Key messages

• Arts-based research methods provide citizens with opportunities to express the emotional and affective dimensions of life in transition towns in novel ways.

• Arts-based research methods enhances the capacity to attune to affective-emotional life in transition towns.

• Arts-based research methods challenge the tendency to prioritise sociotechnical frameworks and reason in just transitions discourse.

Introduction

Imagine being part of a town with a long industrial heritage. What you know about the place, what you sense, how you feel and your identity has come about with industries such as fish canning, motor engine manufacture and stone mining. Yet, those industries are now gone. The loss of those industries altered how this town feels. Production continues at a long-standing multinational petrochemical plant. In a forest next to the refinery, you can smell and hear diesel and tar production. Living in this town means ongoing change and adaptation as governmental, economic, industrial, sociocultural and environmental influences shift arrangements. You and your town must again negotiate being at a crossroad and adapt as carbon-intensive industries are being scaled back or changing because they are causing environmental damage both locally and globally.

In 2017, the Swedish parliament adopted a new climate policy framework that aims to transform Sweden into a fossil-free society by 2045. The framework was a response to the Paris Agreement, 2015 and the international goal of keeping global temperature rise below 2°C. The Swedish net-zero emissions target calls for decarbonisation across carbon-intensive sectors such as energy, industry, transport and agriculture. The policy is reshaping the local dynamics of towns which host carbon-intensive industries of historical importance, such as steel, petrochemicals and cement. These ‘transition towns’ are tasked with adapting to a changing industrial and energy landscape (Bazilian et al, 2021). By ‘transition towns’ I am referring to industrial towns that are undergoing significant economic, social, cultural and environmental changes to accommodate the decarbonisation of the carbon-intensive industries they historically host. Given their intimate relationships to carbon-intensive industries, such transition towns can be considered at the ‘frontline’ of fossil-free industrial transition (Della Bosca and Gillespie, 2018; Morena et al, 2020). In these transition towns, there are competing interests at play as the community navigates the changes associated with decarbonisation. Different groups within the town have varying levels of privilege and disadvantage when it comes to adapting to these changes, compared to the broader society (Morena et al, 2020).

The concept of ‘just transition’ appeared in the Americas, when labour movements and environmental justice groups joined to address the disproportionate impacts of fossil fuel industries on marginalised communities (Morena et al, 2020; Wang and Lo, 2021). Industrial decarbonisation processes involve political, personal, community, economic, benefit, risk and institutional trade-offs (Newell and Mulvaney, 2013; Evans and Phelan, 2016). Decarbonisation policies may even create new injustices and vulnerabilities (Sovacool et al, 2021). In striving for a just transition, it is necessary to consider diverse experiences and stories, encompassing the contextually specific voices, bodies, needs, emotions and aspirations of all those impacted or potentially affected (Boss et al, 2023; Bohman et al, 2024).

Social science research about just transitions often centres industry and municipal actors as well as workers, who become synonymous with ‘the community’ (Mayer, 2018; Bohman et al, 2024). However, the experiences and perspectives of people other than workers, industry leaders and government officials living in transition towns must also be accounted for when striving for fossil-free transition (Bohman et al, 2024), for example, non–fossil-fuel workers and their families, young people, low-income households, marginalised racialised groups and recent immigrants, and people with health issues (Sovacool et al, 2021; Boss et al, 2023). Such transition town residents are heard from less in just transition scholarship (Boss et al, 2023). It continues to be the case that in some transition towns citizens remain locked out of decision-making processes in Sweden (Brodén Gyberg and Lövbrand, 2022). A more comprehensive account of resident experiences and associated stories is necessary to achieve a just transition that brings everyone along.

Scholars researching people and just transitions come from many different disciplinary fields and connected methodological and theoretical traditions (Sovacool et al, 2018; Wang and Lo, 2021). Social science methods used to study people and just transitions include interviews (Brodén Gyberg and Lövbrand, 2022); modelling (Li and Strachan, 2019); case studies (Snell, 2018); surveys (Bauwens and Devine-Wright, 2018); focus groups (Bohman et al, 2024); ethnography (Goodman, 2018); and occasionally participatory action research methods (Boyle et al, 2022; Stripple et al, 2021). This article is consistent with Köhler et al’s (2019: 4) suggestion for ‘reflections on methodologies for transitions research’ that can help to include the widest range of considerations to ensure the fossil-free transition is truly just.

The primary objective of this article is to investigate how arts-based research methods (ABR) can be leveraged to expand the avenues through which researchers can account for and citizens can share their stories about affective-emotional life in transition towns. The primary value of this article lies in its contribution to the development and refinement of ABR within the context of just transition studies that I argue can help add citizen perspectives and consideration of affective-emotional life to the discourse, policy making and action surrounding just transitions. It is not just rationality and the cognitive that shape perceptions of winners and losers, constructing distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in political discourse, and legitimation of the transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy industries and technologies (Cha, 2020; Martiskainen and Sovacool, 2021; Bogner et al, 2024). This article is primarily a methodological contribution rather than a presentation of research findings. While some findings are discussed, they serve to illustrate the application and potential of the ABR methods being employed, rather than constituting a comprehensive analysis of the data.

