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- Convenors:
-
Pauline Destree
(Durham University)
Mette High (University of St Andrews)
Sean Field (University of St Andrews)
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- Stream:
- Who Speaks and for Whom?
- Sessions:
- Friday 2 April, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Who speaks for energy? This panel explores how responsibility and authority frame the social worlds of energy production, consumption, distribution and disposal; and, the role of anthropologists in researching and representing the people, communities, and non-humans connected by energy.
Long Abstract:
Energy is a necessity of life. How energy is harvested from the environment, however, and the repercussions of energy consumption, are of growing public concern and a central contributor to anthropogenic climate change. In a global yet highly unequal energy economy, questions of responsibility and authority are crucial to understanding the entangled social and material complexities of our energy present(s) and futures. This panel explores the ethical tensions and power dynamics vested in the social worlds of energy production, consumption, distribution and disposal. We ask: How are responsibility and authority crafted, accepted and challenged by those who speak for energy? And, in turn, by the people, communities, and non-humans that are dependent on and adversely affected by human energy practices? How do non-humans figure in energy dilemmas? Can, and should they be represented in the anthropology of energy, and by whom? How do we reconcile analysis of the energy sector’s provision of global energy needs and contribution to climate change with the voices, stories, beliefs, ethical sensibilities, lives and livelihoods of people who work in the fossil fuel, nuclear and renewable energy industries? Do anthropologists have a responsibility to avoid favouring or opposing some energy sources and voices over others? How do we, as anthropologists, navigate the ethical tensions of working with conflicting voices and demands for representation in a highly contentious field? This panel welcomes papers that reflect on the ethical challenges, tensions, and opportunities associated with ethnographically researching energy from field sites around the world.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 2 April, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research in Tanzania, we ask: under what conditions are labor, technology, and the fuels of everyday life recognized as constituting a field of “energy”? We argue that gender figures prominently in the construction and resolution of energy dilemmas.
Paper long abstract:
“At the district-level, when people talk of energy, they only consider electricity. They do not talk about solar, water pumps, cooking – all the things that shape women’s lives.” This 2019 insight from an NGO advocate in Dar es Salaam reflects a broader issue in energy policy, planning, and scholarship: that although domestic energy consumption constitutes up to 80 percent of total energy use in developing countries (Parikh 2000), the fuels that power the majority of homes in these contexts are largely left out of energy theories, policies, and plans. Drawing on insights from ethnographic research on gender, renewable energy, and infrastructure in Tanzania, this paper explores how gender figures in the construction and resolution of energy dilemmas in the anthropocene. Following Engestrom (1990) and Star and Ruehleder (1996)--who respectively asked, “When is a tool?” and “When is infrastructure?”--we ask in this paper, “When is energy?” That is, under what conditions are labor, technology, and the fuels of everyday life recognized and legitimized as constituting a field of “energy,” and thus worthy of observation, study, and intervention? Moreover, “who is energy?”; that is, what ideas and practices gender the spaces of the home, industry, and governance in Tanzania, and decide whose potentiality shall be enhanced through energy projects and which types of energy will accomplish this? We suggest that anthropological scholarship on energy and infrastructure has itself been gendered in its predominant focus on the official and commercial spaces of infrastructure rather than the productive domestic spaces of households.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the social impacts and changes experienced by community members due to fracking operations in New Zealand. Through their stories, I report the feelings of uncertainty and confusion often associated with fracking, and discuss the future of energy in the region.
Paper long abstract:
Since 1989, Taranaki (New Zealand) has been home to a series of oil and gas explorations. Here international and national petrochemical companies have carried approximately 100 fracking activities in more than 39 different wells. These companies have established their presence, built their wells near houses and schools, shared the land with dairy farms and their cattle. Fracking has been seen as a controversial practice and community members and local activist groups have questioned its safety and the roles the local institutions play in protecting their health and environment. On the other hand, companies operating in the region have defended its use and the procedures applied to reduce impacts and risks to communities. Little to no ethnographic research has been conducted to understand the risks associated with this practice and the social and environmental impacts involved with it. Through my doctoral project, I have documented the voices and the changes people have been facing with this practice, by hearing from both sides of the story. Looking at the relationship between hydraulic fracturing and different members of communities closely depending on or linked to it can be of help to opening meaningful discussion on possible future scenarios and discuss potential social tensions caused by changes in a region dependent on oil and gas extraction, where recent government decisions are pushing toward a full transition to cleaner forms of energy away from fossil fuels.
Paper short abstract:
We often think about the shale gas controversy as a field marked by profound disagreement between those who oppose and those who support fracking. However, what if the conflicting sides of the controversy are affected by it in similar ways? Why do similar local experiences create more division?
Paper long abstract:
Fracking can have a profound impact on those living and working in the vicinity of shale gas developments. Yet, we rarely gain a grounded understanding of how fracking affects those who are supportive and critical of the industry as well as all those in between. Hence, we cannot appreciate the complex, iterative and localised dynamics between people’s views on fracking and the reality of living near to a shale gas pad. And even more importantly, we overlook the similarity of anti- and pro-fracking residents’ lived experiences and the ways in which they respond to the uncertain and contradictory logics of extractive development.Drawing on five years of ethnographic research and around 100 interviews across three locations in the UK, I explore the glaring similarities in how local residents, protesters, business owners, police officers and farmers, with varying opinions about fracking, experience natural gas development. I also analyse the seemingly paradoxical relation between the commonality of their experiences and their often-antagonistic relationships. I also ask how the dynamics of this social controversy and its entrenchment of conflicting views about fracking influences the relation between popular and corporate power. It is usually considered good practice in academic writing to “give voice” to the conflicting sides of a social controversy. I open this approach to critical scrutiny by highlighting how it can also facilitate corporate ways of seeing fracking communities as arenas of differing opinions, rather than as human-created environments with real impacts.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines how oil and gas industry participants in Colorado reflect on the energy mix of the future. Exploring mocking dismissals of renewables, I show how the industry’s history and epistemes inform energy imaginaries and hinder the oil and gas industry’s own potential for creativity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will examine how oil and gas industry participants in Colorado reflect on the potential energy mix of the future. As producers of energy that is considered to be cheap, abundant, dense and reliable, they position themselves as responsible for what can be achieved through decades of concerted scientific experimentation and innovation. For them, petromodernity is a techno-scientific wonder that crystalizes the successful conjoining of wildcatter risk taking, geoscientific knowledge and engineering endeavor. As an evolving industry that brings to market a product on which we have come to depend, these industry participants regard oil and gas as resources that are destined to enjoy great longevity. However, other forms of energy production, especially from renewable sources, now increasingly appeal to politicians, publics and investors. As climate change concerns mount and energy transitions become a reality, many oil and gas industry participants dismiss and reject renewable energy imaginaries. They mock and ridicule these energy sources, scorning them for being irresponsible and ‘factually impossible’. While oil and gas industry participants see their own industry as a responsible harbinger of innovation, they thus deem other industries completely void of such potential. Exploring these mocking dismissals, I will show how crude’s excesses that seep from the industry’s history and epistemes inform energy imaginaries and hinder the oil and gas industry’s own potential for innovation.