How to study energy citizenship reflexively? Research questions and methodologies for an elusive research object

The energy transition crucially involves social and institutional innovations, carried by new narratives and discourses. A prominent example is ‘energy citizenship’. Coined as an emancipatory counter-narrative of capable and politically involved citizens, it has also proven vulnerable to analytical dilution, ideological appropriation and narrow instrumental interpretations. Arguing for a critical but empirically concrete engagement with the concept, this paper reaches beyond conceptual discussions. Responding to methodological discussions in social-scientific energy research, we address the elusiveness of energy citizenship as an object of study: Is it a policy slogan, a set of concrete actors and activities, a social-scientific category, or all of these at once? As research may silently reproduce implicit assumptions and stereotypes about energy citizenship, we propose a reflexive methodology approach. Building on empirical investigations in a large international research project and critical analysis of recent energy citizenship studies, we identify three key reflexive methodology concerns: 1) the associated normative ideals , 2) the ideological representations of it and 3) the empirical observables, actors and ideal-types that it can be taken to refer to. Disclosing 9 reflexive-methodological strategies, the analysis provides concrete methodological guidance for critical social-scientific energy research more broadly.