37
energy transitions in this city over the course of a century of political flux
surfaces many potent concerns. Among these is the difficulty of evaluating
past transitions in relation to sustainability, which only appeared in its
familiar current form from the 1970s onwards and has gained notable
attention beyond academia even more recently, mainly in the twenty-first
century. He also foregrounds that accountability crises are not a new concern but rather have deep roots. What is new, in this sense, is the relevance
of sustainability as a concern linked with energy transitions, which directs
our attention in this book to accountability crises that are only beginning
to be sufficiently recognised. Moss’ historical analysis of Berlin’s energy
transitions, moreover, emphasises the context specificity of accountability
as relationally negotiated within a spatiotemporally shifting and historically contingent political economy.
Christian Lund probes a case of forest and land conflict that is, at base,
about struggles over authority and accountability. He considers the generative potential of an accountability lens when applied to questions of
land governance that remain under-addressed in energy transitions scholarship. In his handling, authority is relationally and reflexively construed,
through active and tacit contestations between competing actors. Rather
than a state and non-state binary, governance here revolves around questions of claims to statehood and their recognition at multiple scales.
Citizens seek to have their claims met by recognising the state at the more
local village scale rather than a distant central government and, in doing
so, try to reconfigure relations of power and authority. Power is unequally
distributed, but its legitimation is necessarily contingent, and is what
bestows an organisation with institutional authority to control resources
in more persistent ways that can subdue resistance. In Lund’s telling, this
contingency is revealed as an opportunity for hitherto marginalised actors
to not only vye over resources but to orchestrate a redefinition of where
authority resides, and thereby of the state itself.
Håvard Haarstad examines the problematic of setting targets for carbon
emission reduction at the urban scale both in general and specifically in
Norway in terms of its pitfalls as well as potential. He first sets up a case for
debunking urban climate and energy targets as the vanity projects of
street-smart local politicians—the targets do not seem to be achievable
and policies to realise them are not systematically deployed. Then he takes
a step back to point out that the very act of target-setting has performative
and discursive power, it imbues actors with the ability to point at a goal
and orchestrate ambitious actions around it that might otherwise have
3 FIVE EASY PIECES: LEGITIMATION AT WORK IN CASES RELATED…
energy transitions in this city over the course of a century of political flux
surfaces many potent concerns. Among these is the difficulty of evaluating
past transitions in relation to sustainability, which only appeared in its
familiar current form from the 1970s onwards and has gained notable
attention beyond academia even more recently, mainly in the twenty-first
century. He also foregrounds that accountability crises are not a new concern but rather have deep roots. What is new, in this sense, is the relevance
of sustainability as a concern linked with energy transitions, which directs
our attention in this book to accountability crises that are only beginning
to be sufficiently recognised. Moss’ historical analysis of Berlin’s energy
transitions, moreover, emphasises the context specificity of accountability
as relationally negotiated within a spatiotemporally shifting and historically contingent political economy.
Christian Lund probes a case of forest and land conflict that is, at base,
about struggles over authority and accountability. He considers the generative potential of an accountability lens when applied to questions of
land governance that remain under-addressed in energy transitions scholarship. In his handling, authority is relationally and reflexively construed,
through active and tacit contestations between competing actors. Rather
than a state and non-state binary, governance here revolves around questions of claims to statehood and their recognition at multiple scales.
Citizens seek to have their claims met by recognising the state at the more
local village scale rather than a distant central government and, in doing
so, try to reconfigure relations of power and authority. Power is unequally
distributed, but its legitimation is necessarily contingent, and is what
bestows an organisation with institutional authority to control resources
in more persistent ways that can subdue resistance. In Lund’s telling, this
contingency is revealed as an opportunity for hitherto marginalised actors
to not only vye over resources but to orchestrate a redefinition of where
authority resides, and thereby of the state itself.
Håvard Haarstad examines the problematic of setting targets for carbon
emission reduction at the urban scale both in general and specifically in
Norway in terms of its pitfalls as well as potential. He first sets up a case for
debunking urban climate and energy targets as the vanity projects of
street-smart local politicians—the targets do not seem to be achievable
and policies to realise them are not systematically deployed. Then he takes
a step back to point out that the very act of target-setting has performative
and discursive power, it imbues actors with the ability to point at a goal
and orchestrate ambitious actions around it that might otherwise have
3 FIVE EASY PIECES: LEGITIMATION AT WORK IN CASES RELATED…