Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The scare behind energy security: four conceptualisations of scarcity and a never-ending search for abundance

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Journal of International Relations and Development Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

While the number of definitions and metrics of energy security have expanded rapidly (Ang et al. 2015; Sovacool and Mukherjee 2011), surprisingly little attention has been paid to its core concern: the fear of doing without. Shortages and scarcities are the problem to be solved, hardly ever the object of study itself. Inspired by critical energy security studies and the scarcity, abundance and sufficiency literature, this paper problematises the fears behind energy security through a theoretical review that discloses not one but four conceptualisations of scarcity: shortages, absolute scarcity, relative scarcity and scarcification. Subsequently, this paper makes two arguments. First, that goal-oriented definitions of energy security tend to defend the demand and supply of existing energy systems and hence reperform its exclusions, injustices, inequality and exploitations. Second, that in order to break this cycle it is necessary to re-imagine energy security from a goal into a set of security practices that fall within larger practices of scarcification, paying special attention to the unlimited desire behind relative scarcity that drives most of these practices. The paper concludes with a call for energy security scholars to take up the politics of energy security and recognize their role in reproducing and naturalising particular scarcities.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The energy security literature, in my reading, can roughly be divided into five strands. The first category includes the wide variety of explicit (geopolitical) realist and liberal policy reflections (Klare 2012; Peters 2004; Correljé and van der Linde 2006). A second line of work includes the frequent attempts to describe, identify, categorise and quantify a multitude of threats (Ang et al. 2015; Kisel et al. 2016; Kruyt et al. 2009; Sovacool and Mukherjee 2011; Cox 2016). The third strand encompasses the increasing attention to how particular threats are securitised as an energy security concern (Christou and Adamides 2013; Nyman 2014; Szulecki 2018a). A fourth stream of research bundles the few studies that try to understand the deeper underlying logics that structure how policymakers and scholars think, talk and practice energy security (Cherp and Jewell 2011; Ciută 2010). And lastly, a small but growing number of studies focus on the performativity of energy security: the (knowledge) practices and grammar-based politics that constitute (competing) energy security understandings and the socio-political and material effects that enable and result from them (Bridge 2015; Kester 2017, 2018; Nyman 2018b)

  2. My heartfelt thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

  3. Just as security inherently relates to insecurity, so too is it impossible to think about scarcity without thinking abundance, and vice versa. A powerful definition of abundance can be found in Mullainathan and Shafir (2013), who describe abundance as the ability ‘not to care’. People who experience abundance have the option to make mistakes or skip corners, in contrast to those living under the constant strain of having to choose between necessary alternatives and the stress of making costly mistakes.

  4. Central here is the idea of (economic) resources. While there are many types of natural resources and things that can become scarce (time, air, etc.), only that what is in demand or desired is actually part of a scarcity discourse. Something becomes scarce only when it is ‘needed’ or ‘wanted’ by society in the first place. The key term here is the verb ‘to become’, in line with De Gregori who argues that ‘resources are not; they become’ (De Gregori 1987b: 1241), by which he implies that ‘resources’ are nothing but the ‘property of things – a property that is a result of human capability’ (ibid.: 1243). Resources derive from human knowledge (e.g. technological prowess) and are in fact an ascription of function to a material object.

  5. I am limiting this to the scarcity literature, thus bypassing the extensive literature on the sociology of consumption; which in relation to energy has been translated to include 6 mechanisms: social comparison (here called relative desire), consumption as a way to create and express self-identity, mental stimulation through novelty; the Diderot effect (that when people change one item, they want to match others); specialisation (increasing number of products within subcategories: not shoes, but tennis shoes, hiking shoes, running shoes, etc.); and sociotechnical systems that ‘lock’ people in (Shove and Warde 2002).

  6. Even in absolute scarcity, desire initially is taken as a given and acts as the basis for the extrapolation. It is only later that it is questioned, quite extremely in the case of Malthus’s suggestions for population control.

  7. A similar argument is made by Luhmann (1988, 1993) who argues that the normalisation of relative scarcity rests heavily on a self-referential system of increasing complexity. A system that starts with access to resources (access/no access), but then moves to similar scarcity references in property, trade, money, savings and capital. Within this process, Luhmann sees the identification of scarcity as both a temporal closure of a long political and systemic processes and as the start of others. Rephrased: when people define something as scarce (a reading of scarcification closer to securitisation theory [Buzan et al. 1998]), they close off a situation, and in doing so exclude others based on this observation. This observation allows scarcity to manifest, which allows it to present itself as the main motif for excluding those others in the first place.

  8. This turns relative scarcity into a saviour and a structural source of violence at the same time. A saviour, because it reduces actual conflict through practices of trade and innovation that lead to better living standards. But also a structural source of violence, one that could very well lead to conflicts yet often is simply accepted as inevitable and the responsibility of the individual in question (e.g. when being poor is attributed to a lack of work ethic). Dumouchel calls this the ‘ambivalence of scarcity’ (Dumouchel 2014) and argues that ‘[s]carcity does not seek to protect agents from violence or hardship by making them reciprocally responsible, but to prevent the spread of violence by removing each person’s incentive to participate in the conflicts of others’ (Dumouchel 2013: 4). In other words, even though violent conflict is not an automatic consequence of scarcity, on the contrary, the relative desire behind relative scarcity is a form of violence itself.

References

  • Achterhuis, Hans (1993) ‘Scarcity and Sustainability’, in Wolfgang Sachs, ed., Global Ecology: A New Arena for Political Conflict, 104–16, London: Zed Books Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Achterhuis, Hans (1988) Het Rijk van de Schaarste: van Thomas Hobbes tot Michel Foucault [The Empire of Scarcity: from Thomas Hobbes to Michel Foucault], Baarn: Ambo.

  • Ahmed, Nafeez Mosaddeq (2011) ‘The international relations of crisis and the crisis of international relations: from the securitisation of scarcity to the militarisation of society’, Global Change, Peace and Security 23(3): 335–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Ben (2010) ‘Preemption, precaution, preparedness: Anticipatory action and future geographies’, Progress in Human Geography 34(6): 777–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ang, B. W., W. L. Choong and T. S. Ng (2015) ‘Energy security: Definitions, dimensions and indexes’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 42: 1077–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aradau, Claudia, Jef Huysmans, Andrew Neal and Nadine Voelkner, eds (2015) Critical security methods: New frameworks for analysis, London and New York: Routledge.

  • Araghi, Farshad (2000) ‘The Great Global Enclosure of Our Times: Peasants and the Agrarian Question at the end of the Twentieth Century’, in Farshad Araghi, ed. Hungry for Profit: the Agribusiness Threat to Farmers, Food, and the Environment, 145–60, New York: Monthly Review Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ashley, Richard K. (1980) The political economy of war and peace: The Sino-Soviet-American triangle and the modern security problematique, London and New York: Nichols Pub. Co.

  • Barbier, Edward B. (1989) Economics, Natural-Resource Scarcity and Development: Conventional and Alternative Views, London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Barnet, Harold J. and Chandler Morse (1963) Scarcity and Growth: the Economics of Natural Resource Availability, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Jane (2005) ‘The agency of assemblages and the North American blackout’, Public Culture 17(3): 445–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bharucha, Zareen Pervez (2019) ‘This is what Nature has become: Tracing climate and water narratives in India’s rainfed drylands’, Geoforum 101: 285–93.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Booth, Ken (2007) Theory of world security, Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Borup, Mads, Nik Brown, Kornelia Konrad and Harro Van Lente (2006) ‘The sociology of expectations in science and technology’, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management 18(3–4): 285–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bridge, Gavin (2015) ‘Energy (in)security: World-making in an age of scarcity’, Geographical Journal 181(4): 328–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bridge, Gavin (2001) ‘Resource triumphalism: postindustrial narratives of primary commodity production’, Environment and Planning A 33(12): 2149–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bridge, Gavin and Andrew Wood (2010) ‘Less is more: Spectres of scarcity and the politics of resource access in the upstream oil sector’, Geoforum 41(4): 565–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith (2010) ‘Performative agency’, Journal of Cultural Economy 3(2): 147–61.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Buzan, Barry, Ole Wæver, and Jaap H. de Wilde (1998) Security: A new framework for analysis, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Pub.

