Cultures of Energy

This path-breaking volume explores cultures of energy, the underlying but under-appreciated dimensions of both crisis and innovation in resource use around the globe. Theoretical chapters situate pressing energy issues in larger conceptual frames, and ethnographic case studies reveal energy as it is imagined, used, and contested in a variety of cultural contexts. Contributors address issues including the connection between resource flows and social relationships in energy systems; cultural transformation and notions of progress and collapse; the blurring of technology and magic; social tensions that accompany energy contraction; and sociocultural changes required in affluent societies to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Each of five thematic sections concludes with an integrative and provocative conversation among the authors. The volume is an ideal tool for teaching unique, contemporary, and comparative perspectives on social theories of science and technology in undergraduate and graduate courses.

Autorentext

Thomas Love, Sarah Strauss, Stephanie Rupp

Inhalt

Powerlines: Cultures of Energy in the Twenty-first Century; 1: Theorizing Energy and Culture; 1: The Fossil Interlude: Euro-American Power and the Return of the Physiocrats; 2: Energy Consumption as Cultural Practice: Implications for the Theory and Policy of Sustainable Energy Use; 1: Theorizing Energy and Culture; 2: Culture and Energy: Technology, Meaning, Cosmology; 3: Considering Energy: E = mc 2 = (magic·culture) 2; 4: Multinatural Resources: Ontologies of Energy and the Politics of Inevitability in Alaska; 5: Siting, Scale, and Social Capital: Wind Energy Development in Wyoming; 6: Cartel Consciousness and Horizontal Integration in Energy Industry; 2: Technology, Meaning, Cosmology; 3: Electrification and Transformation; 7: Electrifying Transitions: Power and Culture in Rural Cajamarca, Peru; 8: Space, Time, and Sociomaterial Relationships: Moral Aspects of the Arrival of Electricity in Rural Zanzibar; 9: Emergency Power: Time, Ethics, and Electricity in Postsocialist Tanzania; 3: Electrification and Transformation; 4: Energy Contested: Culture and Power; 10: Eco-risk and the Case of Fracking; 11: Specters of Syndromes and the Everyday Lives of Wyoming Energy Workers; 12: Energy Affects: Proximity and Distance in the Production of Expert Knowledge About Biofuel Sustainability; 13: Local Power: Harnessing nimbyism for Sustainable Suburban Energy Production; 4: Energy Contested: Culture and Power; 1: Energy Contested: Borders and Boundaries; 14: Oil's Magic: Contestation and Materiality; 15: Energy Politics on the "Other" U.S.-Mexico Border; 16: Beyond the Horizon: Oil and Gas Along the Gulf of Mexico; 1: Energy Contested: Borders and Boundaries; 1: Maximizing Anthropology