. After
this chapter it is possible to read energy security in terms of a political process
that (1) is productive, (2) is based on knowledge gathering practices, (3) acts as
a form of governance and materialization and (4) not only interprets events but
helps draw deeper social and sociotechnical boundaries by differentiating
between nature, economics, the political and society.
On their own, each of these chapters further problematized the current
understandings of energy security, and each of these chapters offered alternative
insights and mechanisms to study energy security differently. At the same time,
all of these chapters are connected through several core critical insights. All
 Conclusion   223
chapters dealt with being (what is) and becoming (how something is enacted or
performed) and highlight a strong ethical dimension of this becoming. They all
focused on the creation of boundaries and distinctions but offered different ways
of seeing the world and different logics through which to analyse and define
issues. They all dealt with the relation between knowledge and the material,
and the ‘ethico-­onto-epistem-­ology’ sets of relations that make up the durability
and vibrancy of life.2 All chapters deal with the relation between matter, eco-
nomics, politics and ethics by analysing the broader political economies of
(energy) security. After these theoretical chapters, energy security is no longer
only something to be achieved but has turned into a governing technique aimed
at energy circulations that consist of a set of materialdiscursive relations which
are constantly performed and disrupted and which consist of humans, things,
knowledge, morality, practices and so on. In this reading, each call for energy
security is a performative act that has been produced and is producing a par-
ticular understanding of energy security and the materialdiscursive world
around it.
This was highlighted in Chapter 7 with an example of a performative reading
of energy security of the Dutch natural gas debate, which since the late 1980s
has been witness to an increasing number of ever-­stronger gasquakes. This
chapter offered a security analysis of the accompanying debate on the material
consequences and organization of the gas extraction between the threatened
local population, the knowledge institutes analysing the gasquakes, and the gov-
ernment and extraction industry. The chapter studied how these parties make
sense of the gasquakes through a combination of securitization theory and the
flat relationality offered by new materialism, which forces the conflicting securi-
tization claims to be analysed in their local sociotechnical context. The result-
ing analysis showed how the gas debate is structured by a shared security of
supply understanding, but that this understanding has for a long time been ques-
tioned by the local population on its safety and cost implications. Still, it took
25 years for these claims to be accepted and the security of supply understanding
shifted to a focus on minimum extraction volumes. The analysis showed how
this time frame can only be explained through a self-­reinforcing combination of
security claims, experienced materialdiscursive events, increasing measurements
(following security calls), shifting value judgements and increasing audience
acceptance (creating additional speech actors).

8.2 Towards a performative reading of energy security

Where the current literature tries to get to the heart of what energy security is,
this book thus aimed to disclose the concept of energy security by discussing its
performative practices. It approached these practices from multiple angles, dis-
ciplines and theories in order to come to an understanding of what energy
security does. In other words, to open the intuitive common sense behind
energy security to an actual discussion of its underlying sociopolitical processes.
In doing so, it does not argue that this approach is better than the current
224   Conclusion
literature and policy work on energy security – it goes against its performative
approach to even claim such. Instead, the book offered an additional way of
thinking about the phenomenon of energy security. It offered an alternative
that moves away from the primary concerns within energy security and its self-­
reinforcing logics to its use and the practices that shape it. In other words, the
value of a performative approach lies in the interruption of many ontological
and epistemological a priori assumptions that characterize current studies on
energy security, in addition to a reflection on its effects or how it is used instru-
mentally to govern life. As Der Derian argues:

A [performative] response is not, then for all its purported relativism, axio-
matically apolitical or amoral: It is in fact an attempt to understand –
without resort to external authorities or transcendental values – why one
moral or political system attains a higher status and exercises more influ-
ence than another at a particular historical moment.3

