Ethics in practice
Navigating moral complexity in energy transitions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13084142 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Dario Minervini (University of Naples Federico II), Ivano Scotti (0000-0002-9628-1112, University of Naples Federico II, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-21 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Environmental Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2325-1042 • E-ISSN: 2325-1042 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/23251042.2026.2649851 |
| OpenAlex | W7139981687 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 57 |
The energy transition involves value-laden choices and moral dilemmas that can reproduce or reshape inequalities. Beyond environmental justice, questions of individual and collective responsibility are central to social science debates. This article aims to contribute to the literature on energy ethics by advancing a pragmatist sociological perspective and by clarifying how ethical meanings and justifications are enacted within energy transition processes. It elaborates on this topic from a non-normative critical stance, adopting an analytical approach to unravel the plurality of moral registers that assertive justice frameworks tend to reify. Ethics is conceived as a situated, relational, and dynamic dimension of the transition, emerging through the negotiation of moral values in everyday practices, organisational strategies, institutional arrangements, and policy processes. These unfold in contexts shaped by power relations, historical legacies, and socio-technical imaginaries. Within them, actors mobilise different principles of justification, reflecting a plurality of orders of worth and competing visions of the common good. Ethical and justice-related concerns are thus not externally applied but enacted through practices and reflexive engagement. This perspective highlights the plurality of normative orientations and the tensions involved in translating them into experience, clarifying how ethics and justice are constituted in the energy transition.
Energy (signal processing · Energy transition · Field (mathematics · Information ethics · Moral disengagement · Politics · Transition (genetics · Education, Technology, and Ethics · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
Social Practices
Designs for the Pluriverse
Energy justice in the transition to low carbon energy systems
Conceptualising energy use and energy poverty using a capabilities framework
Humanizing sociotechnical transitions through energy justice
The Imperative of Responsibility
A Theory of Justice
Creating Capabilities
Energy Ethics
Outline of a Theory of Practice
The Site of the Social
Giving an Account of Oneself
The Dynamics of Social Practice
Defining Environmental Justice
States of Knowledge
Environmental Justice
Energy justice
Political power and renewable energy futures
Who cares? How care practices uphold the decentralised energy order
Constructing insignificance
Shifting expectations – how the responsibility for the habitability of the planet is shifting
Energy transition, sustainability, and the pursuit of self-reliance ( Atmanirbharta )
Challenging the white spaces of environmental sociology
Change and path dependency in expanding energy systems
Doing ownership’ in sustainable energy innovation
Towards energy care ethics
Energy transitions from the cradle to the grave
Beyond energy justice
A feminist ethos for caring knowledge production in transdisciplinary sustainability science
Reclaiming critique in social sciences – or why ‘non-normative critique’ constitutes a contradiction in terms
Indigenous knowledges and development
What is the ‘Just Transition’
Spatial justice and the land politics of renewables
Ecofeminism as Politics
Coloniality of Power and Eurocentrism in Latin America
Energy ethics, homogenization, and hegemony
Exploring the anthropology of energy
Energy ethics in the assessment of local renewable energy projects
Introduction
Conclusion
After Method
Green means good
Beyond Distribution and Proximity
Non-normative critique
Pragmatic sociology as political ecology
Introduction
Value as ethics
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |