On being an "oil and gas worker": dominant discourse, self-representation, and Canada's energy future

Political wrangling over the future of oil and gas in the context of climate change dominates national debates about Canada's energy future. These debates frequently rhetorically center around the needs and desires of oil and gas workers. Who, though, do politicians and pundits imagine these workers to be, and how do these imaginations measure up against how these workers imagine themselves and their futures? I answer these questions using the sociology of knowledge approach to discourse analysis to examine media and political debates as well as interviews with oil and gas workers. I find that oil and gas workers' self-representation is considerably more versatile and adaptable to different energy pathways than media and politicians' representations of them. I use this finding to argue for disaggregating workers' agency from the dominant stories told about them. Doing so has the potential to open new pathways for energy transition.