Affect in this article can be understood as the embodied sensations that individuals experience as anger, shame, joy and so forth. Emotion represents the semiotic articulation of these affective states. Affect and emotion function together (Wetherell, 2012). Affective-emotional life is at the heart of meaning-making, shaping of spaces and the formation of relationships (Wetherell, 2012). I will provide a more comprehensive explanation of my understanding of affect and emotion later in the article.

ABR is a process of knowledge creation that incorporates principles from the creative arts within research settings and is gaining traction in research communities for studying people’s experiences, including how and what people are feeling (Leavy, 2019; Kara, 2020). It is the use of, for example, theatre, poetry, dance, painting, photography, film, sound recording, textile, animation, collage, sculpture, zine-making and drawing for research purposes.

To achieve the primary objective, this article focuses on a study of the application of ABR to facilitate the exploration of affective-emotional lives of people in two Swedish transition towns – Lysekil and Luleå. The ABR used in this project were photography, perfumery, dance, textile art (specifically banner-making), film, animation and soundscapes. Due to space limitations, this article will concentrate on the perfumery and textile art, selected for how they were particularly effective at facilitating an exploration of affective-emotional life. I contend that ABR serves as an additional and valuable tool for researchers and participants for exploring fossil-free transitions in ways that help to account for affective-emotional conditions of possibility. The use of and discussion of ABR in this article departs from prevailing sociotechnical and rational frameworks that typically direct methods used in the study and pursuit of just transitions (Cherp, et al, 2018; Jenkins, et al, 2018; Hess and Sovacool, 2020).¹

The argument in this article echoes ecofeminist Val Plumwood’s (2002) call to address the ‘ecological crisis of reason’. By this phrase Plumwood is referring to how there a long-standing reproduction of a hegemonic Western hetero-patriarchal capitalist ontological and epistemological system that codes reason, mind and social as masculine and ‘set apart from the lower order’ that contains ‘the body, emotions, woman, animals, and non-living materialities and forces’ (Plumwood, 2009: para 21). There is a performative discourse in just transitions research that in effect continues to enforce oppressions (or privileges), marginalisations and unjust ecological realities.² As Rebecca Coleman and Jessica Ringrose (2013: 1) point out, ‘methodologies not only describe the worlds they observe but (at least in part) are involved in the invention or creation of the world’. Feminist theory more widely has long argued for the consideration of emotions in social science, emphasising their centrality to people’s lives including decision-making (Jaggar, 1989; Woodward, 1996; Hochschild, 2003; Probyn, 2005).

The article is structured in eight sections. Initially, I present the context of the study. This is followed by an explanation of how affects and emotions are understood in this project and article. The next section reviews relevant literature pertaining to the relationships between emotion and research on just transitions, as well as adjacent areas. The fourth section offers a more detailed explanation of ABR methods. Next is a discussion about ethics. In the sixth section, I tell two analytical stories about the use of ABR methods in the two transition towns. Following which, I explain the approach taken to analyse the ABR data. Finally, the article concludes with a summary of the key insights gained from employing ABR when researching affective-emotional life in the context of transition towns.

Research context

The following discussion is situated in a four-year research project (2019–23) that used ABR – among other methods – to explore how transition towns in Sweden are connected to carbon-intensive systems of production and are negotiating decarbonisation-led changes and expectations. The project involved a comparative case study of three Swedish cities – Luleå, Slite and Lysekil – that are reliant on carbon-intensive industries – steel, cement and petroleum – that currently top the list of Sweden’s industrial emitters (Brodén Gyberg and Lövbrand, 2022). Alongside ABR the social science scholars of the project team used policy and document analysis, worker and citizen focus groups, field observation, and interviews (Brodén Gyberg and Lövbrand, 2022; Bohman et al, 2024). As an initial step, the team conducted a mapping exercise to identify potential networks across the three locations. The team then leveraged these established network contacts to help facilitate access to participants. Recruitment was a combination of snowball, referral and convenience sampling techniques (Kristensen and Ravn, 2015). We asked municipal and industry actors as well as transition town residents about current and future barriers, risks, challenges and benefits being negotiated during transitions as well as what it is like to live in transition towns. The ABR component of the study was used to learn about citizen identities and affective-emotional lives within the three transition towns. To align with the primary purpose of the article and accommodate space constraints, the focus of the analysis has been refined to concentrate specifically on the affective-emotional dimensions of lived experiences in two of the three towns: Lysekil and Luleå. The exploration of these aspects will be conducted through the lens of two particular ABR methods, namely perfumery and textile.

Lysekil on Sweden’s west coast hosts the Preemraff oil refinery, which provides 600 jobs. The town’s economy is also tied to summer tourism, a small fishing fleet and marine research centres located here because of a unique fjord that also is the shipping channel for oil tankers. Lysekil has been through multiple transitions as industries such as granite mining, fish canneries and boat motor–manufacturing have closed. Between 2017 and 2020, Preemraff’s plan to expand the refinery resulted in environmental debate and demonstrations. Due to concerns about profitability, the company called off the expansion plan and is now working to transition to biofuels.

