The controversy surrounding hydraulic fracturing in Germany, France, and Poland. A comparative study about the role of ecological economies of worth and civic epistemologies in current conflicts on risk

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Reiner Keller
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 317606666

This project studies current risk conflicts surrounding the use of hydraulic fracturing in France, Germany, and Poland in the context of the current energy turn, initiated sweepingly at a European level and given high societal and political priority. Incorporating a comparative research design focused on discourse analysis, it advances theoretical and conceptual perspectives of sociology of risk and risk discourses to the extent necessary for explaining these disputes. This is accomplished by examining the role of ecological orders of evaluation and justification (economies of worth) in the context of the concrete conflict trajectories and civic epistemologies that define both the forms risk evaluation takes and the way risks are processed. While a moratorium regarding the use of so-called fracking has been put in place in France, Germany has, after some initial hesitation, increasingly begun to take steps towards allowing this practice. Poland, by contrast, has embraced its use for quite some time. On one hand, fracking promises a substantial contribution to the respective national supply and an optimization, as desired by environmental policy, of diversity within the respective energy portfolios. On the other, there has been wide-spread debate about possible risks involved with this technology, which in these countries has been led with noticeably different accentuations of individual elements, and has resulted in noticeably different consequences. The current societal conditions under which these disputes on fracking are taking place are distinguished by the fact that it is the immediate local or regional space that is seen to be subject to potential endangerment. Furthermore, this conflict constellation is new insofar as environmental concerns and sustainability strategies (climate conservation,energy turn) are employed by all parties. The causes, forms, dynamics, and consequences of this new constellation of conflict in France, Germany, and Poland comprise the core focus of this study and are to be discovered by using sociology of risk and discourse analysis perspectives to highlight the role of ecological economies of worth and civic epistemologies in such controversies. First, the actors, arenas, and trajectories in the dispute on fracking must be examined at a national level. Second, two regional case studies on select individual cases are to be carried out in each of the selected countries focusing on actors, forms, and processes of risk evaluation. Third, the study will then, analyze the dimensions of conflict dynamics and the factors that fuel them (ecological economies of worth, trajectories, civic epistemologies) via systematic comparison and based on the theoretical and conceptual elaborations of risk discourse research. This project intends to provide a substantial contribution towards understanding current conflicts on social and technological policy surrounding the energy turn in Europe.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants