Cultures of Energy

Thomas Love, Sarah Strauss, Stephanie Rupp

"This bracing collection returns anthropology to the topic of energy. Uniting theory with contemporary problems, and both with conversations among anthropologists, local folk and developers, the volume shows how energy sustains our lives and how we hoard, sell and share it. Energy is anthropology's lodestone for it brings together the discipline's special perspectives from ecology to health, from the occult to the commons, and from power to culture. To have a livable and sustainable earth, the subject of energy requires anthropology's touch just as for every reader there are touchstones in this collection."--Steve Gudeman, University of Minnesota "This remarkable collection achieves two important goals. The first is to place the central challenges of energy and environment in a globalizing world in a truly cultural perspective, one which takes account of issues of meaning, value, diversity and agency. The second is to allow its authors to engage in debate and dialogue within the book itself, thus presenting ethnography as dialogue on a topic of vital public interest. These dual accomplishments will make the book valuable for scholars in anthropology, geography, environmental studies and social policy and to students seeking a clear and accessible introduction to key debates on the social life of energy."--Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University "One of the most important anthropology books published this century, Cultures of Energy is a guide to all the hot-topic issues which the next generation of researchers (and citizens) will face. This volume signals the emergence of a mature anthropology of energy; comprehensive, ambitious and deeply engaged. The authors demonstrate the adaptive magic of an old discipline, moving back and forth between the concrete and abstract, the tangible resistance of chemistry and physics, and the complexity of culturally defined needs and comforts. This is the only book that gives a comprehensive view of the range and depth of a flourishing field of research. The authors guide us from the most abstract questions about the nature of energy itself, to the pragmatics of markets and regulation. Along the way they give us the intellectual tools to address a troubling future where energy will no longer be cheap and abundant." --Richard Wilk, Provost Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University

• 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