Beyond Speech: Deliberating Energy Justice Using Visual Artifacts

Article by Simone Haarbosch, Tamara Metze and Bas van Vliet: “The inclusion of local and experiential knowledge, interests, and values in the development of just sustainability transitions remains challenging. Deliberative mini-publics have been conceptualized and organized to address these challenges. However, these participatory processes are often instrumental and designed within experts’ and policymakers’ problem framings. Moreover, they often rely primarily on argumentative modes of deliberation. The use of artifacts has been proposed to go beyond speech. This paper explores the opportunities and challenges for the use of visual artifacts in mini-publics. We conducted a thematic analysis of transcripts of 11 mini-publics that we organized with diverse citizen groups (N = 42) in the Province of Overijssel (the Netherlands). We used four types of visual materials: selected images, drawings, geographical maps, and postcards. We explored (1) whether visualized information facilitates more open-ended and inclusive deliberation on energy justice dilemmas, and (2) whether this leads to new insights into various forms of justice in the regional energy transition. The results show that, depending on the type of visual artifact, it facilitates citizens in addressing their local expertise, interests, and values in less cognitive and more affective and relational ways. Selected images and drawings enriched the depth and breadth of deliberations on recognition justice, although they remained within experts’ problem framings, while geographical maps facilitated discussions on distributional fairness in energy systems…(More)”.