- Convenors:
-
Mariana Riquito
(University of Amsterdam)
Michelle Geraerts (University of Amsterdam, Worlds of Lithium ERC)
Eleonora Gea Piccardi (Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra)
Zane Datava (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Roundtable
Short Abstract
This roundtable explores the colonial dynamics embedded in Europe's green transition, inviting feminist and decolonial approaches that reimagine energy, mobility, and transformations, beyond extractivism and displacement.
Long Abstract
As attachments to fossil modernity loosen, the dominant re-attachment has become green growth - a discursive chain translating sustainability into decarbonization and decarbonization into capital-driven renewable expansion (Szeman & Boyer 2017). Across Europe, lithium mining projects, hydrogen corridors, solar power plants, electric car adoption, and other “green” energy projects promise cleaner futures while extending extractive frontiers and reproducing colonial logics (Bridge 2013; Dunlap 2020; Riofrancos 2020; Bonelli & Dorador 2021).
This roundtable gathers anthropologists, artists, and activists engaged in ecofeminist and decolonial ethnographies of green energy to interrogate how such projects transform local worlds, livelihoods, and relations of care. Grounded in field or militant work from Europe’s extractive peripheries as well as central places of hyperconsumption, participants examine how “green” energy projects reproduce hierarchies imbued in colonial logics, while reconfiguring local worlds of care, kinship, and survival. Through stories, images, and situated reflections, we explore how different communities - rural, scientific, activist and beyond - are navigating, contesting, and reimagining these extractive futures.
Following Mario Blaser’s (2025) notion of displacement - the colonial movement of worlds that renders some relations possible while erasing others - we consider how energy infrastructures not only circulate power and materials but also reorder futures, attachments, and worlds. Inspired by Ursula Le Guin’s "Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction" (1986), we approach ethnography as a vessel for gathering and sustaining relations rather than a tool of mastery. We ask: What forms of life and relation do "green" energy projects make and unmake? How can feminist and decolonial ethnographies open space for imagining energy and mobility otherwise - grounded not in extraction, but in reciprocity, repair, and shared vulnerability? How can ecofeminism and decolonial thought help us to go beyond the "green infernal alternative" (Stengers and Pignarre 2005), daring to dream and act beyond the "low-carbon" future?