Consulting Energy by Arthur Mason

Consulting Energy by Arthur Mason

Consulting Energy: From Judgment to Decision-Making examines a shift in the terrain of energy politics that has given rise to consultant experts as new types of intermediaries capable of orienting crucial decision-making, influencing energy politics, steering governance, and envisioning energy futures.

Drawing on fieldwork at executive roundtables in global cities across North America and Europe, the book examines the development and consolidation of consultant expertise, as well as the opulent settings in which it is distributed. By exploring the role of aesthetics and judgment in market-oriented decision-making, the book explores elites, expertise, and ethics by highlighting the relationship between credibility and luxury. The book also considers the enrolment of the expert in a kind of virtue ethics, whereby adherence to neoclassical economic principles is taken to be a character trait worthy of emulation. By adopting this analytic, this book sheds light on the confidence that clients place in experts by drawing out the relationship between depersonalized, quantitative approaches to energy markets and the virtue of the persons who propose them. In turn, the book discusses the implications of relying upon consultant experts to determine, envision, and govern energy futures.

This book will be useful for academics, researchers, and students interested in energy studies, energy and environmental politics and policy, energy and environmental governance, anthropology, and political science.

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)

Arthur Mason is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Social Anthropology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. He also holds positions as Senior Visiting Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK, and Research Affiliate at the Centre for Energy Ethics at the University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland.