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- Convenors:
-
Petr Skalník
Marcin Brocki (Jagiellonian University)
- Stream:
- Living landscapes: Anthropocene/Paysages vivants: Anthropocène
- Location:
- MNT 202
- Start time:
- 5 May, 2017 at
Time zone: America/New_York
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
Industrial projects do not respect local people and international agreements, companies and states collude in landgrabs, comparative world-wide analysis of these cases is badly needed
Long Abstract:
While some countries chose to phase out nuclear energy generation and the European Union crusades against coal power stations, some countries such as Poland and Turkey (as well as China) build new coal stations. Countries such as Germany and Austria, which publicly adhere to renewable energy sources, do not however mind to import power generated by both coal and nuclear stations located in neighbouring countries. For example, while Poland refers to its carbon-based economy as an aspect of geopolitical independence and social peace among its influential miners, Austria builds a major coal station in Turkey against the will of local inhabitants. Joint EU energy policy is not respected in practice and nationalist and/or hypocritical individual member state policies win. While the panel will show on ethnographically documented cases the pitfalls of European integration, cases from outside of Europe will be included as well because they graphically illustrate hazards of late industrialism whether it concerns coal or mineral extraction that involve catastrophes, environmental devastation, landgrabs, massive corruption and open violence including local wars such as those in Papua New Guinea or Burma/Myanmar. Collusion of states with companies and political parties face resistence by civil society.
Keywords: ethnography of social tensions, political anthropology, carbon-based economy, mineral neoliberalism, environmental devastation, landgrabs, local wars
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper will investigate how energy corporations use cultural policy to craft the fabric of the state through their corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on seven years of ethnographic research and participation in dozens of communitybased projects, this paper will explore the sociopolitical nature of cultural heritage protection in post-Soviet Russia. By deconstructing the historically imbued epistemologies and new power relations structuring the politics of the past in Putin's Russia, an updated understanding of heritage governance in a context defined by multinational corporations and multilateral organizations will be furthered. Heritage practice will be explored as a neoliberal statecraft tool, a cultural technology of rule strategically marshaled by both conventional and nonconventional heritage producers to shape the institutional landscapes and cultural imaginations defining the state. The central case study in this paper will trace the impact of the strategic funding of cultural initiatives by the multinational Gazprom in the Altai Republic (subject of the Russian Federation). Through funding archaeological museums and forcing Russian archaeologists to repatriate indigenous remains back to the Altai Republic, Gazprom has not only become part of the fabric of the Altaian sociopolitical field, it has also acquired a 'license to operate' from indigenous groups and bureaucrats to construct a strategic pipeline to China. Our assessment will not be limited to studying the impact of energy corporations. As the region became of interest to Gazprom, a suite of NGO's, multilateral heritage organizations (i.e. UNESCO) and (international) cultural resource institutions entered the cultural policy field. Consequently, this paper will also study how this broader 'resource complex' drastically reformulated local regimes of truth and institutional structures.
Paper short abstract:
The problem of the political and social contexts of instable relations between local community and power plant development will be discussed. The protests against development and then the battle for sustaining the industry within the community borders will be explained.
Paper long abstract:
The paper will be dedicated to the problem of the political and social contexts of instable relations between local community and the particular industry development. The shift from the protests against development to the acceptance and the battle for sustaining power plant within the community borders will be displayed on the background of the political, spcial and ethnic relations. The process of negotiating the placement and then development of the huge industry was far from being democratic and brought some tentions in the local community on many levels of the communal life, but as the industry grown into locality political struggle over allocation of the income from the power plant became a new arena of social drama.