The chapters above introduced such a performative approach, not by offering a

theory, method or specific performative reading but via a broad performative
mode of reasoning that is open to multiple theories and methods. As an
approach, it fits a small (but growing) body of performative work in relation to
energy. The work of Bridge on energy security as ‘world-­making’ has been men-
tioned, but equally interesting albeit slightly beyond energy is the work of Elden
and others on geopolitics and geometrics (a geological play on biopolitics),
which points to the ontological politics of observing our natural world.4
Another alternative, on energy broadly, includes the work on energopower from
Boyer and colleagues (a play on biopower), who study the ‘power over (and
through) energy’ and concentrate on the interaction between energy utilization
and democratization.5
Although reluctant to operationalize my own approach beyond the specific
theories introduced in this book, my chapters do share a certain performative
assemblage of five elements which can be used to describe the epistemology and
ontology behind energy security. Such an assemblage starts (1) with a definition
of performativity. Performativity, or the practice of how matter comes to matter,
was described in Chapter 5 with the help of Butler as ‘a reiterative practice by
which discourse produces the effects it names … the boundaries, fixity and
surface we call matter’.6 Her focus is on how discourse affects the non-­discursive
as it tries to stabilize it through definitions and interventions even though these
are inherently incomplete and rife with virtuality. However, based on the rest of
the new materialist literature, performativity can be extended to a reiterative
assemblage/folding of sets of materialdiscursive relationships where ‘discourse pro-
duces the effects it names’ but the non-­discursive and already-­actualized mate-
rialdiscursive relationships simultaneously produce the discourses that it
disrupts.
The next step would be (2) to offer a materialdiscursive, flat and relational
ontology with multiple sets of relationships that are inherently unstable unless
 Conclusion   225
they actively stabilize themselves, and in so doing enable or inhibit each other’s
circulation in different milieus. Such an ontology (3) is governed through the
differences that are created with observation and the further materialization of
such differences by the folding/assemblage of new sets of relationships. Observa-
tion here is understood as the attribution of meaning through either the identi-
fication of undesired futures or the post hoc identification of events, while
folding refers to the strategies (intentional or not) that guide materialdiscursive
elements to come together, whether through causality, chaos or politics (gather-
ing support for alternative measures). Both observation and folding are part of
security politics, although one can also find them in the distinct strategies for
properly folded and assembled economic, judicial or cultural/social spheres. Like
the differences between these spheres, such strategies are also at work to differ-
entiate energy from non-­energy and thus help perform the referent object of
energy security. Important here is the observer distinction between the things
we observe as facts or objects and the things we see as things and matters of
concern. Facts/objects are stabilized and black boxed sets of relationships that
are of no political concern, that is until they break down, achieve new connec-
tions or wilfully change because then these objects become things and need to
be reassembled and interpreted.
With this and the critical security literature in mind, it becomes possible
(4) to define energy security as the mode through which people identify undesirable
energy futures and act upon them in the present. Subsequently, (5) a scholar’s focus
shifts to these modes or strategies of governmentality, which come to light by
studying events (surprises or achievements, imagined or post hoc observed),
observations (practices of knowledge gathering, including security techniques,
statistics and so on) and assemblages (practices of folding elements in new rela-
tionships, including gathering political support, constructing new oil pipelines
with reverse flow capacity, demand response algorithms and so on). Of course,
the iterative nature of performative processes implies that these three are insep-
arable except post hoc, as an event can be an observation, an observation an
assemblage, and an assemblage an event (see Figure 8.1). Chapter 7 provided an
example where the observations of the gasquakes was both an assemblage of ele-
ments (seismographs, models, final report etc.) and an event that spurred local
response.
Irrespective of how one operationalizes it,7 a performative reading of energy
security has two benefits. First, it allows scholars to escape the real-­life energy
language of these debates and the urgency that comes with the use of security,
by building on its own languages and ontology that places such debates in a
wider context. This implies, for example, a move away from the state-­centrism
often attached to energy security considerations (as opposed to the household-­
level focus in food security or the individual level in human security or terrorism
studies). It also lets one escape the security concerns themselves. In line with
earlier remarks that it is not possible to study a system of communication from
within that system, someone worried about whether a country is energy-­secure
cannot properly reflect on what they are doing. In other words, a performative
226   Conclusion

ǀĞŶƚƐ KďƐĞƌǀĂƟŽŶƐ ƐƐĞŵďůĂŐĞƐ

ǀĞŶƚƐ KďƐĞƌǀĂƟŽŶƐ ƐƐĞŵďůĂŐĞƐ

ǀĞŶƚƐ KďƐĞƌǀĂƟŽŶƐ ƐƐĞŵďůĂŐĞƐ

Figure 8.1 The ontology of a performative reading of energy security.

Source: author.

reading of energy security allows one to reflect on how such security concerns
evolve and what their impacts are. Following from this, second, a performative
approach enables scholars to disclose the inherent assumptions in such a ‘system’
or materialdiscursive assemblage of relationships. For many, questions like these
and the resulting understanding on how humans act socially are enough to
justify a critical performative approach (together with any follow-­up questions).
For others, the lack of modelling and applied theorization means that these
understandings might be interesting but less than useful in real life. Clearly, this
book argued for the former, if only for the awareness to exclusions that these
performative studies offer citizens, consumers, policymakers, economists, scien-
tists and so forth, and thereby highlights the importance of disclosing the self-­
evident and find other ways to perform our materialdiscursive society.
What results is an understanding of energy security that is both (re)produced
and productive. Among others, it is produced by the theories and observations
that claim to observe it. It is produced by the ontological politics of security that
try to imagine, define and control surprising events and undesired futures. It is
produced by individuals who use both descriptive and proscriptive elements in
their definitions. It is produced through policies of diversification, contract law
or price fluctuations in energy markets. It is produced in the construction of new
back-­up capacity, the installation of reverse flow techniques and the overhaul of
the electricity infrastructure from fossil fuels to renewable sources. In short,
energy security is continuously produced and reproduced with each iterative use
of the concept, its practices and the energy system itself. These practices are
inherently fragile and always open to resistance and change. Energy security
proliferates, not because it cannot be defined but because its usage changes
constantly. Simultaneously, energy security is productive. It reifies concerns of
 Conclusion   227
absolute scarcity and the neorealist geopolitical concerns that come with this. It
reifies inherent assumptions on passive consumers that justify a further govern-
ing of them.8 It reproduces a technical and capital-­intensive mode of reasoning
to solve fundamental social problems. Most importantly, it conserves current
ways of life, even if it has to change itself to make that happen.
Counterintuitively, by studying the practices that shape energy security, the
search for a fuller understanding of what energy security does also results in a new
understanding of what energy security is. What emerged in this book was a mul-
tiplicity of energy security, as energy security is simultaneously energy insecurity,
a speech act with strong normative consequences, a risk calculation, a teleology
(a goal to be reached if one behaves in a particular way), a discourse that struc-
tures thought, a localized node of actor-­networks within a network of actor-­
networks, a materialdiscursive phenomenon based on an agential cut, a set of
relations with strategic intent, and a way to govern the present by conducting
the conduct of people in their relationship with things. It is all of these in addition
to the more traditional understandings of security of supply and the security of
energy systems, resources, services and so on, which together bring energy
security into being as a distinct desirable reality. With this in mind, it can be
concluded that even though the proliferation of energy security definitions is
driven by demands for a more emancipated, complete and truthful definition, the
closure offered by such a perfectly emancipated definition of energy security will
always remain incomplete as it hides the multiplicity of energy security.

