Energy Images: Aesthetics of Resemblance and Form explores how visual representations of future oil and gas resources shape energy policy, investment decisions, and public understanding.
Drawing on ethnographic research and visual analysis, the book shows how planners and corporations rely on abstract maps, models, and data visualizations to manage uncertainty and project authority, turning speculative futures into seemingly reliable objects of governance. The book extends the author's previous investigation into how expertise, perception, and power operate across contemporary energy systems and introduces two aesthetic regimes - resemblance and form. Resemblance organizes perception through proximity and surface similarity, grounding energy in embodied experience and causal links between production and consumption. Form, by contrast, operates through distance and abstraction, transforming infrastructures into patterns, diagrams, and branded images that invite interpretation rather than recognition. Together, these insights reveal how aesthetics function as a central force in energy politics.
This book will appeal to scholars in energy studies, anthropology, governance, and environmental humanities.
Dr. Arthur Mason's Routledge trilogy Inside the Energy Salon (2024-2026) explores how expert performance and curated interactions shape global energy governance. The trilogy develops an "anthropology of surfaces" arguing that the visual and social staging of expertise - rather than data alone - is what makes energy futures appear investable and morally persuasive to political and industry elites. It features the following books:
Energy Capitol: The Waning of Regulatory Form (2024)
Consulting Energy: From Judgment to Decision-Making (2025)
Energy Images: Aesthetics of Resemblance and Form (2026)
| ISBN: | 9781041029151 |
| Publication date: | 25th June 2026 |
| Author: | Arthur Mason |
| Publisher: | Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 250 pages |
| Series: | Routledge Explorations in Energy Studies |
| Genres: |
Alternative and renewable energy sources and technology Energy Social and political philosophy Environmentalist thought and ideology Environmental policy and protocols Environmental management Energy industries and utilities Politics and government Civil engineering, surveying and building |
Energy Images: Aesthetics of Resemblance and Form explores how visual representations of future oil and gas resources shape energy policy, investment decisions, and public understanding.
Drawing on ethnographic research and visual analysis, the book shows how planners and corporations rely on abstract maps, models, and data visualizations to manage uncertainty and project authority, turning speculative futures into seemingly reliable objects of governance. The book extends the author's previous investigation into how expertise, perception, and power operate across contemporary energy systems and introduces two aesthetic regimes - resemblance and form. Resemblance organizes perception through proximity and surface similarity, grounding energy in embodied experience and causal links between production and consumption. Form, by contrast, operates through distance and abstraction, transforming infrastructures into patterns, diagrams, and branded images that invite interpretation rather than recognition. Together, these insights reveal how aesthetics function as a central force in energy politics.
This book will appeal to scholars in energy studies, anthropology, governance, and environmental humanities.
Dr. Arthur Mason's Routledge trilogy Inside the Energy Salon (2024-2026) explores how expert performance and curated interactions shape global energy governance. The trilogy develops an "anthropology of surfaces" arguing that the visual and social staging of expertise - rather than data alone - is what makes energy futures appear investable and morally persuasive to political and industry elites. It features the following books:
Energy Capitol: The Waning of Regulatory Form (2024)
Consulting Energy: From Judgment to Decision-Making (2025)
Energy Images: Aesthetics of Resemblance and Form (2026)
Energy Images features in the following genres: Alternative and renewable energy sources and technology, Energy, Social and political philosophy, Environmentalist thought and ideology, Environmental policy and protocols, Environmental management, Energy industries and utilities, Politics and government, Civil engineering, surveying and building
Energy Images is available in Hardback
Energy Images was written by Arthur Mason and published by Routledge an imprint of Taylor & Francis
Energy Images has 250 pages
Yes it is part of Routledge Explorations in Energy Studies series
£139.50