Interrogating Power: Engaged Energy Anthropology

Abstract

Human-induced global threats are compelling many anthropologists to rethink roles, methods, and paradigms and engage in public debate and action on energy policies, extraction processes, commodity chains, and consumption. Laura Nader's Energy Reader embodies her decades-long engagement as a catalyst for public debate on US energy issues. Tanja Winther's Impact of Electricity exemplifies ethnography informing development practice. Strauss and colleagues' Cultures of Energy reflects diverse approaches seeking to build cultural understandings to inform energy choices. There remains a need for collaboration with anthropologists embedded in energy-related agencies-positioned where they can leverage anthropological knowledge to push policy envelopes.

Unprecedented Times: Understanding Actors’ Narratives for Sustainable Energy Transitions

“…With the energy transition taking place, the decisions experts are making on a daily basis become routinized practices, according to the experts´ preferences and world views, consequently becoming normative on the systems they affect (Mendoza et al, 2012). Paradoxically, the energy transition requires reimagining social structures, systems of beliefs, roles and cultures of energy (Clarke, 2015;Valtonen et al, 2020), here, the concept of habitus as described by Pierre Bourdieu (2018) allows us to account for people's present actions and practices, and their resulting regularities as a product of their past.…”

“…When talking about the relation between posthumanism and post-anthropocentrism, Rosi Braidotti (2013) argues that "the post-anthropocentric turn, linked to the compounded impacts of globalisation and technology-driven forms of mediation, strikes the human at his/her heart and shifts the parameters that used to define anthropos" (Braidotti, 2013 p. 5) Recalling that reimagining social structures, systems of beliefs, roles and cultures of energy are necessary for addressing the climate change problem (Clarke, 2015;Valtonen et al, 2020), it becomes evident at this point that insights from posthumanism, developed by scholars like Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad and Bruno…”

“…Thus, it is required that energy experts adopt reflective attitudes since decarbonizing energy systems toward just energy systems requires reimagining social structures (Clarke, 2015). Furthermore, energy experts need to embrace that we are responsible for the world we live in (Barad, 2007).…”