    Google Scholar 

  • Campbell, David (2005) ‘The biopolitics of security: Oil, empire, and the sports utility vehicle’, American Quarterly 57(3): 943–72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cherp, Aleh and Jessica Jewell (2011) ‘The three perspectives on energy security: Intellectual history, disciplinary roots and the potential for integration’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 3(4): 202–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cherp, Aleh and Jessica Jewell (2014) ‘The concept of energy security: Beyond the four As’, Energy Policy 75: 415–21.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cherp, Aleh, Jessica Jewell and Andreas Goldthau (2011) ‘Governing Global Energy: Systems, Transitions, Complexity’, Global Policy 2(1): 75–88.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chester, Lynne (2010) ‘Conceptualising energy security and making explicit its polysemic nature’, Energy Policy 38(2): 887–95.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christou, Odysseas and Constantinos Adamides (2013) ‘Energy securitization and desecuritization in the New Middle East’, Security Dialogue 44(5–6): 507–22.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ciută, Felix (2010) ‘Conceptual notes on energy security: Total or banal security?’, Security Dialogue 41(2): 123–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Claassen, Rutger (2004) Het Eeuwige Tekort. Een Filosofie van de Schaarste [The Eternal Shortage. A Philosophy of Scarcity], Amsterdam: Ambo.

  • Correljé, Aad and Coby van der Linde (2006) ‘Energy supply security and geopolitics: A European perspective’, Energy Policy 34(5): 532–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cox, Emily (2016) ‘Opening the black box of energy security: A study of conceptions of electricity security in the United Kingdom’, Energy Research and Social Science 21(Supplement C): 1–11.

  • Daly, Herman E. (1972) ‘In defense of a steady-state economy’, American Journal of Agricultural Economics 54(5): 945–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daly, Herman E. (1997) ‘Georgescu-Roegen versus Solow/Stiglitz’, Ecological Economics 22(3): 261–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daoud, Adel (2011) Scarcity, abundance, and sufficiency: contributions to social and economic theory, PhD Thesis, Gothenburg: University of Gothenburg, Department of Sociology.

  • Daoud, Adel (2011b) ‘The Modus Vivendi of Material Simplicity: Counteracting Scarcity via the Deflation of Wants’, Review of Social Economy 69(3): 275–305.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daoud, Adel (2010) ‘Robbins and Malthus on Scarcity, Abundance, and Sufficiency: The Missing Sociocultural Element’, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 69(4): 1206–29.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Daoud, Adel (2018) ‘Unifying Studies of Scarcity, Abundance, and Sufficiency’, Ecological Economics 147: 208–217.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Gregori, Thomas R. (1987a) ‘Finite Resources or Finite Imaginations? A Reply to John M. Gowdy’, Journal of Economic Issues (Association for Evolutionary Economics) 21(1): 477.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • De Gregori, Thomas R. (1987b) ‘Resources Are Not; They Become: An Institutional Theory’, Journal of Economic Issues 21(3): 1241–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Devereux, Stephen (2001) ‘Sen’s Entitlement Approach: Critiques and Counter-critiques’, Oxford Development Studies 29(3): 245–63.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dillon, Michael (1996) Politics of security: Towards a political philosophy of continental thought, London and New York: Routledge.

  • D’Souza, Rohan (2019) ‘Environmentalism and the Politics of Pre-emption: reconsidering South Asia’s environmental history in the epoch of the Anthropocene’, Geoforum 101: 242–49.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dumouchel, Paul (2014) The Ambivalence of Scarcity and Other Essays, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dumouchel, Paul (2013) ‘Scarcity, Preferences and Cooperation: A Mimetic Analysis’. Presentation at the plenary session at the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) 2013 Annual Meeting. Available at http://ineteconomics.org/sites/inet.civicactions.net/files/ Dumouchel_Scarcity.pdf [last accessed on 29 October, 2014].

  • Dumouchel, Paul (1988) Violence and Truth: On the Work of René Girard, Stanford University Press.

  • Elden, Stuart (2013) ‘Secure the volume: Vertical geopolitics and the depth of power’, Political Geography 34: 35–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Escobar, Arturo (1996) ‘Constructing Nature: Elements for a Poststructural Political Ecology’, in Richard Peet and Michael Watts, eds, Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, 46–68, London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferry, Elizabeth Emma and Mandana E. Limbert (2008) ‘Timely Assets’, in Elizabeth Emma Ferry and Mandana E. Limbert, eds, Timely assets: the politics of resources and their temporalities, 3–24, Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press.

  • Fine, Ben (2010) ‘Economics and Scarcity: With Amartya Sen as Point of Departure?’, In Lyla Mehta, ed., The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, 73–92, London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel (2008) The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France 1978‒1979, edited by Michel Senellart, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, Michel (2007) Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978, edited by Michel Senellart, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Friedrichs, Jörg (2010) ‘Global energy crunch: How different parts of the world would react to a peak oil scenario’, Energy Policy 38(8): 4562–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Galbraith, John Kenneth (2001) The Essential Galbraith, edited by Andrea D. Williams, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbons, Michael T. (1991) ‘Review of Xenos, N. Scarcity and Modernity’, Journal of Politics 53(1): 267–70.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham, Stephen and Nigel Thrift (2007) ‘Out of order: Understanding repair and maintenance’, Theory, Culture and Society 24(3): 1–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heffron, Raphael J. and Darren McCauley (2017) ‘The concept of energy justice across the disciplines’, Energy Policy 105: 658–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hendrixson, Anne and Betsy Hartmann (2019) ‘Threats and burdens: Challenging scarcity-driven narratives of “overpopulation” ’, Geoforum 101: 250–59.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hildyard, Nicholas (2019) ‘Scarcity, “polite society” and activism’, Geoforum 101: 294–98.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hildyard, Nicholas, Larry Lohmann, and Sarah Sexton (2012) Energy security: For whom? For what?, London: The Corner House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hirsch, Fred (1976) Social limits to growth, Cambridge, MA: Twentieth Century Fund.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hoeschele, Wolfgang (2010) The economics of abundance: a political economy of freedom, equity, and sustainability, Farnham; Burlington, VT: Gower.

  • Huber, Matt (2019) ‘Resource geography II: What makes resources political?’, Progress in Human Geography 43(3): 553-564.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Huber, Matthew T. (2011) ‘Enforcing scarcity: Oil, violence, and the making of the market’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 101(4): 816–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • IEA (2015) ‘What is energy security?’, available at http://www.iea.org/topics/energysecurity/subtopics/whatisenergysecurity/ (last accessed on 3 June, 2015).

  • IEA (2020). ‘Global Gas Security Review 2020’, International Energy Agency.

  • Jenkins, Kirsten, Darren McCauley, Raphael Heffron, Hannes Stephan and Robert Rehner (2016) ‘Energy justice: A conceptual review’, Energy Research and Social Science 11: 174–82.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jewell, Jessica and Elina Brutschin (2019) ‘The Politics of Energy Security’, in Kathleen J. Hancock and Juliann Emmons Allison, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Energy Politics, chapter 10, Oxford Handbooks Online: Oxford University Press.

  • Kama, Kärg (2016) ‘Contending Geo-Logics: Energy Security, Resource Ontologies, and the Politics of Expert Knowledge in Estonia’, Geopolitics 21(4): 831–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kama, Kärg (2019) ‘Resource-making controversies: Knowledge, anticipatory politics and economization of unconventional fossil fuels’, Progress in Human Geography 44(2): 333-356.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kester, Johannes (2018) The politics of energy security: critical security studies, new materialism and governmentality, London and New York: Routledge.

  • Kester, Johannes (2017) ‘Energy security and human security in a Dutch gasquake context: A case of localized performative politics’, Energy Research and Social Science 24(Supplement C): 12–20.

  • Kester, Johannes (2016) ‘Conducting a smarter grid: Reflecting on the power and security behind smart grids with Foucault’, In Anne Beaulieu, Jaap de Wilde and Jacquelien M.A. Scherpen, eds, Smart grids from a global perspective, 197–213, Power Systems, Cham: Springer.

