Theorising resistance in times of fossil fuels: Ecological grief, righteous anger and interaction rituals in Sweden's energy regime shift

The emerging shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy engages a broad spectrum of society. Through protests, social media campaigns and civil unrest, different groups seek to impact the speed, direction and distributional effects of this transformation. In this paper, we develop a conceptualisation of how such resistance is socially mobilised. We ask how people come to resort to open resistance in the context of energy regime dynamics. The growing literature on the topic highlights that declining material and social capital are not enough to understand resistance in times of fossil fuels. We suggest in this study that attention to a wider spectrum of emotions is crucial for understanding the political and ethical contestations through which changes in energy provision materialize. We draw upon sociological theory, in particular the notion of interaction rituals, to understand the social and affective process of resistance. The concept of interaction rituals captures the movement from feeling aggrieved to mobilisation of resistance through attention to the sharing and transformation of emotions. We apply our theorisation in two Swedish examples of contemporary resistance – the Forest Rebellion and the Petrol Protest – to illustrate the grievances that underpin these movements, and how interaction rituals mobilise and justify resistance. We end the paper with a discussion and comparison of the two examples, and the implications of our findings for (academic) knowledge about the role of resistance in relation to energy regimes.