Exploring local ecologies through work & energy: towards a common sensing of the global ecological crisis

Counter-acting the global ecological crisis hinges upon our ability to redefine our relationship with nature. Environmental historian Richard White (1996) posits that humans have historically known nature through work. This paper builds on White’s epistemic notion, proposing that transforming the human-nature relationship requires exploratory work. Empirical insights from local collaboration processes toward energy transition highlight exploration as pertinent to grasping and potentially transforming the blinding conditions of the global ecological crisis. This focus on exploration is driven by two conceptual problematics: first, recognizing exploration as a significant yet under-evaluated component in developing alternative local-global energy practices; second, addressing the under-theorized role of exploration within strands of psychologies concerned with the environment. By engaging the theoretical framework of German-Scandinavian Critical Psychology, this paper examines exploration as a concrete metabolic process occurring in everyday life, in which a global common cause becomes a concern among other daily concerns. Thanks to two empirical analyses, we illustrate how concrete acts of exploration encompass socio-ecological and socio-affective dimensions, constituting and mediating concrete attempts at sustainably reconfiguring existing energetic relations. We conclude by arguing that an emphasis on exploration can foster alternative valuations of the human-nature metabolic relationship. We conceptualize these collaborative affective mo(ve)ments of socio-ecological exploration as common sensing.