  • Kester, Johannes and Benjamin K. Sovacool (2017) ‘Torn between war and peace: Critiquing the use of war to mobilize peaceful climate action’, Energy Policy 104: 50–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kisel, Einari, Arvi Hamburg, Mihkel Härm, Ando Leppiman and Märt Ots (2016) ‘Concept for Energy Security Matrix’, Energy Policy 95: 1–9.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Klare, Michael T. (2012) The race for what’s left: The global scramble for the world’s last resources, New York: Henry Holt and Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Klein, Michael (2011). ‘Operational Scarcity’, SCIBE: Scarcity + Creativity in the Built Environment available at http://www.scibe.eu/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/08-MK.pdf (last accessed on 26 May, 2014).

  • Kovacic, Zora and Louisa Jane Di Felice (2019) ‘Complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity: Implications for European Union energy governance’, Energy Research and Social Science 53: 159–69.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krahmann, Elke (2017) ‘From performance to performativity: The legitimization of US security contracting and its consequences’, Security Dialogue 48(6): 541-559.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kruyt, B., D. P. Van Vuuren, H. J. M. De Vries and H. Groenenberg (2009) ‘Indicators for energy security’, Energy Policy 37(6): 2166–81.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Labban, Mazen (2010) ‘Oil in parallax: Scarcity, markets, and the financialization of accumulation’, Geoforum 41(4): 541–52.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Le Billon, Philippe, ed. (2005) The geopolitics of resource wars: Resource dependence, governance and violence, London; New York: Frank Cass.

  • Leander, Anna (2005) ‘The power to construct international security: On the significance of private military companies’, Millennium—Journal of International Studies 33(3): 803–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Luhmann, Niklas (1988) Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft [Economy as a Social System], Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

    Google Scholar 

  • Luhmann, Niklas (1993) Risk: A sociological theory, Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter.

  • Luks, Fred (2010) ‘Deconstructing Economic Interpretations of Sustainable Development: Limits, Scarcity and Abundance’, In Lyla Mehta, ed., The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, 93–108, London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lundborg, Tom and Nick Vaughan-Williams (2011) ‘Resilience, critical infrastructure, and molecular security: The excess of “life” in biopolitics’, International Political Sociology 5(4): 367–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Malthus, Thomas (1798) An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers, London: J. Josnson, Inst. St. Paul’s Church-Yard.

  • Matthaei, Julie (1984) ‘Rethinking Scarcity: Neoclassicism, NeoMalthusianism, and NeoManrsm’, Review of Radical Political Economics 16(2–3): 81–94.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Matthaei, Julie (1986) ‘“Neoclassical and Neo-Marxian Views of Scarcity: There Is a Free Lunch”: A Response’, Review of Radical Political Economics 18(4): 106–108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Meadows, Donella H., Dennis Meadows, Jorgen Randers and William W. Behrens (1972) The Limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind, New York: Universe Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehta, Lyla, ed. (2010a) The limits to scarcity: Contesting the politics of allocation, Washington, DC: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehta, Lyla (2010b) ‘The Scare, Naturalization and Politization of Scarcity’, In Lyla Mehta, ed., The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, 13–31, London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehta, Lyla (2003) ‘Contexts and Constructions of Water Scarcity’, Economic and Political Weekly 38(48): 5066–72.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mehta, Lyla, Amber Huff, and Jeremy Allouche (2019) ‘The new politics and geographies of scarcity’, Geoforum 101: 222–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Menger, Carl (2007) Principles of Economics, Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute.

  • Mitchell, Timothy (2013) Carbon democracy: Political power in the age of oil, London and New York: Verso.

  • Mullainathan, Sendhil and Eldar Shafir (2013) Scarcity: Why having too little means so much, New York: Times Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nally, David (2011) ‘The biopolitics of food provisioning’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36(1): 37–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Neumayer, Eric (2002) ‘Scarce or Abundant? The Economics of Natural Resource Availability’, Journal of Economic Surveys 14(3): 307–35.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nye, David E. (2010) When the lights went out: a history of blackouts in America, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nyman, Jonna (2018a) ‘Rethinking energy, climate and security: a critical analysis of energy security in the US’, Journal of International Relations and Development 21(1): 118–45.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nyman, Jonna (2018b) The Energy Security Paradox: Rethinking Energy (In)security in the United States and China, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nyman, Jonna (2014) ‘ “Red storm ahead”: Securitisation of energy in US–China Relations’, Millennium—Journal of International Studies 43(1): 43–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Panayotakis, Costas (2011) Remaking Scarcity: From Capitalist Inefficiency to Economic Democracy, Pluto Press.

