Introduction: The ethical constitution of energy dilemmas

Abstract

Growing anthropological research on energy provides critical explorations into the cross‐cultural ways in which people perceive and use this fundamental resource. We argue that two dominant frameworks animate that literature: a critique of corporate and state power, and advocacy for energy transitions to less carbon‐intensive futures. These frameworks have narrowed the ethical questions and perspectives that the discipline has considered in relation to energy. This is because they are animated by judgements that can implicitly shape research agendas or sometimes result in strong accusations that obscure how our interlocutors themselves may consider the rightness and wrongness of energy resources and the societal infrastructures of which they form a part. We propose a more capacious approach to studying energy ethics that opens up energy dilemmas to ethnographic inquiry. As such, we show how energy dilemmas constitute important sites for the generation of anthropological knowledge, encouraging more insightful and inclusive discussions of the place of energy in human and more‐than‐human lives.

The Case for Letting Anthropology Burn: Sociocultural Anthropology in 2019

“…The subjunctive politics of the Anthropocene are articulated in a conditional register that “limits a vast field of potential futures to an actionable set of comparable alternatives” (11). This subjunctive mood surfaces in other sites of “energy dilemmas” posed by the carbon‐fueled climate devastation (High and Smith 2019): the disenchantment of Wyoming coal miners who regard consumers of coal‐fired electricity as recipients of an unreciprocated “gift of energy” (Smith 2019), the promotion of off‐grid solar developments in South Asia and sub‐Saharan Africa by “energy philanthropists” as a means of creating new consumer markets for renewable energy technologies (Cross 2019), renewable hydropower as a basis for the consolidation of state power by technocratic elites in Paraguay and Brazil (Folch 2019), and the construction of Masdar City, a zero‐carbon district of Abu Dhabi, as an experimental grounds for “technical adjustments” to reconcile a carbon‐neutral future with sustained corporate growth and the expansion of consumerist livelihoods (Günel 2019).…”

When disinformation makes sense: Contextualizing the war on coal in Appalachian Kentucky

“…A recent energy‐focused special issue of the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute critiques what the contributors consider to be two prevailing trends within energy‐focused ethnography: the emphasis on state and corporate power and the call for energy transitions (High and Smith 2019). Research within the special issue challenges the “moral binaries” (Appel 2019, 178) that judge fossil fuels to be inherently wrong (High and Smith 2019; Smith 2019) and renewable energy to be intrinsically moral or ethical (Cross 2019; Howe 2019). The authors suggest that these “judgmental” stances limit the scope of energy anthropology, missing the complex ethical worlds at every scale of energy contexts (High and Smith 2019, 9–13).…”

“…Global energy dilemmas present some of the most profound challenges of our time and have recently been the focus of much scholarly attention (Love and Isenhour 2016). The recent ethical turn within energy anthropologies calls attention to the overemphasis of power relations and inequalities within energy research and advocates more scholarly focus on the complex “ethical worlds” of energy actors (Appel 2019; High and Smith 2019). At the same time, populism and posttruth scholars have demonstrated how populist rhetorical strategies are shaping commonsense understandings of global energy challenges (Batel and Devine‐Wright 2018; Stegemann and Ossewaarde 2018).…”

Exquisite Corpses and backward glances: European social anthropology 2019

“…Above all, these do not base themselves on the assumptions of unquestioned good that have predicated earlier interventions. A study of Christian evangelism in the oilfields of the US heartland (High 2019) reveals oil imagined as a gift from God that can enable many to seek redemption, and as the industry experiences hardship it provides that purgative learning context that stiffens Christian sinews and strengthens belief. The vision that one can ‘do well by doing good’ mobilises the actors who populate an account of a project to market off‐grid solar energy products in sub‐Saharan Africa (Cross 2019).…”