Energy and Rhythm : Rhythmanalysis for a Low Carbon Future

Rhythms permeate our everyday lives: they animate our bodies, and structure our experience of day and night and the seasons, time patterns of work and leisure, and the temporal organisation of mundane routine activities. Rhythms are also intrinsically about flows of energy – heat, light, motion – that run through the world, from the smallest movements of muscles, to the petrol fuelled patterns of the rush hour, the spinning of wind turbines and shifting cycles of solar radiation. Energy and Rhythm in Society sets out to energise the rhythm in Lefebvre’s ‘Rhythmanalysis’ in order to develop a novel and far reaching polyrhythmic theorisation and exemplification of our collective living with energy in its many natural and technological forms and flows. Through so doing, it also provides a distinctive understanding of the urgent challenges and possibilities of transforming future energy systems and energy uses into more just and lower carbon configurations.