  • Panayotakis, Costas (2013) ‘Theorizing Scarcity Neoclassical Economics and its Critics’, Review of Radical Political Economics 45(2): 183–200.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perelman, Michael (1979) ‘Marx, Malthus, and the Concept of Natural Resource Scarcity’, Antipode 11(2): 80–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Peters, S. (2004) ‘Coercive western energy security strategies: “resource wars” as a new threat to global security’, Geopolitics 9(1): 187–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pimentel, David and Marcia H. Pimentel (2008) Food, energy, and society, third edition, Boca Raton: CRC Press (Taylor and Francis Group).

    Google Scholar 

  • Pirages, Dennis (1983) ‘The Ecological Perspective and the Social Sciences’, International Studies Quarterly 27(3): 243.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Princen, Thomas (2005) The Logic of Sufficiency, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Proskuryakova, L. (2018) ‘Updating energy security and environmental policy: Energy security theories revisited’, Journal of Environmental Management 223: 203–14.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raiklin, Ernest and Bülent Uyar (1996) ‘On the relativity of the concepts of needs, wants, scarcity and opportunity cost’, International Journal of Social Economics 23(7): 49–56.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Raworth, Kate (2017) Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, London: Random House Business.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rayner, Steve (2010) ‘Foreword to The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation’, In Lyla Mehta, ed., The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, xvii–xxi, London: Earthscan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richardson, Tanya and Gisa Weszkalnys (2014) ‘Introduction: Resource Materialities’, Anthropological Quarterly 87(1): 5–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robbins, Lionel (1935) An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, second revised and extended edition, London: Macmillan and Co., Limited.

    Google Scholar 

  • Robeyns, Ingrid (2005) ‘The Capability Approach: a theoretical survey’, Journal of Human Development 6(1): 93–117.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ross, Andrew (1996) ‘The lonely hour of scarcity’, Capitalism Nature Socialism 7(3): 3–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rubin, Aviad and Ehud Eiran (2019) ‘Regional maritime security in the eastern Mediterranean: expectations and reality’, International Affairs 95(5): 979–97.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ruble, Isabella (2017) ‘European Union energy supply security: The benefits of natural gas imports from the Eastern Mediterranean’, Energy Policy 105: 341–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sachs, Wolfgang (1993) ‘Global Ecology and the Shadow of “Development” ’, In Wolfgang Sachs, ed., Global Ecology: A New Arena for Political Conflict, 3–21, London: Zed Books Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Salter, Mark B. and Can E. Mutlu, eds (2013) Research methods in critical security studies: an introduction, New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scoones, Ian, Rebecca Smalley, Ruth Hall and Dzodzi Tsikata (2019) ‘Narratives of scarcity: Framing the global land rush’, Geoforum 101: 231–41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sen, Amartya (1983) Poverty and famines, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Shannon, Jerry (2014) ‘Food deserts: Governing obesity in the neoliberal city’, Progress in Human Geography 38(2): 248–66.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sheller, Mimi (2016) ‘Uneven Mobility Futures: A Foucauldian Approach’, Mobilities 11(1): 15–31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shove, Elizabeth (2010) ‘Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change’, Environment and Planning A 42(6): 1273–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shove, Elizabeth and Gordon Walker (2010) ‘Governing transitions in the sustainability of everyday life’, Research Policy 39(4): 471–76.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shove, Elizabeth and Gordon Walker (2014) ‘What is energy for? Social practice and energy demand’, Theory, Culture and Society 31(5): 41–58.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shove, Elizabeth and Alan Warde (2002) ‘Inconspicuous consumption: the sociology of consumption and the environment’, In Riley E. Dunlap, Frederick H. Buttel, Peter Dickens and August Gijswijt, eds, Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights, 230–51, Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

  • Simpson, R. David, Michael Toman, and Robert U. Ayres (2004) ‘Scarcity and Growth in the New Millennium: summary’, Discussion Paper 04-01. Washington DC: Resources for the Future.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Helena (2019a) ‘Cyprus: likely gas field find raises prospect of tension with Turkey’, The Guardian, 25 February. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/25/cyprus-gas-field-find-raises-prospect-fresh-tension-turkey-exxonmobil (last accessed on 22 October, 2020).

