ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how speculation and speculative thought might be taken up as part of empirical social and cultural research practices. Although a much-maligned term, typically attributed to risky, irresponsible and opportunistic ventures based on inadequate evidence, this chapter retrieves a version of the speculative from a lineage of thought that can be traced through the work of A.N. Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and more latterly Isabelle Stengers. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates how it can inform a constructivist approach to designing concepts and ‘devices’ that actively relate the research process to the questions it aims to answer as well as acknowledging the co-becoming of the researcher and the researched. The chapter illustrates this version of situated and empirical speculating through the case of the Energy Babble: a research device that was designed by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and deployed among members of local energy communities around England in order to modestly articulate and understand the ‘problems’ and possibilities of energy-demand reduction.