Luleå in northern Sweden hosts steel production. It is known as ‘stålstaden’ (steel city). This coastal city is at the mouth of the Lule River in the Gulf of Bothnia region and has a population of about 70,000 people. The steel industry is a key driver of the local economy, alongside tourism and data centres. The project team was particularly interested in the decarbonisation journey of the SSAB steel mill. In August 2020 SSAB co-launched the HYBRIT initiative with the state-owned mining and energy companies LKAB and Vattenfall, dedicated to producing carbon-free iron using hydrogen and renewable energy sources such as hydropower.

Affect-emotion

There are multiple and competing models of affect and emotion (Wetherell, 2012). This article adheres to a model that defines affect as the observable and physical sensations of a human body resulting from recursive experiences with social and material arrangements (Wetherell, 2012; Tomkins in Frank and Wilson, 2020). Physiologically, affect may bring together facial (such an impromptu smile, sneer or flushing of the cheeks), pitch of voice (for example, a startled cry, a note of anger), muscular and skin responses (a shiver, for instance) and a conscious response (such as an addiction to or desire for an affect) (Tomkins in Frank and Wilson, 2020). Examples of primary affects are surprise-startle, interest-excitement, enjoyment-joy, shame-humiliation, distress-anguish, disgust, fear-terror, anger-rage, dissmell (Tomkins in Frank and Wilson, 2020). Affect is coupled with emotion.

Emotion refers to how systems of signification narrativise affect and thus make meaning, including the manipulation and naming of affective experiences (Wetherell, 2012). For example, a blushed face because of shame prompting self-reflection and stories of mistrust, powerlessness, worthlessness, guilt and interest (Probyn, 2005). There is a politics of emotions (Ahmed, 2004). Even when we experience the same affect, our relationship to that affect will vary because of cultural politics and the associated semiosis (Ahmed, 2004: 10). Indeed, how we affectively connect to objects, others and what such emotionally invokes is political (Ahmed, 2004). This means that the affective-emotional experiences of two people are not simply the sum of their individual affective-emotional states but there is also the production of unique atmospheres (Brennan, 2004). Affect and emotion are not solely individual phenomena (Brennan, 2004). Importantly, affect and emotion are not of different or discrete orders. Rather, the aforementioned ‘separation’ is for analytical and explanation purposes only. The symbolic, biographical, social, cultural and physical mix in situ to produce affective-emotional life (Wetherell, 2012; Tomkins in Frank and Wilson, 2020).

Emotions and just transitions research

Affective-emotional life is part of fossil-free transformations. Consider how the closures of carbon-intensive resource infrastructure can evoke a range of affective-emotional experiences among workers and local citizens, including sorrow, empathy, pride, nostalgia, anger, anxiety, shame, disgust, joy and fear (Della Bosca and Gillespie, 2018; Arsenault, 2020; Martiskainen and Sovacool, 2021; Evers, 2023; Bogner et al, 2024). Affective-emotional registers have an impact on policy development and sociotechnical decision-making processes, even though in Western European traditions affective-emotional registers have traditionally been viewed as an impediment to effective policy making and technical decision-making (Martiskainen and Sovacool, 2021). Moreover, affective-emotional life is also part of regulating the legitimation and inclusion (or not) of some transition town identities, actions and stories in the just transitions discourse rather than others (Martiskainen and Sovacool, 2021).

Martiskainen and Sovacool (2021: 609) propose a new research agenda ‘for low-carbon transitions that takes into consideration people’s emotions as we address climate change and attempt to move to net zero societies’. More widely, there is growing research interest in relationships between affective-emotional life and environmental change and adaptation, energy justice and sustainability (see, for example, Bladow and Ladino, 2018; Huijts, 2018; Longhurst and Hargreaves, 2019; Pihkala, 2022; Verlie, 2022). In this literature, the typical methods used to study emotions are surveys and interviews. However, affective-emotional life is often difficult to put into words. They are felt ‘in your bones’, ‘in your hands’, ‘in your guts’ and ‘across your skin’. As a participant explained during the ABR for this project, ‘I would say this research method is great. Because you are including people to talk about these problems and do something creative that also shows feelings’.

Dunn and Mellor (2017) have argued that mainstream research methods – for example, interviews, surveys and focus groups – that are heavily reliant on people’s verbal or writing skills can struggle to connect to and convey the affective-emotional aspects of participants’ lives. The implication is that researchers may need to use novel methods that can engage differently with the embodied, non-linguistic and affective-emotional dimensions of people’s lives. Arguably, ABR is one such novel approach that can contribute to a more holistic understanding of transition town emotional-affective life and associated just transition politics.

Arts-based research methods

ABR is increasingly accepted in social science research and is also being explored at intersections with humanities and scientific fields (Douglas and Carless, 2018). It is a methodology that can be used at all stages of a research process – identifying research questions, creating data, analysis and communication – both independently and complementing more conventional methods, both qualitative and quantitative, to achieve a more holistic understanding of the phenomenon being studied (Kara, 2020). ABR is typically inductive in nature. It may or may not involve someone who identifies as an ‘artist’, while who we traditionally understand as ‘the researcher’ can be simultaneously positioned as artist (if they identify as such), instructor, learner, participant, documentarian, facilitator and analyst (Leavy, 2019).

