Saska Petrova

Bio: Saska Petrova is an academic researcher from University of Manchester. The author has contributed to research in topics: Energy poverty & Vulnerability. The author has an hindex of 15, co-authored 34 publications receiving 1152 citations. Previous affiliations of Saska Petrova include Urban Institute & Charles University in Prague.

A global perspective on domestic energy deprivation: Overcoming the energy poverty-fuel poverty binary

Abstract: This paper offers an integrated conceptual framework for the research and amelioration of energy deprivation in the home. It starts from the premise that all forms of energy and fuel poverty – in developed and developing countries alike – are underpinned by a common condition: the inability to attain a socially and materially necessitated level of domestic energy services. We consider the functionings provided by energy demand in the residential domain in order to advance two claims: first, that domestic energy deprivation in its different guises and forms is fundamentally tied to the ineffective operation of the socio-technical pathways that allow for the fulfilment of household energy needs, and as such is best analyzed by understanding the constitution of different energy services (heating, lighting, etc.) in the home. Second, we emphasize the ability of vulnerability thinking to encapsulate the driving forces of domestic energy deprivation via a comprehensive analytical matrix. The paper identifies the main components and implications of energy service and vulnerability approaches as they relate to domestic energy deprivation across the world.

Encountering energy precarity: Geographies of fuel poverty among young adults in the UK.

Abstract: This paper develops the notion of "energy precarity" in order to uncover the governance practices and material conditions that drive and reproduce the inability of households to secure socially- and materially-necessitated levels of energy services in the home. The overarching aim is to foreground a geographical approach towards the study of domestic energy deprivation, by emphasizing the complex socio-spatial and material embeddedness of fuel poverty. The paper operationalizes these ideas via a field-based study of a group that has received limited attention in research and policy on fuel poverty: young adults living in privately rented accommodation. In evoking the experiences of such individuals, I employ energy precarity as a means of unpacking the spaces where energy deprivation is produced, experienced and contested. Among other findings, I highlight that people's fluid lifestyles and specific end-use energy demand patterns mean that energy deprivation metaphorically and physically overflows the limits of home, creating multiple performativities of precarity that have received very little attention to date.

Unpacking the spaces and politics of energy poverty: path- dependencies, deprivation and fuel switching in post-communist Hungary

Abstract: This paper focuses on the embeddedness of energy poverty – understood as the inability to secure a socially and materially necessitated level of energy services in the home – in the socio-technical legacies inherited from past development trajectories, as well as broader economic and institutional landscapes. Using Hungary as an example, we explore the recent expansion of energy poverty across different demographic and income groups. While much of the mainstream literature focuses on cases where energy poverty affects distinct social groups and issues, our analyses examine the systemic implications of a form of deprivation that involves a much wider range of social and spatial strata. We develop a framework that highlights the different ways in which inadequate access to energy services has resulted in the emergence of new political reconfigurations among a variety of actors, while prompting the articulation of household strategies with far-reaching structural consequences.

The Production of Space

Abstract: ‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

Comfort, cleanliness and conveniencethe social organization ofnormality

Abstract: Over the past few generations, expectations of comfort, cleanliness and convenience have altered radically, but these dramatic changes have largely gone unnoticed. This intriguing book brings together the sociology of consumption and technology to investigate the evolution of these changes, as well the social meaning of the practices themselves. Homes, offices, domestic appliances and clothes play a crucial role in our lives, but not many of us question exactly how and why we perform so many daily rituals associated with them. Showers, heating, air-conditioning and clothes washing are simply accepted as part of our normal, everyday lives, but clearly this was not always the case. When did the daily shower become de rigueur? What effect has air conditioning had on the siesta at one time an integral part of Mediterranean life and culture? This book interrogates the meaning and supposed normality of these practices and draws disturbing conclusions. There is clear evidence supporting the view that routine consumption is controlled by conceptions of normality and profoundly shaped by cultural and economic forces. Shove maintains that habits are not just changing, but are changing in ways that imply escalating and standardizing patterns of consumption. This shrewd and engrossing analysis shows just how far the social meanings and practices of comfort, cleanliness and convenience have eluded us.

Women and Human Development.

Abstract: Women and Human Development. Martha C. Nussbaum. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 303 pp.