Presentation short abstract

Solar projects in Rajasthan promise green transitions but often trigger ecological harm and social injustice. Drawing on political ecology and agrarian studies, this paper analyzes rural resistance strategies and power dynamics shaping land, livelihoods, and governance in contested energy futures.

Presentation long abstract

While large, technologically oriented environmental “fixes” centered on net-zero ambitions and renewable energy targets dominate sustainability transition imaginaries, such endeavors have resulted in growing levels of opposition. Those resisting renewable energy projects contend that, on the ground, these “fixes” too often produce ecologically destructive and socially regressive energy futures. Drawing from political ecology and agrarian studies, we develop, apply, and discuss an analytical understanding of what we term the “repertoire of rural resistance”—a diverse set of practices, sites and strategies that figure prominently in political protests and mobilization efforts focused on defending landscapes, livelihoods, and identity. Based on seven person-months of fieldwork in Rajasthan and New Delhi, we analyze resistance to industrial-scale solar energy projects in the state of Rajasthan, then discuss insights using the social regulation concepts of institutional change and accountability change. The first addresses shifts in norms and values that regulate legitimacy; the second explores how sanctions and incentives align actors’ behaviors in relation to justice, law, security, ecology and other ideals. Together, these concepts enable us to theorize what the myriad forms of resistance to large solar energy projects, and state and corporate responses to them, reveal about power relations and socioecological dynamics in the context of competing claims on land. This place-based empirical research illuminates dynamics of energy transitions, agrarian struggle, and resource governance at the nexus of climate change and contemporary capitalism.