Nonhumans in the practice of development: Material agency and friction in a small-scale energy program in Indonesia

Abstract

Article (Accepted Version) http://sro.sussex.ac.uk Ariani Fatimah, Yuti and Arora, Saurabh (2016) Nonhumans in the practice of development: material agency and friction in a small-scale energy program in Indonesia. Geoforum, 70 (March). pp. 25-34.

“We Are Prisoners in Our Own Homes”: Connecting the Environment, Gender-Based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights to Sport for Development and Peace in Nicaragua

“…. ] but rather they try to resist control by human actors, also because they may be embedded in alternative webs of relations," [91] (p. 26). Equally, then, the ways the human and non-humans might form a constitutive network of social relations held together within the framework of SGD need to be accounted for.…”

“…Similarly, development studies scholars, such as Fatimah and Arora [91], Li [92], and Merry [47] emphasize the importance of the material objects as well as the actors in the production of knowledge as essential spokes to thinking through the wheel of development projects and their perceived success. Equally, however, the items used to measure, for example, surveys, questions, scales, and "technologies of graphic representation", are part in parcel of what Merry [47] refers to as the "technology of statistical knowledge production, developed in a collaborative process by a series of actors, backed by institutions with incentives and money, over a long period of time" (p. 31).…”

Mutually-Beneficial Renewable Energy Systems

“…Noss et al 2012Pevzner 2015Lokman 2017Sørensen 2017 Relations -6.1 -June 2018 http://www.ledonline.it/Relations/ Technological permanence and the degree to which impacts during construction or operation are reversible should be considered, to establish improved conditions following the end of the project (Pasqualetti and Stremke 2017). This process would allow nonhuman nature to redirect or resist human intention over space and time (Fatimah and Arora 2016). Accordingly, protecting wildlife would be accounted for similarly to other natural processes influencing measures of resource potential.…”

“…These efforts would provide a foundation for learning over time, an essential quality of enduring mutualistic behaviors. Establishing a clear voice for nonhuman interests at site and regional levels would further ensure that conservation objectives remain paramount (Fatimah and Arora 2016).…”

“…This relational approach views human technologies for converting and making use of renewable flows of energy as embedded within and co-produced through their engagement with the nonhuman world, meaning that these energy systems emerge through collective practices of inter-related human and nonhuman participants within broader social, political, ecological, and technical assemblages (Chilvers and Pallett 2018). Nonhuman actors, namely diverse species and ecosystems are at least as critical to the resulting technological system as human agents in government, business, research, finance, local communities and so on (Fatimah and Arora 2016). For renewable energy transitions, this way of representing inter-related social, natural and technological systems becomes embodied within practical, material and organizational forms (Jasanoff 2004), raising the question, what kind of energy system is consistent with living inside a living being (Kelly 2012, 102)?…”