Picking up the slack: Faith-based organizations, informal support networks and energy insecurity, poverty, and vulnerability in the southeastern United States

Abstract

Research on energy insecurity has boomed. However, energy assistance, an essential piece of the energy insecurity puzzle, is neglected in existing literature. Furthermore, extant literature focuses mostly on official sources of assistance funded through federal programs. In this paper, we contend that current research paints a limited picture of the landscape of assistance. Based on qualitative interviews with assistance providers and households in five energy vulnerable communities in South Carolina and Tennessee, we present a more complete panorama of the places people turn to for help. We find that while federal programs serve a small number of those in need, many people turn to informal networks such as family, churches, and faith-based organizations as primary sources of assistance. We analyze this reliance on informal networks and faith-based organizations as part and parcel of the dismantling of the welfare state and downshifting of responsibility in the context of neoliberalization. These findings advance debates in energy vulnerability literature in two ways. First, we argue that this more comprehensive understanding of where people turn for help opens the door to a political critique of growing energy vulnerability as a symptom of neoliberal social policy and the erosion of social reproduction. Second, we argue that current scholarly approaches which rely on quantitative modeling to describe the landscape of energy vulnerability are usefully complemented by a broader range of methodological and theoretical approaches. We need rich, qualitative data to move beyond description and towards more critical, and political understanding and advocacy.