8.3 A brief reflection on a performative reading of energy

security
While the previous section specified a bit more how a performative reading of
energy security could look like, the metaphor of a tightrope walker in effect
captures four additional general insights.
First, the balancing act itself does not just refer to the relation between
environmental boundaries and unlimited desires, but also illustrates the con-
stant balancing between (energy) security and (energy) insecurity, between
scarcity and abundance, between materiality and language, between construc-
tion and deconstruction, between the freedom to choose and the governing of
those who choose wrongly. In other words, it refers to politics. And, yes, politics
is central to this book, ranging from discussions on the politics of energy security
to the distinction between politics of security and insecurity, the shifts in securi-
tization theory (from the non-­political via the political to the extraordinary),
knowledge politics, ontological politics and biopolitics. All of these touch on
different forms of politics. To be clear, politics relates here to the techniques
and distinctions that enable or close the political: the space of contestation
where debate takes place (making things into objects and objects in to things).9
Choosing one over the other, arguing that security is a subset of biopolitics or
that knowledge politics is a prerequisite for ontological politics is an observer
distinction and thus a politics on its own.
228   Conclusion
Second, the relentless forward movement of a tightrope walker not only
refers to the unlimited desire for goods but also to the desire for knowledge.
Often considered progress, in case of energy systems this desire for knowledge
seems limited to a particular mode of thought: a capitalist-­driven search for
more data and better technology. This is a mode known to be unable to reflect
on its own practices, co-­opting resistance into its own existing practices instead
of engaging it reflexively, and therefore unable to think society differently.10 In
hindsight, it is knowledge, and the politics around it, that is so paradoxical for a
critical and performative understanding of energy security. On the one hand,
the search for knowledge by the ‘traditional’ literature is argued to be blind for
its own performative effects. Yet, on the other hand, those same knowledge
practices are the object of study for performative approaches, meaning that a
performative approach cannot do without the more traditional studies on energy
security. A performative approach, in a sense, is just as empty as security. It
needs positivist knowledge to make its claims. More importantly, it will always
find something to criticize in these positivist approaches because it focuses
on the exclusionary practices that are inherent to any form of positivist
observation.
Third, the agent or tightrope walker is also of interest. For whom or what is
the agent balancing on the tightrope? An individual? A group of people? Do we
include ‘things’ or objects as part of these groups? Perhaps society as a whole?
Which society? The moment the black box of society is opened, the multitude
and constantly shifting sets of relations between humans, animals, technology,
economy, nature and so forth come forwards, only to be differentiated by the
distinctions of the observer, irrespective whether scholars observe the agent or
the agent observes its environment. With these differences should come an
awareness of ethics, in line with Barad’s claim that ethics results from the differ-
ences that are part of an assemblage’s observation, but which are identified post
hoc as separate from the ethico-­onto-epistem-­ology that is our world.11 By dis-
closing this relationship, she and others point to a broader ‘us’ which includes
oneself, the other, the ignored others and the things that mediate these differ-
ences. This awareness of visible and invisible others comes with the ethical
obligation to care for and give the marginalized a voice or, if we follow Booth,
even reorganize subsequent assemblages in favour of those less well off.12
A last theme, one not explicitly discussed in the chapters but constantly
returning, is resistance. A consequence of the boundaries that are drawn in
knowledge gathering practices, security decisions, speech acts, the successful
association of a set of relations or the materialization of discourse is that some-
thing is always excluded. When everything stems from difference, as Bryant
argues, this implies that with each performativity comes the option of resist-
ance, whether as failure, achievement or wilful act.13 In the case of energy
security, from a developed country’s perspective, the circulation of energy sup-
plies is governed through a political economic assemblage of energy (resources,
infrastructure), security (biopolitics, geometrics, security logics) and markets.
This assemblage secures, on the one hand, the access to and production of
 Conclusion   229
energy (e.g. an energy intensive lifestyle with both its environmental con-
sequences and comfort and health benefits) and, on the other hand, the flow
and circulation of energy according to its respective mobile norms.14 Simultan-
eously, these forms of governing are constantly resisted, by humans as well as by
black boxed uncontrolled causal relationships, something the natural gas illus-
tration showed with the resistance and securitization of the local inhabitants to
official sedimented gas extraction practices as well as the gas extraction-­induced
earthquakes that entered the frame of reference of inhabitants and officials.

