ABSTRACT
To date, most shale gas impacts experienced by local residents in the UK and Poland have not emerged directly from development but rather from the social processes and interactions with energy companies and the local and national authorities. This chapter draws on ethnographic, participatory and documentary research in Lancashire, North-West England, and the region of Grabowiec in South-East Poland to demonstrate the mechanisms and dynamics that have led to the disjuncture between community risk perceptions and the official evaluations of risk. It is argued that the objections that residents opposed to fracking have raised in the early stages of shale gas developments in Europe have to be understood not in a merely technical and factual way but as an expression of the limits of the planning and consultation processes, usually expressed as democracy-based and justice-based concerns. By focusing on “material considerations” and compartmentalising development, the planning regimes artificially remove the social dimension of decision-making that pertains to the political questions of need, trust, energy justice and alternative visions of the social good.
