Teaching Social Sustainability Through Antenarrative Imaginaries of Energy Cultures

This chapter introduces antenarratives—intra-plays of grand narratives with living stories—to teach energy cultures to clarify how activities connected to specific energy systems contribute to understanding social sustainability. We view energy cultures as the norms, practices, and material artifacts in a society linked to energy use and operating at all levels, from individuals and groups to organizations and even nations. We draw on a recent United Nations Policy brief that calls for energy use related to Social Development Goal (SDG) 7 to be linked with the rest of the SDGs. The policy signals an important development in that it directly acknowledges the role of energy use in spurring large-scale progress in all SDGs. Given the complexity inherent in those interlinkages, we propose the antenarrative method for navigating complexity when teaching this topic. Antenarratives enable the development of imaginaries, understood as powerful cultural resources that shape social responses. The antenarrative method is relevant to teaching social aspects of sustainability as it unveils the disconnect between the ideas that support the organization of activities in the present modes of production and consumption organized through links with current energy systems and those emerging as a consequence of sustainable energy systems. Ideas and interests acquire legitimacy and are normalized through social and cultural practices, and this chapter proposes that educators can use antenarratives to direct attention to energy cultures, which is critical to bridging the gap in understanding social sustainability. Antenarratives enable students to understand how social sustainability evolves onto a different semantic level.