8.4 A research agenda and some implications

These reflections lead to five topics that deserve further research and four core
implications for energy security scholars and policymakers. The research sugges-
tions include a call to overcome the fear of philosophy and theory, to link the
energy security literature to the broader work in critical security studies, and to
further the performative energy security approach, theoretically and by utilizing
its insights to disclose the specific assumptions behind energy security. In turn,
the policy implications centre on the additional reflexivity that a performative
reading offers.
First, and before anything specific, it should be noted that, while this book
has tried to move the energy security debate beyond its realist confirmations and
sometimes simple applications of securitization theory to a range of theoretical
sources that could be used to understand the processes behind energy security
instead of defining them, this theorizing is nowhere near finished. Energy
security and theory are not enemies. And in fact, it is easy to foresee a range of
PhD projects engaging with the works in this book or the many other philo-
sophical works out there, among which the works of Deleuze and Guattari,
Wittgenstein, Habermas, Adorno or an updated reading of Marx. Moreover,
such projects would not be complete without looking to geography, feminism
and architecture for truly fresh theoretical thinking.
Second, this book’s focus on the security aspect of energy security comes with
a call to take security more seriously, with its logics, politics and use, to flesh out
how energy security differs from the broader security literature by focusing on
the ‘strategies’ behind its ontological politics,15 because not only could energy
security gain from insights from security studies but energy security could con-
tribute to it as well, in line with this book, by comparing the differentiation and
assemblage strategies of energy security to those of human security, terrorism
studies, economic security or the range of food, water and climate securities. For
example, the thesis behind this book compared energy security to food security,
which is witness to a similar proliferation of definitions as energy security but
simultaneously faces stronger resistance against the traditional solution of more
industrial food production and is focused on a different level of analysis (house-
holds instead of nations or systems).16 Another potential avenue is to contrast
and compare different forms of energy security, specifically to see how a politics
of energy security relates to a politics of energy insecurity. While the energy
230   Conclusion
security literature clearly differentiates between haves (producers) and have
nots (consumers), and the broad security literature looks at how we safeguard
ourselves from threats, missing seems to be a comparison of the security strat-
egies that are followed by people at different stages of security. In other words,
missing is a comparison of how the security strategies of those who are trying to
protect current volumes of energy (effectively securing abundance) differ from
those who are trying to gain said resources (e.g. securitizing scarcity).
Third, another core aspect that has a lot of potential is the security literature
on risk. A further discussion and application of risk, as discussed in Section 4.5,
offers a whole new approach to more routine security decision-­making and the
commodification of those decisions. This literature has the potential to open up
the energy security field beyond the use of risk in investment decisions to the
security actions that follow insurance and engineering calculations on, for
example, the risk decisions behind the level of overcapacity in electricity grids
or the amount of back-­up generation and spinning reserves or the distance
between a major gas pipeline or storage facility and a block of houses,17 in other
words to study the everyday of energy security by following the energy security
practices, calculations, scenarios, decisions and debates on a very local level
within companies, academia and policymaking, to focus on the desks and pro-
cesses that lead to declarations and outcomes instead of those declarations and
outcomes themselves.
Fourth, a deeper understanding of security, one that discloses the hidden
differentiations behind (routine) security practices, calls for more research on
the relationship between energy security and ethics. To look for energy security
debates and disclose as many of the ethical positions behind them with the help
of the literature on energy justice, energy poverty and natural resource distribu-
tion. This was part of Chapter 7. For, although it was not put forward (instead
highlighting the theoretical and methodological value of the case), it is truly
painful that the Dutch gasquake debate is still ongoing in one of the most
developed, highly organized and socially oriented countries in the world, espe-
cially as it seems to falter on the legal position of who is financially responsible
for the compensation and how this should be organized (even if a very legiti-
mate position on its own). This situation is extra peculiar as it is known that the
earth will keep settling and thus generating earthquakes for a number of years
after the gas extraction stops. Simulteneously, while this is the core concern, a
performative focus on the ethics in this debate should look beyond this par-
ticular ‘agential cut’, and for instance notice that the decision to lower extrac-
tion volumes also has ethical consequences, as it likely leads to higher heating
prices and thus potentially to more people suffering from energy poverty.
Lastly, in addition to a more theoretical reflection, a direct follow-­up would
be to build on the illustrations, here and elsewhere, and provide for a number of
actual case studies that study how energy security is made and how security
practices work in energy and how this affects society in doing so. This would
enable a deeper understanding of specific performative practices and it would
fine-­tune the theories from where these performative readings originate; to
 Conclusion   231
continue where the illustrations stopped, by analysing the relationality of energy
security at the intersection of knowledge practices, security claims and material-
ization on both local and international levels, for example by studying the per-
formativity of the International Energy Agency as a knowledge broker by
tracing the politics behind its statistics and models.
Turning from the research agenda to the implications, there are a couple of
implications for traditional energy security scholars and energy policymakers
that can be derived from this study. First, this book is not an attempt to con-
vince policymakers that what they do is performative, one the one hand,
because the goal of policymaking is to shape the reality of energy and, on the
other, because a performative approach does not help them as it does not offer
positivist projections or blueprints on how to proceed. Instead it offers a
moment to step outside the daily affairs and discourse of energy security and
thereby draws attention to the policymaker’s position in the overall relationality
of energy security. For example, this book starts with a personal reflection pre-
cisely to show that this is a work on energy security written by a well-­to-do
white guy living in the western hemisphere. Most definitely the analysis above
would be different if written by somebody else – notwithstanding how funda-
mental, meticulous and abstract it is. The point being that a performative
reading is contextual, reflexive and, in my opinion, additional to existing
research directions.
Second, this reflexivity in turn makes it possible to argue for an ethical and
normative awareness that extends beyond the self, a particular political
economy or a sociotechnical system. On a political level, this implies that
policymakers, energy security scholars and other actors are responsible not only
for a failure to counter threats but also for the threats that they propose them-
selves: for the distinctions between friend/enemy, the choice of what to protect,
and for the resources drawn from other areas in terms of actual resources and
agenda setting.18 Patterson’s argument is worth keeping in mind here: what
people really want to secure are not the current production and transmission
infrastructures but the services that energy enables them to enjoy.19 Interest-
ingly, those services are never truly measured. Instead we measure kWh, oil
barrels, cubic metres of gas: things that are quantifiable and commodified (a
clear case of ontological politics). Likewise, we know that, while the logic of
security intrinsically is geared to remove doubts and thus dispels any reflexivity
about third party victims (those who become victims in the struggle between
you and the threatening other), security threats are not fixed in stone. Hence,
energy security measures might become counterproductive. Moreover, the
security dilemma implies that more energy security could lead to less security.
Third, researchers have a duty to make sure that the theory they use to
analyse a given aspect of energy security is politically valid as well. Realism and
liberalism are great theories, but are they so because they explain the world or
because the world is performed to behave in that particular way? And would the
use of such a theory and its reiterated strengthened principles actually be bene-
ficial to energy security? I for one would minimize my realist analyses with their
232   Conclusion
conflictual geopolitics, not because these theories fail to explain a case or
because the energy markets are suddenly full of trust and all happy to trade but
because it reiterates certain principles that in certain political contexts need not
always be repeated. Basically, this is ANT’s main lesson: trace the actual rela-
tionships instead of trusting the socio-­economic definitions and theoretical
explanations. For instance, be aware that scenarios, modelling and algorithms
used to test energy security threat levels are constructed on the assumption that
we are in danger in the first place; it is not often that one finds a scenario that
negates the threat.
That brings us to a last implication. In line with the two remarks above and
the reflection that performativity needs positivist scholarship, a certain reflexiv-
ity is required of performative scholars as well. Even though the core focus of a
performative approach lies in it disclosing the assumptions behind existing prac-
tices and existing materialdiscursive assemblages, I share Latour’s view that dis-
closure alone is not enough reason to disclose. We live in a world seemingly
characterized by information overload, ‘fake news’, media highlights and other
brief attention spans, and in such a world critical scholars too have a responsib-
ility for what they study and how they report their results, especially as the dis-
closure of certain scientific facts – how well intended and justified – might not
be scientific or political expedient. Climate change is a case in point. Latour in
particular reflects on the misinterpretation by positivists (who think the lesson
is that everything is language) and conspiracy theorists (who take from it that
everything is questionable) of deconstructive theories as only highlighting the
uncertainty behind ‘matters of fact’:

I myself have spent some time in the past trying to show ‘the lack of scientific
certainty’ inherent in the construction of facts. I too made it a ‘primary
issue.’ But I did not exactly aim at fooling the public by obscuring the cer-
tainty of a closed argument – or did I? After all, I have been accused of just
that sin. Still, I’d like to believe that, on the contrary, I intended to emanci-
pate the public from prematurely naturalized objectified facts. Was I fool-
ishly mistaken? Have things changed so fast? … While we spent years trying
to detect the real prejudices hidden behind the appearance of objective
statements, do we now have to reveal the real objective and incontroverti-
ble facts hidden behind the illusion of prejudices?20

Performative scholars have an obligation to highlight that what an outsider per-

ceives as a move away from facts to the uncertainty behind it is in fact a trans-
lation of those ‘matters of facts’ into ‘matters of concern’. Such a translation
indeed discloses potential ethical implications, hidden paradoxes, missing rela-
tions and voices; however, the goal is not just to deconstruct but also primarily
to reinforce and deepen these facts beyond simplistic ‘this is it’ claims.
 Conclusion   233
8.5 In closing
In closing, a performative reading of energy security offers an additional way to
study energy security as it opens up the political origins and implications of this
concept and practice. Above in the conclusion I’ve argued that this leads to a
better understanding of how energy security works, as it highlights the hard
work necessary to stabilize our current understanding of energy security in light
of materialdiscursive resistance. This understanding is reached by looking at
energy security as a security practice in use, for which it shifts the focus to
security and introduces the broader security logics and how they relate to the
materiality of energy systems and act politically within society.
While it is difficult to formulate a specific performative approach for energy
security (owing to its contextualized nature), the brief performative assemblage
that was introduced to summarize and connect some of the core elements across
the theoretical chapters already offers a range of insights for energy security with
its focus on events, observations and assemblages. First, in line with the ques-
tion that started this book on why the definition of energy security keeps prolif-
erating, it can be concluded that energy security proliferates, not because it
cannot be defined but because (1) it is relative, because (2) its usage and context
changes constantly and because (3) it is based on empty security logics wherein
failure and success always leads to more security. As such, the search for a
central definition – while admirable and politically useful (for some) as it makes
energy manageable and helps spread awareness of the many facets of energy
security – is simultaneously hiding the virtuality and differences of energy
security and is thereby inhibitive of a deeper understanding of the phenomena
and its underlying social processes. Once defined as the mode through which people
identify undesirable energy futures and act upon them in the present, energy security
is no longer solely something to be achieved but emerges as a governance tech-
nique aimed at energy circulations that consist of a set of materialdiscursive
relations which are constantly performed and disrupted. In this reading, every
use of energy security is a performative act that has been produced and is pro-
ducing a particular understanding of energy security and the materialdiscursive
world around it. Subsequently, trying to define energy security/insecurity is not
just a discussion about power; it is the exercise of a form of power through
meaning attribution and materialization.
All in all, the response of Cherp to Sovacool that a definition of ‘energy
security takes more than asking around’ is interesting in light of the above as
this book’s performative stance would argue that it is exactly that – a shared
relational understanding.21 At the same time, it argues that energy security
entails much more than a shared social understanding, as it includes the work to
generate these shared understandings as well as its effects in terms of materiali-
zation and forms of governing. Most of all, the above reflects that energy security
is forever out of reach of humans, not because it cannot be reached but because,
the moment we do, our focus shifts to another element and the process starts
again. The proliferation of energy security definitions, the totalizing tendency of
234   Conclusion
security and the constantly growing desire for energy are all indications that the
tightrope walker will keep moving forwards. Of course, along the way we might
be getting better at managing it, perhaps even for a wider ‘us’, but unfortunately
these management practices remain part of current logics and sociotechnical
systems. In contrast, a reflexive performative reading steps outside of them and
thereby offers a first step to an actual transformation of our current energy logics
and systems.

Notes
1 Achterhuis 1988, 106–107.
2 Barad 2007.
3 Der Derian 2009, 193 (emphasis in original).
4 Bridge 2015; Elden 2007, 2013.
5 Boyer 2011, 5, 2014; Mitchell 2009, 2013.
6 Butler 1993, 2.
7 For an alternative performative, deeply theoretical and practical analysis focused on
natural gas security in the UK, see: Forman 2017, 2018.
8 Kester 2016a.
9 Barry 2002, 270–271.
10 See Byrne and Toly 2006.
11 Barad 2007.
12 Bellacasa 2011, 100. Booth 2005.
13 De Goede 2012.
14 Kester 2016a, 2018.
15 Kester 2018.
16 Kester 2016b.
17 Forman 2017, 2018.
18 Balzacq 2011, xiii.
19 Patterson 2008.
20 Latour 2004, 227.
21 Cherp 2012, p. 841; Sovacool 2011. Also Sovacool et al. 2012.

