Paper short abstract:

Using the case of peat extraction in 19th and 20th century Russia, this paper explores the benefits of integrating labour, environmental and energy history to write more-than-human histories of the fossil fuel age.

Paper long abstract:

Using the case of peat extraction in 19th and 20th century central Russia, this paper proposes to position our histories of the fossil fuel age more explicitly at the intersection of labour, environmental and energy history. Following peat workers on their way to and through their everyday at work, it demonstrates the benefits of taking labour and matter seriously as we try to understand the becoming and functioning of fossil economies and their situatedness in a world that is always more-than-human. The peat fuel which allowed power stations to operate and machines to run was a product of the complex and unpredictable relationships which humans formed with central Russian peatlands and the ways in which social inequality and power allowed for the appropriation of cheap rural labour which sustained peat extraction well into the post-WWII period. If we want to think about the fossil fuel age in more-than-human terms, we may gain a lot from directing our gaze “down to earth” to write the histories of places, people and fuels at its often overlooked margins.