Social movements are arising in unexpected places, producing effects not normally associated with our traditional understandings of either politics or movements. No longer, and perhaps never, solely the highly visible, modernist expressions of resistance to the state, movements are not only enacting politics through protest and cultural contestation, but are generating diverse knowledges. From heated debates over the meaning of Italy's alter-globalization movement; to careful direct-action strategizing in Chicago's cooperative bookstores; to conferences on Native American environmental justice issues, contemporary movements are important sites of knowledge creation, reformulation and diffusion. We call these "knowledge-practices." Building on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of social movements, we argue that when we recognize movements as processes through which knowledge is generated, modified and mobilized, we gain important insights into the politics of contemporary movements. This recognition also has important methodological implications. It requires that we shift the mode of engagement in our research, blurring established social scientific boundaries and promoting a more relational-symmetrical approach.
This article offers a political-ecological reflection on Navajo (Diné) sovereignty, emphasizing lived and territorial interpretations of sovereignty, expanding our standard, juridical-legal notions of sovereignty that dominate public discourse on tribal economic and energy development. Operating from a critical analysis of settler colonialism, I suggest that alternative understandings of sovereignty -as expressed by Diné tribal members in a range of expressive practices -open new possibilities for thinking about how sovereign futures might be literally constructed through specific energy infrastructures. The article follows the controversy surrounding a proposed coal fired power plant known as Desert Rock, placing the phantom project in a longer, enduring history of struggle over energy extraction on Navajo land in order to illuminate this contested future. Broadly, these re-significations of sovereignty point toward a distinct modality of environmental action that suggests other kinds of relationships are at stake, challenging assumptions made by adversaries and allies alike that the politics of protesting (in this case) coal technologies is a practice with self-evident ethics. To intervene in these broad debates, I propose that there are multiple landscapes of power shaping Navajo territory, which must be brought into the ongoing, urgent debates over how the Navajo Nation might develop a more sustainable energy policy for the future. . Powell's research examines the cultural politics of energy development in Native Nations and supports social movements working on building sustainable infrastructure on indigenous territories and elsewhere.The rainbow is our sovereignty ResumenEste artículo ofrece una reflexión político-ecológica sobre la soberanía Navajo (Diné), enfatizando interpretaciones vividas y territoriales de la soberanía, expandiendo de tal modo nuestras nociones estándar jurídico-legales de soberanía que dominan el discurso público sobre la economía tribal y el desarrollo energético. Operando desde un análisis crítico del colonialismo del asentamiento, sugiero que entendimiento alternativos de soberanía -expresado por miembros de la tribu Diné en determinadas prácticas expresivasabren nuevas posibilidades para pensar sobre cómo futuras soberanías pueden construirse literalmente a través de infraestructuras energéticas específicas. El artículo sigue la controversia aparecida en torno a la propuesta de una central eléctrica a carbón llamada "Desert rock", situando este proyecto fantasma dentro de una larga y duradera lucha en torno a la extracción de energía en tierras del pueble Navajo con la finalidad de iluminar su controvertido futuro. En su sentido amplio, estas resignificaciones de la soberanía apuntan hacia una modalidad diferente de acción medioambiental que sugiere que hay también otras relaciones en juego, confrontando las asunciones hechas tanto por adversarios como por aliados de que la política de protesta de (en este caso) las tecnologías del carbón es una práctica con ética auto-evidente. ...
Dana E. Powell argues that the Indigenous Environmental Justice Movement in North America is resignifying ‘development’ through emerging discourses and practices of ‘environmental justice’. She focuses on the emergence of wind and solar energy technologies in the movement as technologies of existence, challenging a history of biopolitical regimes of natural resource development of indigenous lands and bodies while also proposing an alternative approach to cultivating healthy economies, ecologies, and cultures. Development (2006) 49, 125–132. doi:10.1057/palgrave.development.1100287
Surely, scholarship means engaging in original research. But the work of the scholar also means stepping back from one's own investigation, looking for connections, building bridges between theory and practice, and communicating one's knowledge effectively. (Boyer 1990, 16) Ernest Boyer, an oft-cited early proponent of "engaged scholarship," called for a set of transformations to lower the walls between academic departments and disintegrate the insular behaviors between disciplines. To open up new space for redefi ning the full scope of academic work, Boyer explored interactions among fi ve dimensions of scholarship: discovery, teaching, application, integration, and engagement. The fi nal dimension, engagement, emphasizes how scholars might relate differently to their teaching, discovery, application, and integration activities by collaborating with people and organizations beyond campus and ultimately directing their work toward larger, more complex, and more humane ends (Boyer 1996). Despite Boyer's catalytic defi nition, "engaged scholarship" is not fi xed in its meaning. Rather it is an ongoing negotiation, being produced in different places through a range of university-based and community-based practices and the dialogues between the two. Meanings
In Landscapes of Power Dana E. Powell examines the rise and fall of the controversial Desert Rock Power Plant initiative in New Mexico to trace the political conflicts surrounding Native sovereignty and contemporary energy development on Navajo (Diné) Nation land. Powell's historical and ethnographic account shows how the coal-fired power plant project's defeat provided the basis for redefining the legacies of colonialism, mineral extraction, and environmentalism. Examining the labor of activists, artists, politicians, elders, technicians, and others, Powell emphasizes the generative potential of Navajo resistance to articulate a vision of autonomy in the face of twenty-first-century colonial conditions. Ultimately, Powell situates local Navajo struggles over energy technology and infrastructure within broader sociocultural life, debates over global climate change, and tribal, federal, and global politics of extraction.
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