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Index

Page numbers in bold denote tables, those in italics denote figures.

accountability 126, 131, 143; and risk black boxing (Latour) 132, 134, 143, 147,
91–92; see also unaccountability 184, 225
accountants 92, 182–183 blackouts 21–22, 48, 130–131
actants 133–134, 135–136, 137, 139, 147 Bohr, Niels 141–142, 154n200
actor-network theory (ANT) 114, Booth, Ken 56, 70–71, 77–78, 145, 148
132–138, 139, 141, 147, 232; and Dutch Bridge, Gavin 30, 213n35
natural gas debate 202 brittle star (sea creature) 143–144
actors in securitization theory 76–77, Bryant, Levi R. 137, 139–140, 228
78–79, 84–85, 86 Butler, Judith 84, 91, 143, 144;
affordability 13, 14–16, 25–26, 28, 41, performativity 129, 130, 179, 224
44 Buzan, Barry 56, 58, 61, 75, 76, 78
agency 114, 124, 125, 127, 128, 133–134;
distributed 131, 180 capital 71; risk as form of 89, 92
agential cut, the 142–144, 145, 147, 227 capitalism 131, 135, 177–178
Amoore, Louise 88, 91, 93, 104n251, 171, Cartesian dualism 115–116, 122–123, 126,
182–183; on risk logic 94, 95 138, 144, 179
artefacts 116, 126, 141, 146; in ANT 132; catastrophe 61–62
in materialdiscursive ontology 140; Cherp, Aleh 16, 29, 40, 198; classification
politics of 128 of threats 43; on logic of security 47,
assemblages 61, 130–131, 134, 145, 226; 48–49
in materialdiscursive ontology 132, 146, Chester, Lynne 15, 17, 44
147, 148, 184, 226; performative circulation processes 45, 90–91, 163, 166,
224–225, 228, 229 170, 172, 186, 222; freedom of 7,
audience in securitization theory 76–77, 173–174; security of 90–91, 171,
79, 81, 83, 85, 86, 200 184–185, 228–229
Ciută, Felix 13, 29; on logic of security
Barad, Karen 122, 129, 141–145, 147, 47–49, 77, 79
154n199, 155n212, 228 climate change 22–24, 46, 77, 93
Barry, Andrew 139, 140–141, 183 climate security 22
behaviour 165; and freedom 166, 167, 171, coal 13, 16, 18; electricity source 23; and
175; and risk 88, 91–93, 94, 95 oil 19, 20
Bennett, Jane 61; North American commodification of contingency 89–91,
blackout analysis 130–131, 132, 146 178, 230
biopolitics 164, 167, 168–171, 181, 186, conduct of conduct (Foucault) 164–165,
227; and governmentality 174, 175 176, 179, 180, 181, 196
biopower 164, 167, 168, 191n172; and consumer countries 21, 44; economic
government 174 insecurity of 19, 20
 Index   237
Copenhagen School 75–76 energy poverty 24–25
counter-conduct (Foucault) 174–175 energy security: definitions of 13, 14–16,
critical infrastructure protection (CIP) 19, 28–30, 197–198, 220–221, 233–234;
27, 141; origins of 32–3n86, 93 theoretical analyses of 45–49, 47
critical realism 117–118, 121, 123 energy trilemma 2, 46–47, 47, 200
critical security studies (CSS) 3–4, 68–71, entanglement 124–125; materialdiscursive
75, 87–89, 96, 184, 199, 221 143, 145
entities, folded 139
danger 61–62, 69, 87, 174, 175, 232; and environmental security 22–23, 24
freedom 176; and risk 88, 91, 99n22 environmentalism 22, 28, 45, 140
Darwinism in Foucault 170, 174 epistemological theories 114–117,
Dean, Mitchell 91, 169, 171, 173; on 120–121, 123, 142
biopolitics 174, 176–177; on conduct epistemological relativism 118
165; on insurance 89; on rationality essentialism 127; see also social
187n10; on risk 92, 103n206 essentialism
dependency 12, 19–20, 28, 48, 51n48, essentialization 151n82
80–81 ethics 223–229; and accountability 126,
desecuritization, logic of 78–79, 82–83 131, 132; defined 70; and observation
desire 220, 228; biopolitics and 170–171, 141, 143, 145, 147–148, 228; of security
174, 186, 227; fear and 72; liberalism 56, 79, 96, 230
and 176 ethics of security 68–75
deterrence, logic of 65–66 European Union (EU) and Russian gas
diffractive reading (Barad) 143 80–84
Dillon, Michael 69, 71, 126, 168, 184; events 138–140, 200, 225, 226; contingent
radical uncertainty 58, 60–61, 173, 89–91, 93, 94, 178; and meaning 114,
178–179 116–119, 148, 211; regularity of and risk
discipline 166–167, 171 88–89; see also surprise, events as
discourse/material dualism 125, 130–132, Ewald, François 88–89, 91, 93
143, 163, 179–180 exceptionality in political decisions 76,
dualism 115–117, 120–121, 123, 126, 77–78, 85, 86
149n5, 150n38 exclusion, political strategy of 78, 92, 96
Dutch earthquakes 197, 198, 201, 223, exogeneous and endogenous fears 73
230; as political issue 202, 203–208,
209, 210, 211; related to gas extraction facts, material and institutional 116, 118,
203, 204, 229, 230; see also Huizinge 127
earthquake fear 59, 60, 66–67, 69, 72–75; culture of
Dutch gas-industrial complex 199, 202, 77, 97; political use of 73–75, 76, 84,
204, 206–208, 210 95–97, 174, 220
Dutch natural gas extraction 197, 198, folds 139, 147, 224–225
202, 205, 207–208, 209–210 food: politics of 180–181; shortages 169,
Dutch Safety Board (DSB) 198, 206, 210 173, 182–183, 185
food security 43, 229
ecological security 22 food systems 177
economy, liberal 172–173 foreign dependency 18, 19, 20, 45, 80–82
electricity grid: maintenance 33n91; fossil fuels 12, 17, 22, 23, 27, 82
vulnerability of 22, 27, 130–131 Foucault, Michel 7, 88, 90–91, 163–164,
emancipatory security theory (Booth) 185–187, 222; biopolitics 168–170;
70–71 circulation, processes of 184–185; on
empiricism 116, 118 governing 164–165; governmentality
energopower 224 171–175; and liberalism 175–179; and
energy: concept of 12, 13, 28, 40; materiality 179; milieu and government
definitions of 12–13; infrastructure 170, 177–178, 179; on power 166–167;
18–19 power/knowledge nexus 181; on security
energy dependency 16, 81, 220 apparatus 184
238   Index
freedom: and individuals 78, 170, 171, 70–71; and markets 21; and Russia 80,
176; and politics 7, 71, 171, 172, 82; types of 60–62
173–176, 186 insurance 67, 88–89, 92–96, 97, 178
futures, undesirable 57, 96–98, 200, 225; International Energy Agency (IEA) 13,
ethics and security measures 68–71; fear 19, 21, 231; insecurity definition 20;
and 72–75; and insecurity 58–62; logics security definition 15, 28
of 65–68; prediction of 62–65; intersubjectivity 75, 79, 117, 118, 122,
securitization theory and 76–79, 84–87 123