I personally co-created all the art with the study participants, ran all the ABR workshops, curated the final exhibition and created associated documents such as an exhibition catalogue. I do not identify as an ‘artist’ as I have no formal training. It is not necessary to be an artist to use ABR. Rather, what is required is humility and a willingness to learn new skills, work collaboratively, make mistakes and to be a vulnerable researcher (Venäläinen, 2023). That said, because I was pushing the limits of my own skill set and needed to learn new techniques for some of the ABR I occasionally and informally sought out technical advice from peers who are trained artists (for example, about 3D rendering), and a perfumer provided some informal practical assistance to help make perfumes.

ABR is about creating data with research participants rather than about them, and emphasis is on co-production (van der Vaart, 2018). There is typically a prioritising of creativity as a shared non-hierarchical process that may lead to new ways of feeling, sensing, imagining, understanding and questioning. Coemans and Hannes (2017) argue that through ABR there can occur a dismantling of hierarchies between researcher and researched, participants can express themselves in ways that they are comfortable with rather than the researcher, and analysis can iteratively and more collaboratively occur during the method. Data and analysis are treated as performative and created, rather than already existing somewhere ‘out there’ to be found and later analysed in isolation from the context (Riddett-Moore and Siegesmund, 2012).

Ethics

The project was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (reference: 2020-01118), contingent upon principles of informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity. Consent from participants was documented either in written form or verbally recorded. Participation was entirely voluntary, and participants had the option to withdraw at any time. Throughout the duration of the ABR participants were asked about consent and reminded of the university ethical codes of practice, a practice known as ‘continuous consent’ (Klykken, 2022).

The ABR in this study also revolves around the ethical consideration for the dynamics of who has a voice and who is expected to listen during transitions in industrial and associated sociotechnical-cultural contexts, highlighting a ‘politics of listening’ (O’Donnell et al, 2009). Here, I treat ‘listening’ as encompassing all sensory inputs that contribute to knowledge exchange and creation. Viewing ABR through the lens of a politics of listening reflects an ethical commitment to attuning to the multiplicity of experiences of everyday life; an effort to multiply pathways for participation and knowledge-creation in more-than-textual, affective-emotional and sensual ways; and to work on ways to ensure that those more powerfully located listen more by ‘being moved’ in ways they are perhaps not used to and in so doing help citizens to contribute to just transition decision-making.

Two stories about using ABR for just transition research

Perfumery and smell-walking

To start the fieldwork, my colleagues and I embarked on several journeys to Lysekil, aiming to familiarise ourselves with its industries, seascape and landscape and the daily lives of residents. Walking methods are productive of sensory relationships with place – a ‘sensory ethnography’ (Pink, 2008). Showing her photograph of a misty forest, a participant told me to go to and walk a forest ‘that calls to her’ near Preemraff – the petrochemical facility – to get a feel for Lysekil different from the seaside that dominates many visitors’ (tourists, for instance) understanding and affective-emotional experiences of the town. The town’s tourism media and infrastructure orientate the visitor gaze and affective-emotional experiences towards the sea, seaside nature reserve and pleasure-boat harbour.

I travelled to and walked the forest near the refinery. An aroma of damp, rotting leaves filled the air. The forest was downwind from the refinery, and I could smell gas mingling with the forest scent. It is possible to smell the refinery in the centre of town. However, the routine and often forceful sea breeze effectively disperses the sounds and scents emanating from the refinery, ensuring that the town centre, a focal point for tourism investment, stays less affected. In the forest near the refinery, the smell of industry is more powerful.

I subsequently undertook an unplanned ‘smell-walk’. Smell-walking as a method sometimes involves a researcher accompanying participants on walks to explore ‘smellscapes’ (Henshaw, 2014; Allen, 2023). As Zardini (2005: 276) explains, there are ‘specific scents from activities, energy sources, aromas, spices, plants, flowers, animals and garbage, forming invisible yet present and olfactory landscapes’. The presence or absence of smells can communicate boundaries related to, for example, taste, class and identity at personal, group and institutional levels (Śliwa and Riach, 2012; Canniford et al, 2018). Smell provides both a sensory geography of spaces and affective-emotional experiences (Śliwa and Riach, 2012; Canniford et al, 2018). As I walked I conducted informal ethnographic conversations with residents I met. During those conversations I mentioned smell, albeit not directly connecting such to the refinery. My aim was to simply prompt discussion about the presences and associated practices around and cultural significance of smell (Śliwa and Riach, 2012; Canniford et al, 2018).

Residents both during the smell-walk and when I recursively consulted them later for analytical purposes brought up how the smell of the refinery poses challenges in selling homes in and near the forest. They shared stories centring anxiety, with one participant articulating such as a sense of feeling ‘trapped’. This anxiety connected the refinery not only to livelihoods, as emphasised in union and government narratives (Brodén Gyberg and Lövbrand, 2022), but freedom of movement. Another resident told a story of anxiety likening the refinery’s odours to living with a perpetual bomb threat. Anxiety is an emotion that alerts us to danger (Tomkins in Frank and Wilson, 2020). The resident explained that they have been told by other town residents to simply ‘move away’ to alleviate the anxiety. However, doing so is difficult, as the previously mentioned resident had identified. The instruction to ‘move away’ served to individuate the anxiety and obscure the role of the refinery in the formation of an anxious atmosphere. On the other hand, one resident did not mind the refinery’s odours, as they mingled with proud memories of her father’s hardworking sweaty aroma upon returning from work at the refinery. Hers was a nostalgic story of a regionally celebrated breadwinner/industrial masculinity (Hultman and Pulé, 2018). The pride was entangled with a gendered politics common in Lysekil.