  • Smith, Helena (2019b) ‘Huge gas discovery off Cyprus could boost EU energy security’, The Guardian, 28 February. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/28/huge-gas-discovery-off-cyprus-could-boost-eu-energy-security (last accessed on 22 October, 2020).

  • Smith, James L. (2012) ‘On the portents of peak oil (and other indicators of resource scarcity)’, Energy Policy 44: 68–78.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Solow, Robert M. (1974) ‘The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics’, American Economic Review 64(2): 1–14.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sovacool, Benjamin K. and I. Mukherjee (2011) ‘Conceptualizing and measuring energy security: A synthesized approach’, Energy 36(8): 5343–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stiglitz, Joseph Eugene (1979) ‘A Neoclassical Analysis of the Economics of Natural Resources’, In V. Kerry Smith, ed., Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered, 36–66, Resources for the Future, Baltimore: RFF Press by Johns Hopkins University Press.

  • Stillman, Peter G. (1983) ‘Scarcity, Sufficiency, and Abundance: Hegel and Marx on Material Needs and Satisfactions’, International Political Science Review 4(3): 295–310.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Stole, Inger L. (2012) Advertising at War: Business, Consumers, and Government in the 1940s, University of Illinois Press.

  • Szulecki, Kacper (2020) ‘Securitization and state encroachment on the energy sector: Politics of exception in Poland’s energy governance’, Energy Policy 136: 111066.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Szulecki, Kacper, ed. (2018a) Energy security in Europe: divergent perceptions and policy challenges, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szulecki, Kacper (2018b) ‘The Multiple Faces of Energy Security: An Introduction’, In Kacper Szulecki, ed. Energy Security in Europe, 1–29, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Trombetta, Maria Julia (2012). ‘European energy security discourses and the development of a common energy policy’, Energy Delta Gas Research. Available at http://www.edgar-program.com/uploads/fckconnector/7acf1f46-7358-4057-86e5-ffee55813be3 (last accessed on 6 January, 2015).

  • Urry, John (2004) ‘The “System” of Automobility’, Theory, Culture and Society 21(4–5): 25–39.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Urry, John (2014) ‘The problem of energy’, Theory, Culture and Society 31(5): 3–20.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M. (2001) ‘Ecological economics: themes, approaches, and differences with environmental economics’, Regional Environmental Change 2(1): 13–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Walker, Gordon and Rosie Day (2012) ‘Fuel poverty as injustice: Integrating distribution, recognition and procedure in the struggle for affordable warmth’, Energy Policy 49: 69–75.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weszkalnys, Gisa (2016) ‘A doubtful hope: resource affect in a future oil economy: A doubtful hope’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22(S1): 127–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wilson, Jeffrey D. (2019) ‘A securitisation approach to international energy politics’, Energy Research and Social Science 49: 114–25.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xenos, Nicholas (1987) ‘Liberalism and the Postulate of Scarcity’, Political Theory 15(2): 225–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Xenos, Nicholas (1989) Scarcity & modernity, London and New York: Routledge.

  • Yapa, Lakshman (1996a) ‘Improved Seeds and Constructed Scarcity’, In Richard Peet and Michael Watts, eds, Liberation Ecologies: Environment, Development, Social Movements, 69–86, London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yapa, Lakshman (1996b) ‘What Causes Poverty?: A Postmodern View’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 86(4): 707–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This paper is based on a chapter of author’s PhD research Securing abundance: The politics of energy security (2016) funded by and completed at the University of Groningen. Special thanks are therefore due to supervisors Jaap de Wilde and Benjamin Herborth for discussions and suggestions on earlier drafts. Another round of thanks goes to the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their in-depth comments and suggestions. Evidently, all errors and omissions are mine to account for.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Transport Studies Unit, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY, UK

    Johannes Kester

Authors
  1. Johannes Kester
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Johannes Kester.

Ethics declarations

Conflict of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Kester, J. The scare behind energy security: four conceptualisations of scarcity and a never-ending search for abundance. J Int Relat Dev 25, 31–53 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00216-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41268-021-00216-0

Keywords

Search

Navigation