gas reserves 44, 183, 205, 206 Jevons, William Stanley 13, 18
gasquakes see Dutch earthquakes Jewell, Jessica 16, 29, 40, 198;
geometrics 191n172, 224 classification of threats 43; on logic of
geopolitics 13, 29, 30, 45–46, 81–83, 224 security 47, 48–49
geopower 191n172
globalism 19–20, 23–24 knowledge 146–148, 163, 172, 222, 228;
good/bad dichotomy 46, 165 and critical realism 117–118; and
government: police and 168–169; dualism 115–117, 124–126, 144; and
rationalities of 165, 166, 170–171 power 179, 180, 181–183, 186–187,
governmentality 75, 91, 163–165, 200; and radical constructivism
171–175, 186; and collective interest 118–121; and social essentialism
176; and environment 177; of fear 84, 121–123, 150n52
174; of risk 6; strategies of 225
greenhouse gas emissions 22, 23, 188n34 La Perriere, Guillaume de 179–180
Groningen gas field 197, 203–204, 205, language 60, 85, 120–123; role of 115,
210 116–117, 129–130
Groninger Bodem Beweging (GBB) 202, language games 119–120, 123
208 Latour, Bruno 61, 122, 130; and ANT
132, 133, 135–136, 202; on events 139;
Harman, Graham 135–136, 137, 151n83 on materialism 151n83, 152n121; on
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle matters of fact 232; on morality and
141–142 technology 144–145; social-material
Hildyard, Nicholas 12, 27–28, 30 duality 151n62
household: energy security of 25–26, 197, liberalism 169, 170, 172–173, 174–177,
231; uses of energy 26 178–179
Huizinge earthquake 197, 198, 199, 203, linguistic philosophy 119–121
205, 209 linguistic structures 122–124
human-centric perspective 24–26, 41 Lohmann, Larry 12, 27–28, 30
hybrid quasi-objects 133 Luhmann, Niklas 59, 62, 67, 150n36;
systems theory 120, 137, 150n38,
ignorance and undesirable futures 65 151n58
indeterminacy 60, 142, 143, 154n199
individuals: and energy supply 25–27; and Malthusianism 22, 45, 64, 168
power 74, 166–167, 168, 171–177; and market dynamics 17, 19, 21, 23, 45–46,
risk 88–89, 91, 92–93, 95, 97 170, 173, 177
infrastructure 93, 113, 128, 154n195; market-based energy security policy 20–21
Dutch 196, 197, 201; EU programme on Massumi, Brian 66, 68–69, 71; ecological
81, 82; introduction of new 22, 140; theory of power 177–178; on fear 73–74
Marxist perspective of 27–28; North material, the 70, 115, 118, 126, 127, 132,
American blackout 131; protection of 152n115
27, 32–3n86, 67; self-correcting 141; material objects 125, 132, 152n114
smart grids 196–197; vulnerability of materialdiscursive ontology 114, 124, 140,
18–19, 26–27, 48 142–144, 147–149, 222, 224–225; and
insecurity 24–26, 57, 58–59, 68, 227; entanglement 124, 145; relations 5,
definitions of 13, 14, 20; and ethics 223, 226
 Index   239
materialism 149n2, 149n11, 151n83 decolonization 19; demand for 17, 45;
materiality 122, 127, 130, 138, 141, dependency 18–19, 20–21, 26, 45, 82,
221–222; of earthquakes 198, 201–202, 185; reserves 44, 183; Russian exports
210; and power 179–180, 186–187; 61, 80, 83
Wittgenstein 123 ontic politics 163; see also ontopolitics
materialization 125, 127, 130, 132, 140, ontic uncertainty 60, 66, 68, 97, 99n22
181–182; politics of 141, 145 ontological politics 7, 125, 140–141,
matter 126–128, 129, 143 147–148, 226, 231; see also ontic
matter-knowledge duality 115, 222 politics; ontopolitics
mattering 127, 128, 129, 131–132, 144, ontology 4, 115–117, 120–122, 125,
148, 222 182–183; and hypotheticals 59–60, 66,
meaning as use (Wittgenstein) 119, 120 222; materialdiscursive 114, 124, 140,
mediators in ANT 134, 135 142–144, 147–149, 222, 224–225;
mentalité 165, 171–172, 175 object oriented (OOO) 114, 141;
mercantilism 168, 169, 184–185, 188n50 relational 130, 131–139, 141, 201; in
milieu in biopolitics 168, 170–171, 176, systems theory 120
177–179, 184, 186–187; governing ontopolitics 89–90, 96, 113–114, 145; see
through 164, 177, 178–181, 182, 222 also ontic politics
mind/body duality 115–116, 124, 129–130,
179 performative reading of energy security
monism 124 (PRES) 2, 6–7, 223–229, 232–234
performativity 130–132, 139, 141,
national security 78 147–148, 185–187, 196, 226
natural resources 18, 29, 126; debates 3–4; physicalism 115–116, 149n5
politics of control over 45; threats 41, physiocrats 169, 170, 172
42 police 168–169; and government 172
naturalism 116, 127, 149n11 politicization 77–78, 80, 183