Drawing inspiration from the smell-walk and the residents’ stories, the participants and I collaboratively designed and created two perfumes (see Figure 1). The perfumes were created to prompt discussion about the smellscape of Lysekil as well as the associated affective-emotional lives. As part of the perfumery process, I recursively consulted four participants: a young woman, a municipality official, a refinery worker and a local artist. The collaborative analysis of multiple iterations of the perfume prompted interpretations and observations linking everyday experiences with specific smells to broader sociocultural contexts and issues within the community. At a final exhibition the participants remarked on how accurately the various perfumes captured these connections, as well as prompted them to contemplate the contexts and issues further. For example, affirming the previously mentioned resident’s ‘bomb’ anxiety and the pride associated with an industrial/breadwinner masculinity. This recursive consultation supported communicative validity.

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Perfumes created in Lysekil as ABR

Citation: Global Social Challenges Journal 3, 3; 10.1332/27523349Y2024D000000019

Source: Image by author.

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Fragrances that make up a given composition, are called chords in perfumery. A chord can consist of two, three or even more ingredients. The first final perfume featured a forest chord with scents of wood, rotting leaves and earthy dampness. It also incorporated a smoke chord, representing the wood stove common in the area that participants said evoked a feeling of ‘comfort’ and ‘safety’, and an industry chord with volatile scents from the oil refinery. A sulphur/gas chord and a sweaty worker chord captured the refinery’s essence and industrial/breadwinner masculinity. These chords interacted to mirror the interplay and competition of smells in the landscape, as well as connote the politics. The industry and sulphur/gas chords, situated in the top layer, were the first perceivable, gradually dissipating to let the forest and smoke chord later dominate. A second final perfume emphasised a coastal air chord, blending the sea breeze, cool air, water pools, saltwater and coastal plants. A lighter sulphur/gas chord was added, and in contrast to the forest perfume dissipated more quickly than the forest perfume due to a ‘seabreeze’, leaving behind a fresh, sweet coastal scent.

The fragrances were the most popular exhibits at the concluding project exhibition. I observed and was part of conversations where the perfumes provoked personal introspection and in-depth conversations about the power-full olfactory landscapes of Lysekil and respective politics. The ABR had an ability to evoke memories, emotions and experiences. Exhibition visitors spoke about how they felt in response to the smells, for example, joy, pride, enjoyment and disgust. As one coastal-living resident visitor said to me, ‘I never thought about how it smells “over there”’. A worker who visited the exhibition expressed pride in the strong chemical smells part of the forest perfume, validating the forest resident’s memories of her father.

Sometimes, the initial complex and volatile chemical chords provoked dissmell. Some visitors to the exhibition (including residents) unfamiliar with the smells of the refinery winced, wrinkled their nose and pulled their head away from the forest perfume, key signifiers of this primary affect (Tomkins in Frank and Wilson, 2020). Dissmell is an instinctive ‘drive auxiliary’ serving to protect us from ingesting or contacting objects that are potentially noxious to health and life (Tomkins in Frank and Wilson, 2020). It is correlated with disgust. However, dissmell and disgust are not simply drive auxiliaries; rather, they are affects in their own right, as they can fuel feelings of contempt and revulsion towards a wide range of objects and behaviours. For example, dissmell and disgust can inform a broader politics of stigmatisation, being used to marginalise certain places and their residents as ‘smelly’, ‘undesirable’, ‘peripheral’, ‘backward’, ‘dirty’ and ‘broken’, while glorifying others as ‘hardworking’, ‘central’, ‘desirable’, ‘clean’ and ‘productive’. The act of identifying something or someone as ‘smelly’ or ‘dirty’ has historically been a mechanism for enforcing social boundaries and asserting control over who is deemed valuable or worthy within a community or wider society (Douglas, 1966).

The instability and variation in how people responded to the different perfumes draw attention to affective-emotional politics at play in transition towns, where stigmas and their practical implications, such as inequalities and vulnerabilities, occur at the intersection of individual experiences, sensory life, environment, bodies, culture and broader sociotechnical structures. Considering the previous points, I contend that this ABR can provide a novel way to learn about the politics of affective-emotional lives in transition towns.

Textile

In Luleå the participants and I were inspired to use a textile ABR (see Figure 2). Residents had shared insights into the cultural heritage of the Indigenous Sami, highlighting their use of textile narratives to express place and weave identity (Aamold et al, 2017). Researchers, particularly feminist and Indigenous scholars, have employed ABR, including textile making, to decolonise methodologies (Hammond et al, 2018; Harrison and Ogden, 2021). Hammond et al (2018) suggest that to decolonise transitions research, it is necessary to employ novel methods that deviate from the prevailing focus on reason, mind and culture that characterises scholarship in the Global North. I also learned from residents about the rich tradition of banner-making within the Gruvarbetarförbundet (the Miner’s Confederation) (Ståhl, 2018). For some groups, especially those that are harder to reach, the cultural familiarity of art as a means of knowledge creation can assist recruitment and multiply ways to communicate (Goopy and Kassan, 2019; Shercliff and Holroyd, 2020). As one participant explained, ‘This method in my opinion could bring more attention to the subject, because art is something most people can take part in and enjoy … It also brings feelings that couldn’t be described with words’.

