Entanglements with the fireside and responses to low carbon heating transitions: analysis using Actor Network Theory

Ambrose, Aimee and Davies, Kathy and McCarthy, Lindsey and Shaw, Becky and Shahzad, Sally (2025) Entanglements with the fireside and responses to low carbon heating transitions: analysis using Actor Network Theory. Energy Research and Social Science. ISSN 2214-6296 (In Press)

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Abstract

This paper sets out early findings from the UK component of a European project seeking to establish a social and cultural history of home heating, in order to distil lessons for a more socially conscious shift from fossil fuelled to low carbon heating systems. Here we share findings from 30 oral histories of home heating (from 1945 to present day) gathered in the former coal mining town of Rotherham in the North of England. By analysing the findings through the lens of Actor Network Theory (ANT), we reveal the coal fire (or coal fired range) as a powerful actant shaping domestic life in the decades following the end of the second world war. We argue that relational-material entanglements with the fireside endure, despite many decades of gas central heating in the UK, and have implications for current policy efforts to transition to more abstracted and technological low carbon heating systems, such as heat pumps. These entanglements with the fireside hold important implications for the sensitive handling of the current heating transition.

Item Type:	Article
Dates:	Date Event 27 January 2025 Accepted
Subjects:	CAH25 - design, and creative and performing arts > CAH25-01 - creative arts and design > CAH25-01-02 - art
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts, Design and Media > College of Art and Design
Depositing User:	Gemma Tonks
Date Deposited:	10 Feb 2025 13:57
Last Modified:	10 Feb 2025 13:57
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16141