By Saska Petrova
Stefan and I have just returned from an ESRC seminar on ‘home space within social policy and governance at the Open University’. It was fascinating to attend a discussion of the political articulations of domesticity within a disciplinary setting that is quite different from the one in which I have usually participated (while there were plenty of human geographers at the seminar, many speakers and attendees had a social policy or public health background). The seminar featured some excellent presentations and conversations about the implications of austerity for cotemporary meanings, as well the paradoxes of home in contemporary living. Several papers explored the idea of ‘personalization’ from a critical perspective.
There are important intersections between these debates and those centring on efforts to reduce energy consumption in the home that remain to be explored, particularly when it comes to vulnerability and precariousness.
People and Energy Collective 