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Textile banner hanging in the exhibition hall

Citation: Global Social Challenges Journal 3, 3; 10.1332/27523349Y2024D000000019

Source: Image by author.

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Participants for the Luleå textile ABR were recruited from an adult community networking organisation and a youth community centre. Two elderly women from the adult community networking organisation scheduled a time to stitch the night before ‘drop-in’ workshops at the youth centre over two days. The two women from the adult networking organisation spent two hours proudly stitching representations of the region’s natural environment – the rainbow colours of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) and snowy forests – as well as centring a representation of the steel industry. No negative affective-emotional experiences were represented or discussed during this ABR session.

The next morning the textile workshop drop-in began. A sign explained the research and supplied key words – environment, steel, identity – to respond to. Initially, the workshop lacked participation, and I began sewing alone. However, some young women began touching the fabrics and remarked how they liked the textures. Two sat down to glue and sew fabric. Others joined throughout the day. As the two initial participants sewed and glued, they represented and shared insights into local queer identities and politics. For example, they sewed representations of cultural activities and a LGBTQIA flag onto a fabric patch. While making, pride switched to anger then back again then back to anger and so forth. The anger leapt to the other young woman. It was an example of ‘affective contagion’ (Gibbs, 2001). Bodies can catch feelings as easily as catch fire: affect leaps from one body to another (Gibbs, 2001).

A woman shared an account of an incident where she had expressed her anger and frustration at a public event. She had spoken out against the town’s policies that prioritised the interests of the steel industry and allocated funds to sports (such as hockey and basketball) that were sponsored by the same steel industry. Her criticism stemmed from the fact that these policies neglected the needs of the queer community and failed to invest in facilities and cultural events that would cater to those whose histories and identities did not revolve around the steel industry. The woman’s story highlighted the lack of inclusivity and diversity in the town’s decision-making processes, which seemed to favour the dominant industrial sector at the expense of marginalised groups and alternative cultural expressions. Another woman provided context for this anger, explaining that there is no interest in ‘cultural change’. Additional context was provided by a participant who expressed their desire for the city’s ‘attitude to change to be more like trusting to … something strange, something unknown’. The participant had been told by the public event organiser to ‘be more reasonable’ and not to speak so ‘harshly’.

There is a normalisation in some cultures and particularly sociotechnical policy-making ones to frame anger (among other affective-emotional states) as antithetical to productive progress (Shah, 2024). Doing so may be understood as aiming for objectivity and reasonableness when in fact it is complicity with status quo arrangements of power, privilege and authority. Then there is how in some Global North cultures the expression of anger by a woman is less tolerated than it is for men, even being ‘construed as deviant, monstrous or otherwise taboo’ (Kay, 2019: 591). Women can face negative consequences for displaying emotions conveying emotions that dominance, such as anger (Brescoll, 2016). Society tends to penalise women, especially women of colour, who exhibit such – for example, the ‘angry black woman’ trope (Ahmed, 2004). Societal discourses rooted in racism, colonialism, gender bias and class division produce various problematic tropes or stereotypes about different intersections of bodies, emotions and expression (Ahmed, 2004). The way anger is perceived, expressed and received influences who gets listened to and who listens. The participant’s anger is disciplined by society and consequently not listened to and marginalised. She and her peers are consequently not brought along on the just transition journey.

I found that the ABR methods provided a safe and generative space for participants to express themselves and engage in meaningful dialogue, particularly when exploring sensitive or difficult topics (Dunn and Mellor, 2017). That said, the young women did remain cognisant of a potential wider audience for the final banner and self-surveilled how they expressed themselves. As Foucault (1980: 30) explains, ‘power reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives’. That process of disciplinary power includes affective-emotional lives (Probyn, 2005).

Young men were reluctant to join the textile ABR. One young man mentioned technical incompetence, which can be a perceived barrier to participation in ABR. I showed the young man my lack of sewing skill, which got a loud laugh. The vulnerability built trust and rapport. Two young men joined the textile ABR. The young men were ‘new Swedes’. One young man made a patch for the banner by ‘tagging’ a piece of fabric. The tag symbolised the joy of belonging to a small friendship group made up of other new Swedes. As he explained, ‘it talks about my brothers’. Tagging is graffiti semiotics typically taking the form of cursive writing that means something principally to the tagger and their peers. The tagging is sometimes to show where the tagger is from and to signify belonging. Law enforcement agencies often associate tagging with criminalised gang culture, even when it is not (Snyder, 2017). Tagging can also be a vehicle for creating and contesting hegemonic meanings and ‘ownership’ of spaces (Snyder, 2017). While the elderly White Swedish women joyfully represented their ‘imagined community’ and its relationships to industry and to the local natural environment this young man did not. Coined by Benedict Anderson (1983), the term ‘imagined communities’ describes socially constructed communities, even among members who may have never met. The young man had focused on the joy of belonging to a smaller interpersonal friendship group. Here, enjoyment is felt by different participants, yet the participants do not have the same political relationship to that affective-emotional state (Ahmed, 2010). The young man’s tag raises a question about the dominant relationship between the ‘imagined community’ and joy in Luleå.

