The map is not the territory: A sympathetic critique of energy research's spatial turn

Energy research in the social sciences has embarked on a 'spatial adventure' (Castan Broto and Baker, 2017). Those setting out on this journey have started from different disciplinary and theoretical locations, yet a map of sorts has begun to emerge. Made up of epistemological positions, conceptual vantage points and lines of enquiry, this map demarcates and structures the growing field of energy geography providing a more-or-less agreed guide to the territory. In the paper's first half I reflect on the scope and significance of the spatial turn in energy research. I describe the map now guiding much spatial research on energy, identifying core ideas around which spatially-sensitive social science energy research has come to cohere, notwithstanding its heterogeneity and internal diversity. I offer a supportive reading. In the second half, I offer a more critical reading of the adventure so far, arguing that it is unnecessarily limited in its reading of space. The full potential of a spatial perspective for social science research on energy has yet to be realised. I outline three pathways for realising some of this potential - geographies of knowledge production, differentiation and disassembly - and show how each takes energy research's spatial adventure in new directions.