nature/culture dualism 126, 129 politics and security 68, 70, 199–200, 227
neo-liberalism 20, 21, 27–28, 29, 45, 183, politics of biopower see biopolitics
185; of European Union 83; form of politics of ontology see ontological politics
governmentality 164, 175–177, 178 populations and power 186, 163, 166–172,
neorealism 45, 82, 227 174, 176, 180–182
new materialism 113–114, 122, 123–126, positivism 114, 116, 117, 121, 122, 124,
143, 146–149, 201–202, 222; and ANT 228
132–138, 141, 198; and mattering 127; posthumanism 114, 124, 126, 133–134,
and performativity 129–132; and 141
vibrancy 138–140; see also materialism postpositivism 114, 116, 117, 118–119,
nodes in ANT 133, 136, 137, 185, 202 122–124; linguistic 119; and materiality
141–143, 146
obesity 180–181 power/knowledge nexus (Foucault) 163,
objectification 88, 133 181–183, 186
object-oriented ontology (OOO) 114, 141 practice theory and securitization 84–85
object-oriented philosophy (OOP) 124, precaution, logic of 41, 65, 67, 93–95
135 pre-emption, logic of 66–68, 104n252
observation 147–148, 154n199, 222, premediation 64
224–227, 226, 228; and dualism preparedness, logic of 65, 67–68
115–117, 150n37; in Latour 139, prevention, logic of 65–66, 68, 93–94,
153n133; and materiality 124, 127, 137; 104n252
politics of 140–145; in radical
constructivism 120–121; in systems radical constructivism 115, 117, 118–121,
theory 120 123, 146
oeconomia (the household) 25–26, 135, radical uncertainty 60–61, 178–179
164, 168, 169, 225 referent objects 61, 69, 72, 76–77, 79, 90;
oil: crises 4, 13, 17, 19–20, 63; and ‘the other’ as 83–84, 96
240   Index
relational ontology 130, 131–139, 141, social constructivism 118, 122, 148–149
142–143, 201 social essentialism 121–123, 150n52
relations: actor-networks of 142, 147; social-material duality 113–114, 118, 122,
between humans 173, 184; between 124, 140; bridged 128, 131; in Foucault
humans and things 169–170, 180 179–180; in IR theory 115; in new
renewables 12, 17, 23–24, 226 materialism 126–127, 129–130, 132
resilience, logic of 48, 65, 67–68, 175, social probability 60
189n104 society 120, 132, 172–173, 175, 222, 228;
resistance and power 165, 174, 228–229 in securitization theory 76, 78; and
responsibility 131 security 58–59, 62, 68, 71–75; total
Richter scale 203, 213–14n52 dependence on energy 13, 220
risk 60, 62, 87, 97–98, 104n251, 178–179, speech acts in securitization theory 75,
230; accountability and 91–92, 94–95; 76–77, 81–82, 84, 85–86, 97
calculation of 64–65, 67, 88–89, 90, state-centrist perspective 30, 45
92–93, 103n199, 182–183; and State Supervision of Mines (SSM) 199,
contingent events 89–91, 93–94; cost- 204, 205, 208, 209
benefit analysis of 174, 202, 210; and statistics 64–65, 88–89, 95, 168–169, 172,
culture of fear 73–74; definitions of 88; 182–183
and ethics 68–69; and political decision supply, security of 13, 18–19, 20, 28, 47,
making 91–94, 95, 201, 204–205, 208; 196–197; in Netherlands 198, 200–201,
underwriters composing 91, 95 204–207, 208, 210–211, 223
risk rationality 67, 178 surprise, events as 7, 60, 89–90, 138–139,
rump materialism 118 140, 225
Russia-Ukraine gas crises 80, 81–82 sustainability 22–24, 28, 47
systems theory see Luhmann, Niklas
scarcity 169, 173, 182–183, 185; see also
food: shortages threats 61–62, 68–69, 103n185, 211; logic
scenario planning 63–64, 94, 232 of 77–78, 83, 85, 93–94; perception of
scientific method and critical realism 117, 75–76, 201; and securitization 83, 230;
121 stated as self-evident 81
securitization theory 71, 84–87, 97, tightrope walker metaphor 220, 227–228
102n135, 148, 199–201; and
EU-Russian natural gas relations 79–83; unaccountability 94–95
and exceptionality 75–79 uncertainty 63, 89, 91, 99n22;
security: apparatus of 168, 170–171, 184, epistemological 141–142; Foucault on
186; definitions of 56–57, 67–68, 221; 169–170, 184; ontological 140; radical
effects of 69–70; logic of 40, 47–49, 56, 60–61, 178–179; of scientific models
59, 65–68, 96, 98; political concept 56, 209–211
78–79, 86, 211; scope of 49–50; of supply
and demand 17, 21, 28, 41, 50, 71 vulnerability 73, 74
self-government 165, 180
shale gas 17, 23, 213n52 war logic 61, 78
simulation as security technique 65 worst case scenarios 61, 93–94