One of the other participants, who was White and grew up in Luleå and told me they were ‘trying to show the town as a happy place’, by using brightly coloured fabric and pictures of fun things to do asked the young man about the tag. The young man spoke about feeling anxious and sad when not with his friendship group. His story trailed off to silence as the White Swedish participant who asked the question appeared to stop listening after remarking ‘you should feel happy [about being here]’. The new Swede’s negative affective-emotional experiences clashed with the other participant’s desire to portray the town in a joyful light. Another new Swede young man observed that his impression of his new home is that the ‘Swedish guys are all sad’. This perception also challenged the hegemonic representation of a joyful city. These dynamics highlight how certain representations of affective-emotional life, particularly by marginalised groups, can be disruptive to dominant narratives of imagined community other residents may prefer to celebrate. The young man’s presence and his tag in this town challenge a dominant narrative of a proud, industrial, progressive and environmentally beautiful white north city. His existence disrupts any image of a harmonious community where people coexist happily with one another. The young man’s tag serves as a visible reminder of the diversity and complexity of lived experiences within the city, challenging the notion of any singular, unified identity. His presence brings to the fore issues of racial and cultural inclusion, highlighting the need for a more nuanced understanding of what it means to feel a sense of belonging in this transition town. The process of ‘textile thinking’ through the ABR underscored the generative possibilities but, at times, the challenging nature of investigating the interconnections between politics, affect, emotion and identity (Igoe, 2021).

Analysing the ABR

ABR analysis is an inductive, recursive and reflexive process. This analytical approach does not prioritise replicability, given a single event, action, quote or affective-emotional expression may have important meaning to a researcher and participants. It is not a distinct, isolated step in the research process. Moreover, it is typically improvisational, cognitive, embodied and emotional. For example, during the ABR I often felt frustrated and anxious about my own technical inadequacies, sad and angry because of some of the stories of oppression and marginalisation I met, and joyful because of the enthusiasm with which some participants embraced the ABR workshops. The affective-emotional life as researcher influenced when I had ‘aha moments’ – critical realisations or turning points in the research in relation to the topic and questions – that in turn became part of the codes and themes for the findings and final creative outputs. For example, how sadness leapt from the young man’s new Swede body to mine, which in turn triggered interest in learning more about the imagined community in Luleå. These aha moments typically involve cross-checking with desk-based research, expert input and participant feedback for assessing validity and disagreements (Call-Cummings, 2017). While ABR is always contextually novel and stylistic given an emphasis on context and creativity, it does not forgo rigour.

Given I am typically an ethnographer, I also used ‘thick description’ for my ethnographic notetaking. Developed by Gilbert Ryle (1971) and Clifford Geertz (1973), this analytical approach involves keeping detailed, contextual descriptions of the actions, interactions and discussions with people as well as circumstances and events. By documenting – written, audio, film and so on – contextual details, I was able to subsequently able to cross-check these against the aha moments, participant insights and interpretation of the art, as well as explore them in relation to wider societal structures and issues.

I was able to record some of the conversations that took place with participants during the ABR. To analyse audio recordings, I use a ‘reflexive thematic analysis’ framework, as designed by Braun and Clarke (2019). Reflexive thematic analysis involves going through the data to identify the codes, such as particular instances of affective-emotional expression. These codes are then further developed into broader, pattern-informed themes. In this model, the codes and themes remain flexible. This allows them to evolve as the researcher continues engaging with the participants, the research site, relevant literature, theories, and the art in my case. Crucially, this approach underlines using the resulting themes to enable an art of analytical and interpretive storytelling through qualitative data, not discovering and finding ‘the truth’ (Braun and Clarke, 2019).

When using ABR the data is not only field notes or recording (transcripts) but, as is the case for this project, can be banners, perfumes, soundscapes, animation and more. To analyse such objects, I sensorially – by seeing, smelling or touching, for example – interpret what has been made and compare this with the other analyses. Such analysis can take place at the end of an ABR when outputs are finalised. It can also be participatory, involving taking the partial or finished art back to participants for follow-up interviews and focus groups discussing them. A researcher could also go back to participants and make further art to analyse the earlier work. For this project, I was less focused on the final output than conducting analysis during the making.

I observe and ask participants about what they are making, and participants also observe, interpret and ask other participants about the topics and what they are making as they are made. During a conversation with a new Swede young man, I inquired about his textile patch. He explained that his patch represented the new climate he had to adapt to, saying, ‘and this was the snowflake, but it didn’t come out so well. And that’s the sun, that’s time, and that’s the stars … it’s winter to summer to winter’. Another participant who had grown up in Luleå questioned why only two seasons were represented. This exchange served as a valuable reminder to pay attention to the diversity of embodied experiences in transition towns. People negotiate change through their bodies. The in situ analysis conducted through ABR highlights the importance of engaging in research practices that challenge the inclination to insulate knowledge creation and decision-making processes concerning just transitions from the complexities of affective-emotional life rooted in bodies. ABR encourages researchers to move beyond purely intellectual considerations and to engage with the visceral, felt experiences of individuals and communities in transition towns. Such an in situ analytical approach was appreciated by one participant precisely for the embodied ‘energy’ it generated: ‘I loved that we could do some hobbies and paint while talking. It was a fun way to talk. I think that if it was more like an interview, you would not get the same energy we had!’

