The DOI matches its Crossref record; 223 of the 223 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Transforming power: Social science and the politics of energy choices
Open accessAbstract
This paper addresses key implications in momentous current global energy choices – both for social science and for society. Energy can be over-used as a lens for viewing social processes. But it is nonetheless of profound importance. Understanding possible ‘sustainable energy’ transformations requires attention to many tricky issues in social theory: around agency and structure and the interplay of power, contingency and practice. These factors are as much shaping of the knowledges and normativities supposedly driving transformation, as they are shaped by them. So, ideas and hopes about possible pathways for change – as well as notions of ‘the transition’ itself – can be deeply constituted by incumbent interests. The paper addresses these dynamics by considering contending forms of transformation centring on renewable energy, nuclear power and climate geoengineering. Several challenges are identified for social science. These apply especially where there are aims to help enable more democratic exercise of social agency. They enjoin responsibilities to ‘open up’ (rather than ‘close down’), active political spaces for critical contention over alternative pathways. If due attention is to be given to marginalised interests, then a reflexive view must be taken of transformation. The paper ends with a series of concrete political lessons.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
(1984) · Cited by 21,166
Sen, A. (2009) · Rugman Reviews · doi:10.1007/978-1-137-28787-8_94 · Cited by 15,837
A safe operating space for humanity
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S., Lambin, E. F., Lenton, T. M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., et al. (2009) · Nature · doi:10.1038/461472a · Cited by 13,333
Risk Society, Towards a New Modernity
Leiss, W., Beck, U., Ritter, M., Lash, S., & Wynne, B. (1994) · Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie · doi:10.2307/3341155 · Cited by 12,546
Weapons of the weak: Everyday forms of peasant resistance
(1986) · World Development · doi:10.1016/0305-750x(86)90141-5 · Cited by 9,842
Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity
Boyd, W., Beck, U., & Shrader-Frechette, K. S. (1993) · Economic Geography · doi:10.2307/143601 · Cited by 9,215
Human domination of Earth’s ecosystems
Vitousek, P. M., Mooney, H. A., Lubchenco, J., & Melillo, J. M. (1997) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.277.5325.494 · Cited by 9,086
Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
Fukuyama, F., & Scott, J. C. (1998) · Foreign Affairs · doi:10.2307/20048980 · Cited by 8,396
Social Choice and Individual Values.
Shackle, G. L. S., & Arrow, K. J. (1951) · Economica · doi:10.2307/2549613 · Cited by 7,792
Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for Humanity
Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, Å., Chapin, F. S. I., Lambin, E., Lenton, T. M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H. J., et al. (2009) · Ecology and Society · doi:10.5751/es-03180-140232 · Cited by 7,187
Cited by
An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions
Köhler, J., Geels, F. W., Kern, F., Markard, J., Onsongo, E., Wieczorek, A., Alkemade, F., Avelino, F., Bergek, A., Boons, F., et al. (2019) · Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions · doi:10.1016/j.eist.2019.01.004 · Cited by 2,800
Policy mixes for sustainability transitions: an extended concept and framework for analysis
Rogge, K. S., & Reichardt, K. (2016) · Research Policy · doi:10.1016/j.respol.2016.04.004 · Cited by 1,524
Sovacool, B. K. (2014) · Energy Research & Social Science · doi:10.1016/j.erss.2014.02.003 · Cited by 1,285
Financing renewable energy: Who is financing what and why it matters
Mazzucato, M., & Semieniuk, G. (2018) · Technological Forecasting and Social Change · doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2017.05.021 · Cited by 687
The next phase of the energy transition and its implications for research and policy
Markard, J. (2018) · Nature Energy · doi:10.1038/s41560-018-0171-7 · Cited by 659
Metadata
- Authors
- Stirling, A.
- Venue
- Energy Research & Social Science
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2014-03
- Volume
- 1
- Pages
- 83-95
- ISSN
- 2214-6296 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2128925770
- Cited by
- 516
- References
- 223
- FWCI
- 36.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Transforming power: Social science and the politics of energy choices. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.erss.2014.02.001
- The paper
- Stirling, A. (2014). Transforming power: Social science and the politics of energy choices. Energy Research & Social Science. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2014.02.001
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
