Fragmented Resistance in Energy Transitions: Geothermal Materiality in Dieng, Indonesia

Geothermal development in Dieng, Indonesia, illustrates how renewable energy infrastructures can generate uneven socio-material disruptions and fragmented forms of resistance. Drawing on fieldwork that combined interviews, field observations, and document analysis, this study examines how the scattered layout of geothermal installations, including dispersed well pads and pipelines, produces unpredictable steam emissions and water disruptions in a densely populated agricultural landscape. These disruptions create uneven material risks that are experienced differently across neighbourhoods and social groups, generating differentiated and localised claims rather than a unified movement. While existing scholarship has examined conflict, risk perception, and environmental injustice in geothermal development, less attention has been paid to how dispersed infrastructures shape differentiated grievances and how resistance may, in turn, conditionally reshape infrastructure. The article shows that geothermal materiality is not a fixed technical characteristic, but an “in-making materiality” shaped through daily encounters, contestation, and selective operational adjustments. In this context, local grievances over steam, water contamination, noise, and corrosion are translated into broader concerns about justice, sometimes linking activists to regional and transnational civil society networks. By showing how dispersed infrastructure produces uneven exposure and fragmented resistance, the article contributes to debates in political ecology, the social life of energy infrastructures, and the politics of energy transition.