The final exhibition of the ABR outputs was also a point of analysis. In October 2023, I curated a two-week community art exhibition in Lysekil. This exhibition was solo curated and in retrospect I would have preferred more time on-site for it to be a participatory process; however, due to time and financial constraints this was not possible. Employing fog machines, lighting, soundscapes and diverse creative outputs (such as perfumes, animations, films, soundscapes, objects and banners), the exhibition aimed to nurture cognitive, multisensory and emotional experiences, fostering discussion about interpretations of transition town life. It also served as a platform for citizens to exchange ideas and learn about other transition towns. Opportunities for experiential learning exist within both the act of creating art and the experience of witnessing artistic work. Exhibitions can be research themselves (Bjerregaard, 2019). The exhibition received positive responses, with some visitors returning multiple times for in-depth discussions with me as I was present every day as a curator-researcher. Although, the gathering of feedback could have been better as it was not until the success of the exhibition that I realised the extent an exhibition could be used as a data-collection point. Nevertheless, one of the participants wrote to me, ‘I LOVED [sic] the result and the banner! I think that it’s extremely playful and easy to understand the idea of concept of the whole project. Therefore it fits perfectly for all ages children to adults because everyone can interpret the meaning behind the banner them selfs [sic]’.

The mention of ‘play’ by the participant resonated with the analytical approach here. Studies in other fields, such as feminist research on care work, have demonstrated how treating research data in playful, sensory ways can facilitate novel and unexpected embodied, emotionally exploratory exchanges between researchers, participants and audiences that go beyond only verbal or textual modes of engagement and knowledge-making (Johnston and Pratt, 2010). As Hickey-Moody’s (2013: 79) work using ABR with children suggests, ABR and analysis can produce an ‘affective pedagogy’ that has the potential to teach us by having us reflect on and even change how we feel. Such an affective pedagogy is aesthetically driven and reflexive, raising questions and sparking curiosity about the organisation of the world, and how it could be organised and felt differently.

Conclusion

This article has explored how ABR methods can be leveraged to facilitate a more holistic understanding of affective-emotional life in transition towns as a way into knowing more about the politics of such that are at the heart of fossil-free transformations. Using ABR such as perfumery and banner-making in the Swedish towns of Lysekil and Luleå, respectively, I have demonstrated how ABR can multiply pathways for citizens to participate in research as well as more widely and in novel ways share their stories, experiences and perspectives on the complex dynamics of transition town affective-emotional lives. In doing so, ABR can contribute to enabling the inclusion of more diverse and more holistic citizen perspectives and experiences beyond the rational and reasonable in the discourse, policy making and action of just transitions. The use and discussion of ABR in this article departed from prevailing sociotechnical and rational frameworks that typically direct methods used in the study and pursuit of just transitions. Such frameworks may result in a performative discourse – privileging reason, mind, culture – reproducing a system that enforces oppressions (or privileges), marginalisations and unjust ecological realities (Plumwood, 2002).

It was demonstrated that ABR is about creating data with research participants rather than about them, and how it foregrounds the ethical consideration of who has a voice and who is expected to listen – a ‘politics of listening’. ABR can help participants express themselves in ways that they are comfortable with rather than the researcher, and analysis can iteratively and collaboratively occur. Using ABR in this project redirected the emphasis away from the expert academic (or even artist) as the ‘knower’, as well as offered up opportunities for participatory, situated, relational, emotional and embodied approach to data creation. Given this, assessing ABR should not be based on objectivity or reasonableness, as these are not its primary objectives. Instead, ABR could be evaluated for its provocativeness, reflexivity, inclusivity, agitation and emotional-affective resonance, and its ability to reveal norms and reimagine rather than simply report (Schultz and Legg, 2020).

The use of perfumery in the transition town of Lysekil and the variation in how people responded to the different scents provided evidence for how ABR can draw attention to a politics of emotional-affective life at play in transition towns, where stigmas and their practical implications, such as inequalities and vulnerabilities, occur at the interplay between individual experiences, sensory life, environment and sociotechnical structures. The use of a textile ABR in Luleå evidenced how a creative space provided by drop-in textile workshops helped participants to express and explore emotions such as pride, anger and joy revealing the complex interplay between diverse and, at times, contested stories of belonging and imagined communities within this transition town.

The argument for employing ABR is not to suggest that it should replace conventional research methods such as focus groups, interviews, archival research or surveys. Rather, the case is made for diversifying and expanding the existing range, as well as encouraging innovation of methods. By using ABR it may be possible to create more inclusive and comprehensive knowledge about transition towns that unapologetically includes affective-emotional life for use by communities, industry and policy makers regarding development priorities, fund allocation, community participation, adaptation to new environmental circumstances, infrastructure investments and political debate in the context of just transitions.

Funding

Funding for the research was received from FORMAS: Swedish Research Council for Sustainable Development.

Conflict of interest

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest.